Food for Thought

A road well travelled

2006-12-06T11:52:00.000-05:00

This is a letter that I wrote home today.......

Dear ------------,

I had a strange dream last night. I was walking back home from mid-town (maybe Thamel or New Road or somewhere else, I used to do that lot, before I learned how to ride a motorcycle), along Lazimpat and the dream was so vivid. I saw all the shops along the way, and not only that, I also saw the faces of the shopkeepers, customers, general pedestrians. I think it was evening, maybe five or six o'clock on summer. The sights were real enough and on top of that I remembered the smells too, of smoke out of vehicles, of food sold on some of the shops, of the stink of garbage. The background hum of people speaking and of horns honking and of overloaded tired vehicles straining under the pressure. I remembered all the little cracks in pavement, from where grass would grow, the dust covered walls of some of the houses, even the windows facing the road would be dusty, not cleaned for eons. Sometimes the dust would get washed during monsoon rains, but often times the dust would just form a protective sheath, some sort of covering on the wall. I felt the equal and opposite reaction from the pavement on my feet, as Newton Baje clearly quantified it. But on a dream? Later I realized that it was the cat not conceding her ground. I realized this later because if she sees any movement under covers, she assumes it's something suspicious or we're trying to play with her, and instantly seizes the offending hand (or feet whichever the case may be) and chews on it softly.

I could not fix a definite date or time, just some generic summer evening. Trying to fix a date is important as that would allow me to define the clothes, and hairstyles (the ubiquitous Nepali fashion sense, the hairstyle would be the same as on whichever Hindi movie is a hit at the time). I remember walking alone though. I guess this walking along this road is important to me, ages ago I had written a nice little story that happened on a particular night for one of my term papers during high school. High School! we used to call them college back then, strange that the semantics that one uses changes with time and place. English was one of my favorite classes, and of course of of the areas where I was (and hopefully still am) relatively stronger. I maybe should have gone into creative writing. If I have time, maybe I can take a class or two next semester. Hopefully that will work out. But I digress here.

No doubt, over the five years that we've been here, that stretch of road has seen many things. From large Julus, curfews, bone shattering traffic, heavy rains and cold nights, little dust storms, scores of people pounding it with their feet, an ambitious King, power hungry politicians, thieves and police, army boots, people dreaming of a better future, people despairing of a lost future and the list, I bet, goes on and on. The physical face of the road must also have changed. A lot of the places, little shops and people that I saw last night maybe do not exist anymore. People change with time, die or move on, shops get bought and sold, maybe broken up to be rebuilt as a shiny new mall, places get renovated and get a face-lift like a tired actress getting a breast implant just to push her career by a few more years and a few more miles.

A funny thing, I would have associated my memories of dear old Kantipuri Nagari to maybe Thamel or Dhapasi or even maybe New Road or Ason, and what comes to mind? The humdrum Lazimpat stretch, all the way from Lainchaur to Narayan Gopal Chowk (do they still call it that or has it been Loktantra-ised?) I used to walk (or ride or travel may be a more suitable word) through that road daily and maybe that's why I have such a strong memory of it and I had that dream last night.

A line in a famous song by Aerosmith goes "Life's a Journey not a Destination", and so the little road to Lazimpat represents my life. It's changed over the years, not only the road itself, but in retrospect, interpretation of the road too. I might have interpreted a crack in a pavement one way, and with hindsight, maybe I can interpret it in another way. Memories play tricks, most remember only the good part. This dream was different in the sense that I saw the good along with the bad, and remembered both the sweet smells of the street along with the banal stink. Remember I said that I did not know where exactly I was coming from, and so all of us start in this great journey of life from uncertain pasts and our destination ultimately is to arrive home, in death, as that is one constant in life. All the others, change and can be changed, you meet people along the way, make acquaintances for a brief period of time, some stay with you longer than others, sights, sounds and smells that you encounter along the way are experiences, some good some bad. The street of Lazimpat may remember your existence or it may not, depends upon the dent that you make on the pavement, but the street is changed in a substantial way just because you have walked on it.

Well, that's my interpretation of a dream.... hehehe, hopefully it is not so boring. All else is fine over here, it's just grown cold, below freezing over the couple of days. We've also had very little sunshine. It'll snow soon and everything will be covered in white, masks the underlying surfaces and gives a false feeling of cleanliness, untill spring thaw comes and everything is muddy and squishy. Then the underbelly will be exposed, but also life will start anew.

Love ,

Twaaks

California - Episode One

2007-01-05T12:05:00.000-05:00

I have to write about the California trip in episodes.

It was a long trip and well worth it. I will begin at the beginning. The idea for this trip formed when our plan to visit back home got scrapped (you know who you are MFE*!!!). So I thought why not California, we have a bunch of friends there. So I called Gols and made the plan. We decided to go to LA first. Since we were landing on LA anyways, why not drive up to Las Vegas, at least for a night. And so, लहरो तान्दा पह रो भनेझै, we ended up extending the trip.

I had been literally counting the hours prior to the trip, pretty much exited and pumped up. For one thing, we were visiting California, the land of eternal sunshine, the golden state, the third largest economy of the world!! and more importantly, we were going to meet old friends with whom we'd shared all ups and downs that life had thrown in our way. Preety complains that I pestered her off of her mind, I get riled up before starting anything new, butterflies in the stomach, you know (or as Dau would say it, "गेडा च्यापेको").

We had to catch a flight from Logan International in Boston, and since we live about an hour and half away, we'd have to go to the local C&J Trailways station to get a bus to Logan. And on top of that we had to time everything so that we'd get two hours before the reporting time so that we'd have enough time to get through security. Also CNN was full of special reports (with Anderson Cooper? The jerk, more about him later) about inconvenience in flights, about lost baggage, and long security lines, the new regulations so that liquids and gels were prevented in hand carry luggage, and also a big snowstorm in Denver that had thrown all the flight schedules into the works. So we got to the bus station a little early, parked way in the corner and got a free shuttle ride into the main station building (I had to tip the driver, but what the heck, it was the beginning of the holidays). This was the first time that we'd taken a bus to anywhere, and my! I expected something like the Sajha Bus or maybe an improved version of the Sajha bus, but this turned out to be great. And maybe the first time that I got to Boston without either being in the drivers seat or riding shotgun.

We got to the airport with about three hours to spare, and decided to get through the security. We expected a lot of hassle, thanks to you, Mr. Cooper, but cleared security in about 10 minutes total. We didn't have any hand carry luggage, I expect that helped. Well, once inside I had the first drink of the trip, a 16 oz Sam Adams. Lurey would disagree, but argumentatively one of the best beers around.

Got into the plane and the nightmare started. The coast to coast flight is too long and the planes too cramped. Contrary to what they show in the advertisement, the bathroom is not as spacious as shown below. One can barely stand to take a pee.
I had expected the airport to be a hassle and instead the plane ride turned out to be more difficult. I can still remember a time when travelling by air used to be a treat. Even economy travellers (which is a polite word for those who travel third class) got a decent meal, a couple of complementary drinks, spacious leg room and excellent service by beautiful air hostesses. You know the airline industry has hit a downward spiral when you have to buy dinner in form of a soggy sandwich for 8 dollars and drinks cost more than at the local strip-club (not that I would know for sure, but I suspect). After about a couple of brandy's we did get a fitful sleep, but the excitement factor was humongous.

We arrived at LAX on time, the baggage was delayed for a few minutes. That gave me some more anxiety. I had lost a bag once when coming from Nepal and the airlines managed to return the bag after three months, just in time, as that particular bag had all the winter clothes and it was about to snow. But I digress here. Gols and Ahmed also got in time and so we went to pick up the car. I had reserved large SUV (I'd not want be caught dead driving a minivan, I'm not a soccer mom!), but we got a Dodge Durnago, wow! V-8 and spacious. It consumed huge amount of gas, but what the heck.

