सपनाका हांगाबिंगा

पर सामुन्नेको क्षितिज प्रष्ट देखिइसकेछ

आफू पछाडिको क्षितिज अोझेल परिसकेछ ।

रोकिन पाउनुछैन, चलिरहनुछ, ज्यान थाकिसकेछ  

बाटो घुमाउरो छ, धुमिलो, प्रष्ट देख्न नसकिए जस्तो ।।

यदा कदा अनायास बाटो बटारिन्छ 

कहाँबाट हो कुन्नी खाल्टा र ढुङ्गा तेर्सिन पुग्छन् ।

तर गति कायम छ, पैताला दुखाउँदै, सुसाउँदै

छामछाम छुमछुम, ढलमल, ढुलमुल ।।

हिजो हिंड्दा पारी भञ्ज्याङ्ग सम्म पुगुँला भनेथें

कोशेढुङ्गामा चढेर घाँटी भिजाउँला सोचेथें ।

भञ्ज्याङ्ग अझै निकै पर पो रहेछ, उकालो बाँकी नै 

खै कता हराइएछ, अलमलिइएछ, पत्तै नपाई ।।

सपनाहरूको पछि लाग्दै, तर्कनाहरूको हात समाउँदै

माथि माथि उड्न र क्षितीज छिचोल्न खोज्दा खोज्दै ।

थाहा छै कुन बेला धागोेले साथ छोडेछ, चेट बनाउदै 

ढलपल ढलपल हावा सँगे कावा खाँदै कता लागिएछ ।।

वटवृक्षको हाँगा जस्तै फैलिएका, फाटेका, बाँडिएका

चौतर्फि रूपमा मुन्टो उठाउँदै, निहुराउँदै, उठ्दै, लत्रिँदै ।

केही पूरा भएका, धेरै अधुरा, कचल्टिएका, जिम्लिएका 

फक्रिने, फुल्ने, पूरा हुने आशामा अनगिन्ति मेरा सपनाहरू ।।

जीवनका कैयौं पानाहरू अनगिन्ती अक्षरले भरिएका
कथा, कविता, गीत अनि बहुलठ्ठीले लेखेजस्ता असरल्ल हरफहरु ।
 उपसर्ग, विसर्ग, धर्का, विन्दू र अनेकन अल्पविराम वीच
आफ्नो कथाको नदेखिएको पूर्ण विराम तर्फ अग्रसर मेरो जीवन पुस्तक ।।

बल्दै सकिंदै गरेको मैनबत्ती जस्तै अविरल 

आफ्नो शक्ति र रापले आफैं खरानी बन्दै गरेको जीवन ।

तन्किंदै क्षितीज हेर्दै, बाटो पहिल्याउँदै, आफ्नो डाली खोज्दै 

सपनाका हाँगाबिँगा बीच उडिरहने म एउटा जीवन पंछी ।।

मंगलबार, १० पौष २०७५

Maysoon Zayid - A Role Model who Excelled Overcoming Cerebral Palsy

Listening to BBC is a treat. Among the mundane news and affairs from around the world, the station occasionally surprises with very inspiring and energizing bits. This morning, the interview program HardTalk featured Maysoon Zayid, the Palestinian American stand-up comedian who was born with Cerebral Palsy or CP. The condition is caused by abnormal development or defect in the parts of the brain that control movement, muscle coordination, balance and posture.

Inspired by her amazing journey, I also watched her remarkable TED talk. Her story is that of perseverance, struggle, commitment and inspiration. A lot of the credit goes to her parents who treated her as equal to her able-bodied sisters and made Maysoon do whatever the sisters did. Same work, same chores, same school, same education. This instilled in her a deep sense of equality and a high level of confidence. In the TED Talk, she renders her life story in a vivid, satirical and comical way with some serious undertones of her struggle through life and her ongoing battle with discrimination, bullying and threats.

Parts of those threats emanate from the fact that she is a Muslim of Arab origin. Her remarks, though funny, also carry a message of alarm regarding the increasing level of racial discrimination, religious stereotyping and bigotry.

As an able-bodied person with very limited achievements, I found Maysoon Zayid a remarkable source of encouragement. If she can achieve so much in the face of so many challenges including a debilitating illness, why can't a fully able-bodied person achieve her or his dreams. A deep message of introspection. If tried hard enough with right approach, dreams are there to be realized. As Zayid herself said at the end of the talk, quoting her own father "If I can can, you also can can".

