It was Anne's birthday on Saturday, so we needed to buy some things for a meal and other bits and bobs. And shopping around here can only mean a trek into Dinajpur on Friday.

We left around midday, and as soon as we were safely on a rickshaw van heading for the bus stop in Ranirbandar we saw a woman go past on another rickshaw lying down with a fellow female passenger sat next to her holding a saline drip attached to her arm! It seemed obvious that there wouldn't be ambulances around here when we sat and thought about it, but it still took this rather odd sight to set the cogs in motion. That was all that happened though on the way to Dinajpur, and even the bus was quite empty which we put down to it being prayer time and Ramadan. For once I could just sit, watch the countryside go by and enjoy the cool air passing through the bus.

Once safely arrived we grabbed a rickshaw and told him to go the fire station which is in the centre of town. To be strictly accurate I told him to go to the "Fire Service" as a previous volunteer had told me that if you say "Fire Station" they focus on the last word and soon have you gazing at trains and timetables that lie. It's interesting isn't though, as back home I think we tend to focus on the first word and sometimes miss the rest. Anyway, after about 15 minutes, my attempts to adapt my message to local cognitive patterns were beginning to look fruitless as we went through parts of town we'd never seen before. This suspicion was fully vindicated when the puller finally stopped at the gates of St. Francis Xavier Cathedral, and I think he was almost proud of his achievement! As it turned out it "cathedral" was rather a grand name for a few buildings but there you go. It was however a prime example of someone not listening to what you're saying but assuming they know the answer. In this case, because we're white we must be Christian so must want to go to the Christian church.

When I then repeated where we really wanted to go he understood immediately, which just goes to show what listening can achieve when you can be bothered. Incidentally, the whole point of going to the town centre was to go to an Internet cafe and for me to buy Anne lunch for her birthday. When we did eventually get there we found that the Internet place was closed (not a total surprise) but that the Chinese restaurant was open (pleasant surprise). We weren't sure whether it would be open before sunset (what with most people fasting etc.) but it was, so we stuffed ourselves on wontons and chowmein. Anne being a vegetarian and the wontons containing chicken meant that she nibbled the edges and gave me the centre! The lack of surprise about the Internet was due to a rumour we'd heard from Habib that the whole area was without dial-up access as the Bangladesh Telephone and Telegraph board were "upgrading" a server. For 2 weeks, despite having a good phone line, all our attempts to connect to the Internet at BRIF were refused by the authentication server. I'm no network engineer, but surely it doesn't take 2 weeks to upgrade the one machine that the whole region depends on for web access?

Meanwhile, back in the Chinese, the food was good, but the experience was all a little weird really. The place was only lit by whatever distant rays of sunshine that made it all the way to the windows on the other side of a fairly big room. So it was quite dark, with various oriental-looking objects i.e. fans and dragons, stuck to the walls. Next, it was staffed by, amongst others, a dwarf who just lurked by the entrance and didn't seem to have anything to do with ordering or food preparation. All in all it generally had a Twin Peaks feel to it, and I half expected to find blueberry pie on the menu or whatever it was that Kyle MacLachlan's FBI character always used to eat in the diner. Anne of course, being on the verge of turning 24, had no idea what Twin Peaks was about - one of those generation-defining things that remind you that you're not as young as perhaps you thought.

By now it was 3pm, so we did our shopping (quite successfully I might add) and noted with satisfaction the presence of pasta, tinned tuna and laughing cow cheese in a few different stores. In the year I've been in Bangladesh I've definitely seen improvements in many areas, but most of them benefit the middle classes and above (imported goods, mobile phone coverage etc.) rather than the truly needy at the bottom of the pile. Hopefully things will trickle down... I'll close with another cultural distinction from life here. We'd finished our shopping, the Internet places weren't due to open for over an hour, and we'd already had a cup of tea to pass some time. All we wanted to do was sit down on a bit of grass or on a bench for a wee while, watch the world go by, maybe even doze a bit. Of course we couldn't do any of that as a) there weren't really any park areas to speak of, and b) had we sat down anywhere outside the world would have come to us to watch us not go by. As luck would have it though the Internet cafe's doors were open, a disembodied voice from the gloom in the back confirmed that they still couldn't get a connection, so we just took a bus home.