We had also borrowed Prabesh's GPS unit. Garmin, ran a cute ad for the same series of GPS units for the holiday season. And it was my first experience using a GPS unit. We knew the address of the hotel that we were supposed to go to, we entered it into the GPS, and hehehe, Microsoft says "fatal error: 0x0000103, press ctrl-alt-del to debug". That was embarrassing, I hadn't even brought along a map for the trip. Ahmed had to call his cousin, ask him to get into Mapquest and spell out the directions turn by turn. Well we complained about the GPS until we reached the hotel. I felt like flinging it out of the window, but Prabesh would have flung me out of the window if I had done that, so I let it be. So we got to the hotel late and had to eat Popeye chicken for dinner. Remember to shoot me in the head before I enter that establishment again. We got back to the hotel and decided to sleep early, we had a new day of Universal Studio excitement to look for the next day. So I went to the bathroom and the fucking toilet overflowed. Served me right trying to get a cheap hotel from hotels.com. But I just sighed, I was too excited to be in California to worry about the little inconveniences, and it was the start of the vacation season, and I'd stayed in worse places, so what the heck.

And so day one of the great California adventure ended.

* MFE - Mother Fucking Eagle, something I picked up a long time ago.

California - Episode Two

2007-01-08T15:01:00.000-05:00

I got up early on the morning of 24th. We had planned to go to the Universal Studios theme park. I had heard a lot about this place over the years. We already had bought the tickets on-line, but were a little apprehensive that all the rides would be closed this close to the holidays.

But first things first. The toilet had overflowed last night, so I went to the front desk to let them know. The hotel apparently was a mom-and-pop affair, with mom-and-pop off to holidays and the daughter in charge. She handed me a plunger with a sweet, innocent little smile. I took it, went upstairs, waited for about five minutes and returned back. Hehehe, sly me, not taken in by the sweet smile of here, and told her that it did not work. After a few phone calls, she managed to get us another room. Which was fine. Next I had a long wait for everyone to get up and get ready, and off we headed to Universal Studios.

So, the GPS did not work last night! I had asked the girl at the front desk for directions, bit since LA was a new city, we were sure to get lost. Well, what the heck, we said and gave the GPS a second try. And miraculously, this time, it worked. But it was a short drive anyways. I had heard a lot about the notorious LA traffic, but this was like driving in a sleepy little NH town up North just after a snowstorm. No traffic at all. But then again, it was on Christmas eve, everyone must have been home preparing the turkey. Bastards charged us $10.00 for parking, after a $50.00 ticket per head. But then again, I suppose they need to eat too, even though it is caviar, and not daal-bhaat like us, mere mortals.

We entered the Universal Studios, and were greeted by a giant screen playing a seductive number, with a girl gyrating to the music, a bunch of people taking photographs in front of the screen. We watched for a while, mouths agape. But soon lost interest and moved on.

Most of the people we saw were South Asians, like us, some Hispanics, and a negligible number of Kuires. I suppose because everyone else was busy on the holidays and we were the only group with time on our hands. But that was for better, as we would realize later, as lines to all the rides would be much shorter.

Most of the souvenir shops, restaurants were closed. It almost seemed like a deserted town. "Wrong time of year to visit", I kicked myself mentally. But we stopped for coffee at a Starbucks anyways and walked for a while. The entrance to the studios was a little way off and what we had just seen was a pre-view of what was to come.

The first thing that greeted us as we entered was this display of statues. It took us a while to realize that one of the statues was live! (The guy with the cap is live) I did take a video, but it came out too grainy, maybe Ahmed had better luck.

We moved on, and the first ride that we came along was "Shrek". (Now for the uninitiated, the way it goes, first you have to have a hot movie, then you make rides based on those movies. You make a small animation or film, and have some special effects etc.) The line into the ride was pretty short. They give you these oversized glasses, to watch three-dimensional effects. And we had to wait in front of a TV screen (it was dressed up, but still a TV screen). This was the background for the show. We realized later, that they probably had us waiting outside for about fifteen minutes while they cleared up the main ride after the last bunch of people. But at that time I though "खेल खतम, पैसा हजम", what a washout. But, the door eventually opened, and we got to sit for a while. And my, what a ride. The animation was superb. The 4-D effects were great, everything from little spatters of water when Shrek sneezed to the spiders rushing through the feet, and the seats moving in response to whatever was happening in the screen. All in all, pretty impressive.

The next few rides were also impressive, the virtual reality Back to the Future ride, the car would be on the same place and they would just rotate and shake the car in front of a giant screen, but the roller-coaster effect was scare. I have to admit, I closed my eyes on a couple of places, especially when they did a vertical drop. Preety was screaming hoarse into my ears. A bunch of other people in with us were probably more entertained watching Pretty scream than the ride. The Return of the Mummy Ride was also impressive. I did not expect it to be a roller coaster ride, but wow! I cannot really describe everything to its full justification; one has to be on the rides to experience it. This is starting to sound like and advertisement to Universal Studios, and they do not need any more advertisement, they are full of self worth.

The Studio tour was interesting in itself. We saw the shark from the movie Jaws, and it's probably 1/20th of the shark that one sees on the movie. These guys do have the mastery of their art, and spin dreams well. No wonder one gets lost in a dream world once one enters the movie theater.

We'd drive through streets in New York and suddenly enter medieval Europe and then the next block would be a dusty western town out, you'd only have to look over the corner to see Clint Eastwood riding into the town and the very next street would be rural Mexico with a life size flood and rain that could be called in at a push of a button, true rainmakers, these guys.

This photograph on the left side is from the movie Spartacus, if I heard the guide right. I took this photograph because I remembered reading a couple of weeks ago somewhere that Spartacus was Comrade Chairman Prachandas favourite Hollywood movie. He said he liked it because it shows the eternal struggle of a small band of rebels against the mighty Roman Empire and in the end, the small band of rebels prevail morally if not militarily. That was what I understood to be the essence of what he said; of course it was smothered with the masaledar sauce of Marxist social commentary which was irrelevant to the question asked. But then again, hey, to each his own, who am I to comment.

This last photograph on the right was played out on the streets in the form of सडक नाटक and is out of the movie the Mask of Zorro. The girl was exceptionally beautiful, the guy tall (and masked). They put us behind a set of ropes during swordfight lest someone get hurn and sue Universal Studios for millions. But in the end the masked guy got to kiss the girl and I heard someone remark - "Hey! I'd love to have that job!"

Talking about jobs - we came across a bunch of superheroes, Spiderman, Captain America, the Goblin guy from Spiderman and Wolverine from the X-Men. Their job was to just hang around and pose for pictures with kids and show some cool action moves. The sun was hot, and these guys must have been there since the park opened posing for photographs with undies outside their pants and fielding questions from sniveling little kids with ice-cream running down the length of their arms (reminds me of a perennial question when I was in school - who would win the fight between Superman and Hanuman). All the other guys had the benefit of a face covering mask except for Wolverine. Poor guy! one could read the rage welling inside him, he was ready to stick those fangs of his inside some of the people around posing for photographs. If looks could have killed, I would be writing this article posthumously.

There were a bunch of other rides which I will mercifully skip here. Terminator 2 seemed tired and old and it must be in a list somewhere ready to be cut off and discarded to be replaced by some new ride. And that was that.

On returning, the shops and restaurants were open, apparenlty they did not open till evening. So our initial apprehension was false and there was nothing to fear. The dream machine is always open 24/7, 365.

We returned to the hotel. This time the GPS thingie did not act up. It still would show fatal error for Yucca Street, but showed the other street adjacent to the hotel, and that was good enough for us to return.

We went for a walk by Hollywood walk of fame in the evening. Among the many shimmering stars of yesteryears, I found one that I posed to take a photograph on. Somehow, I expected the walk of fame to be larger than it was. It almost seemed anticlimactic. Somehow, everything that one watched on TV appears to be lesser or smaller when one sees the thing in real life. I wonder what that is all about.

We had vowed to go hungry than go into Popeyes, and so after much bickering we found this quaint little restaurant open late in the evening, had our dinner, and turned in for the night. Tomorrow was another day, and we had to make way for Las Vegas.

