The First Time

“He was a bold man, who first ate an oyster.” - Jonathan Swift

Life is full of many firsts: your first steps and solid food; your first day of kindergarten and getting on a school bus. No one forgets that first kiss and other firsts that happen around those years (or later – much, in fact - for those of us a bit slow on the uptake). And who could ever forget your first job or car.

Being a seasoned woman over forty, I’ve had many firsts. Piles of those milestones have received a second, third or fourth round. But I can swear with absolute sincerity that one first from last night here in Bangkok will never get a second chance: eating a freshly opened oyster.

www.oysterguide.com

The horror of it all. The mystery of it all.  After I recovered from emptying my martini glass with a frantic gulp to wash down that slimy chewy slug, I could not help but notice the contrast between my moment of wide-eyed distress and the look of pure bliss from my dining companion as he happily slurped down yet another plump morsel. And that got me thinking –what is it that creates such love and loathing regarding this modest looking mollusk, who sits hidden in a craggly silver white case that grows one of the most coveted jewelry items in the world? What is it about that ritual of effort to risk life and limb to cut open the shell, carefully peel the blade around the pillowy briny center, reach for a squeeze of lemon and swallow the slippery thing that brings such a deep sigh of satisfaction and longing for yet another one?

A rapid fire internet scan yields some curious results. A first entry of “oysters” revealed a top visited erotica site entitled “Oysters and Chocolate: A Sensual Feast for Men and Women.” Being on a work computer I did not feel inclined to add that page to my electronic fingerprint, despite the obvious link between erotica and the workplace. Next up came a site of quotes dedicated solely to oysters and their apparently endless wonder. A short page, to be sure. Last but not least appeared a more vanilla oriented site of “oysters.com” which lays out everything that in my opinion, one never needs to know about an oyster. Just get rid of the lot, I say.

Not so fast, say those oyster lovers. Seems there are significant health benefits to eating those little gems. Oysters are apparently very good for people who need zinc and for men who need a boost of you-know-what to you-know-where. And yes yes, we’ve all heard that little chestnut about the sex appeal of oysters  and how they help to recall blissful moments of a past romp or to get ready for the next one. Personally I think I'd get more turned on watching the grass grow outside.

More amusing is the effect that oysters seem to have on people’s basic communication skills. When chatting with a friend about my near death experience last night, said friend launched into such a breathy rhapsody about her love of all things oysters that I thought she would smoke a cigarette while propped up in bed and charge $3.75 a minute for our phone call. Another friend, when sharing an obvious passion for the treats, typed out such a uncharacteristically garbled string of skype messages that I wondered what had gotten into him – particularly when he opined that the best time to eat oysters was “on a Saturday morning as the sun sets." What is wrong with you people, I ask!

Which is exactly what I heard back when explaining my snack from hell last night. The world may be my oyster, but I'm not biting it ever again.

That's more like it

The Year of the Monkey

And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom. – Anais Nin

I’m astounded by people who want to “know” the Universe, when it’s hard enough to find your way around Chinatown –Woody Allen

Ms. Nin must have been in a contemplative mood when she authored that quote, since usually her writings were significantly more racy and blushing with her erotica and sensual suggestions of living lustfully in the world.  Mr. Allen on the other hand, I bet was right where he usually seems to be: commenting in that delightfully endearing and neurotic way on a basic tension of being human: how to feel connected to something bigger than our immediate world when the daily challenges of just being in that world seem daunting enough. 

That tightrope of balancing the rippling clarity of sensing something more with working out the mechanics of reaching that clarity is one that I also bet everyone of us recognizes –we feel the tickles of something fluttering inside that nudges us in a direction that feels intuitively clear but the stubborn minds’ eye wants to “know” what it is before making a move. Therein lies the trick –in order to know what’s ahead, steps need to be taken and it’s not possible to just leap to the end of the street. I mean, who would start a movie, and then just jump to the final scene in order to know what happens? No one, that’s who. Most of us can breezily say that in such a scenario, you have to just watch to scenes unfold and be available for what comes on the screen. You can’t force the screen anymore than you could start the movie knowing how it ends (ok ok, I get it about films like the Titanic –since the ending is already known, the challenge is how to make the story line interesting. What were we all doing before meeting Jack and Rose…) the point being, there’s something to be said for just showing up and seeing what happens.

