Bits are Bytes

It is worth beginning with Chip Heath’s appetizing quote:

“The most basic way to get someone's attention is this: Break a pattern.”

I never realized breaking my pattern. Because I have accidentally smashed or made it defunct, I was caught in the surveillance of my friend’s attention quite recently. So this time, it was my friends who stunned me out of the blue. 

Happy Thrue Baab 2013

Back in Bhutan, whenever the special occasions draw closer, I used to lead the marathon of sending well-being and goodwill wishes to my friends and their families. And this rhythm of keeping them in touch exactly did not repeat this time because both pairs of my limbs were sealed to orchestrate for my presentations due next week.

These events hectically swallowed my free time without any nerves or hesitation and eventually made me feel like being back to those schooling days. Shifting the gear back to the learning mode isn’t really a piece of cake after I have partially lost the track of my learning journey.

And keeping myself abreast with the current affairs and wetting my friends with constant dews of messages sometimes is, quite another organ of this difficult labour. The fact that I am away from Bhutan is one critical factor that measures my commitment. Therefore, being engulfed by the tentacles of my works with a limited time, in a process, have miserably failed to tender the growing shoots of my good habits.

The failure to wish my friends and their families during this significant Blessed Rainy Day portrayed how sloppily I have withered the greener parts of my good routine that helped me derive fresh relations and rapport for the last many years.   

 

However, I am truly thankful to my friends who travelled the road I drove before but in a different way. Thank you all for checking the elasticity of my inbox and making it full to its rim with echoing wishes.

Little have I known in my life that small things truly make a big difference. Now I learned that those tiny messages in the smallest form of bits really carried a mega meaning in the capacity of bytes.

Happy Thrue Baab 

"It’s the little details that are vital. Little things make big things happen” –John Wooden

My Oxymoronic Classroom Story

The boards speak the Oxymoronic humour

Oxymorons are a pair of neighbouring words with an opposite meanings put together in a sentence.

Literature has it that using oxymoron show a dramatic effect beyond hills. For instance, when someone says, her story was painfully beautiful it speaks of two sets of nature, one as painful and the other as beautiful.

Sometimes, writers bring it into use to show an ironic sense of humour and also to create puns. 

E.g., 

There is low inflation. 

It was a mercy killing or this village is like a living dead.  

    

With the same flavour of the spirit, I use 89 strings of oxymora to weave the basket of my classroom story.

Once, in a class, I found missing so many things. I yelled to my students with anger, “This small crowd of people tries to act naturally and poses me serious fun these days”

“Don’t claim yourself to be a wise fool” I said because that was my only choice. It looks pretty ugly to act as an educated fool”.  

Keeping my book on a table, I continued.

“Many seem to have clearly misunderstood my instructions in the last class. I turned a blind eye to many minor crises and thought that it was just a fine mess. But now it is turning into a holy war because it seems like a casual business. You are not realizing that you are turning to be the original copies of baby giant scoundrels each day.”

“You are bringing bad luck to me. I am already in bad health and started to have balding hair. Don’t think that when I have no comment on what you do, I am on an active retirement. Although I did a brief survey to record how you behave in my class.  

Then I shouted, “Can everyone stand up properly. Stand fast I yelled because they were trying to hasten slowly. Who is still moving at the back?”

“These lousy self-proclaimed unsung heroes are really giving me a delicious torment these days.”

They silently laughed. “This is the best worst form of a kind cruel that gives me a sad joy. So, once again, I remind you to put an end to this and never again repeat it in the near future. Did you hear me?”

They remained silent. As I continued scolding, I observed a sad smile on many faces. Suddenly from one corner, I heard a loud whisper.

It was my boy class coordinator.

“Speak loud. Are you a lady boy? Are you happy to lead this organized chaos against me? You are showing me that true fake, dull shine on your face to say you are wrong. I know you have a good trick to make virtual reality.” 

“Sorry sir,” he said. “Like an honest thief, I will open secret of our class for making this fuss. I can’t exactly estimate the level on how you felt like being buried alive”

Clearing his throat, he continued “Actually we heard a secret rumour of Tashi’s parents getting divorced. Tashi was living in the worst heaven with his uncle in a small hut that was growing small each day. This has caused him to have random orders in class attendance. Therefore, we were discussing to help him after hearing this whole piece of story”.

My heart became cold like dry ice. I saw all of them doing nothing except listening to him unusually. That was the coldest summer day I ever experienced. My angered heart was fully emptied after Tashi’s situation slowly ran into my thinking.

