Run Deepti Run

It's been a two month hiatus. It certainly feels longer, and there have been many things that I've wanted to talk about. However, I felt compelled to come back with something worthy of your attention. So here goes.
A dear friend of mine, Deepti Shrestha, is running the NYC Marathon on November 2nd. She is hoping to raise at least $2000 for educational scholarships for underprivileged children in Nepal. Helping her in this challenge is Sarvodaya Nepal (raising the money, that is. As far as running is concerned, she's on her own!)
Anyway, I hope you will support Deepti and Sarvodaya Nepal now and in the years to come.

and now, we have a prime minister

so finally, we have a prime minister. prachanda- the struggling actor has gotten his break. let's see if his performance is oscar-worthy. the time for talk is over.

...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.