This week saw me reach a third of a century, and yes I realise that's not a real milestone as far as birthdays go. I did however manage to celebrate it and enjoy myself with far greater success than last year. The problem then was that all my new friends i.e. those volunteers I'd come out with, had just moved out to their placements so weren't in town. This year however virtually everyone was there, though only a few actually came out to celebrate a birthday.

Have you ever noticed how many birthdays there are in November? When I was in primary school we had a class calendar with everyone's birthday one, and November was by far the busiest. Our VSO community is no different, and with 2 other birthdays of good friends (Sarah and Graham) within a week of mine we decided to celebrate together on Wednesday night. In fact we were celebrating 4 birthdays, as although Gill's was in October we hadn't managed to celebrate it properly. My personal theory is that the boredom of the long winter nights really starts to bite towards the end of January so couples either spend more time in bed or go out on the lash more often and get careless. Anyway, We picked Wednesday the 24th as everyone was back in Dhaka to attend a VSO training on rights-based approaches taking place in 2 batches on the 24th and 25th.

What are rights-based approaches? Well, it's the latest trend in development theory that says we should focus on people's rights above all else. Basically, in response to the eternal problem of people starving, the answers have evolved something like this: 1) Give the starving person a fish, 2) Give the person a fishing rod to catch fish, 3) Give the person training in how to make full use of fishing rod to catch fish, 4) Make person aware of right to fish in local pond and lobby pond owner for better access for starving people. Granted I'm simplifying hugely, but the basic point is that there's no point in having the tools and skills to feed yourself if you can't access the resources and services you need to get the job done. This goes beyond access to land and rivers, and includes human rights to address little daily joys like discrimination. Now, I kind of find this sort of thing interesting, if only from a purely intellectual point of view, but I didn't learn anything at the course because a) it was truly truly shit, and b) it was so shit in fact that I bailed at the late morning break to take me and my nasty hangover back to bed. And I honestly did things in that order too.

The hang-over of course came from the big piss-up we had Wednesday night. Initially we'd planned on going on a club-crawl, which is basically a pub crawl but not having pubs here we have to go to different expat clubs. That didn't happen as the place where we started, the British High Commission Club, is the cheapest, we can put our drinks on a tab and pay at the end of the month, and it seemed a shame wasting valuable drinking time poncing around Dhaka in rickshaws in an increasingly silly state. So in a nutshell we got trashed, and once back at the flat Sarah made Gill and I the biggest G and T in the world and I opened my really really good presents which had all arrived well in advance. It appears my friends and family were taking no chances after the fiasco of last Christmas when my presents arrived in time for Easter this year.

So that was Wednesday. My birthday was the Thursday, and it honestly took Sarah and I most of the day with glasses of Coke and a Billy Connelly DVD to regain a semblance of normality. By 6pm we were feeling OK so went to the BAGHA for a few swifties, then off for dinner at Dhaka's, and I assume Bangladesh's, only Tex-Mex restaurant. Usually, having only one restaurant of a given cuisine doesn't inspire confidence, but this place was great and we ate like princes for not very much at all. All that was lacking was a jug of margaritas and someone to strangle the Bangladeshi couple sat 2 tables behind us who spent most of their meal bellowing into their mobile phones. They may have mastered the technology here, but they still haven't learnt the social norms that go with them.

The rest of the weekend was really about relaxing and eating more great food. Friday night I was treated to Sarah's legendary lasagne (and my God did Graham and I eat an awful lot of it), and Saturday we ate Chinese to try and forget the very untimely demise of Sarah's laptop mid-document. You know the sort of nightmare situation I mean - important document due the next day and no up-to-date back-up copies anywhere. Then the screen just goes blank. ARSE! Great birthday though, and when I go back down to Dhaka next for Christmas I'll rig up the hammock Sarah bought me on the balcony.