In Pursuit of Wisdom

Very Severe Cyclonic Storm Sidr Hits Bangladesh at Nov 15th early morning with winds blowing at 250 km/h and gusts of 305 km/h.The storm from Bay of Bengal caused large scale evacuation and after it hit the SouthWest part of Bangladesh, so far 2388 death has been reported. This storm is at decisive as 1991 and 1970 cyclones and the death toll is rising in every hours report. I have tried a lot to contact my family back home and could get them only the day before after 28 hours electricity black out finished. All of my relatives and friends are fine as most of them are in Dhaka, although the storm went through 85 miles away from Dhaka with weakened force by the time it reached the center of the country. Pray for Bangladesh. We have seen a major flood this year and now this one - too much in one single year.

Today I got an email from a sports journalist and chess fide master of Belgrade asking the meaning of my name Ashik . The word Ashik, derives from Arabic word Asheq ( عاشق ), and means the one who is in love . Zaman is derived from Zamana , an Urdu/Hindo word that means the age or time . So Ashik Uzzaman means one who is in love with his time . In other words, Ashik Uzzaman is the lover of the age . I live in information age, its my profession as well and I love it. So to me my name resembles that I am the lover of information age.

I have been using the newer version of GMail for the last few days and I like it very much. The first thing I noticed is that it's faster than the older version. But the feature that I liked most is the Filter Messages like these action. Its wonderful and is saving me so many more minutes everyday. The other new action Mute takes out the message from my inbox, but I am not sure whether it archives it or deletes it do what with it. The replies by you are marked with a > sign in a discussion thread to easily distinguish between your responses vs the others responses. And of course the Contacts section has changed significantly in terms of visual appearance compared to other parts of the GMail. The embedded google talk now gives optionto show the list of contacts to chat in different sizes - tiny, small, medium, large. MicroSoft made its Windows Live Hotmail available for general registration. I tool my new live id ashik@live.com . At first look, I think the calendar, calendar...

I joined Salesforce in San Francisco yesterday as a Software Engineer. So far it has been a wonderful and competitive corporate environment. My manager took me to a Thai Cuisine for lunch and explained me how Salesforce is growing so fast! I will be probably be assigned to AppStore and Phoenix projects soon after I finish my admin training next week. Last Friday (2nd Nov) my Philips colleague gave me a farewell lunch at Red Kwali in Milpitas. Although Jeff could not attend it and instead gave me a phone call to say good bye; everyone else in Philips Milpitas R&D team joined that - Imtiyaz, Brian, Dan, Jade, David, Tho, Ba, Franca. It was a nice time with them. In that evening I, Shusmita, Ahyan, Nitol, Ezaz, Shaki and Mahi started for Klamath Falls, Oregon with our hired 7-seater Minivan. We reached the Trendwest Resort there at 3:30 PM. The long drive was quite wonderful with all of us singing by turns. The next day (Saturday) we went to Crater Lake first. We returned in the eveni...

We survived a 5.6 earth quake a few hours ago. It started at 8:05 PM and stayed for 20 seconds. The center of the earthquake was North San Jose and even in Fremont we felt it so strongly. I was playing with Ahyan and Shusmita was in kitchen when saw the whole housing started shaking violently. We gathered together in the middle of the living room until it was over and went out of the house to join many other people in the street after a while to avoid any follow up earth quake. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071031/ap_on_re_us/california_earthquake This is our second earth quake within a year. The earlier one was not as violent as today's one although in richter scale that was 4.8 or so. Our neighbor Kathy/Preston and Tofael Bhai were shocked to have this experience. Preston was like - Welcome to California, the place of earth quake. Update: 5 Minutes earlier 31st October Wednesday 3:52 PM, we had another earthquake which I believe is the aftershock of yesterday's one. It was mil...

Ahyan's first birthday went 12th of this month. Due to Eid-ul-Azha at 13th of this month, we celebrated the party at the following weekend at 20th October. Around 65 guests came in Chandni Restaurant in Newark. We booked the hall's one portion from noon to 4 PM. All the invitations were mostly maintained by evite. The birthday theme was Finding Nemo and all the baloons, table cloths, goody bag and the wonderful tiramisu cake wre decorated with this theme. Ahyan got som many beautiful gifts and love from all. We missed my friends and relatives back home in Bangladesh. This is the irony of living abroad that even happiest moments are touched with sadness. Here are some of the pictures from the party that Nitol uploaded in his picasa web album. http://picasaweb.google.com/nitol.shabbir/AhyanSBirthday

Twenty20 World Cup 2007 just started and we are already with many exciting results. A few hours earlier, very late night (or early morning) my time, I followed Bangladesh vs West Indies match where Ashraful's record fastest half-century (61) and Aftab's 62* knocked West Indies out of the tournament while Bangladesh proceeds to second round. Great job done my country! Here are few links to follow on this. http://content-uk.cricinfo.com/twenty20wc/engine/current/match/287857.html http://worldtwenty20.yahoo.com/videos/wiba1309.html http://rezwanul.blogspot.com/2007/09/hurray-bangladesh-won.html http://www.banglacricket.com/