Calfornia - Episode Three

2007-01-09T16:39:00.000-05:00

On the 25th, we got to test both the car and Paakhe' s GPS to their true potential. The car was expensive, but a breeze to drive. Large, so that one had to watch both corners of the front end, especially in narrow lanes, when parallel parking and during turns, but the V8 engine did provide enough power for all grades of slopes. Too bad that we did not get to drive it up Lombard street in San Fransisco, but we did drive the car for over a thousand miles.

After the initial hangup, in typical Microsoft fashion, the Garmin GPS held up to its promise. The first full use that we made was to drive up to the Hollywood sign in LA. The sign can be seen from virtually anywhere in LA. It's up in a hill in a nice location, and a lot of people come to hike, exercise and have a picnic. If I ever end up going there next time, I'll remember to pack a picnic lunch.

We decided to time our drive to Las Vegas so that we'd reach the place in the evening. So we still would have a couple of hours to kill and decided to try and head to the famous LA beaches. This time Golay handled the GPS. Golay remained the chief navigator for the rest of the trip. (He would later come to refer the GPS as "my precious" and would not let anyone touch it, and he lost his weight and changed his appearance remaining attached to it. He let go of the unit only after a fight and plans to get it back as soon as he can. Read more about it here. :D)

I think Ahmed's cousin had recommended Santa Monica Beach so we decided to go there. Of course we drove through the famous Beverly Hills to get there (if you're my age you'd certainly remember Beverly Hills 90210, I wonder if that place exists or is a figment of imagination created somewhere in the Universal Studios). I was reminded of a song that I once heard over the radio and goes something like,

Beverly Hills,

That's where I wanna be,

Livin' on Beverly Hills

The beach is much wider and the water much warm compared to those on the East Coast. I wanted to go into the water, but considering that no-one was in, I dropped the idea. The rest, boardwalk, eateries, little shops was the same as one would find in innumerable beaches all around. We walked along the pier to the end and there was this guy with a guitar singing songs. Average voice and all, but he was in front of the deep blue ocean and he sang a familiar song, "The Desperado". Sentimental bastards that we are, we had to stop and sat in front of the stairs and listen to the whole song. I did drop in a couple of bucks :D My good deed for the day, but we enjoyed the song. You can see Golay on silhouette, on top of the stairs.

We did take some photographs with Preety and her Palm trees. And then we were ready to hit the highways. The GPS showed us a route to get to Las Vegas (LV from now on) and would recalculate as we missed a turn. After a couple of tries we finally felt a little comfortable with her, Ahmed christened her "Basanti" after Hema Malini in Sholay, who would later grow to be Basanti Raadi. She's an eccentric device to say the least and has a personality of her own, as Gols points out.

The drive itself was uneventful. Ahmed took over somewhere in between and the road into LV was pretty jam-packed. As we neared, we'd get excited and should "Las-Vegas!!" only to realize it to be some outlying hotel-casino-resort on the outskirts of the main maal. We'd reserved a hotel on line on LV too, and after the experience at LA we were expecting something of the same sort. And considering that we were paying less than LA, there was no way that we could expect something better.

But the hotel itself turned out to be intimidating. No less intimidating than LV itself. We had booked a hotel in the South Strip and apparently the Strip is the happening place in LV. The Strip is distinctly divided into North, Center and South. The Center Strip has more famous hotels like the Bellagio, and Caesars Palace and the Eiffel Tower. The South Strip also has a number of extraordinary hotels from New York, New York (where NY is replicated with all the famous landmarks) to the Pyramid to the Fairy Tale Castle.

I had printed out the hotel confirmation slips before leaving home, but it was intimidating to enter the hotel on my own, so I asked Golay to tag along, just in case they laughed and did not let me enter (this truly happened to us in India where they would not let us enter a hotel in town even when we said would pay to enter, they apparently did not like our skin or something. Somehow we South-Asians are racist to our own kind, so we should be careful when crying racism on part of others). But the hotel was right and the room was on the sixteenth floor. I believe this was the first time that I got into the sixteenth floor of any building. (going red on the face: well what'd you expect from someone from a third world country!! Just kidding, just kidding for you apologists!)

So we freshened up, Preety would take ages to dress up, so we left her in the room and hit the bar. We'd gotten some comments while checking is, drinks were cheaper than the airlines. But I now kind-of understood why the rooms were so cheap. The hotels make money off gambling (that's obvious) but also from food, drink and other services.

Preety joined us in a while. Sudhir-Bro called a few minutes later and joined us in the hotel. We took off sightseeing shortly after that. Gols and Ahmed decided to explore the city on their own leaving us couples to go our own way. Hehehe I wonder why? Don't get your hopes too high, nothing like that happened. I will leave that story for Gols to write if he wishes.

The city itself is a sight to see. The hotels are spectacular. One thing that is ubiquitous is the prostitution industry. It is everywhere. Nevada is the only state in the union with legalized prostitution. More about that here. You'd see these men standing in the street giving out cards with semi-nude photographs (of porn stars I presume) with phone numbers and listed as "escort services". The article that I have posted the link to says that these guys mostly are "day-labourers", and handing out cards is their part-time work. Moreover, scores of these cards are left on pavements for anyone interested to pick up. It's a surreal world. And maybe the most "in-your-face" form of advertisement of prostitution that we saw was those painted on the sides of trucks.

Walking through the Center strip, we got tired and decided to head back to the hotel after a couple of drinks (I think on a place called Flamingo). Preety had high heels on, so walking was difficult for her. We decided to take a taxi and head back. I was little tipsy by then and the taxi driver was a talkative guy. That made an explosive mix, a lot of fireworks. People on the back were probably bored out of their minds.

Anyhoo, the driver of course wanted to know where we were from, and of course I have a ready-made answer for that - "New Hampshire, up in Northeast, you know, where it snows a lot".

But this guy was persistent, he asked, "Yeah, yeah, but where are you originally from"

"Guess", I said.

"India?", of course we seem the type

"No"

"Pakistan"

"No"

And Sudhirji quips in from the back - "Actually we're from a place called Nepal, ever heard of it"

Now, the polite answer in this situation is "Yes of course, I know. But where exactly is Nepal? I'm sure I've read about it somewhere but I forgot at the moment"

But to our eternal surprise, the guy goes - "Kathmandu?"

We are all speechless, never expected anyone in Nevada to know that we existed as a nation, least of all a cab-driver. And he goes on - "yeah! my son is an Israeli citizen, he went mountain climbing there. He loved the place" and so on.

Of course, we used to have a lot of Israeli tourists some time ago. We might still have some. I suppose they're probably the only ones with enough balls and military training to venture into Mao controlled areas these days.

We talk for a while and arrive at the hotel.

We get off and since we had talked for a while, I had to tip him heavily. Ouch! my pocket said, but what the heck! we're on a vacation. He shook my hands, but before I had a chance to get out of the cab, he started off again - "Hey, wait a minute. I wanted to ask a question, have you ever heard of this song - Ichaka dana, bichaka dana nananan?"

Now that's a big surprise, because it's a Hindi song from a very old movie to begin with. And very few people, if at all, of my age would ever have heard that song. I say "Yes!! I know that song"

And the cab driver smiles, and says - "Back in my days in my home town, Raj Kapoor and Nargis were huge. And I remember watching that movie. I don't remember all the details though"

I should have asked him where he was from and so on, but considering it was his business time, and there were a line of cars behind us, I did not persist. But what a guy, you never know who you're gonna meet walking down the street.

We called it a night and went to sleep. The next day would be along one. I had hoped that I'd be able to tag Hoover Dam on this posting too, but that would make this article too long. So until episode four, so long!

Mirli Meow

2007-01-10T09:59:00.000-05:00

Before I start Episode Three, I have to write a little about Mirli Meow. She's the smug one in the picture below. Her first name is Mirli and Last name is Meow, I write this so that there is no confusion. I am a dog person. I prefer dogs to cats any day of the week. But the case of Mirli Meow is a little different. She lives with us and sleeps in our bed. She's the first cat that I've come across who snores so loudly that it almost seems that the roof would collapse on your head. And I mean she snores, not just purr like cats often do. Between her snoring on one side and Preety on the other side, I get little sleep these days.

