Number one job of the next government – Energy

Some of you may disagree and you have every right to do that. You may argue that Bangladesh is a poor country; people do not have the very basic of enough food, shelter. However I think the biggest catalyst for Bangladesh to infuse job creation and tap the enormous recourses of man power is energy. Energy should be the task one for the new government sworn in January 2009.
Analyze Bangladesh’s greatest achievements’:

Although agriculture and local industry contributed into the national economy and the quality of life; however two biggest foreign exchange earners are Garments and Wage earners. The contribution of these two sectors in our economy is phenomenal. They directly and indirectly created abundant jobs and purchase power. These two created enough liquidity to infuse local bossiness such that money gets circulated and overall national quality of life improved. All these happened due to global free market economy and because of the private sectors entrepreneurs’ who taped into the opportunity. However there is a lot of room to grow if we could improve “time to market” bottlenecks.

The same thing happens for India. India developed a maga project to computer literate one million Indian during 80s. With their English language skills along with computer literacy, the west seizes the opportunity of more profit margins employing the low wage Indian programmer. Indian kept the customer satisfied and business keep on returning.

Today’s global competition knows no limit. Due to the internet, consumers are well informed and want the best product sooner and cheaper. Bangladesh is almost in the lowest rank of the value chain in RMG; hence could not charge more than the minimum. Several factors are in play. I believe, the worst enemy is RMG’s inability to cope with the “time to market” philosophy.

Buyers have to channel only those products to Bangladesh which are less time sensitive and hence have very low margin. Continuous power supply or the cost of onsite power generation and political instability causing seamless transportation discourage buyer to send those high value and high margin product to Bangladesh to process. To get an edge, you not only have to satisfy the factory but support the infrastructure that works hand in hand with the factory.

Look at an example. When Vietnam asked Intel Corporation to setup a sort and assembly plant, Intel Corporation asked for a continuous supply of electricity and a large parcel of land. What Vietnamese government has done is more than what Intel Corporation asked for. They not only supply uninterrupted electricity; but build new roads to the facility, new bus service to the facility from major cities.

What these incentives did for Intel? A satisfied customer, who tripled the investment from 300M factory to USD$ 1B facility along with thousands of high paying Vietnamese’ job. A year later, couple of dozen high Tech company joined Intel’s lead. That is how you earn global business. This gives you a picture of how competitive today’s global business is. We have no choice; but have to be an active competitive member of the flat world. In economic downturn everybody focuses on core competency.

RMG and Man Power are our core competency. To utilize their full potential, we have to increase our electric energy production from 4 GW to 7 GW (7000 MWatt) ASAP. Otherwise your dream for digital country will be only a fairytale.


How can you increase production ?

The energy options you have are: coal, natural gas, petroleum, renewable, hydro and nuclear. You can not depend of imported Oil for all your needs. Look at the graph below on oil consuming countries and their per capita income.

[Courtesy of Andrews and Jelley]


Do you think you can compete with them for all your oil consumption need? You have to find other sources of energy. Grameen Sakti introduced some solar alternative. They are expensive; but may be useful for individual needs.

You may think about wind energy. You have to be little cautious here. Recently in Kutobdia island PDB spent 9 crore Taka to install tiny 50 windmills to generate a max of 1 MW electricity. This is a good start.

Moving forward we may ask help from the leading wind power generating countries. We have to take initiatives to energize pro-business diplomacy.

Let me show you the following graph where you can see the countries took bold initiatives to adopt wind energy. For example Germany is done with wind energy. This country max out the limit. Germany installed wind turbine every possible place to rip the benefit of clean electricity through out the country.



[Courtesy of wwea.org]

Wind Turbine Technology:
A paradigm shift in power generation: The growth of power generation capacity from wind turbine show in this picture for your amusement.

[Courtesy of Vestas.com]

This world's biggest wind turbine generator is currently undergoing testing in the North Sea 15 miles off the East coast of Scotland near the Beatrice Oil Field. This is the first time these enormous offshore wind turbines have actually been tested offshore, and the first time any wind turbine generator has been assembled in such deep water - 44 metres deep. Assembly took place in August 2006.

The German RePower turbines have a power output of 5 Megawatts with a rotor blade diameter of 126 metres sweeping an area of over 12,000 square metres. Maximum power output is achieved at around 30 mph, but a couple of MW are generated even in a fresh breeze. Rotors start turning at around 7 mph, and are automatically braked at 70mph.

We have a good diplomatic relationship with Germany, can we ask them to build operate and sell to this energy hungry country?


What Bangladesh can do immediately?

Coal power plant. We have to be realistic and use our natural recourses. I visited a coal field in Barapukuria couple of years back. We have to approve a plan to generate 1000 MW from the coal of this mine. Currently at the mine mouth 250 MW electricity is being hardly produced. Need to investigate why it is failing to run full capacity. If they can not run it, find a capable company. Let us not waste our limited natural resources with inefficient operation.

Phulbari was a mess. We aught to communicate transparently. Transparency is good for both the business that gets the deal and the government that handles the deal. Phulbari may be a failed example that we can learn from.

Country first is the motto that we should adopt. There will be thousands of people who will be affected and need to relocate to get the natural resources; however the wealth should be distributed in a fair, win-win agreement. The new businesses that the new plant would bring into the community will benefit everybody in that locality one way or other.

The country owns the natural resources underneath its land; not the owner of the land; hence we have an obligation to properly communicate that to the landowners. Landowners should be enthusiastic about the prospect of the overall development that a new industry brings to the area. Due to the secrecy and under the table deals in a non transparent manner, I bet landowners are suspicious and hence the tragedy.

I live in Oregon and Oregon gets 71% of its electricity from Hydroelectric and 21% from natural gas. The cost is 6.63 cents per kwh. There are four dams in Columbia river. McNary Dam, John Day Dam, The Dalles Dam and my nearest Bonneville Dam to generate hydroelectricity of ~6000 MW. These are not the biggest one here in Columbia river. My neighboring state Washington has Grand Coulee Dam on the Columbia river, which could have meet the total electricity need of Bangladesh with its 6809 MW capacity.

Total Hydroelectric generating capacity in Colunbia river alone is 24, 149 MW of electricity.

However, Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky, and North Dakota almost all the power comes from coal. You think coal is old. As you can see in the chart below, about 50% energy comes from coal in USA.

With Barak Obama’s leadership there will be five million new jobs in USA for the clean energy or alternative energy. There will be a “race to the moon” kind of innovation and research. We may pursue a partnership towards clean coal technology.

I believe a presence of US business in North Bangal is strategically very important. It will give a first hand experience to the USA on seasonal flooding and drought caused by the international rivers. This will give a free global media coverage on any injustices that are systematic in that zone.

I insist the energy ministry to take immediate action to formulate a scheme to “build operate and sell” of 1000 MW coal power electricity generating plant in Phulbari. Electricity in USA and in Bangladesh is almost same cost. I pay 6 cents KWH and my father pays 7-8 taka in Bangladesh. There should not be any scope for stealing in power generation in this age.

In summery, there will be 1000 MW from Barapukuria and 1000 MW from Phulbari to meet the immediate need of additional 2000 MW electricity for the nation. The other 1000 MW can come from natural gas, wind turbine, oil and productivity increase of the existing facilities.

For future growth, a nuclear plant in North Bangal jointly with India may be feasible. High level talk’s between the new government of Bangladesh and the Obama’s administration may bring this agenda for discussion in the near future. Obviously if it is owned and operated by USA, that would be preferable.


In conclusion:

I do not know how much productivity loss we write off each year due to power outages. Somebody should do a study on that and place it to the energy department. The human suffering, demoralize employee and heartbreak of the industrialists loosing competition due to disruptive power failure may be very hard to quantify. Not to mention the pain and suffering of students, children and frustration of parents for their inability to provide comfort to the loved one due to unpredictable power outage and load shedding.

We should search for more natural gas and coal. Although, there is a slim chance of getting more petroleum, we should pursue every bit of natural recourses that we get of. Strong diplomacy needed to resolve the technological learning curve.

Bangladesh solved the food problem, garment industry boom solved our clothing needs, and we are still working on shelter, primary education is work in progress. Time to address the electricity need of the country. Electricity is a basic human right of 21st century; not the cell phone or internet. If I have to prioritize then I would always pick an uninterrupted supply of electricity. Electricity brings predictability and confidence, which are key to stay competitive.

We need a visionary here, who can see through the hurdle of electricity generation. The one who could envision what uninterrupted electricity can bring to the economy, productivity and quality of life and happiness of the people of Bangladesh.

With the all cry and complain about global warming may discourage the law maker as well as the government to use coal to produce electricity; however you need electricity to grow the economy and a strong economy could only address the global warming issues and empower diplomacy. Nobody is suffering more than Bangladesh by global warming; however economy is top priority and you may trade off global warming with economy. Energy is your number one job. Make no mistake about it, country comes first.

My i7, the fastest processor of the planet

Do you know that there were Bangladeshi engineers and scientists worked on the fastest processor on the planet developed by Intel Corporation called i7? There were at least 10-15 engineers of Bangladeshi origin worked in various development and production phases of i7. To set the perspective on how big of a task this was, I must say that it took almost 4 years from 2004 to today. Moreover, about 300 to 1200 designers, architect, musk designer, debugger, design validators, test engineers, fault engineers, scientists, path finder and more worked on this project in various stages of product development. Over its life span, there may be five of the thousands of Intel experts that helped design and test the new i7.


