Dr. Medhi Hasan, the developer of the hugely popular software Avro, has come to tour in India. He is also an old friend of mine, as Niponwave has been a loyal supporter of his Omicronlab and I have been attached with Omirconlab in more than one way. Interestingly, Mehdi Hasan is a medical guy! He has completed his MBBS only recently. It is going to be great to meet this geek-doc friend for the first time! Glad that Siliguri falls on his itinerary. He is staying at Hotel Central Plaza in Siluguri.
For the unitiated, Avro allows you to type Bengali on Windows platform – be it on any webpage or any application like MS Word, etc. Very recently, Omicronlab has come up with a Linux version of Avro that I mentioned here earlier, making it truly a cross-platform Bangla writing solution.
Avro is used in lakhs and lakhs of computers. The current version 4.5.1 has been downloaded more than 1,25,000 times from download.com, 37,ooo from Niponwave and many more times from Omicronlab server. There is also a portable edition of Avro. It has been used by the Bangladesh election commission in their National ID Card project. See link
5 responses to “Dr. Mehdi Hasan In India!”
Hi Nipon, Mehdi has not quite completed his MBBS yet, but he will pretty soon I hope. 🙂
Hi WarlorD,
Yep! I know 🙂 Actually he is just about to be an intern. That makes him a doctor. At least here in India, interns fancy to call themselves docs. 😀
Ha ha ha!! 😀 Here in Bangladesh its also the same situation. In fact even entering a medical college qualifies one as a doctor to his family and neighbors. 😉
Off topic: How can I make a trip to Siliguri? can you let me know in detials on traveling their?
ps. your plug in shows I’m using Safari, (actually chrome 😛 ) and Mac OS X ( I wish!) I’m using damn pirated XP!! 😉
My plugin needs an update!! It is from a time when there was no Chrome! 😛
If you want to come to Siliguri from Kolkata then there are lots of trains, and buses as well. Train takes 10 hours. Bus 12. If you want to come directly from Dhaka, you better ask Mehdi. But from what he has told me, he and his friends came by bus. At the border near Changrabandha, one has to cross the border walking and catch another bus waiting on the other side. The tour operators arranged everything. It took them around 15-16 hours from Siliguri to Dhaka.
Siliguri as such is not a tourist spot. It is more of a stopover with many great tourist attractions all around. I am planning with my friends to make a short trip to a nearby forest next week. 🙂
Thanx for the info. I will contact you later when we decide to visit. 🙂
take care.