Just found this on my e-diary while clearing/cleaning up some old files. Its a musing from some two years ago (written on 2 September 2010 at 11:07 to be precise), I don’t recall what prompted me to jot these lines down then, but when I saw these this morning, I thought I might have written these last week or the week before. If you follow the news and happenings from the sub-continent then you’d know why!
When I was growing up in a traditional, yet fairly liberal Bramhin household, I might have looked like a God-fearing child growing up to to be a God-fearing adult. By high-school, most of the religious beliefs instilled in me had washed away. By the time I went to study intermediate in science, and came out of it, I was probably not an atheist, but certainly an agnostic. By the time I finished my undergraduate, I was an atheist too, and have been since. When I think of growing up, hearing about Krishna’s Leela, his misdemeanours since childhood, be it stealing, harassing girls, or later being polygamous, causing war between brothers and what not, it was rather strange to see people worshipping him as a God, a role model. Thankfully I didn’t take that literally, imagine where I would be now if I had! The question that boggles my mind is this: why do we still revere mythical characters like Krishna? What does it say about our own cultural mindset? That it is OK to engage in misdemeanours as long as you also do some good? Although I fail to find what good that mythical character Krishna really did! The most popular caricature of the character still revolves around stealing butter and chasing young pretty girls. So what was the real message his story gave to our societies. That it’s OK to hang out in every gallis and chowks and tease young girls passing by? That minor theft is not to be taken seriously and that its part of growing up?
…and the wait continues to start on the new job (the actual wait is for the permit to travel to the country where the job is!).
In the meantime I’m working in Nepal – couldn’t get SPSS for my number-crunching job so got and learnt STATA (still learning actually), and becoming fairly comfortable with it! Yet to write of the crunched numbers 
Most importantly got time to read (still too lazy to write much though!) and have finished a few good books 
Just finished Michel Peissel’s Tiger for Breakfast, and currently reading Solo by Rana Dasgupta (pic below).
Oh, did I mention I got married recently?!? Life’s well so far
Not many people know I’m back in Nepal, and I doubt this post will add more than a couple to that number. I think of lots of things to write every day as I come back from my day out in Kathmandu but I find myself too tired to do so. Plus hours of loadshedding (power cuts) every day doesn’t help as we need to be awake at very odd hours to use internet most of the time! Anyway, I just wanted to let know those few who follow me
through this blog what I’m up to here in my hometown.
1. I’m here because I’m in between jobs.
2. I plan to start my work remotely to begin with from here, hopefully from next week (after Nepali New Year)
3. In the meantime, I’m keeping low profile by going to quite high-profile football matches (see an evidence below – a lot more of the pictures here)
4. I’m also spending my time while I’m in the village (village only in name really – it has changed beyond recognition in recent years, definitely not the village I first left in 1999) by taking some macro snaps in the backyard – almost my favourite passtime – at least keeps me occupied when I’m not in the mood to read or write! (another evidence below – much more here)
…and that’s pretty much it thus far. Even if I don’t write here, I’ll be tweeting HERE. And will be uploading pictures whenever I can HERE.
So long…
note: just as I was ready to publish this post power cut struck again, so I’m finishing this from my mobile. hope this comes through fine.
First a couple of screengrabs to show what I am ranting about below
Suddenly all my Google Apps email accounts have started showing additional (and largely redundant) labels (folders on my IMAP), and I have no idea why. I am guessing its because they call Gmail Googlemail in the UK, but then they could just have changed the existing root folder name from Gmail to Googlemail rather than creating an extra root folder called Googlemail under which I see a set of labels (which obviously become folders on IMAP) that are basically redundant – like Sent Mail, Drafts, Spam etc. These labels are redundant because the default labels/folders for sent mails is still set to be [Gmail]/Sent Mail and default for draft emails set to be [Gmail]/Drafts and so on. So these [Google Mail]/Sent Mail, [Google Mail]/Drafts and so on are redundant and annoying really, especially on my Apple Mail. I have of course tried to delete these labels, they can be deleted but they appear again few minutes after, I guess automatically created by the system! The only solution now is to make them ‘hidden’ on IMAP but only the labels/folders are hidden but the root folder [Google Mail] still shows up in Apple Mail’s list of IMAP folders… 
Okay, here is the story. I ordered a bundle that was on sale at Dell’s UK Web site on Sunday 6 Sept. I placed an order and checked out using my debit card, received order confirmation email with the order number. I was looking forward to receiving my order within a few days. Then after two days, I receive an email (below) telling me that my order was cancelled because they made a pricing error. Well, I didn’t know it was a pricing error, in fact, it wasn’t that cheap to be considered a pricing error (it was listed as 50% off from the RRP!). I thought you were supposed to respect the price that is displayed and at which you allow your customers to place an order. They send the email as if I made a mistake by placing an order when they had their apparent pricing error. I’m really annoyed with Dell now. And after enquiring, they tell me its their policy and I should have read the terms. What the heck!?! I’ll think many times now before buying anything from Dell, that’s for sure. And looking at the forums (including Dell’s own forums) it seems it’s not just me what has been treated like this by Dell.
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