Footprints on the Mountainside

I saw Charu sir on TV!!! He is on the Army escorted civilian team. The first goup of civilian trekkers on Siachen left on the 19th September as planned, even as we were wondering if Pakistan’s opposition would cause it to be canceled.

From next year, I bet we will be looking at the same rush of people heading to Siachen that once hit Ladakh and Spiti. I only hope that in that frozen environment, where not much is going to degrade, waste management policies are applied and enforced from the start, as with strict rules to prevent damage to the natural resources of the region.

Though, I guess anything will be better than war.

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Tagsadventure-professionals,destinations,outdoors,trekkingare applied to this post

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And another one. I’m on a paid review roll. This one rocks. If you own any kind of business or service that you are trying to promote, this one is fun and useful. It is the Brand Strength Test - provided by Branding.

You have to answer 12 questions related with your brand identity and you then get scores based on how well different aspects fare. For example, see the above screen shot. Those are my results. You are also offered an hour long free consultation.

Other areas of the site relate with important aspects of improving your brand identity and promoting your business. Paid, of course.

I liked the perky feel of the site. Very well designed - obviously, these guys know how to make an impact. But a flash site…… I wanted to see what happens when I don’t have flash. I got a blankish page with some links, and a small notice (that is also there in the flash page) to click here if the page is blank. Me did it, and went to a bizarre orange and white page with the same information, which clashes horribly with the previous and following pages to the text version. Oh my eyes hurt! I wonder why that one page is sitting there in those garish colours.

On the whole, a colourful experience. I love the purple of the site, and hate the orange of the solo page (normally I like orange, but not orange and white combination immediately after purple - thank you. I liked the flash version for its perkiness and the text only version for its readibility (except that page), and the test was fun and brought my attention to aspects of my business I need to consider, even while answering the questions and the results made them even more clear.

However, I discovered nothing at all that I didn’t know in this experience, so I wonder what I will gain if I were to pay them.

Tagscorporate-training,paid-bloggingare applied to this post

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This is a social networking style site, where people can pay to learn languages. Myngle is still in beta, but I fell in love with the concept. This place connects people from all over the world and helps them learn new languages.

According to their FAQs, signing up is for free, but teachers are charged a small amount for using the platform for teaching, though they can upload their profiles for free. Different teachers set their charges and a student can pick up whatever is affordable. Sounds interesting, but one thing that I’m wondering about is the credibility of the teachers.

I mean, there are no qualifications required to be a teacher here. As long as a person can provide value….. well, that’s how learning languages is, isn’t it? So, you can actually have paid informal conversations which we traditionally call practice and do them for free in the real world. I guess that’s the price of having the right kind of person handy in the online world. However, what is there to assure us, that a teacher is as good as his charges make him seem (other than hindsight)?

There is nothing about that in their FAQs. Also, nothing that can allow for a refund if a teacher is just your average teenager trying to earn big money and you discover it too late. Or, if there is such a system in place, it is not there in their FAQs.

On the whole, an interesting concept, but a new service with an unknown paid factor, which may or not deliver. I’d say, use it for its convenience, but play it by ear. There probably will be some kind of rating or feedback system (its inevitable). Use it to figure out the people you want to learn from.

For teachers, I guess this is an excellent opportunity for some handy income sitting at home. All you need is broadband, Skype and a headset (which you also need if you’re a student)

Tagsnews,paid-blogging,peopleare applied to this post

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This is what I was talking about, when I spoke of paid blogging bringing fresh ideas to writing and adding to knowledge. Of course, this is a paid post, but I’m glad to be writing this one. Honestly, if I had thought of something like this, I’d probably have blogged about it anyway.

I discovered Masterpapers.com - Thesis Writing Tips while hunting for subjects to review on Reviewme. This was a whole new train of thought. We hear of paid articles and stuff all the time, but a service that will do your research for you for educational purposes? Its the first I have heard of this (perhaps I should have gotten educated better - or used the internet more for it). I certainly could have done with help like that.

Not that I’m incapable of writing tomes myself, but I’m info hungry. So if there is something that will gather loads of relevant info for me, nothing like it. I think the strength of this service is in research. Of course, they say that they will help you write your thesis too. In fact, there’s a page with rates for a variety of stuff they can do for you including powerpoint presentations, papers at various educational levels, and what not. Sounds like a pretty tempting source of organized information, if you’re a freak for enormous quantities of well-researched data to pull from, like me.

The husband is laughing as I show him the site. He wants to know if I’m planning to go back to school. Does he know how much research a website needs? Its like being back in school, even for subjects you know about, when you have to write about them, confirm facts before immortalizing them in your name……. sure, I could do with a research service too.

Regardless, folks, if you are still studying, hop over and see if it is any use to you. They have provided some samples and stuff to give you an idea of their work quality. I can’t say if it is good or not (even though this IS a review) simply because I have never used them, or any other service like them for comparison, but I think their site is definitely worth investigating if you need well written documents that need a good amount of research.

Tagseducation,paid-blogging,website-deveoplment,writingare applied to this post

This is a memory from a long time ago. Way before I figred out the internet beyond checking mail.