Mirli used to be the Meeker's (our landlords) cat. It originally was not theirs, they adopted her after the original owner developed some allergy to cat dander. So Mirli had already grown up when she moved in with the Meekers. Of course she was not happy, since she got displaced from her family and started to act like a delinquent teenager. She'd always been a house cat, but Mrs. Meeker became tired of tidying up after her, so she (Mrs. Meeker) decided to make Mirli and outside cat. That was fine. But Mirli being a creature of habit and seeking her comfort decided to adopt us instead. She started coming upstairs and look at us with such sad eyes, that one could not help feel heartbroken. We had to let her in. And then she just started to dance on our heads and boss us around. And by us, I mean all of us, not just Preety and me, but the Meekers too.

She comes and goes as she pleases. She'll stay outside as long as it's warm and sunny and come back in once it starts getting cold. She needs to be let out every couple of hours and is an early riser in the morning. She'll raise a racket if she's not let out by five in the morning. And she waits outside the door to get into our apartment every evening. She's taken a liking to us.

And Preety has taken the cat to be her daughter. She babies that cat too much and sometimes tries to disciple the cat. But we all know how that works, hehehe, one might have better success scolding a dos, but a cat will just turn her nose up in the air and go about her business. I suspect Preety does the same in any confrontational situation. It's almost like living with two cats. I call Preety my big cat and Mirli my small cat.

One of the biggest concern that we had when we left for California was who'd take care of the cat. Preety was so worried that she seriously thought of scrapping the whole trip for the cat. Whew! glad that did not happen. We were able to make an arrangement with the Meekers to take care of Mirli, they'd let her into our apartment at night and let her out again in the morning. So that worked out well. And the smug photograph that I posted up did come out good too....

California - Episode Four

2007-01-12T12:04:00.000-05:00

Mundane work after vacation is impossible to navigate through, especially when they've accumulated over a couple of weeks. I'm trying to find a BIOS from a stupid AMD Athalon that someone managed to mangle, but the task is more difficult than it seems up-front. I've put that on back burner for a while, and will revel in memories of the trip for a while.

So when I last left off, we were in Las Vegas, Nevada. Walking down the tempting streets of the Sin City, where everything seems to be fair-game. The only catch is that one needs to have enough money.

The energetic, lustrous city shimmering with excitement on the night is still trying to shake off last night's burn out, in the morning. The gentle rays of sun wash down on the streets as if to cleanse it, only to become covered with the same-old, same-old when the night falls on. I wake up really early. My back kind of aches from sleeping on the floor. I try to get every one out of bed, but their eyes are still drowsy with sleep. So I freshen up and think of banging down Golay and Ahmed's room. They're still in bed, and Golay complains - "Hey, I should call you Mom! you're the only one after mom trying to babysit us!". Hah! I think to myself, we will not get out of this town in time if I don't rush you guys. So I let them get up in their own time and go down to the lobby to try to get some fresh coffee.

I expected the lobby to be deserted, but it;s busy as a beehive full of angry bees. People coming into the hotel, people checking out, people ready to go to breakfast, lunch, people ready for some more sight-seeing and gambling. And there are a couple of more stragglers on the bar. - "Was it a long night or an early morning?" I muse to myself, loudly. It's easier to get a bottle of beer early in the morning than a cup of coffee, in Las Vegas. So I just smoke a cigarette and head back upstairs to nag everyone to get ready so that we can grab some breakfast.

Checking out is pretty easy, you just drop in a form in conveniently placed letter-boxes and you're done. They even sent me the bill at the address that I requested. Isn't efficiency a charm? We go to the in-house restaurant. The food is good and reasonably priced. I look at the menu - Menus are examination questions, the waitress is the examiner and the questions she fires - uh.... is what I say going to be the right answer? So I opt for something simple, I kind-of know that we're going to miss lunch, so I order the big breakfast. I eat eggs, bacon, sausage, potatoes on top of that Preety's pancakes and Golay's Belgian waffles, and some.

So we set out. We decide to go see the Hoover Dam, well we're in the area already and it'd be a shame to miss it. But we drop off Sudhirji and Missus first. They've already seen the place earlier. I tease Pragya about having lunch in her relatives place, and she takes me too seriously. At times, I get taken too seriously, even when I joke. But, sigh! Gols if you read this I get the point when you say why you hate inviting strangers to dinner or going to a strangers place for dinner. So lesson well learnt, the hard way, but learnt nevertheless.

Golay has Basanti in his arms, the classic RK banner style :D and she gently guides us to our destination, after missing a couple of exits and doing U-turns on highways we eventually get in the right direction. The road to Hoover Dam is jam packed. It takes us over an hour to travel about 20 miles.

I remember Van Damm climbing the walls of the dam in some movie (I think he had to be cooled in ice after any activity, but I forget the name of the movie. Van Dam climbing the waals of a Dam, sounds like a cheesy poem. I apparently had forgotten the James Bond movie, but no matter.

We find a parking spot. Maneuvering the Durango is tricky, especially in tight spots. But we somehow manage. Hoover Dam is impressive. The dam was built in the thirties. We still had Rana Shasan and as a nation did not know what electricity was, the Indians were still under the yoke of British Empire and they were building Dams here that would stand the test of time. Man, every time I see something like that, I just get reminded how far we still have to go. The whole city of Las Vegas came into existence because of the Dam, and the Dam got built for the city. I suppose it's a form of a symbiotic relation.

The four towers that you can see in the picture are the intake towers. Water enters here and is fet into two penstocks and there are arrays of turbines and generators on the other side of the dam that produce electricity. I do not know the details of the wattage and power output or even the number of turbines or whatever, you can look that up here, if interested.

The other side is a sheer cliff face. Featureless, and one gets a sense of vertigo. "Only last week a guy jumped over after murdering his girl friend", we overhear. So this seems to be a popular suicide spot too, not much unlike Rani Pokhari.

Notice how small the cars parked on the side of the powerhouse look. Gives a sense of depth. The guy who jumped probably died even before hitting the concrete below. Sordid business, death! Messy too.

We take some photographs, find a bathroom and empty our bladders and it's already 2:00 o'clock in the afternoon. We've to get to Monterrey tonight, so we decide to head back, pick up Sudhirji and Missus and head out of town. But then again, the same traffic jam. We get back to town, have dinner at the place where we were supposed to pick up Sudhirji and head out of town. We say our last goodbye to Las Vegas. The light die away into the night. Only the headlights of passing cars shine by. Basanti lying in Golays arms guides us. But we still manage to travel 20 miles the wrong way!!! Aakhir manchhey bhaneko glorified bandar nai ho, kahiley nasikne!

The drive to Monterrey is longer than we anticipate. Ahmed takes over the wheels somewhere in between. It starts to rain and we're in a single lane highway (single on-going single on-coming). Trucks splash over water and Ahmed has to hit the wipers in high speed, and it makes an irritating little sound "whoosh, whoosh" as the water is wiped away and the rubber wipes over dry glass.

Everyone is sleepy. I take over the wheel after sometime. I feel Basanti is sleepy too. She seems to be confused. Shows us two directions, looses satellite connection frequently and has to acquire the satellite again and recalculate. Sleep makes people cranky, this is the first time we see a cranky GPS unit. We come to a 4 way and no matter which route we take Basanti says "off route - recalculating". We stop in a closed shopping complex. Golay gets off the car and lifts Basanti to the heavens, as if a few feet of elevation would make it easier for her to communicate to her satellite from where she gets her directions. Everyone else is asleep, Preety, me and Golay are the only ones navigating. We have already gotten two impatient calls from Lurey, who's been waiting us to come. It's 2 o'clock in the morning. Finally, we find a road that Lurey recognizes, and apparently we are in the right direction. So we drive for a while and reach Monterrey, at about three in the morning.

The Deathly Hallows

2007-02-02T11:46:00.000-05:00

Crazy guy that I am.............

Religious Art

2007-02-13T15:26:00.000-05:00

Not that I am a religious person, but I liked the posters and the artwork in this site. It was high time that someone "demystified" religion, in whatever sense that they could and present it in a more friendly way. The poster is taken from http://www.gheehappy.com.