24 December 2018

Very Useful Microsoft Word Tips

Using MS Word effectively can be very helpful in completing documentation jobs on time with professional touch. I have included a few tips that I have found very useful and handy while I am using the application.

Keyboard Shortcuts

• Selecting whole paragraph: triple-click on mouse button anywhere in the paragraph or press 'Ctrl+Shift+Down Arrow' at the beginning of the paragraph.
• Increasing Font: Ctrl+Shift+> or Ctrl+]
• Decreasing Font: Ctrl+shift+<  or Ctrl+[
• Capitalizing: select the word or group of word and press Shift+F3. Pressing repeatedly makes the word (s) change from all-small to first letter capital to all letter capita to all small and so on. Can stop in the position that is desirable. 

Special Tricks & Tools 

• Automatic Table of Contents: change the style of the section or subsection headings into 'Heading 1', 'Heading 2' etc according to their level. Then, on the suitable place of the document, insert the Table of Contents. This automatically arranges the table of contents with respective order of section heads, sub-section heads etc with their respective page number. 
• Cross-referencing: add bookmark in the desired location to be linked to. While referring or linking to that bookmarked position, go to the linking position and insert hyper-link to the respective bookmark. Note that the bookmark can be named. So, give a suitable and easy-to-remember name to the bookmark. 
• Citation and Bibliography: 
• Input your reference material details into the 'Manage Sources' section of the references feature. 
• Cite the source you want by inserting citation to the reference document or material inserted earlier in the source set. 
• To better manage this, can use citation management tool such as Mendley or Zotero etc. 
• Once citations are done, can add bibliography in the suitable section (usually the end)
•  Automatic Numbering of Tables and Figures 
• Add caption to the figure or table with auto numbering.
• Once all figures and tables and captioned with automatic numbering, add the list of tables or figures at the suitable location. It is similar to adding table of content. Just keep in mind that each figure and table that needs to be listed in the tables are to be captioned properly using the caption too. 
• To add caption, right-click the respective figure or table and choose 'add caption'.

20 December 2018

Updated: 25 Dec 2018

The Hand - Power of Positive Posture and Gesture

Suppose I stand up in front of you in my audience, with my palm down and even point my finger at you, and say the following line:

"I am here to tell you something important. Please pay attention closely. This shall be important for all of you."

What would you think of me? Arrogant? Dominating? Rude?

Be it friendly chat, official table talk or talking to an audience, gestures are of paramount importance. Eye contact, postures, body movement are all part of a set of activities that validate, reinforce and drive the meaning of the spoken word.

According to studies by UCLA professor Albert Mehrabian, body language accounts for 55% of a first impression; 38% comes from tone of voice; 7% comes from our actual words. Today I am going to talk about gestures and more specifically hand gestures.

If you would disapprove the manner of my opening remark, would it be due to the rudeness of my words? No, because my words were fairly polite. The thing that would put you off was my gesture. I gestured like this, with my palm down and even pointed my finger at you. Palms down is an indicator of rudeness, command and control. Finger pointing is even worse. I could have said the same thing with my palm up and you would not be so surprised. Its all related to the hand movement and orientation. When we talk about command and palms down, who comes to our mind first? Hail Hitler? Imagine Hitler with his palms up and with a benevolent gesture. Funny, not fearsome.

Hand gestures can convey a lot of other messages. Prayers, requests, curses, welcome, dismissal, acceptance, rejection. Proper gesture shall reinforce the point. Improper shall make it toothless and even outright ridiculous.

Outstretched hands with palms towards the audience would mean pushy, arrogant. Same with pams inwards would mean welcoming, accommodating. If you say ‘come on, join me’ with palms outside, the meaning would be opposite.

Not only while delivering a talk, hand positioning and movement (or lack of it) is instrumental in showing the frame of mind and strength of personality. A hands-down gesture means dejection, sense of defeat, apprehension, nervousness. A properly placed hand makes a superman out of an ordinary man. A thumbs up, pat on the back, nice squeeze of the hand can convey more encouragement than a thousand words of praise.

Power posing is all about posture and hands are important part of that.  

