Deelip Khanal

Appa Sherpa has scaled the Mt. Everest for more times than any other in the world. He once again made it to the summit in his latest adventure just some weeks ago.

Yeah, it’s a matter of pride to reach up to the highest point of the earth’s landmass. Only few can achieve this feat and so far, Sherpas have excelled on this regard. 

Mt. Everest  has been hailed as a national pride and Nepalis boast it as their ‘only identity’ to get them known in the outer world. Mt. Everest along with Buddha  and once a term ‘Heroic Gorkhali’ has long been a symbol of ‘national identity and pride’. After the so called ‘abolition’ of monarchy, Mt. Everest has even replaced the king in the front face of the currencies.

But, I don’t conform to this idea. I believe, only those things that we (can) create, make, invent are our true pride. We didn’t build Mt. Everest, we didn’t invent it, we didn’t create it, we didn’t make it. It’s a thing the nature gave us gratis. Not a single drop of sweat is shed for it. No labour, no wise minds, no technology, no other forms of human excellencies. It’s given us FREE and we Nepalis are ‘exploiting’ it for our advantage. It’s half-witted to boast a thing that we never laboured for, but got gratis. 

France prides itself on Eiffel Tower. Malaysians pride on their economic boom, big cities and structures they constructed in past 20 years, including once the world’s highest twin-tower of Kuala Lumpur. People of Dubai boast ‘Burj Dubai’ and the city itself. America boasts it’s space technology and skyscrapers (most famously decades-old Empire State Building and until 2001, twin WTC towers) in New York. Likewise, Indians see their pride heightened on Taj-Mahal and Bollywood. UK boasts it’s Tower Bridge, Stonehenge and Westminster. Blitzing Bangkok is Thailand’s pride.  And so on…

It’s not that they don’t have any such natural wonders that they really could rely upon to be proud of. But, the thing is that it’s ridiculous to boast natural things that we’ve given ‘free’.

What’ve we made so we, as other aforementioned countries, get ourselves proud on? Nothing. Nothing yet. Beautifully crafted temples and other artistic wonders in Kathmandu have now become a history. We could have boasted our ancient artistic treasures, because, so far, I think we’ve not yet excelled in scientific and technological fronts. But, no such treasures are now intact. They have already turned decrepit.

We couldn’t even save the beauty of ancient Kathmandu. Sprawling suburbs have already cast a blight on the beauty of the once beautiful city.

This is worst that we take things, our ancestors left for us, for granted and that’s why our ancient treasures have fallen into a state of dilapidation or devastation.

Let’s achieve a remarkable feat, like those nations did with theirs, so we could exude our pride. Let’s not make Mt. Everest a ”scapegoat” for our pride. Set this poor thing free and let’s go for a hunt for a feat that could represent our pride. Mt. Everest has been so ”easy and free way” to get ourselves known in the outer world. It’s a matter of gross shame to present Mt. Everest forth to veil our notorious poverty and incompetence.

I know, Mt. Everest is one of the greatest natural wonders but linking it to one’s pride is just absurd and I don’t pounce on it.

Moreover, exact location of Mt. Everest is disputed. Both China and Nepal had been claiming Mt. Everest lies in their territory.

So, I don’t preen myself on the Mt. Everest. Until and unless we Nepalis achieve any remarkable feat, it’s just a thick idea to pride ourselves on such poor thing. For me, it’s just a mountain, no such thing of pride. 

-Copied from a friends blog without his permission.

It was published in his blog on June 7th. Just wanted to share it. Can’t point you to his blog for some reason.

So, I was wondering what have we really made here of which we can be proud of? Literally nothing? I am not a cynic nor I whine all the time. I always fight people who go abroad and talk there-is-nothing-in-nepal things. I even refused to go abroad when my people suggested. I am actually the one who prefers to say “We are yet to make something of which we can be proud of”  rather than to say ” we don’t have anything to be proud of” because the first one sounds less pessimistic. But sometimes I am so hopeless that I can’t take it anymore.

