Hi beloved Local Guides,
The meetup I’m writing now the recap of was originally scheduled to take place on 18th July. Many of you already know that there has been a change of government in Bangladesh recently. And before this government change, there was a massive student anti-quota movement and political unrest in Bangladesh for quite some days. Even Bangladesh had an internet blackout for almost a week. A curfew has even been imposed in the country for a few days. For that reason, we could not organize the 8th anniversary celebration meetup of our beloved Local Guides Connect on t8th September as previously announced (Note that at that time we contacted all the invited local guides through WhatsApp and email to inform them about the suspension of the meetup).
Later political violence stopped with the change of government. And after the situation normalized we rescheduled the meetup on 17th August at 8:30 PM. And I’m happy to share that our meetup has been successfully completed at that time.
We invited 35 active local guides to participate in this meetup. However, not all of them could attend after the reschedule. Finally our meetup was held in presence of 22 local guides.
On that day, all of us from Dhaka and surrounding areas reached the meetup venue at 7.45 pm and started the meetup at the appointed time (8:00 pm). As the venue for this meetup we selected Rooftopia Restaurant & Cafe located in Dhanmondi, capital Dhaka.
For the first 30 minutes we all participated in the discussion phase. The topic of discussion was ‘What should we do as local guides following the violence in the country?’ In particular, during the violence, some miscreants renamed several important places on the map with distorted names, reverting them to their former names.
After the discussion phase, our celebration phase begins. As we celebrate the 8th Anniversary of our beloved Local Guides Connect’s by cutting and eating cake. This part of the meetup was really enjoyable. Due to political unrest in the country, we were under house arrest for quite some time. At least this meetup has played a role in refreshing the mind. For that I would like to thank all the members present in this meetup. I would like to mention and thank a few people, as their role has been immense in making this meetup a success. They are LG @AbdusSattar @JohanJafar @engrNasir
@JakariaSultan @ShovanPaul @Soykot_azam @Bishnu_Modhu And special thanks to LG @MahabubMunna for giving me the opportunity to host this meetup.
About Ruptopia Restaurant Cafe:
Located on the 10th and 11th floors of an eleven-story building, this restaurant is very modern and tidy. As there are no tall buildings around, a large part of Dhaka city can be seen from here. Staff behavior is customer friendly. Food quality is also quite good. Thanks to LG @IshtiakAhmed for suggesting this beautiful restaurant as the venue for this meetup.
Anyway, our meetup was declared over by a group photo session after dinner at 9:30 pm.
Thanks everyone.
Happy guiding~
Regards
I’m so happy to hear that despite the challenges, the meetup ended up being a success.
Thanks to all who contributed to make this event run smoothly, especially to LG 
