In Pursuit of Wisdom

By all means and parameters, July 18th 2008 will remain as one of the most significant dates in my entire life. Because that was the day when my parents landed in San Francisco airport from Cathay Pacific Airlines. I was working from home that Friday and rented a 7 seater Ford Explorer van to receive them in the airport. I needed this big car to handle 4 full size luggages (70 lbs each). They got USA visa at 2nd attempt after a long 7 months of backgrounds check. While they were supposed to come 6 weeks back, at last they reached here to spend the next 3 months with me, Shusmita and their grandson Ahyan whom they never saw earlier. Me and Shusmita planned a lot before they came here. We bought new sofa, new bed to fit in our second bed room, new LCD HDTV and so on. We were worried of the little high temperature here although so far it has been good. Shahriar and his parents, Ezaz, Nitol came to see my parents in the afternoon and we shared the fresh Bangladeshi foods together. The very...

I have read Quran, our holy book in Islam, once in Arabic language. I was a teenager that time and didn't understand the meaning and it's impact. Later I attempted to read the Bengali translation of Quran but stopped after making some progress. Few months back, my friend Nitol was talking to our another friend Emon who started reading and telling everyone to read a very good Bengali translation of Quran with Shan-e-nuzul. This is exactly what I was looking for and it ignited in me the desire to finish Quran with proper understanding. Sometimes early this month I proposed my friends in Bay Area on a systematic and combined study on Islamic history and events from Quran. Some of them seems really got interested with this proposal. Then I started looking for resources considering the following objectives. Resources on Quran, Hadith that are accessible electronically or via internet. I am an IT guy and I have very less time available in a day when I can afford to stay away from com...

When I checked after lunch in San Francisco near my office in Embarcadero, all their iPhone3G were already sold out. I am not surprised because I know the stories when iPhone came out first time last year. As I will buy 2 iPhone3Gs this coming 1st August when my Verizon contract will finish, I took some effort to figure out the rough estimates for 2 years’ plan prices for iPhone3G from AT&T - 1 iPhone3G Individual Plan: $70 (+ tax) * 12 * 2+ $200 (+ tax for phone set) + $36 (activation fee) + $30 * 12 * 2 (+ tax) = $2636 (+ a lot of accumulated tax) So if I apply a flat tax of 8.75% on the total it becomes $2866.65 for next 2 years. 2 iPhone3G Family Talk Plan: { $70 (+ tax) * 12 * 2 + $10 (for 2nd line) * 12 * 2 (+ tax) } + { $200 * 2 (+ tax for 2 phone sets) } + { $36 + $26 (activation fee) } + [ { $30 * 12 * 2 (+ tax) } * 2] = $3822 (+ a lot of accumulated tax) So if I apply a flat tax of 8.75% tax on the total it becomes $4156.425 for next 2 years. This will be...

This independence day long weekend, I along with my wife Shusmita and son Ahyan stayed overnight in San Francisco to watch fireworks and to shop in Union Square. My friend Nitol joined us at 4th July noon when we started in a relax mode. We reached Club Quarters in San Francisco (in Embarcadero) and parked my car in a nearby garage. Then we caught BART for shopping in WestField. In the evening we came back to Ferry Building to watch fireworks, but we couldn't watch well from there. So we started walking towards Pier 39 with Ahyan in Stroller. There we could watch the fires very closely. Ahyan was scared of the sounds and hence started crying loud. We finished our dinner just opposite to my office in market street and then Nitol went back to Fremont while we headed towards our hotel room. http://picasaweb.google.com/nitol.shabbir/4thOfJulyAtSanFrancisco The next morning we went to Naan N Curry in O'Farrell street. Shusmita did a lot of shopping from Union Square and we returne...