But there’s lots more to said for just dealing with what many Buddhist teachings call  “monkey mind.” What is that, you may ask. Think about it. Monkey Mind is when the mind just leaps, swings, screeches and yelps day and night with chatter and distracting projections of “what if.” Note the distinction between the brain and the mind. The brain is just a collection of bio-chemical and physical traits that create a pile of grey matter inside a skull. It is a tangible, actual thing that you can look at, pick at and scan. The mind, on the other hand, is a construct of that stardust from the universe that creates thoughts, feelings, impressions, fears, desire, anger and all those other good things that humans and creatures experience over a lifetime. The brain doesn’t “do” anything beyond the chemical –but the mind, left to its own devices, is a force to be reckoned with.

I don’t lie awake at night at 3am because my brain wanders into darker corners of uncertainty and anxieties. I don’t pace the hallways like Medusa at 4am looking out at the stormy Kathmandu skies because my brain is fluttering like a jar full of butterflies. When I do those things –and it’s not often but has happened, particularly when jetlagged (thanks body chemistry) – it’s because I have chosen a certain record from the collection of my musical monkey mind. And I’m playing it at full volume. The mind can seem very far from being a soothing friend. It can be the farthest thing from a warm hug, a smile from a friend, or a kiss from a loved one. Instead, monkey mind can be a powerful cocktail of doubts, questions, uncertainty that causes me to turn around and look back as if I can hear the tail of monkey mind swishing up and getting ready to greet me.

Monkey mind can also be a very good friend to get you into that place of darkness. I read once that the darkness of the deep night is in some cultures considered a sacred and coveted space of enlightenment and revelations. It is there, in the deep night, that the most powerful and revealing insights come to us through the slivers of star or moonlight that trickle down from that universe above. It is there, in the sleepiness and solitude –and sometimes sadness—that moments spark into helping us understand that something is changing. That we are changing.

The months of this past year have held many such moments. Moments of looking out the window while deep rains poured down, hitting the glass so hard that I felt sure any moment the windows would crack and the rain would just wash away the doubts and questions and desire alive in my mind to reach out to something that felt unclear. Other moments were in the pre dawn light, where birds were waking up and the blanket of night lifted away to reveal the sounds of morning sweeping and little temple bells starting to ring. At those moments, the puffs of incense coming into my nose tickled me in more ways than one.

But monkey mind is not all deep contemplation. It’s also talking with dear friends who say something insightful like “I’m more than 40 years old, I don’t have to put up with this shit anymore” that results in a belly laugh of understanding so obvious and clear that it’s worth a week of meditation regarding a sense of peace and acceptance. It’s skyping with a delightful little 4 year old who says “I want you to read me a story here on the couch please.” And you realize that yes, I want to sit on that couch over there. These moments set into motion a series of little hops, sparks and desires that then become concrete steps, decisions, choices and conversations. And it’s figuring out that Ms Nin was onto something –that staying in that little bud really does become a bit of a pain, and that the pain of kicking it out and saying “what the hell, why not” does actually feel a whole hell of a lot better.

And who gets lost in Chinatown anyway. 

Wandering at Crystal Cove Beach, California -  a most beloved place for me

A most beloved little nephew

The much beloved Chang clan of Southern California, who is always "that family" in any Chinese restaurant

Remembering

 A new season has begun in Nepal. The dark and damp winter haze is lifting out of the Kathmandu Valley, replaced by puffs of white clouds that flirt with the bright blue sky and glossy white mountain peaks. Even against the filth of Kathmandu, this change still manages to bring a promise of adventure and possibility. As the Mt Everest climbing season approaches in April, the streets start to fill up with the most determined of climbers set on summiting a mountain that while not the most technically difficult  (that prize belongs to a peak in the Annapurna Range) is still considered the most intimidating and of course, the highest.  Soon the newspapers will give harrowing details of climbers gone missing, climbers gone to the top, and other climbers who have gone for good.  Avalanches, accidents and reflections on previous expeditions and the “art of the climb” will continue to present a curious narrative of what has been done before and what remains to be done. Words will revolve around remembering and hoping.

April is also an important moment in my own personal memory. The end of March starts that remembering. One of the loveliest things to me about memory is how such a storehouse can connect seemingly disparate moments together in ways that then later make perfect sense. I had such a time last night in Bangladesh. 

