Nepalis generally make a lot of assumptions about and are judgmental of fellow Nepalis based on their appearance and/or their name and/or surname, a consequence of our social system, the monstrous caste system.
In this blog post I relay a typical incident of a fellow Nepali making assumptions about who I am and what I do based entirely on my facial features -- my ethnicity.
A reproduction of an Instagram post about a family in Nepal pressuring their young professional adult medical doctor daughter based in Australia to accept an arranged marriage proposal from a complete stranger. In spite of her "No" the day the post was published, it had been three weeks of constant pressure from the family to accept the proposal, completely ignoring her wishes and thus putting her through a lot of mental and emotional agony!
In part II of this two-part blog, I shred the contents of a grade 12 chemistry paper the students took last month. It's full of mistakes showing how little attention to details the examiners and board have paid in creating it. The contents also show how the syllabus has NOT been revised and updated at all to reflect newer practices and topics that have evolved over the last few decades etc., indicating how the whole point is just to put the students through a wringer.
A look at how the board managing the grade 12 examinations have failed the students. The examinations, originally slated for May, was cancelled and, finally, in October, rescheduled for November. The examination, supposed to consist of questions papers in the new format, did go ahead in spite of the student not having seen any sample papers prior to it.
What's more, analyzing the chemistry paper, it had some major issues. The whole exercise, as far as I am concerned, has amounted to putting the students through a wringer.
Life at home among the familiar and predictable—people, culture, social and physical surroundings, routines etc. — surprises and challenges generally are few and far in between, unless you go in search of them or are on the lookout for. When traveling however, unexpected and unfamiliar struggles and challenges are routine, and that's one reason to travel!
When form and protocol generally take precedent over and is valued more than substance, a society struggles to make social, economic, and political progress. One such form and protocol is showing respect for and/or deferring to old men. In this blog post I demonstrate how two old men use the guise of lack respect for old men as a pretext for silencing young adult women of similar academic and professional stature as them for no other reason than the fact that they are female.