From November 19th to the 24th, 2009 Palden Dorje a.k.a. Ram Bahadur Bomjan will be giving blessings in Ghadi Mai. He plans this appearance in order to protest the sacrificing of tens of thousands of animals before they take place on the 25th at the Ghadi Mai Festival near Nijgad in Bara District. This Ancient Nepali Festival has taken place once every five years over several millennia.

I completely support him on this one.

More about Gadimai

It was a life changing experience being at the the operating theatre during her birth (I wasn’t allowed in the labour ward when my son was born in Hong Kong in 2000). Words can’t explain it! I’m sure all the dads who’re present at their child birth understand what I mean. The pain women has to go through and courage, love, care and tenderness that they show throughout pregnancy and birth is one of many things that make them so special. I think that’s one of the reasons mothers are so special in our life.

Here’re few photos I’ve taken.

Minutes after birth

With her mum

With her brother

With her dad

D90 is the very first DSLR to do HD video. I’ve taken few pictures and video with it and I’m impressed. The crisp quality pictures you get when you hook it up with your HD TV using hdmi connection is just breathtaking! I’ve bought few photography books and am reading all about ISOs, whitebalance, lenses, Aperture, Shutter speed, etc…

I’ve taken some pictures of my D90, enjoy…

Click on the photo for larger image.

He’s now 8 and half. Here’s a masterpiece he made when he was 5 and half.

I was keeping my eye on the price of D90 in UK at Camera Price Buster (very useful site indeed!). When I was ready to buy it from Currys (it was £709.00 at that time), just decided to do a last minute check on Amazon (I prefer buying from Amazon because never had any problems in the past) and to my surprise Nikon D90 Digital SLR Camera, 18-105 VR Kit was there for just £649.99 by a seller called “rodneyjwillis”. Almost £60 cheaper, Excellent – I thought. Checked the sellers profile/review – it had 100% positive feedback from the buyers, nice comments and seller was with Amazon for almost a year. So, ordered it from Amazon marketplace. I didn’t see anything phisy at that time and anyway I was aware that paying via Amazon will guarantee my purchase with their A-to-z guarantee scheme.

When all other stuff I ordered together with D90 arrived (camera bag, sd card and d90 book), but there was no sign of my D90 being dispatched, let alone delivered. I sensed something was wrong. Went back and checked the seller’s profile – there was one new feedback saying

“BEWARE! This account is being used in a scam – items don’t arrive!”

That got me worried. Sent seller an email and alerted Amazon that this might be a scam. The storefront of the seller was immediately taken off (I guess by Amazon)

Contacted the seller for the status of my delivery – got an email next day saying, the item was dispatched (without any details):

I then replied asking when was it dispatched, if he was sending it from UK and if he could give me the tracking number. In reply I received another copy of exactly the same email. Called Amazon several times and sent several emails. By now I had no doubt in my mind that it was a scam and I wanted my money back, but amazon was sticking to it’s policy of waiting for the 3 days to pass after the seller’s advertised delivery date, which was 11 to 23 June ( I actually placed the order in 5th June). That meant I could only file a-to-z claim after 26th June (which is 3 weeks after my order), and would have to wait for amazon’s investigation (one to two weeks), then when they transfer the money back, it can take up to another 10 days to end up in your account. Almost 2 months before you get your money back in worst case scenario.

I think it’s totally unacceptable for a clear fraud case like this!

When I sent a last email to the seller (June 16) – got this auto-reply saying his amazon account was closed.

After a week of persistent complaining Amazon finally filed the a-to-z claim on my behalf. All in all it was a very dreadful experience. What a waste of time! I’ve spent most of my last week just checking the sellers profile, reading other victims comments, contacting Amazon and worrying…

Here’s the link to scammer’s amazon profile, at the time of this writing more than 70 people have fallen victim to this scam.

I’m sure everyone who paid via amazon will get their money back but Amazon has failed here in a big way. Looks like the seller has duped Amazon more than the buyers. At the end of the day buyers will get their money back. Amazon is the real loser here – the lost customer confidence is more costly for them than the refund they’ll have to make. Amazon should have been more proactive to refund the money to customers since it was a clear fraud case, which happened due to weaknesses in their Marketplace system, but they kept on dragging.

Every amazon’s email had this signature:

“We’re Building Earth’s Most Customer-Centric Company”

But I wasn’t convinced. You couldn’t reply to any emails they sent you because the emails were sent from addresses that cannot accept incoming emails. There might be a valid security reason for doing that but as a customer it was quite difficult to track my email conversation with them (the online contact form didn’t keep any record of my previous emails to them either). I found Amazon’s telephone support to be better than their email.

