I spent all of this week in Dhaka, mostly for pleasure but there was also some business going on too. I don't think I've ever really given you any details of what I get up to in Dhaka so here's a day by day account:

Monday: The week actually started in Barisal. If you can cast your minds back a wee bit I was still finishing off the PAP with my foreigner hunt and a flight back to Dhaka at lunchtime. What with the tight deadline to finish writing up the partner assessment, and while it was still all fresh in my mind, I went straight back to the VSO office from the airport, picking up my laptop along the way, and spent the afternoon trying to make sense of what we'd learnt to present it in a clear and accurate manner. I lasted about 2 hours before deciding I'd had enough and didn't have all the information I needed to clarify the NGO's activities and future needs, but fortunately I'd arranged a meeting the next day to clarify just that with one of the program coordinators I'd met the day before.

While typing away at VSO I saw another volunteer Gill who had just arrived. We were both staying at the VSO flat so I said I'd buy some food and we'd have dinner together. I'd also arranged to go and see another friend Bjort in the evening but in the end I just ate some salad with Gill and had a quiet night in with a book. I think I must be out of practice as before I could fly around the world, do a good day's work and then go out and play in the evening. Not anymore apparently! In the same way that you can get used to a fast-paced and stressful professional environment the opposite is also true. It's the brutal changes between the 2 that create problems.

Tuesday: A good day, with 4 main objectives:

1) Go to the British High Commission clinic (Elizabeth House) and have my ears checked out... again. It's not a particularly tasteful tale but almost ever since I arrived in Bangladesh back in October I've had problems with my ears. As a result I've been to Elizabeth house at least 4 times for examinations, tests, irrigations and consultations, and I now think we've cracked it. The basic problem is that the humid climate here makes it difficult for hard to reach places like the ears to dry after washing. Unfortunately, when the skin remains damp eczema develops hence weakening the skin and making it more vulnerable to infections. In my case I'd caught some sort of fungal infection, but the drops I received were immediately effective and things are much better now ta!

2) Help a fellow volunteer move back into the VSO flat in Dhaka. Some of you may recall that Sarah (for tis her the volunteer in question) had been having a tricky placement, so much so that all concerned decided to cut things sort after a year giving Sarah the chance to do another 1 year placement with a NGO worth working with. As a result of this, and until she finds another placement, she was moving back to Dhaka, and more specifically the VSO flat where I was also staying. A few of you may be aware that when I came out to Bangladesh I could only take 23kg of luggage, excluding carry-on, and that's not a lot. However, clothes here are so cheap and more adapted to the climate that you can cut a few corners and get in some more books and CDs for example. That said, after nearly a year in country you tend to accumulate "stuff" as you generally do anywhere, and Sarah was no exception. Soooo, when the pickup truck eventually turned up at the flat at lunchtime I discovered that her affairs actually filled all of the back as well as most of the back seat! To make matters worse the driver is not as young as he used to be and has a bad back so can't lift heavy objects. To cut a long story short I ended up carrying anything vaguely heavy up 3 flights of stairs from the truck to the flat, while the driver took up pillows and tupperware boxes (I kid you not). By the end of it I'd worked up quite a sweat I can tell you, though I later felt a bit better about it when Sarah told me she had had to bring everything down to the truck from her old flat down south at 6.30 in the morning. She didn't say whether she'd had any help with the pillows.

3) Meet with the guy from the Barisal NGO and finish writing up my part of the documentation. As luck would have it he was able to come early so we clarified, structured, double-checked and discussed various things until we had a draft that made sense and was accurate at the time of going to press. That happened mid to late afternoon which meant I'd finished earlier than expected for the day's high point.

4) Go out on the piss to celebrate Ann's birthday, Bjort's recovery and Sarah arriving back in Dhaka. When it comes to VSO volunteers going out on the razzle in Bangladesh that can only mean one place, and that place is the BAGHA club. Most people were there by 6pm drinking the local cocktail, the "Dhaka Donkey", which is a slight variation on a Moscow Mule for those who know these things. Suffice it to say that it's a fairly effective drink, and after the third most people were pretty much donkeyed. The reasons for this get-together could do with some explanation so here goes. The first, Ann's birthday, is pretty clear so I'll just remind you that she's a volunteer living about an hour North of me with her husband Bjort and we went to Darjeeling together for New Years. Secondly, poor old Bjort has been suffering from a variety of stomach complaints ever since he arrived nearly a year ago. He's had numerous courses of antibiotics, the last ones being extremely powerful i.e. the sort that kills pretty much everything including the good bacteria the digestive system needs anyway. The end result of all this was losing 15 kgs and still getting diarrhea and nausea. Finally, after going to a different hospital (not far from BRIF I'm pleased to report) he got a different view, some anti-worm tablets and within a week he was looking much perkier and had gained 5 kilos! What I haven't mentioned is that his condition had become so preoccupying that had he not got better he would have had to leave the country all together. Neither he nor his wife Ann wanted that as they only have a few months to go before finishing their placement, so his getting better was definitely cause for celebration.

Wednesday: A rather slow day in Dhaka as there was a general strike, or hartal at they're known. It's amazing what a difference a hartal makes with the shops closed, traffic almost non-existant and nobody really about. It almost gives the town a post-apocalyptic feel but it's also quite nice as life is quieter, calmer, time stands a little stiller than usual. I spent my morning doing computer things like backing-up files to CD. It's a permanent fear that someday the climate and dust will get the better of my laptop and I'll loose all my data, including the 13GB worth of music I spent literally weeks copying from CD before leaving the UK. After lunch at the best cafe in VSO's part of town, which actually was probably the only cafe open in aforementioned part of town, I had a quick meeting with Moni about the draft I'd given her and the document in general. She was happy, showed me what she had done and how it fitted together, and miraculously by local standards we had a quick yet effective meeting.

