I am today staying at the Grand Regency Hotel in Doha on the way back from attending the South Asia Millenium Develompent Goal Forum held in Kathmandu 11 – 12th October. It was a good forum though relevance to Maldives will be on the effective application of the lessons learnt from the Forum and the action plans that should follow after this. I represented the private sector under the auspices of the Maldives National Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

 

During the two days that I spend in Kathmandu I came across some very interesting people. The Sri Lankan crowd as usual was the best company, especially Duga. He is the music director who was representing the media. He claims that he has a problem with the "international languages". But whenever we went out or sat for a chat, he was the man of the occasion, and made sure that he made life wonderful for all of us. And also Sherman the Director of the MDG Program was a fine gentleman and keenly passionate about the improvement of the quality of lives of children and poor – a most extraordinary person indeed. A new friend was also Allesandra who works with the UN in Colombo – a most pleasant and wonderful person. Ganga was the whole group lively and was a good sport. I also bumped into Jeelan, who was very vocal on the issue of gender mainstreaming. And Sherman and she could make any round-table lively.

 

From old acquaintances, Kharma from Bangladesh was a familiar face from the SME Conference last December. It was very nice to meet him again. The whole Bangladesh team were most quiet as always.

 

My first trip to Nepal was a very interesting and useful one indeed! Our delegation included Mr. Patrice and Bari from UNDP, Andey and Shahuda from Planning, Nuhaira from VOM, Zuhair from SHE, and Niyaz from DER [in the capacity of a researcher]. I got to know them better and learnt much from them – socially and professionaly.