John, I have been slightly remiss about this post but better late than never! Thanks for your post. About stereotyping, it's an all too familiar social trait borne out of convenience perhaps rather than anything else. We all tend to develop certain ways of looking at things, people and everything else around us depending on our familiarity with the immediate surroundings and oftentimes, end up with, to quote your own term, the 'preconceived notions' - an ingrained mind set. But I think, we do it because this affords one a plausibly convenient way to describe one's situation in a given scenario - something we do without even realising what we are doing and why. Most of the time, we do it for fun, I think, and that's why we have those Indian jokes, for instance. The national stereotypes. And that's fine by me as long as one's habit of throwing remarks on one has that humour currency attached and this is done in a healty manner i.e. not causing incitement of hatred, racial or otherwise. Whether one finds it offesive is a different matter altogether - purely a matter of personal choice rather than priciple. Back home on leave, I do come across a few blank faces with gaping mouths now and then when I tell people what I do for a living. A friend (Nepali) of mine who is halfway through his Phd from a UK university and is still serving in the Brit Army tells me the same thing when he goes home on leave. Now about us being hunk, ahem! Hunk? Far from it - a cross between Woody Allen and Bart Simpson would better suit the description of yours truly! :) :) Wine? Yeah, a few sips now and then won't go amiss! Bullet?? Self-explanatory. Women?? Come on John, we all love women, don't we? :))))) And vice versa. I mean, who wouldn't like the sight of Pammy Andersons shooting past you. It'd be foolish not to. We men eh! SITARA, Thanks for your post and for your kind words. I trust that your course is progressing well. All I can say is keep up the hard work. The 'sun burn' is definitely worth taking the brunt of and remember, you always have us and Sajha to lean to whenever you feel the need to 'crawl under a rock and hibernate'. Oh, forgot to mention one name for Sandhurst's former alumni: Robert Graves. Another Oxonian, saw action in the 1st World War, after war went on to live in the Mediterranean island Majorca in the late 1920s and 30s. Later lectured at Cambridge before eventually going back to his alma mater, Oxford, to become a professor of literature. They apparently have a monument of him put up there in Majorca for what he'd done to the place like his predecessors - the most celebrated couple of the Victorian era, the trousers wearing French novelist George Sand and her boyfriend Chopin, the flamboyant Polish composer - had done to it many years before him. So, Graves to Majorca is exactly what Hemingway is to Cuba and West Quay. Hope you had a lovely Dashain. I better sign off as this post is becoming boring with my woffle. Have a good day. Carpe Diem