I can no longer be calm saying “we are yet to choose a new prime minister after 5 prime ministerial election” while the fact is “We could not choose the prime minister even after 5 prime ministerial election”. I can not stop laughing at incompetent CPN-UML for their Tatastha drama and I can not stop feeling sorry for Maoist for not being able to win other political parties heart even after being largest party in constitutional assembly with tremendous support from the public. And I can not stop feeling sorry for them for their internal war on the superiority. I am starting to feel that CPN-Maoist is going to be another CPN-UML in next few years.

And above of all, I can not stop feeling sorry for us, Nepalese people, for being fucked up by these so called leaders since last 60 years in the name of democracy. I am not counting thousands of years before that because they never promised anything to the people which is a lot better than not giving anything that is promised.

Firefox is awesome software. I haven’t used any other browser since I came to know about this but it started working differently lately. One of the most important features I like about Firefox is that I can simply type in the search term in the address bar and it takes me to the Google search page. And if I am lucky enough with my search term, it actually takes me to the actual web page I am looking for. But it is taking me to ask.com search result since some days. It’s just too unfair.When I type “yahoo answers” it doesn’t directly takes me to answers.yahoo.com anymore.It rather takes me to a crappy search result page of Ask.com. I am sure I didn’t configure it in that way, I wasn’t even sure that Ask.com still exists until this incident. I remember upgrading Firefox few days ago. Now I suspect that Firefox itself is the culprit. May be they have changed their default search provider. But I wonder why would they want to do that. Do they really think people still use any other search engine than Google? Or does Ask.com pay them more than Google does? I doubt that.

I would rather use Internet Explorer with Google rather than using Firefox with fucking ask.com.

Everything else except Firefox was fair to me last week. Weekend was especially very good. I met some new people and had fun with all of them. Things went unexpectedly/surprisingly good with some of them ;)

I am going to quit my day job to concentrate on my studies.

Well, that’s could be a lie :) I’m moving on to something else.

I know this announcement is going to drive some of your crazy, I’ve already received some hate mails(almost) from some of my well-wishers ;). They can’t simply understand why would I want to quit a very well paid, respected job while I can do both(work and study) side by side. But people,let me tell you how my typical days goes:

- Wake up at 6:30.
- work on the t-shirt site and a pet site for about 1.5 hour.
- go college at 8:30
- off to office at 11:00 
- return home at 7:00
- work on other projects for another about 3 hours(dinner in between)
- sleep at 11:30

If you calculate Its like 16 hours including college. College is the hardest thing I’m doing now. I already have 3 backpapers from my first semester. If it goes like this I’ll have 18 backpapers when I leave college. I will have granddaughters teaching me writing those papers. So If I sleep 7 hours then that will be 23 hours. I spend 1 hour that is left on bathroom. Seriously ;)

See? Don’t you feel sorry for me?  I am working too much. I literally work all the time except those 7 hours at night and 1 hour at bathroom. I work in the morning, I work all over the day and I work in the night until I sleep.  

College initially was never really that important but I’ve changed my mind. I have already paid for almost half of the college duration so I just can’t let go of that money. Its just few hours in the morning. If I take all the classes it won’t be hard . I can still maintain hundreds of other things after college for money. Even though I have a very well paid day job (at least for my level) I am not too busy there. So I won’t miss it much I think. The thing is, I like to feel very important if I am working on something and I can let go of the position where I am not really important. In other word I am not completely happy about my current work. 

I won’t be doing any day job for next one and half year after this.

A friend of mine returned from Malaysia last week. She was about to go India right after a week. She wanted to hangout with me. So we went to places, in the evening. Thamel, New Road, Kingsway and other places. In 3 short meetings, she tried to make me realize that I am living in hell. And that we don’t know how to live and that we’re so backward and many other things. She did not directly that that of course but she tried. She is my friend, so I hate to say that I hate the people who act like they belong to some other country just because they’ve spent some time there and whine about how bad the country is how bad is it going to be. She’d been in Lankawi for barely one year and when she returned Nepal, she was saying “things are not like this in ‘her’ place”. As if that is where she belongs.

She is not the only one actually. I have many friends living in USA, Australia and other country. Everytime they come down here, they not only whine about the situation here but curse us for our bad waste management sytem, for the traffic problem, for lack of water and for the political system. They curse us for giving them hard time during their a month long visit.

“Poor Nepalese are never going to learn these things.”.

That is the exact line she said.