Paradigm shift:
After completing my Potomac design task I joined Nehalem in late 2004. I recall the time when we were brainstorming on how to bring the new architecture, new features in most power effective, and high performance mix. During that time Intel introduced a Philosophy of “Right hand turn”. We just don’t go for speed or performance; but as a total experience and we think outside the box of traditional design philosophy.

It is not easy for me to write about my work and inside stories of how we designed the i7; because I should be very careful about intellectual property of Intel. Intellectual property is the most important asset of Intel. I have to follow Intel’s information security guideline and I will be limiting my scope on the press releases and public documents.

I7 Highlights:
As I already said, i7 is the fastest processor in the planet. The Core i7 processor is the first product of Nehalem processor design. This is the most sophisticated processor ever build. It has the technology to boost performance on demand and maximize data throughput. The Core i7 processor speeds video editing, immersive games and other internet and computer activities by up to 40 percent without increasing power consumption.

The key features at a glance:
· Four cores, or processing units, all on one piece of silicon.
· New Intel® Turbo Boost Technology that matches the computer’s energy use to its workload, automatically adjusting the number of cores and the clock speed depending on the application.
· Double the memory bandwidth of previous processors, thanks to an innovation called Intel® QuickPath Technology.
· Hyper-Threading technology that allows up to eight computing threads to run simultaneously.
· Processing speeds up to 3.2 GHz.
· Energy efficiency: Despite the extra computing muscle, the chips don’t use any more power than Intel’s previous top-of-the-line processors.


The Core i7 processor is the first member of the Intel Nehalem microarchitecture family; server and mobile product versions will be in production later. Each Core i7 processor features an 8 MB level 3 cache and three channels of DDR3 1066 memory to deliver the best memory performance of any desktop platform. Intel's top performance processor, the Intel® Core™ i7 Extreme Edition, also removes overspeed protection, allowing Intel's knowledgeable customers or hobbyists to further increase the chip's speed.

Shift in traditional design philosophy:
In mid 2005, Intel introduced its Intel® Xeon® processor MP processor-based platform with up to 8 MB of a third-level "L3" cache memory reservoir, codenamed "Potomac." Potomac was the top-of-the-line 32-bit Intel Xeon processor with Hyper-Threading technology performance. I joined the Potomac design team in 2003 after completing my assignments on VT (Virtualization Technology or Vanderbilt Technology). We introduced a lot of *T (what we called Star-T) in various products of Prescott. There was a lot of innovation going on because of the tough competition and ever hungry market of innovative high performance products.

Now going back to my early days of Nehalem, which is the codename of i7. I started my work in instruction queue (IQ). My job is to design circuitry so that the stream of bits can be converted into useful “instruction”. These instructions can be processed by the processor’s execution unit to deliver what the instruction is asking. Now if you are familiar with IA (Intel Architecture) Instruction set, then you know what an instruction means.

Let me back up a little bit and give a vary high level view of the activity here. To learn the most accurate science, please consult any good text book in library near you.

Think about the very basic electrical engineering that we all see everyday in our life. A flip in any switch in the wall turns on or turns off a light bulb in our home. Hence a switch works as a “gate” (or door if you will) of electricity flow. When the circuit is complete, than electrical voltage to the opposite nodes use material property of the filament of the bulb and the enclosed atmosphere to convert electrical energy to light and heat energy.

The similar thing happens in a fan. However the material is different and use different property. We call it magnetic property or you may call it electric field. The trick of opposing electric field is used to fool the drum of the motor and the result is the rotating motion of the fan. Hence we use electric energy to electro-magnetic energy to rotate the shaft and wings deliver wind. There is a lot of talk now a day to do the reverse; which is to use wind energy from wind tunnels to produce electric energy and store in battery or deliver to the grid.

Remember I called light bulb switch as “gate”? “Gate” is the most important basic building block of a microprocessor. Think of it like a “brick”, which is being widely used to build multistoried building now a day.
You may think each “Transistor” like a gate. There are 731 Million Transistors in a single core of this i7. You may recall i7 has 4 cores. Look at the attached picture of i7. Can you identify the 4 cores? There is also a huge uncore section in the picture which helps cores and the outside world to communicate.

Now we know that a transistor is like a switch. It can have two positions, on or off. Let us do coding. My code name “1” is for “on” and my code name “0” is for off. See how easy, we are doing software programming.

My design:
The processing speed of i7 is 3.2 Giga Hertz per second. What exactly does it means? The processor can produce 3.2 billion “0” and “1” in a second. Of course this is a mare simplification. That’s a lot of 0 and 1.
You know the microprocessor wants everything simple. We proudly call it a dumb machine as it will do the exact same thing over and over. It only understands various combinations of “0” and “1” in a string. Think about a mile long line of 0 and 1 with various combinations. From that mile long string, look at the following section:
000001110101010011100000000101010101010100000101111000001010101010000010110101010101010

This is a typical stream of binary data coming to instruction queue. The bold highlighted bits translate into: ”Add 32 bit of immediate data to the EAX register”. The 00000101 is what we call 1 byte opcode (05) for Addition operation. Hence these highlighted streams of 32 bit data and 8 bit opcode represent a complete instruction.

While I was designing, my job is to find those instructions in this type of stream of 0’s and 1’s and place them in a specific area. Hola! You have a queue of instruction ready for the execution unit to execute. My design is such that, I can place six instructions in one clock cycle, enough to keep the execution pipe busy to complete 4 instructions in one clock cycle. This is parallel processing in action. Even one thread of a core can simultaneously compute 4 instructions with in one clock cycle span of time.

What is one clock cycle in 3.2 GHz i7? It is 3.2 Billionth of a second. Hence, one core at any second may complete more than 10 Billion of IA-32 instructions. With 4 cores, possibilities are endless. Moreover with hyper threading in action, you may have as much as 8 core equivalent processing power. Yesterday’s mainframe computer become today’s desktop with i7. Did you realize that we are talking about circuit and logic design of a microprocessor? See how easy it is.

Hardware and Software Synergy:
Let me take a stab on how an application software work’s with operating system and get the job done from hardware. Although I do not claim myself to be an expert on software or operation system, here is what I think the synergy among them. Let us go from the lowest level of operation to the user level operation. We just learn that how a lowest level instruction worked in a core. With the help of combinatory logic and sequential control by the clock the execution unit can do all the operation and instruction of IA-32.

Let us try to put things into perspective. This 8 bit opcode 00000101 that we learned today is asking the machine to perform an addition of adjacent 32 bit of data with the data of the register file called EAX. You may think of a register file EAX, small memory storage very close to the execution unit. So we are adding two data. The output of this operation will be stored in the same register file EAX erasing old data after the operation is done. In everyday use, this result can be a fraction of digitized sound bits, or a pixel of an image or an intermediate stage of a mathematical computation. Then there should be another opcode to take the result to the proper destination or IO. Hold you though right there.

If you do not know how to read and understand English, than everything I wrote so far is gibberish to you. Similarly if the application software does not understand all the 0’s and 1’s that the code calculated and delivered, than there is no use. So they need translation in an understandable language.

What happen when you hit a key on your keyboard:
You hit a key in your keyboard of your i7 desktop. The driver program of the keyboard translates that key stroke to a form of instruction codes. Keyboard is considered to be an IO (Input Output device). There is a sequence of tasks follow through. The driver program may be written in C++ programming language. In the high level C++ code there may be lot of really easy understandable code. These codes are library modules. Those library modules may be in fact written in IA-32 opcode. Now the compiler takes those high level code of the keyboard driver and translate into machine level code of 0’s and 1’s. With the help of the operating system recourses and the motherboard, these code streams goes through the bus and enter the processor. The processor generates the output and returns it back to another IO, which is your computer monitor display. Now you see the letter you typed.

How music or video play in Computer:
The same thing happens when you play music in your desktop. The software application reads the code of the song with the help of OS. Send those stream of opcodes, compiler compile them, processor continuously load next stream of digitized bits to process and send it to another IO, in this case the speakers. Now think about the digital photo or movie. Processor sends the processed output to display. The demand for processing capacity dramatically increasing from key stroke, to song and movie. The next toughest job for processor is interactive extreme gaming. Processor has to do zillions of IO operation with multiple of driver, sound, video, console and mathematical calculation. Taking inputs from multiple IO and process it instantly to deliver to multiple IO requires a lot of processing power. The synergy of execution should be smooth enough to deliver ultimate user experiences. Do you want a processor that delivers just that?

i7 offers up 40% faster performance for immersive 3D games, video processing, music and other demanding applications. Through a sophisticated on-die power control unit and using new "power gate" transistors based on Intel's advanced 45 nanometer, high-k metal gate manufacturing process, Turbo Boost automatically adjusts the clock speed of one or more of the four individual processing cores for single- and multi-threaded applications to boost performance, without increasing power consumption.

Now you might wonder what Intel will do next? Is there really anything more to it? Wait for the next product.

Disclaimer: Opinion expressed is solely the author’s. Author does not speak for or represent Intel Corporation.

Some more i7 picture to share:

My "letters from USA" column at CNEWS

Time flies, it is almost one year that I am writting this column in the monthly magazine CNEWS.

