The growing power of Social Media

Some time back, I had written about the power that Social Media exerts these days. This fact is definitely not required to be blogged about as many event worldwide has shown what Social Media can really do.

However, while we are on the topic, in Nepal, Prime Minister Baburam Bhattarai has also joined Twitter, knowing the fact that Twitter boasts the presence of the influential segment of Nepal vs. the mass segment in Facebook – where having a specific tone is bit difficult. Not even 1 week from the sign-up, he had more than 10,000 followers and extremely engaging fans – with lots of retweets and mentions.

Yesterday, the government hiked the price of cooking gas – in an extreme manner. Kathmandu started reeling under protests in different parts. So was the situation in Twitter. The PM, then started conversation with the Twitterattis in a bid to justify the hike.

When all round criticism didn’t stop coming, the PM announced the revoke of the hike through Twitter.

And now, the traffic in Kathmandu has returned to normal jam only.

Baglung – unexpectedly loveable

It isn’t a new thing for me to fall in love with almost every place I travel. Sometimes, it’s the smell of the place, the other times, it’s the people or the food or the lifestyle. It doesn’t need to boast the best infrastructure or the finest facilities. Sometimes, smaller things make you feel happy about it. Though people say that you love a place you travel to because you have very limited time to get to know the not-so-good sides of it. Well, I agree. But, that doesn’t stop me from loving the places I visit.

I have been to Baglung a couple of times now. And both of the times, I felt very local there.

First thing I liked was that there was no load-shedding. For a person who goes through load-shedding every night, seeing light throughout the day is like no less than visiting a foreign nation. This helps me remind the days when we used to have lights most of the times, and at least enjoy the thought of it.

The streets of the town was clean. People collected the garbage and threw the waste in an organized way of waste management rather than throwing the waste in the nearby chwok.

People are friendly. As Nepal is known for its “friendly citizens”, we get to experince this when we go out of the capital, where selfishness has overshadowed the friendliness.

Probably there were other sides of the town too. But during short stays I have been there, couldn’t figure out any. And for an urban dweller, these small things create excitement.

The Her-oes

Pushpa Basnet became the second Nepalese to become the CNN Hero of the Year. Great accomplishment for us and great exposure to our country. Making your mother-land stand tall among all, making the countrymen proud – one of the best feelings.

Here goes for the two ladies who did so…

Thought of the day!

Uh oh!

Facebook, YouTube are great things – some of the best inventions of the mankind – along other technologies. I was going through Facebook  yesterday when I saw this video.

I mean, WHAT THE HELL WERE THEY THINKING? The composer (or the translator, I should say), the singers and the actor who appeared in the song. Are we so non-creative that we had to copy to that extent?