Though gestures including hand gestures are universal tool of message conveyance, there might be some cultural aspects as well. The gesture of taking hand in a eating pose near the mouth means eating for Nepalese, but means entirely different in Italian culture. Next time you are with an Italian, think twice before using this gesture. Well-known victory sign with palms inward means offensive remark in UK, Australia and South Africa. The OK sign means OK in US, Zero in France, Money in Japan and in Russia, it is considered very offensive.

Except some subtle cultural nuances, especially involving fingers, hand movement parameters such as inclination, palm orientation, angle of movement, speed of movement, position relative to the body etc have universal meaning.

So, whenever you are talking, delivering a speech or having any face-to-face communication, be sure to consider your gestures including hand movement. As famous author F. Scott Fitzerald writes in his famous novel The Great Gatsby, ‘Personality is an unbroken series of successful gestures’, our gestures convey what we are and who we are. Conversely, we can develop personality with the use of proper gestures.

<<Based on my toastmaster speech in December 2014>>

Posted on Thursday 20 December 2018 

Pervasive Personalization

Recently, I was in a discussion with a young, innovative and talented marketing researcher. An energetic young man with international education and commitment to work in Nepal, he shed light on an important and emerging phenomena in marketing and business promotion – personalization.

The young man discussed about a project he had done with an airline to divert travelers on a particular from competition to his client who had started service on that sector recently. With an ingenuous idea, they setup a free hotspot on the departure lounge of the domestic terminal, collected phone numbers, flight numbers and boarding card as part of registration to that free hotspot. Based on that data and the analysis of that, they created specific campaigns to personally solicit the travelers to the flights of the client.

Hey, you travelled via this airline to this place last month. We are offering a cheaper ticket and more mileage. Please travel with us. And so on and on. According to him, the campaign was very successful.

If I were to walk into a store and the store front-door were to welcome me personally, I would be happy and want to shop there and more likely than not, visit again. I would feel respected and valued. What if the same system tracked my visits to e-commerce sites and what I searched there to use that information to recommend a similar product at a bargain price in the store? The chances of me doing that purchase would increase significantly.

The current Internet content is already deeply personalized. Not only the social media pages but also the portals of e-commerce sites, sites of enterprises offering different products & services and even the generic sites such as news portals are getting more personalized. You can either select the bits and pieces to customize your own version of the portal or the system automatically customizes it based on your recent activity inside the portal or outside of it. Even that is not static. The portal keeps on changing and coming nearer to your actual taste based on your prior activities.

The level of personalization is moving beyond the pages and portals. They are even using videos to promote and push their messages to end users through specifically personalized clips tailored to the interest and activities of the individual. According to Forbes.com, one such campaign by Nike+ in 2014 was a very successful one. In it, Nike created personalized digital videos and pushed them to more than 100,000 of its members. Personalized videos, customized web portal widgets, interactive chatbots etc are some of the tools used to enhance personalization and engagement between the enterprise and the individual.

You might have seen many promotion of gift items, products and services specifically tailored to the birthday, anniversary or specific occasion of yours, your spouse, children, friends or relatives. It would not be that surprising if one of these days you walk into a store in Singapore and the store billboard welcomed you by recognizing your face, looking up your social media profile and offering you a product available there based on your interests and recent purchases as obtained from social media, e-commerce portals or other similar web services. Might look magical and otherworldly for the uninitiated but that is where the cyberspace and e-commerce is heading to.

It is not only in the cyberspace where personalization is pervasive. In the sector of education, healthcare, entertainment and even medicine, the trend is to personalize and leverage on the engagement with each individual. Personalized doses of medicine specifically tailored to the patient’s need and delivered via a special dispenser device or similar mechanism is one possibility being vigorously explored by the medical and pharmaceutical sector. Though they are not directly related to cyberspace, they also make use of the intelligent computing infrastructure to come up with the suitable model of the system to deliver such deeply personalized services to the end users.

As this fine-tuned personalization pervades everything around us, we might also find ourselves increasingly exposed and in many cases, vulnerable. We shall be living in a glass house with all our activities visible to the whole world. Perhaps there is a sinister side to it, a near Orwellian society in which the big brother knows everything. In this case, the big brother would not be an individual but the big players in cyberspace and industries leveraging on cyberspace. While you might feel honored and privileged at receiving your deeply customized offer, you might want to contemplate how that thing could know so much about your personal life.

Being Used

You are made to think it an opportunity
You are persuaded to take it as privilege
You find yourself taking it as respectful
But do you also know you are being used?