30^th March 1999: as a newly minted “aid worker”, I was 5 days into a new position before being quickly deployed as part of the Emergency Assessment Team to Tirana, Albania. Tasked with helping to establish a new office for responding to the rapidly exploding Kosovo refugee crisis, I’ll always remember this flight date as it is my mothers’ birthday. In March 30 of that year, I felt exciting promise that I would soon move from being 30 to 31 years of age. A sense of permission and evolution to move ahead into a time of more maturity and connection.

Traveling with a new colleague, a retired former Marine Colonel who was in charge of security and also overall management of this yet to be understood humanitarian crisis response, I left Atlanta with a wariness over knowing my parents were deeply concerned about this trip. My German mother, having spent her WWII childhood surrounded in Berlin by bombings, various military troops and in the end, even receiving several bonafide CARE packages, did not smile over seeing her daughter head towards such a conflict. My Chinese father, another survivor of war but of the Japanese invasions and civil conflict that meant chronic displacement and fleeing throughout the China eastern seaboard, was even more bothered by all this. They did point out the peculiar “western” idea of people from one country roaming to other countries to engage in this kind of work. But as always, they shared themselves with me without guilt, without control and without hesitation.

The details of that journey to Tirana shuffle like a deck of snap shot cards–Atlanta flights to Boston and then Italy, long train rides from Milan, portside hotel rooms where red neon store signs flashed outside; I recall a deep in the night ferry ride from Italy’s east coast over the Albania, surrounded by BBC journalists, aid workers and even some former CNN colleagues who were discussing critical elements such as if anyone had remembered hotel reservations and driver/local support. Arriving into the coastal ferry port, I saw a crush of humanity so dense and dominated with men in low dark caps, long leather jackets and non shaven faces that I felt for sure I would simply dissolve into the crowds. Driving through the black night towards Tirana, we came across many police checkpoints where stern but young looking officers flashed bright lights onto our tired passenger faces. The main thing I remember next was tumbling onto a very soft hotel room bed, fully clothed and waking up in the morning in the exact same diagonal display of fatigue.

After a few days of predictable emergency moments –endless coordination meetings, finding office space, meeting CARE colleagues and doing the rounds at respective embassies – a little deployment team was ready to move out into a field operation. A few days later a team of us drove up towards Kukes, on the Albania/Kosovo border in one of the bluest mornings I have ever experienced. With a solid Mercedes jeep, seat belts fastened in front and back and a young driver winding the 5 of us up and down the steep winding hills, that day also seemed full of possibility and promise. And it was.

15 minutes and 500 feet later far off  the mountain cliff road, I was pulled out of a crumpled car that had been driven too fast and too soon around a descending switchback and as a result soared into the sky to capitulate, careen and crash land with a loud bang in the valley below. My marine colonel colleague had been yelling “stay alive” over and over as the car flipped and spun and bounced its way down, down and down. A group of amazingly strong Albanian women, wrapped in colored scarves and thick clothes, pulled me out of the car as if I was a newborn. They carried me to a patch of grass and took charge of stroking my face and hair and patted my cheeks while murmuring softly in my ears. My eyes fill even as I write this now to remember that moment, and my mother always takes comfort to know her daughter was cared for like that by total strangers at the bottom of a Balkan mountain. Local transport brought us into the chaotic capital and after an overnight stay in an Albanian hospital, we were delivered to the NATO airport clinic.

The efficiency and speed of a NATO diagnostic medical theater is breathtaking: a patient arriving laced to a stretcher is unloaded out of the ambulance onto the airport tarmac and hustled into the medical tent. She is then unstrapped and body-lifted by 4 military officers onto a table who then together with a loud yell announce that “patient Claudia M. Chang available now for treatment post mountain car crash. 30 year old female conscious and conversant.” (newsflash: even after such an accident I’m still managing to have a chat). Seemingly seconds later, several take-no-prisoners medics and nurses descend upon the unsuspecting patient to simultaneously pull away any clothing blocking a let’s-just-say-very-thorough head to toe inspection. One doctor takes charge of speaking to the patient, introducing himself and asking her name along with questions about location, what happened and how many fingers is he holding up. The rest of the team is each assigned a particular limb and body section: more ID wristbands are strapped on, an IV drip is started and eye pupils are examined for dilation. Toes and knees are tapped to test for reflex damage while abdominal areas get prodded and poked to look for internal bleeding. Next, gentle but firm hands all together now turn the patient on her side to check the back of the head, neck, “posterior” area, legs and ankle mobility. Leaving Albania for Germany and the Ramstein Airbase, it is the only time in my life I have traveled internationally without going through immigration. 

