Nirlog.com

Some of my friends have been asking me why aren’t any updates here. I don’t feel good about leaving this blog unattended for so long, but frankly didn’t have time and energy to keep up with it. Now I have decided not to feel guilty because this was just meant for fun anyway. So, this blog will go with the flow of my life, without any stress… Things have changed slightly. Mainly the time. I’m pretty busy running a rat race, like most of the people, work, home, work…. Weekends are good time to get in touch with reality and re-charge your battery. I try to devote the weekends to my family.

On personal account, life is pretty good, trying to climb a property ladder, probably good (or bad) time for first-time buyers… On professional side, enjoying the challenges at ShipServ, grateful for the opportunity to serve and learn… My son is having a good time (very little homework and lot of play). My wife is quite worried about the teenage stabbing, drugs and alcohol abuse…

The weather was very good last week. It was warm and sunny for the whole week! That’s something to celebrate here, English weather is so unpredictable… you can truly see 4 seasons in one day.

Here are few moments I’ve captured from my life in UK…

April snow, my wife and son enjoying their first encounter…

Read the rest of this entry »

Apple has finally announced the long awaited SDK for iPhone. Looking at the amazing games and enterprise softwares that third party were able to develop in just two weeks I’m convinced that iPhone will be an excellent gaming machine as well as a hit enterprise handheld device. The next release of iPhone firmware version 2.0 due to be released in June will have native Exchange support, Cisco IPSec VPN, remote wipe capabilities, WPA2, and many more…

Here’s a nice iPhone SDK comparison chart by engadget.

Another good news for iPhone users in UK is that BBC has launched iPlayer video on demand service for the iPhone and iPod touch. I just watched the BBC News on my iPhone and it’s just awesome!

I don’t know about other ISPs in UK but I can tell you that Orange is the worst I’ve encountered. I’ve been without the internet at home for 23 days. The broadband stopped working from 23rd of December 2007 (for unknown reasons) until yesterday, but I still don’t know what was the problem. I’ve made more than 10 calls to it’s customer support and they’re clueless about the cause of outage. The call gets redirected to it’s support center in India and the support staff absolutely have no idea about the problem. Every time you call them they’ll tell the same thing: “The case has been escalated and will be solved within 5 working days” and they’ll ask you to follow the Livebox (wireless router) reset procedure. It’s probably one of the worst customer service… no followups, no idea about the problem and the service goes on and off like magic. They sign you up for a 18 to 24 month contract and once you’re hooked who cares…

I’ll probably never join Orange again!

Thanks to the iPhone, I was able to keep up with the personal emails and relatively decent web browsing.

2007 has been an exciting year for me. I moved to a new place, changed jobs and am enjoying new environment, new culture and new opportunities… I’ve made some new friends and the life seems wonderful. I’m very content with what year 2007 has given me, and am looking forward to more challenges, fun, love, peace and spiritual development in 2008.

I would like to take this opportunity to wish all of my readers, friends and family a VERY HAPPY and PROSPEROUS NEW YEAR 2008!

It’s been interesting times for me here in London. Life has taken many turns and I’m enjoying the Journey. Just wanted to let you all know that I’ve joined ShipServ as a System Manager and will be looking after their network, infrastructure and Security.

ShipServ was founded in 1999 and is the world’s leading e-marketplace, helping buyers and sellers to easily find each other, connect cost effectively and trade efficiently. Whether a Supplier wants to attract new customers, a Buyer needs to source new Suppliers or existing purchasing relationships require internet-enabling, ShipServ is unique in helping businesses of all sizes in the areas of web based Commerce, Search and Advertising.

I’m really honored and delighted to accept the new challenge and start this new phase of my career.

Finally got my hands on the iPhone today!

We’ve all watched/read so much about the iphone and it’s coolness that expectations were quite high. And I’ve to say that I was not disappointed. It’s really cool, slim and gorgeous. Most of the things work perfect. I think the keyboard is not an issue.

iPhone was launched today at 6:02pm in UK and could be bought in Apple Stores, O2 stores or Carphone Warehouse stores. You’ll have to sign 18 months contract with O2, which is the exclusive carrier in UK.