My 2’cents on TV, DVR Ad:
http://www.cnewsvoice.com/pdf/PISNO000000000000015/PISNODTL000000000424.pdf

To the kids of Today:
http://www.cnewsvoice.com/pdf/PISNO000000000000014/PISNODTL000000000381.pdf

IT startup projects to get your hands dirty:
http://www.cnewsvoice.com/pdf/PISNO000000000000013/PISNODTL000000000338.pdf

Cell phone for everyday transaction:
http://www.cnewsvoice.com/pdf/PISNO000000000000012/PISNODTL000000000305.pdf

Return of the Golden fiber:
http://www.cnewsvoice.com/pdf/PISNO000000000000010/PISNODTL000000000252.pdf

Healthcare in Singapore, my experience:
http://www.cnewsvoice.com/pdf/PISNO000000000000009/PISNODTL000000000204.pdf

International Gateway licenses:
http://www.cnewsvoice.com/pdf/PISNO000000000000008/PISNODTL000000000192.pdf

Nursing, serving the world, a manpower opportunity overseas:
http://www.cnewsvoice.com/pdf/PISNO000000000000008/PISNODTL000000000192.pdf

Let’s take Bangladesh to the next step:
http://www.cnewsvoice.com/pdf/PISNO000000000000006/PISNODTL000000000143.pdf

Human Capital:
http://www.cnewsvoice.com/pdf/PISNO000000000000005/PISNODTL000000000099.pdf

Broadband Vision:
http://www.cnewsvoice.com/pdf/PISNO000000000000004/PISNODTL000000000075.pdf

An Expat's opinion on TV programming in Bangladesh and funding from Ad

Theme:
Bangladesh is enjoying the freedom of media as well as the competition, especially, in the television sector. A burden of responsibility comes along with the freedom. Although the country is going through the turmoil of “emergency rule and caretaker government”; however the continuity of popular TV channels may not feel any difference, except the flow of easy money to fund flashy shows. As an expatriate, I would like to express couple of my opinions on the TV serials and Advertisement.

Introduction:
First, let me give my audience a disclaimer. I was in Dhaka for about three weeks during the month of July.
If I think about it now, it surprises me that, I did not watched TV for a single minute during that three weeks trip. Having said that, I subscribe to four Bangladeshi TV channels for USD $32.99 per month, in my Portland home in USA. The channels that I have are RTV, NTV, ATN, Channel I.

For about a week, I started to record 3-4 hours of programming of each channels. That brings a total of 12 to 16 hours of deshi television to watch each day. How on earth I could possibly watch that many hours of TV programming after a day of full time job. The answer is the advantage of digital video recording or DVR. Although in USA, one study shows that in average Americans are watching 5 hours of television everyday; I personally watch average an hour or two. Watching Bangladeshi TV programs gave me some perspective on the corporate responsibilities of the media moguls and their business partners with the context of TV programming and Ad sponsors.

What is DRV:
Before that let me tell you what DVR is. This is simply a recorder, like you video recorder; but digital. Being digital, it has the advantage of scanning frame by frame video. The major hardware is the HDD or the digital hard drive. You have one in your computer.

DVR is a TV set top box with programmable digital recorder. You can program the DVR for certain time slot of a channel. In USA, I subscribe to America’s top 100 digital channels. The service provider gave me a set top box which has DVR and programming guide in that box. For USA channels, I look at the channel guide and select the program that would be aired next day or scheduled weekly. The DVR will trigger when the program is on and keep a copy for me in the hard drive. For Bangladeshi channels the guide does not get updated and there is no programming information available; hence we have to guess or select a time window to record those programs. This enables us to watch the shows at our convenience.

Bangladesh TV Serial/Drama/Soap:
From my west coast home, which falls under Pacific Standard Time zone (PT), Bangladesh is 11 hours ahead of me. For example, 6 PM in Dhaka is 5 AM in Portland Oregon. So if I could start recording 4 hours of prime time TV show from 5 AM to 9 AM, which is 6 PM to 10 PM of Dhaka’s time, than I get almost all the popular shows and news covered. One of my friend suggested that most of the TV channels repeat 4 hours of programming through out 24 hours a day. I must acknowledge that, without any verification, I took my friends word for that.

Readers, please email me if you find it otherwise. In the email, please include the 4 hour window of programming and the starting time of cycle that it starts. If that cycle is during the daytime of Dhaka, that will work better for me. Now, going back to the TV programming. My DVR allow me to simultaneously record 2 channels at the same time as I have 2 rooms DVR; however, you can get 4-6 room DVR, which will allow you to record 4-6 shows at the same time. I programmed my DVR to record NTV and Channel I from 5 AM to 9:00AM PST. For RTV and ATN, the recording starts 1:00 AM PST for the next 4 hours. That actually leaves all the primetime of my USA shows without any conflict of Bangla channels and worked out pretty well for my schedule.

As I mention earlier, how on earth I could watch 12 hours of TV shows. In reality with the help of DVR, I watch only 1-2 hours of entertainment if I have time. Rests of them are ad and programs that I don’t find interesting. Hence I skip them with the speed of 4x to 300x; which means 4 times to 300 times fast forward.

There was a time in my life, I watched a lots of nonfictions, drama, thriller and action based programs, be it a soap, cinema or documentary; but now a day, I watch most of the comedy as pass time activity. That brings me to shows like, Friends, Office or “Everybody loves Raymond” or “Will and Grace” and Seinfeld. Let me refresh your memory about these shows.

Friends: It is a show of six friends in the “city”; “City “is known to be New York City through out the world. These six individual possess uniquely six different personalities; however they are hanging out all the time and sharing supporting each other in everyway, be it emotionally, socially and literally. This soap captures all the nuisance of city living, living single, and living together, all the natty gritty details of dating and above all friendship. In a broader sense, “Friends” represents the culture of New York City with the context of six young adults living alone. It is the funny straggle of adjustment and constant try to mold into the city culture of the time.

Everybody Loves Raymond: It is a day to day story of two brothers and their parents. Raymond the younger brother is married and has 2 children. He with his wife Debra and the children moved into a house near his parents’ house. Raymond’s mother loves Raymond more than the elder son Robert and hence the jealousy between the brothers. Moreover, Raymond loves her mother more than her wife Debra. To make things even worse, Debra does not cook as good as her mother-in-law. This is a funny family pass time show.

Office: This show is a primetime hit with its eccentric mockery of corporate culture in a small branch office.
To spice things up, it introduces some affectionate love affair between colleagues and even subordinate and superior. This is not a norm in American corporate culture that I am exposed; where employee get fired for the everyday things that shown in “Office”. However, it is fun to watch. The show brings out the imagination of the corporate employee into a TV screen in a casual funny way. I think that is the source of its popularity. It is the craving of forbidden thing that you can not do but enjoying it watching others to do that, in your living room in front of you.

I will not talk about “Will and Grace” or Seinfeld here today; because the issue that I am going to raise today reverberate around “Friends” and “Office”. Last week, I saw two shows in one of the Bangladeshi TV channel, which are true copy of “Friends” and “Office”. Although, I believe that any culture can get enriched if it embraces other culture. In the embracing process two cultures may get integrated, adapted and molded into one living culture. This living culture over the time evolves into a living manifesto of people that it represented.

However, the process is not that simple. To me the show made me feel uncomfortable; sort of a feeling of “not getting alone”. May be I am not culturally savvy enough. In the same week, one of the talk show invited my Bangla Professor of Dhaka College, Dr. Abdullah Abu Said. He brings out an interesting point. One caller called him and asked, if he were given to do the budget, what he would do. Dr Abu Said mention that he would allocate 1000 Crore taka for Cultural sector. He indicated that last budget it was only about 35 Crore. According to him, the best thing that Bangladesh has is its culture. With all due respect, I don’t know how he comes to that conclusion with compare to Chinese culture, Indian Culture or British Culture; not to mention Egyptian, Inca or Mesopotamian culture.

However, the prescription that all the major TV broadcasting companies in Dhaka feed to their viewer is not the culture that he is talking about. I am sure of that. Present day TV culture definitely not the culture of Bangladesh that I knew of. I agree with Dr Said on this point that Bangladesh has some unique culture that we feel good about. We should practice, portray and nurture that culture so that it could thrive. We could expose those cultures and bring the best out of it so that it could expand our identity to the greater good.

If you look at any drama serial, almost all of them fall under one simple structure. There will be cell phone conversation for 50-80% of the episode. By doing this the director kills two birds with one bullet. Cell phone conversation is solo and cheap to shot. This makes his boss happy with respect to cost. Moreover it brings the Ad money from the Cell phone industry. It is hard to imagine how much dispensable money Cell phone operators have still today. If you follow any TV channel any given day, almost all the program runs by their money. I don’t blame them. Think about it, If you fund a program, don’t you expect that the program serves your interest? It is not healthy for an industry to 100% dependent on one industry; unfortunately in Bangladesh this is the fact.
Bangladeshi TV Ad:
This brings me to my second topic of this article, Ad. I know the Ad industry’s sole purpose to bring the Ad to your attention and introduce the product. Hence you will be interested on the product the Ad is representing. Ultimately sales will flow through the roof. The Ad I am about to mention at least attract my 100% attention.

Ad 1: A family is watching TV and the TV died, they put a fan behind it, slap few time; but still no picture. Then every body pitched in to buy a new TV, which fall short of 2000 Taka. Family chief put the dead TV to “Cell Bazaar” and claimed “just to fix the Knob and it will be fine”. Notice that by cooling and slapping they could not bring the TV to live. Is that our culture? May be today! What kind of moral value we are feeding?