A tale of two snowfalls

2007-02-14T18:20:00.000-05:00

Valentines day snow! So romantic! They got a foot of snow in some of the outlying areas of the valley. The hotels in Nagarkot full and it's been so busy that one of the hotel managers had to cancel his Valentines night dinner with his wife to stay over and manage things over. Kathmandu seems to be having a ball with this snow event after some sixty odd years. To bad that we had to miss it. Reminds me of TaNa Sharma Ghanaghasya ko ukalo, correct me if I'm wrong

Huna ta hiu mailey Belayat basda nai dekheko thiye ...... and i forget ... tara yo hiu mero thiyo, ajha pyare, kinabhaney mero mutu najik thiyo......... and I forget the rest. Saprasanga byakhya gara! Would be a surefire question on SLC, and we did get it too......

Valentines day snow! Well, the snow was just inconvenient. We also got a foot of snow this time, maybe the largest snowstorm of this winter. Romantic, was the time that I spent with my wife. We got stuck in the house, could not go anywhere. We would have gotten a day off but for this damn invention called the "Internet" through which emails can still hound you to death. And just look at Wadleigh Falls, so beautiful in fall, so desolate and barren in winter.

Some thoughts. Valentines day is a newfangled chaad, parwa in Nepal. I heard of this chaad only through the advent of FM in Kathmandu, when people in the radio (should call them RJ's(?), I happened to dissect a radio the other day, but did not find the little people inside, they must have gotten afraid and maybe hid from me). But I digress here, as I said, did not know of this chaad for a long time. And in this time of year I'd be more interested in Shivaratri than on Valentines day. Of course for obvious reasons. For those of you who do not know or think that Shivaratri is a time when you sit in devotion to the Lord Shiva, well, frankly I feel sorry for you.

But anyway, I was talking about Valentines day. One fateful Valentines day, things changed for me. A lighting bolt hit. It's been five years now. It's not always been easy or fun. But for me, hey! Everyday is a Valentines Day!

For those in love out there, enjoy and cherish. For those who are looking, keep on looking, I'm sure someone is out there for you. For those who've found someone and lost, do not give up hope. And for the eternal bokas (and bokis too, if there are any), well may Lord Shiva grace you with his infinite love for your soul (you are a step from becoming a pichas, so tread lightly).

300

2007-03-12T09:22:00.000-04:00

What a colossal waste of time, money and effort!!

I went to watch this movie last night. The hype behind it was overpowering. The choices that we had when we got to the movie theater was "The Wild Hogs", "The Ghost Rider", "The Zodiac" or "300". Frankly, with hindsight I now think we should have gone with either the "Ghost Rider" or "Wild Hogs". Either would have been more fun than what we had to go through for an hour and half with 300.

Don't get me wrong, the visuals are stunning, the tone great, the music haunting, the actors and actresses - eye candy with their torso rippling with muscle, the women nubile and erotic. It's the outright theme and politics of the movie that I disagree with.

Now, according to the movie, all Spartan boys are selected at birth for their physical strength, size etc and then trained to become psychopathic killers, not much unlike the child soldiers from the more horrible wars of Africa, Asia and maybe in some instances Nepal. And yet this is a noble thing to do, something to do with a warrior code - this is something that I have never really understood - the warrior code, bravery, valor, glory, art of war and the like shit. Probably something to with the fact that I come from a family of peace loving priests. By the way, what if the kid did not want to become a warrior in the first place and preferred to be a musician? But still, all professions, except the soldiers are beneath the Spartans. We are painfully made aware about that.

Now that we have a bunch of psychopaths, they develop this society that's based on equality, justice, truth and in a huge sense of superiority over other societies, even the local Greek societies. They have a working democracy, with elected council members and of course the "corrupt" politicians. Why does every second politician in Hollywood's eyes have to be corrupt? And oh, did I mention that the priests are also corrupt - now this I take personally!! But the King! ah, he is wise and valiant and non-corruptible and fights for truth, justice and the Am.... uh.... Spartan way.

The bad guys are Persians, who send slaves to fight. Their best fighters, the "ghost guard" are mere brawlers compared to the Spartans. And since they send slaves to fight - the Persians - cannot fight with as much heart as the "free" Spartans do. And evidently, the Spartans know that "freedom does not come free". Now would someone please take the time to explain what people mean with that phrase? It's a remarkable catch phrase someone has come up with. It has equal punch, if not more, as the words patriotism, liberty, truth, justice, equality...... and somehow, no one knows what it exactly means. People use that line in the same manner that one would use a liberal dose of ketchup in a hot-dog.

By the end of the movie, I was rooting for the Persians to win. I doubt that this was the intention of the director or the storyteller. The story would be appealing to a red-blooded 17 year old warrior, but for anyone with half a brain, well, the one dimensional characters and the storyline is just an insult.

I would have accepted the premise of the story had they told the story without taking sides, somehow trying to show the Spartan society as all that is good in the world and the Persians as slave owners and followers of "Mysticism" and "Tyranny" - read Iran - as the Axis of Evil.

And if you still have appetite for more and the time, do follow the link and listen to the show on NHPR. http://www.nhpr.org/node/12388

Sine Wave of Life

2007-04-06T14:53:00.000-04:00

Ah the sine wave - perfect in its undulations. Changes polarity with whatever frequency that you set it to. For power lines, sixty hertz, of course if you have anything near it, you may have some harmonics induced. It can of course pose tricky questions, especially for little freshman on their first Viva-Voce (why Latin? for a pain in the ass oral exam? Just copy what the professors taught you, bastards!!) of their life.

Question - why is the power line current (or voltage for that matter) sinusoidal?

Answer - because you're a fucking moron! That's why. Take that you jerk!!

These days I find life also follows a sinusoidal pattern. Both in long term effects, and short term effects. Also in terms of moods. It does not matter if you differentiate it or integrate it, you get the same thing, just shifted by a pi. Meaning, no matter what you do, you end up with the same shit!

Birth and death are both zeros, in that you come with nothing and leave with nothing. The rest, both the crescendo and the diminuendo and everything else happen in between. Childhood, untill you can ask your parents for money probably is the rising part. Once you start t earn and are single or with a girl (without kids) probably is the peak. After that, hehehe downhill. Roll down like a stone! And then you reach a bottom such that death seems like rising to something.

And surprisingly the same with moods. If you're in the rising edge of the sine curve, moods elate, and if you're in the falling edge, then God help you. Same with your Mojo, Libido and whatever have you. Same with popularity and fads.

Remarkable thing this sine wave!

Nearly home!!!

2007-07-20T21:34:00.000-04:00

Will probably be buried in the hallows tomorrow....

Chhauri -

2008-03-03T11:07:00.001-05:00

She passed away yesterday, about 8:30 in the morning. May her soul rest in peace.

So where are you from?

2007-11-21T16:39:00.000-05:00

Do you ever have to face questions that irritate the shit out of you? This is such a question for me. I have to go the bathroom everytime I hear this question. Not that I mind telling people where I am from originally, but it's that often time the person that asks this question does not really care where you are from originally. How do I know, well they kind of lose interest in while I am talking and shift their eyes around, and I could be speaking about the weather on top of Mount Washington for all it mattered, they wouldn't notice.

Also, those who are polite enough to listen to me with some attention, do not know where or what Nepal is and it's not easy to explain my country to people. We have no marker in history.

How do people deal with this question?

And I really do not know where I am from originally - Some years ago we treaced our ancestry to Gorkha, and before that? Who knows - which specific amoeba we all came out of. Next time someone asks this question I will ask them back! But well, I do not have that much courage for confrontation, so I rant here!

Confused ---

2007-08-28T11:23:00.000-04:00

OK, this comes after a major barbecue that we had last weekend. Among all the usual, tonnes of meat and potatoes, corn, mushrooms, salad, beer and coca-cola, we also had a vegetarian friend among us. We of course did not eat him, but the reason why he became a vegetarian is interesting. His is an ethical objection to eating meat. He thinks for one, modern farming and animal rearing techniques are too cruel (in the West). Also, in countries like ours, we do have the practice of animal sacrifice, in the name of religion, but most of the time, it's for food. Lately I have read and heard a lot of objections about the animal sacrifice part of our culture in popular media Now, I respect this guys objection to eating meat and well, have nothing in particular to say against it, it does a number of moral questions for me.

