4 foreigners walk into a bar...

Actually it wasn't a bar it was a toy store. This past week was a busy one and part of the activities of the week was showing a visiting American and Nepali person around Dhaka. One of my newer expat co-workers joined us since he hadn't seen the parts of Dhaka we were going to. The first place we visited was New Market which is a very large market in Dhaka. We spotted a toy store and expat co-worker decided he needed to check it out to buy a toy for his host family's 3 year old son. We went inside and had many laughs at the absurd nick-knacks that were available (most of which would be extremely terrible gifts for a 3 year old boy). Then it happened, expat co-worker and I discovered the most awesome thing ever. They had a magnetic dartboard! We had to try it out of course. The shopkeepers were more than willing to oblige our desires by telling us where to stand and holding up the board for us. The epic game began with us standing in a corner throwing magnetic darts at a board being held 4 feet away from us. Expat co-worker struck first with a 60 point shot to the third ring. I followed that up with a lot of luck when I hit a bulls-eye for 100 points on my first shot. Expat co-worker followed my luck up with a bulls-eye of his own to get the crowd of 4 (2 visitors and 2 shopkeepers) excited. I then fired the next two shots which ended up being a 40 pointer to the 4th ring and another bulls-eye. The suspense was in the air as expat co-worker said, "watch this" and proceeded to throw his third and final shot underhanded!!! Now, if you didn't catch it in the last sentence, I think it is time to point out that expat co-worker used the infamous last words that all men (and women?) have a knack for using right before they do something really stupid. In this situation, the dart flew up and over the board in a beautiful arch before coming back down to land on a glass shelf which promptly shattered dropping its load of snow globes and ceramic boxes onto a similarly loaded glass shelf below it which also shattered and dropped all off the previously mentioned objects on the tile floor where they joined in the fun by shattering themselves. What followed was a first for me. I've been in many crazy situations in Bangladesh, the one that stands out as the craziest was when I hit a child with my bicycle, but I've never seen something actually stun a Bengali person the way this did (though just seeing me in some villages does seem to stun quite a few people). Both shopkeepers just turned and stared drop-jawed at the mess on the floor. Visiting American and I clasped our hands to our mouths to keep ourselves from laughing out loud. I have no clue what visiting Nepali did since he was quiet and behind us the entire time this occurred. Poor expat co-worker had an "ah crap" moment of silence. After about 5 seconds the "ah crap" moment struck me as I realized that I'm the only one in our group that knows enough Bangla to sort out how much we owe these guys. It took about 20-30 minutes of haggling before we settled on paying the store manager about $45 for all the stuff we broke. Judging from the fact that he kept apologizing and saying that he wasn't the owner, I think he felt somewhat like we should be mad at him. Judging by the smile on his face when we paid, I think it was one of the best selling days he's had in awhile.

Moral of the story: never say, "watch this."



In another one of my adventures from this past week, I went to a tailoring shop last night to have some pants made. While I was there, a middle aged man puffing on a cigarette took special interest in me. He started asking all sorts of questions about who I am, where I'm from, and what I'm doing. Having nothing to hide and being in a good mood, I answered honestly. Eventually after they get done measuring me he motions me over and has me sit down next to him. After a few minutes of additional conversation he turned to me and said, "your country...(pauses to take a puff on his cigarette which he promptly blows in my face)...is sexy country." That was my opportunity to be stunned. How do you respond to that?!? I finally settled on telling him that this wasn't proper English and then scurrying along.

It has been an amusing week. Now I'm off to bake pie!