While the Keys on my Keyboard gently ...

Learning to fly

2011-12-19T03:54:00.000-05:00

"When there's nothing left to burn, you have to set yourself on fire, " a growling voice exclaimed on the stern, crackling radio. It was just a start of a song, a song that set the stage for this...story.

The rain poured down tap-dancing on his car roof. He was disheveled from this fight. As much as he tried, he could not shake these feelings of anger and disgust. He acknowledged both of those feelings but ignored the most pressing emotion that he felt. He was hurt like a wounded pigeon.

He tried to uplift himself from these negative feelings but just like the wounded pigeon, he could not take off. Not without first confronting his inner turmoil, not without nursing his wound.

Goals, do you need one?

2011-11-12T17:33:00.001-05:00

Ganesh Himal, one of my favorite peaks in the Kathmandu skyline

There's a parking spot near my work. It's a one car spot in which my car barely fits. I used to spend some time perfecting my parking in it to avoid any hassles with the neighbors or the parking meter maids. After one day, a simple revelation hit me after which I was extremely effective at parking in that spot. It now takes me barely five seconds to park and be on my way.

The revelation was that I chose a spot in my case a tree that I aligned my car with. It's quite simple and sometimes, I kick myself for not thinking about something so simple earlier. Then I forgive myself. Amongst the rubble, sometimes you miss the ruby. But when you find it, it's better to focus on the ruby.

The real revelation is that I made up a goal that made me very effective.

When you have a goal, you measure yourself against an external stimulus. You might update your goal time and again or change it completely. That just means you are adjusting your goals and beliefs. Ultimately, you will converge towards what you want.

Embrace a goal. Jump in. Adjust your goal as you see fit. Jump in. Reiterate.

Pour Yourself

2011-10-31T03:05:00.000-05:00

Essay by Nitish Rajbhandary

I have an atypically long posttoday where I talk about how many businesses operate and how thatcompares with how we live as people.

If you have worked in somebusiness, part-time or full-time in any field, you might have noticedthis interesting phenomenon. The manager or the supervisor in chargewho manages and takes cares of the ins and outs of the business isdriven with profit in his mind. You can't blame him really. Ifthere's no profit, it's hard to think of a reason to stay inbusiness! That, of course, is not the interesting observation.

You might also have observed how themanager works. A typical manager will work hard every day. However,you should have noticed how the manager will focus mostly on highprofit days or periods of the year. Those high profit days could bethe weekend sales or the holiday sales. As a minion of the corporatemachine, you might not earn any commission (if it was such a fieldthat you work in) and might really hate those high profit periods. Oras a commission wielding person (still a minion really but a slightlyhigher paid one) you might really love those extra cashish. Also, Iwelcome you to this exclusive club of minions (commissioned ornon-commissioned) of which I am also an esteemed member.

Perils involved

Interestingly, if you were to observe more deeply, you will notice that the bulk of the profit in such abusiness and in almost any field will be from the low-profit days ofthe week/year. That makes sense since you have a much higher numberof low-profit days than high-profit days. Even though you makehundreds more in profit in the weekend, volume wise the most profitcomes from the weekdays for a typical small business. You would alsonotice that the low profit days are taken for granted while the highprofit days are revered as the savior.

This mentality is shared across theboard by the managers, the owners and the workers alike. Thismentality makes the individual look at the high profit periods asthis period that is much more important than the other days. Whilethis prioritization make sense from the productivity view point(average higher profit per day), you can easily conclude that thisdoes not make sense from the volume view point (total profit ishigher on the lower profit days).

So what gives? Is it justified tofocus on the high profit days or the christmas sales while ignoringthe rest of the week or the rest of the year? (I don't know the answer for certain so I ask this question as well.)

Even a 10 year old will be able to tellyou, this strategy is costing the business some money or unneeded stress since the normal days are ignored to focus solely on high profit days. The profit either stays the same or goes up on high-profit days while the profit comes down on low-profit days. How come thebusinessmen can't see that flaw?

My closest answer

I was thinking about this and theclosest answer I can come up with is this:

Individuals aremotivated to profit at the highest level at all times. If you see aday/period with a higher profit than another one, you will be drawntowards such high-profit days and high-profit periods much more thanother days. While initially you might have been paying attention toall days equally, this difference in profit draws you in to thehigher profit periods. While that is not necessarily bad, you alsoend up ignoring those other days and take them for granted. Somepeople might even hate them!

The last point is interesting. The lowprofit days have lower profit but still they are not losses. Yet peopleignore them, take them for granted or actually hate them. Thisdifferentiation is important in the lenses of people perhaps. Butthere's something wrong with the picture here!

A Small Thought Experiment

Let's now go to our imagination. Let'stake ourselves back ten years ago, let's say in the year2000. What do you remember?

I remember taking some board exams inNepal called the School Leaving Certificate (SLC). Funnily, I went to highschool after that again (everyone does). I remember doing well. Iremember playing in a cricket tournament where we lost because ourplayers simply left because they had to meet a deadline to get into aschool (long story). I remember the first time I fell head over heelsfor a girl that year. I remember learning to play the guitar afterthe board exams. All of these events are my cherished memories.However, all of them share this same theme as the "high-profit"days or in some cases the "lowest profit days" of a business. They arememorable because they make me very happy or very sad or very (insertsome emotion). Perhaps you remember similar events if you are my age or completely different events if you are at a different place in life. But that's not the point.

Now let's get back to the present. Whatare you thinking about? Perhaps you are thinking "Does Nitishhave a point here?" or "Why the hell am I wasting my timewhen I could be doing something else" or "Oh, damn monday"or "What do I have for lunch today" or "I have to run for ameeting soon" or "That was a great dessert." Allperfectly valid questions and observations. However, did you thinkabout this moment too? Or better yet, did you enjoy this moment? How about that breath you just took?Did you take enough to draw it into your heart into your blood supplyto provide the fuel for your brain and other parts of your body? Doyou feel your heart race as well? If you did any of the latter things, pleaseteach me how, because you are living in the moment.

Much like the profit oriented businessperson, we also own a business. That business is ourselves. And muchlike the manager, we focus many times on high profit periods. Ourgraduation, our weekends, favorite TV shows, anniversaries, weddingdays. That's excellent. However, when we focus a great deal on thesesorts of items, we lose the enjoyment of the normal days, the plaindull mondays, the weekdays, the dish washing hour, the coolwednesday nights. The "low-profit" periods are many morethan the "high-profit" periods. Yet we willingly andforcefully ignore them. There's something wrong about the picturehere, isn't there?

The Impending Platitude

Here's the impending platitude that draws in as a conclusion to the above observations: Try tocherish and live each of your moments. Observe that breath, observethat glass of water trickling down your throat. Pour yourself intoyour work of choice. Pour yourself into the steamy hot shower/bath.Pour yourself into that cup of green tea.

Please share if you like it, comment onthe post or just say namaste or hi.

Festival

2011-10-29T01:38:00.001-05:00

In the festival of life where moments never pause
to take in a deep breath, get light-headed and reflect
the fact that we are still restless chasing the comet's tail
of dreams long shaped by the itinerary of travels to distant lands.

Confusion is the gentle curve of a swift current around a rock
where chaos resemble head on collisions and other idiosyncrasies
Into the dark of the night they vanish
Only to alight like freak will-o'-wisps and blinking tower lights.

With extraordinary insight his deeds reflected the sentiments of his time
and infectious experiences cast a spell on progress
Of always being open minded to everything but filtering out the dregs
Assimilating the beauty and happiness of festivals.

- Inspired by Dashain and Tihar, 2068 BS.

Perception of Selfishness

2011-10-22T15:42:00.002-05:00

"I think it all comes back to being very selfish as an artist. I mean, I really do just write and record what interests me and I do approach the stage shows in much the same way, " David Bowie exclaimed.

Most endeavors have selfish motives. But the effects are much more important.

The effect is what determines selfishness or selflessness for people, it seems.

Artists specialize in inherently selfish acts. Art mostly is about the self.

I am writing to you because I like writing. I like to converse with people. Sometimes, I might be helping you. Sometimes, I might be simply writing my thoughts. The common denominator in all my writings however is that I write because I like it. Hence, it is a selfish act. A selfish act does not make its effect selfish.

Artists and scientists, by indulging in selfish actions, have propagated selfless acts and dreams in others and themselves. Many physicists do physics because they love it. Their intentions are many times selfish. But their effects have been selfless and helped humanity in many levels. The advancement of the medical field or food production can be seen as an example that has helped the world.

By focusing on one's benevolence, you potentially waste energy that could be focused on your work/creation. Being mindful of your action means focusing on your action singularly. When I write, I write best when I focus simply on my own writing. When Mozart composed his music, I am certain he did his best work thinking about his own ideas singularly. When Feynman started teaching Physics, his love for Physics and his "selfish" act of propagating that love, produced many fine scientists, artists and people of that generation, I am sure.

Brandishing an act as selfish could be acting on incomplete information. The effect might be selfish while the intention might be selfless. Brandishing an act as selfless could be acting on incomplete information. The effect might be selfless while the intention might be selfish.

A selfless effect is much more important than a selfish effect no matter what the original intention is. The examples cited are sufficient to see that and one could come up with many more examples.

The truth is that asking such a question is irrelevant to your actual work as fun and tempting such discussions are. However many words we use to describe and analyze this situation, the fact remains that work which has a selfless effect is much more useful and effective at solving problems and propagating the collective conscious forward.

There is a catch

It is, of course, very important that you do not quash other people's dreams, work or feelings. Being selfish is not a linear endeavor. You can look out for yourself to improve your work and still not quash other people's work, dreams and feelings. One needs to be selfish with the highest ethics to be successful and human. If one does treat others in a way that profits themselves but harms other people in any way, the effect is obviously selfish as well. In any event, the effect has to be truly selfless to justify their own "selfishness."

Differentiation

I would like to assert that I am not talking about a "Me, Me, Me" kind of selfishness where the world revolves around a person, the kind that is associated with a person with narcissistic personality disorder.

The "selfishness" I am talking about instead is the kind that focuses your energy on improving your mind, your body, your actions, your work, your environment, your relationships and your condition.

A selfish act which has purely selfless effects is definitely not a paradox. As a matter of fact, it appears to be the norm in artistic and scientific endeavors.

The Sad Part

We probably need a new word for this kind of "selfishness" as the same word to describe an act that advances positive ideas is confused with really selfish acts that have disdainfully negative effects.

This is selfishness which frees you from negativity. This is selfishness which makes the world better. This is selfishness which clears your mind and provides nutrition to your mind, body, friends, family and your work. This is selfishness which advances you. This is selfishness which respects other people and never tramples their dreams, hopes, feelings. This is selfishness which instead inspires you and other people. This is selfishness which transmutes the selfish intention into a selfless and benevolent effect. This is selfishness which needs another set of consonants and vowels.

Do your best work. Work on what you love. Be selfish in your own advancement. On the way, make sure you are following the highest ethical standards. Let your creative juices flow. Make it worthwhile.

Simplicity

2011-10-17T00:12:00.000-05:00

Recently, I cleared my place. It feels good to pare down. As the night cools down, having the bare essentials with the emptiness, empties your mind, it seems like.

My possessions have diminished gradually over the last month. I have sold equipment that had lingered such as the Keyboard Piano, Event 20/20 Passive speakers and much of my clothes. I only have my books, a mattress, a desk, a laptop, my cell phone, my Washburn guitar, my clothes, my car and daily use belongings. The relief that I have felt after selling and donating the stuff I don't use or need, has been stimulating.

In this post by Steve Pavlina titled "How to find your life purpose in 20 minutes", Pavlina mentions an anecdote about Bruce Lee. The story goes like this: a student asks Bruce Lee about learning everything that Bruce Lee knows about, Bruce Lee states that only by pouring out the previous knowledge, can the student learn everything new. It is brilliant and something I would like to venture towards.

I mentioned this anecdote about Bruce Lee because I feel, that my paring down is simply a start of a journey. It's my first couple of practice rows in my boat. It's not nothing and it's not everything. It is a start.

The link between the Bruce Lee story and my minimalism is that, I am unlearning all my previous behaviors and patterns of thinking. I am not doing it simply for the fact that minimalism is cool or simplicity as a counter-cultural movement is hip. The bigger picture is that, by making room in my life physically and mentally, I will be lean and ready to absorb and notice important values, purpose and qualities that lie within me.

My experience has been a bit gradual and I will be speeding up my own evolution in a measured way. Step by step, toning it up, the good way, if it is to be so. I am prepared to let go, if not.

You know you have been slapped when...

2011-10-03T01:08:00.000-05:00

You know you have been slapped in the face when:

1) Instead of being appreciated for the favor you have done, the "favoree" proceeds to point out the flaws in this favor.

2) You boss cuts your paycheck/salary/hours or fires your pretty assistant.

3) Your significant other doesn't bring your favorite food/beverage from the store because they are still mad about you ogling over some beautiful girl in the restaurant the other day. You were probably literally slapped as well.

4) Life gives you lemons and when you cut the lemons, it's actually genetically engineered onions which look like lemons. You drown in your own tears...perhaps out of sorrow also.

5) The $25 fix it ticket that you got from the motorcycle cop could have been easily avoided, had you listened to the two ladies who frantically called you aside to point out your broken brake light, while you were at the local library to drop your books off. You had simply thanked them for their gesture while completely ignoring to fix this minor issue. You also commented to your friend in the car how weird the two ladies were, that they were so flustered about such a silly thing. A couple of hours of your life have now vanished in dealing with the ticket. Perhaps one of those ladies was related to the motorcycle cop, a point to be noted and investigated (as if...).

6) Life handed you lemons. You made lemonade. The lemonade got promptly spilled and the knife that you used to cut the lemon with also scratched your thumb. You were somewhat happy that you did not fare worse. However, the blood that was spilled frightened your lemonade making colleague who fainted. You thought it ironic that he wanted to be a medical doctor. Then again, maybe he just wanted to be a dermatologist.

7) You are in the Himalayas and the helicopter that was supposed to pick you up at the summit was too full to pick you up. The sparrow in the cockpit also took a dump, right on your goggles.

Joy in Little Things

2011-09-05T00:40:00.000-05:00

I was preparing lunch today. Two slices of wheat bread, mayonnaise, gouda cheese and oven-roasted chicken slices. As an experiment, I tried some garlic seasoning and toasted it in the toaster oven.

I was genuinely excited to use the toaster oven for the first time today.

I pondered about whether I was being too silly.

That's when it came back to me and what I feel many people forget. Take pleasure in little things. I noticed almost for the first time how I myself take pleasure in such little and seemingly trivial things. I always admired this quality in others but for some reason, I had never questioned whether I had that quality. There was no need for that question, it seems. And perhaps, that's why it was never asked.

Ah, the joy. For now, unfortunately, my chicken pot pie seems to be burnt. I really don't know if there's any joy in this episode!

Warning

2011-08-28T20:49:00.000-05:00

Warning: If you are reading this then this warning is for you. Every word you read of this useless fine print is another second off your life. Don't you have other things to do? Is your life so empty that you honestly can't think of a better way to spend these moments? Or are you so impressed with authority that you give respect and credence to all that claim it? Do you read everything you're supposed to read? Do you think every thing you're supposed to think? Buy what you're told to want? Get out of your apartment. Meet a member of the opposite sex. Stop the excessive shopping and masturbation. Quit your job. Start a fight. Prove you're alive. If you don't claim your humanity you will become a statistic. You have been warned- Tyler

Tyler Durden, Fight Club (1999)

To be or not to be a minimalist

2011-08-10T22:37:00.004-05:00

So it hasn't taken the world by storm yet. Maybe it never will.
There is, however, an accelerating movement, that of minimalist people and of minimalist ideas. This movement might never be adopted by the majority. That is mainly because of the nature of the idea of minimalism itself.

This movement is quite personal for me. My involvement in this movement was and is not that of a leader but as a reader. My greatest influence has been Leo Babauta. Lately, I have been branching out to other bloggers (liveyourlegend.net, evbogue.com and minimalists.com seem promising).
"To be or not to be a minimalist" was never a question that I posed to myself. It has been "to be" for a while now.

Today is my foray into blogging about my minimalist journey and not my dive into minimalism itself. My journey is my path and my goal is my journey.

I disdain categories and branding myself as a minimalist had seemed unimportant. However, today, I decided to be in a category. Categories are bad only when taken from a wrong perspective. The right perspective is that, they all are approximations.

My minimalism will differ from Leo's minimalism and so on. The only thing that encompasses both minimalisms is the principle of minimalism and the journey towards that idea.

For me, minimalism is about stripping of all extraneous, unnecessary and materialistic possessions, ideas and relationships. This paring down is necessary.
Everett Bogue has described quite beautifully in these words (about the need for minimalism):"For years you couldn’t figure out what the problem was, instead you had this raw aching feeling that something/somewhere was terribly wrong." and in another posting Ev Bogue answers in one of countless eloquent posts to a question “Why would you ever…?”:

Leave a city that you love so much.
Delete a best selling e-book that still sells copies every day.
Quit a job with a fancy title.
Stop eating something that tastes good.
Donate a perfectly good jacket because you I have two.

Why? Because it isn’t a challenge anymore. I’m covering the same ground again and again. I’m taking 25% of my energy and investing it in time that has already eclipsed. That leaves me with only 75% for the new stuff. As more things build up in the past, more energy gets dedicated to maintenance. Pretty soon I’m maintaining with 100%, which equals stagnation.

I don’t want to maintain connections, I want to grow the existing, or create new ones. This applies to everything in life.

I untether to evolve.

I love the part about maintenance and how it bogs us down. It's very true. From a person, to a club to a corporation and to a country, a big behemoth means a need for constant maintenance. Pretty much, after a while, all innovation that could be achieved is not only lost but retardation might even occur. To go forward, it is not optional to pare down. It is necessary.

Think of a boat you have used to cross a river. Would you carry that boat into the promised land while the tigers in the dense jungle are bent on tearing you apart?

It's a must to be dedicated in non-maintenance which means that you will grow and evolve.

Here's my two cents to be a minimalist.

A peril and a gloomy yet salvageable paradox

2011-07-27T22:37:00.000-05:00

Passion. It's not enough to just have passion. The passion has to be about something.
Just being passionate is a blissful and fitful state. As a ship without a sail or a rudder, this person will set sail. They will find something and be "useful". Yet there's a certain level of vacuousness in this person. Being passionate about something is a more complete way. Risky but much less vacuous and much more fulfilling in a true way.

The Valley Unearthed

2011-07-25T03:00:00.007-05:00

The Golden Sword

As the wheels turned, and the clouds turned white and gray then disappeared altogether, I felt a breeze.

After a pause, I took a long, deep breath and closed my eyes. The freshness was lovely because it was the air just after the rain. It was almost as lovely as the air before the rain, I thought. The only thing missing was the inspiring anticipation.

From my stance, as my graying hair danced with the swirling breeze in a gentle beat, I opened my eyes. The rays of light met my gaze and I saw. The light also saw me.

Today was the day I was starting my journey.

In my bag, I had packed some medicine, grain to last me two weeks, some gold, my writing materials and my sword. As the sword glinted in the setting sun, I saw a tranquil golden hue as if it were a golden sword.

Converse

2011-04-22T21:48:00.003-05:00

Interestingly, in this information rich world, it looks like less does more while the converse is also mildly true; more mostly does less.

Pop

2011-04-15T01:15:00.002-05:00

Why does anything have to be popular? I really wish that all the independent bands that I love never become popular. The reason for that being, the very act of popularity clashes with independence and free thought. It's sad but true. Popularity seems to breed from outright ignorance most times. What is popular art anyway? Does such an entity even exist?

Is going against the flow of popularity always the right answer though? The more I think about it, the more it seems to be. Deep down, I feel it is not but I can't really back that up with any evidence or logos of any sort.

The One

2011-03-25T02:32:00.002-05:00

Either really close to, or the most universal law:

You can't get something for nothing. Look closer. Look further.

I most likely don't

2011-03-14T03:11:00.007-05:00

As Nicholas strayed down the path of petals barefoot with the morning dew shimmering and the leaves trembling in the graceful breeze, he stopped. He glanced and fixated on a lotus flower in the center of the green pond. A green frog lay on one of the lotus leaves and just as Nicholas was pulling away his gaze, the shiny green frog dove into the pond. Nicholas looked back into the lotus. There were drops of moisture on the flower just reflecting the morning sun. The morning freshness was flagrantly displayed today.

This short break was distracting. And it was enticing for his mildly distressed mind. "I most likely don't care about what he said," he told himself recalling a hurtful comment one of his friends had said in a flippant way. As comical as the comment was presented to be, it lacked the wit nor the humor that needed to compensate for the severity of offense in the comment. Nicholas really didn't care but felt the need to justify that he didn't care. He was wasting his time. Hence, he most likely was a fool.

