The week in re(ar)view

Perfume warehouse gutted
Surely you must have at some early point of your life tasted a lemon soap or any other similarly fruit soap. To your dismay you must have found out it tastes just like soap. And soap does not taste like anything good. It tastes like soap, which is bad.

Similar burning questions would also include what would happen if a perfume factory burned down. Would the entire pace smell good for years to come? Could somebody take a stroll through that area just before a date and smell fresh. Apparently, NO!

A warehouse of a perfume factory at Uttara in the city was gutted in a fire on May 5. Apparently goods worth Tk 1.40 crore went up in smoke.
What did the place smell like?
Smoke.

Price of mental anguish
Thee last few weeks we saw a drama being performed by the government, by the people and by our two ladies of power. There were more plot twists than in an entire season of a Hindi daytime soap opera. One moment we wanted the lady leaders to be kicked out of the country, next we want them in jail, next we make them a martyr (without dying) and soon we don't want them back when they want to come back.

Former Bangladesh premier Sheikh Hasina was refused to board British Airways when she wanted to come back home. Now she is seeking a cool million pounds in damages from British Airways.

"BA did not give her a boarding pass, citing security reasons. It caused her immense mental stress and agony," it was cited. Ah, that's the sort of mental stress we wish we could have. We could so enjoy living with it. We could definitely afford the doctors fees.

Prof Yunus came and saw
Nobel laureate Prof Muhammad Yunus on May 3 backed down from forming a political party. It seems his political backers have refused to publicly support or join his party. So that means he does not have a party.

His letter to the public included, "I have seen those who initially encouraged me gradually losing their enthusiasm." He came, he caw and he concurred that politics is exactly what it is hyped up to be absolutely terrible.

Yunus, however, said he would give his full support to a new political party that would aim at providing a political alternative.

Streets to be foreign named
Is this never to end? Speakers at a discussion on May 3 called on the authorities to name two city streets after former Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and commander of Bangladesh-India joint forces during the Liberation War Lt Gen Jagjit Singh Aurora in recognition of their outstanding contribution to the Liberation War.
Duh? That's all we have to say.

Burn the people
Last week we knew budget for 2008 to be downsized. This week we find out budget to be 22pc bigger. This is mainly to deal with outstanding debt owed by Bangladesh Petroleum Corporation (BPC) to national commercial banks. Currently, the BPC owes around Tk 10,000 crore in loans with interest to various local banks. Guess who will be paying for it though?

By Gokhra and Mood Dude

Before the Exam:
1. Make sure you create an exam timetable and mark the locations and their addresses in it (specially if you have lots of examinations). Nowadays EDEXCEL places their examinations in really far off centers like Bashundhara Convention centre and a mistake in identifying your correct location may cause you serious trouble.

2. In the last few hours (or days), do not go for revising or memorizing the entire contents of the syllabus, instead, just go through the bulleted list of important points. You should concentrate on keeping yourself relaxed before you go to the exam room

3. Make sure you take all your stuff (like pens, pencils, calculators). Take couple of pens of all same colour (not one of black and one of blue and then one runs out). Take pencils of two or more different colours so that you can highlight question sections or mark them appropriately as you see fit.

4. If your examination centre is far away, then make sure you are ready to leave at least two hours before the scheduled time. If you don't have a private car, its better to arrange for a relative to drop you via car, as traffic situations are really terrible in the city.

5. Be mentally confident that you are going to do well, and even if you have poor preparation in some area of the syllabus, concentrate on the ones in which you are strong and they will bring you your desired grade.

During the Exam:
1. If you are free to choose your order of answers, then answer the ones you are really confident about, that way you save a lot of time to think about the ones you are not really confident.

2. Use all the provided information (i.e Periodic table during Chemistry or formulas in the physics paper). The examiners often give you just about enough clues to answers almost all the questions.

3. Do not waste time asking the invigilators about questions, most of the time they don't know anything about the paper. This is also true for practical exams. Instead, look for clues in the question itself.

4. Fill in all the information about yourself (candidate number, center cumber etc.). There have been lots of instances when the answer scripts could not be traced to the examinee, giving way to poor grades.