Ad 2: This Ad portrays pure form of begging. To make things even worse, the begging comes from a little kid.
The little boy named “Shipu”. The boy friend of his elder sister came to visit and this boy sending all kind of massage to get 3 Taka. Finally he reaches the guest in absence of her sister and asks for 3 Taka. Sure Bangladesh once leveled as “Bottomless Basket” and “Miskin” in middle-east. And now we are proudly practicing it over free media. My kids get glued to the Ad every time it comes and I had to block the Ad. Thanks to DVR. In another similar Ad: couple of elementary kids hijacks a Senior citizen, claiming as their grandpa, to steal his candy. Can we do better than that? Unfortunately the Ad moguls are the one who brags about our culture and cry the most for its decline.

However, there are some good programmings as well as positive Ad. For example, “Shada Moner Manush”. Lots of positive energy present in this show. It is inspirational. It humbles us. It brings role models right in front of you. You feel good seeing them. One of the positive Ad that I can think of is this: A business man start from zero, do all the hard work with due diligence and discipline, count every penny and justify the expense; not a penny more, not a penny less. At the end the businessman appreciates the deal offered by a cell phone company; because it gets along with his value and ethics.

Conclusion:
In conclusion, as an expatriate I am immune to those immoral Ads or mixed up culture fed by corporate sponsor and interest group, because I have DVR. Moreover, I screen what my kids watch. As an expatriate, it makes sense to me why there are depression and frustration amount those young adults. These young adults do not have gym, sports field or any decent source of entertainment. What they do for “pass time” activity?
Watch TV or if they can afford, chat cell phone. It is boosting Cell phone industries bottom line, so they could not adopt social enterprise concept to fulfill their social obligation. Rest of the young adults get bored; thereby fall into depression and frustration. Although this may sound like very naïve explanation; however we can not deny that it is a major component. One may argue that past generation did not have all the facilities and infrastructure for sports and “pastime” resources; however they turned out fine without catastrophic depression and frustration. They are correct; however the past generation did no exposed to the media and internet to the extend that this generation is exposed to. This exposure brings the whole world in front of them. They see the disparity, discrimination and unequal distribution of wealth and resources before they are prepared to handle. These issues may fuel more of the negative energy.

Looking forward:
I hope that Ad industry and Corporate sponsors will assume more moral, ethical and social values for the betterment of the vary customer they depend on their business. We do not have laws to safe guard this type of TV program or Ad. More regulation means less freedom. I hope they will enjoy the free media and act responsibly. Free media like a sharp knife. It is the responsibility of the beholder to either use it like a thug or a surgeon.

Kids, everyday is precious

This week, one of my colleagues is going to sabbatical. We took him to a restaurant of his choice for a sabbatical send away lunch. He chooses a restaurant called “Thailand Restaurant” in Beaverton, a small town near Portland, Oregon. Sabbatical is an 8 weeks paid vacation after seven years of service. The root of the word sabbatical came from Arabic number seven (Sabba); hence sabbatical.

Our team carpools and meets at the restaurant. We are a small team responsible for designing couple of Units of today’s humongous microprocessor “Core”. We ordered our food and chit chatting between Olympic, current events and work. Our small team composed of two Russians, three Indian (One from Bengal, One from Bombay and the other one from North), One Brazilian, One from Taiwan, One from Laos, One from Bangladesh, One from Chicago area and the last one from Utah. Surprisingly, none of the team members are from Portland or even from the state of Oregon.

We are a team of eleven came from seven different country, where only two are from USA, working in a USA company, which has more than 80% market share of the global microprocessor market. How amazing is that? How innovation, competition and globalization shaped the form of a small component design team in a suburb of silicon forest, where none of them came from that state.

Let me back up little bit to set the ground of today’s writing. Last month, July 2008, I was in Dhaka to see family members. During that trip I had an opportunity to hang out with couple of bright musicians at their Gulshan residence cum studio. Although the composure is single; however he brings up an important point regarding raising kid for future. “Shaping the future of our kids in the direction of science and technology”, this is what I would like to bring your attention.

With all due respect to them, I will not reveal the musicians’ identity. My kids along with four other nephews and nice, rampaging the studio. They are strumming their guitars and “DoTara”, not to mention the piano concert of my kids with the mouth piece in their hands. Anyway, we were talking about music. I am out of touch of music for a while, trying to catch up the recent trends. I remember during my University days at Purdue in Indiana. I, with my friends from the Purdue, went to Lollapalooza feasible, where “Sound Garden”, “Metalica” smashing the stage in a hot summer day in Midwest. Sudden rain soaked everybody and justifies one more excuse to have less attire. I not only attended this type of crazy concerts; but also some decent one by Sir Elton John, Paul Simon, and Bob Dylan etc.

In the middle of the discussion in their apartment, another prominent musician walked in. This third one has Master’s degree from a prestigious University in Massachusetts. We are in the middle of very talented people who happen to be musicians’. Going back to the “raising kids” discussion. One of them was talking about one of their friend in the west. Her friends are so concern about the kids future education, how to improve their intelligence and so forth. She also indicated that her friends bought all the gadgets’ by “Baby Einstein”, Leapfrog etc to tickle the tender little mind.
I can relate to their thinking. My friends here in USA, I mean, Diasporas’ are also concern about the future of their 3-6 year old kids.
At this point of the discussion, the top music composure made a comment. He said, “look at Sohel Bhai, did he ever play with Baby Einstein; but he is designing the most complicated microprocessor design of the world today.” How cool is that? This is a huge complement. The moment I started writing about it, to me, it sounds like I am bragging; however he has a point and a very good one. You don’t know what future holds; however you aim high enough to get best out of you. This does not mean that you get panic and give up everything. What it means is that you understand what you want, understand the challenges, plan a path to reach their and then start working on it. Be diligent, discipline and committed to the plan of action.

We see kids are deprived of being kids now a day. I must acknowledge that today’s kids are not the same as kids of the 80s. The expectation and demand profiles are not same as before and it should not be in a changing world. Look at Olympics at Beijing, there were accusation of extreme training from very early age. Even in the USA parents are pushing their kids to a limit to excel in Golf (to be Tiger Wood), to excel in Piano lessons (to be Mozart of tomorrow). These are reported in the major TV broadcasting. In Bangladesh, affluent children are being transported from one couching center to another.

The nightmare of parents during the admission season, irrespective of kindergarten, primary school or middle school pass down to the tender kids. Hence these kids are deprived of being a kid. I am not suggesting that you do not push your kid to excel; however you as parents need to get involve and plan ahead. Please take it easy and as smooth as you could be. There should be a balance and kids should be comfortable enough to communicate. They should participate spontaneously and trained to negotiate freely.

I have a wonderful childhood. Although, I went to a good primary school, which was by accident an English medium. However, we did not have tons of homework; most of the tasks were done at school. I had all evening to play and to be kid. I experienced a vacuum during the transition from primary school to middle school. My middle school was an average Bangla medium and enforcement of discipline was poor. Not much education was done in class and children are encouraged to attend the couching class. I did end up attending couching class in my 9th and 10th grade.

After my high school education, I went to Dhaka College for my HSC. Like almost all the students I was receiving stipend for my SSC. During my two years in Dhaka College I paid almost nothing; however I was paying a good amount for my dining hall (no subsidy there). I take no pride; on the contrary, it gives me shame that during those couple of years, like most of the students I did not attend the regular classes, there was no first year exam or second year exam. Attending class was not a cool thing those days.

There were attempts to schedule, conduct exam; but the macho students made every attempts to nullify those. And they were successful. The trend was to go to the batches at the professors’ residence to attend couching class. Students of well-to-do families had no trouble with that culture; however there are few students who had hard time to adopt that culture. They are tutoring high school students on Math and science. The remuneration that they received was directly changing hands form them to the professors.

I entered BUET after Dhaka College, thanks to my friends of Dhaka College and couching centers. I have no clue on how did I made that. I believe most of the credit goes to my friends. Hanging out with them and following the trend put me on the “BUET stream” and I sailed pretty good with the western wind of couching centers. BUET test exam is one of the horrifying life changing experiences for most of the students. For me it was like “whatever”. Because I was fool and did not really realize the true consequence of failing at that stage of life. May be that helped me to go through the process seamlessly without any tension at all. I recall couple of incidents on the day of the admission test. I was excited seeing lots of my friends going to the big exam room which was the second floor of the BUET library. I patted my friend; let’s call him T2, on his shoulder. Out of my surprise he did not return the same enthusiasm in response of my pat on his back. May be a little perturbation could disrupt his concentration of all the trick questions solutions that he piled in his mind. I should mention here that T2 did excellent in the exam and he secured his discipline of studies. Later in his life, he became a successful professor.
The second incident surprised the exam supervisor on my care free stupidity. She showed an outmost expression of irritation when I asked her if I could go to the restroom. Because nobody was wasting a single second in that time packed testing. These two incidents give some sense of seriousness of the test exam and my ignorance of the event.

Anyway, I end up with BUET. I will write about BUET some other time. Stress free environment and good association of friendship was key to my success during those days.
I had the opportunity to kid around as well as stress free guidance.

For the kids growing up today, my suggestion to them is to do what you do best and excel. Today’s children, who are aiming at science and technology, please use internet to dig what interest you. Read more and be discipline about it. More you know more you get interested. And the only way of knowing more is reading. Do not believe in “special talent or gifted child” or “sharp brain”; because they don’t exist. They are Myth. Spending time in a guided, well planned path and dedication to achieve that plan is the ticket to success. Finally the biggest advice that I can give to you is: “make your idle time into productive time”. I know my nice spent all night to study and she is not doing well enough in the study; But if you ask her how many hours she studies during her HSC days, the answer is two or at best three hours. Because her night starts at 1:00 AM and ends at 3:00 AM or may be stretched up to 4:00 AM. She wakes up at noon. You can not achieve a decent education if you don’t utilize your time in a discipline manner. Same goes with your passion or hobby, your sports or music.

