THE ANSWER IS 12
TAI12 #244. Settling in and
Finding a Rhythm...
(More mental
methadone!)
02/26/2023 – Day 1,093
out of China
174/129 – Nepal
Greetings COVID
Quarantine Quitters,
Welcome Back to the Show...
2/26/2023
I can’t even believe that I’m writing these words. Today
marks three years since I left Munzu in Shenyang’s airport to get a new job. My
guts drop like I’m on a rollercoaster every time I think about it. Her nearly
two years of silence hasn’t helped.
Having gotten the job has been one hell of a ride (insert
stock footage of flaming car going over cliff and exploding). I have settled
into a boring routine. After six 174 days in this town, I have yet to make a
single friend. I literally don’t talk to anyone outside of my classes or when I’m
ordering food/booze at restaurants. It’s now 5:07pm, and I haven’t opened my mouth
to speak to another human yet today, and that includes a 13km bike ride I took
earlier this afternoon in a futile attempt to shake off some of the boredom and
expend some of the energy from today’s Modalert breakfast. That reminds me, I should
go out and hunt some food before the restaurants close between 8 and 10pm.
China’s reopening last month was a hard kick to my
nuggets. Now that I can go home, I’m trapped in this gig until July. Further
adding insult is that I have to get an FBI background check in order to get a
job in China. This task I don’t believe I can complete from here.
I don’t know what’s going to happen. There’s much more to
tell you than what’s contained herein. I’ve got some of TAI12 #245 planned out
for a March release.
I did wrap up the current draft of Ninjalicious: Crazy
Corea last night. The next draft should move much faster. That’s all you
get for now. I’ve added some pictures to the internets and will have more to
come soon at:
https://theansweris12.weebly.com/
My Return to WLOTUS
2/26/2020
My return to WLOTUS was fraught with potential
disaster. Mom picked me up at one of two airports in Oklahoma named for men who
died in airplane crashes. I happily drove us back to my childhood home where
medicinal marijuana had been legalized since my last visit. I snatched one of
Mom’s insanely high milligram gummies to help me overcome my jetlag. She went
to bed. The overly strong not-candy sent me on a most unpleasant trip
consisting of joint pain and mental fog. I eventually fell asleep.
Mom had come down with the regular old flu the next
morning. This was most unfortunate as I had to await a visit from a Custer
County Health Department nurse. Luckily for me, she wasn’t allowed to enter
Mom’s house. She checked my temperature from the front porch and informed me
that she would be calling me every morning at 9 to have me read my temperature
to her. She would stop by at 4p.m. to check it for herself. I somehow dodged
Mom’s infection as I wore a mask while looking after her.
It wouldn’t be long before the virus that has become
such a focal point of the lives of so many people would follow me across the
pond, although it likely beat me by a couple of months. We just didn’t know it
yet.
With the world beginning to shut down, all of our
plans for the next six months were unraveling. China shut its borders, and
WLOTUS shut its borders to the Chinese. Chairman Wife wasn’t going to make it
Stateside to celebrate her birthday and our anniversary. Musicians either
cancelled or postponed concerts, meaning no Roger Waters or Gathering of the
Juggalos for us. With months to kill, I had looked into doing some
temporary/part-time work. The lockdown nixed those thoughts.
A funk quietly settled in as I had little to keep my
mind occupied. A brief reprieve took place between the two weeks I had
quarantined at Mom’s and the rest of the world shutting down. This allowed for
a couple of expedited reunions with friends and family.
Time slowed as I settled into a daily routine that
which began with walking Mom and Tut each morning. We’d take turns cooking a
late lunch/early dinner before taking Tut out for his evening exercise. The
hours between dragged with little to occupy my time.
Spring crawled into summer. Mom and I attended one
very important wedding in Oklahoma City, our first social outing of the
pandemic. The remainder of the summer was spent watching cities and hopes burn.
Never one to rest on my laurels for long, I had to
take some sort of action. Uncertain as to how much more of my life the pandemic
was going to cost me, the time had come for me to take some action, to do
something productive. I enrolled in a couple of classes at the local
university. These, along with my bachelor’s degrees and years of experience in
the classroom, would allow me to sit for the state teaching licensing exams.
