It's All Volleyball

Even the skies are shooting water cannons at the ticket scalpers around Mirpur Stadium. But this really isn't our idea of a Banglawash during the Asia Cup finals. Maybe this is why there was a scuffle the day before over the game tickets – to convince people to just stay home. 

Meanwhile, Maasranga TV is in a fix on whether it will eventually get to air T20 or Tea with Tootli. If the game is postponed, we will get joint champions. Not quite the way any feline, let alone the Tigers, chases a trophy. The (rain) water making way to sharing the cup is surely not the idea of the Teesta Deal and 'water sharing'.

If there are any true heroes, they are the ground crew who soak up an arena befitting a water polo match and transforming it to a one good enough for even the Wimbledons. And all done at warp speed.

But alas, T20 reduces to T15 as the euphoria diminishes as quickly. Seeing so many normally hot blooded Bangladeshis so quiet is a rare scene indeed. Even the cameraman, whose job it is to find the pretty women in the stands, is now so disappointed that he's showing the same ticked off Bangladeshi guy over and over again as the visitors do exactly what Ravi Shastri tells them: "Just go out there and get the bl**dy job done!" Just like Zee Bangla serials, we happily suck up to the use of the word 'bl**dy' on live TV.

The Thrill Is Gone. So, is the Cup. But nature has its way of compensating as 9kg of gold make their way into the country by riding a plane from Singapore to Dhaka. The gold bars travel like a proper passenger, albeit under the seat. Pity the passenger whose boarding pass sports the seat number of that seat. He should have carefully listened to the pre-flight announcement: "We will be taking off shortly. At this time, please check underneath your seats to ensure that there are no gold bars hidden there."

But it's a game of volleyball. The cup goes and the gold bars come with the score now at 1-1. It's time for an outward motion which comes in the form of US$100 million going to the Philippines, ok, some to Sri Lanka too, oh, and really S.W.I.F.T. The Chinese hackers instantly become a hallmark within the hacker community, though the laundered amount still falls short of the Hallmark scam. Thank heavens, the exodus to the Philippines is not termed as 'insignificant' or the incident as 'these things happen' (unless we're talking about hacking Facebook accounts). 

Looks like scam victims are coming in alphabetical order – 'A'TM, 'B'angladesh Bank aka 'C'entral Bank, 'D'SE. 'E'astern Bank Ltd. is probably now on high alert.

The hackers work over the weekend – all relaxed with effectively a long global weekend available every week with Bangladesh being incommunicado with the whole business world on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. 

Wonder if some lucky dude in Manila actually clicked on the link in the email he received from a Nigerian Prince.

Ah, the workings of a global economy. As I write this column, wearing my shirt made in Vietnam, shipped on a Singaporean vessel with an Indonesian crew, offloaded at the Los Angeles port by Mexicans, loaded on to a San Diego bound Korean truck with a Japanese engine and a Guatemalan driver, delivered to Sears, purchased by my friend originally from Chittagong, who gets into his German Volkswagen, drives down to the Los Angeles Airport, boards an Airbus jetliner made in France belonging to Cathay Pacific of Hong Kong which used to be a British colony, flies down to Dhaka (via Hong Kong), brings with him that shirt as well as a Nokia cell phone made in Finland, bought with his credit card made in China, the transaction processed in India using a Dell computer designed in the US, assembled in Malaysia, using a micro-processor chip from Taiwan, then gives me the shirt on my birthday, which, as mentioned earlier, I now have on as I write about 100 million American dollars belonging to Bangladesh Bank, getting routed from the US Federal Reserve to the Philippines and then making its way to Hong Kong and Sri Lanka, thanks to hackers in China. 

Oh, and somewhere in the chain there's a casino… 

Sigh! Global-isation turns Golmal-isation. The end recipient tries once again to up the booty to match that of Destiny Group, but Destination Philippines, along with America and Bangladesh, are now already on red alert and the attempt, thank heavens, fails. 

Now, the serious question: when and how do we get the dough back?

Nobody knows. Wait, maybe the expert on Dhaka City's future can tell: what say you Sourav Ganguly?

The writer is an engineer at Ford & Qualcomm USA and CEO of IBM & Nokia Siemens Networks Bangladesh turned comedian (by choice), the host of ABC Radio's Good Morning Bangladesh and the founder of Naveed's Comedy Club. 
E-mail: naveed@naveedmahbub.com.