friday songs

lacking in inspiration for blog posts after a busy/uneventful week, and a ridiculous weekend in dubai. new Radiohead is in my opinion totally awesome. and Led Zeppelin tangerine is a song that is

 a. continually in my head

b. continually on my ipod and

c. inspiring me to pick up a guitar again.

stay tuned and happy friday kids

xx

a brief absence

Dear small blog observing audience,


sorry, I've been meaning to write, but just haven't got around to it. its not you, its me. i haven't really been all that busy, i spent half an hour at work the other day trying to get my curly lions mane aka as my hair into a french style hugh bun, which i found the instructions for online, while using stumbleupon.com.
so a. you can see i've had time on m hands, and
b. it failed miserably. apparently to achieve the very louche and casual french style top knot as seen here you have to have hair that resembles a french model. or indeed anyone who doesn't have hair that resembles this

anyway, i digress. days here in Nepal continue to range from the ridiculous, the amazing, the bizarre, the fun, and the flat out frustrating mostly during the course of a day, the roller coaster of daily emotions from 'why wont my colleague give me any information about this project proposal she wants me to write' to 'kathmandu i F**king love you, usually leads to a daily wrap up with housemates, friends and other volutneers/aidworkers filled with amusing/frustrating anecdotes about working in Nepal. and I imagine in all less developed countries (i think thats the term we are using now). yesterday's little tale of the day, if it were to be written into short story would be entitled 'the time i jumped out the bus window to get out because it was too crowded to go through the door'. or 'writing a budget for a 3 year project without a clue'.

so i'll leave you with this, Kathmandu, i do love you, you are great, fun, amazing, dirty, full of inredible humourous, smart people, with amazing mountains, rubbish, dogs and 1980s style aerobics classes. but you are a challenging beast. 

Off to Dubai for the weekend, for sun, warmth, pools, overpriced drinks, seafood and shopping, 

i'll see you when I get back

xoxo pussymandu

ps other amusing anecdotes involve elton john singalongs, 'you cook us dinner' parties and the night we overdosed on mo:mo's (note the appropriate aspiration)

dreamfoods

the argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges writes of a man who cant stop imagining blue tigers, a coin that cannot be forgotten, of small disks that drive a man mad in his short stories.

i can completely obsessed by food. i'm thinking about the meal i'm going to eat after the one i'm about to sit down to while i'm still full from the meal before.
In borges' short stories the man dreaming of tigers end up in a cell surrounded by drawings on the wall of the unforgettable tigers, within which are pictures of tigers, containing pictures of tigers, ad infinitum.
I wonder if i will wind up in a room surrounded by sketches of plates of food, within plates of food disguising other plates of food.

a chef i once knew complained of being completely obsessed by food , that he couldn't stop thinking about food and cooking, at the time i couldn't see the problem. now im not so sure. the worst part is i'm not even dreaming of delicious amazing foods of amazing flavour. sometimes its just white bread with cheese. couscous with some raisins and tumeric. momos. muesli. porridge. i'm trapped in a glass cage of desirable and not so desireable foods.

oh and if you haven't read borges. do. now. you will be satsified.

its almost hell  

Kathmandu is playing hard to get

And I like it,

seriously, these days KTM is like playing the whole 'treat 'em mean keep 'em keen' reallllly well. KTM if I didn't know you better I might dislike you more.

In the last week Kathmandu has been trying to mess with me in the following ways:

its gotten colder
(which means my office has gotten colder)
the sun has gone away
(which means it has gotten even colder and now i can't see the moutains)
it rained
(which means I saw rain for the 2nd time in 3 months)
the load shedding has gone up
(which means its now 12 hours a day no power, and the 12 hours a day when you want it - before and after work, and usually during )
our hot shower has stopped working
(which means i can either wash my lions mane in lukewarm water, or not bathe at all)

photocredit :http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/926610.stm
road side filth. KTM is not winning any cleanest city awards any time in the next decade.

try as you might KTM , I have faith,  but don't pull this cold s*** on me too much longer, in dont know how much longer i can work with number fingers.

xL

establishing field cred

according to this pretty hilarious blog establishing field cred is a must for the aspiring or already aspired development/aid worker. while i wouldn't classify myself as an aid worker - writing reports and running surveys is hardly saving lives/children/the world , I finally made it on a field trip last week. and i think i got the ball rolling with the field cred. while I didn't manage to get any photos of myself, DSLR in one hand, cup of chiyya in the other, wearing a Kurta, boots, jacket and shawl speaking terrible nepali to female community health volunteers, I can tell you that thats pretty much how it looked.

View of the himalayas (obviously) from the road

I didn't go on the trip with my organisation, but another Nutrition NGO where my colleagues sister works, and they invited me slash i invited myself along on their field trip tip to Jiri, Dolakha district, east of KTM towards the Everest Region. Jiri used to be one of the main trail heads for Everest Base camp, but the road goes further into the mountains now, so there are fewer tourists passing through .

the field trip was: white 4WDs on windy nepali roads. dahl bhat chiyya dahl bhat chiyya. coconut crunch biscuits, LBM, going to bed at 9pm, listening to nepali 24/7, indian pop music, cold, clean, clear, refreshing, a season of how i met your mother, a paul auster book, 2 sets of clothes, no shower, chiyya, dahl bhat, meetings, community participation, health worker training, chiyya.

 Jiri is home to an ethnic group called the Jirel, tibeto-buddhist's. this was the quite attractive stupa and only main sight in Jiri. According to one of the people on the trip inside they keep guns and weapons, should there be a fight.....i wasn't convinced. but who knows...

Female community health workers have been integral to Nepal's progress and success and health gains over the past 20 years. initially trained to distribute Vitamin A capsules, they now distribute ante natal advice, immunisations, important health care messages, nutritional training and advice, sexual health education and basically any other community based aspect of health care operating in Nepal. Part of the trip was training a group of FCHVs from around Jiri on nutrition and eating habits, what foods to eat, what to avoid and what is nutritious. The education package is simple straightforward and effective. The women may not know what micronutrients are at the beginning of the day but by day 2 they can competently advise mothers what they should and shouldn't be feeding newborn children and themselves.
I have mentioned Nepal's staggering problem with undernutrition - FCHV training forms an integral part of trying to eradicate hunger in nepal....

Female community health workers at the community nutrition training, lady no. 2 from the left had a striking resemblance to Patsy from ab fab. i swear.

another list

my three favourite possessions in Nepal. its not very buddhist, but its not like i'm the dalai lama or anything

1. the coffee pot i bought from aus
2. my bike
3. my new puffy vest.

call me a consumer but i'm a girl who likes her stuff.

and three things i don't like
1. handwashing
2. handwashing my sheets
3. handwashing my sheets in cold water.

and now a photo for thought.

lessons learnt

 three things i learnt this week:

1. if you give a nepali bus driver the finger he WILL stop beeping at you
2. ask and ye shall receive ( a field trip)
3. sitting in a 5 day workshop conducted in nepali does not mean you will be able to speak nepali at the end of the week.

and one more

some things - never change. the tibetan refugee camp or settlement hadn't changed the roof that we painted 10 years ago, was still there and almost blue .