Hi Everyone
This is Mohammed Jubaer Arif, a phd student at the
Department of Computer Science and Software
Engineering, The University of Melbourne, Australia. I
am in my second year of phd candidature. On my first
year, I have been working hard and fast only with my
study. Then I realized I have more to give to the
community, to my university and on top of everything
to my beloved country Bangladesh.. Thus, I involved
myself with different clubs in out university and
recently I have been elected as President of our
department's postgraduate student body. You may like
to have a look at our group :
http://www.cs. mu.oz.au/ pgrad/index. html
As the subject line suggests, the first point is, in
our department we have 14 phd students, boys and
girls, from Bangladesh out of total 50 phd students.
All of us work hard and spent most of our day into our
lab. Even in our busy schedule we never forget our
beloved country Bangladesh. Thus, whenever we confront
an opportunity to promote our country we take some
time out of our busy schedule. I would like to mention
about few points regarding that and the first one is
Festival of Nation at our university.
Festival of Nation, is a yearly program organized by
our university for people from different culture. This
year it was around August and as usual we took the
opportunity to show our love to Bangladesh. We came
out with a Bangladeshi food stall. Our food was loved
by so many people that we finished all our food on the
first day of two day long program. Another interesting
point is, we were doing this while students of Dhaka
University were shamelessly fighting with our pride
The Army of Bangladesh. It was so painful from our
part, mainly because even under being so much work
load we try our best in the foreign lands to take our
country upwards and whereas in our own country the
scenario is different. With this little effort what we
made sure is, our flag was flying at our university as
high as two super power of the world Israel and U.S.A.
Please have a look at the attached file.
Secondly, another story from our little Bangladesh
here in Melbourne. From our club we have arranged a
chess competition recently. Our competition was
supported by former woman world NO. 1 chess player
Alexandra Kosteniuk (http://www.kosteniu k.com/). You
can have a look at her website where she was so kind
to put up a news of our competition. In this very
competitive competition Bangladesh got both 1st and
3rd prize. On top of that, Mr. Abdun the first prize
winner won last three years in a row.
Finally and most importantly, the reason I am writing
to you all is regarding our pride, our dignity 21st of
February. Yes, you all know it is now International
Mother Language Day. This year we will celebrate this
event in our department with more flavors and from
here on it will be a yearly event from our group and
from the Language Technology research group of our
department. I have been working to make it official
for last one month. Finally we are there and I am so
happy that, I had to share it with you. We never
forgot 21st, we will never forget it.
To the students, always have this believe that we are
young, we are unbeatable and we are strong TOGETHER.
We can reach to our aim by simple steps one at a time..
I am not claiming with the 21st February being an
official event at our department we have achieved a
lot but surely we are proud that every year, doesn't
matter we are here in the department or not, yearly at
least for one day people will utter the name
Bangladesh.
Thanks to the Language Technology Research Group of
our department and to our university.
Bangladeshi students all over the world please
encourage yourself to work with this idea at your own
university.. You can encourage your Language Technology
Group of your respective universities and make people
heard the name Bangladesh. Let's don't fight at the
street of Dhaka University, let's put all of our
strength and courage together and let the people heard
our voice, let them know we are coming up.
If sharing these simple stories help even a single
mind, can encourage another soul to put some efforts
for our beloved Bangladesh, we will be proud of our
efforts. Please forward my message to all those
beautiful souls, those are ready to flourish.
We have created a small Bangladeshi students group
here in the department and group's main message is "We
Love You Bangladesh, We Will Never Let You Go Down."
Oh! Yes before I end, I should mention, we are also
working hard with our research and study. The person,
so far, from Bangladesh at our department who
completed his phd joined our university as research
fellow here in Melbourne.
I am coming home after 2 long years on 6th of
February, 2008. Looking forward to share our stories
to the students.
Regards
Arif.
With regards
Mohammed Jubaer Arif
Mobile: +61-0411215302
Personal Web: http://www.geocitie s.com/jubairarif ctg/
Org. Web.: http://www.geocitie s.com/halimscham ber/