After two weeks in an extremely efficient hospital and daily little paper cups of colorful and soothing pain meds, I then moved to one of Germany’s top rehabilitation clinics in Bonn for 6 weeks of physical therapy. As would be imagined, that experience warrants its own separate narrative. Returning home to my house in leafy Atlanta months later was a sweetness I could never capture on paper.

People often say “I’m so sorry that happened to you. “ I’m not. Most of the time actually, I wonder what I did to deserve such a gift. And being with people last night in Dhaka who generously listened to my words also reminded me of why I’m not. Without interrupting, they simply listened to what I had to say. I realized later how I appreciated that basic gesture and choice to hear aloud my story during the time of year when it’s particularly significant for me to tell it. Flying back into the blue Kathmandu sky also reminds me why I’m not sorry. That’s the thing about remembering - it helps to keep the sense of promise and possibility alive, even if you yourself really shouldn’t be after events of April 7^th 1999. 

April 6th, 1999.

April 7th, 1999

Seasoning the Ears

The thing to remember is this: Life is full of surprises, 

and that there is always hope.

                                                     -Ruth Reichl, Comfort Me with Apples

Is there anyone smarter than Ms Reichl? Who else but a former NYTimes Food Critic could write something so simple and yet full of flavor. Who else could write something that has just enough sweet and spice to help remember that varying flavors of life? No one, that's who. But I digress. Her wisdom, my last few months and everything in between will come up shortly.

This blog is supposed to be about navigating Nepal which understandably would mean talking about Nepal. True. But for the last several months, most of my time has been spent outside Nepal for work meetings plaguing those of us who work in this field. So while my next blog will focus on what's been happening in various parts of the non Nepal world but relates to my Nepal world, today's little chestnut will just capture a very local peek at my street. Yep, that's it. My street.  No photos today. Just words. Some video at the end. Words written in a letter to a girlfriend in the US during a midnight moment due to another festival celebration here in my part of town. 

Think globally, write locally. But with a swig of youtube ambiance thrown in for good measure. You'll know why. 

 Hi sweetness! I thought I might describe for you what is becoming a sort of average day of life in Kathmandu. The various *experiences* draw from across various days, since having them all happen in one day would be too much for even the most seasoned of global dilettantes. But they are all true! Read it and weep!

Let’s start with the time right now, shall we? It is exactly 2:48am on Saturday morning. I myself, though have already been awake since oh, 1:55 am. Why? Late night reading? No. Late night socializing and or something equally enjoyable? Of course not. The reason I am awake, is because of a marching band. That is correct. At 1:50 am, a marching band, complete with trumpets, bass drums and cymbals, meandered with alarming volume down my street. Why? let us try and count the ways….maybe to visit the little temple a quarter mile down the street? I’m sure there is yet another festival this weekend, given that there are literally 10,000 different gods across the various slices of Nepali society and culture. (where is “Goddess to help you Sleep” shrine, I wonder) Perhaps it’s a wedding procession (remember from the end scene of Monsoon Wedding, when a band proceeds the groom being led in on a horse…) that is kicking off the normal 3 days of festivities. See, I heard this band already earlier, around 930pm. So they are keeping themselves local. The last possibility, and this seems equally likely, is that it is really just a marching band from one of the millions of local universities and/or institutes that is practicing., taking advantage of the empty streets. No joke. One slice of life here explained. The idea of noise management and privacy is totally different here.

