The mac

Histrionics (for this week) are History

SDL — Tue, 28 Sep 2004 06:43:00 GMT

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 extra clothes and brought all my CD's and manuals with me, painful as they are to cart around I would be lost without them AND Thank God for the iPod. I did manage to remember to do a backup about a week or so ago to the iPod, so once I get all my apps downloaded (did I know something when I got an unlimited d/l account?) and back on, the loss is going to be fairly minimal. Unfortunately I didnt bother backing up the Virtual PC as it was so big, soooooo rebuilding the Windows machine is going to be the biggest pain. The mac was back up and running within an hour and you can guarantee the latest updates are NOT going on. Another bonus is IMAP, I havent lost any of my mail as it is all on the westnet server and with the synching between my phone and the iPod, again I havent lost any of my addresses or calendar. Bit of a bugger I can't swing the trip to India yet, but thats life ...

No doubt I will have plenty of time to ramble over the next 2 days, consider yourself warned :-) To all those who have sent emails, comments or chatted to me over the last couple of days, your support is a never ending source of comfort and it truly lifts my spirits and touches my heart. I'm sure that my bad days make some people uncomfortable, but if this is to be an account of my 'adventures' it has to be warts and all. We all have our bad days and when you are so far out of your element and your network of friends and family is so far away, you just have to go with it and then pick yourself up, brush off the dust and get on with it.

The Ups and Downs of Life

SDL — Mon, 27 Sep 2004 01:33:00 GMT

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 !!!
Will have to spend tomorrow sorting it out, Tuesday and Wed are dead days, another bandh on and from what I can gather it will take a week to get an Indian visa ... Will keep you posted

Kathmandu - Monday 13th September

SDL — Mon, 13 Sep 2004 15:13:00 GMT

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. Quite a few of the board also run their own organisations and I am getting invitations to come visit and help. They are so desperate for professionals (?), especially with IT and english skills to help out, I feel quite overwhelmed and not sure how to cope. As much as I would love to help out, how much can one person do ??

The meeting was followed by an enourmous lunch, which was beautiful, I have no idea what I'm eating sometimes, but I'm getting over my paranoia now, so no doubt I will be bitten again soon.

I just vegged around Saturday morning and decided to head off to Thamel later in the day. In the interests of my new 'get fitter' phase, I decided to see how far I could walk and would you believe I totally suprised myself and made it all the way. I would guestimate that its about 8 or 9 k's !! After that little effort, of course I needed a drink ... wandered around for a bit and ran into a guy from Melbourne. It was soooooo nice to talk with someone and actually understand both sides of the conversation. I found myself at Sams Bar, a relaxing chair, some music, a vodka and popcorn ... most places here serve a fresh bowl of popcorn with your drinks, not a bad idea at all. I started talking to a girl from England and the group slowly expanded over the evening, in the end we had poms, aussies, kiwi's, costa ricans, canadians, nepali's and no doubt a couple of others .. so many travel tales and adventures, it really does make it so much harder to know what I'm going to do next, they all sound so good.

Woke up Sunday feeling just a tad under the weather, I've really got to stop this drinking on an empty stomach thing, its just that I get so involved in looking around and talking I forget to eat ... such a wonderful sight .. I felt like crap, the forehead and nose are peeling, lots of lovely coldsores from all the sunburn and a bad hair day to boot. Got myself moving in the end, as I had to pick up the software that I had ordered, LOL, no walking today .. I slacked out and got a taxi. Picked up the software, had a wander around New Road and headed home for a thrilling day of installing Virtual PC and Windoze. After the mac, I forgot how damn long it takes to set it all up. Got VPC and W2K on OK, but it took hours ( and hours ) to get W2K up to speed. Service packs and security updates, .NET framework .. got the worst of it done and will have to finish the rest today at work.

Breaking News - Skype Released for MacOSX today

SDL — Wed, 01 Sep 2004 17:48:00 GMT

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 to yak for.

I'll have to go out and get a headset, I could use the internal speakers and microphone but there is so much background noise here, I think it will interfere too much.

So, if any of you out there make a lot of overseas calls, its probably worth your while to check Skype out. They have a client for just about all of the OS'es now.

Kathmandu - The first real weekend

SDL — Mon, 23 Aug 2004 04:19:00 GMT

Saturday

Lesson #3
A nice dinner and wine do not go with an already stressed stomach.
I know this and I should know better, but oh well, thats life.

Managed to get up and have a shower and pop in to the shop (luckily its next door) and stock up on water. I couldn't find any lemonade, but suprise suprise, I got some Golden Circle Raspberry Cordial which seems to be helping. ( Its a very well known Australian brand for the non aussies )

Today is declared a day of rest and recupuration ...

Sunday

Woke up feeling a bit better. Bored, cranky and tired of being stuck in the room, but thats usual. I make a real good patient :-)

Besides not physically being able to go far, I couldn't have done much anyway as there is a bandh ( general strike ) on today. Apparently these are very common and called by the maoists. Most of the cities transportation is ground to a halt when there is a bandh on. I am told some taxi's will still operate, but it then makes them (and you) a target, so you either walk or stay home.

