September 2004 Entries
Finally it has dawned ... I have been trying to work out why I have been so miserable lately. Yes, I miss everyone and Yes, I've been spending a fair bit of time on my own, but none of this is anything new .. Hell, I spent nearly 22 years in solitary confinement. Its not my general nature to be down for so long and it has really been bugging me, but today I worked it out ... LAUGHTER !!! ... I am in a situation where I generally am not part of the conversation as its always in Nepali, so I have no...
Came across this in one of my forums, thought to be based on Celtic origins its a bit of light hearted fun ... Soooo check it out .. What Tree Are You ? Just in case you where wondering I'm the 24th May ( now you know when to get me those gorgeous speakers for the iPod !! )
Histrionics and HissyFits over, I'm now rebuilding the mac .. The next 2 days are bandhs (again) , so it sort of works .. After applying the latest update on Saturday, the machine just started crawling and locking up. It was playing up on reboot and would only come up every other time until it just didnt come up at all. The b-tree ( sort of the index to all the directories and files) got totally screwed and the only solution is to erase the hard drive and start again. Luckily I didn't fit in those...
Well .. after all that upbeat stuff, this weekend totally sucked ... I managed to get myself into a total blue funk and just to top it off, the mac has decided to die. Looks like the hard drive, and of course I didnt f... well do a backup this Friday, do we ever learn. Soooo, will be offline for a while (except for when I can be bothered to use these net cafe things) and looks like my little jaunt to India (closest mac support centre)might be brought forward. At least thats one positive out of this...
Can you believe its nearly two months since I left work and I've been here for 6 weeks already ?? Wow, time is flying and I thought things were going to slow down... I'm settling in well, but to be expected, with all the moving I did as a kid it generally doesn't take me long to adapt to a new environment. There are always going to be things I miss from home, especially my sons, my girlfriends, my family, a night on the town with said girlfriends ( eyah .. wait till I get home girls, we are gonna...
Rest day today .. In my usual all or nothing style its been a full on for the last couple of days. Thursday morning, Moni came around to help me wrap me into my sari. I just love them, they are so beautiful and feel gorgeous on. To help complete the 'localisation' she very kindly gave me a heap of bangles, some necklaces and some diamante tika's ( the red dots). There are lots of different takes on the meaning of the tika's but they have now become a bit of a fashion statement and range from the...
Scary as it sounds, I am settling in and even find myself in a bit of a routine. Not something I had really 'planned' to do but inevitable no doubt. The itchy feet are still quietly tapping in the background making sure I don't get too settled ... In the head up to Daisain, it's full on festival season here and tomorrow is 'Tij'. Traditionally it was to honour married women and it was the one day a year they could visit their families and everyone make a fuss of them. The dress for women tomorrow...
What have I been up to over the last few days ? Well, besides listening to Missy's new album (which I love), its been a bit of everything. On Friday we had the annual AGM at work, so I got to meet most of the board and directors and sat through a 2 hour meeting all in Nepali .. interesting to say the least, but slowly the langauge is starting to sound 'normal' and if I'm lucky I might start picking up a few words soon. Amazingly I managed to get the gist of a lot of it just by the tone and body language....
Geez, I'm getting slow. I have been waiting for Missy Higgins new album to be released and finally finally 'The Sound of White' was released last week. You can listen to her fantastic voice online at http://www.missyhiggins.com/ . I'm trying to talk that son of mine into installing an ftp server so I can get a copy. I really don't want to cart around CD's and lord knows how long it will take to get to me anyway. I'm still waiting for some stuff the wonderful Deb and my fantastic sister sent to me...
Wednesday 8th September Well my last post was pretty down and thank you so much to everyone for your emails to brighten my day. I'm just back from Pokhara and I'm trying to get down as much as I can before it all starts to fade. Some of it never will, and from that comment you can tell I had a fantastic time. It is such a beautiful place and so much like the Nepal that I envisioned. I am restored of sound humour, very sunburnt and look like I have reverted to my hippie days. Hope you are up for a...
Saw this at the bottom of a post yesterday and just knew you would like to share :-). What a great way to look at life. Life is not a journey to the grave, with the intention of arriving safely, in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming: wow, what a ride! *Start of vent* Its probably a good thing for me to read at the moment because I have lost all sense of perspective, grace and good humour over this @#%^%$@...
And yet another day cancelled. I know I said I wanted to slow down, but not this much !!! The curfew is still on, but at least the shops where allowed to open for a couple of hours (apparently they did yesterday too, but I didnt know about it), so at least I have supplies in. The media here is already calling it 1/11 and Black Wednesday. Personally I'm not sure how locking people up in their houses for 3 or more days is going to make people calm, I would think it would have the reverse effect. It...
Another quiet day. The government here has called a national day for mourning and the curfew is still in place. Things seemed to have settled down today, so lets hope it lasts. Thank goodness I've got the net. This means I can spend all day putting in links to wierd and wonderful things for when you are bored :-). Or is that when I am bored, oh well ! Here's one for the girls. For those long lonely nights when all you need is a cuddle, but you can't or don't want to find a man, this is the perfect...
Wednesday 1st September No work today. Got a phone call this morning advising me to stay inside as there are demonstrations going on. The demonstration is to protest against the killing of 12 Nepali's by Iraqi militants, so as you can imagine they are pretty wound up. They came past here not long ago (10am) and it was pretty loud, sounded like a football or soccer match. Now that they are gone, the silence is eerie. Normally there is this constant cacophony of animals, people, cars, buses, horns,...
Woohoo, Skype, which is an MSN type application which also allows phone calls to mobiles and landlines over the internet at super cheap rates was released for mac today. To phone an Australian mobile is going to cost me about 28 cents a minute and 2 cents a minute for a landline, no matter where in the world is Carmen Santiago .. lol, got carried away there, no matter where in the world I am. Currently from Nepal its costing me about $2.00 a minute. Big difference, see how much longer I will be able...
Tuesday 31st August Not a lot going on, working away like a good little vegemite and finished creating the tables. Stored Procedures and views next, think I might go and climb Everest instead ! Everyone has been at me to get some pictures up, so I have updated and/or added a few galleries. Don't ask me why, but I feel terribly embarrased standing around with a camera, like a tourist or something :-), I will have to get over it and take some more, but this is it for now. Apparently there seems to...