The next aspect is the power cuts. Despite having the highest mountain ranges in the world –and presumably enough snow and other kinds of water based resources that should during the seasons provide flow to generate hydro dams….Nepal is woefully underelectrified. Kathmandu in particular, is so short circuited that starting November until about March, the entire city experiences what it called “load shedding.” What in hell is that. It sounds like getting rid of some loads….of what? What it really means is power rationing. At the moment, my neighborhood has about 13 hours of power cuts a day. This means no light, fridge, internet or general electricity. Thank god for generators that my boss insisted upon. The start up putt –putt-putt sound of the generator has become music to my ears. How did this happen to Kathmandu? A mixture of a 10 year insurgency whose violence forced millions to the city seeking safety from the rural areas, stressed governance, bad city planning and a completely inadequate grid and wiring system that would make your hair curl results in a dangerously overdrained power system. The winter months dry up the hydroelectric dams (no rain) and rumors that apparently Nepal is selling power  to China and India is not going over well with people here, who sit around in candlelight –the non romantic kind – and gas cylinder powered heaters or firelight warming their hands. And the term “load shedding “ has mystified me for months, without explanation from my Nepali colleagues until just yesterday someone said its actually the idea of putting a kind of protection/ shed around the power load. So the term means to protect and cover the electricity levels. Ohhhhhkkk.

(side note: 3:06am –the band is returning)

Let’s move on to traffic. I live about ½ mile from my office. So when I drive (I keep my car at the house for security and emergency reasons) I need to do the following turns: out the driveway, turn left. And end of street, turn right. After about one minute, turn left…then a quick right and left into the CARE office compound. The is a total of 5 little turns in about 5 minutes. Yet soooooooo much possibility exists in that 5 minutes. At any given moment, I could : run over one of the 30,000 stray dogs that roam the Kathmandu streets; crash into a non observing bicyclist concentrating instead on not losing his 100 lbs of vegetables tied to the bike rike ; bump into a taxi whose driver is navigating these narrow lanes while fiddling with his cell phone and radio to hear the latest Bollywood hit; or be completely plowed over by a mammoth bus careening towards town filled with weary workers. This is to say nothing of the random pedestrians who literally do not look anywhere when crossing the road or darting out into the way of traffic. Sidewalks are an extinct species here. But this pedestrian concentration on the path ahead is understandable since the open sewers require 100% attention when walking.

And of course let’s not forget the elephants. Yup, last week I was caught in traffic – behind the largest elephant I had ever seen. It was enormous and laden with tree cuttings and leafy branches. Perched atop this woodpile were two young men who for the life of me somehow managed to convey to this gorgeous creature how to cross the road while chaos reigned in morning rush hour. This elephant was also multi tasking –walking while lifting its trunk to grab a leafy treat that swung dangerously close to its ultra sensitive snout. I slowed down to observe–a form I guess of Nepali rubbernecking –because when swinging up its trunk to nibble on its baggage, the elephant wove from side to side and threatened to disgorge its human cargo who hung on to each other dear life (when it would have been more efficient to hang onto the elephant, actually). Would I be around to witness the carnage, I wondered!

Pulling into my office brings a morning feeling of accomplishment. No scratches, no dents, no roadkill under the tires. Mission Accomplished. And it’s off to download my email avalanche. Nothing like a bright start to a day in Nepal! It is the little things that count, isn’t it. 

love, Claude

Click below to answer the burning question of:

What does a Nepali Wedding Marching Band Sound like? 

Shipping to the Dock of the Bay

(Nothing like a few weeks of meetings and email avalanches to keep the blogging away.... but I'm back.)

I am quite sure that when Otis Redding put together his lovely nugget about "sitting on the dock of the bay, wasting time....." he was not thinking of personal effects shipments that cross various oceans to be reunited with their hopeful owners posted far far away. But that particular line could in fact mirror EXACTLY what often happens to such shipments in the life of those who like to move from place to place.  I mean, taking out Frisco for a more relevant Bay --"I left my home in Georgia....headed for the Bengal Bay.....looks like nothings going to come my way..."

(disclaimer: this is not my shipment --mine is much smaller. But it adds visual flavor)

Where to begin. Usually it starts at what is called the "home of record", meaning whichever location the forementioned person is administratively anchored --meaning, that home is going to be the place where you get your annual leave ticket to, the place to which your "master address" is linked and the place from which your beloved personal goods get inventoried, packed and wrapped, and stuffed into boxes and sent off to the nearest port for loading onto a container. You hope for an eventual reunion. Recall those Rush Hour scenes where Jackie Chan hops from container to container in the dark Hong Kong harbor dock, searching for the bad guys? He's likely hopping on my personal effects that are waiting around for the next round of paperwork clearance and release.

