a moment in the office

freezing office. check
report writing. check.
load shedding 2-5. check
whirring diesel smelling generator. check
dodgy internet connection. check
chiya (tea) check
and a dude on the street just fixed my flat tire for 30 cents.

Officially a lunatic

new friend Old Mate and I decided to organise a bit of a pub crawl this weekend. and were in the process of drafting a witty enticing email. unfortunately my computer malfunctions regularly and it managed to send 'all' , not forward 'old Mate' and my half written half baked un edited email got shared with anyone in KTM's email i could get my hands on. I officially look crazy.
see for your self and decide...lunatic talking to voices in her head or text book L Drummond .

nicknames have been used incase those mentioned dont want to be associated with a lunatic.

Hey Peoples,

In MCAT's absence, I decided to fill her large and comfortable shoes
and get the
party/organised and started for the upcoming weekend. Old Mate (new
mate)  , who is literally filling MCATs shoes by sleeping in
her bed, suggest a pub crawl on saturday afternoon and night. kick off somewhere
between 4.30 and 6.30 at OLD MATE (Fake M Cats's)  place - who has kindly
volunteered tequila and small puppies. the party train will then
direct itself to thamel's seedy underbelly, in conga line if
necessary,

OLD MATEs a doctor and thus organised and wants to take suggestions as
to pubs and venues to find ourselves....

sorry i'd i dont know you...i just collated email addresses from
various group emails going around kathmandu,

and always pass it around,




happy friday - oh...and if your in downtown nepal....join us at Old Mates 

friends, parties anything

como andas friends,

If I knew how to say this in Nepali i would, but really, my battle with the nepalese language is so far proving to be an epic battle. while i managed to pick up (what i though was) decent spanish fairly quickly, this could mainly be attributed to the 10 years of french, 7 years of latin and 3 years of italian that my combined school and uni education contributed. Nepali, however, you are a whole different kettle of fish. i have heard various people tell me that its actually a relatively simple language, but i'm yet to see this . after close to 4 weeks of classes i'm still asking the Didi at work to learn me how to cook and getting some fairly simple sentences completely wrong...and i still start speaking random spanish when getting annoyed at taxi drivers trying to rip me off...

since our rafting adventure, the week has been a fairly run of the mill  mish mash of work and play mainly centred around some serious devouring of food. monday night saw a girls movie night without a movie and a bucketload of food, tuesday was a ayad related dinner in some highly nice restaurant where K Mac JD and I stuffed ourselsves silly with Thakali curry (as far as i understand thakali's are an ethnic group from Jomson- where i was lucky enough to trek 10 years ago...lucky because now there's a round up the kali gandaki valley making the formerly quiet and peaceful walk somewhat less peaceful...think great northern walk from brooklyn to syd along the Old freeway). the curry was put on top of a normal breakfast, and workplace cold and boredom lead me to a mid morning snack of aloo and anda (curried potato and an egg), followed by lunch, followed by dinner. i think i ate a weekly ration of carbs in about a day. and then repeated last night with a meal at our lovely landlords. 

the flying dutchman and KiKi and I had been skeptical of this guy, as he was always poking his head in the door and had once or twice made some strange commments and locked us out on our first night here, but as it turns out, he's quite a nice person and has 2 orphan kids living with him. oh and his wife can cook. oh she can cook.  saag, aloo, cauli, dhal bhat, rice pudding radish, all delicious. and carb loaded. 

random non blog related image: boudha

in the mean time i had been trying to combat this excessive consumption with a jog or two, but apparently this thing called the KTM Lurgee is bound to catch me - a cough caused by the fecal and other particles in the polluted air. nice. despite the fact that i am leading a fairly health life, my lungs feel continually like its saturday morning after a friday night at oaks with baxty and rao dog. 

I got invited to a two year olds birthday party. which lead to more face stuffing, more booze and more social encounters of a nepali kind. compared to the epic 15th b'day party i attended in Huancayo, Peru. this was average stuff. but seriously, the party had more attendees than my 21st, more food than you could poke a stick at and more free flowing booze than burg ball 2003. dudes were knocking back bottles of whisky by 7.30pm.  When i got the invite to the party at the crowne plaza, i thought it was the real crown plaza, a 5 star hotel on the other side of town. my lovely coworwker (whose childs birthday it was) assured me her family owned the hotel. i got the wrong end of the nepali stick. the real one is owned by the old royal family. or something. interesting side note, the guy who drives one of works USAID trucks, used to drive the king around. true story. apparently the king liked chicken.

the actual party was quite nice, free wine and food is never a bad thing, but as anyone who has worked overseas has probably experienced there was a significant amount of awkward silence + awkward conversation being made ' oh...do you like this food. yes i like this food. do you like chilli? ' with everyone waiting for the appropriate time to leave.