Well, I'm confused on two levels. First, I'm not an anti-animal rights guy. I like animals as well as the next guy - maybe a little bit more. I am a dog person, I am the guy you see in the road with a bumper sticker that says "dog's rule". I am also a cat person to some extent. I maybe am the crazy persons who has a gut reaction against Michael Vick and thinks that this guy should be locked forever or maybe put through the same grueling things that he put his dogs through.

On the other hand, I love eating meat - not dog meat mind you, but any other kind. I like my meat medium rare and prefer to have at least a portion a day. I love my barbecues, steaks, dumplings, roasts, and I have even tried rabbit meat - and it does taste good. I have no qualms eating the cute bunny or the frolicking lamb or even Gau mata.

So does that make a hypocrite? Well, maybe not. I suppose it is not really my choice what I eat. One cannot really put morality on survival. Humans evolved this way. If you put a moral weight on food, then well, those who say that they do not eat meat because the worry about suffering of animals ar ethe hypocrites - they should not eat anything, all you eat has been a life form sometime or the other, they should not take medicine because it kills bacteria, which is a life form and also they should not swat the mosquito sucking their blood. It seems to me, that people often take the easy road of pontificating when what others do are a little different. (hah! the last paragraph is tripe - I started this a long time ago and as usual lost the original thread of my argument. If anyone bothers to read the shit that I put out here, any comments/expansions are most welcome)

Dashain Revisited

2007-10-12T11:08:00.000-04:00

"Hindumatrako Mahaan Chaad!"

I think to myself, my head groggy with last night's drinking. My hands are folded in a Namaste, an array of Idols in front of me. I see the empty scotch glass from the corner of my eye, last nights ice-cubes have melted, and mixed with the remnants of the amber liquid that they were washed on, give off a slight stink this morning. Funny, did not seem to stink while I was chugging in down last night. I also see a used condom wrapper, carelessly tossed away in the exitement...... And here I am, a puritan, observing the customs, traditions of my forebearers - that has been followed to the letter by my forefathers for a millenia (and hopyfully by my progeny).

I slowly and cumbersomely read the mantras that I printed off an email that my father sent to me last night. Words that I do not know the meaning of, sentences that I can barely decipher. A rush of memories follow, my grandfather helped me through all this a long time ago. He did explain what all of it meant, and it really was simple to understand at the time. But everything has become hazy now. But still, some of the explanations come back, even after all the upteenth glass of scotch that I have downed.

Does God mind? I mean, I live a life so far away of what the scriptures preach, I should not drink, not eat beef, should say my prayers daily, should have a thread around my body, should perform all the ceremonies in a certain way - or else it becomes impure - like pouring water into sand...... And then, some say that God lives inside of you - if so, by definition, God knows what you think, can differentiate between what you say and what you mean to say and what you feel inside..... Then what is the point of all the rituals? The Idol is not God, by the same amount that a my photograph is not me........

Oh bother, I forgot to light the candle, I mutter silently and light the candle. We could not get barley seeds, so the jamara has to be corn seeds. Orville Redenbacher's instant quality popcors, buttery and light at the same time. I think as I put the seeds on sand from the river outside that my wife brought along last night on the little almunium baking sheet (maybe designed to bake a chicken, another thing that puritans should avoid!). (Over the next few days I would anxiously look every morning to see if the seeds sprouted at all).

The cat slinkers past, lookin g curiosly at me, What does she think, I wonder.... What's wrong with the human servant today - got up early, washed himself and is sitting in front of a litterbox. Oh boy, that would give anyone a heart attack if she thinks my jamara is in a litterbox and if she decides in the morning that it is too cold to get out. "Ho Mirli Meow?" I say. She moves her upturned arrogant little nose and gingerly steps into the warm bed. She has the life, fed when she wants, loved and doted by everyone and can sleep whenever she likes, whenever she likes.

I finish my pooja and get up, late for work. I have to commute for an hour and half to work and a car that's held together with duct tape, literally.

So I pray to the God, for World Peace? No, the World can go to hell for all I care, and it is too if you believe Bill, Glen, Lou and the like. But I did pray for peace for myself, health and happiness of my family and, well If you are reading this, for you too........

A Tale of Two Wolves

2007-08-31T12:16:00.000-04:00

I wrote this article for Business Vision magazine published by KU MBA students, and a cousin of mine asked me to write something for the mag. I hope I am not infringing on their copyright by republishing it here..... It's not as polished as it could have been. As lazy as I am I wrote this over a period of months and maybe, as usual, lost the original thread of my thought.... But it is what it is....

A Tale of Two Wolves

Here is my song for the asking
Ask me and I will play
So sweetly, I'll make you smile

This is my tune for the taking
Take it, don't turn away
I've been waiting all my life

Thinking it over, I've been sad
Thinking it over, I'd be more than glad
To change my ways for the asking

Ask me and I will play
All the love that I hold inside

- Song For The Asking - Simon and Garfunkel

This is a tale of my experiences running a small start-up company in Kathmandu, at the turn of the century. I have tried to share the things that I learned from that experience. For what is a (wo)man but not a sum of all their experiences.

I graduated Kathmandu University School of Engineering in the heady days of the “Dot Com Boom”. Looking back now, I suppose the boom had already started to wane. As the myth went, “the age of Internet” had dawned. Old ways of conducting business affairs would change forever. Buzzwords like “web pages”, “HTML”, “ASP”, “paradigm shift” were flying around in multitude. I had graduated as an Electronics Engineer, but was attracted to this new fangled concept of the Internet. Well almost everyone and some were jumping into the bandwagon, I was pretty tempted to, and so the whole saga began.

Being an engineer, especially an electrical, electronics or computer engineer, severely restricts your job options. The only places that you can go for a job are the NEC, NTC, Rashtriya Computer Kendra and a whole alphabet soup of acronyms. And even if you get into one of these institutions, the only work that you can do is either maintenance or overseeing of existing equipment or if you're really lucky and can pull some strings into management, rather than any type of design work. The other option is to go into teaching. To say the least, teaching in Bachelors level with only a Bachelors degree as a qualification is weird, you always end up feeling inadequate.

So I got together with a bunch of like minded friends, and we decided to do something different. After all, we were all qualified engineers, had taken classes on economics and entrepreneurship along with our regular technical classes. We were very interested in computers so we decided to start a company which would provide computer business solutions. We were so naïve; starry eyed kids.

The first order of things to do was to get finances for the office. We soon learnt, that starting business in Nepal (or wherever else for that matter) is not a trivial affair. We do not have a concept of venture capital. Money is easy to come by if one has family sources. Banks will rarely finance any business venture unless one can come up with substantial collateral or show some sort of political "reference" - in which case it does not even matter if you pay off the debt that you took on in the first place. So, as was the custom, we borrowed off some money from our parents. It was not enough that they out us through college, but we went ahead and shamelessly asked for some money. Well, whatever they thought about the success of our endeavour, we did raise enough money to buy a couple of computers and set up an office. I'm sure I speak for all of us involved in the project, that we owe a debt of gratitude towards them.

We had to decide on a name for the firm, so after a couple of rounds of beer and momo's in the Bakery cafe, we settled on a name. We also came up with a sort of business plan. Even though it was half baked, it was a plan nonetheless, as opposed to not having a plan. And so Two Wolves Computer Solutions was born. We went ahead and registered the name of the company - no small feat indeed. Registering companies in Nepal is no small feat. The laws are anachronistic to say the least. Company registrars office did not have (and still does not have) a concept of the Internet, let alone e-business. There are no laws that can be used to define services delivered across the Internet. We were not sure if the service that we would deliver would come under the VAT umbrella, we did register for VAT though - to this day I'm not sure how that works. We got help of an accountant to make sense of our books, but that is another complicated aspects. We were to learn that businesses in Nepal usually keep two books, one for the officials and one for the business owner to understand the inflow-outflow cash relationships themselves. One has to map entries in between two books. And that at times is not a conformal mapping.

