The Positronic Dream is a business owned by sole proprietorship of Engr. A.I. Sudin – that’s Me. Positronic Dream’s main focus at this point is to provide professional translation services, online business consultancy, and training. However, it is also involved with manufacturing innovative products at small-scale.
If you are up for more details…
What do the names imply?
Positronic Dream is not a big business, and it is not any positron related business either. Also, AI stands for Ashiqul Islam, not Artificial Intelligence. I have always been a big fan of Sci-Fi movies and TV series. I have watched Star Trek Next Generation four times all-over. My most favorite character in the series is Data (and Q), the Android with the Positronic Brain. He always tries to experience feelings, human emotions and dreams in order to be more like a human, but he never quite gets there. That’s where the name ‘Positronic Dream’ comes from. So, here’s what I meant by Positronic Dream: It’s a dream that I might be incapable of realizing, but it’s certain that I’m incapable of giving up. ;D
The beginning
You might laugh if I said that when I was in high school (9 to 12th grade) I pictured the future-myself as a physicist like Newton or Einstein. It was too big a dream to dream! I soon realized that I was born in the wrong time and that all the original (basic) laws of nature were already discovered and explained by science and all that left to work on were others’ complex theories and hypothesis – in other words, I realized I didn’t have the brain! I began listening to English songs. I memorized more than 2000 English songs including songs of Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan, John Lennon, John Denver, Radiohead, Nirvana, Iron Maiden, Slayer, Megadeth, among many others.
When I was a first-year student at the university, I started writing poems. Edwin Arlington Robinson (The Poet Laureate of Failure)/ Jibanananda Das, and Lalon Shah were my idols. I dreamed of becoming someone like Rabindranath Tagore though. I kept writing for three years, published a book of poems named Atmakhaki. My biggest achievement with the book was that my grandfather (my grandfather’s younger brother), Late Artist Abdur Razzaque (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abdur_Razzaque) drew the cover for my book. I never got the chance to thank my grandfather enough! I never went for advertising of my book, never sold a copy of it either. But I felt like I had accomplished something worthwhile for the first time in my life.
The ultimate lesson
Well, to quote Nietzsche, ‘What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger’, I was actually made stronger with my failed dream of achieving three Pulitzer prizes like Arlington did! I gave up ‘writing poems’ (not on the poems). After completing my B.Sc, I tried to do regular jobs, I mean, 9 to 5 jobs. My friend Monirul helped me get a job in Informatics as a Senior Faculty. Well, someone had to help me because I could never avoid presenting myself as a product for sale or bold enough to do otherwise in an interview! If you find that difficult to understand, well, just know that I was and am a very peculiar person with some very introverted thoughts :P. Anyway, I worked there for three months, during which I was writing a novel. I completed it, but it was never published and will never be published because it was gibberish – actually, a little touch up here and there would have made the novel better, but I had already moved on!
My results came out. My CGPA was 2.93!!! Thus, one thing was clear that I was never going to be a University Teacher, even though I realized that I could have been a great teacher because I had a solid basic foundation of knowledge! Again, I moved on! I took a translation job for a project of CIDA. I was highly admired for my translation quality. In fact, I was called the best among several other translators working for the project, among which there were two with M.A in English Literature from public universities. But friends and family suggested that I needed to do something regularly. I was appointed a System Analyst of DTCB. It was a promising job. Soon, I realized that the freedom to do something or nothing at all at any given time was too valuable to sacrifice for a regular income source. I didn’t attend the job regularly, and in three months I had to quit that job too. It was a mistake! A big one! But every mistake comes with a lesson! You need to sacrifice your freedom and earn some good money first, so you can buy freedom to do whatever you like later on in your life! Well, what can I say, I was too impatient!
The struggle
I realized that I needed to do something on my own. So I took on translation as a profession. But work opportunity was scarce. I built bdtips.com (first Bangladesh based online earning platform) in 2008. Applied for Google Adsense. I was earning $30 a day without doing anything at all! It was easy money and good money for all that mattered back in 2008 in Bangladesh. However, I didn’t bother checking the ToCs of Google Adsense. Soon, there were changes in Adsense ToCs. And due to my lack of sincerity and attention, I lost Google Adsense in 2009. I was virtually unemployed, with no translation project to work on at the moment; of course, I was making silly horror videos with my point and shoot camera back in those days. If you get to watch those videos, you might scream KMN- LOL!
Being loyal to my website visitors, I couldn’t shut down bdtips.com as many of them had almost reached the threshold for redeeming their earning. So, I kept on paying the visitors till 2013; but as there were only losses, I stopped giving time to it. Soon, my hosting had switched to an upgraded version of PHP rendering bdtips.com unusable. The visitors stopped coming. But I am still maintaining bdtips.com; why – I don’t know.
Again, ‘What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger’. I decided buying a car within a year even though I was totally unemployed but armed with the power words of my life ‘Your problem is never really your problem, your reaction to your problem is your problem’! If you are wondering buying a car is not a big deal, well it was actually a big deal in Bangladesh!
A gleam of success
In 2011, I bought my first car, had appointed a driver. I was officially an upper middle class myself. I was getting a lot of translation works during this time. I was working for AED as a translator. Through AED’s cooperation, I got a translation job at BRAC University. I have been translating for many other organizations too. I worked for oDesk (now Upwork), OneHourTranslation.com, TranslatorsWithoutBorders.com. I built more websites and kept writing reviews and articles for those too.
The way I see myself is that I am a multi-skilled versatile personality. I don’t suit well in a confined environment. I need to be on my own to do something. So, I am here with my Positronic Dream. At present, I am writing a detective story based on foreign drama. I am translating my poems and getting them ready to be published as an e-book, translating for different organizations, maintaining my websites and regularly contributing articles to those sites. But most excitingly, I am in a manufacturing business. I am planning to do more businesses along the way.
Life is good, life is beautiful
I love spending time with my only child, Lionel. Whom I often call Megamind (Just so you know, Megamind is my most favorite superhero). And I would often tell him that I was his sidekick Minion (the fish). To this, one of my bosom friends said, ‘If you become a sidekick of your son at this age, he will look for another role model as soon as he becomes old enough to understand’. So, I have become the despicable Gru ;). But my son is still my superhero, Megamind; I just don’t mention it to him anymore.
My most favorite movies are Waking Life (love the part with the Alex Jones ranting), Fight Club, Life is Beautiful, Children of Heaven, Predator (1987), Aha!… with at least 20 more to follow.
Having my wife working for one of the biggest airlines, I had the opportunity to visit seven countries several times so far. It didn’t take me a long time before I realized that I love traveling too. I intend to travel to many more countries in the future.
I love waking up in the morning, having a cup of ginger lemon tea with the surreal sitar fusion of Ananda Shankar’s ‘The River’ or ‘Cyrus’ playing in the background. Life is good. Life is beautiful. I am a very positive person. I never stop trying, and I never give up on myself or on my dreams. I am 41, but I am still a kid at heart.
Well, that’s all about me. What about you?