So kids, have your parents in your team, get them involve with your web browsing and quest for knowledge. Respect your elder sibling and learn from their success or failure. Utilize every moment for meaningful activity that enrich your life experience. Let’s assume you have 70 years to survive then you only have ~25,000 days. Everyday is precious; do you want to waste a day doing nothing?

Information Communication Technology related Project Ideas and paths to Startup

There has been a lot of talk and enthusiasm going on in Bangladesh now a day with respect to digital divide and technology adoption to uplift the standard of living. During last decade cell phone paved the path of technology adoption. More and more application is landing into the market to increase productivity and way of life.

There were some major direction changes done by BTRC over the past year. Eliminating illegal VOIP, auctioning broadband connectivity and delivering a policy on how to do it. Most recently they deliver the WiMax policy. I am not in a position to criticize if those actions are good or bad. However, I always view technology as a tool to enhance life experience in a positive way.
I have several ICT project ideas which I day dream about. These ideas may not directly fall in to profitable business entity; however they may be categorized as social business. Under the social business umbrella, these projects could be taken as NGO activity; moreover some of these projects may fall in to the development activity of smart nation building.

1. Security monitoring and first response initiation over the internet.

2. Online Math and Science Tutoring for High school students in US.

3. Online trucking/goods shipping reservation facility for nationwide faster goods movement.

4. Micro-credit for laptop purchases for every University admitted student in Bangladesh.

5. RMG intranet for capacity and recourses sharing for maximizing throughput.

6. Online auction of excess or minor rejected RMG products. (Govt. need liberalization)

7. Consumer Pricing Interactive Information broadcasting system.

8. Intranet for Universities and dedicated network for all students.

Security monitoring and fast response initiation:

Bangladesh being one of the top UN peace keeping forces in the world deployed more then 9000 troops in various turbulent countries. They wear UN blue helmets to provide peace and security around the conflicting borders in the world. Bangladesh Military earned the honor outmost respect. One third of those troops are currently in Ivory Coast. Many of them returned home with experience and a solid track record of success.

New business initiative may capitalize these well earned expertises with evolving technology to solve the security surveillance challenge of the mid-east and may thrive to serve the west. Applying technology to the puzzle may deliver a robust and affordable solution of surveillances from a command center far from the object of interest.

Let us take an example of a Mega business center in Dubai. The management has to provide complete security of the facility. Now we have technological capabilities to provide the surveillance part of the solution from Kulna Bangladesh. The Mega business center will have complete wiring of the video monitoring and we will see them live via our submarine cable in the command centre at Kulna. I have chosen Kulna to get out of the big city dram doll and hassles.

To run that business, we need experienced man power, dedicate electricity and dedicated access to the information superhighway. We have ex military service men as expertise, electricity and access to the submarine cable can be managed if there is goodwill. The command centre will run 24/7. Let us assume that there are 100 cameras in that facility sending 3 fps each to 12 monitors each one capturing 9 cameras. We can safely deploy 2 people to visually scan through the screens and report any unusual activity to the direct voice line to the facility guards. The facility guard on site will take over from that point. Moreover, direct live data dispatch can be done to facilitate the guards during the operation from the Kulna command center.

In doing so, the Dubai Mega Business center may reduce 10 more people from surveillance duty and can maintain small secondary surveillance facility in site as a backup.

Now if we can integrate 10-100 more business entity as a customer around the mid-east, then we could replicate the model for any number of businesses or place of interest around the world. We could bring command center of surveillance for Airports, mass transit stations, museums, libraries, schools, major intersections etc.

Once you have one customer happy and satisfied, you will get 20 more customers to be a mega security center and may further reduce the cost and enlighten your customer. In addition, companies that could not afford security center will be able to do it as the cost is down. Hence the market will get bigger. One day the West may come to Bangladesh for their security solution for the affordability and reliability.

Online Math and Science Tutoring for High school students in US:

Dhaka probably one of the few cities in the world where “coaching center” is a necessary and integrated part of the education system. Moreover Dhaka also known for the other short term coaching business, such as TOEFL, SAT, GRE, Various University Admission including BUET, DMC, Cadet core, BMA Marin to name few. The “coaching business” is a matured enough to test for export. We have talented students, panty of medical college and engineering students who are very good in theoretical Math and Science and in “coaching center” business.

The next ingredient that we need is virtual presence; which could be done utilizing our developing broadband access to the internet or world wide web (WWW). Tutor student may meet at chat room or use web cam with audio to consult mathematical problems.

This could be done in a simple “24/7 coaching center” concept to serve a specific class of students with a monthly subscription fee for unlimited consultation. Let us assume for simplicity, a 24/7 coaching center is opened for students of “grade 8”. The coaching center has all the math text material for grade 8 math and offering unlimited tutoring for USD$ 10.00 per month or may be USD$100.00 per year. The center started with one school in the USA and there are 15 students signed up. If all 15 student of that school did pretty well during first month; then the coaching center may sell the success to get 100 more school with 1000 to 2000 students. There is a very good potential for rapid growth and the management should have the dynamics to handle the growth.

Online trucking/goods shipping reservation facility for nationwide faster goods movement:

With the fuel cost sky rocketing, you have to minimize your unnecessary drive and make the delivery quick and cheap. For simplicity let us assume that we have 10,000 trucks in Bangladesh. At any given time, 5000 are on the road making a delivery of goods. The remaining 50% are at some station or truck stand available for rental contract. Unless you have a regular contracted Truck Company to serve your need; than you have to go to that truck stand and make the contact and bring the truck to loading area to load it. Then the truck makes the delivery.

This problem of extra drive and waiting idle time can be solved by a smart locator program and a simplified GPS vs cross street database. First you have to build a database with the entire cross streets and their corresponding GPS entry. This is needed as we do not have a systematic street structure as well as corresponding digital map. However, couples of local tech companies in Dhaka are working on a digital map with every holding number or address entity included in the program.

A truck driver may text his location referring a cross street from his cell phone to a locator server. The servers take the text and translate it to GPS coordinate. A customer send a text of the cross street name of loading area. The servers translate the loading area coordinate and calculate 5 available trucks for hire. The calculation may be done through radial proximity or may be Manhattan length. There is no perfect solution here as because there is no digitized map of Bnagladesh integrated to the GPS servers. Now the customer has 5 potential bidders for the trip and everybody happy as less waiting, less overlap routing, less fuel cost.

Here for this business, the solution provider may charge a subscription fee or could be commission based. The transportation authority may sponsor the business and yearly charge the truck company during renewal of registration. Hence this business could be government, NGO, cooperative or an enterprise itself for profit.

Intranet for Universities and dedicated network for all students:

There are 74 universities in Bangladesh. Out of these, 21 universities are in the public sector, while the other 53 are in the private sector. Out of 21 public sector universities, 19 universities provide regular classroom instruction facilities and services. Each of them may take initiatives to get grant and design their intranet as well as the gateway to internet. BTTB may just drop the extension of submarine cable and fiber to the nearest node. Again, government may impose a mandatory 5% revenue contribution from the entire telecom provider operating in Bangladesh including BTTB to fund such a connectivity project. No University will benefit from the online capability more than the National University of Bangladesh.

The National University caters the general education at graduate and post-graduate level in colleges/institutions which were affiliated to different public universities since independence. About one million students are studying in more than 1600 colleges/institutions affiliated to this university. The National University is expanding in terms of number of students, courses and institutions day by day. To day this university plays the most significant role to provide opportunities for higher education among the students living especially in rural and semi-urban areas. A dedicated connectivity and access to the internet with a computer in students possession may do more then the education. The student will have a tool to shape his/her future.

Micro-credit for laptop purchases for every University admitted student in Bangladesh:

Currently there are approx 200,000 students who are attending any of the Universities in the country.
Let’s say, we need USD$ 40 million for 200,000 laptops (University Grant commission or ministry of education can strike a deal with ASUS Taipei or Lenovo China) which will ensure a piece for every university enrolled student of Bangladesh. Due to the competition price of laptop are going down everyday. A US$199 laptop called “Eee PC” an inexpensive laptop designed to help spread computing to poorer regions. The hardware funding may come from various foundations and NGOs. Universities need to research for that. Again you need a dedicated internet access to even to search the funding. It is feels like the chicken and egg problem. There is a lot of funding available to close the digital divide. BRAC or Grameen could take a lead on working out a micro credit loan with Universities for the funding of these PCs. Moreover, University governing body can work with various bank and financial agencies for a package of installment payable by each student in absence of funding from non profit organizations. A student may pay as low as 500 Taka per month for a laptop during his full length of study. I am sure, these creative students will innovate a lot of usages of these toys at their disposal for generating lot more then 500 Taka to pay for it. For this scheme we do not need any grant, we can work out with a bank for this venture.

Consumer Pricing Interactive Information broadcasting system:

The ultimate goal of this project is to have self sustaining free market price stability for consumer goods. This system will share instantaneous market valuation of major consumer good in major shopping zone throughout the country and thereby adjust the price fluctuation or price hike. This can be modeled after the stock exchange index. In a very high level, the system will be integrated in the following architecture.Each vendor will have a secure ID and product code. At any point of time during the business hour, the vendor will enter his asking price of a specific item. That information will store in a server and broadcasted to multiple billboards throughout the country to major market place like New Market, Sowary Ghat, Moluvi Bazzar, Chalk Bazzar, Kawran Bazzar, Gabtoli and likes. Now the vendor’s security ID may be his personal cell phone. Once he called to that specific server and entered his product code, the program will pick up the bid and broadcast it to the billboard as a “cron job”. Now if you paid careful attention you already figure out that any customer will be able to access that bid through their cell phone from that server. The transaction will happen as usual with the vendor and customer in the respected business site or over cell phone. You have the luxury to scale the system based on your investment or availability of funding. How you make money out of this? That is a trade secret. Be innovative or hire innovator.