He continued on his path of petals into a trail, the color of hay.

Land of the Yeti

2010-10-25T00:42:00.002-05:00

There are many things one can use to represent its country. If you ask anyone about it, one might probably think of things his/her nation created. The Americans might say their corporate ways, the massive great wall and large scale production for the Chinese, Indians might say the ayurveda, and their skilled IT workforce, the Germans their cars, and high tech machinery. With each country having their own specialty; the list is endless.
Now speaking in context of Nepal, that is if I were to represent my own country how would I do it. With the savagery of the khukuri? The might of the Gurkha? The great Himalayas? The birthplace of Buddha?
Or will it be this unheard, rarely used word "the Yeti"?
Yeti suggests a magical creature, sighting of and encounter with the mystical yeti is not uncommon. Almost a year ago, an American expedition near the Everest base camp found a foot print which they claimed to be that of the yeti.
The Himalayas has long been known to be the homeland of the yeti, vivid description of encounters with an immensely fast, strong, dark man like creature is often heard. And if you ask anyone in these regions about the existence of the yeti they will definitely have something to tell you whether it be an anecdote or folklore. And when asked why with all the profound evidence no one has yet captured a yeti, I was told the yeti possesses supernatural powers.
Bizarre as it sounds with all the fantasy and no facts proving the existence of the yeti, what has compelled people in believing in the yeti? How did it even come into being, and why even the wisest of people believe in it. Late Sir Edmund Hillary was convinced that a creature such as the yeti exists and even reported seeing one in his Everest expedition.
Nepal is one of the smallest countries in the world, with its meager contribution to the world economy and added by the fact that it is mostly hills, mountains and deep dark forests. Nepal is a dot in the world map. Few people in the world know of it, few people know of its beauty and the others who have heard of its deep deadly crevices, savage rivers that carve their way through the misty mountains to the sunny plains, ultimately gave Nepal an identity. It became a mystery.
This mystery has been well woven to bring many mysterious creatures to life. Stories of whirling wind in unclimbed mountains, large wandering beasts of burden, undiscovered cascades giving rock faces new, shapes and people’ imagination have only added to this mystery and without any doubt found magical stones of power, mythological artifacts, God itself and maybe the yeti too.
I believe the Yeti is part of that mystery that was shaped from the very foundation of a nation and the people that live in it. It is a surreal mystery that seems so true because of Nepal’s geography, its people, and how Nepal is perceived to be by the outsiders, the mystical land of the yeti.

-Sajin Rajbhandary

The Death of the Mind

2010-09-25T18:11:00.004-05:00

Everything is a cycle. Yes, that toaster oven is actually a transport vehicle called a cycle. I kid.

As cycles go, perhaps we are at the low ebb of the intellectual war per se.
The aforementioned war being that of trusting and revering the intellect as opposed to the mistrust yet awe and demise of the intellect for the inferior enjoyment of the body and passiveness of the intellect.
To truly live in the intellect, one doesn't have to ignore the physical world. He can still revel in the physical world.
However, to truly live in the intellect is to be the greatest skeptic. Oh, what a pain for the friends and acquaintances of such a person, it would be. To feel like being poked and bombarded with sardonic arrows all day would be at the very least humbling if not violently repulsive. One would almost have to be an emotional masochist to bear such behavior. No wonder, it's not bothered by many.

Using the mind is a nuisance sometimes. Yet it is not a luxury to some. Sometimes, its necessity itself bores the user.
The silence ensued could be suspicious for suspicious minds.
It could be mysterious for inquiring minds.
It could be despicable for despicable minds.
It is just there, in the end.

I acted and behold,....

2010-07-18T23:12:00.000-05:00

I was awake that night and had not
slept at all;
and fumbling thoughts were passing by as I
dreamt drunken dreams
that left me supine and awake thinking about
life that
was left in us and the
joy.

I observed and simply
awoke from my slumber
and as I did, I
saw a clear shimmering light
that danced by the glass windows with a
life of its own which
was without cause or
duty.

I felt around and the light
acted as if it saw me
and left its shimmer but
behold, it was just an act;
duty was looking as
was a trail that was
joy.

The Golden Rule

2010-07-11T00:52:00.000-05:00

“The Golden Rule is of no use to you whatever unless you realize it is your move”.

Frank Crane

Average of obliviousness

2010-07-03T20:18:00.004-05:00

Average of obliviousness

And he said in all earnestness "I f'king hate negative people."

Matter

2010-06-30T19:35:00.005-05:00

It doesn't matter what you do, it only matters what you say you've done and what you're going to do.
- Slashdot

Adieu l'Emile I liked you
Adieu l'Émile I liked you you know
We sang the same wines
We sang the same girls
We sang the same sorrows
Adieu l'Emile I die
It's hard to die in spring you know
But I'm going with the flowers of peace in the soul
Because since you're good as white bread
I know you take care of my wife
I want you to laugh
I want you to dance
I want to have a hell
I want you to laugh
I want you to dance
When you put me in the hole

Adieu Curé I liked you
Goodbye Father you know I liked you
It was not the same side
It was not the same way
But we tried the same port
Goodbye Father I die
Is hard to die in spring you know
But I go to the flowers of peace in the soul
Because since you were his confidant
I know that you'll take care of my wife
I want you to laugh
I want you to dance
I want to have a hell
I want you to laugh
I want you to dance
When you put me in the hole

Farewell Anthony I didn't like you much
Farewell Anthony I didn't like you, you know
I'm dying to die today
While thou art alive
And even stronger than boredom
Adieu l'Antoine I die
It's hard to die in spring you know
But I'm going with the flowers of peace in the soul
Because since you were her lover
I know that you'll take care of my wife
I want you to laugh
I want you to dance
I want to have a hell
I want you to laugh
I want you to dance
When you put me into the hole

Farewell my wife, I liked you
Farewell my wife, I liked you you know
But I take the train for God
I take the train that is before yours
But it takes all we can train
Farewell my wife I'm dying
It's hard to die in spring you know
But I'm going with my eyes closed flowers my wife
Because I've seen that often closed
I know that you'll take care of my soul
I want you to laugh
I want you to dance
I want to have a hell
I want you to laugh
I want you to dance
When you put me in the hole

It is, isn't it?

2010-06-19T21:37:00.003-05:00

Like little kids trying to explain the phenomenon of let's say, Propagation of Light or Monetary policy of a certain nation or let's say, the musical composition of Bach, they write news.

They whine about losing. They whine about evils of a corporation like there was no tomorrow.

A goal that was reached or not. A whistle that blew even before the goal was "reached".
That doesn't matter. It doesn't matter that you-don't-know-what-the-fuck-you-are-talking-about.

Half can't even answer a question about an unjustified entry into the battle arena; but all can relate to and condemn a neutral judge for lashing out apparently.

Because the world is against you, that's all it matters in your tiny prism. In your limbic-fucking brain. The limbic self lives on strong.

It's getting old.

Khukuri : Uniquely Nepali

2010-06-07T07:33:00.003-05:00

Article below was published in TravelTimes magazine issue of March 2010 in Kathmandu, Nepal.

Khukuri : Uniquely Nepali

“Parashuram Thapa of Sindhupalchowk had invited me to come and attack Nepal, but at the same time he had sent his younger brother west of Gorkha with the instructions to gather a hundred-thousand by inciting the Baisi-Chaubisi to attack Gorkha from behind, and I learned that they were quartered in Hatiya of Pokhara. And I asked them – “Who among you can go and kill him?" No one could find a person suitable, so I said—"Perhaps Jhangal Gurung can," and sent for him and gave him the short-sword on my waist, so he went disguised as a gaine singer with fishhooks in hand and a sarangi under his arm and a 2-4 dharni Mahseer sahar fish, and as the troops in Thapa's camp rested to eat their morning rice, Jhangal Gurung sought an opportune moment and decapitated Thapa with a flourish. After thusly securing the rear and ridding of all obstacles by taking in hand the people of the east and the west, I conquered Nepal.”

This excerpt is from Dibyopadesh, an autobiographical account narrated by King Prithivi Narayan Shah, the unifier and founder of modern Nepal. Dibyopadesh mostly relates the ideas and stories as told by the King on how he was able to unify more than fifty independent city states and gave an identity to a nation of this rugged Himalayan Republic in the mid eighteenth century. Perhaps the choice of Gurung as the Khukuri wielder was a carefully thought out plan since Gurungs were indigenous tribes ancient descendants of Mongolians who later became renowned all over the world as elite Gurkha soldiers.

The origin of Khukuri is speculated to be derived from the ancient cavalry sword of Macedonians called the Machira. The troops of Alexander the Great wielded the Machira when it invaded Northwest India in the 4th century BC and that particular technique of sword making is believed to have been adapted by local blacksmiths. Another speculation about the origin arises from local history with historians who believe that Khukuri had been in use in the Kirat Dynasty as far back as 7th century and with the Malla Kings in the 13th century. The oldest known Kukuri in Nepal is on display at the National Museum in Chhauni and it belonged to Drabya Shah, the founder of the Kingdom Of Gorkha, dated 1627 AD.

Prior to the use of firearms in the early 18th century, the Gorkhali soldiers or Gurkha warriors were armed with Khura (also referred to in old texts as Kora or Korna). It was a sword with blades of varying length and width. This Khura was believed to be the true native weapon of Nepal and was mostly worn across the back or on the left side with the sling draped above the chest or over the left shoulder. The Khukuri was used as an auxiliary weapon and was stuck in the fighters sash directly in front of his body. The indomitable spirit of the Gurkha warriors and their fearless thirst for victory along with their valour in battle gave a new meaning to the art of war in this rugged mountainous terrain particularly in the Anglo – Nepal war in 1814 which greatly impressed the British and they started recruiting Gurkha warriors into their army. Through these Gurkha warriors, the uniquely tapered blade of the Khukuri has gained popularity all over the world and it is as much a part of our identity as it is a mere fighting apparatus.

There are two distinct process involved with Khukuri making – the forging of the blade and the making of the scabbard or the sheath. The blade is mostly made with high grade carbon steel and the scabbard out of buffalo hide. The handle of the Khukuri can be made out of either buffalo horn or any type of hard wood. The blade is forged in a coal furnace with repeated blows from a hammer on an anvil to give it shape. A notch (kaudi) is drafted onto the blade and it has a practical purpose of catching an opponents blade during attack. The tempering of the blade is a delicate process and is done by pouring cold water from a kettle onto the hot blade along the cutting edge to give it strength. After tempering the steel, it is filed, sharpened and polished. The handle is prepared by shaping and filing the horn or the wood and the tapered edge of the blade is inserted into the handle and fixed in place by Laha (traditional Nepalese Gum). The sheath is also prepared using wood or buffalo hide and it also involves similar process of measuring, shaping and polishing to make it worthy of a finely polished blade. Finally, the blade is rubbed gently with oil and stored in the scabbard to complete the handmade process of Khukuri-making. The scabbard of each Khukuri holds two small knives called Karda and Chakmak. Karda is a sharp knife mostly used to hone the master blade and for small cutting jobs. The Ckakmak, being rough is used as a flint stone to start fires.

The deeply ingrained cultural and religious significance associated with the Khukuri often makes it a perfect choice as a souvenir. A longer version of Khukuri is still often used in ritual sacrifice of buffaloes, goats and sheep in annual festivals. A Khukuri is found in almost every Nepali home and used as a multi-purpose knife for cutting grass, chopping wood, peeling vegetables, slaughtering game and skinning. It also provides security in its capacity as a weapon to ward off wild animals in the jungle and an occasional thug. The versatility of the Khukuri as an all purpose knife and a weapon for security makes it an ideal possession for households and travelers alike.

Through generations Khukuris have gained popularity as the national weapon of Nepal and its production have been localized to districts such as Bhojpur, Dhankuta, Salyan; Bhojpure khukuri being the most popular and well recognized. Bhojpur is an eastern city in Nepal well known for its Khukuri craftsmanship. Bhojpure khukuri is not a military issue but is heavier than the standard blade Khukuri. The blade is 10 or 11 inches long with 5 inch handle. The handle is made up of buffalo horn or wood and the scabbard is made up of buffalo leather. There are often engravings of dragons, temple or figurines of gods and goddesses on the blade of Bhojpure Khukuri. It weighs about 750 grams.

The British Service No. 1 is the standard khukuri which is issued to the Gurkha soldiers in the British Army and it has garnered fame all over the world. The Khukhuri is used by the soldier as a self-guard or in battle. It a mandatory for British Gurkha soldiers, Singapore Police and Gorkha Reserve Unit in Brunei to carry this Khukuri. The blade is 10.5 inches long and the buffalo horn handle is 5 inches long. The sheath is made up of cotton wood covering the buffalo hide. It weighs about 700 grams.

The jungle or the pri type Khukuri is used for jungle warfare by the Gurkhas. The shape and size of this Khukuri is similar to Service No. 1 but it is unpolished standard-sized Khukuri. It has 10.5 inch long blade and 5 inch long handle and is mostly utilized for rough use in forests as hunting knife. Buffalo horn and hide are used for making handle and case respectively. It weighs about 700 grams with scabbard.

Dhankute Horn Khukuri originated in Dhankuta of eastern Nepal. It has a beautiful scabbard evocative of nationalism since it incorporates hand inlayed brass depictions of Nepal’s National symbols such as National Flag, National Bird (Lophophorus), Crossed Khukuri and National Fish (Asla) and King’s Crown. The scabbard is made up of wood or horn and the handle is made up of horn, wood or brass. The weight of Dhankute Khukuri depends on its size.

World War II or Dehradoone Khukuri originated in Nepal but was later used by the Indian and British Gurkha army. Before World War II it used to be forged in Dehradoon in India. This type of Khukuri is slightly bigger, heavier and more curved than the standard issue. The blade is forged from steel used in railway tracks. The handle is similar to Bhojpure Khukuri and the case is made up of Buffalo hide. The handle is made out of aluminium, brass, horn or wood. The Khukuri is 16 inches long with 5 inch long handle and weighs about 750 grams.

Nepal Police type khukuri is the authentic Khukuri in use with the Nepal Police and the Armed Police Force. The shape of the blade is similar to Bhojpure Khukuri and it slightly heavier than the one used by the Nepali Army. The sheath is made from hide covered by cotton-wood. The blade is 9 inches long with 4 inch handle that is made up of rose wood. It weighs about 700 grams.

Cheetlange Special orginates from a village Cheetlang and it is a special issue Khukuri with narrow blade and a wide grip base. The blade is used for general cutting and light to moderate chopping. The length of the Khukuri is 18 inches with 5.5 inch long handle. It has a unique scabbard made of wood, horn, aluminium or brass. It weighs about 900 grams.

Kothimora Khukuri is a special khukuri made for retiring Gurkha or British Army officers. It is manufactured as a memento and has an especially designed scabbard of silver filigree and velvet background matching the color of the regiment. The regimental badges and the crown in mounted in the scabbard as well. The blade is found in varying lengths – the 10 inch standard Kothimora, the 11 inch Gurkha Badge Kothimora and the 14 inch Royal Kothimora. The Royal Kothimora used to be occasionally presented to Royal families in Nepal and Britain and are amongst the most precious and desirable of all Khukuris.

The versatility in types and uses of this multi-purpose knife make it an ideal souvenir that also has many practical uses. It can also be regarded as a symbol of national heritage and rich culture that defines life in Nepal. A handmade Khukuri is an affordable item that is evocative of all that is uniquely Nepal.

Sources:

www. Nepaleseskhukuri.com
http://samudaya.org/200507/dibyopadesh/

complicated

2010-06-03T17:43:00.004-05:00

Let's not complicate our relationship by trying to communicate with each other.
- Slashdot.org

It struck

2010-05-16T01:55:00.000-05:00

Twinkle in the eye
Playful banter
Happy and shy
Dark. No matter

Marnie, it struck
Like wind to a sail
Together they walk
Lively and pale

Standing still
In front, a light
Voice empty and shrill
Growing beautiful and bright

All in all
Moments arrive
No unpleasant fall
Away they drive

People need to be more informed

2010-04-08T19:58:00.005-05:00

It bothers me when people are incapable of forming or articulating coherent rational thoughts. It is mainly because most of them are ill informed. There are five different types of people in the world. First of two of those types are the same, so that makes it only three types of people: people who know what the h*ll they are talking about, and those who do not.

I mean, what the fuck!?

A recent research done by the scientists of the Department of Sociology at the University of West Carolina found that 65% of people make up or incorrectly quote statistics when they are trying to make a point in a discussion. Out of these b*llshitters, only 30% of them will ever admit to doing so! That means 95% people in our society are just lying to us. Fucking hypoc**tes!

The reason why b*llshitting runs rampant in our world is because people are not very well informed. If they are well informed, they will be able to call people out when they are br*infarting. For example, if someone says to you, ‘Galileo was not all that smart before he was hit in the head by an orange.’ You should be able to say, ‘Shut the fuck up, you stupid m**therfucker! He was hit by an apple!’

The problem lies in this culture of misinformation. There is no easy way to differentiate between what is true and what is false. Misinformed people end up misinforming more people. As more people feed on that false information, it becomes an universally accepted truth. This is what Albert Einstein explained as the ‘vicious cycle of misinformation’ in the epilogue to his book, ‘The Special Theory of Quantum Mechanics’. I can give you an historic example of this vicious cycle. Ancient Egyptian knew that earth was spherical. However around 50 BC, Plato introduced the concept of 'a flat earth' to his disciples, Socrates and Heraclitus, who popularized the concept to the Roman civilization. It was not until Christopher Columbus set out on his historic voyage in 1294 AD that people realized the earth was in fact perfectly spherical.

Now there is the guy you can trust, Christopher Columbus! He falls into that remaining 5% category. He would never try to bend the truth to suit his own agenda.

Pashmina: Perenially In Vogue

2010-03-24T04:56:00.000-05:00

The article given below on Pashmina was published in the January 2010 issue of Traveltimes magazine in Kathmandu, Nepal.

Pashmina: Perennially In Vogue

Each springtime the farmers native to the mountainous slope of this beautiful country climb up its slopes to comb delicate woolen undercoat from the neck and chest of Himalayan Mountain goat, locally known as 'Chayangra' (Capra Hircus). This rare breed of goat is generally found between altitudes of twelve thousand to fourteen thousand feet above sea level. To insulate them from the harsh Himalayan winters these special goats develop a thin inner coat which they shed during spring. Each hair thus obtained is twelve to fourteen microns thick which is about one-sixth of the human hair. This unique inner coat of hair serves as the raw material; the end product of which is a fabric popularly known as Pashmina. Pashmina is a word derived from Persian ‘Pashm’ which means finest wool fiber.

From a distance a shawl made of Pashmina looks like any ordinary shawl made of fine wool. If you brush up against it you may mistake it for a cashmere shawl. Only when you drape it across your shoulders will you know what a Pashmina shawl really feels like. It has an exquisite almost inexplicably fine texture and negligible weight. The warmth it provides can hardly be supplanted by any other type of fine wool fabric. In fact, warmth and texture are the sole indicators of the quality of a Pashmina product.

The origins of Pashmina fabric can be attributed to the primeval human desire for warmth in the inhospitable wintry chill. Seeking inspiration from Mother Nature they invented an ingenious method of acquiring hairs from whatever goats they had grazing around and weaving them into a fabric to insulate themselves. To their astonishment they discovered that the fabric they had created was a sublime gift that exceeded their expectations. The art of creating such a fabric would be passed down through generations within closed family circles that would keep their art-form intact. As the fame of Pashmina grew and expanded beyond the family circles, introduction of newer methodologies and technologies further enhanced the end product. Through centuries of further experimentation and refinement Pashmina evolved into a fabric cherished for its warmth and feel and in a form familiar to us today.

Pashmina seems to be almost as old as the culture that invented it. It was considered as a status symbol since the days of its inception. Families that prospered often gave Pashmina as dowry along with jewelry and other precious to accompany their daughters in marriages. It adorned the walls of temples and monasteries during times of festivities. Leaders of a tribe or a village would be covered with fabric made of Pashmina during such special ceremonies. A parallel culture evolved in the Kashmir valley that also used similar hair and weaving methods to create a fabric that was not very different from the fabric under discussion here. It is a debated fact as of which fabric is of a superior quality as it is really hard to distinguish between the two fabrics when each side claims that it has the best fabric in the world. Nonetheless, Kashmiri Pashmina or ‘cashmere’ is documented to have originated in the 15th century and it received an unending patronage from the Mughal Emperors that improved the local cottage industries and the livelihood of people living in that area for a few centuries. Pashmina remained largely unknown in the world until the 19th century when Napoleon Bonaparte gifted an exotic Pashmina shawl to Empress Josephine whereupon it became a craze in France. It is also said to have adorned the courts of Caesar and Mary Antoinette. Since that time Pashmina have held their own special place in history as the fabric of choice of royalties and dignitaries around the world.

