Within the space of 1 week we turned our back on winter and welcomed spring. Or maybe it's autumn. To be honest I don't really know but I do know that temperatures have risen considerably in a short space of time and that winter is over (which would make spring the favourite in my book). Gone are my fleece jackets in the office and a T-shirt in bed, and in Dhaka you can already see certain people starting to reach for the air conditioning remote controls. Sarah's Canadian flat mate Mike has already started to complain that it's hot - boy is he in for a rough time this summer!

This week I've basically got a collection of odd events for you, with a professional update thrown in for good measure. To start off, I received a hand-written note in my pigeon hole at VSO from our Country Director no less. It read:

"Dear Sarah and Keri, Are you interested to take part in features in local newspapers? Please see the attachment under section 4."

The photocopied page stapled to this note said:

"Do you know any couples who found love whilst volunteering...? The Press Office in VSO London are planning on doing features in local papers on volunteer couples who have met during their placement and need the information by 23 February. If you know of any volunteers who found the love of their life while volunteering please contact..." And no we won't be putting our names forward for this rather shameless attempt at generating human-interest publicity. No but honestly, would you expect your employer to publicise couples that formed after meeting at work? In local papers?!

While waiting to get the bus to Dhaka on Wednesday I noticed a guy with a bucket talking to one of the bus company staff. After a few minutes the office supervisor called him over and asked him how much a kilo was. A kilo of what I hear you cry. Well, I didn't have to wait long to find out as they all told me it was honey. I had a look into the bucket and it looked more like mouldy fish at my first glance. I leaned in a bit closer and realised that the lumps I'd initially spotted were in fact pieces of honeycomb. And there were dead bees too. Funnily enough, and despite it's clearly natural origins, I declined to purchase any.

During the bus journey down to Dhaka we stopped at a petrol station for fuel (I presume so as I don't remember seeing any filling going on) so a few passengers got out to go to the bathroom (and I use the term loosely). Not everyone who needed to go was however allowed to get off and find some privacy. One little girl was simply held out of the bus window by its father or grandfather and had to urinate from a height of 2 metres onto the petrol station forecourt. Believe it or not I've actually seen worse. One time I had to tell off a rather horrible man for trying to get his young male relative to piss actually in the bus in the corridor between the seats. No one else seemed to notice, and being opposite and downstream of the impending event I quickly voiced my concerns which were fortunately heeded. I can tolerate all the puking that seems to happen on the buses (mostly women and children), and call me an intolerant hygiene maniac if you will, but I draw the line at actually pissing on the floor.

Once actually in Dhaka and in safer surroundings I had a meeting with VSO about my job. The meeting was actually the office's monthly programme development meeting but it covers both knowledge management and the short interventions I'm supposed to do. The afternoon before I'd collared Clive, the senior programme manager, for his take on the situation. The discussion, which I had hoped would throw up a few interesting organisational projects for me to do, started off badly when he said he wanted me to put a video together. Seeing the danger of becoming the office's man who finishes off outstanding shit I probably reacted a tad too defensively, and now that I've had time to think about it I would probably quite enjoy whipping a few hours of footage into an interesting promotional video for the HIV/AIDS programme.

During the meeting itself it became clear we had a few leads for things I could do but nothing really substantial. The only exception to this was however an opportunity to work for the International Labour Organisation on an as yet undefined piece of work. For those of you who are a bit rusty on your UN organisations, here's a quote from their information leaflet: "The International Labour Organization emerged with the League of Nations from the Treaty of Versailles in 1919 (and is the only survivor of that treaty). It was founded to give expression to the growing concern for social reform after World War I, and the conviction that any reform had to be conducted at an international level. After World War II, a dynamic restatement and enlargement of the ILO's basic goals and principles was made in the Declaration of Philadelphia. The Declaration anticipated post-war growth in national independence, and heralded the birth of large-scale technical cooperation with the developing world. In 1946, the ILO became the first specialized agency associated with the newly formed United Nations Organization. On its 50th anniversary in 1969, it was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize."

What I may be required to do for them is yet to be defined, but it could be a source of income for VSO depending on how much money they're willing to pay for my services! Initially our country director was not keen at all to take the idea any further, but the possibility of extra cash deserved to be explored further. I personally rather like the idea of working for an UN agency for a short while, and will meet with the Dutchman in charge of the project asking for VSO's help next week to understand what they want and how I / VSO could help. Fingers crossed it goes well and I get the green light. Incidentally, I also popped into CARE while I was in Dhaka and asked about the job opportunity I'd heard about some weeks ago now. Apparently they are so far behind in winding up the project and getting a proposal in to DFID to use the spare money that I could well be back in the UK before anything interesting happens. Strangely this didn't surprise me too much...

The end of the week saw me complete one of my placement's significant objectives i.e. deliver training to all managers on giving feedback and coaching staff (hence the funny photo). It went really well, and the manager I had coached to facilitate the session directly in Bangla did a superb job. At the end when the participants were giving us their feedback (well, it was another opportunity for them to practice that I couldn't miss now could I?) they said that they had never thought of telling their staff how they were doing at their jobs on a regular basis. Oh how scary is that, and how much do I hope that some of these ideas will have sunk in and get used in the field.