The pronoun you use in Nepali to address a fellow Nepali can be an indicator of the level of closeness to the person. Curiously enough but not really surprisingly I have discovered that I don't really have a single Nepali woman who I can say I am really close to, no one I am very informal in pronoun and/or the language I use.
Life is amazing in many many ways. One way it's amazing is how when all the trouble you go to to consciously -- and quite possibly even unconsciously -- avoid something, you discover much later that life actually ended up giving it to you, as it were! This is one such observation about an aspect of my life.
A blog post about my 7th grade English teacher Bro. Joe Sheehan. The amazing storyteller that he was, he fired my imagination and contributed to my "escape" from Kathmandu to see -- and learn about -- the amazing people and world beyond the borders of Nepal. He had a role to play in who I am today.
As a primary school student, I loved the arts and was good at acting and singing, and did a lot of that. But acting was also an "out," a means to escape my own self, to become someone else, suffering as I had been from a number of personal issues.
Had I been born a different caste or in a different country, I would have probably become a performing artist as an adult.
A reproduction of a page from my original homepage that is no longer to be found there as, in revamping it, I eliminated many pages. It's what would have been referred to the "About Me" page. It was last revised and updated around 2006 it seem!
Last June, at my class' 25th reunion, Grinnell College, my Alma Mater, gave me an Alumni Award. I wasn't able to go to receive in person as the US Embassy in Kathmandu turned down my application for a travel visa. Reproduced here are two photos and the citation.
Following a traffic accident, when the other party, unable to get their way, though they were at fault, lodged a "case" against me with the police. When I was told that, I was scared. I didn't know that the trauma of incarceration in Qatar had also engendered another feeling: fear of police cases and the the police.
Children want to impress and please adults they look up to, whether the adults are family members, teachers, or members of their local community. As a teacher, if you have high expectations of your students, by and large, they will do everything they can to meet those expectations, partly to impress and please you.
This is a very feel-good story of a former student of mine who, as a HL IB Chemistry student, rose up to meet my expectations, succeeded AND went on to do a PhD in Chemistry at Oxford in the UK.
Near the end of my academic career at Grinnell College, I wanted to "go see the world" after graduation. However, even until just months before graduation, I had really done nothing towards that goal! And yet, I ended up working, living, traveling the world for 19 years following my graduation from Grinnell in May 1994!
In Nepal, you pay a price if you, as someone Nepali society considers to not be sufficiently meritorious, comment on the issues the society suffers from or holds up a mirror.