Most of commercially available Pashmina is woven by hand in local handlooms. The raw hair obtained from ‘Chyangra’ is stretched and cleaned by soaking it in a mixture of rice and water for a few days. This also makes the hair softer. Then the hair is dried and woven on a spinning wheel or ‘Charkha’. The spinning process is a performance that demands exceptional levels of patience and dexterity and makes for a great viewing. If the Pashmina is to be mixed with silk, the silk thread is wrapped horizontally in a beam according to the width of the fabric that is to be made. In a shawl of width 90 cm there are typically about 3800 yarn threads. After this process the silk is inserted into a nylon netting to give it patterns and this process is called ‘drafting’. After drafting the silk thread, the spun yarn of Pashmina is used as a filling to weave the patterns onto the shawl using a handloom. It is then removed from the netting. It takes about three hours to weave a shawl but it has to undergo further processing before it becomes ready for the market.

Once the shawl is weaved it is checked for imperfections. These maybe in the form of missing threads in a pattern or excessive threads. If the threads are missing they are patched using needlework. Excessive Pashmina or silk threads are either removed or tied into knots. The shawls are then generally subject to a crushing force for ten to fifteen minutes which enhances their softness. Once the shawls are crushed briefly, they are washed to prevent further shrinkage, remove odor and eliminate any stains and dirt that might have accumulated during and after the weaving process. The final process in Pashmina manufacture is the process of dyeing the fabric. A huge container is maintained at a temperature of 100 degrees Celsius throughout the dyeing process where the fabric has to be continuously stirred to ensure the uniformity of color. Some firms are known to employ authentic Tibetan artists especially for the dyeing process as it involves a more delicate and intricate routine.

A typical Silk/Pashmina blend of fiber consists of 70% Pashmina and 30% Silk. The distinction between a Silk/Pashmina blend and a 100% pure Pashmina fabric is the lustrous sheen obvious in the Silk/Pashmina blend which is desirable in some occasions such as weddings and other formal events, where the dresses often are made of materials that also have sheen, such as silk or satin. A Pure Pashmina fabric is much warmer than the Silk/Pashmina blended fabric and the difference in warmth depends on the percentage of silk content of the item. A difference in the weave of the product is another possible variable to consider. A Pashmina/Silk blended item is usually produced using a tighter weave that enhances the sheen and creates a smooth texture. A pure Pashmina accessory is generally produced with a looser, more textured weave to help prevent pilling and shedding of the wool and gives it a ‘fluffy’ and luxurious hand feel.

The versatility of a Pashmina product in the form of stoles, scarves, sweaters, mufflers and a host of other accessories is sure to bring a touch of decadence to your wardrobe. This versatility coupled with its high end fashion appeal make every Pashmina product a unique masterpiece. Moreover, if you plan on traveling light an addition of a Pashmina accessory would not significantly add to your overall load. Since most of the Pashmina products are exported abroad, why not get a genuine Pashmina product when you are in the area?

I fleet

2010-03-06T23:11:00.004-05:00

Oooh, I wanted that phone so bad. And I got it the first day it came out.
My life changed. I buy applications for my phone.
I check my email on the go.
I check my stocks and see it rise :) and fall :( .

I leave reviews on websites about my phone, the applications that made me happy or made me sad.
I leave reviews about my life.
A half an hour, that's all I can give you, I tell my friends without any guilt and with doe eyes.
I am full of energy during the day. Only because of the morning coffee.
I am full of energy during the night. Only because of the energy drink I bought at the 24 hour grocery store.

My life is so organized. I keep track of my daily schedule and tasks.
I keep track of all my friends through the internet.
Emails fly in and shoot out. I live on the go.

I work out every other day. I look good, I think. There is no time for myself or for others.
There's only time for my device and my work.

I won't leave an impression when I fly.
I would not have lived fully when I die.
I realize where this might be headed.

I am not dumb, at least not as much as I used to be.
I just go with the flow.
And the water sometimes drops into a frenzied end.
Roaring down like the Niagara Falls.

I take a chance and hope it's a lake instead.
It's quite a gamble. I know.
Tomorrow's another day and I will not back down.

A simple Thought

2010-03-05T22:46:00.002-05:00

it doesn't matter whether you become rich

Or end up in the street

It doesn't matter whether people remain aloof in your presence

or search for you in your absence

It doesn't matter you spend every night at home

Or out having fun

what matters is at the point of death whether you are desireless or full of regret

for at that moment you will long for the things you are doing right now

the sound of rain the tender touch of white snow

so let the reins of your life go

let it run free

it will work out someday somehow

not now but someday you will know.

knock, knock! who's there

2010-03-04T12:06:00.001-05:00

Knock, Knock!!

Knock, knock! Who's there?
Mostly gone away to special places where only the mind in its infinite ananda dwells above all
Always on the lookout for the signs from heavens such as freak shooting stars
That power intuition, invention and necessities.

Knock, Knock! who's there?
Often gone away, spiralling deepwards to nether regions where only snakes dwell
Slithering amongst thick mud pond that always drags you in
Trying to still recall what you have been thiking about dwelling someplace.

Simplycity in all its glory beckons the way when you are trying to find yourself
In the labyrithns of the mind where everything happens for a purpose though nothing is written
Just tireless quagmire of sloth and stagnation, ancient Sirens - manifestations of temptation.

Knock, Knock! Who's there?
Just another ringtone call that you just can't pick up.
Electronic leashes for the modern civilization and the inventors just smile
Trying to remember another related dream that are starting to take on a form of regular episodes.

Knock, Knock! Who's there?
Beautiful green eyes full of kalaeidoscopic hues
Trying your best to control attentiveness and attention.
But the aquatic plants just continue their wavering motion
Something like a breeze on leaves, a flame or smooth motions of schools in the ocean.

Knock, Knock! Who's there?
Another fizzling shooting star that I wish would never burn out
Infinite, eternity, everything, nothing
A quiet and a peaceful mind is hard to achieve

Can I take pleasure in this wasting leisure?

03/04/2kX

O Captain My Captain!

2010-02-22T00:17:00.004-05:00

We should all learn to sail.

Age of Empires: Conquerors

2010-02-14T17:34:00.003-05:00

Conquering yourself is the precedent to truly conquer your life. Only after each alley in your dark pathways has been hosed down, will a true mingling of the mind, heart and action begin. The beginning of the completed conquest is in itself an end. I say that because, to this entity, possibilities are boundless.

The end result itself is a sign to the difficulty of this task. How can you conquer something completely if you don’t know about it completely? Granted you might get lucky and conquer an area in your life. As many life stories have shown, people get successful in one area of their lives and face ruinations in many other areas.
Leaving it to luck is an art; an art of deceit on yourself, although certainly not a novelty.

The real question, granted that the presumptions are accepted with scrutiny or without, is “How do you know yourself completely and go towards the path to conquering yourself and conquer/ leave it to your new self to do his/her deeds?”
In a most sweeping generalization, this will require patience, observation and time. The earlier two qualities/virtues are under our control. Time unfortunately is not. In a way, time is inversely related to the effort, patience and observation developed.

Individually though, it depends on the clarity in the person’s mind and the elevation in the person’s being. Knowing oneself hence, is an exercise that has to be done with precision, scrutiny and focus.

Afterwards, conquering oneself has the same requirements as the knowing oneself but with the added element of self-trust. Self-trust stems from a healthy self-esteem which is the result of experience, practice and positive reinforcements from the person and outside agents.

To conquer, one has to have a leap of faith in the most beginning stages. Once that bridge has been crossed, the process is on its path to completion. And the leap of faith requires trusting oneself and most likely in some cases, no matter what one encounters.

Conquering oneself in such ways non-inclusively of course, one can be truly free and truly apply themselves. Being deceitful and trying to rely on luck is a short-term method which is bound to cause pain and undue stress, no matter what success one may see for an ephemeral amount of time.

Another question that comes to mind is the degree of the conquest. Let's leave it as trying to be "beautifully imperfect."

Walking Barefoot

2010-02-13T02:47:00.004-05:00

This is a story of a man obsessed.
The beauty took his breath away, and he was in awe all day.

The Easy going ways. The summer came sunny side up.The Company was quite relaxing and He thought walking barefoot along the sand was quite the magic.
He really didn't plan to stay.

He saw that it would be sad to see it all come to an end.
"Why can't we all just quit from all this wishing and go down to doing?" he asked himself.

He said that he will go where the wind blows him. "Freedom" he asked for into the coastal ease. The chance of "freedom" being overrated; at least, that was the chance he took.

सत्ते-विद्ध्यानस ।

2010-01-13T04:00:00.000-05:00

सुन,
आजको जून र मेरो मनमा केहि समानता छ ।
पूर्वि क्षितिजमा जन्मिए देखि नै
दुबै चलायमान् छन् , गतिशील छन् ।
आधा दुरि पार गरेका पश्चिम-गामि-हरु ।
बिच गगनमा ।
मिर्मिरे विहानिको आशमा।
महत्वाकांक्षाले अभिषप्त स‍‍-साना मुस्लाहरु सँग
लुकामारि खेल्दै
पश्चिम क्षितिजको निशाना ताकेर
छ्यास्-मिस् बादल बिच दौडिरहेको जून
हेर त,
जति धेरै नियाल्यो उति तिव्र गतिमा दौडिरहन्छ ।
ठ्याक्कै त्यस्तै छ मेरो संघर्षशील मन पनि ।
हात-लाग्यो-शुन्य ।
सत्ते । विद्ध्यानस ।

End of the year

2009-12-31T15:41:00.002-05:00

It's the end of the year
And the start of a new decade

Hope for the best
Be a doer and not only a thinker
Stay calm, Forgive and Forget
Trust yourself
And try to leave your job, your class, your room, your world a little better than the way you found it
That should do it.

Cheers~

Paradigm Shift

2009-12-18T19:42:00.003-05:00

"When a paradigm shifts, everything hits zero" - Joel Barker

While used scientifically in this phrase, it can be generalized into any arena. It's a simple statement and hence, more powerful.

A shift in paradigm is a change in attitude towards an idea, entity etc. An ability to change your view including your perception is not a trivial task. But once achieved, it's tantalizing. Truth or the aysmptotic road towards the truth however bitter is priceless.

Once a paradigm shifts, you start from scratch. A lush valley to be shaped, a lake to be transformed, a mountain to be climbed.

Some choose to transform it, shape it and climb it. Some never reach it. Some refuse to change their paradigm and stay clogged to their ears, eyes and minds. Some stray free and some after reaching the valley, the lake, the mountain, choose to let it be.

This post not that bad....sort of.

2009-12-09T03:28:00.004-05:00

“‘Sort of’ is such a harmless thing to say. Sort of. It’s just a filler. Sort of – it doesn’t really mean anything. But after certain things, sort of means everything. Like after ‘I love you’ or ‘You’re going to live’ or ‘It’s a boy.’”"
-Demetri Martin

Some other 'certain things'.

1. No, you are not ugly.
2. Yes, we can.
3. Change we can believe in
4. Aafno gaun afai banaun
5. Whoa! You haven't aged a bit.
6. I have never cheated on you.
7. F**k you.

sometimes...

2009-12-04T02:26:00.003-05:00

Sometimes...

Some days, some people make decisions.
They seem harsh. Crude. Emotion-driven.
Motivated by hatred. Anger.
The next day when it all comes down to.
It's refreshing. Wonderful.

How a day makes a difference.

It is not the length of the day.
It is the comfort in the mind.
The inevitability of the circumstance.
The immovability of the decision that prompts.

A breaking of a friendship with one.
Tragedy occurs.
A slow kindle is blazed.
Celebration begins.
They go hand in hand.

This decision is fueled by wisdom.
Much sought after but rarely realized.
Kudos to them who have such realization, such wisdom, such patience.

Discretion between such wisdom and a random action is a skill.
A wisdom in itself, requiring such qualities as well.
Kudos to them who have such discretion, such wisdom, such patience.

Common Words Unearthed

2009-11-22T13:06:00.003-05:00

All formal definitions from Merriam-Webster's Dictionary more or less

Responsibility: liability to be called on to answer
Unearthing: The act of doing a job in a timely manner makes one responsible. The preciseness of the completed job usually matters less than the time line under which the job is completed.

Compassion: sympathetic consciousness of others' distress together with a desire to alleviate it
Unearthing: Sympathetic consciousness of others as well as your own distress together with a desire to alleviate it, makes one truly compassionate. Distress itself is subjective on the other hand. So to be compassionate, one requires a certain level of discretion to differentiate between actual distress and perceived distress.

Conversation: oral exchange of sentiments, observations, opinions, or ideas
Unearthing: Conversation classically is oral but with new technology (blogs, social networking sites, online newspapers, instant messaging), it can be written as well. The exchange has to be fruitful in some way otherwise it is simply an exchange rather than a conversation.

Howl By Allen Ginsberg

2009-09-25T22:47:00.004-05:00

This is one american classic and a forerunner of the beat generation!!! It has associations with the place I went for college and the whole west coast and lifestyle in general!!! Many of you might have already read or heard this particular poem but it is one of those fine art that has an inexplicable allure and deserves to be read time and again.

HOWL

For Carl Solomon

I

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by
madness, starving hysterical naked,
dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn
looking for an angry fix,
angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly
connection to the starry dynamo in the machin-
ery of night,
who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat
up smoking in the supernatural darkness of
cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities
contemplating jazz,
who bared their brains to Heaven under the El and
saw Mohammedan angels staggering on tene-
ment roofs illuminated,
who passed through universities with radiant cool eyes
hallucinating Arkansas and Blake-light tragedy
among the scholars of war,
who were expelled from the academies for crazy &
publishing obscene odes on the windows of the
skull,
who cowered in unshaven rooms in underwear, burn-
ing their money in wastebaskets and listening
to the Terror through the wall,
who got busted in their pubic beards returning through
Laredo with a belt of marijuana for New York,
who ate fire in paint hotels or drank turpentine in
Paradise Alley, death, or purgatoried their
torsos night after night
with dreams, with drugs, with waking nightmares, al-
cohol and cock and endless balls,
incomparable blind; streets of shuddering cloud and
lightning in the mind leaping toward poles of
Canada & Paterson, illuminating all the mo-
tionless world of Time between,
Peyote solidities of halls, backyard green tree cemetery
dawns, wine drunkenness over the rooftops,
storefront boroughs of teahead joyride neon
blinking traffic light, sun and moon and tree
vibrations in the roaring winter dusks of Brook-
lyn, ashcan rantings and kind king light of mind,
who chained themselves to subways for the endless
ride from Battery to holy Bronx on benzedrine
until the noise of wheels and children brought
them down shuddering mouth-wracked and
battered bleak of brain all drained of brilliance
in the drear light of Zoo,
who sank all night in submarine light of Bickford's
floated out and sat through the stale beer after
noon in desolate Fugazzi's, listening to the crack
of doom on the hydrogen jukebox,
who talked continuously seventy hours from park to
pad to bar to Bellevue to museum to the Brook-
lyn Bridge,
lost battalion of platonic conversationalists jumping
down the stoops off fire escapes off windowsills
off Empire State out of the moon,
yacketayakking screaming vomiting whispering facts
and memories and anecdotes and eyeball kicks
and shocks of hospitals and jails and wars,
whole intellects disgorged in total recall for seven days
and nights with brilliant eyes, meat for the
Synagogue cast on the pavement,
who vanished into nowhere Zen New Jersey leaving a
trail of ambiguous picture postcards of Atlantic
City Hall,
suffering Eastern sweats and Tangerian bone-grind-
ings and migraines of China under junk-with-
drawal in Newark's bleak furnished room,
who wandered around and around at midnight in the
railroad yard wondering where to go, and went,
leaving no broken hearts,
who lit cigarettes in boxcars boxcars boxcars racketing
through snow toward lonesome farms in grand-
father night,
who studied Plotinus Poe St. John of the Cross telep-
athy and bop kabbalah because the cosmos in-
stinctively vibrated at their feet in Kansas,
who loned it through the streets of Idaho seeking vis-
ionary indian angels who were visionary indian
angels,
who thought they were only mad when Baltimore
gleamed in supernatural ecstasy,
who jumped in limousines with the Chinaman of Okla-
homa on the impulse of winter midnight street
light smalltown rain,
who lounged hungry and lonesome through Houston
seeking jazz or sex or soup, and followed the
brilliant Spaniard to converse about America
and Eternity, a hopeless task, and so took ship
to Africa,
who disappeared into the volcanoes of Mexico leaving
behind nothing but the shadow of dungarees
and the lava and ash of poetry scattered in fire
place Chicago,
who reappeared on the West Coast investigating the
F.B.I. in beards and shorts with big pacifist
eyes sexy in their dark skin passing out incom-
prehensible leaflets,
who burned cigarette holes in their arms protesting
the narcotic tobacco haze of Capitalism,
who distributed Supercommunist pamphlets in Union
Square weeping and undressing while the sirens
of Los Alamos wailed them down, and wailed
down Wall, and the Staten Island ferry also
wailed,
who broke down crying in white gymnasiums naked
and trembling before the machinery of other
skeletons,
who bit detectives in the neck and shrieked with delight
in policecars for committing no crime but their
own wild cooking pederasty and intoxication,
who howled on their knees in the subway and were
dragged off the roof waving genitals and manu-
scripts,
who let themselves be fucked in the ass by saintly
motorcyclists, and screamed with joy,
who blew and were blown by those human seraphim,
the sailors, caresses of Atlantic and Caribbean
love,
who balled in the morning in the evenings in rose
gardens and the grass of public parks and
cemeteries scattering their semen freely to
whomever come who may,
who hiccuped endlessly trying to giggle but wound up
with a sob behind a partition in a Turkish Bath
when the blond & naked angel came to pierce
them with a sword,
who lost their loveboys to the three old shrews of fate
the one eyed shrew of the heterosexual dollar
the one eyed shrew that winks out of the womb
and the one eyed shrew that does nothing but
sit on her ass and snip the intellectual golden
threads of the craftsman's loom,
who copulated ecstatic and insatiate with a bottle of
beer a sweetheart a package of cigarettes a can-
dle and fell off the bed, and continued along
the floor and down the hall and ended fainting
on the wall with a vision of ultimate cunt and
come eluding the last gyzym of consciousness,
who sweetened the snatches of a million girls trembling
in the sunset, and were red eyed in the morning
but prepared to sweeten the snatch of the sun
rise, flashing buttocks under barns and naked
in the lake,
who went out whoring through Colorado in myriad
stolen night-cars, N.C., secret hero of these
poems, cocksman and Adonis of Denver-joy
to the memory of his innumerable lays of girls
in empty lots & diner backyards, moviehouses'
rickety rows, on mountaintops in caves or with
gaunt waitresses in familiar roadside lonely pet-
ticoat upliftings & especially secret gas-station
solipsisms of johns, & hometown alleys too,
who faded out in vast sordid movies, were shifted in
dreams, woke on a sudden Manhattan, and
picked themselves up out of basements hung
over with heartless Tokay and horrors of Third
Avenue iron dreams & stumbled to unemploy-
ment offices,
who walked all night with their shoes full of blood on
the snowbank docks waiting for a door in the
East River to open to a room full of steamheat
and opium,
who created great suicidal dramas on the apartment
cliff-banks of the Hudson under the wartime
blue floodlight of the moon & their heads shall
be crowned with laurel in oblivion,
who ate the lamb stew of the imagination or digested
the crab at the muddy bottom of the rivers of
Bowery,
who wept at the romance of the streets with their
pushcarts full of onions and bad music,
who sat in boxes breathing in the darkness under the
bridge, and rose up to build harpsichords in
their lofts,
who coughed on the sixth floor of Harlem crowned
with flame under the tubercular sky surrounded
by orange crates of theology,
who scribbled all night rocking and rolling over lofty
incantations which in the yellow morning were
stanzas of gibberish,
who cooked rotten animals lung heart feet tail borsht
& tortillas dreaming of the pure vegetable
kingdom,
who plunged themselves under meat trucks looking for
an egg,
who threw their watches off the roof to cast their ballot
for Eternity outside of Time, & alarm clocks
fell on their heads every day for the next decade,
who cut their wrists three times successively unsuccess-
fully, gave up and were forced to open antique
stores where they thought they were growing
old and cried,
who were burned alive in their innocent flannel suits
on Madison Avenue amid blasts of leaden verse
& the tanked-up clatter of the iron regiments
of fashion & the nitroglycerine shrieks of the
fairies of advertising & the mustard gas of sinis-
ter intelligent editors, or were run down by the
drunken taxicabs of Absolute Reality,
who jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge this actually hap-
pened and walked away unknown and forgotten
into the ghostly daze of Chinatown soup alley
ways & firetrucks, not even one free beer,
who sang out of their windows in despair, fell out of
the subway window, jumped in the filthy Pas-
saic, leaped on negroes, cried all over the street,
danced on broken wineglasses barefoot smashed
phonograph records of nostalgic European
1930s German jazz finished the whiskey and
threw up groaning into the bloody toilet, moans
in their ears and the blast of colossal steam
whistles,
who barreled down the highways of the past journeying
to each other's hotrod-Golgotha jail-solitude
watch or Birmingham jazz incarnation,
who drove crosscountry seventytwo hours to find out
if I had a vision or you had a vision or he had
a vision to find out Eternity,
who journeyed to Denver, who died in Denver, who
came back to Denver & waited in vain, who
watched over Denver & brooded & loned in
Denver and finally went away to find out the
Time, & now Denver is lonesome for her heroes,
who fell on their knees in hopeless cathedrals praying
for each other's salvation and light and breasts,
until the soul illuminated its hair for a second,
who crashed through their minds in jail waiting for
impossible criminals with golden heads and the
charm of reality in their hearts who sang sweet
blues to Alcatraz,
who retired to Mexico to cultivate a habit, or Rocky
Mount to tender Buddha or Tangiers to boys
or Southern Pacific to the black locomotive or
Harvard to Narcissus to Woodlawn to the
daisychain or grave,
who demanded sanity trials accusing the radio of hyp
notism & were left with their insanity & their
hands & a hung jury,
who threw potato salad at CCNY lecturers on Dadaism
and subsequently presented themselves on the
granite steps of the madhouse with shaven heads
and harlequin speech of suicide, demanding in-
stantaneous lobotomy,
and who were given instead the concrete void of insulin
Metrazol electricity hydrotherapy psycho-
therapy occupational therapy pingpong &
amnesia,
who in humorless protest overturned only one symbolic
pingpong table, resting briefly in catatonia,
returning years later truly bald except for a wig of
blood, and tears and fingers, to the visible mad
man doom of the wards of the madtowns of the
East,
Pilgrim State's Rockland's and Greystone's foetid
halls, bickering with the echoes of the soul, rock-
ing and rolling in the midnight solitude-bench
dolmen-realms of love, dream of life a night-
mare, bodies turned to stone as heavy as the
moon,
with mother finally ******, and the last fantastic book
flung out of the tenement window, and the last
door closed at 4. A.M. and the last telephone
slammed at the wall in reply and the last fur-
nished room emptied down to the last piece of
mental furniture, a yellow paper rose twisted
on a wire hanger in the closet, and even that
imaginary, nothing but a hopeful little bit of
hallucination
ah, Carl, while you are not safe I am not safe, and
now you're really in the total animal soup of
time
and who therefore ran through the icy streets obsessed
with a sudden flash of the alchemy of the use
of the ellipse the catalog the meter & the vibrat-
ing plane,
who dreamt and made incarnate gaps in Time & Space
through images juxtaposed, and trapped the
archangel of the soul between 2 visual images
and joined the elemental verbs and set the noun
and dash of consciousness together jumping
with sensation of Pater Omnipotens Aeterna
Deus
to recreate the syntax and measure of poor human
prose and stand before you speechless and intel-
ligent and shaking with shame, rejected yet con-
fessing out the soul to conform to the rhythm
of thought in his naked and endless head,
the madman bum and angel beat in Time, unknown,
yet putting down here what might be left to say
in time come after death,
and rose reincarnate in the ghostly clothes of jazz in
the goldhorn shadow of the band and blew the
suffering of America's naked mind for love into
an eli eli lamma lamma sabacthani saxophone
cry that shivered the cities down to the last radio
with the absolute heart of the poem of life butchered
out of their own bodies good to eat a thousand
years.

