Steve Jobs & I..

Thanks coach for the greatest b'day gift ever... finally got to read Steve Job dai ko kitab by Walter bro! My sister gave me a book about Richard Branson, seven years ago.. she thought I was like him kya... well you know, sabai bahini haroo lay afno dai khatara (in a good way!) cha bhun thaan chan ni!

Now, seven years later... I think my sister is really cool and she will go places! Okay, let's get back to the story of the day hai! Finished reading the book... I usually like to read at one go... but 200-300 page ko short stories haroo tuh ekai raat ma bhya-in-cha... but it took me a few days to read all about Steve dai.

Dherai kura mil-do (as in dough) jul-do rahecha... when it comes to them risau-ney baaney chahi... crazy diets and KISS formula. No I am not talking about chooppa-chooppy... Keep It Simple Stupid bhaneko! I have had my share of crazy diets haroo... like eating aloo and ghiraula for 90 days (pet thik hooncha bhaney-ruh), drinking cream soda for a year (heard it was good for ... nothing! )

I have tried so many things... work, business, aroo nautanki nataks. Now, I know why I failed... because I was never a good salesman..err.. salesperson kya! I have been fired many times. I was even fired as the coach of a sports team ... damn.. and even that job was actually voluntary kya!

I got fired from my last job but that wasn't my fault. The partners decided to get into a messy fight and I was like... hey, fire me first then go kill each other. So.. that's what they did... hehe! And it's not a good idea to tell one of the partner (jay bhaney pani mero boss ho ni!) ko dad that he is a grumpy old man and his son is a mini-Sunny Deol look-alike who can't not only dance but doesn't know sheet!

I got demoted in my current job because I was acting like Steve Jobs (minus the cool ideas but lot of 'This is sheet' stuff) hola... and it really didn't work. Well, Steve Jobs got fired only once and then he came back and that's why we have ieverything! My siblings got their iPod, iPhone, iMac and iPad... but I am still sticking to HTC...hehe! My first computer was Apple II but now I like notebook (tyo sano pocket size kya.. pen wa pencil lay lekhnuh milcha ni!)

So here I am.... old enough to be an uncle to nearly everybody in my tole and I still haven't figured out my sheet! I don't think my sister thinks I am a 'Branson' anymore. I did start out pretty good early in life... with my own newspaper when I was 16 (lasted only a few issues .. hehe!), stock portfolios @ 21 (I still have the 'I died during the Nasdaq crash t-shirt!), anti-war activist @ 26 (that was my 'zen' moment hola haha!)... and now, I am just another grumpy old man! One of my sisters told me recently... 'Thank God, you aren't thinking about climbing Everest anytime soon!'..

I am having a pre-mid-life crisis hola... hehe! Anyways, the book is good... Steve Jobs always knew that he would die young... Amrika ma 50-60 pani young nai ho ni! I always though I would die by 27... not dead yet.. so still going or doing okay but now, I have dheari seto kapaal and have been a very hardworking member of the IBS (International Brotherhood Society aka Irritable BS!)

I have no idea what today's guff is about... just wanted to update something hola! So what did I learn from Steve Jobs ko kitaab... 'reality distortion field' (RDF).... hehe! (google that or wikipedia helps too!) It did work for Steve dai... still hasn't worked out for me!

Jay bahe pani.. Steve dai tuh India ghoom-nuh aunoo bhaako rahecha ni! Yeso Nepal tiruh pasya bhaye, he would probably have stayed here nai hola! He would probably be making a cool 'safa tyampoo' ... color tuh sabai 'white' nai hoon-thyo!

So if you really want to think different then you have to try some LSD rey! I don't agree but we all need our 'Wozniak' hola. Billy Goat (Gates) dai had his 'Paul Allen' ni. Jerry Yang had his Filo... Larry Page has his Russian... abuh the list goes on and on!