this weeks lessons

a. nepali people don't like walking (which was suprising...the mountains aren't conducive to other forms of transport). apparently a 15 minute walk was 'quite far'

b. nepali people think i will get lost wherever i go ' oh its ok i can just take my bike' 'no..you wont know where it is' 'you could show me on a map' 'no no, you will probably not find it'. it turns out no nepali person can show you anything on a map, and this is inclusive of where they live, and where the office is, and how they get to work. 

c. nepali people wont say no. they just wont say anything 'couldn't i just put my bike in the car?" ' you can take a taxi tomorrow, sit sit, we go now'

moutnains and clouds in bhaktapur, where does the cloud end and the mountain begin. thats half the

 fun

view at the last resort -of the swing and bungee jump (or however you spell it) canyon thingo. bliss

enough ramblings from me, coming up next 'liz looks like a lunatic' and weekend shenanigans

peace mis amores

x

rafting good times

 wicked weekend away with my compardres K Mac and JD. Decided to avoid spending the weekend hungover in KTM (which is always fun, if not counterproductive)

Kathmandu, is a great place (so far...i haven't been here long enough to hate it) but it is seriously polluted. riding home on my bike at the end of the day i usually come home feeling like i've eaten a litre of lead or just sucked on an exhaust pipe for 20 minutes. the traffic is a bit of nightmare anytime after about 10am. which is easy enough to avoid on the back of a bike......anyway, we left the valley, and headed for the tibetan/china border (or 100km from there) for some rafting.  good times ensued. the drive out was quite spectacular, with more himalayan views etc. its nice to be able to get a glimpse of Nepali life outside Kathmandu without getting to far form the city.

anyway, I digress. rafting was amazeballs. s much fun, the water was freezing, but i kept reminding myself that it was probably the last time i'd be getting underwater until i take another rafting trip, a trip to thailand or when i finally go home....plus it was likely to be the shower temp i can expect through winter...

we managed to not flip the raft but we all goat soaked in tibetan water, though the more villages we floated through, the harder I attempted to close my mouth through the rapids, seeing the sewarage run straight into the rivier had me fearing the big G.

team extreme rafting feat. american girl , JD , Winnie our new aussie friend, Me Feat. Rangi Changi boardies and K Mac.

lead succesfully by the Nepali Roger Federer

day 2: more extreme rapids Class IV and more awesome sun and fresh air.

on the cards for this week ? momos, emergency nutrition work, zumba, bikram yoga, salsa and i dare say a few beers,

xL

sorry about that

it was a little abrupt...

so basically I decided to write a blog, because every man and his AYAD- ing dog has one, and i thought Nepal might provide some interesting anecdotes for friends family and any cyberstalkers out there to hear. Also, i have had considerable idle time at work so i thought I should, in the words of Dave Chapelle (sp?) diversify my bonds.

my office is quite pleasant, with plenty of sugary tea( I can feel my teeth falling out, incidetally a recurring nightmare of mine). goats outside the window, and some himalayan views from the office. though I'm in a dank corner on the ground floor so I'm more goats and people doing laundry than Ganesh Himal and city vistas.

this morning I managed (hopefully) to transfer some skills, in the form of basic handheld GPS use for data collection to a bunch of Nepalis. Firstly, this was not a google mapping exercise, no 'directions to...' and secondly, I didn't know I had this skill. but apparently 12 hours a good manual, and some basic google searching with a fancy (if outdated) handheld GPS thing (which is apparently not designed for novice use-thanks J Dog)  is all you need. Anyway, these guys are out in the field for the next 3 weeks doing data collection and survey...they were rather alarmed that the accuracy of the GPS was only on average, within 10 -15ms of the exact point.  Rightly so, without going into any detail, i am starting to have my doubts about ensuring data collection integrity...or something.....if one house has the exact same location as a house 15 meters away...well maybe you catch my drift...

either way its a boring drift.

Life so far in Nepal has been balls out fun. Got my new wheels bikeaphalus and have so far managed to avoid being ridden off the road or hit by an oncoming bus. work has been interesting if a little slow, but work at the Box Factory back home prepared me for idle time...

adios muchachos

xL

Check out my riiiiiide

welcome a mi casa...or mero ghar

What up people?

Hi there, after no demand, and a few days mulling it over, i figured the world needs to hear more about what i think .

right now i'm thinking i am way under qualified to be showing nepali people how to use a GPS tomorrow.
i need some bhuji mix, after 3 weeks we finally ran out. i thought i'd never see the day.
and
c. i really need to put some decent clothes on so i can get to dinner.


more to come

xL