As we discussed to find solutions to solve the mystery of Tashi’s old news, even those called to be weak muscles of the class dint show mild interest in helping him.

“We have the same difference of living in this modern world with old fashioned treatments,” one said. “His uncle who is found sober drunk in others eyes has a new routine of making a neat mess in the house” one added.

The other followed “Tashi is forced to speak only harmless lies”. “Sometimes he was found like a big baby that is barely dressed”.

My heart was burning cold. Hearing more evidence has made this incident strangely familiar to me. Like a bankrupt millionaire without a penny sometimes, I became like a wordless book. It was like a waking dream to me.

So I left the class and took a rest on my hard cushioned chair in the staffroom. I skipped taking the free working lunch given to my friends attending the workshop in my school.  Amidst my painful beautiful thoughts to help Tashi, I heard my friends say, ‘This is not a sincere lie, I got the meatless meat”. Another joined, ‘I got the boneless ribs”, and the whole group roared with a big laugh.

I had a lesson to teach on birth control tomorrow. This news turned out to be boring entertainment for me to prepare, so I skipped. It was a harmless hell that I got a negative gain from this new cliché’.  Not knowing how to deal with such common uncommon human troubles, I cried with a mute sound that evening. That was the solace to freeze fire of dear wounds in my living dead heart. 

 " The term 'serious actor is kind of an oxymoron, isn't it? Like 'Republican party' or 'airplane food.'-Johnny Depp

The Rogerian Argument

I was out for an outing into a Facebook restaurant. As usual, this social pub was never in short of its consumers. 

But sadly, few of my friends have already left that public park while some were still there holding that green baton ready for the chat relay race.

This time, two of my friends who have discoed in that social club have suspended two quote boards nailed on the wall of Facebook. It read: 

a) I don’t understand why when we destroy something created by man we call it VANDALISM, but when we destroy something created by nature we call it PROGRESS- Ed Begley Jr.  

b)  Definition of Human Being: A creature that cuts trees, makes paper and writes "Save Trees" on the same paper.

I was not stunned to see the huge digit of comments for the posts because both the quotes sounded interesting. However, my attention cells waved in the direction of the second panel that defined Homo sapiens.

‘Ah! A new definition from ‘creationary: the dictionary of creativity’, I chuckled.

As I started to dissect it segment by segment under the microscope of my thick little brain, I could fairly zoom out huge muscles of meaning hidden in the gene of that statement. And I joined to swim in the pool of a belief that yes, humans are indeed the most sophisticated living commodity on this planet.  

The humans, mine and extract the harmful chemicals, make explosives from it and shout on the top of the world podium to stop wagging war using chemical weapons.

Similarly, humans run after the crazy democracy. They fish out for the intellectual heavyweights and push into a political ring to run the ship of democracy under their captain-ship. While it is always certain for the failures, the tsunami of cynicism blows off even for the fruitful sail and later laments saying that these people were great.     

 

Thus, I happened to feel something that human must join force to hunt for one thing: A memory chip, when inserted can easily detect the status and feelings of other people or like an indicator that can predict acidic or alkaline faces.   

I really wonder that when human can fly over atmosphere, dive into the hydrosphere and built towers inside the lithosphere, why really can’t people think and adjust the pH of their temperament.

Day after day, people flood the serene terrain of newspaper forums with high density of venomous comments to each other. They exchange intellectual blows with the fingers of their words rusted with soot that can even change the colour of the nation itself.

Forums are like 3D video conferencing to me. No matter where people are, anyone can see it simultaneously through the spectacle of that writer. Whether it is good or bad, the whole in is out and the prolific writers really do magic in changing the thinking of the audience. 

Thus, I feel there is no need for Syllogistic Reasoning adorned with those syllogistic fallacies in the forum. 

Should there be anything to discuss, why can’t we opt for that noble Rogerian Argument?

Rogerian argument is the kind of argument that endoscopes for the commonalities. The reasons, ideas, and beliefs are brought together and then argued on the common ground.

This form of argument bridges the distant far and makes the far closer. And a GNH country like Bhutan, following it would mean Utopia over the Last Shangri-La.  

  "People generally quarrel because they cannot argue"-Gilbert K. Chesterton 

Evolutionary to Revolutionary?

Formally born in 1989, it still shares the cradle of commonness and cleanness with the acme of purity and sacrosanctity. I am talking about the virginity of Drukyul-Siam relationship.