II

What sphinx of cement and aluminum bashed open
their skulls and ate up their brains and imagi-
nation?
Moloch! Solitude! Filth! Ugliness! Ashcans and unob
tainable dollars! Children screaming under the
stairways! Boys sobbing in armies! Old men
weeping in the parks!
Moloch! Moloch! Nightmare of Moloch! Moloch the
loveless! Mental Moloch! Moloch the heavy
judger of men!
Moloch the incomprehensible prison! Moloch the
crossbone soulless jailhouse and Congress of
sorrows! Moloch whose buildings are judgment!
Moloch the vast stone of war! Moloch the stun-
ned governments!
Moloch whose mind is pure machinery! Moloch whose
blood is running money! Moloch whose fingers
are ten armies! Moloch whose breast is a canni-
bal dynamo! Moloch whose ear is a smoking
tomb!
Moloch whose eyes are a thousand blind windows!
Moloch whose skyscrapers stand in the long
streets like endless Jehovahs! Moloch whose fac-
tories dream and croak in the fog! Moloch whose
smokestacks and antennae crown the cities!
Moloch whose love is endless oil and stone! Moloch
whose soul is electricity and banks! Moloch
whose poverty is the specter of genius! Moloch
whose fate is a cloud of sexless hydrogen!
Moloch whose name is the Mind!
Moloch in whom I sit lonely! Moloch in whom I dream
Angels! Crazy in Moloch! Cocksucker in
Moloch! Lacklove and manless in Moloch!
Moloch who entered my soul early! Moloch in whom
I am a consciousness without a body! Moloch
who frightened me out of my natural ecstasy!
Moloch whom I abandon! Wake up in Moloch!
Light streaming out of the sky!
Moloch! Moloch! Robot apartments! invisible suburbs!
skeleton treasuries! blind capitals! demonic
industries! spectral nations! invincible mad
houses! granite cocks! monstrous bombs!
They broke their backs lifting Moloch to Heaven! Pave-
ments, trees, radios, tons! lifting the city to
Heaven which exists and is everywhere about
us!
Visions! omens! hallucinations! miracles! ecstasies!
gone down the American river!
Dreams! adorations! illuminations! religions! the whole
boatload of sensitive bullshit!
Breakthroughs! over the river! flips and crucifixions!
gone down the flood! Highs! Epiphanies! De-
spairs! Ten years' animal screams and suicides!
Minds! New loves! Mad generation! down on
the rocks of Time!
Real holy laughter in the river! They saw it all! the
wild eyes! the holy yells! They bade farewell!
They jumped off the roof! to solitude! waving!
carrying flowers! Down to the river! into the
street!

III

Carl Solomon! I'm with you in Rockland
where you're madder than I am
I'm with you in Rockland
where you must feel very strange
I'm with you in Rockland
where you imitate the shade of my mother
I'm with you in Rockland
where you've murdered your twelve secretaries
I'm with you in Rockland
where you laugh at this invisible humor
I'm with you in Rockland
where we are great writers on the same dreadful
typewriter
I'm with you in Rockland
where your condition has become serious and
is reported on the radio
I'm with you in Rockland
where the faculties of the skull no longer admit
the worms of the senses
I'm with you in Rockland
where you drink the tea of the breasts of the
spinsters of Utica
I'm with you in Rockland
where you pun on the bodies of your nurses the
harpies of the Bronx
I'm with you in Rockland
where you scream in a straightjacket that you're
losing the game of the actual pingpong of the
abyss
I'm with you in Rockland
where you bang on the catatonic piano the soul
is innocent and immortal it should never die
ungodly in an armed madhouse
I'm with you in Rockland
where fifty more shocks will never return your
soul to its body again from its pilgrimage to a
cross in the void
I'm with you in Rockland
where you accuse your doctors of insanity and
plot the Hebrew socialist revolution against the
fascist national Golgotha
I'm with you in Rockland
where you will split the heavens of Long Island
and resurrect your living human Jesus from the
superhuman tomb
I'm with you in Rockland
where there are twenty-five-thousand mad com-
rades all together singing the final stanzas of the Internationale
I'm with you in Rockland
where we hug and kiss the United States under
our bedsheets the United States that coughs all
night and won't let us sleep
I'm with you in Rockland
where we wake up electrified out of the coma
by our own souls' airplanes roaring over the
roof they've come to drop angelic bombs the
hospital illuminates itself imaginary walls col-
lapse O skinny legions run outside O starry
spangled shock of mercy the eternal war is
here O victory forget your underwear we're
free
I'm with you in Rockland
in my dreams you walk dripping from a sea-
journey on the highway across America in tears
to the door of my cottage in the Western night .

On decadence (cross posted from facebook)

2009-08-14T00:57:00.002-05:00

On Decadence

Resplendent whores seemingly busy with their chores
Adverting prying gazes amidst the glitter of their clothes
Play their subtle games of allure with delicate precision and grace
With measured blink of eyelids and well-timed smiles etched upon their garish face.

Skillful belly dancers challenge visual perception and contort the shapes
Of the rooms in which they perform
Fire spinners and breathers create a symphony out of silhouettes in the dark
Sometimes just silently watching other times exploding like roman candles.

A mockery of royal opulence is prevalent among worshippers of flesh
As the head mistress floats in on her feathery throne borne upon swift gales
Commanding attention off drunken masters lost within their own confusing swells
She gestures and summons them to her from their far away mind-mazes.

Thus the routine carnival begun and the mistress vanished as swiftly as she appeared
And before her admirers lapsed into their age-old despondence and indifference
The whores realized their place amidst the world and the grand scheme of things
And cast aside their false pretence, shook off their clothes and joined the masters in unrestrained revelry.

What I think sometimes...

2009-08-03T18:11:00.002-05:00

What I think sometimes:

This belligerant focus and insights on the fights of Apple Vs Microsoft, Apple & AT&T Vs Google, Microsoft Vs Google Vs Yahoo or, Microsoft & Yahoo Vs Google etc. by media and bloggers alike are just nothing but tabloid magazines types of articles for technology. Can we hear about something actually meaty and substantial, world?

As dirty as politics is, why should it be dirty like this? Will the synonymity between dirty and politics ever disappear?

Is the world economy circular? The supposed wisdom is the world economy started with Agriculture and went on to Industry to Service and that's the top of the pyramid. My proposed "fooldom" is it's circular with a never ending loop. I call it "fooldom" for the specific reason that it is not based on any facts or evidence except on my own whim unlike Evolution (please don't call it Darwinism, please don't).

Recycle Recycle Recycle

My Bus-Stop

2009-06-28T23:19:00.002-05:00

These days bus stops in my city are only for humans.

मनोलाप

2009-06-23T17:51:00.005-05:00

धत् !
यो कस्तो लत ।
५० कि मि प्रति घण्टा को गतिमा बसको अगाडि अगाडि दौडिरहेका आँखा
र त्यति नै गतिमा टाढिँदै गरेको मन ।
बिचमा च्यातिँदै गरेको मुटु
र यो मन्द मीठो दुखाई ।

(Image is linked to its source)

A drop in the ocean...

2009-05-29T01:50:00.006-05:00

A drop in the ocean might be the ultimate. Perhaps not an inevitability but something which needs to be strived. Just like a seed grows, turns into a fruit, gets ripe and falls off with the swiftest of the breeze, perhaps maturity of the complete kind will wither off and fall with the swiftest of a push.

A drop in the ocean could just be an illusion. It could be just an illusion of rationality. Something spirituals being invented to get a meaning out of this desert.

A drop in the ocean is the melting of the ocean into the drop too. A passive process at best, again an illusion at worst, especially for the concerned being.

If it is the ultimate, the middle way is the most effective. You become desireless. Your motives purify. Your intentions become white as the whitest sand. As with the ripe fruit, you mature, a process which is usually guided with your will, instinct and good intentions and actions etc. Then with realization, perhaps not even a gentle push is needed before you plunge into the ocean, the nothingness or the everythingness, the sunyata. The feeling perhaps could be confusing at best. You feel the ocean nearing you like she is the one who is moving. Terror and dryness might take over for untrained pathways in the person and slowly, transcendence takes place. Another moment and realization before you plunge into her or to you, the ocean plunges in you, taking you and swirling you around. Then peace.

An illusion brings despair and vanity back. Things to be strived for are there and also not there. For everything turns into an illusion again. Bonds, sweetness, bitterness. Like starlight which will fade after the coolness of the night becomes heavy and the starlight evaporates. The ship takes you away, far away, from the memories of the people who care if you live or die. It will bring you back or maybe it won't. Is it the same in the end? It doesn't matter in this case. And it will never.

Looking Back

2009-05-06T23:57:00.002-05:00

Looking back

The ‘Revolution’ in Nepal introduced more politicians, and more interesting games in Nepali politics. Last year around this time, tatwa P-Funk had labelled Nepal as a ‘failed state’ . His reasoning was ‘back biting and double talk’ of Nepali politicians tarnishing the top leaders’ image and them failing to recognize the ‘people’s mandate’. I wanted to re-post my comment on his blog entry, just to evaluate how true were my predictions.

(In italics was my comment from the past; my additions today are in brackets and in bold)

'Back biting' and 'double talk' are Nepali-pan. Once it becomes ones character, it cannot change immediately. It needs time and labor. And hopefully, it will end in couple of years.

More difficult to eliminate will be the culture of nepotism and corruption. (I believe you have already seen the long list that shows the relatives of Maoist leader’s getting into high profile government positions.) Just take one example, wouldnt you pay a bribe to get a document from Nepal that you desperately need but do not qualify to get one? And you will definitely boast pride of your relative in higher authority if you are caught driving without license by Kathmandu traffic police.

Introducing new politicians: I compare this situation with that after 2046BS revolution. All I saw after that revolution was channeling state money to your supporters either through development projects or other forms. (We do not have to look much to find out how true this has been. Nepalnews.com had a news today saying that Maoists released the largest amount of money to their cadres on the final cabinet meeting, that is, after the PM resigned from his post.) Introduction of new politicians will provide opportunity to channel money or employment or development projects only to the supporters of the leading party. Deprivation of recognition to supporters of 'purano-satta' will increase. Result- those who supported or have leaders in the present government will benefit, others will just watch that happening. Only those in the higher posts of the old system may benefit but for sure their share will also decrease, and eventually leading to nil. (purano-satta has not yet admitted the defeat and trying to retain its influence leading to the present conflict. So, this has not yet happened.)

पोएट्री अगं!!!

2009-04-16T23:49:00.004-05:00

So I was watching latest batman movie 'the dark knight' wondering why chirstian bale uses an uncharecteristically hoarse voice while he is batman but normal voice while he is the corporate tycoon. It is kind of funny and it seems like the makers are missing something when they make him speak in that hoarse voice.

Change of context and there is a scene where 'the joker' conspires a woman to enter a vehicle while handing her an envelope saying that the address of her destination is in that envelope which is only to be opened once she gets in the car. The woman hastily enters her car and opens the envelope where only one word is written on it, "UP!". The car is subsequently blown to smithereens. Drawing inspiration from this passage of fictional events I have written this poem dedicated to the memory of Heath Ledger.

UP!!!

Flashbacks.

Once when just before dying you are reminded where you are going
Just UP, whence suddenly you are borne upon the swift breeze
And all existence feels like a comical game as the world becomes smaller
And you are trying hard to remember where you are going.

You have felt it before in your dreams, just rising, often spiralling
But in your most peaceful moment you are just flying, hovering even.
When in mid flight you can see the entire himalayan range, through the greenery, muddy rivers extending out the the deep blue sea.
You see the rays of the early morning sun cast mystifying shades of red and orange down their sharp forbidding ridges

You feels as if in this dream you are a big bird born to take pleasure in flight
Most of the time you play hide-and-seek with the mountain slopes
And when the wind is strong you dive to feel its strength upon your wings
No one, nothing bothers you and you care for nothing, you are free.

But what if this is not all a dream?
You really are dying with each moment.
Is this hallucination telling you that you will be a bird in your next life?
If that is so then I am thankful, for birds have shorter lifespan.

This is not a dream as you are reminded by the tolling bells to wake up.
The bells are not of this world.

Real and Substantial Versus Fake and Hollow

2009-04-08T22:00:00.005-05:00

Some things are just real while some things are simply fake and hollow. Both of these are experiences perceived to be real by the mind probably although I am not completely sure about that.
So to start it off:

1) At my number one is the real world versus the TV world.

Real world: When you can hear your neighbour quarreling with his wife over whose turn it is to do the dishes. And you get irritated so much so that you have to get a temporary restraining order against that neighbour because you feel threatened.

Virtual and TV world: When you watch a funny TV show where the main character say Raymond and his wife are arguing over whose turn it is to do the dishes. And you laugh so much that you fart, thereby irritating all the people who are in the room with you.

2) At number two is practicing the beauty of life versus just understanding the beauty of life.

Practicing philosophy: On a bus when you see a smile from the opposite sex, you smile back, turn off your mp3 player or close your book and begin a spontaneous conversation that might change your life.

Just understanding the beauty of life: On a bus, the book is read or the music is listened to with the most pleasure,which you have experienced countless times. You don't care/know what is happening around you most of the times. All you care about is knowledge, this life which you can analyze with the most precision. This regurgitated knowledge which is supposedly the backbone of society smiles back at you and you smile back. Of course, it doesn't matter that all you have done is become great at analyzing this mecca of human wisdom while there's not a shred of it that you have come close to in experience.

When Bhuwan KC ruled the world with his leather boots....

2009-04-05T22:55:00.003-05:00

The most awesome things about the early 90’s in Nepal (not in any particular order)

1. Bekha Maan (our own Hagar for Gorakhapatra)
2. Mama chow-chow (cheapest tiffin ever!)
3. Coca cola candy (genius!)
4. Chakra Bomb (because they wouldn’t let us play with the bottle rockets!)
5. Muna Magazine (it was soo good! And published your jokes!)
6. Barba Papa (Clickety-click, barba trick!)
7. Watergame, and then the Brick game (wasted youth)
8. Magnetic instruments box (remember the one w/ a thermometer, so cool!)
9. Indian movie stars’ post cards (because nothing said happy dashain better)
10.Gum boots (save your leather shoes in a rainy day)

Vanilla

2009-03-27T20:07:00.003-05:00

Looking back just a few years ago, I have to admit that I was either selfish or immature or may be both. If this realization has made me any less selfish or more mature could be a topic of examination in itself, but I must say that I can now understand why we buy products such as life insurance.

It’s not too difficult to comprehend why people buy disability benefits or even health insurance, but it seemed unnecessary to me to buy products such as life insurance, which provides benefit upon the death of the policy holder. My instant reaction was why would you need benefits when you aren’t even the beneficiary? I mean, you would be dead!

Then I see an advertisement of a little boy asking his dad if the dad had life insurance. Knowing that he does, the boy goes on to do whatever he was doing. That was it!

Although the central question here—how much should you live for others—has been tackled by generations of thinkers and will continue to be debated for centuries to come, I am bit more interested in knowing how much of it can be bought? We have all these products out there that can provide benefit to the beneficiaries long after you are gone. It’s like setting up a charity fund for your family, but with lot more money than what you actually have.

And then one fine day, the people at the insurance company realize that they had actually made tons of bad bets dragging the company to the brink of collapse. Then your legacy, generosity, and goodwill are at risk unless the insurer is so big like AIG that it’s sure to receive the bailout money!

Truthiness

2009-03-21T01:57:00.003-05:00

Truthiness
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truthiness

Nepal has the biggest potential for hydroelectricity in the world, next only to Brazil.

This truthy bit of wisdom probably came from some ‘high’ aspiring Nepali government clerk and managed to make it all the way to our curriculum. It provided a whole generation of Nepali students with a great sense of pride and hope (and change?).

I thought we should tap more into the truthiness potential for the national pride and unity. Here are some of the things I came across during my serious scholarly pursuit thingy. I really hope they make it in the textbook for the future generation.

Waterworld
Nepal stands second in the world for the total depth of all of its lakes (Add the maximum depth of every lake in a country and add them up).

Bovine Intervention
Cow is a holy animal. It has four legs. It has a tail. It has two horns. Nepal has the lowest cow mortality rate in the world. No one really knows why.

Rainmaker
When you flush the toilet in New York, it swirls clockwise. When you flush the toilet in Sydney, swirls counter clockwise. When you have to flush the toilet in Kathmandu….don’t flush, water is expensive.

Amores Perros
82.5% of all stray dogs in Kathmandu were fathered by the same politician, (who shall remain nameless in the name of responsible ‘journalism’, but you all know who it is. If you don’t, feel free to guess and comment, responsibly).

Write of Passage
Nepalis proudly hold the world record for the highest number of handwritten passports issued in the 21st century.

Prepare for the Worst? Are you crazy?

