Friday, March 30, 2007

Nepal already committed to the earthhour

Today I received an email about the earth hour, the campaign to reduce green house emissions. We are to turn off our lights for one hour once a year, as a sign for our committment to reduce global warming, giving just one hour to our mother earth. That one earth hour is going to make a lots of difference to the climate change, if we really commit ourselves to earth hour.



The funny thing at Nepal is we are compelled to commit to the earth hour. Have you ever heard of load-shedding? Well this load-shedding campaign not only reduces green house emissons, but also reduces lots of our productivity. Because we are having 40 hours power off per week, a week or two back. Though the hours have reduced from last week onwards. Unfortunately Nepal doesn't contribute much to global warming, a small developing country, with not much industries like developed countries and yet are committing to earth hour - though not deliberately but out of necessity.



As far as the people, in general, are concerned, it's going to be a hell difficult task to make the crowd follow, unless we experience 'The Day after Tomorrow'. Rather than requesting people, how about compelling people. We can do anything if we just wish. Otherwise climate change, global warming doesn't make any difference to the lives of common people. Tsunami, earthquakes, tornados, sea-storms come and kill people; only those are affected and it's too late for them. For people living in New York, that doesn't make their single hair move. If tomorrow, San Francisco, Florida, Netherlands... gets submerged under water, as predicted by Al Gore in his award winning documentary 'An Inconvenient Truth', then I think people around the world will eventually start to act. I wonder if that start will be able to stop the end of the world. I just wish.

I almost got promoted by myself

At the end of every month, we have to sign an attendance form. I love this day; our bank account will encounter an increase. I know this attendance system is orthodox; the ICIMOD's way. I signed the form, gave it to the division secretary. Almost immediately I got a call from him "You will be punished!". He's not serious (most of the time) so I went to him with a smile to find out the cause. Well I had signed under progamme manager title rather than mine. And that was unintentional. Some colleagues had already started mocking me "That was a really quick and gigantic promotion". If only ...





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Wednesday, March 28, 2007

Honey from honeycomb

For the first time, today I tasted fresh honey from the fresh honeycomb, freshly taken from the bee home. The comb was cut into pieces, hexagonal beeswax holding honey intact. It was little difficult to put the tasty piece in your mouth, as you risk dropping sticky honey in your clothings. I did anyway. It was sweet thick and satisfying. First I didn't know whether to suck honey from the comb or put the entire piece into mouth. I just followed the crowd, put the piece in, sucked honey, chewed the wax and threw the wax out.

Monday, March 26, 2007

UML: developers tool or the Nepalese party

After been working in software development for more than two years, I thought I should now dip into UML tools, that would help me in designing softwares efficiently and effectively. I hope that with its use I would be in a better position to explain the application functionality clearly. In the past I had tried to learn UML in much details. But... No comments.



I must have downloaded an e-book "UML2 for Dummies" way back. I am not dummy. I wonder why "... for Dummies" are titled. If you have realized, "... for Dummies" are usually computer related books. Are the publishers/authors trying to be funny or trying to make fun of others. Anyways I was in the "Introducing UML" section - a beginning of the beginning.



[...]

The first thing you need to know is what the initials UML stand for. Don’t laugh—lots of people get it wrong, and nothing brands you as a neophyte faster. It’s not the Universal Modeling Language, as it doesn’t intend to model everything (for example, it’s not very good for modeling the stock market; otherwise we’d be rich by now). It’s also not the Unified Marxist-Leninists, a Nepalese Political party (though we hope you’ll never get that confused). It is the University of Massachusetts Lowell—but not in this context. UML really stands for the Unified Modeling Language.

[...]


I just want to show you the red-colored text above. Nepal is such an unknown small country - though people are generous enough to make it infamous now. But again I am happy to see Nepal in such unexpected ways.

my hilarious school project

I just happened to stumble upon some of my school reports. I was thrilled to see my work, dated almost 10 years back. Some of these are really funny that I couldn't resist laughing. I don't know what I was thinking then. I wondered whether my grade 8 English teacher (Chris Heaton, I still remember him) laughed at my piece or not. Take a look.



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Time

Days come and go

Time never waits just so

Respect time of yours

Success arrives at your door



It doesn't hurt trying some poetry at times:)

Sunday, March 25, 2007

My queue is the longest one. Oh God!

Have you ever realized that the queue which you belong to is the longest? Then you change the queue thinking that the other one will be shorter but in vain. You will get stuck in the longest one, no matter how much you try. I can't predict about you but it usually happens to me - like today.