Smiling and being radiant
Straight up and being confident
Showing off and being special
Mindful of having a good luck

Various angles and perspectives
Multitudes of strides and steps
Plethora of poses and postures
Showing the charisma of your creator

Blinking of the eyes to shoot arrows
Shaking of limbs to fire bullets
Swirling of hairs to hallucinate
Innumerable weapons of mass destruction

Walking like a cat with wavy motion
Turning of head and piercing gaze
Projection of beauty like no one else
Killing softly with darts into the hearts

Twisting and turning to maximize impact
Stretching and shrinking as choreographed
Covering and uncovering like hide & seek
Heightening the tension, deepening emotion

You are a treat to the onlooker
You are an asset to the shrewd user
You are a weapon to the smart warrior
You are a puppet to the magical charmer

If you want, take it as your soft power
If you feel, use it to grip, grasp and control
But make no mistake of what is hidden
More often than not, you are being used

13 December 2018

Nothing to Write About

The budding writer in me always itches to write. He wants to write about his life, life of others and the factors that affect anyone's  life. He wants to write about the experiences and lack of them. He want so write based on knowledge or even ignorance. He revels in joy when he is able to write a few lines that represent his thoughts. Sometimes, he is elated to read his own writing. At many other times, he is utterly frustrated at the tasteless banality of his words and sentences. 

Whenever he thinks about writing the next page of his own little book project (coming to fruition of which he has a lot of doubt about) or even a page of explanation for his bosses, he tries to move his pen as fast as possible or bang his keyboard as rapidly as he can, not to miss any of the things circulating in his mind. Sometimes, like the eternity taken by the photon of lights from Sun's core to come to surface and illuminate everything around it, his thoughts languish at the farthest back of his mind and take too long to come to the fore. He knows there are profound thoughts but he cannot give words to them so that he could write. 

Many times, the aspirant writer in me runs out of topics. The topics that are in his  mind seem so commonplace and uninteresting to him that he does not pen a word about them. Then there would be no thoughts worth writing about. At those times, he rues the moments when he had tons of thoughts jostling inside him and yet he was too lazy to articulate them and give them shape. After all, thoughts are thoughts, if they are not expressed and penned as they occur, it is hardly possible to re-think them and write at a later date. The feeling and intensity is not the same any more. 

Early in the morning just before the lazy body becomes fully awake and tries to lumber out of bed, the train of thoughts can be at full speed. Or late into the night when snugged well inside the bed and ready to welcome the goddess of sleep with a full heart, the thoughts swirl like a whirlpool and fight against the impending sleep. In both those extremities, the writer in me wants to pen the thoughts but the non-writer and the dominant self is too lazy to let the writer use the common resources. After all, it is the dominant self that controls the mind and body needed to articulate and the thoughts on paper or in the computer. 

At other times, when the dominant self is lenient enough to allow the writer self to do his calling, the latter tries to write something. But alas, he is out of topics. All the topics that come into the mind seem not worth penning. Even the most serious and profound aspects of life seem uninteresting. It might be because of the extremely limited creativity or highly cluttered mind. But, simply put, many a times, at the height of the desire to write something, the writer in me does not have a topic to write on. And it is in those moments that he ends up writing about nothing. Nothing is also something to write about, it seems. 

12 Dec 2018 10:09 AM

My Dear Pen

Tucked away in my pocket, snugged inside the dark corners of my bag, bundled up together in between my books, pressed against hard table and a pile of papers, in whatever situation and circumstances, you have been there for me. Ever ready to give shape and legibility to my thoughts. Ever eager to articulate my emotions. Ever willing to present my limited knowledge. Every anxious to give shape to my ignorance. You are there forever. 

You have come in many forms and incarnations. You have come with pistons, with bubbles, sacks and tubes. You have come with split tips, ball-tips, carbon tips and everything in between. Whatever the form, you have been there to help me learn. You have been there to complete my homework, to prepare reports, to meet deadlines and to ink corporate deals. 

Whenever I feel like hiding my vast ignorance and highlight my tiny horizon of knowledge, I use you, ostentatiously placed in my front pocket, possibly in more than one form or color. Like a naive man with golden tooth deliberately grinning to show it, I open you, close you, rotate you in my fingers, place you in front of me, feign writing time and again, offer you to others, just to make sure to use you to enhance my limited personality. 

