Running for ASR Senator

I have a good piece of news to share. I am running as a candidate for Association of Student Representatives Senator. I always wanted to run for an election and go through this election euphoria. I have very strong interest in politics; my dad too knows this since it is clearly written in my ‘janmakundali’, a document that learned scholars prepare for every person based on the position of heavenly bodies such as stars and planets. And this document was prepared when I was less than a year old. I know what you are thinking now. I do not believe so much in it but coincidentally or otherwise, all of the events mentioned in that document seem to be coming true one after another. I do not want to talk about it, it scares me; my dad believes in it very strongly.

When you get a lot of attention, you know how uneasy of a feeling it is, don’t you? Well, when you run for an election, you become the center of attention and when you walk by your election poster and see other people looking at it, lots of things run in your mind. This is a wonderful feeling. It does not really matter so much to me whether or not I win. Of course, if I win, it will be great, my ‘self-confidence will be boosted’ and all, but if I don’t win, I will not be dejected. For me, running as a candidate and standing before everyone to let them know that I am there too, means as much as winning does.

I am strange, strange in the sense that when I feel about something, I feel very strongly about it and want things to happen in certain ways. For instance, when I see a device, a simple or common one such as trash bags and spot designing errors or can see that the design can easily be improved, I feel sorry for all the people who use those trash bags and feel a little dissatisfied with the engineer who possibly designed it. I want to fix things if they need to be fixed. I want to change things if they are not in the best of their forms. My strong desire for working to make things better came from the sorrow situation of my own country Nepal. Right now, it is in a situation as bad as it could be. Lots of things need to be fixed and improved. New and rational policies need to be formulated. A leader needs to be born. Some of educated Nepalese need to sacrifice their fantasies to become leaders. I will need to step up front. I will need to start this from Trinity.

If you want, you can check out the Facebook Group Vote Puru as ASR Senator

Politics is dirty, but I am not.

Life in a Mess

If I were to stare at the mirror for half an hour, I would still be surprised with the way my life has been moving in the last few weeks. The way I have been acting, I will tell you, it is not me. To make the long story short, my life is in a mess. I have been suddenly pounded by tonnes of assignments and projects. It is not that others do not have assignments, the thing is whenever I have a choice for my paper or project topic, I often choose the one which I have absolutely no idea about or is too hot to handle or difficult to get information about. For instance, for my economics country project, I chose Nepal, my country. At first, the choice seemed obvious to me but then later as I set down to do research, I realized retrieving information about Nepal was more difficult than I had thought. There are very very few books on Nepal at Trinity Library, one I found on Nepali politics was from 1970s. Data collection in Nepal is not very scientific and is done mostly by UN groups, the government rarely collects any statistics.

You would not believe that I missed a lot of deadlines for my assignments. I do not have any record for doing so. Even though GPA does not mean much to me personally, I give a heck lot of attention to it since that is how everyone judges a student’s performance and knowledge. And missing exams, which usually happen only thrice a semester could permanently strip you of the prospect of landing an A. If there is any class that I hate so much then it is Ancient Science & Technology. No, Calculus III comes second. And, Macroeconomics comes third. Wwww…is there anything that I even like? It seems no. I am a complainer. I don’t like this system. I want to be on my own and read and study what I want. What do I want? If you ask me what is my favorite subject or discipline, my blank stare at your face might make you uneasy but yeah that is what I would do. I love a lot of disciplines. I have interest in politics, international affairs, stock market, rural and urban planning, all physical sciences, mathematics, philosophy, psychology and many more. I want to gain knowledge and read about all of these areas but no college education, not even those like Brown which do not have a mandatory Common Curriculum requirement would cater to my ‘unusual’ style. I guess, for this you could call me a complainer since I am very hard to be pleased.

I kind of drifted away while writing this. I wanted to talk about the mess my life is in right now. On Monday, I decided I would get some work done on my Ancient Science & Technology Project, which is supposed to be about a dozen pages long and so skipped the class to be in the library. A consequence of bad ‘karma’ you can call it, an important exam was scheduled and an assignment was due the same day. I had not marked my calendars and so I had no idea about these. When I think about it now, I can’t tell if skipping the class did more harm than good since if I had gone, I would have failed it, and that’s for sure. You know who wrote de Architectura Book VI? I didn’t know. What’s a sambuka? What am I talking about? Just few of the terms common in my Ancient Science & Technology class

Things are moving too fast. I am working on my Writing Workshop Paper which is about Federalism in Nepal. I chose this topic because it was interesting and I wanted to know more about it since this issue of federalism is being discussed in the Constituent Assembly in Nepal and is the hottest debate in Nepal right now. I could have easily got away with an easy topic like abortion, gay marriage, capital punishment and other common topics that we have been writing essays on from secondary school. But no, I want to learn about new things. Very Inspiring, I’m impressed you would falsely say. Now, I have got to do a lot of research about this topic. And guess what, there is not a single book in our library on this topic. With the inter-library book loan program that directs you to a page where you have to fill a long form that I do not like, I am all left to the internet. Hope Google Scholar helps. I LOVE Google. Google is such a sweetheart, the BKG (Big Kind Giant); Microsoft is such an evil monopolist and Apple is only for certain type of people, those who can afford big bucks. (As you can tell, my opinions on Microsoft and Apple have nothing to do with this article. I just wanted to say it out.)

