Man's best charo

No, this post is not complaining about the stray dogs or sleepless barking nights in Thimphu. It is also not about high-tech ear plugs. Instead, I'd like to share information about a high-value service that might not be easy to find.

A few months ago a couple of dogs have adopted us. Over time the relationship became mutual (they bark in both Hebrew and Dzongkha), and so we thought that it would be a good idea to vaccinate them. Back in the West, we'd look up "vet" with our zipcode on the Internet, check customer reviews (and people can get very sensitive when it comes to their pets!), call a vet, make an appointment, bring the dogs over to the clinic, get them vaccinated and shell out a big amount of cash.

How to do this in Thimphu? Looking up "veterinary" in the Thimphu section of Bhutan Telecom's telephone directory gets you a few leads (see image), though you'd have to figure out which is the right one. Searching online for "Thimphu vet" doesn't take you too far... I took the low-tech old-fashioned way and contacted our friend Marianne from Pilou Bhutan Animal Rescue & Care, who gave me the information. Let me supplement it with our excellent personal experience:

Vaccinating dogs and cats in Thimphu is done by the Chubachu Veterinary hospital (02-322432). Their immunization service beats my Western experiences hands down: Being car-free, we couldn't bring the dogs to the hospital. Instead, the wonderful Dr. Kinley arrived after 30 minutes with a team of two helpers. They vaccinated our dogs (free!), gave de-worming tablets (free!), and registered them (Nu. 120 per dog). The dogs were a bit surprised, but it's for their own good. No wonder that Thimphu hasn't had a rabies outbreak since 1992.

The importance of strong passwords

I've recently encountered more incidents of hacked email accounts in Bhutan. This time it was a Chinese spammer sending thousands of "you've won the lottery" fraudulent emails to unsuspecting recipients. Other hackers abuse email accounts by sending out emails of the infamous "Mugged in Pataya" type to the victim's contact list. And one can think of even more sophisticated ways of taking advantage of hacked accounts, especially if the hacker takes the time to delve into the victim's messages.

Reading Lolita in Thimphu

Married to the Kindle

There's recently been an explosion of Bhutan-focused travelogues and memoirs. Or at least so it seems. Three of the newer works are currently not available for sale in Bhutan: Radio Shangri-La by Lisa Napoli, Married to Bhutan by Linda Leaming, and Beneath Blossom Rain by Kevin Grange.

So what do you do if you're here in the Kingdom and desperate to get a copy? The public library would be a natural place to find such books, but as far as I know, copies are still not available for loan. Eventually a few will end up there. Another option is to find a local friend who has a copy. If that didn't work, keep on reading.

Upcoming online course: Acceptance Sampling (opens Apr 15)

I will be instructing an online course that can be useful to those working in organizations who receive or send goods to/from multiple sources (the hospital, large shops, Bhutan Agro, UNDP, printers, Yogurt production plant, traditional medicine, BioBhutan, and more).

About the Course:

Mindfulness essential when emailing subscribers

One of Bhutan's leading newspapers has recently made an embarrassing - if common - mistake.
When emailing the PDF version of the newspaper to the list of its online subscribers, the sender absent-mindedly added the recipients to the message's Cc field. Anyone who received the email was now able to browse the entire recipient list and see who the other subscribers are. So I now have the newspaper's entire online subscriber list, which includes a few dashos and other VIPs, among others. And of course, they now have my email address as well...

Will a new plastic card revolutionize retail in Bhutan?

Bhutan National Bank is launching a prepaid Visa card today. Other banks are offering or have plans to offer similar cards. According to the information provided by BNB, the card can be used for Internet online shopping.

Subscribers or users?

The MoIC recently released the 2010 Annual Statistics Bulletin. According to the bulletin, there were 84,458 mobile broadband subscribers in Bhutan in 2010. This figure has also been reported by the Kuensel. Mobile Internet technologies include GPRS (very slow), EDGE (slow) and 3G (sometimes fast). The latter is only available in Thimphu. Out of the 84,458 subscribers, the bulletin reports that around 2% (1,998) are 3G subscribers, and the other 98% (82,462) are GPRS/EDGE users.