2009-03-13T19:09:00.004-05:00

I take issue with the statement “Hope for the best, prepare for the worst.”

To “hope for the best” I don’t have to do anything…well except hope. Neither does it involve me to do anything actionable nor does it require using my intellect. I just have to hope! In my opinion, this part of the statement does not add anything to what I have already performed.

To “prepare for the worst,” I start to think about what the worst case scenarios could be. It is out of my imagination to think of the worst case scenario, for anything that I come up with as the worst situation, I could always add little more bad stuff and make it more worse. So, when I don’t know what the worst situation is how will I be able to prepare? In some cases I may not even live to prepare for the worst case scenario.

****************
Ohhh....forgot to mention even greater beef with the second part of the statement, which I will add later.

Recession

2009-03-10T22:27:00.006-05:00

No wonder everybody is affected by 'American Hegemony of Recession'. The sites that intend to have jokes related to students are starting to include financial factor to them as well.
The following cartoons are taken from www.phdcomics.com

The texts appear small, I do not know how to make the picture larger. For now, click on the images and you can read the text.

Golden Tar Heroin and the Black Prince: The Drug Trail Ends in Kathmandu

2009-03-02T22:21:00.001-05:00

A recent article I came across. The veracity of the article can be disputed but can be found cross posted in a number of sites.

Golden Tar Heroin and the Black Prince:The Drug Trail Ends in Kathmandu

By JOSEPH PIETRI

The heroin smuggling black Prince is now Black King

I first went to Nepal in 1970 it was the end of the now famous Hippie Trail that started overland from either Amsterdam or London. Buses full of Hippies would disembark at the end of New Road and to this day this street is called Freak Street. Nepal was Hippie nirvana being that marijuana and hashish were legal and sold openly in Government licensed shops! At the time there were no opium dens in Kathmandu nor is opium grown or heroin produced in Nepal! There was no such thing as a Nepalese junkie. Cannabis was only illegal to export and Hippies caught at the airport were fined $100 USD and deported on the next flight out of Kathmandu.

The King Mahendra died in 1972 and his son Birendra ascended to the throne and I remember the most solemn ragas that mourned the old King's passing on Radio Nepal. Who can forget the huge procession to Pashupatinath Temple where the King was cremated, or the bizarre ritual of a Brahman priest taking over the bad karma of the King and even getting a share of his earthly possessions and then being banished from the Kingdom on a Royal elephant. I left for India in 1973 just before Cannabis prohibition in Nepal. Richard Nixon and his recently formed DEA paid the new king 50-70 million dollars to outlaw pot--his in a Hindu country where everyone must take cannabis once a year on Lord Shiva's birthday. Hippies were deported to India. It was a sad day on Freak Street.

I returned to Nepal in 1981 and to my amazement the country now had a heroin problem. Hashish was 20-30 times more expensive than in 1970 and a very cheap and low grade of smokable heroin was now making the rounds. The Nepalese, not really knowing the difference between brown sugar heroin and marijuana, were easily seduced by smack. Not only that but Double UO Globe Brand heroin was available for export the finest Golden Triangle heroin made. Heroin was now being imported from Burma and brought overland from East Nepal on Army and Police trucks by the Royal Family. The Royals control every aspect of the black market in Nepal. What was once Hippie Nirvana was now a major heroin hub.

Sometime in 1983 my Nepali partner and I were invited to lunch at one of the Ministers' homes. There over lunch and drinks he explained that for the first time in the history of Nepal the Royal Nepalese soccer team was going to compete at the Olympics in Los Angeles the next summer. He said was working with Prince Gyanendra who was in charge of the Olympic committee. Due to my long history in Nepal they felt I could handle the merchandise they were sending along with the team. I took it for granted that they were talking about 150 kilos of hashish. He then spoke to my associate in Nepalese and then talked directly to me that their intentions were to send 150 kilos of heroin to LA. My first thought was to look over at my Nepali associate and tell him that whatever he promised these people to forget it. I explained to the Minister it was impossible and managed to squirm my way out of there.

When I got back home my old pal Patrick came by and I told him what had happened. Patrick says that if I would have gone along with the Minister's proposal, I would have ended up in prison or dead. I was being set up as a fall guy for the Royal Family. The Black Prince, as he was known around Kathmandu, had once been stopped with a bunch of his cronies trying to lift the kneeling Malla King Statue in Bhaktapur (a national treasure) with a crane! The policeman who stopped this theft was "disappeared", but the statue stayed a top its pillar, and the Black Prince was sent packing to Europe.

A bitter rivalry existed between King Birendra and his brother Gyanendra that went back to the 1950s when King Mahendra and the Crown Prince fled to India fearing an assassination attempt and left Gyanendra in Kathmandu as the defacto king. Upon returning to Nepal, it went back to the status quo. Gyanendra has always felt he would have made a better King than his drunkard brother.

During the 1980s and the introduction of brown sugar heroin into Nepal one of the casualties was the Crown Prince, who was rumored to having been sent to rehab in Switzerland. In 1984 the Nepalese Soccer team was detained at LAX carrying that 150 kilos of pure heroin. It was quick news as it disappeared instantly from the media and was never talked about since. A year later bombs went off in the lobby of the Annapurna Hotel (Royal Family owned) at the palace gates as well as other government buildings, apparently in retaliation for the mess in LA.

In 1986 Henry Kissinger and a group of narcotics agents come to Kathmandu for a SAARC conference. The agents bought 2 kilos of pure heroin on the back streets of Asan Tol market with traveler checks! These two kilos they threw down on the desk of Inspector General of Police D. B. Lama and threaten to cut off all aid to Nepal. The agents produced a list of all the people who were involved in the Cannabis trade who still lived in Nepal. Soon wany Westerners with private vehicles or extended Visas were rousted. Overnight the jails swelled with Westerners and Nepalese most of whom were not involved in the heroin trade. Nepalese and Westerners were tortured into confessions. D.B. Lama was one of the front men for the Royal Family heroin trade, sort of a sticky wicket, but I escaped the inquisition to Bangkok and did not return to Nepal until 1988. The inquisition was still going on so I left for good. D. B. Lama the Inspector General of Police had been arrested. They found the pipes in his house were pure gold painted over gray to resemble pipe and boxes of foreign currency. I guess they traced old Henry the K's traveler checks back to the Inspector General of Police himself and the Royals were forced to sacrifice D. B. Lama.

Student demonstrations for democracy, the Monarchy's medieval repressive tactics and the attention it got around the world finally brought 30 years of absolute rule to an end and in 1990 King Birendra reinstated multi-party democracy in Nepal. A treaty was signed with Pakistan and flights now come in from Karachi. Military ties were initiated and with that Afghan heroin is now available by the ton in Kathmandu. Nepal has become a major player on the global heroin trade.

Democracy brought a succession of governments that throughout the 1990's were marked by one being more corrupt than the last. In 1996 the Maoists took to the field and it's been a bloodbath ever since with nearly 12,000 killed and disappeared as of this writing.

King Birendra never unleashed the Royal Nepalese Army against the Maoist's and the gains they made led to the Royal massacre of June 1, 2001. Everyone in the way of the Black Prince becoming king was killed. Most media today refer to it as the shoot out at the palace! It was a coup d' etat engineered by the Prince and the Royal Army with the blessings of outside interests. I was told that the Crown Prince was executed at the Balaju army barracks where he had run to escape the assassinations.

Very few Nepalese believe the official account and the Crown Prince was an easy patsy due to his long time heroin addiction and alcohol problems. There was no way that the Black Prince would allow the junkie Crown Prince to ascend to the throne if his brother should die suddenly, and the King had health problems due to his alcohol abuse. The Military felt the same way and the Black Prince is now the King of Nepal and the iron rule of his father has returned.

The events of September 11th altered the equation as Nepal joined the war on terror and allowed B-52's to fly over the nation on their bombing runs into Afghanistan. The King declareed the Maoist movement terrorists and now receives unprecedented support from the US, UK, and India. American and British Special Forces train the Royal army. The King hired 400 private mercenaries, who now lead the Royal Army into battle. What has the Black King promised the Bush Administration for US support?

The Nepalese Royal Family has a long history of involvement with the CIA. Through out the 1960s and 1970s the CIA maintained a secret base at Lo Mustang on the Tibetan plateau bordering China. This was the jumping off point for CIA-trained Tibetan Khampa guerillas fighting the Chinese. Today they are building a road from the Indian border to Lo Mothang and it's quite obvious that once again it will be used as a forward base.

At this point the Maoist control 85 percent of the countryside and five districts outright in Western Nepal. Peasant women, tired of being sold to brothels in India, comprise 40 percent of the arms-carrying cadre. A free election would bring Socialism to Nepal and if the people could they would vote the King to be gone! The Maoist movement is a Nationalist movement of people who are awakening from 250 years of feudalism! The one road from the Indian Border town of Birgunj to Kathmandu is easily shut down by strikes called by Maoist's! The Royal Army is reduce to guarding Kathmandu and other major border towns and protecting the convoys of supplies that keep Kathmandu alive.

On February the 1, 2005, the Black King dismissed the government and declares a state of emergency. He then suspended telephone, internet, and air links, effectively cutting off Nepal from the rest of the world. The Black King assumeed total power and suspended constitutional freedoms of press, speech, and expression, constitutional protection against news censorship and preventative detention! Hundreds were jailed, leaders of all major political parties were put under armed house arrest. Students protesting the King in Pokhara were fired upon from helicopters and 20 were wounded. The iron fist rule of his father has returned.

Once Time magazine came out with a report critical of King Mahendra. When the magazine arrived at the news stand in Kathmandu that page had been completely blacked out. Hitler, Stalin, Saddam had absolute power and now the Black King, Every since the massacre at the palace they have been trying to clean Gyanendra's image internationally by blaming the heroin trade on his younger brother who was also killed at the palace. The facts are that Gyanendra and his Uncle, who owned the Annapurna hotel, have been heavily involved in the heroin trade going all the way back to the 1960s. Nepal today is 8 times poorer than in 1970.

How can that be with all the foreign aid, the carpet industry, textile industry, tourist industry? Think Marcos, for years the Royal family has siphoned off from every dollar coming into Nepal. Nepal is a classic example of failed American foreign policy and how we create terrorism. Today we are supporting a heroin dealing despot king and again killing people who can't afford shoes in the mountains and jungles of Nepal.

Prisoners and their plight

2009-03-01T23:49:00.004-05:00

I had read somewhere that in some prisons in South East Asia and even in some prisons in Nepal, they were starting this new practice of teaching spiritual concepts to prisoners. When I read about it, I was a bit young, say 14 or so. When I thought about it at first glance, I thought it was a pointless practice. Yet when I thought about it deeper, I thought this was a great thing. I admired the people who did it.
For some reason, I was thinking about this piece, some weeks ago. Especially here, in the US, you get to hear about a lot of violence. You read about people who are prone to violence, who are born and raised to be dominating, people whose very nature have become hateful and misanthropic. And these same people are the ones who concentrate in prison cells and are in contact with each other day in and day out. Now of course, they are put in prison so that they learn that their actions have consequences.
However, if they realized that concept at a profound level, they would not be there in the first place. This system we have probably does let some people see how they are wrong. Some of the people might actually get it. But most of them, whose lives are most probably ruined any way due to the adverse record on their background will probably never really see the right way.
It's about these people I speak. Granted some prisoners might be so twisted in their thoughts, so prone to their darkest sides that many people will refuse to call them humans or having human qualities. That discussion I leave for some other day.
Now going back to my piece, if governments all over the world organized to have spiritual guidance programs in prisons, perhaps we would be better off. By spiritual guidance, I mean, teachings that any religious books encourage. Perhaps the one which is the most effective is Buddha's teaching. But it can be anything which has some moral/spiritual worth.
I feel there is such a need because after all, these prisoners when they get together, the tendency to be more violent increases simply by association. Not only that, after they get out of prisons, they will be living among us. Wouldn't the world be a safer place if they were taught some values?
Isn't that the whole point of having them in prisons?
Perhaps I am making castles in the air. Perhaps I am being too naive and naively compassionate.
Every man/woman deserves the punishment that their actions got them. I agree. But we do need to make this world safer as well and not be chained to just one point of view.
Having convicted felons in prisons is Right. I do not argue that. But if they are to be let out, there should be a spiritual/moral value we need to instill in them. It is good for the individual and society and hence humanity in general.

_______________________________________

"Controlling my feelings far too long
Forcing our darkest souls to unfold
And pushing us into self destruction
They make me, make me dream your dreams
They make me, make me scream your screams"

'Showbiz' by Muse

Mount Everest in Google Map

2009-02-28T20:35:00.007-05:00

If you search Mount Everest in google map, it shows the result in'map'mode of it.But if you select 'terrain' for the results, you can see that the coordinates of the place shown as Mount Everest is not the highest altitude. In fact, the highest altitude is to the north it. Wikipedia says the coordinates of Mount Everest is of 27°59′17″ N, 86°55′31″ E. If you look for these coordinates in Google Earth, it is the place little north of the one shown in google-map results. The peak as in terrain map and the coordinates from google earth differ by about 100 meters.

The map also shows that the peak is entirely in China.

The reason behind this could be the entire google map not being sync with the coordinate systems. And shows that google map and google earth do not work together.

Is this an isolated case or did China payed google to have it that way?

ब्लगमा नयाँ नथपिएको केहि समय भएको हुनाले यो सानो जानकारि राखेको ।

Curiosity killed the Cat

2009-02-21T23:14:00.003-05:00

Things The Cat was Curious about
1. This Curiosity sounds like one hot kitten.
2. Why am I raining with the dogs? What does that even mean?
3. Who the hell is this Schrodinger guy and why am I in a f**king box?
4. Why a dog gets its day and I don’t?
5. Why can’t Slumcats be millionaires?
6. First a box and now a bag?! Why are people obsessed with trapping cats? Why don’t they just let us out?
7. When two female cats fight, is it called a girlfight?
8. Did you just call me a pussy?
9. What if I have more than nine lives...

...that’s the last I heard from the cat.

For Her, hEr and heR

2009-02-18T22:11:00.004-05:00

It was an innocent look.
She caught it though and was intrigued.
"I feel warm and welcomed."
She must have thought.

There he was standing with authority and a handsome poise.
There she was, lanky and with a remarkable aura.
She was beautiful.
Like a gazelle.
Mia from Pulp Fiction, his mind offered.
He took the offer.

She came in, red hair shining from the sunshine.
Magnetic and with grace like a flower petal, floating in the air.
Spreading her fragrance in this dry, dull fare.
He was mesmerized.

Her heart did not let go.
She left and kept thinking about him.
How charming.
"I must go back." And she gulped down the wine.

hEr phone rang.
And she replied to the message.
With some veracity and a lot of velocity.
No ifs or buts. Only Yes and whens.
He longed for her .
With stars shining like fireflies in the dark nights of September, they met.
"What was he in for?"
Little did he know.

heR short red hair was wet.
It was pouring and she jumped in.
She said she sees the paintings and the sculpture in his eyes.
He said he sees her by his side.

She came back and inquired.
Her inquisitiveness was charming.
And disarming.
He could not take it and shook his head.
In defense of himself and his space.
Otherwise she thought and left, fluttered and disenchanted.

He reached for her in the haze of the night.
He felt her in the clear of the dawn.
She said she is moving up and he asked her to watch for the pigs.
She said, she will and smiled the most pretty smile, they thought.
He simply brushed it off as a lie.
" I can't be fooled," he thought, perched from the top of his crumbling cliff.

Now he can't see her.
Unexpected and with full grace, she comes in one day.
He looked into her eyes and her hair.
He saw no lies this time.
The truth still amazed him.
And he felt joy like he had not felt before.
She saw a lake she had not imagined before.
And quietly, they moved on.

Theist/Atheist Anxiety

2009-02-17T02:15:00.002-05:00

Am I religious or not? Should I be religious or not? This anxiety beats the crap out of me. These two questions pretty much sum the cause of my anxiety because if I could answer any of those, I might be closer to a decision.

For the religious part of me: If god made us who made god? he could not have made himself because he didn't exist while creating...himself.

For the atheists part of me: What caused the Big Bang? You cant make something out of nothing.

Here are some clues but I find them inadequate.

1. Big bang confers with the singularity theory which primarily means time, space cease to exist. We as humans, are accustomed to the finite measurements. We can imagine how long is 1 trillion second but cannot really figure out the trillionth of a second. How would it be if time ceased to exist, ie, thats what happens when we think of near big band.
The Big Crunch is a theoretical scenario where the entire universe will collapse after being attracted by its own gravity towards its centre. The Big Bounce holds that once the Big Crunch happens, another Big Bang happens.
M-theory suggests that we might live on one universe of many, a plane within higher membrane. Most of the time those planes exist parall0el to each other without interaction but every now and then they get close enough to interact. This interaction causes the Big Bang and creation of universe as a bubble between two planes.
When we look into the particles smaller than atoms, in quantum scale, all is nothing but bunch of mathematics and probability, and the vast nothingness. Quantum physics does not really talk about matter. So isnt that making something out of nothing?

2. God is supposed to be omnipotent. Some religions believe that the God got is God-hood because he was lifted to an exalted state, which implies that He too could have his own God.
A God is higher supernatural being that does not have to be created because they are eternal, some argue.

The reason God doesnt show himself or his works anymore is because he wants his followers to be led by belief rather than everyone following him because they know he exists. Its is the faith than real proof, that is needed to understand that He exists.

Whatever could be the correct answer to both of the questions, there is definitely a lack of usable information or logical value as of yet. We have seen in the scientific world that a lot of resources are used to fund researches in every field of it. However weird the studies might seem, like a Japanese scientist bagging Ig Noble prize of 2007 for Chemistry (for developing a method to extract vanilla fragrance and flavour from cow dung), it is taken well by the scientific community and used as a tool to understand more complex things. Scientific advances may one day help to answer the second question, but will it answer the first one? Questions all over.

Creep/ Brushing of the disembodied souls.

2009-02-09T00:03:00.003-05:00

Everywhere he looked he saw beyond death as an agent for rejuvenation. From the celebrations of Dia de los Muertos to the offerings that the living beings offered for his disembodied soul. Offerings with crosses so that all his connections with those of the living world would be filtered through that holy symbol making all his efforts to communicate with them futile.

Even when he was alive he occasionally had these visions and a repeated feelings of déjà vu when suddenly everything became so much clearer. It never frightened him but bestowed him with the understanding of the nature of reality itself. Like the end of many parties where he had been and the party just suddenly died one day his bodily functions will also cease but his consciousness will live on.

Too be continued..........from beyond the ashes and the grave.

Heightened Reality

2009-02-07T19:52:00.004-05:00

<3:00>I am freezing and losing my way. I don't need another map of your head.
I am freezing and losing my way. I don't need another map of........
He is dreaming now. Thoughts race in his head. Thoughts like juggernauts.
Formed and rational.
Substantial. Theories and transformations. Moments pass.
He is in conversations with some people and thoughts, feelings and ideas are flung towards each other.
With speed and intensity, wholly surprising yet with pin point precision.
It's reading it and feeling it. No sweat. Not even a drop.
No stress. None at all.
It's cent percent.
His twin got older while he stayed young.
Thoughts travelling at the speed of light. It's sensing each sensation.
Feet on the air or head on the ground?
Is this evolution or a fantasy?
Is this a sensation or just a mystical experience for madmen?
Para gliding or scuba diving?

head..............
<3:01>I am freezing and losing my way. I don't need another map of your head....
Music fades and another song starts on his Winamp.
He felt tens of minutes pass.

Sixth Sense

2009-02-06T00:37:00.006-05:00

It was one of those nights in the university hostel when me and my friends were stuck with a crappy ad that repeats like 20 times throughout the night in free local channel, that we had thought of mobile set-like computer with virtual keyboard, projector as output device and hard drive in internet (like the one google is talking about) could be the best gift to the bums who smoke and sit on the couch all night long. Sure the lazy people are lazy but not their creativity.

These videos present a demo of research conducted at MIT that uses a mobile phone to access the internet, a projector attached to the mobile to display the output and input of data is done by somewhat similar to touchpad but not the real touchpad. The additional feature they include is the capability of capturing the photo just by gesture of fingers. Various apps were used by these researchers, like identifying if the product is organic or not, or find the review of the book you hold in your hand, which will be displayed on the book itself.

The only drawback about it in my opinion is if it were to be used in public as they are trying to show, then more work is needed to ensure the privacy of the user.

For more information you can visit the wired.com link (I think it is displayed in the video) where there is extensive reporting about it.

