I guess this was inevitable. For five months I have been pretending to be someone who I never can be. I am not a blogger. I don’t belong here. It took me five months and 65 posts to realize.

I had a fun time here I got to admit. I never thought that I’d get this much response from my readers. The thing I’ll always remember is that I actually won a prize for blogging. It felt great.

Thanks to timethief… a wonderful blogger and a great person. My mental condition is just not fit for blogging. Sorry.

Angry young man
Irtiza104

For over 5 months now I am noticing this person in this same place. He definitely doesn’t work and I don’t see him going to person to person and begging for money. I wonder how he manages to buy food. I wonder how he managed the sweater and the cap which he is wearing now. His character strikes me as mysterious and interesting. I don’t know what but there is something about this lonely and poor guy which has made me to like him. I would definitely like to talk to him someday.

There are millions of people just like him in my country who are homeless and suffering a lot in winter. I can’t think of living under the open sky in these fogy and extremely cold winter nights.

The national election of Bangladesh is only 8 days away (29 December, 2008). I hope the people of our country wisely choose the person they are going to vote for. I hope the election result reflects the long cherished desire to bring a change in our country. A change, which will help people like that person in the picture. A change which will bring peace in this country, in the soul of the countrymen. I want to see a place named Bangladesh where no one is hostile to another person, where everyone gets up from a decent bed in the morning and can have a plate full of something to eat. I want to see a place where everyone is more or less helpful to one another. I definitely don’t want to see hundreds of people dying in the winter in cold or in hanger.

I hope this 9th national election brings a change… no matter how small it is. It has to start from somewhere.

I hope I am not living in ‘dreamland’.

Dear readers,

As you all can see there’s no particular niche for my blog. I write about almost anything worth blogging. As it has its own benefits, is has MANY disadvantages also. One of the main problems I face due to not having a particular niche is that I often can’t decide which subject to write on.

I often have to be faced with this very hard decision- should I write on poverty, or should I ‘try’ to promote peace by writing a meaningful post? Should I spend a little time on writing about the environment, or should I go forward writing about health and self improvement? Or is it the time now to brag about my very own personal life?

In this dilemma I often find myself not posting for days. I strongly believe that I take blogging seriously and this ‘not posting’ thing puts stress and a little depression on me. So it gets even harder to concentrate…

So now, I have come to this understanding that I need the opinion and the help of my readers and friends. So from now on I’ll request you to suggest me a subject, any subject (related to L.A.I.K.I.) that you would like to see on my blog. I think by this L.A.I.K.I. can interact more with its readers and turn this simple blog in a happy and healthy community. It's a huge step for Life as i know it and I really hope to get your help.

Peace
Irtiza104

P.S. Moreover it would be a little more challenging for me and I love challenges :D


*L.A.I.K.I. - Life as i know it

A Glorious Day

37 years ago, on this very day, a new nation was born. On this day Bangladesh emerged as an independent country after a nine month long war of liberation (26 March – 16 December) against the Pakistani government. It is indeed a great achievement for all the freedom loving people of Bangladesh and the most significant day in the history of out beloved country. Happy victory day...

The Great Sacrifice

The war of liberation began on 26 March, 1971 after the declaration of independence by Mr. Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. From that day some 175,000 freedom fighters (East Bengal Regiment & Civilians) and 250,000 Indian soldiers fought side by side against 100,000 Pakistani soldiers and 25,000 Para-military. Yet the Pakistanis managed to kill 3 million soldiers and civilians, and rape 300,000-400,000 women (as young as 8, as old as 75) in just nine months. Yes, I know, no great achievement is achieved without great sacrifice.

A video about rape victims:



No body plays with fire:



National anthem sung by freedom fighters:



The joy after victory:



Further reading: War of 1971 Wiki, Women in 1971, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, Genocide.

But I Can’t Be Happy

37 years have passed. But still we are unable to honor this great sacrifice. Our freedom fighters didn’t lay down their lives to give birth to a nation which has the reputation of being the most corrupt country in the world (consecutively 5 times, 2001-2005. Bangladesh is now ranked 10). Bangladesh has honored the freedom fighters by letting them live like beggars on streets. Many of them are street hawkers, rickshaw pullers and day laborers. Hell, we don’t even know the complete list of the freedom fighters yet. Still there is dispute going on about how many people died in that war; some say 300,000 while some say 3 million…pathetic. 37 years have passed, but still we are unable to ‘do something’ the war criminals. Hell, the war criminals have now become our political leaders; we elect them- send them to the parliament and let them rule us. Mujahid, Nizami, Golam Azom are war criminals, we know it, they know it to. But still we are voting for them…

Further reading: War criminals

Someday…maybe someday.

As you can see I have added a LinkBar under the header image. It took me almost a week to install this little thing. At one stage I got so pissed that I was actually thinking about moving my blog to Wordpress as Wordpress offers static pages to their users (unlike Blogger). So it gets a lot easier to install this little feature.

