Lawrence, a town lost by the economic realities

We spent the last weekend to Mr. Mahmud's house in Andover, a city about 20 miles north of Boston. To attend a inviting party in another city, we're crossing a small town named Lawrence. There we saw many large factory & even residential buildings deserted. I was heard that long ago it was a very thriving industrial belt with many textile industries. Workers' houses were made nearby. With the rise in wages & other costs, America lost its competitive advantages in textile production and consequently factories shifted to China, India & even Bangladesh. As a consequence, Lawrence lost its economic activities & now looks like a crime-prone ghost city. Mostly, the next generation of the Afro-American workers live nearby now. It's a living example of how economic dynamism shifts across the nations in this globalized world.

Lost into DC museums

After long 8 months my wife joined me as she arrived USA on 7 March. That was the concluding day of our workshop at WB-IMF. As she's on her flight by Emirates (Dhaka-Dubai-JFK-DCA or Reagan airport ) I was checking her flight status online in order to be at the airport just in time. Everything was fine for her journey to the US.

On 8 March morning we went to explore the DC meseums & other attractions. At first we went the Capitol Hill, then into the Orchid garden museum. It was awesome! The garden area was covered with artificial transparent roofs (to protect plants from cold, snow). Orchids in dry lands, deserts, rainforests and in other natural environments were looking so gorgeous!

Then we visited the art gallery museums, my wife was fascinated by the arts, specially of artist Pablo Picasso. Our next museum was Natural History Museum. It was so huge & superb! Of particular interest to me were the Egyptian mummies (still unpacked) and earthquake zone line illumination(Ctg & Sylhet area directly on that line!).

Our last visit for the day was Air & Space Museum. There visitors can see the first mission to the moon (Apollo 11, 1969), views to the earth from sattelites, first plane by Wright Brothers & many other attractive things including plane dummies.

In addition to the above, there're many other museums in Washington DC. But due to time constraints we couldn't got there. Also the good thing about DC meseums is that they've all free entrance. We feel previledged to have the opportunity of visiting some great museums of the world!

World Bank- IMF Workshop in Washington DC

I attended a 5 day long (3-7 March'08) workshop on Finance and Development organized jointly by the World Bank & IMF for the Humphrey Fellows in their head offices in DC. In total 43 fellows from different campuses attended. On the opening day of 3 March, it was just reception cum dinner hosted by the WB head office. Then the next 2 days were scheduled for IMF & the last days were for WB activities. The IMF sessions covered overview, world economic & financial market developments, IMF program design & conditionality, IMF survellience for the member countries, poverty reduction & debt relief, growth & poverty reduction in the sub-saharan African countries ; and IMF reform efforts. One unique arrangement was made of a speech by someone while fellows took their luncheon. In all of the sessions speakers tried to highlight different aspects of the IMF in the context of growing criticism of the organization by the world community. One speaker mentioned of a joke that if a country's economic conditions improve after the IMF program adoption, all credits go the respective country's own policies whereas if it detriorates, all blames lie on the failures of IMF. I personally enjoyed IMF sessions (and also the good food served!)
WB sessions were held on the top floor of their main building on 18th street. It covered WB organogram, functioning mechanism of IDA, governance, evaluation mechanisms of WB initiated projects, global evironment issues and so on. Most of the sessions were very interactive & fellows found ample scopes to make questions or comments.
Joining to the WB-IMF workshop was indeed a previledge. We came to know many aspects of those 2 world class institutions. Also many items (T-shirts, souvenir bags, electronic diary etc.) were gifted to the participants.
Out of 43 fellows, 11 were from Boston University. Also BU fellows (in picture) were more active in the workshop sessions. I personally stayed active in all of the sessions I could attend. Attending in such a workshop is definitely in line with the prestige & honor associated with being a Humphrey Fellow.