(edited by the poster to include the description and proper display of video)

Dispositions

2009-02-03T17:53:00.002-05:00

The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion." - Albert Camus

I had never thought it would ever come to this moment but all existence now seems to have a whiff of inevitability about it. I mean the inevitability of the neccessity of academic degrees for securing decent jobs, a life of routine and it all boils down to the loss of the basic idea of freedom. And the plot thickens as I may/maynot enter holy matrimony and after that kids so all existence seems only like a tragi-comedy about the loss of my worldview that I have projected all my life upon. Would I be able to strive for happiness if I am at a loss for this basic idea of freedom? Would I be willing to live for the life of my family instead of my own? Hell no. But the main question still remains and I want to project this out to the readers. Why work hard when you know (somewhat vaguely) what your future has in store for you? A boring life of routine with only limited opportunities to have fun.

I have been dealing with this issue for a few years and I still have no satisfactory solution and it has definitely shaped a part of me who I am today so go at it.

Problems, How Come?

2009-01-31T17:06:00.003-05:00

So I have a very basic question but one that is vital and crucial
for the most number of jobs in the world. People spend their lifetimes dealing with these things. People write books on these. There's countless theories, laws, algorithms, languages, programming languages and tools to solve, counter, lessen, or soften their blows.
This question is: How does a problem arise?
I will be succinct and write points:

It was not anticipated.
It was anticipated but unavoidable.
You were just being careless.
You just didn't care. In this case, the "problem" might not be labelled one, at least by yourself.
The problem was a benefit until it became a disadvantage and turned into a problem, which turns into point number 1 again.

Now that the points are laid out, I will attempt to expand on them gradually in my following posts. I welcome further input.

Live and learn

2009-01-30T14:51:00.005-05:00

Things you live and learn

1. Youtubing TV shows that you thought were great as a kid is a bad idea. (That’s right! I used youtube as a verb. Deal with it English language!). I mean, don’t do it! They may be way more annoying and way less funny/awesome than you remember. It will traumatize you, make you take a long hard look at yourself. It will make you realize that you weren’t as cool as you thought you were. If you don’t believe me, see it for yourself.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R3_IskCwxMc

2. If you make jokes with obscure references in a room full of strangers, everyone will think you are a weirdo. For eg. Don’t say this when someone walks into the room, ‘Here comes Officer Dibble swinging his baton!’
(In case you do not remember or do not know, Officer Dibble was a character in that cartoon ‘Top Cat.’)

3. Speaking of jokes, don’t do ‘Your mom’ and ‘That’s what she said’ jokes in a job interview.

4. Don’t order chicken wings as an appetizer on your first date with a girl, especially if she’s a vegan. No graceful way of ingesting a dozen wings covered in Barbeque sauce.

5. If you really like the girl, don’t take her to a place where they serve a dozen chicken wings as an appetizer to begin with.

Feel free to add your priceless life lessons.

Beneficiaries of Tipping

2009-01-29T10:02:00.001-05:00

“We pay $15B every year on this,” asked a local Radio Jockey (RJ) on one of the FM stations I was listening to on my way home after work. The guesses were all over—parking, cake, milk, and so on. The correct answer, however, was tips. That’s roughly $50 per person for 300 million people. Then I thought about how much I had paid in tips in 2008. Although I don’t record any tips or for that matter even spending, I was confident that it was well over $50! Ok, I side tracked.

As I gave a little more thought to this tipping culture, I began to believe that the biggest beneficiaries of tipping culture are the employers, not the recipients.

Tipping generally creates uncertainty for the recipients; some day you make more and some day you make less. Marginally speaking, a good tip makes a difference in the day/life of the recipient since these people tend to live paycheck to paycheck. So, there is a BIG incentive for, let say a waitress, to provide excellent services to the customers. High tips is a win-win situation for all the parties involved—customer must be blown away to give high tips and the chances are that he/she is likely to come back again, which makes the recipient happier and the owner giddy!

Here is the situation now (in a restaurant for instance): with relatively normal food, but served with lots smiles and friendliness for which their pay without tips is even below the minimum wage in a lot of instances, the employer retains a customer! Better yet, the employer doesn’t have to ask the employee to be at her best; she will be on her own.

So you want to help write the constitution of Nepal?

2009-01-26T22:24:00.005-05:00

With all sincerity, please read it, and email them your thoughts: (If you do email, please post the message on this blog)

Here is an email forwarded by embassy of nepal Distinguished Community Leaders of the Nepalese community organizations/ NRN office-bearers/ friends from media/ Nepali sisters and brothers living in home and abroad The Embassy is very pleased to inform you all that the Citizen Relations Committee of the Constituent Assembly has appealed to all the Nepalese living at home and abroad for their views/opinions on the concept and content to be incorporated in the new constitution of Nepal. Against this background, the Embassy takes this opportunity to request you all to kindly help disseminate this information to the wider Nepalese community with the aim of obtaining their views and suggestions as mentioned above. The Embassy sincerely requests the friends from media to give due publicity to this information in their regular broadcast and publications. The Embassy will compile all the views and suggestions and will forward the same to the Citizen Relations Committee of the Constituent Assembly. Suggestions/views may kindly be sent to the Embassy's address (postal and email) given below. If you need further information, please do not hesitate to contact us. Sincerely, Embassy of Nepal Email:info@necan.gov.np
Webpage: www.necan.gov.np

_________________________

http://www.sajha.com/sajha/html/OpenThread.cfm?forum=2&ThreadID=68119

I just work hard

2009-01-26T02:18:00.005-05:00

So I met a hair-dresser who works at a local shop and was admiring his brand new Mercedes Convertible and the following dialogue ensued.
Me: Hey, is that your car?
Him: Yes, it is.
Me: It's a very nice car dude. How much was it?
Him: About $50K.
Me: Cool!
(I am thinking whether I should ask him the following question but could not resist it)
How did you afford it?
"Him (indifferent smile) : I just work hard."
He parks it near where I work and I see it sitting there sexily through the window.

Perspectives

2009-01-24T19:00:00.002-05:00

To me, short films are like short stories. They are complete and with their message portrayed in their own way. This one is an animation with abstract message on how things are perceived. The producers of this film describe it as a question of whats right and whats wrong. But I found it as cause and effect phenomenon.

View this movie at cultureunplugged.com

Seven reasons To Kill a Mocking Bird

2009-01-18T05:16:00.001-05:00

7. It’s delicious!

6. To piss off that monkey-loving Darwin (Boo! to the theory of Transmutation of species)

5. To save precious little spiders (Everybody loves spiders, especially the tiny ones. So cute!)

4. For the racial injustice it represents

3. Because apparently there’s an instructional book on how to

2. Apparently, there is also an instructional video

1. Anything that f**king small shouldn’t really be doing any mocking. I mean, how dare it! Stupid bird.

Contingencies

2009-01-15T00:12:00.012-05:00

I'd love to develop this into a more coherent and an error free piece, but I don't think I will be able to spend much time on this unless I really really want to make something out of it. This is something I managed to jot down after a stressful day at work. Hopefully, there aren't that many errors.

And yeah...three cheers for Baltimore Ravens for their Sunday game. We gotta go to the Superbowl this season.
=========

It may be partly due to the fact that I never had to attend any classes nor had to do any assignments for this course, except for that final exam in the middle of the summer, but Life Contingencies has been one of the most interesting courses I have ever taken. Of the many things that this course expects you to master, you basically learn to calculate the probabilities of person/s dying within a certain number of years given their current age. Of course, then you also get the probability of those people not dying within that period.

Knowing these probabilities have brought me both grief and joy. Every day after I wake up, I calculate the probability of surviving that day….well I am not that crazy, at least not yet…but I certainly privately calculate the probability of bunch of seniors that I see at the mall everyday dying in the next five years; this is a grief, knowing that they have such a high probability. You could say that everyone knows that a bunch of seniors in their 80s will die soon…what’s the big deal? Well…I know their probability of dying within n-years, with ‘n’ ranging from 0 to infinity; you certainly don’t, unless….. This is total BS.

Then I came across an awesome deal in the paper: that a 65-year old man was offering the buyer of his house to be the beneficiary of his 10 year term insurance with the price of the house, in this case $500,000, as the benefit payable upon the member’s death. What this means is that if you buy the house from this person at $500K and if the person dies within 10 years, then you get $500K at the time of the seller’s death. Basically, you get the house for free should the seller die within 10 years; if he doesn’t die within 10 years, then you pay for the house as you would normally pay for any house you would have bought.

The probability of that person dying within 10 years is 28.4%, which is quite high. Consider this, for a person aged 24, the probability of dying within the next 10 years is about 1.5%. It already starts to look like a sweet deal. Then add to the fact that the person’s father and grandfather never made it past 75. So genetically speaking, god bless the person, he probably would not have made past 75. For obvious reasons, the person did not disclose his medical records, but it would not be totally shocking to assume that the guy wasn’t the healthiest for his age. So, it made every sense to enter into such an agreement provided that the house was in the location where you didn’t mind moving. Unfortunately, the location killed it for me! Well, may be money too. :)

I look at data to study human emotions, which most of the time is subtle but telling. This is a story about a person who wanted to sell his house by betting against the odds of his own survival. Boy, I tell you, these are tough economic times! The person didn’t want to give the house in inheritance, and with that huge amount of money at that age he probably had big plans in the offing. Everyone at some point has to die, so says my Life Table, and this has been the history. But what about the future?

दृष्टि

2009-01-12T23:42:00.003-05:00

( कता कता छापेँ, कता कता छापेको छैन याद भएन तर यहाँ टाँस गरेको छु, दोहोरिएको भए माफि पाउँ । सायद पुराना मित्रहरुले स्पष्ट पारिदुनुहुन्छ कि? )

दृष्टि

यि सबै नजरका दोषहरु हुन्

तिमीले जे देख्यौ त्यहि बोल्यौ

चम्किलो सुर्य बिस्तारै मधुरो हुँदै

क्षितिजको सिरानि बनाउँदा तिमी

गोधुलिको रोमान्चकता सम्झेर पुलकित भयौ ।

रातो बादलले अस्पष्ट हुँदो आकाशमा

सुर्यको गेडिमा जलबिन्दु लागेको जस्तो

झलमल्ल संसार अन्धकारको निशाना बनिरहँदा

पलभरको झिसमिसेको सौन्दर्य

अलौकिक र आदिम महसुस हुनु जाहेज छ

यदि पलभरको लागि मात्र जिउने हो भने ।

खोपामा राखेको पानसको बत्ति

पुतलिको निम्ति सौन्दर्यमा सर्वसक्तिमान छ

प्रेममा प्राण आहुति पाउँदछ

जलाउँछ

र बिस्तारै गुरुत्वाकर्षणलाइ जितेर आकाशतिर धकेल्छ

जलेका पखेटा उड्न थाल्छन् स्वर्गीय दिशातिर ।

खोपाको माथिपट्टि जम्मा भएको धैँसोको थुप्रोमा

अझ एक नौलो तह अझ फेरि थपिन्छ ।

स्थिर तालमा डुबुल्कि मारेको जूनको प्रतिविम्व

तिमिले देख्दछौ

हावाको वेगले तरङ्गित स-साना छालहरुमा

निमेशभरलाइ बास गर्दछ

तर पानीको निम्ति जून जहाँ हुनुपर्ने त्यहिँ छ

अकाट्य दुरिमा ।

र रातभर मात्रको लागि ।

तिमी जे रोज्छौ

गुच्छाबद्द गुलावका पत्ता

वा

पत्ता भित्रका किरा सहितको फूल

वा सम्पुर्ण काँडा सहितको बोट ?

हरियालि बगैचा ? या बगैचा वरपरको डङ्गुर ?

सिमाभित्रको सौन्दर्य अपुर्ण हुनसक्छ

फराकिलो सिमा कुरुप हुनसक्छ

एउटा अस्पष्ट समीकरण ।

मौलिक ।

सीमा, सौन्दर्य र पूर्णताको ।

A Green Shirt

2009-01-11T23:16:00.004-05:00

It's a work in progess. Has yet to be edited or proofread. Feel free to add, edit or comment.

A Green Shirt

Prabal typed in ‘Ewing’s Sarcoma’ on the Wikipedia page.

‘Ewing sarcoma is a malignant round-cell tumor. It is a rare disease in which cancer cells are found in the bone or in soft tissue. The most common areas in which it occurs are the pelvis, the femur, the humerus, and the ribs. ‘

He picked up his Amstel Light and took a sip. Across the room, Ben was yelling something loud in Chinese over his cell phone.

‘We should get fucked up tonight.’

‘Yeah dude!’ Ben cried back.

Familiar question, expected response. Prabal mused that the predictability was the foundation of their friendship. He smiled.

It’s nice not to be surprised.

Prabal felt an acute pain in his back. He had been lying on the Salvation Army couch for too long. He grabbed his beer and took a big gulp. He watched as his backwash settled on the bottom of the bottle. He stood up and walked towards the mini fridge to pick another Amstel light. He turned the TV on. Russell Crowe demanded to be told if he was not entertained.

‘Dude, I am talking to my parents,’ Ben shouted.

Prabal turned the volume down as he settled on the Shamrock-green couch. That was Remi’s favorite color. Last time he saw Remi was five year ago, in a small dark bar behind the Ghantaghar. She had cried when he told her it was time from him to go.

‘Okay, it’s eleven already. Time to go! Greg’s having a party in his room.’ Ben said as he snap shut his razor phone.
‘Not sure if I want to hang out with underclassmen tonight.’
‘Oh! You will though!’

Prabal woke up next day with Rachel’s right hand on his left chest. She was resting her head on his right arm. He gently picked up her hand and placed it on her right hip. She rubbed her feet against his with a sleepy moan. He rolled up from his bed and walked towards his desk, where his laptop was. He opened up the Wiki page and continued where he left off.

‘Survival for localized disease is 70% to 80% when treated with chemotherapy. Long term survival for metastatic disease can be less than 10% but some sources state it is 25-30%.’

Remi was not very lucky.

Prabal read the late night email from his cousin, Sujan, for the seventh and the last time. He closed his eyes. He was surprised at how unaffected he was by the news. He had become cold and hardened, and tough! He was the man he had always wanted to be. He had turned out to be his father.

He opened his eyes and found Rachel staring at him with her big green eyes.

‘Are you okay? You don’t look so good.’
‘Yeah, just a little hung over.’
‘Okay dude, I don’t know you well, but you are NOT hung over. Plus, you just had three beers last night. And I can always tell when someone’s hung over. My father’s side is Irish. Speaking of which, are you going to the parade today. That is today, right? Is today the seventeenth or fifteenth? Hold on, it’s Saturday. So it is today!’ Rachel laughed.

Prabal smiled politely. He was a little surprised and annoyed by Rachel’s chattiness. Remi was a quiet observer. He turned away from Rachel towards his closet and pretended to look for something.

‘What are you looking for?’
‘A green shirt.’
‘Of course!’

Picture: Snow or Sand ?

2009-01-10T14:01:00.002-05:00

Musings Musings

2009-01-08T00:46:00.002-05:00

Aye,

What is the purpose of life? Or What is A purpose of life?

Or What is a purpose of life?

It's easy to get lost in the languages and the subtle capital letters.

It's easier to get lost in the higher level of abstract thoughts and ideas.

As a matter of fact, sometimes you might feel that you never even started.

Such is the complexity in its "simpleness".

Is there just one life or many lives? The idea of reincarnation

embraced by Hinduism and Buddhism collectively is interesting.

The idea of a person going to heaven or hell after one life embraced by the Christians, Muslims and the Jews as well is interesting (and straightforward) as well.

Although as I write it, I have to say, I find it much sillier than the previous belief held by Hinduism and Buddhism.

About life, I really have no idea at this point as to what it is for.

There possibly could be no purpose or there could be one, of trying to

make oneself happy/ joyful or perhaps a higher purpose of attaining nirvana or "moksh".

There's doubt and confusion everywhere in the seeming confidence of this persona.

Perhaps an elimination process might work better. More on that later.

Randomizing the"Rrandom thoughts of CoolFire"

2008-12-28T22:58:00.001-05:00

Trying to link the purpose of life with the happiness,CoolFire used the word ‘happiness bubble’ which by itself defines itself to be short lived. But as he rightly explains that getting out of one bubble opens the chance to get into the second bubble. It is the frequency of getting in and out of that bubble one wants to increase, he argues.

This concept of happiness bubble is as being in संसार and शुन्यता। Realization of sansar leads us to get happiness of the materialistic world while the realization of शुन्यता leads to वैराग्य. Since happiness is a comparative term, it cannot exist without the realization of वैराग्य. Unlike his example, this transition of happiness and वैराग्य should be very short lived which means that the frequency of bursting that ‘happiness bubble’ and getting into the next one should be in some Terahertz or something of that scale.

Coming back to purpose part of life, what part of life are you referring to? Are you asking about why you came into life? Or is it about what should be your purpose when you are alive? I will not go into why ‘you’ came into life in this response blog but just focus on what should be your purpose after you are already here up and alive. I have to admit that what exactly ‘is’ the purpose is not my concern because ‘should be’ purpose overrides the understanding of ‘is’ part.

What should be the purpose of life?
The purpose of life should be to make favourable condition for survival of mankind. Whether you look at religion or science, evolution theory or moral science, traditions or political laws and constitutions, all are to prolong the existence of humans. If we care about environment or biodiversity, the underlying selfish aim of ours is to preserve the favourable condition that we have in order to prolong the existence of humans.

Neither science nor political laws and constitutions are concerned about the ‘is’ part of the purpose but rather ‘should be’ part. Neither do the religions explain details of the ‘is’ part. Hindu and Buddhist books ewrite quite a bit on it but I personally believe that those explanations are made to confuse or indulge general people when ‘should’ part is working well while also to give some insight to the seekers on ‘why I came into life?’.
what is the morally correct thing to do?

Morally correct act is that one if everybody else starts to do the same act, it should not harm the existence of humankind.

With this definition of morality and ‘should be’ purpose of life, I have to admit that the laws and constitutions of any country are not supportive enough to fulfill this purpose.

Before ending this rant, I want to let you people know that one day I will write on my take on ‘why i came into life’ and its relation with fight for human rights.

Random Thoughts

2008-12-22T14:32:00.005-05:00

When it seems to me that I have finally figured out the purpose of life, I come out ever more confused. My sense of happiness is ephemeral, because I pride my happiness in figuring out this elusive “purpose,” which I know will forever leave me confused.

I find reasons to be happy, and I go along with them for a while. But I feel like I am acutely aware of the destiny, so I try to abandon this happiness. I don’t want to be in this “happiness bubble” for a long time. Then I seek redemption in others, without knowing why. Others seek redemption in me, which is even more astounding. With apprehension, I abandon the trajectory of my life in search of a new one. The process continues.

This is what I model my life after, hoping that the frequency of few past events will provide clues to the future ahead. That’s what I do everyday, mostly at work and certainly in my own life, but I can’t say I fully believe in it. This is one way I separate myself from the intricacies of life.

untitled

2008-09-14T07:44:00.001-05:00

Secret teachings and the initiation rites to be protected as heirloom
Of a dying culture of rueful decadence lies unsupported
Idealized pockets of greatness fragment into mercurial clusters
Mobile, fluid and crisp. Forever fresh.

Dreaming upon faeries and valkyries of distant lands
Of heroism, honour and honesty leaving trails in stories or myths
Which easily lasts cycles brought about as changes but actually are legends
Often you are just a warm feeling in your head, melting.
Conversing upon a point resembling drainage vortices (spiralling!) down the kitchen sink.

"All is not lost" is the reply when we are told everything has ended
Hoping beyond hope into certainties of change and death
Weighing out former glory against the passage of time into future
Greater, higher, more powerful we keep extending the limits to (its) edges.

Drunk at the great starry void catching occasional glimpses of random bright stars that twinkle for attention
At the same time shedding realizations and ancient light
Appearing as reassuring as normalcy to the uninitiated
Whereupon rituals are still performed behind veils of secrecy.
(Upon the first light of a new dawn.)

Always indulging upon the seduction of brainwaves and sound frequencies
Plowing the field, grinding the grains using fast streams that murmur as in
murmuring brook,
Harnessing the potential of that might be, beautiful.
Glory Manifest in all its brilliance,
Of Creativity and Intuition and perhaps art
Freedom of opinion is free of all jurisprudence.
(YOu KnoW!) Its hard being expressive when the words flow.

An encounter at a Grocery Store

2008-08-05T20:54:00.010-05:00

**********
Bored after studying for my upcoming test, I decided to go to a grocery store to buy some food. After collecting stuffs I direly needed, which isn’t much anyway, I stayed in the “express checkout” lane, hoping to minimize my waiting time. Since I knew that the waiting period at a check out line in a grocery store could be modeled by a poisson distribution, I was quietly calculating the probability of staying in line for more than 3 minutes. Ok…I wasn’t actually calculating any probability but was rather checking out a girl on the next checkout lane. She seemed to be absorbed in an intense thought.

