Star Diary

Where are we Heading?

It seems the people of this country have given up hope and accepted the traffic jams as their fate. An example of utter disappointment is the Mohakhali Flyover. It was built in the hope of reducing traffic jam at Mohakhali intersections. Nowadays, the long tailbacks reach the flyover itself. It remains loaded with vehicles stuck for hours.

I think we should remember how much we are losing in the traffic jams everyday. It is a huge waste of fuel as well as working hours of hundreds of thousands of people. The country's progress is going to be affected by this in the long run.

Another problem of the city is load-shedding. It seems to me that most people have become accustomed to frequent power failures. Sometimes, load shedding continues for five or six hours. The people of Bangladesh get stuck in traffic when they are on the street, and when they are at home or at work, they don't get electricity. Is the Government not seeing the sufferings of the people? Where are we heading?

Khwaja Mohammed Ali Saber
Baridhara Diplomatic Zone, Dhaka

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Ladies and [then] Gentlemen

A month ago, there was a family get together in our home. When all the men were having a noisy chat in the drawing room, one of my uncles was sitting in my father's bedroom. He was watching some Indian Bengali serials. In two hours, he watched four serials in a row. It was clear that he was lost in those serials during the time. When I sat beside him, he narrated the entire story of a serial with a broad smile on his face. I thought the story was pure rubbish.

To my astonishment, his five-year-old daughter came to him saying that all the other men were sitting at the drawing room and he should go there. "So what? I'll join them after I finish watching TV."

It used to be a common thing for Bangladeshi women to watch these serials. Men used to hate them. But things seem to have changed a lot. I have noticed that my father watches them nowadays.

Does this mean that our Bangladeshi channels have failed to keep the viewers entertained? On September 16 last year, there was an article in the Star where the writer said that over 50 Indian channels were watched in Bangladesh but not a single Bangladeshi channel can be watched in any Indian city. I get frustrated when I see that the people of Bangladesh are becoming increasingly obsessed with Indian TV channels.

Md Adeeb Sharif
Muhammadpur, Dhaka

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Facebook Addiction

At present, many people think that having a Facebook or Skype account is a smart thing. They tend to think that Facebook users are the ‘in crowd’. It is true that in modern times, these social networking websites help a lot by letting people communicate with each other. But some young people spend too much in these sites. It is pretty obvious that people, who spend most of their time sitting in front of a computer using Facebook, are addicted to it.

Recently, in our lab class we were using Microsoft Word. I can operate the software quite well. But suddenly, one of my classmates asked me how to use it. I helped her and asked if she had a computer at home. She replied that she had. She also added that she had been using a computer since she was in class 9. To my utter surprise, I learned that she used nothing but Facebook on a computer and that she spends a lot of time chatting. She reminded me of a friend who got GPA 5.00 in the SSC exam. But now, she is doing badly in college, because she spent too much time in social networking. If we fail to do something, this addiction is going to leave its mark on the futures of many young people.

Shanjida Rimi
Dhaka City College, Dhaka