The initial plan was to concentrate on website development, and we'd also try and attract some business with software development later on. A friend was proficient in website development. We were able to get some server space off someone that we had met online for very cheap rates. With this amount of money we could undercut the prevailing rates on the market. And once we had built some name recognition for ourselves, money and work would be plain sailing. Or so the plan went.

But we were to learn the lessons of entrepreneurship the hard way. These are some insights that I had, some we realized early on, some has come with hindsight, thinking over things and analyzing past events. One has to learn by every event in ones life, and that is how one progresses. This is by no means a 101 in entrepreneurship, just some experiences that I had.

1. Brand Name

We had the office st up, brand new computers, some sample websites that we had developed and so we started looking for clients. We were technically sound, I still believe we would have given existing competitors a run for their money both in terms of the value of our product and delivery of our services. But we learnt the first lesson at this point. And this is where that anyone running a start-up must realize how uphill the battle really is. Whenever we went to local businesses with our products and services, they would listen politely (sometimes not) and then take the brochure and we would wait in our office for the call. We did get some calls but not to the extent that we hoped. Thinking back, the reason was that no-one was willing to trust an upstart company. For all they knew, we could be just a f;y-by-night operation. That is the reason why brand name is important. Think about it, you go to buy a soda in the grocery store - there are a number of brands - but you pick up a can that you've picked before, that's the safe bet. And for an new company to get it's foothold in a market that has been dominated by old and more experienced, mature players is difficult to say the least.

2. Networking

Not only in Nepal, but in other societies that I've seen, this maybe is one of the single most important parameter for success. A proper network is important. Not only for running a business, but to get into schools for higher education, to find a decent job, to progress in life. And I suppose this is so because we live in a human society. One's identity is the company one keeps.

The first trickle of work that we got our way in Two Wolves was through friends and family. People recommended us to someone who had a business and needed a web-site. And then the client would recommend us to someone else. It then becomes important to keep up good relations with the client. Often times, people end up thinking of relations in local domain, in terms of a time frame. Once the job is done, then well, one can forget the client. And this is one of the major mistakes businesses make, especially in a developing economy like Nepal. Word of mouth does spread quickly, and if the word is negative, well then, it spells doom.

3. Customer Relations

"The customer is always right" - If you want to run a successful business, of course without resorting to corruption and playing by the rules, then print that quotation out and stick it in your office. No matter what degree you have what you have learnt in school, what gizmo you can use to dazzle the competition, if the customer is not satisfied, then all your effort is as good as sour milk poured down the drain. And this point is directly related to point number two. Good client relations is another way to form strong networks that may bring you bigger and better work down the line. The client should feel that the sole purpose of running the business it to satisfy the customer. Unfortunately, in Nepal one generally observes the customer treated as a nuisance - I've seen this happen in small businesses like food services to large businesses or even service agencies. Remember that the money is in the customers pocket. It does not cost extra to be proficient and make the customer happy, but it pays extra!

4. Quality of Product and Services

Never compromise on quality - for either products or services. Start-ups are always pressed for time, pressed by management issues, pressed by financial obligations. There are bills to pay, salaries to provide, services to buy, equipment to be purchased and this goes on forever. On is often temped to finish a task quickly, without giving is the careful consideration that it requires. And that is a mistake. A mistake by a huge margin. Shoddy products and services not only hit the bottom-line, but will form a dent on point 1, 2 and 3. Do not under-quote yourself when letting the customer know how much time you will need for a particular job. If you overstretch yourself, then the quality is going to suffer and that will hurt the long term prospects of the company. Further, negative reviews, comments and words are more sticky than positive words. You never want to be associated with anything negative.

5. Time Management

Which brings me to the fifth point. Time management is probably one of the greatest issues of modern life. One who has the key to proper time management, has the key to reach their full potential. Again, I stress the point of never overstretching oneself. In issues of time. If the client is expecting a delivery on Tuesday, then Tuesday it is. Business world is not as forgiving as other fields. Once you make a negative impression, all excuses are going to be similar to the - "dog ate my homework" excuse that a kid would make to the teacher - and it does not matter if the dog really ate the homework, a responsibility was not fulfilled.

6. Money Management

Remember being a teenager, never having enough money but still have to impress your girlfriend (or boyfriend, as the case may be)? Well for start-ups, monetary issues are of the same sort. You will need to tighten your belly. We worked without really well defined salary. We would of course take our "cut" when we had surplus money, but we did not have enough to go around. Prioritize, bill payment come first, then paying the salary of the staff, last comes the bacon that you're gonna take home. You must learn to cut extra spending, find plugs in your money bucket. Money management is especially difficult as we do not have the concept of venture capitalism or even have banks giving out loans for short period of time in an event of emergency cash flow. Of course, networking and better client relations would help in situations like this, but maybe it would also help if banks would change the way that they conduct their business.

Once we had a cash flow problem in Two Wolves, and we went to the bank where we conducted our finances to see if they could provide a short term loan. The asked some form of collateral (which we did not have) and an interest rate of about 28%. We would have been better off if we had gone to the local loan shark! Fortunately for us, a client made a timely payment and we were out of the pickle, but things like this happen, and the only way to deal with them is with better planning and better management.

7. Personnel Management

You are the boss of your own empire, however small, however insignificant. A surefire way to ruin a business is to keep the workers unsatisfied, unmotivated and underpaid. There are several ways to do this, act as royalty, do not listen to even good ideas, do not pay attention, show favouritism, foster politics in workplace and the list goes on and on. But the key to being the best boss is not only to hire the right person for the right job, but also to keep them motivated. Make employees feel that they have a stake in the success of the business. Raja ko kaam, kailey jala ghaam - Now why and where did that come from? Analyze that!

And so my friends, this old wolf takes his leave. I hope that my experience will at least serve as pointers for you as you graduate and move along your chosen paths. If not, then I hope this has been a good read. Now, the world is your oyster, go grab it and have fun while at it.

Good luck!

Too much time

2007-08-02T00:07:00.000-04:00

I seem to have too much time on my hands these days. Not that I am complaining, but it starts to get boring after a while. One of the things that I do a lot, is watch TV......

I skimmed through a Steven Segal movie today. I forget the name, "Death Vendetta", "Painful Death", "Furious Fists" or whatever, it's not too hard to come up with a name for a Steven Segal movie. - I can see him kicking my butt - but - lately, he seems too old and too fat to be menacing in any way..... Anyhow, the bad guys in this movie were Jamaicans (??) Rastafarian's who smuggle and distribute pot...... Hey! Steven Segal!!! Do people need to be blown to smithereens for smoking or dealing with pot? C'm on, that's too harsh by any standard, demonizing these people..... Especially in the eighties and the nineties, everyone was fighting the "drug" smugglers, everyone from James Bond, Arnie, Stallone, Steven Segal, Mel Gibson and whichever testosterone laden monkey that you can think of in Hollywood had these guys "drug" smugglers for punching bag. That was before everyone was fighting the terrorists. Anyone watched Godfather? Hah! even the Godfather is against "drug" related business, he will dabble in gambling and prostitution but drug is a no-no..... In the Godfather case, if you have to show a criminal, show a criminal, why do you have to make him a golden herted, liberal, social criminal....

Finished!!

2007-07-23T15:59:00.000-04:00

Finished Deathly Hallows this afternoon. So the series ends, and I liked the ending. JKR ties down all loose ends, and it is a satisfying ending. Some things I guessed right, some I did not see coming. But the sad part is that there is no other book to look forward to...... There still are the movies, I guess.......

------SPOILER ALERT ON COMMENTS--------

HPOOP

2007-07-18T12:58:00.000-04:00

Ech poop - hah, just realized! The tube-light that I am. I watched the movie a couple of days ago. My, my, the children have grown! The book was long and plodding, but they somehow managed to make a meaningful script out of it after all. I enjoyed the movie, worth the nine bucks that I had to shell out.....