If Steve dai was still alive, he would probably singing 'Simple Simple Kanchi ko Dimple Parne Gaala' ... hola hagi!

p.s. and breaking news ma chai.. stupid Ashton Kutcher is going to play Steve dai in some indie flick rey! Lau maryo... where the @$#! is Edward Norton? Kutcher.. go back to Iowa and get on a John Deere (tractor) or something!

Oh.. I forgot.. I really don't have any 'cool ideas' to change the world and my design sense is zero .. so I am not trying to compare myself with Jobs ni feri... usko sabai naw-ramro baani chai mil-do rahecha kya. I guess that's why I like Darth Vader! I really don't care much about the iProducts but Thank You Steve.. for Pixar!

Students Love to Cheat

The SLC exams are finally over and I hope our police wallahs will be more prepared next year when they face hundreds or even thousands of angry villagers, pelting stones at them for not letting our great students cheat. Maybe, it would be better if we deploy all our security personnel to guard the SLC exams centres next year. After all, they don’t have much to do except put on a parade at Tundikhel, guard our VVIPs, and sometimes act like local goons.

I don’t think our police wallahs have learnt their lessons yet. You just can’t send 10 men in blue to a remote district and expect them to secure the location. It’s not like Kathmandu where you have thousands of Armed Police Force personnel and their only job is to charge at Valley residents who are not happy with the way their houses have been bulldozed. Let’s cut them some slack…after all, it’s not easy standing outside them foreign embassies, fully armed and chasing away Nepali citizens who think it’s a great spot to take pictures.

Dr Saheb could have done us a favour if he had gone on national television and given a pep talk to all SLC students. Maybe it would have inspired many of our students in them villages and they would have probably asked their parents and teachers not to act like political hoodlums. Because stone pelting and political cadres are like bread and butter ni.

It’s such a shame that our parents and teachers think it’s a good idea to cheat in them exams. Well, half of our public school teachers in remote districts get paid even if they don’t show up anyways. If these teachers had spent their time teaching their students some math theorem then I guess they wouldn’t have to learn ‘stone hurling’ techniques.

And what’s up with the fake examinees? A Maoist CA member must have been either too busy to sit for the exams or he figured it would be as easy as sending someone else to pose as a PLA soldier. Well, I guess it’s much easier to fool UNMIN than our police personnel checking them IDs at the exam centres. We do have a few competent cops hagi? Yes, not all politicians are crooks and not all students cheat but a few of the rotten ones make it hard for everyone else.

I think our TV news channels should send their crews to the SLC exams centres next year, they will probably get better content as they film our ‘parents and teachers going wild’ acting like they are fighting for a noble cause. I think we should ask them ‘stone pelting’ parents and teachers to fight against school shutdowns by our political parties. How come they are not complaining when everybody from trade unions, ethnic fronts, to even a local guy whose chicken got run over, shuts down schools across the country?

Nearly half a million students sat for this year’s SLC exams. Half of them will fail and a few will try again next year while the rest will probably start learning Korean or visit our manpower agencies to find a job somewhere in the Middle East. Not all of us are smarty pants like our Dr Saheb and for those who won’t be doing a PhD in the near future, the government can at least provide vocational trainings. Try finding a plumber, electrician, or a carpenter in Kathmandu.

Instead of trying to get all our young folks to join the army and have a compulsory military service in ‘New Nepal’, why not make it mandatory for all SLC candidates to take a three-month intensive crash course on anything from fish farming to fixing a motorcycle to CPR or something. Any course will do except ‘stone hurling’ and ‘tyre burning’ hai?

The government wants to build ponds in all the villages across the country. It wants to spend billions and launch some kind of a volunteer program. It sounds more fishy than our fish farms selling fresh trout. As always, our political parties will try to get their own cadres and chamchas as we have seen in nearly all youth programs launched by the government. Why not ask our SLC candidates who are now staying home to get involved?

Maybe someone should start a new political party? All those who have sat for the SLC exams can join the party. It doesn’t matter if you have failed to get past the Iron Gate for years. The party will help you to get some training on how to build an iron gate nai. Then at least you can make a decent living building iron gates across the country. It is much better than going around cheating people with false hopes and empty promises.