After two decades as an educator, I finally became certified to teach K-12
TESOL and 5-12 Journalism.
(To be continued…)
A Death in Town
12/2/2022
KMC cancelled classes
today, because our students across the city are protesting the death/murder of
a 14-year-old girl on her bicycle yesterday. Guess who is going to use his
newfound free time to go check them out? Main Street looked normal with the
exception of the spot on the road in front of the police station where they
burned tires yesterday. A handful of police in riot gear clustered there and at
a spot much farther up the road.
Taking the back road
home, I came upon another group of police that forced me off the road onto some
side roads to avoid the fun. I could see another tire fire about 100 yards away
and the lobbing of a tear gas canister.
Digging around online, I
learned that a road grater was backing up and hit the girl on her way to school
yesterday morning. People think he could have saved her but killed her instead because
a one-time pay out for her death would be a lot cheaper than having to pay her
hospital bills for a long time. The bastard ran back over her to seal the deal.
The police left her body there most of the day. Angry citizens protested the
accused murderer’s potential to get off lightly.
Meeting People but Not Making Friends
12/2/2022
I met three randos outside a bar last night. They
invited me up to a place stranger than Nasa, a sort of girlie bar I had
accidentally found in November. It featured a stage of sorts separated by a
garden fence/gate. A woman and the male owner sang Nepali songs. A chubby woman
in a pink shaggy sweater with "brooklyn" printed across the front sat
next to the group’s outgoing guy who had invited me up.
"You want to sex her?" Mr. Outgoing asked
me.
I replied in the negative. They ordered Khukri Rum, a
Nepali brand, which was served with hot water. Mr. Outgoing and the second-most
outgoing guy went to dance. There was only one other customer outside of our
quartet. Mr. Loner was already dancing. Every time he got up to dance by
himself, he'd set his phone up against an ashtray at his table to record his
dance skills.
I escaped after two drinks. The third guy of the
group, Mr. Cool, hadn't spoken to me or his friends since we'd sat down. Clad
in a leather jacket, he walked me down the three flights of stairs and stopped
me outside. I figured that this was the time of the night where I was going to
get mugged. I was wrong. He looks at me and starts speaking in English far
better than Mr. Outgoing had managed.
"When you tell people about tonight, please tell
them Nepal is a good place."
Mr. Outgoing had demanded my phone number last night
and called at 7 this morning, excited about meeting up tonight. I didn't agree
to shit. I was still relatively sober enough at that point to set up drunken
play dates with weirdos from bars.
Sewer Snake
12/6/2022
A very large school sits just up the street from my
house called Three Star Boarding School. My town has many so-called “boarding
schools,” despite the fact that they let all of the little devils out as I'm
heading to my 3:40 class.
Today, a cluster of kiddies was gathered over the
little shit ditch running alongside my house. They were throwing rocks and more
garbage into it. I asked what they doing. One replied that there was a snake.
They were unimpressed when I told them snakes were tasty. I failed to catch
sight of the reptile.
Walking home later that night, I decided to take the
back road to my little alley of a street. As I'm walking along in the dark
listening to my earbuds, a guy catches up and starts talking at me as he tries
to match my stride.
"Where from? What country? Where you live?" he
asked.
I tried to be semi-polite/dismissive. I just wanted to
go home and poop. He continued to ask about my living situation and then said
that he wanted to go home with me, informing me that we were now friends. He's
at least college age and didn't understand when I responded with, "No. I
don't know you!" I sped up and got away from my new “friend.”
Mystery Holiday
12/7/2022
As I was bidding my
afternoon students farewell for the day, one of the girls in the front row
informed me that she would not see me tomorrow. Apparently, KMC has a holiday that
nobody told me about, even though I'd talked to the Chief this morning and
several other professors and staff throughout the day. None of my 25 students
could explain what the holiday was, but I’ll take it, regardless.
Thirst Aid
12/9/2022
What little public transportation Dhangadhi has on
offer ends about as early as its restaurants/bar. Having gone out for a night
of food and beverages, I found myself having to stomp home. An ambulance rolled
up on me as I neared my street.
