Friday ramblings
Posted: October 1, 2010 Filed under: Ramblings on life, Randomization of randomness 2 Comments »I kept wondering why Netflix keeps providing me with weird recommendations. Finally I figured out that both my wife and I were rating the movies, initiated by us respectively, on the same account 
Nowadays, I go by the genera and see “people’s ratings”, not the Netflix recommendations 
With midterm elections coming up on November 2, I am beginning to get sick of ever increasing political ads on the TV. It’s funny that those ads seldom say any good about the candidates, but are always spilling venoms on their opponents. I understand this has become a national trend, not just here in Maryland between Martin O’Malley and Bob Ehrlich for the governorship. It’s like telling American people “hey, choose the best among the worst”. I was baffled to know that even a state judge has to raise substantial amount of money for their election campaign. Seriously, judges to raise money; and expecting them to be fair and not returning the favors? I guess this is what “capitalism” is all about, the free market deciding who their leaders, sheriffs, and state judges are.
Last April, someone asked me “what do you guy’s do on the weekends”? For a moment I was dumfounded, couldn’t figure out what we did. After a while I realized, we (more specifically me, sorry my dear wife) zealously watched football (American Football). The Football Season ended in February, so I was awestruck with that questioning in April. Saturdays used to be the College Football, and Sundays would be the NFL. This year, I have stopped following the College Football, much to a delight of my wife. BUT, Sundays are still for NFL, no exceptions 
Yeah baby, Go Ravens !!
Déjà vu
Posted: August 17, 2010 Filed under: Randomization of randomness 2 Comments »I normally get out of the apartment by 6:20 AM for work. Last Thursday, like any regular weekday, I woke up to the sound of my alarm, freshened up, and left for work. Outside it was pitch dark; I double checked my watch to make sure if it was really after 6, unfortunately it was and I dragged myself to work. That day we had one of the biggest storms of the summer.
Today, like any other weekday, I woke up, freshened up, and left for work. It was pitch dark, and I felt Déjà vu all over again. I though to myself – I know it sucks but Saturday is not far off, I will sleep my butt off once the weekend is here. As I approached my car, I gave a hopeful glance to my watch. It was FREAKING 5:25 AM.
I wish I had glanced my watch before getting out of the bed, I would have abso-FREAKIN-lutely loved to smile and go back to sleep for another hour. It was too early even for the guards to be at my work to open the doors, so no point in driving there. And, I was in between sleepy-sleepy and wakey-wakey mode, so the thought of extra 30-40 minutes of sleep wasn’t that exciting either.
Eventually I entered back to my apartment along with the sound of my regular alarm, and kept snoozing till 6:20 AM. What a waste of an hour of sleep 
Winter
Posted: December 11, 2009 Filed under: Let the picture speak, Randomization of randomness 10 Comments »One of my friends said; one burns 200 calories* just to get out of the bed, in a wintry morning, to get to the work. I say it’s more like 400 calories; 200 on bed itself while you are just thinking about waking up, and 200 to actually get up. Though some might argue that’s a fantastic way to burn calories, trust me it’s no fun to wake up at 5-6 am every weekday, in these chilling condition.
Hope ya’ll are staying warm and cozy; wherever you are, except down under (Australia). Below, a recent picture taken from my window. And, a choreographed picture of a flower on snow; to make things brighter, even in gloom
* Note: just for the sake of talking, not a fact
The festive atmosphere
Posted: December 3, 2009 Filed under: Let the picture speak, Randomization of randomness 5 Comments »One of the bitter part of celebrating festivals (like Dashain) in a foreign country is that you don’t have any holiday atmosphere to go along with your rituals. As soon as you get out of your or your friend/relative’s house, it is business as usual. There is no festive environment, forget the holidays; it is like celebrating the festival in isolation and in patches. If I have to remember Dashain in Nepal at this moment, I would say: rituals for ghatasthapana, flying kites, fifteen days or month-long holiday, empty streets of Kathmandu, good food, my parents always buying the exact same cloths for me and my brother, fulpati rituals, astami, nawami, tika and blessing from elders, etc. Things that we took for granted or overlooked in Nepal are sorely missed here; the religious and cultural significance of a certain festivities is not complete without the festive atmosphere that precedes them.
