Today I realize that there was what we call the “Peer Pressure” that made me kick off to celebrate. Everyone would bring sweets on their special day and before the first period would begin, upon the teacher’s consent, the birthday celeb would distribute it among the class mates. In retrospect, we would be too shy to even wish “Happy Birthday!” But the day I started marking with rejoice, whoa! I was so happy back then. The feeling that day was equivalent to having got distinction in your exams. I’m glad that I at least broke the isolation. I consider it’s important to acknowledge one’s momentous day, be it in a simple or a grand way; the key purpose is what matters – celebrating together!

Today as a citizen of the modern and digital world, we don’t realize but we are very dependent on technology. Thanks to all those social networking sites that keep us connected to family, friends, work, study and life around. They have served as a rich source of instantly updated information which even reminds us everyday on who’s celebrating their birthday. But there are some idiots who don’t know what they are missing. Some days ahead of my birthday, my BFF were talking about how they removed their birthday details from their profile account in facebook. With each additional one year to their age, they now believe that it reminded them of their growing age which sadly is a thing of concern according to them. With the shifting century, the way of life has also shifted. Now, it seems like growing age has replaced the fun loving and spontaneity in our lives. Birthdays have changed people, the kind of person you become at these times. We are afraid of playing the birthday girl/boy for one special day to celebrate anniversary of the day of your birth. Today, the day that you were born, is a precious day. It’s personally significant to me for the reason that I believe it’s a time to thank for being born. Excerpt from Welcoming a new age

It seems that the number of “healthy” computers in Bhutan can be counted on a single hand. Many computers that I’m running into show clear symptoms of a sick machine, some of them so terminally ill that the only cure is the IT equivalent of a brain transplant, i.e., re-formating the hard disk. Most computer viruses spread when you insert an infected USB drive (also known as pen drive) into your computer. Once infected, your computer starts to slow down or otherwise behave strangely. If you have good and up-to-date anti-virus software installed, this can sometimes protect your computer.

In addition to slowing down your computer and otherwise being a major nuisance, malware (MALicious softWARE, such as viruses, torjan horses, and more) can also use your Internet connection. For example, Trojan horses can steal your files and passwords and send them over the Internet back to the hackers. Rootkits – another type of malware – often use your computer to attack other computers. All this takes place while you’re online, and most likely you won’t even notice it – although you might be annoyed by the apparently long time it takes for your Facebook wall to load.

Given Bhutan Telecom’s consumer broadband prices – about Nu 160 per 1GB – a virus that uses a mere 0.5kB/second will cost you about Nu. 200 a month, assuming the infected computer is connected to the Internet 24 hours a day. If you have several infected computers sharing your Internet connection, your bill will be even higher. My advice: Obviously, always try to keep your computer clean. However, If you suspect a computer infection, turn off the broadband modem or computer(s) when not in use.

And on a national level: Given the increasing number of Internet-connected computers, the poor “health” of so many of them, and the finite international bandwidth, what price – in productivity and otherwise – are we paying for all those bandwidth-gulping computer viruses? – From Are Viruses clogging Bhutan’s information highway?

We have been seeing this for a quite a while now.

What is happening here?

1. The web hosting  is expired?

2. The account is suspended by the host for some reason (e.g. violation of the Terms of Use, server resource overusage, etc, malwares and other harmful scripts in pages)?

3. The site is hacked…again?

Well, It’s high time Kuensel considered trying a different CMS (with a new look) and seal the those web security holes.

Whatever the reason, they must at least, inform the readers of the glitches through other social media. They have not even stated reasons for the dead page on their twitter page nor on their facebook page that they have ditched since March.

Teachers encourage students to think out of the box. This is also what bosses expect of subordinates. But then again, any thought out of the box may not be always logical, practical, and desirable; therefore, it’s not always recommendable. Yet it mayn’t be uninteresting even if unwise to be adventurous at times. When Tiger Woods hit the headlines for his “transgressions”, one person at NIKE (We know NIKE carry endorsement from Tiger Woods) said that perhaps Tiger took their slogan too seriously and literally. This is the slogan: JUST DO IT.