Though it seemed very difficult at first, but in the end it turned out to be a simple job. The LinkBar contains links to two (Not-So-Static) static pages which contain the following sections:

*About - about me and my blogs

*Contact – my email address, yahoo IM and FaceBook link

*Links - blogroll and links

Thanks to TimeThief for getting me starded. Not everyone is as helpful as her.

(If you want to add a linkbar to your blogger blog and google fails to satisfy you, you can contact me)

It is sad but true that for the last couple of days (for a week to be exact) I have been smoking cigarettes. It’s not like that I’ve never smoked before but for the last few days I’m doing it regularly. I feel extremely bad about it and this post is basically written to remind me of why I shouldn’t smoke.

For some people smoking helps to calm them down. Maybe that’s my reason of doing it as I am going through a rough time. But that’s no excuse. Smoking harms us a lot more than it benefits us. At first it might seem to relief us from depression but that’s not the case as no substantial proof has been found yet (correct me if I’m wrong). Every year hundreds of thousands people die because of diseases caused by smoking cigarettes.

There are tons of reasons why I shouldn’t smoke. I’m pointing out some of those which I can relate to the most.

Smoking reduces our overall fitness. It robs oxygen from muscles, brain and body tissue. So the whole body has to work much harder. I can’t take the risk of being unfit.

Smoking may cause shortness of breath and Asthma. I have recently joined ‘one hundred push-ups training program’ and I want to go all the way. I am also dying to get into the army, which requires extreme physical fitness. So I can’t afford to have shortness of breath or asthma.

Smoking may cause impotence/infertility. Who wants that?

It causes various cancers including lung cancer. It tar coats our lungs like soot in a chimney and causes cancer. A 20-a-day smoker breathes in up to a full cup (210 g) of tar in a year. Smoking increases the chances of stroke and heart attack.

I don’t like to unnecessarily waste money…another reason not to smoke.

I hate the following picture. I don't want my lungs to look like this.

Smoking cigarettes is not only bad for the smoker; it’s also bad for the people around him. When a person inhales the smoke exhaled from the lungs of a smoker or the smoke coming from a cigarette, it is called secondhand smoking or passive smoking. Second hand smoke contains almost 4000 chemicals, 200 of which are poisonous, 63 of which cause cancer. So, passive smoking is as dangerous as direct smoking. So, when I smoke, the person next to me also gets affected without doing anything wrong. I don’t want to see yet another person suffering for my sins.

Further reading: effects of smoking, effects on human body, WIKI smoking

To draw a conclusion to this post let me say that I am done with smoking. I am not completely addicted to it so getting rid of it would be relatively easy.

This post was influenced by TimeThief’s great post Do You Love Yourself?

I think to move ahead in life it’s very important to let go of certain things. Punishing yourself for the same things over and over again is -above all- unfair to you.

No human life is perfect. We make mistakes, don’t we? Over the past few years I’ve done some terrible things which I can never be proud of. I have taken some difficult decisions which I could have avoided. It’s not like that the choices I had were any less hard.

It’s very important to seek forgiveness- not from others but from your own inner-self. Forgive yourself and just let it go. If you can change the consequences of the past activities, then great. But if you can’t, don’t bother too much. Let go the anger you are holding in from your rough childhood. Let go the burden of shame that haunts you. Let it go. And be strong. Be strong to make sure that the same sh*t never happens to you again.

Accept yourself for who you are, not for who you wanted to be. Be true to yourself. Love yourself. If admitting is the first step towards self improvement and forgiving is the second, loving yourself and letting go should be the third…atleast in my opinion.

In my last post I have discussed about the symptoms, prevention and some other stuff about AIDS. In this post I will try to talk about the behavior/attitude of other’s, towards the HIV/AIDS victims.

In many countries, especially in developing countries people seem to ignore and sometimes insult the HIV victims. And as far as I can understand the reason behind this is how HIV spreads. As you all know HIV/AIDS spreads through body fluids like infected blood, semen, vaginal fluid and breast milk (not saliva). And two of the main means of transferring these fluids are through unsafe sex and drugs. That’s why in many countries like Bangladesh and India people consider AIDS victims as the rotten section of a society.

Bangladesh still has a minimal number of HIV/AIDS infected people. At present there are about 1,495 people who are carrying this virus. The majority of these people are drug addicts, sex workers and non-resident Bangladeshis. In our country (and I know in India also) people who are HIV+ are often socially segregated. Not only the society but also their own family starts to hate that dying person. They become socially unwanted and left alone to rot. IMO because of this kind of attitude they die long before their deaths.