As I mentioned in one of my previous post, we not only celebrate our own festivals here but are also culturally involved in the local festivals. We do get holidays for those, but the festive atmosphere encourages us to enjoy the culture even more. For example in Christmas, for weeks, there would be lighting and christmas carol everywhere you go, people everywhere seem happy and cheerful. Regardless of your religion, creed, or faith; I believe all the religious holidays are meant to be celebrated among families and friends. People everywhere sparing some time to get together and have fun. I tend to celebrate them all, as a means of getting together with friends and family, even if that’s not always economically viable 
Merry christmas to all of you.
Following are the few pictures I took around my neighborhood (you can click on them to enlarge).
Cooking & recipe
Posted: July 17, 2009 Filed under: My kitchen, Randomization of randomness 6 Comments »In my previous work, we periodically cooked something for the lunch (just among our project group). It wasn’t mandatory nor it was an everyday stuff, but eating my colleagues (primarily Americans) cookery for long time made me feel guilty and inspired me to cook something for them too. I was a mediocre cook, so the pressure of “representing Nepal” was immense. For the first time I decided to take an easier route and made momo, which I am proud to say was well received. There on, I started to be more creative
Image source: http://www6.worldisround.com/photos/14/339/131.jpg
The biggest problem I faced was when someone asked me for the recipe. How can I produce the recipe when even I can’t duplicate the same taste, if I try again? To my surprise they had a recipe for everything, and if I asked they could simply print out from their records and give it to me in minutes. And trust me, they had very specific recipe, for example: preheat the oven for 15 minutes at 400 degrees, put the dish at middle rack for 20 minutes, let it settle for 10 minutes, apply 2 ounces of whip cream, and so on
Today at work I was discussing about food and cooking, and again I found my cookery lacked specifics when explaining the recipe. All I could explain was: add little bit of salt, and little more of cumin, and slightly more of curry masala, then boil for few minutes, etc I began to worry if it’s just me or our food culture (as a whole) is not detail oriented enough. Finally, after thinking for a while I came up with a good enough line to explain my colleagues “yours cooking style is a science but ours is more of an art, you learn these from years of experience”
Did you know this?
Posted: June 19, 2009 Filed under: News/information and opinion, Randomization of randomness 5 Comments »We all are aware of current situation in Iran. I am in no position to confirm if voting was rigged or not, but public uprising there seems definitely genuine. The United States of America is paying a very close attention to the situation in Iran, and has been the headline for a week now in American cable news. Iran holds key to Middle East peace process, safety of American soldiers in neighboring Iraq, nuclear proliferation issues etc; so the interest on Iran is immense.
Couple of days ago I was watching PBS news on Iran, like on most of other cable news the talks were centered around how the use of social networking (Twitter, Youtube, Facebook, etc) has kept the momentum of protest in Iran, despite the governments clamp down on the conventional media and communication systems. Iran has applied Internet filter to stop these social networking sites, but the work around using the third party application makes harder for government to filter everything.
So the host of news asked an expert guest if a country can shut down the whole Internet system. The guest replied that it would involve a big political ramification to completely shut down the Internet system, ultimately giving an impression to the world that the election was rigged. So it’s unlikely that Iran would do that now, but it’s been done twice in past elsewhere. To quote that expert guest, one was in Myanmar and the other was in Nepal
Loss of a category
Posted: June 8, 2009 Filed under: I love to drink, Ramblings on life, Randomization of randomness 5 Comments »There was a time when I absolutely loved drinking, no matter if it was a social drink or simply drinking to get drunk (big time). I never used to shy away from any possible opportunity to drink, and on few occasions established some notorious reputations too
But times changed now, without even knowing about it, I ain’t the same drinker that I used to be. I had to sit around with some of my old pals to finally realize that. Now I am more of a social drinker, who if tries to push beyond that suffers a great deal the next day
I know it’s all good considering possible health as well as monetary benefits from my less enthusiastic drinking. However, my blog is in loss because of that. I have a blog category called “I love to drink” where I post all the creative ideas that I acquire during my drinking sagas. I doubt if I will have any more updates to that category. But I am optimistic that any substitutes (if any) to my drinking habits can also produce equally interesting and inspiring accounts for me to share