There was some error with the cashier at the express check out lane. Just when I was mulling over whether to switch to the other check out lane, I could see the girl packing her stuff in a basket. No sooner was I behind her in the lane, she carried her basket and moved to the express checkout lane. I was like, “whatever bitch.”

It was only after I realized that the second cashier was also having problem that I understood why the girl had moved to the other line. I gave her the benefit of doubt that she also knew that the cashier at the express check out lane was having some problems. The game was on, and I was in the race to get out of the store before the girl. We both had one person in front of us. Each move now had to be made carefully.

I wasn’t entirely sure what the problem in the express checkout lane was since I was busy checking out the girl, but I did notice that the problem in the non-express check out lane was that one of the items didn’t have price sticker on it. The second cashier had someone sent to check the price for the item. Since it would take at least two minutes for the problem to be resolved in the second lane, I thought the battle was over, and the girl would be out of the store earlier than me. While waiting, I could see the cashier in the express lane fumbling to put the paper roll (that prints receipts) into the machine that prints it. Since I had worked as a cashier few summers ago, I thought I could help her put it in and get out earlier if only I was ahead of the girl.

Boy, could it become more interesting! The girl then came and stayed right behind me in the second lane. Perhaps she thought that the cashier in the express lane didn’t know what she was doing and it would take a while before someone comes there and help her. I then packed my stuff and moved to the other lane. She probably thought I was being a “bitch” too, but I was quite surprised to see her smile. As soon as I reached the second line, I offered to help the cashier, which she appreciated. The problem was solved, but what I saw on the other checkout lane took me by surprise. At that point I gave up whatever hope I had of winning this race.

The girl apparently had the same item in her basket that the cashier was having troubling finding the price of. While I was diligently inserting the roll into the machine, the girl was making a “deal” with the cashier to swipe her item to get the price for the other customer. The deal passed through swiftly.

As I was signing my credit card receipt, I could hear the girl on the other lane say, “Thank you, and have a good night.” As a consolation prize, I convinced myself that those words were directed at me.

humans have the unique ability to conceive of future based on the past and the present.

2008-05-18T13:31:00.003-05:00

As the leg pulling in Nepali politics is more furious than ever, the alleged involvement of Maoists in killing of this one businessman Ram Hari Shrestha would have to tarnish the image of the top leaders of the CPN-Maoists. This puts us to face the possibiltiy of the eventual failure of what the leaders lovingly call 'people's mandate'. Is the motherland ready to bear this burden should it show it ugly face? In the world of Nepali politics where incessant back biting, double talk and non-existent trust and co-operation; I wonder if I am alone in this pessimism that Nepal is a failed state that would always be striving for the forbidden foods of better lifestyle.

The price of this revolution has been only to introduce more politicians into the mainstream and although all Maoists are big talkers they are definitely making the atmosphere less conducive for increased foreign aid. World bank recently granted a sum of Rs. 8.2 billion to rehabilitate the war torn country but even all this money is still going through the old system where a healthy portion of it ends up in the coffers of private individuals. When you talk of a revival, where do you start? Grassroots. Not only political but a massive reframing of the country is in offing but the progress about is just like big talk of the Shining Path and big talking tomfoolery.

All is not bleak though. This day will pass and the dream of a rich, electricity making Nepal seems like another valley in a sea of mountains.

Concerns

2007-12-17T10:56:00.000-05:00

I have attempted to answer some of your questions and concerns in this post. As always, I will appreciate your comments and suggestions.
******
Premiums
Lack of sufficient experience and enough data, no doubt, makes it harder to calculate premiums, co-payment, deductible, and maximum allowable expenses. Provided we have relevant data, we can use actuaries, who do pricing and reserving among a lot of other things in insurance companies, to do some of the grunt-work. But, I don’t think what people pay as premiums should be an issue provided they are within a reasonable range. I say that because: Guthis act like “not-for-profit” entities, so unlike private insurers who are interested in making profits, Guthis are not in pressure to make handsome profits. In case, if the premiums charged turn out to be high, the consumers don’t have to worry much because that extra money Guthis made in the past year will roll over for the benefits of the same people next year. If Guthis don’t incur most of what they collect, they can adjust the premiums accordingly for the following year.

Does not Cover All
There is also a reason to worry that some people in these communities may not even be able to pay Rs. 50 (per couple) every month. Unfortunately, this program cannot cover those, poorest of the poorest, in the initial years. May be after few years, if the reserves get sufficiently large, then for subsidized premiums, the excluded members could be brought into the program.

Role of Outside Entity
If the premium collected is high, then it won’t be a big problem if people do not mind paying that money. But if the program cannot cover what it said it would, due to lack of enough fund, then that could threaten the integrity of the program itself. For the first few years, there is a palpable threat that the funds collected will not be sufficient to cover all expenses. So to reduce that risk, I am proposing that some outside entity should match the funds generated from premiums for the first few years. That will also give incentives to people to pay premiums, may even encourage higher premiums, to the members since they get 100% return on their investment.

M&A
To further manage risks, Guthis will be encouraged to merge with one another. As they merge/acquire, they will be in a better position to deal with catastrophes. Ideally, I would love to see one large zonal insurer in each zone, much like the Blue plans operate in the United States.

Awareness
One common suggestion that I got from almost all of you was about making people understand the program. I totally agree with you. This will be the single biggest challenge going forward. Lets face it, a lot of us don’t understand how health insurance works even in this country. So, educating people about the program will be a big challenge, especially when you have to make them understand that you still have to pay premiums even when you are not ill!

****

Affording Health Care: Community Based Health Insurance Program

2007-12-14T14:21:00.000-05:00

It comes as a little surprise that the government of Nepal has done very little or nothing to provide healthcare benefits to its employees, let alone to its ordinary citizens. Even by the wildest stretch of imagination, Universal Health Care System in Nepal seems far from a reality. The number of people dying each year from preventable and curable disease is astronomically high, and yet, there is no sign of stopping. So, instead of waiting for the government to come to its rescue, the rural population should seek creative solutions to pay for its healthcare facilities—through community based health insurance programs.

We already have “Samajs” and “Guthis” that act as “insurers” in our communities. With some slight modifications in the way these organizations operate, we can change the lives of rural population in so many areas, primarily in health care. Community based health insurance programs may not prevent deaths from deadly diseases, such as say cancer, but it can certainly equip many people with the finance, which they lack the most, to pay for rising healthcare cost.

Community Based Health Insurance Program: How this works?
For the sake of simplicity, there will be one ‘Guthi’ in one village, each Guthi roughly consisting of 1000 people. Each member in a Guthi will pay Rs. 50, as premium, per month to be a part of that Guthi. In turn, the members receive health care benefits as approved by the Guthi. To discourage random and frequent doctor visits for unnecessary treatments, the members will have to pay a doctor’s fee of at least Rs. 50, called co-payment, every time they visit a doctor. To weed out fake visits further, there will be a deductible of Rs. 300 a year for each member, but Guthi will be liable for any expenses between Rs. 300 and Rs. 20,000. What Guthi then does is make basic healthcare affordable to those masses that would otherwise have a hard time even affording little care, something that would cost in the range of few thousand Rupees.

Since most, if not all, Village Development Committees (VDC) have more than one village, it is also expected that there will be more than one Guthis per VDC. These Guthis, in partnerships with each other, can now form a network of local doctors and bargain on the price that these doctors charge to Guthi members, much like any Health Maintenance Organizations (HMOs) or Preferred Provider Organizations (PPOs) networks work. Since, most of these people in these groups would not have come to hospitals or doctors, except for major illnesses, it is also in the interest of doctors and hospitals to charge a lesser fee for this select group of people who are members of these Guthis. This way, both parties get better off. For example, a villager can stay in a hospital to treat his broken limb and can get away paying only Rs. 300, the deductible amount, while the hospital or the doctor will also have access to this particular group of people, who were previously inaccessible.

As I outlined earlier, to prevent Guthis from going bankrupt, Guthis will be liable only up to a maximum amount of Rs. 20,000 for each individual person. But there might be some instances when a member might incur a cost of more than Rs. 20,000. As the system progresses and as people learn the way this system works, Guthis could insure one another for individual or group losses. For example, Guthi A could buy insurance from Guthi B for individual loss over Rs. 20,000 and a group loss over Rs. 100,000 for a specified premium that Guthi A will have to pay to Guthi B. What that means is if any member in Guthi A incurs an expense of more than Rs. 20,000, then Guthi B will be liable for the expense after the first Rs. 20,000, and if the total loss of Guthi A is more than Rs. 100,000, then Guthi B will be liable for the expense after the first Rs. 100,000. So, Guthis can insure one another or they could insure themselves with the District Guthi, one in each district set up by the government, to mitigate their losses. In this instance, the government is not paying anything for the healthcare of its citizens; it is only acting as an insurer.

Challenges
This program bases its strength on the way it operates: that we are our own keepers and that we collectively take care of our community. Obviously, we face huge challenges in implementing this program. First off, we must have relevant information of all the members in the Guthi, including their previous health conditions. A computerized record of relevant information could tell us many things that we might otherwise not know about our own communities. Besides, if we have records of each of our members, it becomes easier to decide how much we expect to incur and thus charge premiums accordingly. Moreover, policy makers could utilize an up-to-date database to base policies that can have maximum benefit to the people in the area.

There must be a good network of doctors and hospitals in the area with the Guthis for this program to work. The providers—doctors, hospitals and pharmaceuticals—must coordinate with Guthis to provide services to this otherwise unreachable population in the country, even if it means somewhat less money for the providers. The doctors bill both Guthi and the patients, so that Guthis know which members are incurring what expenses. It is now self evident that honesty from providers--doctors, pharmaceuticals, and hospitals--remains critical at this point so that they do not take advantage of the situation and charge whatever amount they can to Guthis. However, to reduce such practices Guthis and the providers can agree on allowable expenses for high volume treatments, much like the insurers and the providers coordinate in the United States.

The other, but very important issue is the management of fund, premiums collected from consumers. How should the fund be managed? While keeping some portion of the fund in reserves, the remaining amount should be invested in profitable ventures so that the fund grows by itself. With the establishment of all these Guthis and with developing financial markets in the country, I am sure there will be investors sprouting up, looking to manage these funds. As fund grows, Guthis could twist their rules—for example, decrease deductible amount or increase maximum allowable expenses—to better take care of their members.

This, by no means, is an advocacy for a socialized health care program but rather a program where the consumers themselves have control of their money and their health care. What it does not do is provide expenses for all treatments of all people, but what it does is provide expenses for seemingly affordable treatments, yet that could be very burdensome to a lot of people in our rural communities. Thus, there is a real possibility that these community based health insurance programs could provide creative solutions to cure preventable diseases without major financial constrain on the consumers.
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The numbers used above do not come from any research or analysis but are only used to simplify some of the concepts. I am hopeful, however, that a rigorous actuarial analysis could give us a lot better estimate of those numbers.

अटेरी

2007-08-31T19:00:00.000-05:00

ए!
तिमी आइदियौ ?
मैले निम्तै दिएको थिएन
माया लाइदियौ ?

ए!
अलक्षिण लाइदियौ ।
मैले सोचेकै थिएन
मुटु खाइदियौ ।

हँ ?
आफै भन ।
मेरो चैन खोसेर
के पायौ ?

हो ?
खोजेकै हो ?
मलाई आफ्नो बनाउँछ्यौ ?
ई!!ऽऽऽ!!! सक्छ्यौ ।

मेरो नौलो प्रयास । कविता जस्तो भएपनि कुनै नियम मान्दैन ।

Along the lines of CoolFire

2007-05-24T14:22:00.001-05:00

CoolFire brought up an interesting topic about the "irrelevance" of some spiritual teachers. I actually do have sentiments along the same lines. My feelings are not identical but they do converge with his idea at some point and then diverge again.
I have had interest in Buddhism since my teenage years yet now I feel distant from it. By interest, I mean I used to read some books related to Buddhism or go to forums about once a fortnight.
However, I feel that basically religion tries to explain most things based on false(on hindsight) information. To make it short, I will say that the conclusions it reaches are true for the information that it possesses at that time. However, most of it is wrong as time passes and new information is divulged.
Buddhism can be summed up in a limited way by Newton's third law of motion "Every action has an equal and opposite reaction". What did you think Karma was? It is basically the equal and opposite reaction to your actions. By opposite, I don't mean the negative reaction but something which affects you instead of you affecting something else.
At that time when Buddha conceived this, it was probably extremely profound. But now when you read about it, it is still profound but science has quantified this revelation and has taken this understanding deeper and at a more profound level. For example, the way I think about it is that a person's thoughts change the physical brain cell pattern and affect him later on. It's cyclical. Buddhism takes this single concept and extrapolates it to different ends.
I am not a Buddhism expert and I am sure there are a lot of other "concepts" in Buddhism.
This is a simple example and something that science can actually test. So am I saying science has reached a point where it can explain almost everything?
No. But I do think the unexplainable will be explained; of course, other unexplainables will be discovered. But surely, it will boil down to a single unexplainable some day. Maybe eons.

Next God

2007-05-06T12:42:00.000-05:00

For all the noise, I know, that I make here in this forum, it might be hard for some of you to believe that I am really being serious now. And, you may rightly wonder, but why. No particular reason. Anyway, here is just something that I found on my desktop which I had written a while back but never developed nor posted it.
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Buddha never said anything new that we didn’t know already. No offense to any Buddhists here, but does anyone really need 5-6 years of "tapasya" to find such simple things that Buddha did? Same thing with Jesus and Muhammad—did they really discover some groundbreaking set of norms that people didn’t know already?

OK…my point was not to make Buddha, Jesus or Muhammad look stupid, but to illustrate how it is from very simple things that we do in our everyday lives that we get revelations/realizations. Ok…to drop the bomb….I also got the revelation, coincidentally, on New Year’s Eve. I guarantee though that it has nothing to do with neither the imminence of New Year nor the revelry and the drunkenness of the eve.

My revelation, in contrast, is not a spiritual one, neither is it a religious one. Honestly, I felt stupid for having such a revelation but as I thought deeper, it only got more interesting.

My revelation is that if there is a single person on this planet, then he/she will not remain for a long period of time. This might not be any groundbreaking revelation; in fact it could be too obvious. But still, I think this theory kicks ass!

Typo??

2007-04-29T13:45:00.000-05:00

While at work, I came across a term paper that was on the box outside my supervisor’s office. I did not flip through the pages, but I read what was on the front page. What I read there, apparently, made me think for a while.

My supervisor, although, manages a department of 15 people also teaches few classes on campus.

It was not the title that got me thinking; it was the mis-spelled name of my supervisor. Moreover, it was not even a full name but a four-letter last name. It wasn’t any exotic last name brought from Africa, South America, or even Nepal; it was a common last name that "every" Harry and Johnny has. How can you mis-spell the name of your professor at the end of the semester on a capstone paper? Could it possibly have a repercussion on the student’s grade?

I assumed that the paper was submitted late because the professor had already left for the day, and his was the only paper that was on the box. I also saw the student’s name on the front page. I then thought if I should let the student know about his mistake. Anyway, I wrote down the student’s name and looked up online to see if I could find his phone number.

I decided not to worry at all. Given his apparent laziness, I even wondered if he would care about the “petty mistake,” if at all. If he really was careful, then he should know by the end of the semester his professor’s last name. Could it be a typo? It could very well be, but that should not be an excuse. I am pretty sure he had more than plenty of time to finish his research paper. He could have also given someone else to proof read his paper. Apparently, he did not do it. Moreover, the fact that he was late in even submitting his draft made me believe that this was not a serious student, and if he himself did not worry about his work why should I worry about his.

On Grand Central

2007-03-16T11:26:00.000-05:00

Grand Central kicks ass!

Why?

One Number That Will Ring All Your Phones
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/15/technology/15pogue.html?em&ex=1174190400&en=133d4b6eca15f64b&ei=5087%0A

Also, check out: http://grandcentral.com/

I am buying its shares! No, I am not paid to advertise the company.

Why I refuse to vote in national elections?

2007-03-05T13:56:00.000-05:00

I have never voted in any national elections yet, neither I intend to in the near future. However, it is not to say that I do not participate in any elections; I do. I just feel that it is a waste of time to vote in any national elections!

*******************

Someone in sebsonline.org vehemently argues that citizens abroad should be able to exercise their inalienable right—the voting right. While I agree with the person that every citizen should be able to vote should they chose to, I do not quite think that my individual vote is going to make any difference in saying who gets elected or what gets passed. Since my vote will not, at the margin, significantly alter the outcome of the election, I am better off if I do not vote; at least I save my time. Hence, I refuse to vote!

Some might argue what if the vote difference between the two candidates is only ONE. In that case, you would think that my casting of vote would alter the outcome of the election, but, for whatever reasons, that has never happened before! Even if the vote difference is very close, my one vote is unlikely to influence the outcome of the election. For example, in 2000 presidential elections in the US, the vote difference between Al Gore and George W. Bush in Florida was less than 0.002% of the total ballots cast. After all the recount and adding in of absentee ballots, there still was no clear winner in the state. Again, a difference of more than 400 votes did not set apart any candidate as the clear winner much less one!! Moreover, Florida residents did not decide who won their state; nine Supreme Court justices in Washington DC did!

If the election is too close to call, my vote will not have any effect, as evidenced by the 2000 presidential elections in Florida. If there is a clear winner, my vote will not have any effect either since the candidate is going to win anyway. Then, why should I waste my time to stay in line for hours to vote? Therefore, I refuse to vote!

********

The author holds this view only for national elections. His views could be very different for elections of much smaller magnitude.

Protesting 101

2007-03-01T17:02:00.000-05:00

I think I was more lazy than I was busy for not coming up with anything for this long. Anyway, here I am now....again....talking about bandhas. I designed this course "Protesting 101," with the aim of inculcating protestors with the basic tools of protesting, which, sadly, many of our protestors seem to lack.
-------------

Protesting 101
Instructor: Cool Fire
Pre-requisite: none
Co-requisite: 40hrs of practical

The number of protests in the country has been rising steadily over the past few years. This increase can be attributed to two factors: i) an increase in the number of unsatisfied groups, ii) and the unwillingness of the government to compromise with the existing protest groups. Unfortunately, neither these interest groups nor the government nor the Nepalese people is gaining anything from these meaningless protests.

Looking at the current scenario, it seems that this increase in the number of protests is due to the “outbreak” of grievance groups that are insecure about their future after the constituent assembly elections. For example, Madhesi Movement (Goit and Jawala), Indigenous movement, Tharu movement, Kirat Movement, Mountain People Movement, Karnali Movement, and countless other movements—cropped up directly as a result of this feeling of insecurity in the run up to the CA elections.

Let’s say there are N “unsatisfied groups” in the country. Even If each group organizes only one protest in two months, we have to go through N days of protests during that period of time. The loss of lives and property due to these bandhas is incomprehensible. Moreover, this has neither brought any success to these protests groups nor given any pressure to the government to take them seriously. Therefore, this continued increase of these bandhas has become certainly worrisome to all the stakeholders.

What this class aims to do is try to find ways to make these protests more effective while at the same time minimize the harm on ordinary citizens. We have N different groups protesting in the country right now. Because these groups are so many and their members fairly low, even if their demands are fair, it is very unlikely that they will get any favorable response from the authorities in response to their bandhas. But, lets say, if n groups coalesce together to form a bigger group, then not only will they have a stronger voice when they go out into the streets, but they can also pressurize the authorities to take actions. Better yet, this will reduce the number of protests (bandhas) by 1/n days!! Everyone would be better off!!

The parliament is now in the process of passing a bill that restricts the political parties from organizing any protests. I think that is a stupid bill. This law, if passed, will not reduce bandhas. If any of the political parties wants to have bandhas, it will call upon its student unions and other organizations to protest anyway. Moreover, this restriction impedes the citizens, which includes politicians too, in freely exercising their “democratic” rights.

Lets not restrict anyone from exercising their democratic rights, but lets change the way we protest!

What is the reason that we are all here?

2007-02-28T20:22:00.000-05:00

This is what I read here and there today. These are not my words but I think it is worth sharing. Please feel free to add what you think about this.

What is the reason that we are all here?

1.We could talk about the process by which we got here, from the Big Bang, to star formation, to planet formation, to biological evolution. But the reason? That implies that someone had the power to put us here with a purpose in mind. Many religionists would tell you that that someone is "God".

2. Is it purely for the propagation of our species? Are evolution and sexual selection more important than the life itself? How about when it concerns the life of an individual?

