Well it has been a little while since I last blogged, mostly because ‘blogger’ have finally made changing your sign in procedure a pre-requisite of blogging and I didn’t have time to do that until now!
So life is good. I have put some more photos on Flickr, of mountain biking last weekend, and of the Maoist rally that I went to today - celebrating 12 years of glorious insurgency amongst other things I believe. Prachanda the great leader himself was there, not that I could get anywhere close enough to spy him. Thousands upon thousands of red flag flying people were surging around Ratna Park in town trying to get close to the action. Maoists were dishing out free water and it was all very jolly – the red paper ‘Maoist’ visors worn by every other person made me feel as if I was in a surreal communist theme park… and I desperately want to find exactly where you can get vests with Prachanda printed on them in a very Che Guevara-esq pose.
The petrol update is that there is now petrol (a 10 day halt to the strikes and blockades in the south was called)… however there are still fairly huge queues – back log I guess. Electricity cuts are increasing to 6hrs per day starting tomorrow. At work we only have back up power for PCs and so there are no lights during the power cuts. Its soooo dark and depressing! Oh yes and as if this wasn’t enough the people who collect the rubbish are striking about something or other - they have learnt that if you want anything in this country you just have to strike and then the government is fairly likely to give into most of your demands and you can all live happily ever after… well until the government realises that this really isn’t a very sustainable way to function… so yes rubbish collection people striking is actually more tragic than you might think, as basically most people, especially in market areas, just throw the rubbish onto the street and then someone else comes along and sweeps it and burns it and manky dogs run around it all and get excited… so basically certain areas always look rather grim, or so I thought until the rubbish collectors went on strike… and now they look really grim… but the dogs are happy at least.
The other weekend we went to see a bollywood movie. Its interesting, very rarely are western films shown here. I think Casino Royale was shown in December, but with all sex scenes edited out, which makes you wonder if the Bond-ness of the Bond film was lost. So, yes we went to see a bollywood movie, which was a 3 hour epic with no subtitles… despite this quite easy to follow… the liberal interspersing of ‘I love you’ and other English mixed into the Hindi helped. There was plenty of singing and dancing… the movie was split between Delhi and ‘London’… well it was supposed to be London, but when one actress ran round the corner of Trafalgar square and past the Bodleian Library in Oxford I decided either something was amiss or I had been out of the country too long. Just sitting in the audience was an experience, people brought their whole families along, babies and toddlers included, fortunately the sound system was incredibly loud – to drown out screaming kids I suppose… my friend was sitting next to a Nepali who tried to have several conversations with her during the film, and asked her if she wanted to take part in some sort of rally car event he was setting up. Random.
Friday is a holiday. Apparently a big Hindu festival will be celebrated with (naked!) Sadhus chanting, smoking dope and waving live snakes about the place… it all sounds a very random ceremony and one not to be missed. Perhaps some good photos?!
That’s all from me I think.
Love and power cuts x x x x
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