Category: Randomization of randomness


Winter

Filed under: Let the picture speak, Randomization of randomness by Prajwol — 9 Comments
December 11, 2009

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

Comment

The festive atmosphere

Filed under: Let the picture speak, Randomization of randomness by Prajwol — 5 Comments
December 3, 2009

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).

Comment

Cooking & recipe

Filed under: My kitchen, Randomization of randomness by Prajwol — 6 Comments
July 17, 2009

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 :D

Image source: http://www6.worldisround.com/photos/14/339/131.jpg

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 :P

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” :D

Comment

Did you know this?

Filed under: News/information and opinion, Randomization of randomness by Prajwol — 5 Comments
June 19, 2009

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 :(

Comment

Loss of a category

Filed under: I love to drink, Ramblings on life, Randomization of randomness by Prajwol — 5 Comments
June 8, 2009

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 :D
twante

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 :)

Comment

Social Safety Nets

Filed under: My bandwagon, News/information and opinion, Randomization of randomness by Prajwol — 3 Comments
April 21, 2009

My previous post was not about detest to taxation, it was more on the inept pricing of DVD  rentals in that particular public library. I believe that proper functioning of a society requires certain social safety nets, for that you need taxation. But don’t get me wrong, I am strongly against ‘taxation of people to death’ by their government. Taxation definitely is required, but getting an appropriate and effective taxation scheme is more of a challenge.

Today morning, while driving to work, my car spun off the ramp and the engine shut off after hitting the curb. My car was facing straight to incoming ‘office time’ traffic, eager to get off the ramp. There was a high probability that some vehicle would definitely crash into mine on the ramp (while hurrying to get to their work). I dialed 911 and a State Trooper got their in two minutes to slow down the incoming traffic from the ramp. A County Police Car got their in five minutes, giving way to the State Trooper. The County Police stayed there till the towing company towed my car away.

If there was no taxation then there won’t be anything called Police, or any other social safety nets. I doubt anyone would have stopped their vehicle in safe (visible) place and help slow down the incoming traffic. So as long as my tax money is spent wisely, I don’t mind contributing. And if you expect similar help (god forbid if something like that happen), then it would be foolish to decry taxation.

Thank god, I and my car got away without any major incident. God is great.

Comment

Perks of living in a big city?

Filed under: News/information and opinion, Randomization of randomness by Prajwol — 6 Comments
April 9, 2009

There are definitely some perks of living close to a big city: like proximity to bigger airports, happening places, lot more friends, lot more visitors and places for you to visit, better infrastructures, etc. But there might be some downsides, even if it’s negligible in comparison to the benefits you reap. I discovered one of them yesterday.
I am a big fan of public library, in fact I love anything that’s public: public transport, public TV, public radio, etc. When I was in Lafayette, I used to borrow a lot from the public library; books, CD’s, and mostly DVD’s. They all were free, you could keep DVD’s for a week, and after that it was $1 fine per day.
Yesterday I went to Baltimore County Public Library to borrow couple of DVD’s. The rate was $2.30 for a DVD (you can keep it for 2 days), after that there was a fine of $2.30 per day. I was surprised with the cost, especially when I pay four times the state tax that I used to pay in Louisiana. What baffled me more was who would want to get DVD’s from this library when you can get newer releases in the Redbox for $1.06 (rate of a DVD per day)? Also, when the older movies nowadays are readily available on the web.

redbox

Picture source: http://tylermuth.files.wordpress.com/2008/06/redbox.jpg

Comment