Two other movies that I watched within the past couple of weeks - Transformers and Ratatouille (did I get the spelling right? I'm too lazy to check!). First, Transformers; glitzy graphics, shiny metals, huge explosions, the chick is HOT!! - but the movie uh! well!! (just shrugged my shoulders). Ratatouille; about a rat in the kitchen, disgusting, but a great movie - maybe even better than ech poop? But ech poop is a part of a ongoing saga so comparisons would not be fair, I suppose. Let's leave it at that.

So I am a regular visitor at a couple of blogs - one of them, golay.wordpress.com died today. I suppose I understand why, in a way. For one, coming up with something to write day in day out is difficult, one in pulled in all directions. Then also, once you have a fan base, you have to meet expectations. Also, one of the things that I find extremely exasperating about blogs is that one likes the attentions of readers, but as the number of readers increases, it becomes difficult to write - in a way that the pen just flows - you just start to worry about offending someone, you cannot talk about people and so on and so forth...... But they again, Gols might have gotten busy just going to the gym and working on his/her pecs, abdomen, inner thighs or what have you :D...., hey, what'd I know!!

Talking about blogs and ech poop, I read a couple of people say that they do not find the whole series appealing, it's a dumb fairy tale, too much hype surrounding the HP series and so on. And the reason for not reading or having anything to do with the HP series is that it's become too popular, a "fad" so to speak. These are the counter culture guys. The thing is, these guys do not realize is that their counter culture is also a fad. The counter culture guys read only "serious" stuff like "Chomsky" or "Husseini" or "Rushdie" or whatever the else fuck you have. All in all, one tries to become "cool" and the "hip" or "in" crowd. Somewhat like the leftists that I so often jump upon. Starry eyed people talking from their backside!! That irritates me extremely, more than this ringworm infestation that I have right now!!!!

Untitled

2007-07-11T14:32:00.000-04:00

It's been a while, so it will probably take some time for me to find my way about the keyboard. Gramatical errors, spelling errors, and errors even in the line of reasoning...... well, unavoidable, so let's not worry about them for a while. Meanwhile the wheel still turns.

California, this is my third trip. I'm going back to the warm loving embrace of New England and to the one who waits me tomorrow, I anticipate that with exitement. Meanwhile, California has been fun. It has taken my mind off the daily grind of the wheel, and the buda-budi have taken good care of me, put up with my eccentricities, been patient while I have hogged their couch, cooked for me and, .... ah! the list is endless - to that I am eternally thankful - both to them and to the good fortune of calling them friends. And hey! the Reebok was a beautiful surprise, thank you!! I am never good with spoken words!!!

So now, again we hape to think and plant some more food for thought. I have to do this more regularly, a note to myself.

To a God Unknown

2007-05-14T10:24:00.000-04:00

I got this out of a Steinbeck (I forget the title of the book) book a long time ago. It used to hand on a wall in a frame in 2Wolves. I'm not a particularly religious person, but I like this poem. The other version that I've heard of this is as a chant in Hindi, in used to come as a closing song in the TV series of Nehru's discovering India..... (I belive a part of his letters to Indira Gandhi).

Apparently this is a part of the Ved.....

To a God Unknown

He is the giver of breath, and strength is His gift,
The high Gods revere His commandments,
His shadow is life, His shadow is death,
Who is He to whom we shall offer our sacrifice?

Through His might He bacame the lord of the living and glittering world,
And He rules the world and the men and the beasts,
Who is He to whom we shall offer our sacrifice?

From His strength the mountains take their being, and the sea, so they say,
And the distant river,
And these are His body and two arms,
Who is He to whom we shall offer our sacrifice?

He made the sky, and the earth, and His will fixed their places,
Yet, they look at Him and tremble,
The risen sun shines forth over Him,
Who is He to whom we shall offer our sacrifice?

He looked over the waters which store His power,
And gendred the sacrifice,
He is the God over Gods,
Who is He to whom we shall offer our sacrifice?

May He not hurt us, He who made the earth,
Who made the sky and the shining sea,
Who is He to whom we shall offer our sacrifice?

Blank Mind!

2007-04-30T13:04:00.000-04:00

I'm sitting here in the library with a borrowed laptop in fron t of me trying to write some shit, but nothing comes to mind. I feel lethargic. My brain has stopped working and worse still I'm on my last ciggarette of the pack! Oh shit! I will go out and smokeit anyway, maybe something will come up.......

Kun papi le rangai halyo

2007-04-23T12:53:00.000-04:00

Listen to the song and the video. I couldn't help laughing.... Someone came close with expressing their feelings......

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3oXOmC_Qvsw

Virginia Tech and Me

2007-04-21T10:18:00.000-04:00

I've been to Blacksburg once. This was in the early 2005. More of a personal visit. We drove all the way from NH to Potsdam NY, and then from Potsdam NY to Blacksburg VA. That was one long trip. We still had some snow on the ground. We did get caught in a minor snowstorm in Potsdam, but in Blacksburg, it was more of a rain.

The Blacksburg campus is huge, to say the least. Maybe a larger version of Durham, the same brick buildings, the same huge expanses of lawns and buildings, the same houses where faculty lived, and student dorms - a typical campus town. The best thing that I remember from Blacksburg is that there was this marvelous little place where you could get excellent gyros. I had more than three in a single go. I had to wait to meet someone, so well, it was a good way to pass time as any.

So it was a news of somewhere that I had been when I first heard of the shooting. I think it was on CNN, a bottom scroller about two people murdered. Nobody was paying any attention at that time. The number suddenly escalated to 22 and then to 32, with the gunman - the total count - 33 dead. And then - all hell broke loose. In TV talking heads were shouting, blaming everyone left, right and center. The fault of police, the VT administration, the gun culture, Hollywood, violent games, his mother - I'm sure all must have come up.

The first thought that I had when this thing happened was, who's the guy - hopefully not someone from outside the country! Shortly, CNN started to say Asian Male. Wow! that was a shocker. The next thought was, not a South Asian or a Muslim guy. Because that would have the potential of us getting beaten when walking down the street. We're in enough hot water as it is. But thankfully, the guy turned out to be a South Korean, even though he was brought up and spent most of his life here, went to a VA school, probably did not speak a word of Korean. He still was "South Korean". I feel sorry for his parents though. They must have worked hard to get established with their little laundry, working late, even on weekends, no vacation to speak of, no holidays and the jerk of a son turns out to be a mass murderer.

And the outpouring of grief - don't get me wrong - I feel sorry for the victims - but not more so than I feel sorry for people dead in a car bombing in Iraq or people dead in Darfur. I probably feel more sad when I hear of a killing in my own city or country more. I just do not have the same outpouring of grief, hand wringing. I do not get choked up and angry. I do not feel the need to blame anyone or to explain "why" this happened. Sorry!

It seems, at least in Media's eyes, life had different value for different parts of the world. Maybe not only media, because they are a mirror of society - and it thus must be society that values life from one part of the world - life of certain types, values, mores, color, background - more than others.

A more glaring example was seen with the death of "Princess" Diana. A month later Mother Teresa died. Just compare the social contributions of both, the importance of lives of both and the media attention and the outpouring of grief. When Diana died, people were crying on the streets, the gate of Buckingham was covered with flowers, when Mother Teresa died, maybe some black skinned lepers felt bad, but the world was too engrossed on something else.

The death of Anna Nicole Smith is another example, why is that even news? And for the death of me, I do not understand why the fucking judge cried? Where's even the show of impartiality and impassiveness?

And yesterday, the media was into the NASA thing. Again someone took someone hostage and got killed I believe. By the end of the week, I've had enough of it - media fatigue, I suppose.

And now, all universities are into counselling. I received an email yesterday on pointers of how to start a "conversation" about the tragedy. Well, I don't know what to say or think about that. I have my own problems to worry about.

The only sensible news I heard of this whole sorry affair was on NPR, where a guy talked about the "South Korean" guy being a local of Virgina - just a kid from Virginia, and he followed a path that led to an American Tragedy -