This coming week is Tihar, what the Nepalis call Diwali. Our hostess will be leaving for her village to get a tika from her mother. Even more embarrassingly than yesterday’s faux pas, I learned today that I have been calling her by her daughter’s name all this time. I had thought I was so clever; […]
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Nepali weekend
The Nepali weekend is Saturday, today. We have a new guest at the homestay, a young Israeli gentleman (whom I embarrassingly misidentified as Lebanese because of his coffee and his Arab sounding name). He used to live in Nepal and speaks some broken Nepali as well, and is on his way to India to learn […]
Light reading
The Calculating Stars by Mary Robinette Kowal. I have always had mixed feelings about Kowal’s work. She’s a decent writer and her contributions to the Writing Excuses podcast are usually quite insightful. But I find her books and stories middle-of-the-road, and she has a Middle America sensibility that rivals Bujold’s (many of whose books I […]
Shameful
What a dispiriting day for Pakistan. Another one, that is. Another full day of rioting and looting and rumours. The army saying they can’t interfere in every little issue in Pakistan (not that they don’t otherwise, maybe the rioters were careful to avoid the army’s extensive property portfolio). Then the assassination of Sami-ul-Haq striking abject […]
Riotous day
Rioting all day across Pakistan. One sibling trapped in Islamabad, one using all sorts of feints to get to the airport in Lahore for work in in Karachi (and then to leave the airport). A parent trapped in the ancestral village where he had planned to be overnight, but has been unable to leave because […]
Not happy
Today, Pakistan’s Supreme Court acquitted Asia Bibi, a Christian peasant woman, of blasphemy. She had been accused by two of her Muslim neighbours after they quarrelled when she brought them a drink of water and they refused to drink from a cup that a Christian had drunk from unless she converted to Islam on the […]
Homestay
The other residents of this homestay are a Tibetan couple from China who carry a small sign saying ‘Dear sir or madam, I am sorry but I do not speak English or Nepali. Please give me a three month visa’. It appears to have worked, for here they are. We communicate through smiles and gestures. […]
Playing twister
This morning I left the hotel. They gave me a ride to my new abode, a homestay on the western outskirts of Kathmandu. It is set at the foot of a green hill with a Bon monastery just above, but is otherwise very residential, what I would call in Pakistan lower middle-class aspiring upwards, with […]
Save the toe
Well I went to the doctor (rather overpriced I thought) and had my toe examined. He thought the nail was still attached and would not come off, which was a relief indeed. He cautioned me repeatedly to breathe deeply as he was going to drain the swelling, so I braced myself and then didn’t even […]
(Very) long way back
The bus left at around 7.20 though it didn’t actually pass through Dhunche (the entry point to the region and the national park) till over two hours later as there were many, many stops – reversing to let another truck or bus pass on the narrow mountain road, or to take on or let off […]