Finally Blogger cooperates

Pictures at last:

My office is on the second floor of this building

At Swayambhu, where the largest Buddha statue is located. Notice how Hinduism and Buddhism are intertwined here. Many Nepalese think that Buddhism is part of Hinduism, since Siddhartha Guatama was a Hindu born in Lumbini in Nepal before he attained enlightenment and became Buddha.

Stupa at Swayambhu

We came across a Nepali shoot in Kathmandu while covering a press conference at a nearby hotel. You just gotta love the costumes...

Me at Bhaktapur. Say it, I gained weight. Blame it on the naans and curries...

More pictures to come tomorrow if Blogger continues to cooperate. In the meantime, check out my Flickr account link ("My Pics") located on the left side of this page.

Bhaktapur, the city of devotees

In case you are wondering why the lack of updates again, my reason this time is simple-blogger refuses to let me upload my photos and I have been trying for the past week to do it but to no avail. Basically last week I went for a picnic with my company colleagues in Dhulikhel, an hour bus ride away from Kathmandu, to celebrate our anniversary. A nice getaway from the polluted city, and we had fun at the resort. Then I left early with another colleague as he invited me for dinner. To cut the long story short, my Japanese friend Yuko and her friend will be visiting me here in Nepal for two weeks from late February to early March and we decided to head to Pokhara for a week, another city in Nepal 8 hours by bus away. Since this Nepali colleague's parents own a restaurant in Pokhara and they were in Kathmandu that day of the picnic my friend invited me to his house for dinner so that I could meet his parents and get details for Pokhara. The dinner was good (they are restaurant owners afterall) and we had a good time, although it's always amusing to me to be the only sober person in a roomful of people who had a tad too much of a drink. People really do funny things when they are drunk.

Before we got back to Kathmandu from the Dhulikhel though, my colleague and his cousins who kindly agreed to drive us back decided to stop by Bhaktapur, an ancient holy city about half an hour from Kathmandu. I was really glad that I went to Bhaktapur, and doubly glad that I went with Nepalese as I didn't get stopped by the guard to pay the tourist entrance fee like Zak did when he went another time. So I got some great pictures, and spent some nice time sitting in a teashop in Bhaktapur, surrounded by ancient stupas and holy shrines of the Hindu gods of Ganesh and Shiva, and just drinking my dudh chia and people-watch. If you want pictures, you'll have to head to my flickr site. Click on this link below or just the one on the left side of this page that says "My Pics".

http://www.flickr.com/photos/wenwhy14/

More pictures coming up, if Flickr and Blogger cooperate...

"OK class, today we are going to learn about RESILIENCE."

http://www.straitstimes.com/Breaking%2BNews/Singapore/Story/STIStory_333370.html

I find this article highly amusing and couldn't resist commenting on it, even with 4 hours of electricity here. Basically it's another one of the Singaporean government's crackpot ideas to try and brainwash the kids into somehow becoming resilient towards terrorist attacks. As if the kids can fully grasp the concept of terrorism by staying in our bubble island. And besides, who says that resilience can be inculcated just by being able to withstand terrorist attacks? Not to mention that to me, the whole article was written with a hint of sacarsm. I suggest that to learn resilience the Singaporean government should sponsor kids to come to Nepal or India or rural China or Africa, and then they will see for themselves what resilience means, and maybe even learn from their fellow kids in these countries what being resilient entails. Let the Singaporean kids spend a cold winter night with the street kids of Kathmandu, and see how they survive on less than 5 nepalese rupees (10 cents) a day. Just remind them not to get into glue-sniffing like the street kids here do to stay warm at night. Or maybe spend a day with the child labourers lugging rocks 3 times their own weight up and down the mountains here. Or better, get the teachers from Singapore to try farming for a day in the Maoist hotbed in Western Nepal.

If the army in Singapore dosen't teach resilience, then I think the future of Singapore will be one big basketful of strawberries. One bump and we're all squashed.

Teaching resilience indeed. Oh please, give me a break. I am ashamed to say that I am a product of the Singaporean education system.