The weird point of the day came in the evening. A Ugandan volunteer called Harrison had told us that he was going to be live on national TV to talk about HIV/AIDS. It has to be said that Harrison has a slightly different concept of time to the average European but we all went round to his flat at 6.30pm to watch his appearance. After a bit of channel hopping we found Bangladesh TV, waited for the programme to come on, waited some more, and some more. In the end we called him on his mobile to find out what was going on. When he answered we knew something was up. I mean, you don't tend to answer your phone when you're on live national TV do you? I turned out that the head of the Bangladesh Central Bank along with the leader of the Chamber of Commerce had been billed ahead of him hence reducing his slot, and it wasn't live anyway. In the end we all went up to the BAGHA for bangers and mash and some beers. Much better.

Thursday: A lot of VSO volunteer group things happened on Thursday. First up in the morning there was the meeting of the management volunteers that we try to organise every 2 months around a theme that we all want to discuss. This time we had 2 sessions planned; one to compile a list of all our different NGO's contacts in different areas (Health, Education, Human Rights etc.), and the second a meeting with the Oxfam Country Director to find out more about writing good project proposals from an international donor's perspective. We did the former, and I spent bloody ages writing down then pinning up my 37 different cards, but sadly the Oxfam guy had to cancel. There was another general strike that day and he refused to come to our part of town for fear of getting on the wrong end of an energetic demonstration.

In the afternoon the volunteer liason group (VOICE) of which I'm now a member met to sort out all the different issues and actions we've been trying to manager through e-mail. It got to the point that on a bad day I'd open my mailbox and have 10 VOICE messages to deal with. It was a good meeting, though when we summarised the different decisions I had 80% of the actions while the others had 1 or 2 things to do each if anything at all! ARSE!

The key moment of the day came in the evening with a party at VSO. The last VSO Country Director, before she left last year, nominated one member of staff to be added to the New Year's Honours List. As I later learnt during the traditional speeches, Tony Blair changed the system so that normal people could nominate other normal people who they thought deserved to be recognised for their achievements. And so it was that VSO Bangladesh's very own Program Support Manager Mr. Ranju Chowdury, after over 18 years dedicated VSO service, went to the British High Commission in Dhaka some weeks ago to be presented with his MBE by the High Commissioner. It's since transpired that they're not 100% sure whether it's a MBE or the higher OBE, and having read a photocopy of the certificate signed by the Queen I can't say I found it crystal clear either. Anyway, it was a good excuse for a get together, all the volunteers and many partner organisations were invited, and once they'd finished the speeches us vols buggered off for a beer or 5 at the BAGHA. The more astute among you may by now be detecting a pattern to my evenings...

Friday: What is the last day of the working week in the UK is of course our weekend, though not at the luxury hotels and in particular the Shonargaon Hotel where I get my hair cut. This is Dhaka's finest hotel, being slightly better than the Sheraton and more complete than the Radisson they're still building out by the airport. Like most things here a haircut is readily available anywhere you go for a handful of taka, but I prefer the safer option of going to an international barbers that can count the English cricket team amongst its customers. It also "only" costs 200 taka or 2 quid which is outrageous for Bangladesh but unbelievable for back home, so I treat myself every month to the most expensive men's haircut Bangladesh can probably offer. Being the most expensive in town also means that it attracts some of the rich and powerful of Dhaka, and while I was there it seemed like I was the only person who didn't know everyone else. Bit of a country club really, so I just sat with a cup of tea that I had made myself and read a book until they could fit me in.

Feeling a lot smarter and cooler around the head, I then went up to the BAGHA for a swim in the pool then some lunch, before doing the thing I like doing the most when in Dhaka i.e. play touch rugby. It happens every Friday afternoon at the French international school, lasts about 2 hours, and attracts a mixed crowd of Brits and Sri Lankans with the occasional Yank, Italian or even Cuban would you believe. It's usually the random nationalities you need to be wary of, as what they lack in rugby knowledge and experience they tend to make up for with pure fitness and sheer speed. When you're playing against a team of mid to late 30's guys in 35 degrees and humidity these things can be very telling, especially in the 2nd half. I always enjoy myself, though towards the end when we're feeling totally drained it can get a wee bit niggley, and after this 2 hour session I was feeling completely spent and my T-shirt did not have a single dry patch.

Luckily for me the evening was a relaxing one high in carbohydrates. While I played touch the girls went shopping for minced beef, and by pooling a few luxuries we each had we cooked up a great spaghetti bolognaise washed down with some red wine legally bought but illegally smuggled out of the BAGHA. To finish off the day we went round to Harrison's flat for the 2nd time in 3 days, though at least this time we did actually see him on TV. He wasn't able to talk about HIV/AIDS as hoped, and instead they had asked him to share some songs and dancing from his native Uganda. He's got a great voice and the songs were good, but to introduce the item they showed an extract from "George of the Jungle" with monkeys and gorillas playing drums. We couldn't make out what the presenter had said to justify the footage but it looked pretty bad and I hope would never have happened back home.

Saturday and Sunday, while usually work days for me were the laziest of the lot and I did basically nothing except relax around the flat, go to a great Indian restaurant Saturday night, and write this up Sunday afternoon. And seeing as I'm already a week behind I'll end this here and send it off.