RMG intranet for capacity and recourses sharing for maximizing throughput:

The proposal that I am about to unveil here may be analogous to knife. Doctors use them to save life and miscreants use it to harm life. This centralized database will be populated with all the RMG order that has been placed in the nation to various factories.

A standard form need to be developed for the database entry. The sensitive and competitive business information may or may not be required. If that sensitive information needed for statistical purpose to maximize the national RMG production, than proper guideline should be strictly enforced to guard that information. Binary coding may be introduced for that sensitive information.

Once we have such a system, than NBR at any point may estimate net tax earning accurately. BGMEA will be able to know the status of the national production statistics. More service may be customized to member factories to share recourses or sub contract a time sensitive critical order. This will help to reduce if not eliminate the contract cancellation due to “delay”.

Online auction of excess or minor rejected RMG products:

In every RMG factory, there is always some not so perfect left over products. These products usually handled secretly. They often used for appeasing local influential and so called “Mastans”. In some cases they are dumped in the local wholesale markets. In addition to those products there are some products that are abandoned due to delay in shipments and any other minor breach of contract.

If government acknowledges these products as legal merchandisable entity; then there could be a auction house which can handle these products in a market driven manner. This auction house may be modeled after “ebay” to get the global participation. Free market force of globalize flat world will shape the supply and demand to equilibrium. Bangladesh may earn valuable foreign exchange as a result of that.

To design the model, the end customer has to be the top priority. A rigid delivery and shipping procedure have to be ensured. We have a history of export cheating. In the past frog leg or shrimp has been shipped with metal attached to them to get high weight. Once the bid is done, the delivery process should be seamlessly done by one dedicated management. No exception on the method of shipping. To earn the expertise, we may hire UPS or DHL or FedEx.

To enlist your surplus product to the auction database, a standard form should be filled. A standard procedure need to chalk out for the payment methods and release of fund agreement.

Conclusion:

In this article I tried to provoke thoughts to several ICT projects start-up ideas. Any of the above ideas has tremendous potential to transform into a profitable business. Moreover, each of them has inherent nation building ingredients. I hope that visionary entrepreneurs may find these ideas interesting enough to take the challenge.

Can Cell Phone bring Credit to Credit less people?

Everyday technology redefining the way we do business. In fact technology in some cases dictate how we live, work and do things. I am delighted that BTRC is considering some financial transaction activity available through cell phone for licensing. This will enable business community to tap the new opportunity to increase productivity and ease of account payable. I foresee the outmost benefit for the day labor or street vendor as well as small business.

The only technical activity needed in the area is the software API (application programming interface) development for the cell phones, some infrastructure development or upgrade needed for the client server community. The cell phone industry in Bangladesh is well established to take this small challenge in house.

However a full scale financial transaction activity would require more liberalization of policy and active enforcement of the rules of engagements. There are several statistics on how many new customers can be reached for financial activity over cell phone. One data shows that there are 17% of the population has bank accounts. Another data point estimates that there is 30% of the population covered by the cell phone consumer. Thereby, roughly 13% new customers can be served by cell phone financial transaction.

What is transaction with cell phone: Financial transaction with cell phone technology is not a new phenomenon in Bangladesh. Truth of the matter is that, the technology was developed due to local demand and ease of cell phone penetration. To comprehend the idea, let us think about the “top up” concept. Your loved one may send some unused minutes from his SIM card to your SIM card. What is means is transferring some credit from one account to another account. Just simply substitute the word “minutes” with “money”; eureka, you get the idea! It is that simple!

So as a consumer point of view, if two party agree to transact financial activity between their accounts; than the technological capability is in place. The rest of the puzzle could be solved by the policy of Bangladesh Bank and BTRC. They will ensure that the consumer are protected, loop holes are guarded and enforced against misdeeds as well as corruptions or extortion.

Let me give you an example of simple checking service that can be done via cell phone. You want to buy something and you went to the store. You want to pay for the product that you picked with the click of few buttons of your cell phone, like placing a phone call. You can call the transaction as “mobile payment”.

Good for small transaction: In my opinion I consider mobile payment suitable for frequent and small transactions. We should take many baby steps before we consider for large transactions. For the poor credit less population this “mobile payment” could be a big boost to the credit flow. This scheme could bring this vast majority to the national credit activity. For example if the transaction amount is between 10 to 500 taka per day or up to 500 taka per transaction then if could be safely implemented with out a major money laundering or extortion.
A day labor may get their payment at the end of the day with a simple transaction of txting with secure code attached to it. The “Phone lady” or the Curd lady” may get their payment right at the place of exchanging goods. A basket maker or handy-craft artist may instantly top-up their “reserve account” and don’t have to handle cash, which could get snapped off by the patty theft.

Suppose you stopped a street vendor for some vegetables or fish at your door step. You chose your fish or vegetable and fix the prices. The vendor txt the invoice to the buyer and the buyer replied back through his “account reserve”. If the buyer has enough cash on his “reserve account” than transaction goes through and deducted from his account to vendor’s account.

This “reserve account” may be serviced by the subsidiary of Cell Phone Company or an intermediate banking company for small fee for their service. The vendor could get instant cash from their account from little street shops where SIM card is sold. The same simple SIM card transaction methodology may be implemented for this transaction.
If properly implemented it could emancipate the credit less hard working class of citizens who could get benefited of banking service without stepping to a bank. No new education is needed to get then landed in this liquidity market as they are used to cell phone in the first place.

You are in charge: Your son took his friends to a café for some ice cream or sandwiches to celebrate an accomplishment. They enjoyed the food and fun; however his wallet is empty. He called mom and mom called the café to pay for the bill. They could easily acknowledge the account payable and “top-up” the café’s reserve account. Now for the Tiffin at the school canteen, fare to the taxi cab, take out order for pizza all could be done through exchanging credit through your cell phone from your private comfort zone.

Credit Card vs. cell phone: Sometime I wonder if cell phone came before ATM or Credit Card, what the developed world would look like with respect to their daily transaction. How would the develop world would build their financial package around it? There are reasons to believe that lot more financial application might get done in the western world via cell phone if it were before ATM or Credit card. But the potential are huge for the poor people in so called least developed country to adopt latest technology to make a giant leap of progress. We in the developing world may learn from the fast world and think out side the box to get more efficient and compete for business.
In context of Bangladesh, it is obvious that cell phone could bring more monetary transaction than credit cards. Due to the absence of credit monitoring capabilities and limited tracking of credit history, credit cards are difficult to penetrate; however “mobile payment” delivered by cell phone may instantly accessible by everybody, including the less fortunate poor people.

Cell phone in developed country vs. developing country: I believe the cell phone, WiFi or WiMax technology as well as genomic or hybrid seed technology are blessing for the developing country. The developing world did not have to invest heavily to innovate these technologies in the first place; however they may get the productivity benefit as well as economic benefit out of it simply by embracing them. One thing they have to do however, to start adapting and customizing for their needs. They have to continuously innovate development around it, so that they don’t have to heavily depend on the developed country for the service and expensive new hardware.

In the developed world like USA or UK, cell phones are not as widely used as in Bangladesh. These applications around cell phone are not as broad as in Bangladesh. In the developing world these technology are being used for vehicle of more income, directly contributing to the bottom-line of household economic freedom. Less your credit worthiness is, more you get benefited from these new technology. Ironically it started a luxury gadget and now helps bring food to the poor families.

Individual vs. institution transaction: A set of policy need to put in place for small and institutional transaction. To foster the goodness of technology and improve productivity amount the credit less small individual entrepreneurs and street vendors, the policy should be simple and easily implement able as well as enforceable.
There should be two categories of transactions. First one is for the small frequent transaction, like 10 TK, 20 TK, as much as 500 TK exchange. This would enable the low income, daily labor, street vendor to actively participate in the broader economy. They would establish a credit flow and over the period will develop credit history.
The second category may be for business to business or medium level transaction. This should follow more strict regulation and enforcement.

Challenge: The biggest challenge is Extortion. With a clear simple policy and technology based enforcement may minimize some risk; however there is a learning curve that may be steep and error prone. As an engineer I know for sure that Engineering is always a trade off. I would definitely trade off the risk of extortion for the benefit for those 13% credit less low income population. They will get one more tool in their disposal to get out of poverty and gain economic freedom.

Summary: Cell phone is a productivity tool, although has some negative impact with respect to usage model of the user. Using cell phone to bring the capability of small financial transaction could help the less fortunate demography. That particular part of the population could participate in the credit flow without making a trip to the bank. The key to minimize extortion is limiting the amount of transaction or putting a cap. Moreover to bring the productivity advantage of the technology to low income population, it is prudent to have the minimum amount to 10Tk and maximum to 200-500 TK depending ton the users choice.

Power of gossiping

Suppose one of your friends Julia returns from a vacation and explains the place that she visited. Julia was telling you about the nature filled with snow covered mountain. The moment she tells you the snow covered mountain, you are picturing that scene in the back of your mind and it feels like you are seeing it; although you are wide wake and having a conversation with Julia. You may even feel the cold in your feet from the show of that mountain or may feel the gentle touch of comfy breeze. Did you wonder why that happens?