5. How much time you ought to spend in each question depends on the ratio of the marks attached to it. In a 100 marks questionnaire set, of 120 minutes exam, a question of 20 marks is roughly worth one-fifth (24 mins) of your maximum time.

6. For math examinees, check and recheck your answer, and in the end, highlight your final answer with a double underline to hint the examiner that that is your answer to the intended question.

Well that's it folks. These are some last minute tips that would hopefully all get you the desired grades that you want. Remember, O' level Exams are really easy, just take it cool.

By Monty Python

RS Mailbx

Loud, loudest
Seeing last week's Babu where the car exploded into pieces from loud music made me wish for a genie who would grant me a wish. I wish it would happen to all those annoying kids who want to sorely show-off the entire country what loud speakers they have. The only thing that will probably fall off in time is their ears and then the rest of us annoyed people can laugh at them. Too bad they won't be able to hear us.
Sharmeen
NSU

Love and hate
I'm an angry reader (yah,right, that's for my introduction). The jokes and funny stuff are getting really 'Not So Funny That It Should Be in a Paper Like RS'.

Now some good points regarding RS (26 April). The article on Virginia Tech Shootout indeed very good piece on a truly touching incident. Bhola & Boo rocked again as well as Babu. Book review was awesome as always.

Now some weeks ago I got some information on violin lessons in Dhaka. That was really handy to me. So, thanks RS very, very much.
Best Regards
Lord Sesshomaru
SOS Herman Gmeiner College

Monty Python
I use an Acer Aspire 3502 laptop. The problem I'm facing with it is that it always gets frozen on startup and I have to repeatedly restart it up to 15 times to get it started. It freezes at various stages of startup, sometimes before windows loads, sometimes during disk checkup and during login. Sometimes it seems to have started but freezes 10 minutes after login during the middle of my work. I bought new from the Middle East. I travelled with it to and fro from Dhaka to Mymensingh. Please help as the next time the laptop freezes I'll just smash it against the wall.
Sumaiyah

Dear Sumaiya
Dhaka's weather is known to play serious havoc with sensitive electronics like laptops and since you carry yours around a lot. It could be a problem with either the hardware or software.

If you have bought yours within the last one year, then your laptop should come with a one year warranty for full free servicing and also replacement. Now whether that warranty is covered in Bangladesh will depend on the type of warranty you may have purchased (global or local), you should see your warranty paper and find out.

If it is covered by the limited warranty (full replacement if bought within one year or free servicing if bought within last three years), then you simply find out the local dealers for Acer laptop. Any shop in IDB can inform you as right now I do not know.

Before anything else, try to see if the recovery CD's that were provided with the laptop help. There ought to be five or six CD's or DVD with the Acer logo containing original windows XP and some recovery software. A simple reinstall of the main operating system may do the trick.
Monty Python

I love Bengali movies for their unique style and visual effects; they are simply the best. Just think about it-have you ever been able to predict the ending of any other movies except the Dhaliwood ones? Of course you haven't. As for Bengali movies, you've just got to watch them for ten solid minutes and you'll be able to predict what happens during the rest of the movie flawlessly.

Bengali movies are identical twins, that is they are identical in structure. the heroine (Priya, Julie, Josna or Maya) is usually from an influential family and is sure to be a hoodlum's daughter however, she is not aware of that. When the hero and heroine grow up, they fall in love. This part of the story usually takes place in a cha bagan in Sylhet where the hero saves the heroines life. The hero presents the heroine with money for his heroism, but his philosophy denies it, which takes the heroine's breath away. They start seeing each other and decide to get married, but the two families oppose the marriage. Why? Because the heroine's dad murdered the hero's dad, say twenty years back. the grudge was long forgotten until the wounds were opened again when the happy couple break the news. You see a lot of dishum dishum and after that the heroes rage crosses boiling point (no smoke without fire and no Bangla movie without cheap action). He gets revenge for his dad's death, killing his prospective dad-in-law. At last, the movie ends and the hero ends up with the queen of his heart. The police give the hero enough time to clean up the mess and then they finally show up saying ain nijer hate toole niben na. Then we have Dildar (Rest in Peace) smiling from ear-to-ear announcing the happy ending.