You’ve been looking for your lost key to no avail. You’re fully exhausted, but you’ve not exhausted the entire gamut of possibilities. You’ve never considered looking for it in one place because you think it’s unlikely to be there. Then you look there only as a first-last resort. Lo and behold! It’s there. It’s the seven-year itch. The marriage is on the rocks. For seven long years it’s always been missionary position. Then they go doggy. They overcome the seven-year itch. And they lived tied together happily ever after.

We cross the hills and vales and climb the high-rise. None of us needs to be prompted. It’s the infamous nightly escapade. We have all braved the nocturnal dangers and the height fright. We have all survived. So haven’t we learnt anything in the process? We have, but we not only do not realize but also do not care to use it.

There are many intractable and unresolved disputes. Nothing seemed to have worked. But not everything has been employed to ease agitation and solve crises. Negotiations slog late into the night. There is no bargaining. Both sides cannot thread through mutually beneficially. Neither side budges. Sleep gets the better of both, and they retire. Gosh, they end up in one bedroom. There is an agreement at last  – both are straight and they are of the opposite sex. They cracked the tough nut. Codes are transmitted to the headquarters, nuclear button is spared. So use sex and each other. The risk of its failure or backfire may be insignificant as against the enormous benefit it’ll result in. If you are still doubtful and fear anticlimax, don’t worry – be tactful and shift into withdrawal gear. It’s coitus interruptus, an onslaught interrupted and thwarted – perhaps a humanitarian orgasm! Orgasm anyway. A free, random and fanciful thought indeed. Excerpt from A Virginal Meditation

Note: This blog has Dzongkha entries too…:)

I can’t understand myself so I can’t really expect other people to understand me. And no, no romanticizing out here. It is not like those scary movies or books where you have a split or multiple personality disorder and go around making life miserable for people or become a psychopathic killer. It is more about the inner conflict…the battle within.

You know you are not doing the right thing yet you keep on doing it. You know you are doing the right thing yet your whole being rebels against it. You want to escape from reality. You are a tortured soul. You want to be stranded on an island. And the next moment a flicker of hope arises. You perceive it with some joy, some anticipation but the moment passes and you are again left with the crumbling remains of your unfulfilled dreams.

The past haunts me, the present troubles me and the future beckons me with some promise but are these promises really meant to be fulfilled in my life? I have nothing to complain about, no one to hate or keep a grudge against….I don’t know if that is happiness but I am longing for escape…Not escape as in death… I want to be free of myself and my complications…I know I am creating them. But I guess every one of us is complex… there is hardly a simple human being in the true sense of the word.
Folks, please don’t misunderstand me. I am a very normal and a very ordinary person…the only thing is that my inner battles which I experience every day of my life makes me sound a bit too …..whatever that maybe. Don’t you feel the same sometimes? – Excerpt from My Inner Battles

As I write this article sitting and seeping a hot masala tea in Khamsa Café, two women on the next table are envying few of their friends who have gone to America. “She is working for a millionaire, lo!” says one. “Oh yea?” comes the reply. I didn’t mean to snoop on them, but they are talking so loud without any courtesy to other clients in the café. Their conversation slowly jumps to a good hair saloon that has opened somewhere in the town. And how much Bhutanese hairdressers knew nothing about hair and how much they were looking forward to the upcoming trip to Bangkok to get it fixed. What a tragedy of unthinkable proportion! Poor souls! It must be hard for them to go around with their hair in such a mess…

It is just amusing that people don’t live for themselves anymore. They live for others. But not by practicing the Buddhist principles of compassion or altruism. Rather, dreading what others will think of them and what others will say on them for not having this or owning that. In vying to keep up with someone’s lifestyle, a social war has erupted in Thimphu where the name of the game is survival of the richest. No more is your social standing based on the Civil Service grade or the university you have graduated from. These are passé. You are noticed, and frowned, for owning an old Nokia mobile phone. And more vividly by the size of the car, or the brand, you drive. There is the growing social competition to outdo each other. Some things, of course, never change. The dress you wear is still an indication that you are somebody or nobody.