I wanted to say that why don’t you brilliant minds just stay in Nepal and manage the waste properly, make roads and get into politics and make it better? Otherwise why don’t you just forget about us? Just stay where you are and serve your ‘place’. Isn’t it your duty to make it better if you call yourself Nepalese citizen? You could at least just let it be if you can’t do anything. But I am too nice to say that to a girl in her face :)

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And about my ex-girlfriend. Her result published yesterday. She called me to ask  if I could help her to see the result. I was in theater so I didn’t answer. Then when movie finished and I came out of theater I called her to ask whats the matter, she said her result is published but she doesn’t want my help. She said her friends will help her. And also said that It doesn’t really matter to me whether she passes or not. And out of nowhere she made fun of my bad habits and said that I’ll loose everything in my life someday. That didn’t hurt me. That rather made me wonder had I really been with the right girl for last 3 years  and had I really known her? I still have the line “I am in love with the probably the sweetest girl” in my blog’s header.

So, I watched the movie Psycho by Alfred Hitchcock. Being grown up in a village I got access to Hollywood movies only after coming to Kathmandu for high school (I rarely missed any Nepalese movie though when I was in last grades of  school). Its been 6 years and for the last 1 year I’ve been watching all the classics and critically acclaimed movies.( Btw, I actually bought the DVD, not rented, and for full NRS. 200).

So Pshycho, I found the movie just like any other drama movie until Marion reaches Norman’s motel.I loved their conversation during the dinner, the way Norman talks sometimes quite romantic and very angry. And then it blew me up with the famous shower scene.  This must be one of the very rare scenes on any film that actually scared me. I saw the same scene at least 5 times and I want to see it again and again. 

But, besides the shower scene I didn’t see anything special when I first saw the move. It starts from an ordinary crime drama to a incredible gory murder scene and then an awesome psychological story but then I’ve seen that all the time.  And then I wondered how can a movie that is called masterpiece all over the world looks just another Psycho thriller to me? As I said I’d been watching all the highly rated classics all the time, I find some of them just average. I never appreciated these movies like RGV appreciates Pshycho except for few movies like Pulp Fiction, Sin City, reservoir dogs. I mean of course I enjoy these movie but I just don’t find them as incredible as others do. Only after I read that article by RGV on psycho, then realized the reason. The reason I do not find these movies as incredible as others find is that there have been made hundreds of clones of these movies. I have definitely seen more than 5 other movies on the same story as psycho and with equally brilliant techniques. Its simple, when you’re happy about the present you forget the history.

I watched Psycho once again after reading RGV’s article on the movie. Now I realize why Hitchcock is talked about so much and then I agreed pshycho is one of the best movies I’d ever seen. 

Big news!

I broke up with the girl whom I was seeing since last three years. It was supposed to be a mutual breakup but few days after the breakup she blamed me and said that I betrayed her. Had I know that she’d say such irresponsible thing, I would have never get involved with her in the first place. Because both of us thought we’re done with each other and we do not have the wonderful future we imagined earlier.  In these 3 year, this is the first time, she’d said something bad at all. Otherwise she was probably the finest woman I’ve ever known. Needless to say that I’m very frustrated and am unable to realize whether we did good or bad.We’ve been in on and off relationship in the past but this one very much looks the final breakup. Sometimes things changes so suddenly you don’t even realize how much you’re going to get hurt the other day.

Exams.. gawd, I had to give up college rather than the girl (which were not options for each other unfortunately). I skipped exam again which I’d skipped in the first semester. I choose to not to sit in rather than being clueless and leave the exam hall within half an hour or probably try to cheat in which I’m really bad.My sisters had no idea what I’m doing. They wanted to shout at me but they don’t anymore. But I know what I’m doing, so chill! Yes, I do know what I’m doing.

All things are coming together, all the bad things. First breakup, and then the exam, my bikes having problem again(and i don’t have time to take it to the mechanics) and my eyes are hurting. I went to the hospital last week and had been putting some drops. But I can easily forget all kind of schedules like exam schedule(did I say that I forget date of one of the paper of my board exam last semester?), medicine schedule etc. I’ve been forgetting to use the eye drops almost everyday, no wonder my eyes are taking ages to be alright. I feel like some bugs into my eyes but there’s nothing.