3. I think the only way to live is to believe that there is no meaning to life, but to love it anyway. To savor every second whether bad or good as a tiny fluctuation in a random fall of dominoes. If at the end of our lives we reach somewhere that IS a Heaven of some kind, it's a bonus. If it doesn't, we've had damn fine lives and never regretted a second. Live it, worry about where it's all headed later.

4. Although there definitely is a meaning to life because I am sure nobody wants to die. Nobody wants today to be their last day on earth.

5. Why I feared death? I think that I have a lot more to do, which I consider as duty of a man. To do what? To pay the debt to my parents for bringing me up. Here, it is not for giving me life. Did I ever wish to come to life? As far as I can think, reason or remember, no. They just gave birth to a child and it happened to be me. Coming into life was not my choice, nor was it their choice to bring 'me' into life instead of somebody else. But, after I came into existence, it was due to their help that I grew up. Once I got consciousness, I wanted to live and see the world, (why? May be it is just curiosity once I was already here) and the parents helped me to grow; so that I can fulfill that want (to see the world). I want to repay for their help so that I am free from any debt. When I am free, from the debts, I can go on my own. Though it was/is the parents who played the major part, there are others as well who helped in growing up, physically and mentally. So, they also deserve the repay for the time and effort they spent on me. Its not the love that makes me closer to them. Its the feeling of duty to repay (I do not know why I cannot be independent without repaying, may be its the basic law of nature: independence meaning without debt of any sort). If these people die, colloquially termed as ‘loved ones’, my wish to repay will be unfulfilled, and I will have to live ever in debt.

How do I repay? I do not know for everything. But, like I want to be independent, I believe that they also want to be independent; personally independent. So I would like to help them to be independent, as a repay. They were unable, like me, to be independent because they themselves have their debt incurred by exact same way as I had. Since I do not know what exactly their debt is, I try to ease their environment so that they will be in better state to repay their debt. I guess (yes, it is a big guess) that giving, or trying to give, whatever they want, would make them more ‘themselves’ and independent. Money, health, bringing up other ‘bodies’ (their children) that they have/are bringing to the world, are some of the things, I think, that is preventing them from creating proper environment to make themselves independent. When they are free from their debt, they will be independent. When they will be independent, I will be independent. At that state, there will be no relation between them and me. BUT, its never going to happen that they will be free from their debts, and hence I.

हाम्रो काठमान्डौ

2007-02-25T04:39:00.000-05:00

Unidentified gang shoots two persons in the capital – Nepalnews.com

Feb. 22, 2007. A gang of unidentified people shot and injured two persons at Tundaldevi area in Kathmandu Wednesday morning. Kaji Sherpa and Nisha Bhattrai, who were worshiping at the Tundaldevi temple, received bullet injuries in the firing.

दुइ समूहबीच गोली हानाहान – Kantipuronline.com/kantipurdaily

Feb 22, 2007. राजधानीका ठमेल र विशालनगरमा दुइ ग्याङले हानेको गोली लागेर पा“चजना घाइते भएका छन् । ….. घाइते ३५ वषर्ीय काजी शर्ेपाले दीपक मनाङे समूहले गोली हानेको बताएका छन् । शेर्पा विपक्षी चक्रे मिलन समूहका सदस्य हुुन् ।

मलाई नबिथोलियोस् – Kantipuronline.com/kantipurdaily

Feb 24, 2007.

राजधानीबाट प्रकाशित हुने विभिन्न अखबारहरूमा काठमाडौं महानगरपालिका-४ टु“डालदेवीमा बुधबार भएको गोलीकाण्डमा मेरो नाम मुछिएकोप्रति मेरो ध्यानाकर्षा भएको छ । टु“डालदेवीमा गोली प्रहारबाट घाइते भएका भनिएका आङकाजी शर्ेपास“ग मेरो कुनै व्यक्तिगत रिसइबी छैन । बरु कुनै बेला शर्ेपालाई केही व्यापारिक कारोबारमा मैले हरसम्भव सहयोग गरेको थिए“ । उनलाई गोली हान्ने र भौतिक रूपमा मैले आक्रमण गर्नुपर्ने आधार र अवस्था छैन । जसरी उनको परिवारले ममाथि शंका गरेका छन्, त्यो अत्यन्तै काल्पनिक र तथ्यहीन आरोप हो ।

म एक हप्ताअघि जेलमुक्त भएलगत्तै आफ्नो व्यापार-व्यवसायमा सरिक रह“दै आएको छु । त्यसै सिलसिलामा वीरगन्ज र चितवनमा खाद्यँन्न ढुवानीसम्बन्धी मेरो व्यापारलाई सुचारु पार्ने सिलसिलामा म वीरगन्ज र चितवनमै रह“दै आएको छु । प्रशासनसमक्ष म प्रश्न गर्छर्ुकाठमाडौंमा नभएको मान्छेलाई के आधारमा गोली हानेको आरोप लगाइयो - अपराधहरूको अनुसन्धान गर्नलाई जनताले कर तिरेको राज्यकोषबाट तलब खाने अधिकृतहरूले त्यसरी बिनाअनुसन्धान, अनुमानको भरमा र कसैले चुक्ली लगाएको भरमा आरोप लगाएर एउटा स्वतन्त्र नागरिकको व्यक्तिगत जीवनलाई किन खल्बल्याइरहेका छन्, मैले बुझ्न सकेको छैन । अनुसन्धानबाट म दोषी प्रमाणित भए कारबाही भोग्न तयार छु, तर बिनाआधार मलाई दोषी देखाउन खोज्ने प्रशासनको प्रपञ्चविपरीत म निर्दोष ठहरिए“ भने मेरो नाम मुछ्नेहरूमाथि कारबाही हुनर्ुपर्छ कि पर्दैन - त्यो गोलीकाण्डमा मेरो वा मस“ग सम्बन्धित कुनै व्यक्तिको संलग्नता भए त्यसलाई प्रमाणित गर्न म चुनौती दिन्छु । यदि प्रशासनले मेरो संलग्नतालाई प्रमाणित गर्छ भने जस्तोसुकै सजायको भागिदार बन्न पनि म र मेरा सहयोगीहरू तयार रहेको स्पष्ट पार्छर्ु

हिजो राजा ज्ञानेन्द्र र पारसको उत्छृङ्खल तथा तानाशाही व्यवहारले मलाई गुण्डाजस्तो तुच्छ संज्ञामा बा“ध्यो, आज त्यो तत्वले धूलो चाटिसकेर लोकतान्त्रिक परिपाटीमा मुलुकले प्रवेश पाएको बेला फेरि मलाई त्यस्तै व्यवहार गर्न कुन तत्व लागिपरेको छ, मैले बुझ्न सकिन“ । विगतमा मबाट भएका गल्तीहरूलाई दर्ुइ वर्षो जेल सजायपछि सच्याएर शुद्ध व्यापारिक तथा सामाजिक क्षेत्रमा आफूलाई संलग्न गराउने मेरो सत्कार्यलाई बिथोलेर अझै पनि मलाई 'गुन्डा' जस्तो निकृष्ट

संज्ञा दिई मेरो मानसिकतालाई नबिथलिदिन

सञ्चारक्षेत्र, प्रशासन, शुभचिन्तक तथा सहयोगीहरूमा हार्दिक अपिल गर्छर्ु

- दीपक गुरुङ -मनाङ्गे)

पकनाजोल

काठमाडौं

Posted on: 2007-02-24 21:00:22

Dehumanization of Celebrities

2007-02-23T23:34:00.000-05:00

It seems the majority of people love dehumanizing something other than they are familiar with. Dehumanization is a powerful word. Merriam and Webster defines it as "deprivation of human qualities, personality or spirit". I would add to that definition "especially pertaining to other beings".
So there have been deaths, scandals, porn movies in this "kaliyug". One of the recent ones is the death of Anna Nicole Smith to still unconfirmed causes. (If the cause has been found, I apologize for not being up to date. ) Now many people have sympathy for her and especially for her young daughter. But an equal or even more proportion of people have anger and hatred for her. I agree that she does not quite have the talent to be an A-list celebrity. But she DIED. She was a human being with her own problems. Now I am not a psychologist and am not going to analyze her problems. Let others do that. But my point is if a person who has been in the public (albeit infamously) dies you should not come up with statements like "it's good that she died. Now there's one less useless person to eat up the resources of our earth."
Sick people might find humor in this. But to me, that comment has crossed the limit. There are thousands of other comments like that floating around in the internet. Internet has definitely helped me understand more of people in general. There are some extremely intelligent people, Sympathizing and able to discern the right from the wrong. While on the other extreme, are the ruthless, hidden-behind the-mask-of-anonymity cowards who like spreading filth and hatred.
I would be glad to have more of the first kind and less of the latter one. But the battle still rages on.

Snowfall in Kathmandu

2007-02-14T22:38:00.000-05:00

On Valentine's day, Kathmandu witnessed snowfall after 63 years, bringing jubilation to children and adults alike.

But what surprised me more than the snowfall in Kathmandu was the comment by Senior Divisional Meteorologist of the Meteorological Forecasting Division. He said that, “the temperature in the valley is 3 degree Celsius and if the temperature goes down to minus, the snow will freeze.” That was the comment that this official made talking to one of the leading dailies in Nepal, nepalnews.com. May be I am being too critical, or may be some editor of Nepalnews.com never studied science, but that was something, I thought, too obvious for even a 10 year old student. No biggy though!

http://www.nepalnews.com/archive/2007/feb/feb14/news08.php

Awakening

2007-02-11T04:38:00.000-05:00

Awakening

It happens often that I do not get a good sleep. It is my old habit the I have a sleeping disorder. It is not that I do a sleep walk or sleep talk or anything but it is totally of personal level. It concerns with my consciousness and affects ‘me’. It is that ‘me’ with the name given to identify as it, but also can be recognized if somehow your friends know with that particular new name. Yes, I am talking about the you inside you that defines your personality, that describes you to the personal level. And this thing in me that fascinates at times, that’s what I am talking about tonight.

I go to bed, at my usual time. But as soon as I am in my bed, lying but not asleep, it is the time I think. I think of only myself, not as the name I have, but for the self my name implies. This self goes to the personal level, thinks good and bad things happening in life and tries to find the answers to the deeper quests, cherish the moments of the past and anticipate the future. And slowly, I have to go to sleep, I have to rest and prepare myself for the tomorrow in coming. I have to wake myself up for the struggle or happiness, for whatever the morning brings.

I am so deep into my thoughts, refining my ideas and philosophies based on the knowledge of the experiences of the day. And slowly, my dreams start to be my realities. I am no more in the conscious world but in the subsconscious world where I can somehow to some limit shape my dreams. I can to some extent, change the happenings in my favor. But then, my body is already sleeping.

But then is the time when I experience the world, the true personal world that somehow has become a part of my philosophy. The question of death and life is answered in part for I am half conscious and half dead. I can partly experience what it would be like to be alive and live the material world, but partly, I am a true consciousness, a true life, a true philosophy of living.

All of a sudden, I come into life, I realize that I am sleeping in my bed, alone, yet I am sleeping. I try to move my legs, but I cannot, I try to shout but I cannot. Then I dream, a better life, where you have friends and the world behind you. Your friends come to you, to wake you up, to save you from that half-life and to take you to the full life, but they do not succeed. You are still alone, sleeping, unable to move any part of your body. Your friends take you to the washroom and wash your face with cold water. It is a full daylight outside with sun shining, and you can feel the warmth even inside the washroom. But, somehow, your friends are not very close to the inner self you have. They can only ease your body but not you. Realization of this makes the things even worse, you go crazy, lost, lonely, suffocated in the personal world.

Its then, you make a move; a strong move to move your fingers, or to make a noise that would prove that you are still alive. You give your full effort, and finally it works, you move your legs from one side to the other. Now, you are fully awake, with no friends in your side, no washroom near by, let alone the cold refreshing water that you thought you rinsed your face with. You are alone in your bed, feeling relieved to be out of that stage, the half death.

And you keep wondering, what if all the people who die are exactly in that state, alive but not physically? That’s when I love myself for being a Hindu, my body will soon be burnt, and only my true self will remain without my body.

Fighting Nepal Bandhas with Monsoon

2007-02-10T21:54:00.000-05:00

It just occured to me that there has to be some sort of connection between the expectation of the incoming Monsoon and the success of the April revolution. Here, I am also proposing a way to reduce the number of protests that have become so frequent these days that their mere absence from our every day lives makes us question the very normalcy of the state of the country! (My tequilla bottle is staring at me. :) )

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CPN (UML) notoriously introduced the culture of Nepal Bandhas some ten years ago as a means to express their discontentment against the ruling Congress Party. While those initial bandhas might have had some successes in voicing their dissent, the protestors to this day choose to ignore the loss of life and property due to their actions. Given the low achievement rate of these bandhas, why do our leaders—political and civil—continue to take any and all of their grievances to the streets even when they are fully aware that the only thing that these events do is inflict harm on ordinary citizens like themselves?

When in government, people like Girija choose to ignore the genuine demands raised by different groups. If their past actions are any guide, the government first looks at the number of casualties of the group before it even considers a talk with that group, regardless of the genuineness of their demands. But, it is not the government alone that bears the responsibilities for these bandhas; it’s the civil society too which is more than eager to come out on to the streets for nonsensical stuffs. But whatever it is, the government simply cannot meet the demands of all these groups even if it wants to.

The April revolution epitomized this Bandha culture. But the single most important thing that was critical on the success of the April revolution was neither the rigidity of Girija and the seven parties nor the struggle of the Maoists for the last 10 years; it was the expectation of the arrival of the Monsoon very soon. There were numerous rounds of protests—bandhas—before they staged that final decisive revolution in the capital. Why didn’t we get the victory in, let’s say, January? If there were no expectation of the Monsoon then we would still have King Gyanendra as the supreme head of the country.

The turning point in the April revolution was when Girija told his protestors of the incoming Monsoon season. Girija himself admitted that if the struggle were not to be successful before Monsoon, then it would never be. That is because with Monsoon, the protestors would also go back to their homes, mainly for agricultural reasons. This decrease in the number of protestors would directly undercut the heretofore achievement of the revolution. Moreover, who would want to go out in the torrential downpour and protest when the only people who suffer would be the protestors themselves?

Girija was shrewd enough to have built this decisive revolution on the expectation of the incoming Monsoon. And yes, it was just the expectation and not the actual occurrence of the event in itself. It didn’t matter whether the event occurred or not. Thus, Girija acted rationally one time when it mattered and capitalized on those irrational minds who do not need any reasons to go out on to the streets!

But going back to the issues of these bandhas, why did it so happen that there are relatively few bandhas during Monsoon season? Exactly, that is not just a coincidence; it is for a reason I mentioned earlier. The only way we can stop these bandhas is to have this “expectation” of Monsoon season all along the year. If the stakes are not high, this expectation will deter the protestors to come out on to the streets. It’s not always that the stakes are high.

So, I propose our government to invest heavily on the technology that can bring in those clouds from the Indian Ocean to over our major cities. The government should have a “controller” that can cause the downpour in our cities. This is one technology that is already in progress in China and Japan but for different reasons. Let’s make use of the technology to fight nonsensical protests and protestors. But, this should be a top secret program!

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http://www.kantipuronline.com/morephoto/day13/2.html

Just imagine what the torrential downpour of rain would do to these protestors :)

The Valley Unearthed

2007-02-08T15:32:00.000-05:00

Crunch Time

So I gathered data about my journey. My acquaintances asked me about the length of the journey. Ironically, I realized that I did not know myself. I had planned to make this an excursion. Only a mind refresher. But for some strange reason, I was heading down another path. I myself had little idea where this path led to. They asked me whether I intended to move to Nagdaha. Honestly, I had no answer to this even though I told them that I will come back again in several months.

I had always contained in myself a desire to start a new life. For here, I had realized that people had become too leisurely. Their life was easy...too easy. This marginality had tormented me throughout my adolescence. It had been invisibly suppressed through unseen prejudices.

After years of torment, in which I had surrendered and then risen countless times, never had I been able to brush this transparent marginality off. And as I gazed out into the milky sky, I realized that the wheel had already been set in motion. I only had to let go.

Fuck Shite Die!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

2007-02-08T03:27:00.000-05:00

What the fuck happend to teh write lines I worte.
Mayeb I am just Grouting!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The Valley Unearthed

2007-02-07T23:54:00.000-05:00

Nāgdaha, the Valley Unearthed

So here I was rejuvenated from my stay at Lhasa. I was ready to venture forth into what lay around our abode. The elders had heard tales of a magnificient lake near the foothills of the snow mountains. After poring through some of the records, I and my fellow scholars had discovered its Sanskrit name to be Nāgdaha. I could reminisce stories from the elders about the foothills of the snow mountains. They had described lush vegetations, mild weather suited for the Kings and a diverse area of florals and fauna. After my morning prayer, I had a meeting with one of the eldest of travellers. He had been further than Nagdaha. As I sat in his humble abode, conversing, I felt through him.

He described to me, the civilization that lay beyond this river that he called the Indus River. He had gone there to get an official transcript of the Prajnaparamita which he and his students had meticulously translated from Pali to our language. He had travelled thousands of leagues and I slowly gathered all the information I could about Nāgdaha; for that was my destination.

How Momos could have prevented the Terai conflict?

2007-02-07T18:04:00.000-05:00

Ok..this article is purely for amusement purposes. Nothing more!
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As delicious and mouth watering as it may look, Momo has more than just its culinary appeal. As a Nepalese food that has won acclamation from even the strongest critics of Nepalese cuisines who believe that the only thing that Nepalese eat is rice and chicken, Momo has become a unifying dish among Nepalese students, at least in the US. The number of members in the groups associated with this dish in sites like facebook, a favorite “hang out place” of many students, speaks itself of its popularity.

But what most people do not realize is the immense influence that this Momo market could have on the events unfolding in Nepal, the Madhesi conflict.

To understand more about the demand of Momos on the streets of Kathmandu, I contacted few Momo shopkeepers. I started first with the owner of our very own Bamboo Cottage Restaurant in Budhanilkantha. The proprietor of the restaurant believes that if there are no Momos on any one weekend then not only will he lose the only source of revenue, but he also goes as far as to hint that the students could possibly go on a revolt. His deductions appalled me, but I wanted to confirm it. The managers at Momo Kings in Jamal and Putali Sadak also concur with the proprietor of the Bamboo Cottage Restaurant in that there could be a different and much effective revolution if the Momo demand is not met. By the end of this mission, I was convinced that this steep increase in demand of Momo is something that could potentially change the way we live!

Momo is not Momo anymore if the meat is not from buffalo, and to be specific Rango. Obviously, analyzing where these buffaloes come from is of utmost importance if we are to understand how this Momo market affects, if it does, the current events unfolding in the country.

Then, I began to collect the necessary data in my quest to find more about this Momo market. Although, I didn’t find what I was particularly looking for, I, however, did find the population of buffalo in the country in 1997. The data certainly is little obsolete; however, it serves our purpose—to understand the Momo market.

Buffalo population distribution (in thousands): 1997
Mountains: 304.5
Hills: 1918.7
Terai: 1139.2

Data source: http://www.buffaloreview.20m.com/Leadarticle.html

The data, although too scant to make any reasonable deduction, is telling! The majority of the buffalo owners in hills are either Brahmans or Chhetris who find it immoral to sell cows and even buffalos for meat. Then one may ask, rightly, why is it that the number of buffalos is still so high in the hills? That is because buffaloes in the hills are mainly used for milk (and its derivates) production. Not surprisingly, the hilly districts are the largest producers of milk in the country. So, obviously, the meat for all these Momo that we get in the streets of Kathmandu or any other major cities in the country comes from buffalos of Terai.

We have already lost 22 lives in the Madhesi revolution, yet, we haven’t reached any consensus. This delay doesn’t have anything to do with the demands of Madhesi, rather, it has to do with the places of revolts. In order for any major revolution to be successful in Nepal, it has to be done in Kathmandu as is evident from the 1990 revolution and the April revolution, for obvious reasons. Unfortunately, Kathmandu has not quite yet “seen” this revolution.

So, I suggest all our Terai brothers and sisters to stop the supply of buffaloes to Kathmandu. Without buffaloes, there won’t be any “real" Momo on the streets of Kathmandu. If the proprietor of the Bamboo Cottage Restaurant is right, if the managers at Momo Kings in Jamal and Putalisadak are right, and if my own conviction is right, we will witness a revolution which will be much more effective if we are to have a halt in the supply of buffaloes. Let's wage a Momo war.

The era of conventional revolution is gone; modern times require modern ways!

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"Momo is something that could potentially change the way we live!" (Coolfire, 2007) :)

http://members.chello.at/andreapi/nepal/kailash.htm

(I wish I had a better picture)