This just shows that it’s not all safe and well on online purchases. The scammers can trick not only innocent users but successfully dupe big companies like Amazon.

Finally the money refunded by Amazon has appeared in my account. I’m off to local Argos store to get my D90.

A Hong Kong police constable shot dead an unarmed homeless Nepali man.

A life was lost unnecessarily.

Why?

Because a policeman couldn’t subdue a single suspect with pepper spray and baton, then gave him warning in Cantonese (possibly the suspect didn’t understand) and decided to shoot him twice (one in the head) from a very close range.

Investigation is underway, but looking at the mobile phone video footage, shooting was absolutely unnecessary. If the officer was so unfit to subdue a single suspect he should have left him alone and waited for a backup support instead of shooting in the head, after-all he wasn’t a fugitive or a terrorist.

Shame on you Hong Kong Police!

Update: Latest News about the incident from HKNepal.com

I’ve to say that I’ve been quite reluctant to install third-party apps and post family photos due to privacy concerns, but this new terms of service makes it worse. Now anything you post or upload can be used by facebook even after you close your account. In previous terms of service, facebook’s rights on your content would expire after you closed your account, but not any more.

via: Consumerist

Update (17Feb09): facebook ceo, Zuckerberg has written a blog post about the issue, trying to explain why they need this TOS.

Our philosophy that people own their information and control who they share it with has remained constant. A lot of the language in our terms is overly formal and protective of the rights we need to provide this service to you. Over time we will continue to clarify our positions and make the terms simpler.

Update (18Feb09): After a global complain facebook has returned to previous terms of service (until they find a new language to clarify their position). Zuckerberg explains it in his Update on Terms

We concluded that returning to our previous terms was the right thing for now. As I said yesterday, we think that a lot of the language in our terms is overly formal and protective so we don’t plan to leave it there for long.

Update (27Feb09): Finally, democracy has come to facebook, it’s allowing users to review comment and vote over it’s future policies. That the way to go, well done facebook!

As for myself, I decided to go to office but my car needed some work.

After 15 minutes of shoveling the snow, it was ready for a drive.

The road was pretty slippery, it took half an hour to drive to work (it’s a 10 minutes drive in normal conditions).

Office was almost empty. No public transport and road closures made it impossible for most of the staffs to get to work.

Came back home and played in the snow with my son.

Just came to know that my sons school will be closed tomorrow as well. He’s very happy.

Delivering customer-focused managed network and application delivery solutions that leverage a global network with unrivalled reach, depth and breadth to multinational, service provider and global carrier clients. Over 1400 enterprise customers and 200 carriers depend upon Reliance Globalcom to manage business-critical network solutions and address complex requirements for their businesses and partners throughout the world

Vanco is now Reliance Globalcom, Anil Dihrubhai Ambani group, which is also well known because of it’s chairman Anil Ambani, currently 6th on The World’s Billionaires List.

I feel myself privileged and honored to have this opportunity. At Vanco my role will be exclusively focusing on security, I’m really excited about it. This is a perfect opportunity for me to bring forward my previous network/security expertise as well as learn and grow at this truly global organization.

Watching news about the economic downturn, global credit crunch and job cuts is one thing but experiencing it firsthand is a different matter altogether.

How does it feel?

Awful, I felt something swirling in my stomach I can tell you it wasn’t a pleasant experience to be on this side of the table (it used to be other way round). Anyway, there’s first time for everything. It felt awful for a while, but the fact that this redundancy had nothing to do with my personal performance, and I had no control over it provided me some consolation. I was over with it pretty soon. I didn’t see it coming though and was caught with a surprise after enjoying my Dashain holidays…

After all it’s just a business decision for the company. I believe that whatever happens, happens for good. So, hopefully ShipServ will be able to weather out this storm. As for myself and other affected colleagues at ShipServ there might be something good waiting for us.

Its slightly painful now (you know you start thinking… oh my god how am I going to pay my rent, bills, food, blah blah…) but I’m absolutely positive that something good will come out of this. Lets see…

BTW, Cnet has an excellent list of 14 things to do if you are laid off from a tech job

Looking at the brighter side… I’m excited about new opportunities and have attended few interviews, which look promising. Also, it’s a good news for prospective employers; thanks to the credit crunch there’s one more very talented and experienced network, security and infrastructure engineer available on the job market

Anyone interested?

Grab my CV here.