The relationship between Bhutan and Thailand has indeed attained its diplomatic puberty that it is 24 years old today. During these years, they have fastened the belt of cooperation to cross any height of domain for symbiotic developmental growth, come hell or high water. And the status quo of the visible comfort zone that exists today is rather self-explanatory that it can easily pass the Baconian induction [where one key contradiction is enough to reject the whole theory no matter what amount pieces of evidence one possess] to validate.

However, the recent Ketamine lady nabbed at Suvarnabhumi International Airport for smuggling might in some way navigate the cursor of integer in Bhutan-Thailand friendship. That singular ignorance might turn out as an acid test for Bhutanese purity of integrity and trustworthiness. So, unless the verdict is placed out or not, none of us can predict the state of the radar in the Drukyul-Siam diplomatic balance.

Fairly it would mean that Bhutanese now be carefully inserted into the ports of a surveillance CCTV and scan for the hazardous Trojan horse. That shouldn't be a connotation of cruelty or aversion.   

We are buying this treatment and it's worth sharing the American playwright Tennessee Williams when he said: 'We have to distrust each other. It is our only defense against betrayal. 

By writing this article, I am not trying to don the blame-hat to the 26 year old. Neither is it written to aggravate any sort of unfortunate future imperatives. 

Being based in Thailand and as a concerned bona fide Bhutanese, I equally suffered a heart stroke when Thai media were flooded with reports that sustains Bhutanese fingerprints. 

This incident, be it foolhardy or  an impudent timesaver to run for money rocks my mind with the monsoon of interrogations. Today, that editorial 'The Thai Honeymoon is over'  in the Kuensel I learnt emits a kind of foul smell of flaws in the security box office at Paro International Airport.  

In anyway, this incident I think might gradually close some chapters of evolutionary progress that stood the hardest test of time. That means, nothing like before, now a journeyer or a vacationer might have to show a whole set of true truth to pass the paradise of Thailand.

Because a single misfortune is just enough to persuade us into a revolutionary road that it will, in any form, result in a radical change. That's what revolutionary is all about. 

"Tragedy in life normally comes with betrayal and compromise, and trading on your integrity and not having dignity in life. That's really where failure comes"-Tom Cochrane 

Rekha Mongar's Poll

Readers Discretion is mandatory:

If any regular bloggers happen to step their mouse accidentally into the residence of my writings, just excuse me that your discretion is absolute and mandatory.

I am neither eligible nor qualified to turn out for this race actually. Yet, that initiative by Rekha Monger spoke the common language that incidentally paralleled my quests within.  

So, I found it difficult to remain idle without posting one for myself. I have delayed because I have to reserve more of my time for studies at this hour. 

Q: Why did you start blogging in the first place? And what’s the story behind your blog title?

I like scribbling anything, anytime, anywhere. This smell of my interest was smelt by many of my teachers back then in the school. Even as a Science student, I took a lead role in many activities that demanded linguistic capacities.

Having won third place in National Essay Competition for Secondary Level in 2002 escalated my curiosity into writing.  My profile to work as a student editor in the school and college magazines massaged my muscles to walk even further.

Many times I wrote something and that something got lost many times. It forced me to eye for a place where I can dump it and bulldoze sometime in the future.

But then, it was in only 2012 that a male teacher could give birth to a blog with the weakest idea through a massive exploration.

My blog was born in the 21^st Century. And people of this century use an electronic NOTEBOOK. This electronic page compiled to form a notebook is created by Dumcho [Me] and is fully under my keyboard of mine to start an engine to fill in it. Thus, Dumcho’s NOTEBOOK.  

Q: How long have you been blogging? Where are you based?

I am running for two years on the blogging campus.  I work as a teacher in Kabesa Middle Secondary School under Punakha district.

Currently, I am pursuing Masters Degree in Science and Technology at Mahidol University, Thailand.

Q: How do you schedule your blog post? Daily or weekly? Or as and when inspiration strikes you?

As and when I feel like posting something. It is directly proportional to the mood and theme factor, but time remains constant. 

Q. Does your family and friends know about your blog?

My wife is my sole inspiration. She was the first coach to morally boost and push me into the blogging ring. Few literate family members do know of its existence and a sketchy number of friends too.  

Q: How happy are you as a Blogger?

I take solace in writing. The shapes and colours of my face determine how happy I am as a blogger.

When am happy, I visit blogs to post something. When frustrated, I always swim in my blog pool and write many things on evil faces. That makes me feel happier because I can hit them with the blows of my words directly onto their head without any injury. 

"There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you"- Maya Angelou