Images for my blog

These images are sample pictures present inside any computer. These have been edited.

Who is the Owner of the Ruler?

Saturday Morning. I walked towards Murchison Computer Lab, a 24 hour quiet study area with my Vector Mechanics for Engineers and Calculus Transcendentals, each of which are nowhere less than five pounds to spend the next several hours computing and understanding nonsense mathematical equations and 3-D graphs. Not having a graphing calculator aggravates the mathematical pain. Unlike last Saturday, the study lounge was relatively vacant and much peaceful, there weren’t any couples there. At least that appeased the mathematical torture that was to come. No sooner than I unpacked my bags and sat down to work on Calculus first, my eyes fell on a shiny metallic ruler left unattended on a table beside me. My initial reaction was a sense of annoyance to these careless kids of rich parents who have plenty to spend on Trinity's outrageously priced stationery items at Barnes and Nobles Bookstore. Next to that table was a pencil that was left behind. Every time I walk in a study lounge, I know I am in the United States because something is left behind and no one cares.

My initial annoyance towards the careless owner of the metallic ruler changed to an uncomfortable feeling when a little unnerving realization came to my mind about how much it resembled my own metallic ruler. I checked my bag and saw the ruler was missing from its usual place. The insinuation was not positive and I didn’t want to believe that the ruler was mine. I did not have a history of carelessness. My memory added some details by recapping the two days earlier scene when I had walked in and had sat on that same table to do my economics assignment. Obviously, I had used the ruler to draw graphs that make little practical sense to me. I checked my bag and realized pencil, eraser, sharpener, few pens and other items were intact but one item was missing- my metallic ruler. It was hard for me to believe that even if I had left my ruler, it would not have remained there for 2 days; it was shiny enough to lure the laptop-thieves if luck had not been on his/her side and could not get his/her hands on any laptop. It was an unpleasant feeling that I could have been careless enough to leave it there. Furthermore, it was a quirky feeling to lay my hands on a ruler that been left behind in a study lounge. My dorm is the second closest dorm to Murchison Study Lounge and it aided my otherwise threshold motivation to go to my room and see if I have left my ruler in the drawer.

It added to my embarrassment when I realized that the ruler was mine. I felt stupid and childish for making generalizations about careless people being rich, I was careless but I am far from rich. I learnt a lesson. And I am glad I am at Trinity since I learn something every day.

Dream. Inspire. Achieve.

What's up with the Pope?

When you realize no one is really paying attention to you or commenting on your Facebook status even though you change it more often than you change your underwear then, you act out of desperation and write something really stupid. Don’t tell me you have not seen people writing controversial statements on their Facebook statuses expecting tonnes of comments.

It seems Pope has been using a lot of Facebook these days, with high privacy settings, of course. What should I make of his Facebook status message which says that the use of condoms would make the ailing situation of AIDS in Africa even worse? Of course, he fulfilled his purpose by drawing out thousands of comments. Did he act out of desperation because for Christians, religion was starting to get limited to Sundays? He caused a stir and uproar among the large population. Even many Catholics must have felt really let down and misrepresented. I mean what is his basis? A person with his authority is in no position to make value judgments. It would be stupid to think he had not foreseen that this mass uproar would be created. Pope must have been watching a lot of Britney and must have learnt from her on how to stage a publicity stunt. Well done the Great Pope, you are a quick learner.

Abstinence? Why should anyone abstain from sex? Sex is a physiological need. Humans are unusual in that they have too less sex. I’m not kidding. If you were to look at scientific evidence of primates and compare bonobos, chimpanzees, gorillas and humans, there is a solid link between the size of testicles and frequency of sex per day. The analysis predicts that on average, humans would have sex at least once a day and that is a natural rate, chimps mate several times a day. Again, these rates are normal and early humans might have followed this trend until this notion of abstinence was imposed by religion. Osho and Freud, all they were proposing were what was in nature. And religion boycotted them. Pope is against contraceptives because it is against natural law of sex for reproduction and advocates abstinence. But how the hell is abstinence any more natural? What hypocrisy? The only reason the Pope is against the use of condoms is because of his reluctance to budge against his dogmatic beliefs. Please correct me. It’s not his. The unwillingness to change and upgrade and keep on using Pentium I even though Pentium IV has arrived in the market has been trademark of all religions; this deep conservatism seems to be the common ground of all religions. It is fine with me, if they don’t want to change, they will be left behind.