In Bangladesh premarital sex is unexpected (!). Having multiple partners is strictly prohibited by the society. And I think drug is unwanted all over the world. So when a person falls a victim to AIDS he also becomes unwanted in the societies of this subcontinent (mainly because of ‘social values’). There’s also another reason behind this kind of attitude towards them, which is misconception. People of these developing countries usually don’t have a clear knowledge about HIV/AIDS. They often think that AIDS spreads through wind, food or water or by touching the HIV+ person. So they don’t eat, live, drink with the HIV+ person. They don’t even feel comfortable going near that person. They have to count their last days being trapped in their own room, which is very heart breaking. (HIV AIDS *does not* spread like this)

Dear readers and fellow country-men, I’ll not comment on whether this kind of behavior is right or wrong. That’s up to you to decide. But think, doesn’t that dying person need a little support from his family and friends? Is it so hard to forgive someone?

A Little Knowledge

Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome or commonly known as AIDS is caused by Human ImmuneDeficiency Virus aka HIV. Many researchers believe that HIV was originated in Sub-Saharan-Africa in early 20th century. HIV destroys the immune system of our body and makes us vulnerable to all sorts of viruses and bacteria. In simpler word HIV makes us to go into battle without any armor or weapons. The final stage of being contaminated by HIV is called having AIDS. If an HIV positive person doesn’t undergo treatment in time, it may take 8-10 years for him to become contaminated by AIDS. And let me tell you that *no cure* for AIDS/HIV has been invented yet. In time treatments can only *prolong* the lives of HIV positive persons.


A Little Statistics

AIDS is an epidemic. Though the number of HIV victims has reduced over the last couple of years we are still in extreme danger. Currently there are some 32.2 million people in the world who are living with this disease. In 2007 alone about 2.1 million people including 330,000 children were killed by this life-talking (not ‘life-threatening’) disease. Three-quarters of these deaths occurred in Sub Saharan Africa. More than 11 million children have been orphaned by AIDS. The number of HIV contamination in Bangladesh is low. At present there are some 1,495 victims of this virus in our country. But we are also at high risk as our neighboring countries like India (2-3 million) and Myanmar (200,000-520,000) have a higher percentage of people who are carrying this disease.


How Is It Transmitted

One can only be contaminated by AIDS by another *HIV/AIDS victim*. HIV/AIDS is transmitted through body fluids like *infected* blood, semen, vaginal fluid and breast milk. It *does not* spread through saliva. Drug addicts are often found HIV positive as they often seem to share a common needle when they injected drugs in their bodies. If they have one HIV+ person among them they all get contaminated by using the same needle he used earlier. Not caring (or not knowing) about safe sex is one of the main causes of AIDS. Having multiple unfaithful/careless sex partners increase the risk of being contaminated by sex. Prostitution and homosexuality play a major role in AIDS. Birth control pills can’t prevent AIDS or other sexual diseases. Not wearing condoms properly or not wearing them at all can/will increase the number of HIV+ persons. If an HIV positive woman conceives a baby there is a high *chance* that the baby will born being contaminated by HIV/AIDS. I advice HIV+ mothers to not to breast feed their children as it can kill him eventually.

AIDS *does not* spread by French kissing (unless there is blood in the mouth), taking bath in the same bathtub, eating in the same plate, drinking in the same glass or sharing the same bed.


Some Symptoms

Many people don’t have any symptoms at the early stage of HIV infection. Some may suffer from flu-like illness after 3-6 months of contamination- this illness may include fever, tiredness, diarrhoea, headache, enlarged lymph nodes etc. HIV triggers various diseases which normally don’t affect human body. It increases the risk of various cancers. The later symptoms of HIV contamination may include massive weight loss, lack of energy, lack of concentration, memory loss, personality change, shortness of breath, severe pain in arms and feet, vaginal infections, frequent fever and headache.


Prevention Is Better Than Cure

Once again let me say that there is (still) no cure for HIV/AIDS. So prevention is the only way.

*Be Smart, Use a Condom*
As no one will listen to me if I talk about abstinence, I will talk about safe sex instead. Try to be faithful to you spouse/partner. If you have multiple sex partners than you must use condoms as condoms (male/female) are the only sure way to prevent HIV contamination by sexual intercourses. If you are at the giving end of oral sex then you must keep a good oral hygiene and remember *not to* brush right before/after giving oral sex. The person at the receiving end of oral sex does not get contaminated by HIV (unless the giver’s mouth is bloody). *Source: AIDS and oral sex, male/female condoms.

*Don’t Do Drugs*
Don’t do drugs. But if you do, then be sure not to inject ‘stuff’ in you. But if you do, then don’t use the same needle.

Friends, let’s be safe. Let’s love our lives and respect the feelings of the person next to us. I strongly believe that by raising awareness, by being aware we can fight this global epidemic. I believe that one day soon AIDS will vanish from this beautiful earth of ours. Let’s be safe.

*This post was the runner up in a blog carnival.

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