There’s one Carphone Warehouse store few blocks away from my house, so I went to check out at 6pm. Surprisingly there were just around 20 people queuing up. The store opened at 6:02 and everybody was let in. But there was a problem with carphone warehouse’s payment system. I’m not sure if the system was flooded by iPhone transaction or other technical issues. Anyway, it took more than half an hour just for the payment authorization. I was the first one to walk out of that store with the iPhone. They authorized the payment manually, bypassing the chip and pin (security system in UK’s bank cards).

Activating iPhone with iTunes was a smooth and painless process. I am currently using Vodafone, and got the PAC code from them few days ago. PAC code is a special code to transfer your mobile number from one provider to another. My existing mobile number will be automatically transferred to my iPhone after 7 days, until then O2 has assigned me a temporary number. That was clever.

Played with most of its features, made several calls (quality is quite good) and tested the visual voice mail (which should be very useful). Synced my address book, music, podcasts, some photos and videos. iPod is excellent. Gmail and IMAP mails are easy to configure and work without any problem. Photos are very cool, flipping them, zooming in/out, resizing was fun. Google Maps will be very useful for me finding places in London, it loads pretty fast even on EDGE Network.

Only problems are the Wi-Fi connection and YouTube. I use a 128bit WEP HEX Key at home and couldn’t establish connection with my Access Point. Quick Google gave me this (seems to be a known issue) but using $ in front doesn’t solve the problem for me. For the YouTube Videos It says that it requires an EDGE or Wi-Fi connection.

I think these two problems can be fixed easily.

I’m just having a good time playing with it. You’ve to hold it and use it to really appreciate it. It was a nice Deepawali gift for myself!

Finally some sense of normality is returning to life. I’ve found a house in Charlton, London. It’s 45 minutes commute to work by tube (underground). My son is still waiting for a school placement from the local council though, it’s taking longer than I’d expected.

Newcomers will find it quite difficult to start anything here in UK because nothing seems to move without an address proof!

You want to open a bank account?
Show your address proof.

Your child needs to go to school?
You can’t apply without an address proof.

You want to rent a house?
Address proof please!

You can’t even register with GP (Local Doctor) without an address proof!

If you’ve just arrived in the UK, where are you going to get the address proof from? It’s like a Chicken and Egg story! I was lucky that I’d opened HSBC UK account from Hong Kong, which worked for my address proof. If you’re coming to settle in the UK, think about how you’re going to get an address proof ahead of time, that will save you from some unnecessary hassles.

BTW, I bought a new MacbookPro in Hong Kong just before coming to UK because it’s insanely expensive out here. I bought it for HK$15,400, the same machine is GBP 1299 in UK. It’s around HK$ 5K (nearly 300 pounds) more expensive. Not only Apple laptops, but everything is expensive out here. Anyway, I love my new santa rosa MacBook Pro. It’s refreshingly fast compared to my previous Powerbook. I wanted to use Parallels to install different OS in my MBP, but encountered a problem with WindowsXP installation. It gives an error message saying “Error loading \PrlSAShellExt.dll”, I tried to tweak several config and reinstalled twice, but no luck. Now I’ve turned to Vmware Fusion, and I’ve to say that it’s as smooth as silk. I’ve already installed WinXP, CentOS 5 and Ubuntu. Solaris 10 is next.

I was hoping to get my hands on 3G iPhone early, but as Steve Jobs announced, it’s going to be the same EDGE and need to wait until Nov. 9. One good thing though is that there will be free unlimited access to any of the O2’s 7500 wifi hot spots.

Most of the time local telephone calls in UK are more expensive than international calls - I don’t understand how the prices are fixed. I use pay as you go (prepaid card) from voafone, it’s 30 pence for first 3 mins and 10 pence there after. The telephone plans are charges are very confusing. In Hong Kong nobody cares about how long you’re talking, but here you need to be aware of minutes, pounds and pence.