I was living in the high pastures with my herd of horses. The winter had been rough, and I was just camping out in the high altitude pastures where we leave them for the summers, supplementing their diet with some grain, to help them catch on on their health a bit faster.

The days were pretty idle. Feeding the horses a couple of times a day was
no pain - they used to come happily enough for the treat. Beyond that…. not much to do. Cooking, enjoying the paradise I was living in, early to bed, early to rise.

Occupation came in an unexpected way. A gaddi camp was passing by, planning to camp a little higher than the pasture we were in. I recognised the shepherd, and invited him for a cup of tea. When he saw me, he decided to camp near our camp itself.

Over a cup of tea, I realized why.

A filly of his, had been attacked by a bear a week ago, and had been hurt badly. Originally, believing that she would die anyway, he hadn’t taken her to a vet. But she hadn’t yet died. She was in a bad way, with her wounds infected, and was struggling to keep up with the moving camp, to follow her mother. This was creating a problem, as the mare used to keep waiting for her, and slowing the caravan.

I had already gained a solid reputation as an animal lover, and my animals were often a point of interet for local livestock owners for the glowing condition I used to maintain them in. Plus, I was gaining a reputation as an enthusiastic “onofficial vet” from the knowledge of animal medicine I used to gather for the well-being of my horses in a land where vets were not easily available, and often very far from the place of need.

He wanted me to take a llook at the filly and see if there was any hope
for her, as well as see if she could be put down, if there wasn’t. I refused flat out to put her down, as I am not of the opinion that animals should be killed when they are fighting to recover. Plus I lacked the kind of knowledge and equipment it would take to put her down. I agreed to take a look and see what I could do for her.

We went out into the pasture and unloaded his horses to set up camp and then look for the filly. She was in a bad way. She was sleeping, exhausted at the end of the pasture without even coming to join the herd, once she saw that they had halted.

We got her up and brought her up to my tent and tied her in front of it. I started to take a goot look at her and see what it was that I was up against.

She was a beautiful, black filly. Three months old. lovely body structure - she would have made a fine mare when she grew up, if she survived this scenario. Her rump and neck was covered with deep gashes from the bear’s claws, and a week of neglect had allowed infection to settle in. Most of the gashes had developed pus, and a couple had maggots in them. My whole being recoiled at the thought of having to clean up this mess.

If I had to save this filly, I had to do it, no matter how repulsive it was. I felt a surge of anger at the shepherd for neglecting her treatment like that, and vented my fury in choice words, yelling at him and his wife for being callous to the very animals that made their livelihood possible.

The filly stood there shivering from the early morning air and her exhaustion.

I made the couple promise to rest in the pasture for at least a week, before I would touch the filly - it was pointless to begin something, if it wouldn’t be sustained. As an incentive, I praised the quality of
the filly, and asserted that she would become a very valuable animal and bring him good money and work very well, if she was helped to recover. This seemed to strike a note of interest.

I had some anitbiotic injections in my animal first-aid kit. I gave her a shot. She hardly noticed. Then I knew, that I had to get over my nausea and actually deal with those wounds, and took a look at my medical supplies. They were minimal. The anti-septic I had, would hardly deal with half the wounds she had before running out. The same with the creams. Now what? I shoved the supplies back into my sack, and kept only the bottle of phenyl. The rest would have to be home remidies (which was what I preferred in any case).

I made a strong solution of tea in a huge pot and used that to clean the wounds. Yes, I just plunged in, and cleaned them all thoroughly, pus, maggots and all, till the flesh showed clean. Some of the deeper wounds still harboured maggots - of that, I was sure, so I used some gauze soaked in phenyle on them to dress them. On the rest, I applied a light film of honey and stuffed them full with crushed garlic.

All done, I walked away from the tent area and puked.

The evening saw a repeat performance. On the next day, the maggot wounds were clean too, and they received the honey and garlic treatment, and by that evening, some of the lighter cuts had begun to heal, and the filly was acting more interested in life, and giving me trouble to catch for treatment But she seemed to understand that I was trying to help, so she flinched and nudged with her nose, if it hurt, but never tried to kick at me or hurt me in any way.

After that, I taught the couple how to do what I was doing, and told them that they would have to repeat this till ALL the wounds were healed, and that the filly could probably begin walking in a day or two.

They seemed to have got the point, and the two days were uneventful - so to say (not counting one of my fillies who seemed to be jealous of all the
attention this one was getting)

The time was up, and the gaddi camp moved on, and the filly became another memory, until a few years later, when I ran across the same gaddi again. There was a beautiful mare in his herd - the one I had treated. I recognised her instantly
and was happy for her. The couple put camp once more, to spend some time with me, and that evening, I was invited to a special dinner, where they thanked me with tears in their eyes for saving their beautiful mare.

Their animals also looked better cared for, since the last time. I was happy, that things had worked out well, and that they had developed some love and concern for the living factors in their “business”

Tagsanimals,first-aid,horses,memories,performanceare applied to this post