A group of British and Belgian scientists used MRI to scan the brain while the woman is asked to see a place; than for another session they asked the woman to image the places. The same areas in the brain lighten up when the she see the place or imagine the place. Brain activity and blood flow in that particular region of the brain which is responsible of certain activity are in fact behaving similarly during the activity of seeing or imagining.

There are conscious thing we do in daily basis, like planning for the days activity. And there are unconscious thing, like heart rate, the sequence of movement of muscle to hold a spoon. Now the unconscious command center is also somewhere in the brain; but completely sealed off from your planning and reasoning circuits. That is why you can not change the heart rate as you wish or change the order of muscle movement to hold the spoon.

Another friend Mike told you a frightening story or a horror experience abuse; all of your senses become sub consciously active such a way that you kind of feel the pain or fear the fear. At this moment you are in the same state as Mike who went through the experience in the first place and feel sympathetic to him. This very moment you will do whatever you can to stop the event or any future recurrence. Because you feel, see, hear, smell the event. Have you ponder why you feel that way? I am sure you have at least one story like that.

Spiritual speakers, eloquent political leaders as well as leader of special interest group use almost the same technique to get their massage deliver. First they tell you a story that somehow relate to you, then they elevate the story to open your heart and touch it. Once your heart is open, they deliver the massage. You are defense less and the chances are at the pick to get the massage through.

There may be debate about this technique and you may question if it is moral or immoral; however if it applies with the conscious mind, with the planning and reasoning circuits of your brain in action; then chances are low that you will be misguided. Moreover, you have to understand the pure motive of the speaker or the story teller.

In this regard, a maxim by philosopher Francis Bacon seems relevant: "The human understanding, when it has once adopted an opinion, draws all things else to support and agree with it. Although there be a greater number or weight of instances on the other side, it either ignores or rejects them."

With the above understanding of scientific and philosophical argument, what should we do when we are exposed to such mind blogging stories? Should we be very careful about spreading rumors and sharing gossips in every aspects of life?

NB: Check out the brain science argument noted here in details at time.com: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1580394,00.html

Project: Return of the Golden Fiber, can Textile and RMG industry deliver a new product and market it using Internet technology?

The enlightening:
Last week in a cubical of one of my collogue; I saw a stack of black garment reusable shopping bag. She asked me to have one and keep track of how many times I reuse that. I should report to my manager on how many times I reuse that bag and my manager will track it. This goes through the hierarchy of management at the Microprocessor design company in Portland Oregon where I work. Every manager asked their direct reports to encourage the adaptation of reusable grocery bags in their daily life. There is a movement going allover USA to cut down polythene shopping bags or grocery bags to improve the quality of environment. In Bangladesh we did this very successfully several years ago.

This black grocery shopping bag that was handed over to me for reuse, is being sold by FredMeyer, is 100% recyclable and reusable. After looking at the tag of the bag, I found out that it was outsourced to China by a California company called “Earthwise” based in Commerce, California USA. This bag is hand washable (not machine washable which is uncommon in USA) and was made of 100% non woven polypropylene.

If you consider the fact that it was not machine washable and it was not natural fiber material; however it is being marketed and corporations are buying this as a statement to show their commitment to the environment. Now imagine this, an entrepreneur in Bangladesh use 100% natural fiber Jute to design a grocery bag that is machine washable and shows a cool statement of being environmentally savvy. This product is obviously a better compare to my black “Earthwise” bag because it is bio degradable, recyclable, reusable and machine washable. This will sell as a slam dunk to every consumer in USA. Then the same entrepreneur posts this product information in as many media outlet as he gets for free, say Internet, a video demo in Youtube.com. He tries to get as much attention as he can including all the Jute agencies to support the product. The possibilities are boundless.

Time for a new project:
“Jute, the golden fiber of Bangladesh” was the most popular essay tested by the both HSC and SSC examiner during eighties. Almost all the students in our generation were exposed to that statement. Although the golden periods of Jute was already started showing decline during our college days; I am sure our generation and the generation before us might have more to say about the glory days of golden fiber. It is almost like RMG (Ready Made Garments), which may be the pride of today’s kids; although RMG is little bit slow now a days and God forbid in a decline. Whenever any optimistic prospect of Jute come in the media or discussion table, I think our generation feels pretty good. They want to turn every stone to see what is underneath of that stone. They look every corner and try to make sense out of it. A tiny bit of prospect on the return of the golden fiber amuse them. As a part of that generation I also feel passionately about the potential of Jute, which may be the fiber of the green fabric of 21st century. This generation is currently the power horse behind our industries as most of them are in mid management in various sectors. I am targeting them as my primary audience for this article.

After Al Gore told the “inconvenient truth” and earned a Noble prize, people are at started to getting aware of sustainability. The intergovernmental Panel on Climate change bringing scientists, engineers as well as civic leaders on board to solve the challenging issues of climate change. The progress is slow but apparently going in the positive direction. Now a days, people in the USA asking for more and more greener options in their everyday life. This year Hybrid car demand rose to 37% ; however, 2% cars in the roads of USA are Hybrid today. Progress in the right direction; but slow. Never before, Greener businesses are booming like today, even in the decline of the economy. For example, look at the reusable shopping bags. Macy’s a major upper mid scale departmental store, which has 800 stores in the metropolitan cities all over USA, introduced reusable shopping bag to its customer at a discount with a substantial subsidy. These bags are now considered to be fashion statements. You are carrying this bag because you are environmentally conscious, social in nature, care for others and a responsible person. It showcases your better humane nature on the go.

Especially, in recent months, when this “green movement” by the west is getting momentum catalyzed by the earth day in April, I see an opportunity for a Jute Project. I do believe that there are new opportunities for Jute goods today for environmentally sustainable economy. There is obviously a demand and market is ready, growth potential is enormous. The product in this case is a shopping bag and the simple specifications of the product are: reusable, recyclable, machine washable, non-toxic, environmentally friendly and biodegradable.

In this project, there are three major milestones to achieve. First and foremost, development of a fabric of the above mentioned specification. Second milestone would be design and manufacture a prototype and the third and most challenging part of the project is to get the attention of the consumer.

Jute Zhamela:
We simply can not ask our government to pull this project. In my personal opinion, our government failed us with Jute. I question the very existence of our Jute research institute. I read articles to revive Jute by genome sequencing. They argued that multimillion dollar Jute genome sequencing could open the doors of better Jute. The knowledge could be used to bio-engineer Jute to bring better features and quality in the breed. However I disagree with the argument of costly genome sequencing is the answer to the Jute revival.

Look at the recent huge shipment of raw Jute to Pakistan. What Pakistan will do with this huge quantity of raw Jute? Obviously they will make a finish product, add value in it and sell it with higher margin. Why can not we do what Pakistan is doing? If we can not make high margin product with our existing Jute and sell it to global market than what are the chances that we would be able to do it with bio-engineered Jute? I believe the answer is somewhere between initiatives that need to be taken by dynamic entrepreneurs. May be one baby steps at a time.

I am sure our national pride Dr Atiq Rahman of UN environment award winner will come forward encouraging such product of national pride. I hope this product is a better alternative of unsustainable polythene bags that is being used all over the world. There are 46,000 floating plastic pieces per square mile of ocean according to a 2006 U.N. study. If Bangladesh can develop such a creative product and do proper marketing, than it not only can revive the golden fiber but also solve a global environmental problem.

Why I believe we can do this project and what is our strength:
Today, Bangladesh has more capability to make a successful finish product of Jute than ever before. We have the mature textile industries that are making fine quality fabrics, including jeans, cottons, mixed fabrics you name it. Some of the factory has onsite small R&D (Research and development facilities), where I assume they experiment or reverse engineer of hip and popular fabrics. They are capable of developing a Jute fabric.
I would like to throw one specific idea to them. To those who are in the textile R&D, start searching for a formula to get Jute as the base of fabric solution. You may try making cool yarn with 90% Jute and 5% cotton and 5% acrylic. You will have a fabric with strength, soft and stretchy.

We have access to the global information system to use for free product advertisement, marketing, virtual office and demo 24/7. Thanks to http://craiglist.org, http://youtube.com, google blog are there to serve you free; where you post your product videos, slides, photos, description and your contact. It is a flat world and global marketplace. If your product add value and cost effective, surly you will get call. Get the benefit of broadband, VOIP, internet technology and flood the information superhighway showing, demonstrating the merits of this unique product.

The next pipeline would be our RMG capability. Using this expertise we would be able to make Jute based finish product. Let us begin with shopping bags. Then, it could expand into product that could be used in landscape development and restoration of environment. Our entrepreneurs at the RMG and Textile industry have a lot to offer; only thing missing is a visionary entrepreneur who can design such a product. Can you do it?

Food price rise and the impending crisis worldwide

I think the root cause of the food price hike around the world is the ongoing turbulence in crude oil price. It happened due to a chain of events. If we trace the events then we could link it to the war in Iraq. The ever increasing demand of fuels to support the growth in China and India is the other major factor.

In one hand, the war constrained the supply and growth in China and India raised the demand, on the other. To battle the shortage, everybody is searching for other sources of energy. Higher crude oil price showed economic viability of some alternative energy sources. The USA, like EU and other nations, found some alternative sources. Biodiesel is showing some potential. A significant amount of corn went into biodiesel production. The USA used to provide 70 per cent of the world demand of corn; now 30 per cent of that is being diverted to energy production.