The next thing that happens once you wave farewell to your shipment is, well, nothing. You just go about your business, and try to eek out information from a kind but overworked shipping company agent your organization has hired to manage the crazy relocations of your colleagues. (you think Atlanta to Nepal is a strain, try oh, Kinshasa to Kabul. Kudos if you know the countries in which those capitals are located). Just as the sun will set and the moon will rise, you can count on an information vacuum, with nebulous updates such as "what will likely happen, is your shipment will go to Charleston, sail through the Panama Canal, head over the Singapore, make its way to Calcutta and then once released from customs (good god!), be offloaded onto a truck and head towards the Indo/Nepal border where it will be inspected (another good God!) and then once cleared, arrive in Kathmandu warehouse. Great, so that's not even mentioning dealing with Kathmandu traffic and the police. Can we have a final Good God please! What happens in a Calcutta port, you may ask? Click here: Calcutta Port

So, after several months in country, your news starts pebbling in..."please sign this paperwork, it sounds as if your shipment will arrive soon." False alarm, that was someone ELSE's shipment. So, have I just signed for another shipment? Where is MY shipment? Mine Mine Mine. Nothing like demonstrating pre-school behavior when tracking your personal effects. Yippee. Its arrived in Calcutta! But wait, it's under lockdown until the Nepal paperwork is authorized in the ministries, couriered to Calcutta (only hard copy signatures, thank you very much ) and then passed around the various hands in the Calcutta ports. By this time, images of dock workers sleeping on my brand new plush king bed dance through the mind's eye, while in KTM another hotel room has to be found since you could not extend your hotel room due to the influx of Dutch and German tourists arriving for trekking season. Why don't they all just stay in Europe and stop bothering us over here?

But at long last, hope appears. An email confirms that "your personal effects shipment left Calcutta and is expected at the Indo/Nepal border on 10 October. Shipment is expected in KTM a few days later." something about that "few days later" rings an unwelcomed bell. Isn't something happening starting 15 October? wait...it's ...it's...right. Dashain. The biggest Hindu festival in Nepal. Everything closes down. It's like saying "oh, your shipment will arrive on 24th December in NY." what then? "No worries, madame, it will remain at warehouse till after Dashain Festivals are completed.." which is when? 10 days later.

I can hear Otis singing again the lyrics below, with new insight from the perspective of a shipment. You can too, by clicking  here:  Sing it, Otis!

Sittin’ in the morning sun

I’ll be sittin’ when the evenin’ comes

Watching the ships roll in

Then I’ll watch ‘em roll away again

Just sitting on the dock of the bay

Watching the tide roll away

Sitting on the dock of the Bay

Wasting time

I left my home in Georgia

Headed for the Frisco (Bengal!) Bay

Cause I’ve had nothing to live (wait) for

Looks like nothings’ going to come my way

Just sitting on the dock of the bay

Watching the tide roll away

Sittin’ on the dock of the bay

Wasting time

Looks like, nothings going change

Everything still remains the same

I can’t do what 10 people tell me to do

So I guess I’ll remain the same

Sittin’ here resting my bones

And this loneliness (paperwork) won’t leave me alone

Two (six) thousand miles I roam

Just to make this dock my home…

Just sittin’ on the dock of the bay

Watching the tide roll away

Sitting on the dock of the bay,

Wasting time…..

A Room with a View

This post will let the pictures do the talking.

The important thing about moving to a new place and creating a new home is, well, finding a home. The central factor to finding a good home is generally the same around the world: location location location. And Kathmandu --technically, Patan, across the river where I'm living --is no exception. With an infusion of international organizations and UN scale up in the last 5 years, housing prices have shot up faster than your blood pressure when negotiating a decent taxi fare. But fear not, as there is an endless supply of real estate 'agents' trolling the lanes and neighborhoods who can sniff out a homeless expat from a mile away and are creepily eager to provide their "support". I've been no exception to grabbing on to any potential house leads, eagerly anticipating every appointment with the hopeful glow of a giddy teenage girl on her first date. And the scary thing is, the questions about my potential house have been similar to those days back in high school, while Duran Duran crooned on about being hungry like a wolf or A Flock of  Seagulls lamented some kind of space age love song (what was that song about, anyway?) Questions such as : is this going to be good? Will it lead to a second date? How much is this going to cost? What comes with it? Other wonderings include what secrets you might find out later, after you've already committed and how to get out if things go poorly. Not to mention all that maintenance that comes with both a house and a relationship.Maybe we've all been preparing for househunting for a while now...