I really had to get some fresh air ( and with no taxis and buses it wasn't too bad ), so I went for a walk down to the bookshop which is not far. Got a novel, one of the local papers and an ASP.NET book. Wasn't long back and the cleaners and the guys to install the broadband turned up. It was a little crowded in my poor room. Turns out the cable is actaully the whole deal. Something on the roof, I didnt see it, some utp down to my room (they just drilled a hole in the window sash which is wooden ) , broadband router and wooohooo I've now got a 32/64k connection. The mac totally confused the guy setting it up, but once I got a console window up for him it was sorted pretty quickly.

I had to run out and get another powerboard as this has now added another 2 things to my collection. So here I am, running smoothly, find out in just 3 weeks of being relatively offline I've got 100mb of updates to do, get that done and bang .. the power drops out.

This is fairly typical as I've said before, but when it came back on it blew the new (crappy) powerboard. Off I trot down the road again and found an electrical shop. Got a new decent powerboard and priced a voltage regulator. Think I better get one .. they are only 800 rupee which is well and truly worth it considering the cost of my gear, not to mention the lack of reliable parts or support this way.

Looks like I'm nesting again and building up a supply of stuff I will have to give away when I go .. just can't help myself ..

I did some looking around on the net on the "Kathmandu Quickstep" ( aka Travellers bug or Dehli Belly, etc,etc) and actually found that one of the clinics here (CIWEC Clinic) are world class experts in researching this lovely phenomenen and have actually discovered one of the bugs. I suppose this isn't suprising in that they have plenty of research subjects !!! But their website is actually worth checking out if you are thinking of heading this way as there is information on all sorts of health related issues that are particular to foreigners in Nepal.

Can tell you one thing, once this gets sorted I don't want to see red cordial or digestive biscuits for quite a while ...

Kathmandu - Day 2

SDL — Sat, 14 Aug 2004 18:58:00 GMT

Woke up early after a pretty good nights sleep and decided to head off to Thamel. This is meant to be the most popular area for trekkers and backpackers to stay. Its in the taxi for some more obstacle course work, it should be scary, but I think because the speed is relatively slow, 20 – 40 k's it's a blast. Just lean on that horn and push your way through. I think everyone here is in a permanent state of carbon monoxide poisoning, you just wouldn't believe the smog. Lots of people walk around wearing those little medical mask things. Back to Thamel .. again dozens and dozens of alleys, all not quite one car wide, shops (stalls) everywhere. Pashminas, Tshirts, jewellery, camping gear, trekking gear, food, lots of exotic and interesting looking food, drinks, saris, fabrics, clothes, cyber shops, map shops, so much to take in. Alleys off alleys, its just mind blowing. Being so inconspicuous, I got picked up about a dozen times by 'guides'. All beautiful young men who 'don't want money'. You can see why so many women come back with husbands from here. Thank God I'm not in the market for one. I also had my first taste of begging. A woman kept following me with her baby asking for milk for the baby. Ohhhhhhh it was so hard to say no. I found a place for coffee which unlike the tea here, bears a close resemblance to the coffee that I know and a little boy stood 2 feet away from me the whole time just saying 'please' in this sad sad voice. They must be able to spot me from 100 paces. I am going to have to learn how to deal with it, as I know that giving is not going to help, but in the mean time I feel like some western cliched tourist who doesn't give a shit. As Thamel is really the main tourist spot, and this has been the only place I have encountered the begging and picking up thing, I assume its our behaviour (ie tourists ) that encourages and enforces this way of earning a living. Its quite a sad and sobering thought. After doing my usual thing of wandering around without any idea where I am for a couple of hours, (did I also mention going around in circles due to my excellent sense of direction) its taxi time again and off to New Rd, which is apparently a more upmarket shopping area. This means the stalls are bigger and not as dusty. Toni, you would just drool over the fabric here. There are dozens and dozens of sari and pashmina shops and the fabric is absolutely beautiful. Its also the electrical centre and hopefully I can pick up a converter as my battery power on the mac is getting a tad low, and worst of all .. the iPod is flat. My never ending ability to hone in on shops also found me wandering down a laneway and I found myself at obviously a very privileged and upmarket mall. There were actually guards at the entrance with hand held scanners and all. At least I now know where to go when I need some Yve St Laurent gear ..

Yay, the mac is going and the iPod is charging, its time for a rest. I hate to admit this but the adapter I bought was only 5 amps and didn't work. It turned out the hotel power board is multi adaptive and I didn't look closely enough to see the extra notches cut out for our Aussie plugs.

You know its absolutely amazing how I find it so hard to just sit around and do nothing. I feel like I should be moving but I would really like to rest. There is nowhere I have to be, nothing I have to do .. yet another thing I have to learn .. How to do nothing .. Here goes ..

PS I have organised to start my work with Tewa tomorrow. How well am I doing at doing nothing ...

Side Note: For those that don't know I am working at Tewa on behalf of the Jagriti Foundation. Might as well make the pitch and let you know that you are quite welcome to make a donation if you wish to.