Whenever I have a whim, I rub you vigorously against the rough paper, pressing you with my cruel fingers into it. But even then you revel and magically create a vivid picture of my thoughts on it. You make that paper worthwhile. You make me contended. But in the process, you run out of your own vital fluid. Sometimes, you run out of fluid and I have to do away with you. Much lesser number of times, I happen to re-fill you but that is becoming rarer and rarer. Your new forms do not allow me to reuse and refill. I simply have to take a new form and incarnation of yours. 

I am sometimes lazy to find you, fill you and get a paper. As a result, I start banging with my ten fingers on a keyboard. I might create more words and sentences but I do not get the same intimacy as I get when I navigate you on a paper. That is a different level of excitement. 

While I was young and was using you more to be a able man, I had vigorously debated that you are much more powerful than any weapon in the world. You can create war. You can sign a deal to make an end to war. You can marry two people or you can divorce them. You can create poems, novels, songs, musical notes and even declarations of hostility. You bring hearts together. You tear them apart. You give shape to emotions and feelings. You make sure a literary genius lives on ages after his or her mortal remains are gone. You make sure a composer's work keep enthralling music lovers eons after the composer is gone. 

My dear pen, as time passes, I see you increasingly overwhelmed by the touch screens, keyboards, voice to text converters, smart assistants, automatic navigator and electronic mails. Still, like a candle that can light a thousand more while a fluorescent electric lamp cannot, like a fragrant rose that can liven up a room while a thousand fake ones cannot, like a centuries old masterpiece painting that no digital art can ever emulate, you are above all of them. You are the one who worked so hard since time immemorial that all these exotic technologies, products and facilities could be imagined, worked upon and realized. They are all here, trying to overwhelm you and make you obsolete. But, without your hard work, they would not be here. And, they might evolve and even perish some day but as long as the quest for knowledge and human creativity persists, you shall be relevant. 

Thank you on behalf of all of the humankind that believe in the power of a pen. 

Friday 07 December 2018 (14:23 NPT)

Ability vs Disability - is it a state of mind or body?

What is ability? What is disability? Why are some people called disabled and others not so? What is the metric of ability and indicator of disability? 

Seemingly, these questions are easy and have obvious answers. Or, do they. Probably not. 

Yesterday, as part of the annual division level gathering of Nepalese Toastmasters fraternity at the Himalayan Hotel, I was struck by this question again and the answer I contemplated was not so easy and obvious. At the pinnacle of an already exciting moment of learning, leadership and lessons for life was the amazing motivational and inspirational speech by Dr. Rajdeep Manwani, a person of immense intellectual ability and unbelievably positive outlook of life. If one were to listen to his speeches or his words of wisdom with closed eyes, one would never contemplate that he is actually visually blind since his teenage. His compass of learning is so wide and his ability to connect with his audience so immaculate that a physical disability that would have been crippling to countless ordinary beings seems to be of no hindrance to him. 

But, like that Chinese bamboo sprouting after years of nurturing (another metaphor so well used in the event, especially by the master of ceremony), what I would have seen yesterday is the tall, green and lush bamboo tree but I did not see the years of struggle, despair, perseverance and self-motivation that would have driven this amazing human being become what he is today. Still, his down-to-earth attitude, candid confession of his own shortcomings, his sincere efforts to overcome them and his compassionate connection with everyone else make him one of the humblest achievers around. No wonder he was awarded by the President of India as a role model and achiever.

It is these moments of inspiration and learning that makes one's life worthwhile. Yesterday, it was such a moment for me. The proximity with such an amazing achiever also made me and many more contemplate on the value of life and the things that can be done to enhance it. It is not the physical challenges that stop a person but the mental attitude and outlook towards life that do. 

10:52 AM 02 December 2018

PS: Coincidence is an amazing thing. Today, I read another story of inspiring venture by a visually impaired person. This time, it was a Nepali citizen who was blinded at the age of 20 in a workplace accident. He also persevered in situation of despair and triumphed. Not only that, he created an enterprise to produce incense sticks and employed the disabled and visually impaired people in his manufacturing unit as well as nationwide marketing & sales network. For people like him also, disability has a new meaning. Physical disability is not that big a hindrance if the power of will is there. Details in the Onlinekabar article.

13:02 PM