hello, mr. president

and now, we have one too!
ram baran yadav is officially the first president of nepal. parmananda jha is the veep.
i'm just a little skeptical that yadav has been a girja loyalist. however, he's also one of the guys who stuck to his principles and stayed with the NC when the smart thing to do then might have been to switch parties. so i guess there's a sliver of hope.
but here's the thing. during the nomination process, the maoists insisted that if their candidate wasn't elected president, they wouldn't form the govt. what kind of threat is that? all they've done so far is make threats...if we don't get this, then we'll do this, or we won't do this. this presumption that they are owed everything. what if the Republicans said that if John McCain isn't elected president, they would stay away from the Congress and the senate? not quite the same, but you get the idea.
the significance of having a madhesi prez and veep is certainly not lost on me though.
hello, president yadav.

mr. brainwash

i decided to explore the bookstores today. so i hopped on the DASH and went around Los Feliz to the Alpine bookstore--for used books. the only problem--i couldn't find it! that's the second Alpine bookstore that i went looking for and couldn't find. where the hell are these guys??? the first one was 'supposedly' on Melrose but it had a big fat lock on the door and looked like it was shut down. today, i couldn't even locate a door, or lock.
so i got on the DASH again (which i might add, is very convenient--a quater to get around hollywood) and headed to the borders on sunset and vine.
however, the most interesting part of the day was the free exhibition that i stumbled upon on my way back. it was an one-man show-mr. brainwash-and he had some very interesting installation pieces. a lot of pop-culture stuff, right down my alley. i think i'm going to go back next weekend to take another look.

we have a president

uh...actually, make that Vice President.
so after weeks of deal-makings and deal-breakings, the CA went in to elect the first prez/veep. and as with everything we do in nepal, he have a veep before we have a president!!
neither of the candidates could secure a majority. that's reflective of the "revenge politics," as someone put it, that seems to have plagued our CA.
it never fails to amuse me that all our gray-haired politicians never want to let go off their top-tier positions. look at madhav kumar nepal. here's a guy who has been the face and voice of UML politics and still failed to be elected to the CA. and until a few days ago, he wanted to be President. let's not even start with girija.
with the parties wasting so much time in electing a merely ceremonial president, when will the CA ever get around to doing their main task? writing the constitution, remember? forget about tackling problems like the economy, education and health care. i don't see that happening in a while.
in a country where people strike to protest strikes, i'm surprised that we even got this far.