What’s Plan B?

Our media wallahs should be ashamed of themselves for trying to defame our crown prince and his daddy. I guess our patrakars don’t understand that if it weren’t for our Emperor and his courtiers, a lot of us would have never thought of shutting down schools, businesses and highways just to make our point. We are all empowered now and we all want our rights even though we don’t care a hoot about our responsibilities.

All IT wallahs should be happy that finally a computer operator wants to climb Everest. I think it would be better if we call him a ‘Social Media Specialist’ (SMS) since he uses Facebook more often than an average Nepali picks his nose.

Sherpas are born for it. Our civil servants managed to piggy-back on our Sherpa brothers and did it. So, why can’t our crown prince get some ‘free’ money from the state coffer to get to the top of the world? Yes, it is indeed a noble cause. After all, who wants to take the risk of climbing the world’s tallest mountain when one can just laze around in the city and get a cut of everything from nearly everybody?

And he is only asking for Rs 20 million and that’s like pocket change. We have ‘imaginary’ teachers milking ‘real’ billions of Rupees from the state. Whilethe real warriors are out on the streets, the hired ‘actors’ who masqueraded as PLA soldiers got billions. Well poor fellows, they just didn’t realize they were only going to get peanuts when the checks arrived. So when our cadres, cousins , civil servants, contractors and constitution writers are making billions , why are we so hung up on giving our crown prince millions kya?

The Crown Prince has now decided not to accept the free money because he doesn’t want the tabloids running more stories about his extra-curricular activities. Give the boy a break. Don’t go around snapping pictures when he is exhausted after a Facebook status update binge.

Our Facebook comrade now wants his take to go to the conflict victims rey. I guess it will now go to the same folks who got some dough from the Youth and Small Enterprise Self Employment Fund. As far as we know, none of the youth got any money and those who got it didn’t actually use it to operate a small business.

So how do we raise Rs 20 million for His Red Highness? The old way would be to call up byaparis and demand contributions. And if the designated donors refused to pay then they would have to face paranormal activities. But we are no longer living in the jungle, eating Wai Wai and running around in Goldstar shoes. Most of them ‘thulo’ comrades never really did all that but it makes a good story hagi.

We now live in mahals, drive around in SUVs and prefer expensive bideshi liquors. We have to change the way we raise funds because we are now part of the ‘burger’ crowd rather than the ‘pitho’ crowd we had dreamt of.

I think NepalUnites should organize a Facebook event for our computer operator. Let’s have a party right outside BICC … we can organize a BBQ, call up all our rock stars and even build a temporary climbing wall in the middle of New Baneshwor and the most active Facebook user of Nepal can show us his climbing skills. That’s how you raise funds… the new way or he can learn a thing or two from the Amrikis.

Let’s have a nice fundraising dinner at Hotel Radisson, which seems to be the favorite hangout spot for our comrades. Our FNCCI wallahs can afford Rs 101,000 per plate dinner and they can take pictures with the Crown Prince and get his autograph as well. We would only need around 200 business wallahs to attend the event.

But if every small contractor to local tender don to fake-VAT bill wallahs want to help then we can book the national stadium. We now have floodlights…. we can start the party at 9pm and our Crown Prince can surprise us by running 1,000 laps around the track. It might take him a few days if he doesn’t take a break and he can get himself into the Guinness World Records as well.

The Comrades plan to leave for Everest on March 29. So, we have like four days left before we raise enough to make their trip successful. So time is running out. I don’t see any Facebook event yet. No walkathon or cycle rallies to raise funds and no dinner and dance parties have been scheduled at any of our five star hotels. The easiest way now would be to call up the union wallahs and ask them to pitch in. After all they are the only ones who have cash these days and I guess our capitalist-feudalists-imperialists pigs weren’t wrong when they said ‘cash is King!’.