You need to pay tax for watching TV. Yes, it’s illegal to keep a TV without paying for TV License, that’s of course separate from the cable bill.

Anyway, with all that said, overall I’m finding UK life quite interesting! Different culture, different people and different environment. It’s quite a change, and it’s a welcome change. Work is challenging and pay is not bad . Most importantly, my son loves the new place!

It’s been quiet here for some time because I’ve been busy lately, moving to UK. Actually I’m already in the UK (arrived here on Aug 10), living with my relatives at Aldershot (which is a small town, an hour drive from London). It’s very cold out here, although it’s supposed to be summer, you hardly see the sun, and it rains with cool breeze most of the time.

My son is enjoying the new place (eagerly waiting for it to snow), my wife finds it very quiet and peaceful (she misses the hustle and bustle of Hong Kong). Initially I was busy looking for a job (applying and responding to calls), the good news is that I’ve already found a job and started working from last week.

I’ve started working as a System Administrator at a company called Covestor, which is in Central London. I’ll be looking after their Linux Systems, Security and Network. It’s a startup company with a new idea to democratize the investment management industry and help proven self-investors around the world compete with the large institutions.

A real-trade sharing service for proven self-investors. To share your real investment decisions, gain recognition and earn fees by helping others

At Covestor they’ve built an unique system and technically there’re many challenges. I’m sure it’ll be fun working with them, where I can add value and learn. Other cool thing about Covestor is that they’ve a small group of really dedicated, smart, and truly multinational team at work. People from US, UK, Colombia, Russia, Lithuania, Italy and India are working together. It’s a great opportunity for me to be joining this team.

Currently, I’m looking for a house close to London and also a school for my son. I’m still getting used to the new place and new life. There’re many things to be done so, this blog might be quiet for some time but don’t go away once things are settled I’ll be blogging regularly.

Stopped at London Bridge to take a photo after my interview at Covestor.

Read the rest of this entry »

I remember being admitted to a boarding school when I was in class 6 (around 12 years old). From that time I’ve been living away from home (most of the time). Trying to make new homes, a home away from home…, In 1990 I left my home town Pokhara to join Amrit Science College in Kathmandu. In 1992 I left my country, and flew to Russia, where I completed my higher education and lived for 6 years. I came back to Nepal in 1998, and started my IT career. Came to Hong Kong in 1999, where I have been living with my wife and son since then.

Hong Kong has been a special place for me both in personal and professional aspect. Personally, my married life started together with my wife here, my son was born here, I’ve made many friends, and overall I find Hong Kong very friendly and peaceful place to live (except the buildings are too tall and your living apartments are too small). Professionally, I had an opportunity to work in a very interesting company (Japanese), where I grew up to become an IT System, Networking and Security Professional. I obtained some well respected professional certifications like CISSP, CCNA, ACP, and earned my Masters Degree in IT. Hong Kong has been a nice stop in my life, but the journey continues…, I’m leaving Hong Kong, this time the destination is UK. I’m moving to UK in August 2007, with my family. By moving to UK, I hope to improve the quality of life for my family in the long term, and I think I’ll have more interesting opportunities to grow professionally as well. If anyone in UK is looking for someone with my background (pdf), feel free to contact me or email me at niranjan.kunwar@gmail.com.

I’m having mixed feelings at this stage. A lot of excitement and some uncertainty at times. I’m observing my feelings with great interest. I’ve learned to watch my own feelings, and chatter in the head up to some extent, thanks to mindfulness meditation. It’s amazing to step back and observe what your mind is doing. This gives some clarity and helps make important decisions. I truly believe that life is a journey, not a destination, and I’m really enjoying this new phase of my journey that’s about to begin.

Any tips (for a newcomer) from people living in the UK will be very much appreciated. You can leave comments or contact me.

Ok England, here comes one more geek!