I'm loving it!

Our friend Craig Dalton, a public health physician who's currently teaching at the RIHS (see our acronym dictionary), created this hilarious critique of a McDonald's ad. These commercials are viewed in many Bhutanese homes, courtesy of Indian satellite channels. Thank goodness Bhutan is McDonald's-free.

Today was World Statistics Day

Today was the first World Statistics Day. Initiated by the UN, this day was (and still is) celebrated around the world by various events such as seminars and conferences to highlight the role of statistics, the achievements of statistical bureaus, etc.

The choice of the date Oct 20, 2010 is explained on the International Statistical Institute's website as follows:

The date 20-10-2010 was chosen since the year rounding in '0' has always been an important year in official statistics. In many countries, this is the year when the population and housing census is conducted. It is also the base year for the trend analysis in economic statistics or in compilation of national accounts or input-output tables. In 2010, some 3 billion people will be counted in some 60 countries. This is why we choose 20-10-2010 to emphasize the importance of this year in official statistics calendar

Bhutan's National Statistics Bureau celebrated the event with a program on "The role of statistics towards supporting evidence-based decision-making in the country."

As a statistician, I would have loved to attend this event. However, I was conducting another related event: The first day of a 3-day workshop on Decision Making Using Excel. The workshop aim is the same as the NSB's event: to promote evidence-based decision making. The workshop is attended by 20 decision makers from government, corporate, and private organizations in the country. The workshop highlights the usefulness of data for planning and evaluating projects, and for interpreting and presenting data effectively.

More Dzongkha Smartphone Screenshots

Here are some more screenshots of the first-ever smartphone with Dzongkha support. Note: The Nokia N900 is available in India with a a price that hovers around Rs 25,000.

BT's new Power Voucher

Bhutan Telecom is promoting its new Power Voucher: 50 minutes of talk-time for Nu 60, which is Nu 1.2 per minute. Is this a good deal? Quite probably, unless you're calling during late-night hours (1-3AM), when the charge is Nu 0.4 per minute. But there are a few missing details regarding this offer: Is the money being deducted in 15 sec units, or by the minute? And which balance is debited when your phone has both a regular balance and a "power voucher" balance? Hopefully BT will provide more details and list the exact terms of this new voucher.

Update: This voucher can only be used to call another B-Mobile subscriber. You will not be able to use it to call TashiCell subscribers (Thanks, Andrea).

What's your favourite Bhutanese acronym?

If you've ever wondered what's the meaning of IMTRAT, ABTO or JDWNRH, you've come to the right place. In a modest attempt to put some order into the many acronyms used in Bhutan, I have compiled a list of the ones used most frequently. The list includes only the ones that are Bhutan-specific; thus, UNICEF, JICA etc have been left out.
Hopefully this mini-dictionary will be helpful. A link to the list (known as "AoB - Acronyms of Bhutan") is available on the right sidebar, under "Pages".

New phishing scheme

I just received an email that appears innocent, but is actually a tricky phishing scheme. "Phishing is a form of fraud in which a message sender attempts to trick the recipient into divulging important personal information like a password or bank account number, transferring money, or installing malicious software. Usually the sender pretends to be a representative of a legitimate organization." (Gmail's definition). The email that I received (which was able to pass through the Gmail spam filters) looks like this:

The scammers here are posing as Adobe, a credible company, well known for their Acrobat Reader software. This email is tricky for two reasons:

• It doesn't directly ask for your password or other personal information. (That will happen only after you click on the link to their website) 
• The URL mentioned in the email actually links to that exact URL (In some schemes, the URL written in the email is linked to a different URL -- placing your cursor on the link will reveal the destination URL). In other words, these scammers purchased the domain "adobe-software-2010.com". If you examine the actual sender's address, you'll see that it is "newsletter@adobe-software-2010.com". 

If you receive such an email, protect yourself by not responding or clicking on any links within it. If you are using Gmail, you can help others by reporting the email as Phishing (as shown in the picture above). I reported this one, so hopefully you will not receive it!

More love for your fixed-line

I previously blogged about reasons to keep your fixed-line phone. I promised a future post with "secret" features that come with your line. So here it is!

Every phone line in Bhutan comes with a set of optional service features. Alas, information about these features is hard to come by. You won't be able to find any information on the BT website (the most obvious place to list these features) or in the printed phone directory. However, the BT representative at the One-Stop-Shop was kind enough to provide me with the relevant information, so I'm sharing it with you. The features are now listed on a special page at ThimphuTech.

To enable any of these features, you would need to contact Bhutan Telecom. Among the more useful or interesting ones are Alarm clock (*55), Call waiting (*43), and my all-time favorite, Camp on Busy (*37).