Finally the American dream is gaining momentum with even young some Bhutanese mothers supposedly minting greenbacks in the Big Apple. Most, I am told, are babysitting. Someone’s child, of course. It dreads me to imagine what will become of those hundreds of “abandoned” children here – when they grow up. One of the highest crime rates in the US was recorded in the late eighties. Analysts say they were children from the hippies’ generation of the late sixties who didn’t receive proper parenting. May be my fear is too far fetched. For now, perhaps, I should think of what to do with my old mobile phone. – Excerpt from his blog post Survival of the richest

I loved them before I got here. I planned it. I decide that no matter what, I was going to love each and every one of my students. My homeroom is only twelve so that’s easy. Then there are all the students I teach who aren’t in my homeroom, that’s another 62. Then they all have brothers, sisters, cousin-brothers and cousin-sisters (Bhutanese consider close cousins siblings). Then there are the kids who stop me in the hall to give me a kiss and ones who deliver love letters to me even though I don’t know and never did know their names. Once it’s all added up, siblings, close relatives, distant relatives in remote villages, etc, I figure I am committed to loving all kids in Bhutan, not just the ones in my homeroom, my classes, or even all of ELC.

At times, this is great for the ego but at the end of the day, they are teaching their teacher what real unconditional love feels like. I could be anyone. They don’t love me because I am me, even though it is an appealing thought. They just love so well. They love all of their teachers this much. We can scold them, give them a weekend full of homework, make them watch as their friends play basketball for some minor infraction and the next day it’s as if we are still the brilliant sun of their sky. I’m not saying I am going to be doing this forever. Screaming, “WALK IN THE HALLWAYS!!!!”, “What goes at the end of a sentence?” and ‘What part about, “Go pee in the toilet wasn’t clear?” gets old after the first three hundred and seventy five times, but for the moment I can’t think of a better way to spend my days. Deciding to love this many strangers has been a good decision. – From On Deciding to love 350 Strangers at once

I think of the long road home. I must conquer the distance like I always do. But something feels amiss today. Maybe it is the absence of rush of agitated emotions that which the old will die to know again. I turn on the radio to the tune of Handy Man. It makes me feel old and good. I am in the middle of the town, mentally counting the houses that I bypass. I cannot remember how and when I started the journey now but I hope I didn’t hit the old man with a prop whom I see on my daily journeys to and fro.

Now I spend some days listening to them talk about salary raise and making dough out of GNH. – Excerpt from Wooing the Crone

Here is an example.

Warning! Malware detected, bhutanstudies.org.bt on Google Chrome

Malware warning on Apple Safari

So, what do we have here? It says, The website at www.bhutanstudies.org.bt contains elements from the site internetcountercheck.com, which appears to host malware – software that can hurt your computer or otherwise operate without your consent. Just visiting a site that contains malware can infect your computer. – While browsed on Google Chrome

We get the warning only while browsing on Google Chrome and Apple Safari. For some reason, Mozilla Firefox lets the page through only to alert the Anti Virus Program that a virus has been found. I did not test on Internet Explorer.

How malicious are such sites?

Well, it depends. Here’s a screenshot of Bhutan Studies site with Google safe browsing diagnostics.

Google safe browsing diagnostics for bhutanstudies.org.bt

According to diagnostics, the site appears safe. But not quite. I browsed on Firefox and Avira Antivirus was quick to warn me of the infection and immediately removed both the site along with history and all the cookies associated with bhutan studies web. How bad is the infection?  According to google safe browsing data, around 6 pages are infected and as much as 38 trojan(s) are included in malicious software. Now, that’s a lot of trojans.

How did those malwares get there?

- Mostly outdated CMS, themes and plugins.

- Bug on CMS/blog software, themes, plugins

- Malicious codes that come with Premium templates/plugins that you downloaded for free.

- Brute force attack against passwords.

- Others that I don’t know…and which you may know better.

It’s always better to clean such sites as Google and other search engines will block and blacklist infected sites. Always update your site to latest CMS/themes/plugins and never use a premium theme that you downloaded for free as they contain malicious codes.

How do we clean them? For Joomla and wordpress sites, go to SUCURI.NET or click here. I think solutions for other sites are also available there.

Since Bhutan Studies is hosted on druknet, I hope it won’t spread to other sites (if hosted on a shared hosting…)