But luckily there is such a thing as temporary housing to take the edge of all that angst. And its even better when it comes with a lovely view and fresh air. ....

As can be seen, Patan and Kathmandu are surrounded by a ring of mountains and hills...the Kathmandu Valley hugs close the now several million inhabitants who squeeze themselves into any corner. Not to be outdone, these hills also hold lots of little respite hiking and relaxation points for all those folks who gets stressed out every day by this (ignore the chatter in the car)"This" being the lack of any traffic lights in the entire valley.

or this:

Personally, I'm finding that the best approach is to draw on those clever Romans: When in Nepal, do as the Nepalis do and leave road driving to the experts: the rickdraw drivers. This is the best way to check things out without losing your mind or your way:

Now, if the househunting thing really gets you down, you can always take a break and just get out. As in, out of the city. Out of the area. And into the far west of Nepal, with views that make everything seem better:

Just Exhale.

Something New Something True

Anyone who is armed with a passport, thirst for travel and a complex tangle of desires to make a home while "on the roam"  knows the feeling: leaving the clouds after a long flight, gazing with somewhat unfocused eyes out the window, you feel the sigh of relief when the wheels screech down and the plane eventually comes to that jerky roll-stop-bing signal to unbuckle the seat belt time and begin the crush to exit the plane phase. Standing there in the aisle --wondering "why did I jump up only to stand here now, with my bag and carry on crap wedged between my knees."--eventually you are among the liberated crowd to go and fight the next battle for finding your wrinkled money to buy your visa and to develop a  flash of religious fervor to pray to the luggage gods that you will in fact be reunited with your bags. This time you *really mean it*. Using your sharpened elbow skills to yank your stuff off the belt  (why is there always THAT person standing right in front of where you need to be to reach your bag?! The divine reincarnation of THAT person anywhere in the world to me ranks up there with other global mysteries such as the logic behind economy seat spacing and if plane seat cushions really do in fact work as flotation devices). Dealing with customs is just too much to even think about, much less write about.

Brand new tag after maiden transpacific flight to KTM.

Having been rejoined with your temporary home in a suitcase, it begins again. Something new. A new way to find a taxi or to swat away a taxi. A new SIM card. A new hotel number. A new time zone. Soon, a new supermarket, cafe and pharmacy and bookstore. But right now, still at Airport Number I've Lost Count,  you begin to find the person with your name sign, who has probably spent some time already looking for you past all the  "I live here" faces that come out from the international arrivals terminal. I have a theory that all drivers sent to pick up arriving expats are encoded with a secret language that only they share to help each other spot their human cargo. With the lift of an eyebrow and a twitch of the face, they can communicate things like "is that one yours? no, dressed like a hippie. They'll take the bus." "How about that one? No, looks too well dressed for my non profit pick up...she's got the Hyatt Regency van pick up.." ..."oh, I bet that's her,  trying to look friendly and open but with the edge of someone whose been flying for 36 hours. Good luck finding yours!" This connection marks another new: a meeting of people who will usually end up spending significant time together driving to the office,  looking for housing and maneuvering embassy car security for meetings.

Something true remains amid all the newness. True curiosity. Where DO people here learn to drive? oh right, not necessary to learn. Another traffic culture embracing the Nike culture to Just Do It. If the world is my oyster, it is also the place of endless opportunity to lose your life just crossing the street. True kindness as in "here madame, let me organize your 4 suitcases and waltz them through customs for you without a care." But right, that kind of kindness comes for a price of about $5 if you can bargain, and $10 if you think "well lets' see, in the States or Europe, I'd have to pay..." and get lost in that useless comparison.  True patience. Patience with all the new and old things, and everything in between. Truly important questions: What is the exchange rate here again? Where can I get bottled water? Is it fine for a woman to grab a taxi off the street or should the hotel call one? Why do people appreciate hearing dogs bark all night? and wait, what? There is a 15 minute time difference between here and India?!

Truly a new start here in Kathmandu.