...rattle and roll

just felt a tremor...more of a jolt, really. and i thought it might have been the coffee!
no matter how prepared you are, earthquakes do leave you weak in the knees for a few minutes after. must have been about a 5 on the scale and now i'm just waiting for the aftershocks.
hang on.

yeh bhi koi baat hai?

as much as it bothers me that our new veep took his swearing-in oath in hindi, i think that causing all this hoopla over it is just pushing us in the wrong direction.
as always, someone does or says something that doesn't sit well with others, and we spend weeks after that protesting. two weeks from now, it'll be forgotten and we'll have found something new to complain about and take to the streets.
india has always been a touchy subject with us nepalis. i guess the resentment stems from the fact that they always seem to interfere in our internal matters. india's the big bad wolf waiting to pounce on us. but that's just the way it's going to be. and we need to live with that.
but my whole point is that, in the last 15 years, we haven't really done anything. sure, we have overcome political hurdles and have gotten rid of the monarchy (and i don't want to diminish the significance of that) but what about the economy, health care, education? i don't expect it to happen overnight and i do agree that we're just starting to lay the foundation for that. but why bother ourselves with taking to the streets every time someone does or says something?
let's get to work. the time in now. isn't this why we took to the streets all these years? so that we did not have to keep doing it again and again?
and as far as parmanandha jha taking his oath in hindi goes, it does bother me. but what would really piss me off is if he sucked at his job. uh...what exactly is he going to be responsible for again??

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.

monthly update

this is turning out to be exactly that--a monthly update.
and boy, there certainly are a few things that need updating.
let's start with the car. three days after i got it, some drunk 17 year-old decided that all the worries of the world would be resolved if he smashed an orange cone into the windshield of my car at 2 in the morning. and cut his hand in the process. a little blood to appease the gods, i guess. i sure hope they're looking down on him. and i hope they're happy.



on to better news. i started my class at the book shop. and i'm absolutely loving it. i finally feel like this is my ticket out. it might still be a little early, but i think that i really enjoy the process. more on that later.
uhm...what else??
the new apartment is good. except that moving and settling in has been a saga. we had no electricity the first night. and no hot water for more than a week. we didn't get our internet hooked up until 10 days later and we still don't have a stove. other than that i really like the place.
and that might be it.
i know, it's really sad that a month has passed and i have only three things to talk about!
ok, here we go...i'm really happy that the celtics won the nba, i was slightly disappointed that portugal didn't do too well in euro 2008 but was really excited for spain. finally, huh?
also, i was impressed that nadal finally beat federer in a tournamnet other than the french open.
in political news...looks like nepal might finally have a president. and thank god, it's a new face.
i'm also looking forward to watching the new batman flick. and tropic thunder.
later.

it's been a while

i was hoping that the next time i wrote something here, i wouldn't have to start off by saying, "it's been a while." unfortunately, it has been a while. almost three weeks, to be exact.
while i haven't been writing, i have to be content that the time i've spent on the computer these past few weeks have been fruitful. well, to some extent.
i finally bought a car!! i've been eating , sleeping, drinking cars for a long long time. see, my brain's been so out of whack, i have to depend on cliche after cliche to get my point across. so after a long and draining search, i finally got one yesterday. nothing fancy schmanzy..just a plain simple hummer. ha!
relax, i didn't get a hummer.
all this while i've been using the bus. yes, you can survive in LA without a car. yes, they do have public transportation in LA. It's not the best, and definitely not very time efficient. it'll take you close to an hour and a half to get to a place that's just a 15 minute drive away, but you'll get there. eventually.
and you'll just have to spend another hour researching all the bus schedules to coordinate and plan your trip.
then, there was the apartment search. after a few weeks of it getting nowhere, we finally found a place. I've been crashing at my old roommate's tiny one bedroom apartment. the new place is not in the valley so i hope it's not going to be as unbearable during the long summer. so that's that.
and now, all i need is a proper job to pay for the car and the apartment!!