#dhakaliving

[a1samireit]

Dhaka's Serviced Apartment Market: An In-Depth Analysis for Investors and Expatriates

Dhaka’s serviced apartment market is booming as expats, NRBs, and professionals choose modern, furnished, hassle-free living in areas like Gulshan, Banani, Baridhara, and Bashundhara. Demand for compact, tech-enabled homes keeps rising.

📞 01921096846 | 01712553547

Main Home Page

One-bedroom, fully furnished studio apartments are available for rent. To-Let Two Bedroom Small House Short Terms Rental in Bangladesh.

[radioactivegrowth]

Standing at the Base of the Mountain

Z! How is it so far? Loving it?!          

The past few attempts at answering this have resulted in a catalogue of all the great things I’ve seen or experienced so far: the awesome dood chai available at every turn, the kindness of the people around me, the beauty of the lush greens surrounding my new home and office. But I haven’t posted these reflections…

…because while all of it is true, there is definitively something missing. Humans are rich with emotions; we are complex beings, capable of experiencing multiple sensations and feelings – even ones that are totally contradictory – at the exact same time. Sadness and relief, love and disgust, fear and hope - I know you’ve been there.

For me, not four days in, my emotions have run the gamut and I’ve noticed that frustration and satisfaction alternate at the top of the list. Maybe it’s just me, but as I try to process life, I sometimes use multiple lenses from which I see and experience the world at the same time. I call it “going meta” and we can call our lenses Zahra A and Zahra B.

Zahra A carries a micro lens. She gets super zoomed in on the details and only sees what’s in front her. She’s the outcome you forget to imagine when you say, “Live in the moment! Be present!” Right now she’s living and feeling every moment of jet lag as it hits at 3:38am and of course the dehydration. She could use some more water right now but WHERE WILL I GET SOME?!? She could also really use a friend right now BUT HOW WILL I CALL THERE IS NO INTERNET BECAUSE THE POWER WENT OFF AGAIN AND I DON’T KNOW HOW TO USE MY PHONE. She feels the hot tears when the Food Aunty doesn’t understand what Zahra means when she says she wants stir-fried veggies and some chicken on the side. Zahra is foreign, so Food Aunty, gem that she is, assumes this needs to be coated in a white, cornflour-gravy mix that is tasteless and totally not Z-friendly, because, #AmrikanTasteBuds you know?

Micro-lens Zahra is exhausted, run down with emotion and itchy mosquito bites, and utterly overwhelmed by literally everything: the language barrier, the servant culture, the dust, the lack of a refrigerator water filter system that gives beautiful, refreshing, clean, potable water WHENEVER she wants and as much of it as she could imagine. (Sometimes so much that she throws it out and now is feeling really bad about this.) She is experiencing cabin fever because HOW DO YOU GO ANYWHERE HERE?! And the colony is great but she freezes every time she steps outside the door because this isn’t home yet and I DON’T ACTUALLY KNOW WHAT I AM SUPPOSED TO WEAR…EVER. Her only solace – which she definitely is not taking for granted, I promise you, is the near-constant access to air conditioning.

And somehow, at the exact same time that Micro-lens Zahra is struggling to keep the panic rising inside her at bay as she holds this huge mountain of an adventure in her consciousness, Zahra B, the one walking by this disastrous scene as her macro lens swings around her neck, lifts this big-picture perspective to her eye and looks through it. She chuckles a little and smiles with satisfaction because hey – it’s only day four – and right here, at the base of this adventurous mountain, is exactly where Zahra A is supposed to be. It’s supposed to be hard and overwhelming and terrifying; you’re supposed to feel maxed out, like you want to give up, and that you just can’t do it. She shakes her head a little because she sees what the zoomed-out picture looks like: when Zahra A gets into her groove and starts taking this new land by storm and ruling from the mountain top, as she inevitably will, she won’t even remember how hard these moments were.  Zahra B is the cool, calm voice of reason that doesn’t get flustered because she knows how it ends (hint: it always ends the same way). But, she also misses the day-to-day details that make life so rich and enticing. Zahra A feels the incline of the slope; Zahra B knows the tiny speck that is today exists somewhere in the whole-mountain landscape she shot, but she can’t focus on it, her lens isn’t capable.

I gotta say, I love Microscopic Zahra A in all her impatient, hot-tempered, panicky glory. She knows how to feel man. Like really, really feel. She puts life into the words “moving across the world” and wastes no time getting waist-deep in the mud; she truly embodies passion and emotion; she brings out the different hues of color you might have otherwise missed when you glanced back at the picture of 2017. She reminds me that I am alive and that every day is a new and different type of wonderful than the one before it.

Macroscopic Zahra B, though, I think she’s my favorite. Because while Zahra A reminds me that I’m alive, Zahra B is the one who reminds me that being alive is a great thing. She swoops in right at the last second and says, “don’t worry, I know this is all you can focus on right now, but I’m here to tell you there’s more to it than just this moment.” She allows me to feel more forgiving toward myself when the heat of the moment finally passes because she could see it coming from a mile away. And most importantly, macro Z gives me my voice – the one that comes post-emotion, when we reflect on the picture together.

My thoughts are interrupted as the fajr azhan wafts through the air and into my ears; ahead, the silhouette of an abandoned, half-constructed building slouches in the darkness. Micro and Macro converge for a moment in the peace before dawn, mosquitos, and Food Aunty’s attempt at breakfast. Today will be another day spent at the base of the mountain, but in this moment, you, me, and Zahra B know what an incredible mountain it is.

So yes, so far so good, thanks for asking.