I went to pay the monthly bill of telephone at Nepal Telecom counter. At first I just chose one of the two queues randomly. Standing, I counted the number of people in both the queues. It seemed that the one I belonged to had two more than the other one. And the woman at the front of my queue was discussing with the counter person. It's definitely going to take time, I thought for a moment and shifted to the seeminhly-shorter queue. Guess what happened? People who came after me paid their bill and went out one by one and I got stuck in the shorter-yet-longest queue. The person behind the counter was little slow and so was his computer. He would wait for 20 seconds before the bill gets printed. I didn't want to re-shift to the former because the next turn in that queue was mine. And my turn wouldn't come. I didn't count properly but probably 10 or more people who came after me overhauled me. I was so furious. But what? It was my decision to change to the shortest yet longest queue. That's why I hate this orthodox system. I like the queue management system, an electronic system that issues you a number at the time you arrive and your turn will come when that number appears in the scrolling LED screen, attached somewhere around the wall. First come first serve basis. I am really bad at locating the shortest queue. It has happened to me several times in the past. Yet it's happening. Why don't these big corporations implement such an efficient queue management system?

Saturday, March 24, 2007

I did it again.

Well I ran to Budhanilkantha again and this time, ran back too, covering a total distance of 10 KM plus. That's a lot. The most amazing thing is I ran back without a single break and that again after devouring a litre of water at Budhanilkantha. At first I was about to take a vehicle back but decided to run some distance and then only ride vehicle. Surprisingly energy came out of nowhere and I felt energised, depleting full day energy ( I am still lethargic, it's night now, with pain in my back, legs).



Today I realized some similarities between being hanged and tiredness. When you are hanged, you give a damn to the people, you are a happy person, smiling, you don't hear or actually see people, you are not conscious about yourself. That's what exactly happened when you are very tired. That's how I felt today.



But there are more advantages of tiredness over being hanged though their immediate effects seem to similar.You won't get to experience horrible hangover after tiredness, which is obviously a good thing. And you won't be destroying your liver during tiredness as during hanged. You won't have to worry about your tummy during tiredness, instead you will be excited about your body. You don't have to worry about your foul breath.

Tiredness = hanged - worries = happy feeling



So the next time you really want to get hanged, just run 10KM plus and you won't regret. Don't believe me? Try it.

Tuesday, March 20, 2007

Practice! Practice!

After having done the demonstration part of the elibrary presentation at ICIMOD, people started to congratulate me. "It was great! You did a great job!" I was not much prepared and was quite sure that my portion of the presentation did not go well. I underestimated my part, thinking it was just a demo and I can speak anything that comes to my mind. But I prepared a rough outline of what I would be showing to the audiences. That list did come handy. But I felt that I could have done much better if I had practiced at least three or four times. English is not my native language so that also poses a little barrier. I really have to search for words at times. Practice! Practice! Practice! Boy that's what makes you perfect! I know this and yet I overlook.





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Monday, March 19, 2007

Wiki! Wiki!

The first time I was giving training on Wiki at ICIMOD, I was the most excited person. I was thinking of different ways to grab the audiences. I succeeded so far. But now the fourth training and sixth presentation on the same topic within 3 months didn't excite me much. I am always looking for challenges; it was then, but not anymore as it used to. But it's my responsibility, I had to do it, and faked some excitement. I should have done extra work on that to make it even more interesting. The difficult part of huge organization is one has to approve all these materials. Even though it's a learning process, sometimes I really don't want to go through all the hassles and just compromise with what I have, which is bad, I know. And yet, I did!



Long live wiki.

lost in the wind: the voices of the poor and powerless

On Saturday, a school girl was killed in a road mishap in Bungamati of Lalitpur district. She was standing near the bus door and thrown out of the speeding bus, twisted and rolled before getting under the wheels, killing the 16 year old instantly. The agitated crowd went to the police office in Jawalakhel, protesting against the bus driver. No conflict till now. Everything going as expected. One gets killed and people protesting, burning tyres, chanting slogans. Now it happened that that killer bus belonged to some close relatives of maoists. The potent maoists threatened the police that if they didn't suppress the crowd, they would bring their army. The powerless government police had to charge on the crowd. What do one make of so called democracy? Democracy? Not yours, it's theirs, the maoists!!

Thursday, March 15, 2007

Questions.. What? Why? How?

Sometimes I question a lot. It just comes naturally like habit. People find it funny. If somebody says something, "why" is the first thing that comes out of me. Does that sound funny? I don't think so. But some people does. In Smriti's party (farewell or bday or probably both), my questions were being counted. And that was funny. This guy has almost developed the habit of counting my questions.



How does this sound? "Yeah! my hobby is to count his questions?". Isn't it funny? No? Well, who cares? ? ?...?

Sunday, March 04, 2007

A Budhanilkantha mission accomplished

Finally I made my run to Budhanilkantha today, a 5km ( plus some meters) distance from my home. It took 31 minutes in total, and I ran for 24 minutes 49 seconds and walked the rest. I was expecting worse than that. I was underestimating myself. My next mission would be to run the whole distance without any walks in between and then my another would be to run back and forth home. Well I took a vehicle back home today. I could still run but again I decided "little by little". Now I am liking myself being tired. It's a great feeling - for me though. Upon reaching my destination I drank almost half-a-liter water and left the other half in the vehicle. I forgot it, I was enjoying my tiredness.



I was thinking of this mission few months back and had even put it on my new year resolutions list.