Moreover, the higher market price of oil makes it more profitable for the farmer to produce corn for energy solution. This created a short supply in the food cereal market and there was no additional supply to mitigate that. Because the developing countries did not anticipate this series of events, they could not fill the gap with wheat or rice. To make the situation even worse, the higher transportation cost pushed the market price of wheat and rice even higher.

Farmers in the developed countries are motivated to switch to corn production due to the demand of alternative fuel sources. Today, more lands are producing corn than ever before. The USA, EU and other developed countries should evaluate the situation and act urgently to correct it. If they fail to do so, more people will die due to hunger in this 21st century and that would be a shame for the entire human civilisation.

This post may also be seen at the Daily New Age news paper in Bangladesh:http://www.newagebd.com/2008/apr/25/fb.html

Treatment in Singapore: What I learn from treating my father’s cancer?

In March 2007, a very bad news hit me when I learnt that my father might have a stomach cancer. It was that time of the year when a lot of news hit the media in Dhaka about abuse of formalin to preserve fishes and fruits. This abuse can cause various deadly diseases including stomach cancer. Tons of fishes has been disposed to underground or burnt.

There have been no traces of cancer in my family or my ancestor as far as I know. So this was a shock to me living abroad. My younger brother lives with my parents in Narayanganj. I asked him to see some more specialists and do x-rays, biopsy to multiple laboratories to be certain.
He followed my directions and did all the necessary lab works in three renowned laboratory and hospitals in Dhaka. All the reports have some doubts and nobody was certain that my father has cancer; however nobody is ruling that out. The biopsy in one medical university in Dhaka could not bring out the samples confidently form the affected tissues of the stomach.

Recently there has been a lot of talk in the town that, most of our politicians fly to other country for their treatments and hence local treatment facilities did not get enough attention and investments to meet our local demand. There is some truth in that. Moreover, enforcement for basic standard of medical practice and protection of the rights of the patient are also lacking. This can be tested any time by doing a simple lab work of blood in several laboratories randomly and then compare the chemistry.

Anyway, going back to my father’s cancer growth in his stomach. I was fortunate enough that I live and work in USA and earn decent amount to provide the medical expensed for my father. So I was looking for all the options available out there. I had three options except bring him in USA.
Bringing him in USA would cause a significant amount of delay as he does not have a visa and the process now a days take 4-6 weeks. Moreover treating in USA without insurance will cost a fortune. So here are my three options: (1) take him to TATA cancer center in Bombay http://tmc.gov.in/ ; (2) Bumrungrad Hospital in Bangkok www.bumrungrad.com/; (3) MT Elizabeth in Singapore http://singapore.parkwayhealth.com/hospitals/meh.asp .

First two options have some complicacy on logistics, visa, finding the right doctors and availability. And we did not have local support and time. The doctors in Dhaka recommend that if we want to treat it; we should do it pretty soon as my father was loosing blood with his stools and weight is dropping very fast. So if it were cancer; then it is spreading pretty fast. These are scary news and not helping the logistics. I feel helpless in my Portland home. The third option was pretty simple. Although it was costly and all our politicians as well as high up civil servants makes their first stop to MT Elizabeth Hospital in Singapore. The business is so good that MTE (short for MT Elizabeth Hospital) has a local agent in Dhaka, who arrange all the Visa, admission to the hospital, transportation and what not. I used my family connections and got everything lined up in couple of days. My brother took off with my father from Dhaka to Singapore and I was in Singapore one day early to join them.

A MTE contracted cab picked up my father and my brother from the airport to the MTE admission counter. I was waiting for them at the counter. After the initial pre payment, we went to his designated hospital bed. For the next several hours, we let the MT Elizabeth doctors to do X-ray, endoscope, and laser burning to the damaged area after a sample of biopsy. They delivered several photos of the affected stomach where bleeding was obvious. Then the doctor in charge use laser to burn some affected area to slow down the bleeding and shoot some photo for us.

The photos were such convincing that the leading doctor told us that he is almost certain that cancer is present; however we will get the biopsy result next day and the treatment will start after that instantaneously. My father was under a leading doctor of Parkway Cancer Center, which is integrated with Gleneagles hospital chain that includes MTE. He told us in the evening that if cancer is identified by the biopsy, then he will start a chemo right away; however he will also bring in one of the best surgeon to evaluate the possibility of surgery before chemo. It was a long day.

I was also skeptical for the fact that Mt Elizabeth is part of a mega healthcare management system and a for profit company. They are not part of the Singapore Government’s healthcare system, which is also very good; but non profit in the core of their business. So I was watching the doctors of MTE cautiously. I talked to the surgeon and the Surgeon evaluates the lab results and the images of the scope and concludes that the surgery may be done but may not considerably successful. He agreed with the lead doctor that several chemo followed by a surgery may give better chance. He argued that if there is a positive response from the chemo then we will know for sure that the cancer is controllable.

Next day we got biopsy result proving cancer and Dr Tiam immediately admitted my father in his Parkway cancer center; But before doing that he started the first chemo in the MTE hospital that day. The doctor gave me 80% chance of shrinking the cancer and 20% chance for not shrinking it. Baba got released from the hospital on the 3rd day. We took him to a partially rented apartment nearby.

Now that we have a handle on the situation, I started looking for other opinions and validate the treatment plan. I went to see NUH National University Hospital and consult with head of Oncology Dr Robert Lim. Robert Lim happen to be also a specialist on intestinal and digestive system Oncologist. Earlier his profession, he worked in NIH (National Institute of Health in USA and did some good work on cancer research. He is now running TCC (The Cancer Center of NUH), which is under the ministry of health. I showed him all the test report from Dhaka and Mt Elizabeth. He explained the tests and agreed the treatment plan; but he disagree the composition of the chemo based on his research experience with French and USA. He gave me 40-40-20 chance; where the chemo can shrink the cancer 40%, the other 40% case the chemo may stop the growth but may not shrink and the remaining 20% chance for no response.

Now I am confused. So I paid my next trip to Singapore General Hospital SGH. This hospital has a very good cancer pre screening center. This would be a good place to find out for sure if somebody has cancer or not. I highly recommend this pre screening program for those who are at risk. Anyway, I consulted with the head of the Oncologist of National Cancer Center Dr Koo Wen Hsin. He is expert in Hematology and Upper Gastrointestinal cancer. He gave me a depressing analysis. He knows the surgeon and thinks highly about him. He thinks the course of action may work and there is only very slime chance of total cure and in his opinion it is 5%. He recommends that we take him home. Send him to nice vacation to nice place and spend my fathers’ last 3-6 months in a happy environment. He may prescribe some medication to comfort my father.
At this point I was very confused and I felt helpless deeply disturbed. I was in shock. I feel disoriented while I find myself walking haphazardly in the subway station. However I bring myself under control and trying to think logically and scientifically. I talked to couple of people that I admire and was close to me to get some perspective and comfort.

I went home take rest; spend the rest of the day thinking the alternatives. Finally I decided to get the treatment done at the cancer Institute at the NUH under Dr Robert Lim. Robert lim was on a conference and he responded with an email. He directed his coworker Dr Benjamin Chow to arrange a consulting session and start the next chemo.

My father went through 2 months of chemo. During the 3rd month, a very confident surgeon took my father to a total gastrectomies for 10 hours. The procedure removed my father’s stomach, 80 lymph nodes and spleen. After the surgery they analyzed all the staff that they bring out of my fathers’ body and did not found any trace of cancer. This was due to the excellent response to the chemo; however they continue to put my father under chemotherapy for next 2 months to make sure that it does not come back right away.

Now it has been a year, my father is living with me in my Portland home today. He is almost adjusted with out a stomach; just he has to take small portion of meals, several times a day to compensate the absence of a big stomach to store more food.

What I leant form the journey of my father’s cancer fight and survival is phenomenal. These three hospitals in Singapore are best on what they do. They implemented the integration of computer and information system technology to take the healthcare system, in some aspect better then average USA hospitals. Moreover the cost of healthcare is almost one third for USA in general. For example, consultation fee with a specialist could run between SGD 100- 200; where in USA it could be around USD 150-300. For chemotherapy, it ran between SGD 2000-3000 per course and here in USA for the same formula I received a discounted quote USD$ 3000; however the cost depends on the combination of drugs in the chemo. I am giving this numbers as an example from my personal experience. I consulted with three top consultants from these three Cancer facilities. There is lots of information about them in the egoverment webpages of Ministry of health as well as those institutions. I changed the direction of the treatment based on my personal analysis of those three consultations, financial situation, and long term sustainability of the actions. There were a lot of blessing from Allah, as well as good wishes and pray from my friends and relatives’ were at the center of my father’s fight against cancer.

If I would have know, what I know now. Than I would have gone directly to Singapore National Hospital for a cancer pre screen to find out want exactly went wrong. It is known as NCC, National Cancer Center. Then I would have gone to NUH’s TCI, The Cancer Institute, for the chemo and Surgery. However the surgeon that did the surgical procedure now works in MTE. Singapore was number one destination for medical tourism in Asia in 2007 and I am sure it will be repeating that in 2008.

I am glad and optimistic that Dr Yunus is paying lot of attention on our health care system. Recently I met him after his meeting with Bill gates. He told me at a diner in Portland’s Typhoon restaurant that he urged Bill Gates to invest in healthcare sector of Bangladesh. He urged Bill to extend his work in Africa to Bangladesh. Dr Yunus has a dream of building a mega hospital and medical research center in Bangladesh. We need this kind of leadership from Dr Yunus. We hope and pray that he deliver a solution of this problem. We will support him for such a noble goal.