It was Madan, the meat wagon jockey I'd met months ago
while taking pictures of his rig to send to Mom. I ran into him again a few
days later while drinking beer and whiskey at a mutton joint. He picked me up,
asked how I was doing, couldn't understand my answer, and gave me a
half-finished pint of Khukri Rum. What was he doing driving around with half a
bottle of booze? I don’t know, but I do know better than to turn down free
liquor.
Dhangadhi Trade Fair
12/12-20/2022
After a brief text exchange with Ritu, I learned the
location of the Dhangadhi Trade Fair. I clomped off down to learn that it more
closely resembles one of our county fairs or a destitute state fair. It also
dawned on me that that the crowds I’d waded through on Saturday evening while
witnessing a rather dramatic scene of violence had involved people leaving the
fair’s opening day.
A thick and constant stream of people were heading
east on Main Street as I was heading west on Saturday evening. I had never seen
this many people here moving in formation like this. As I neared the collection
of hospitals and pharmacies in the center of town, I happened upon the side
street that was spewing forth all of these people. I cautiously picked my way
through the snarled traffic of farm tractors, autos (Nepali tuk-tuks),
scooters, and bicycles to reach the other side.
Dhangadhi’s fair was an odd experience. Visitors
purchased Rs100 tickets from one of seven women perched along a narrow platform
on a bamboo rigging five feet above the ground. A large tree provided shade for
them.
Gurukul Security Services guards stationed at the gates
tore tickets in half and dropped them to the ground at their feet. Stepping
through the paper litter granted entrance to a snaking labyrinth of stalls
filled with vendors hawking clothing, footwear, cosmetics, sunglasses, toys,
banking services, insurance, blankets, purses, Korean lessons, spices,
detergents, plants, and plastic chairs among various other goods and services.
The maze at last opened out onto the fairgrounds. The
massive space was barren most days, the exception being Saturdays, Nepal’s
single day of weekend. Dotted with ice cream carts, snow cone stands and random
food vendors, others sold balloons, cheap plastic toys and grains of rice with
your name written on them. One enterprising family had a loud rusty machine
squeezing the juice from sugar cane stalks. The father repeatedly folded over
the mashed stalks, eventually placing a lime in the mix to add a splash of
flavor to the juice he serves after straining out the pulp. The slightly tart
and very sweet drink provides a refreshing cup of relief from the dusty day.
Makeshift restaurants lined the outer ring of the grounds
to your right as you exit the vendors’ maze. While many of them tried to capitalize
on their operators hailing from several of Nepali’s indigenous tribes, several
others were temporary extensions of cafes and restaurants from town. All the
way across the field sat a large stage with tall speaker stacks. A few more
booths were off to the left of the stage. Opposite the restaurants, the fair
was devoted to a collection of ramshackle rides.
My arrival yesterday evening came as the crowd
gathered in front of the stage was reaching a fever pitch as a singer belted
out a catchy Nepali pop tune. A few attempts at crowd surfing briefly lifted a
few guys about the gyrating throng of concertgoers. With the conclusion of his
set, an exodus began heading towards the exits, despite the Trade Fair still
having two more hours before closing.
I stuck around for a while as the setting sun cast the
mostly unlit grounds in a hazy darkness. In that fading evening, I found pani
puri and a crispy, sweet snack.
A piece of trail treasure greeted me on the walk home:
one of the political party flags I’d seen attached to so many of the car
antennas attached to the few cars in town leading up to the November 20
election.
12/15/2023 Thursday
My hike back to the Trade Fair resulted in a plethora
of mental material. My lunch consisted of some bits of fried pork fat with
miniscule morsels of skin or meat attached to either end of each piece. A plate
with three chicken lollipops accompanied the pig. The staff all wanted pictures
with me. I might even have costarred in a Tik-Tok video.
On my way out, the lone man working amongst his female
counterparts pointed to a smaller plate just plopped down atop their platters
of fried pork, eggs, chicken lollis, chicken legs, small crab halves, tiny
fish, larger fish, and a few items which escaped my ability to identify.
“Rat,” he clarified, pointing to the new plate.
Sure enough, the plate contained the dismembered
corpse of a small rat or a normal-sized field mouse. The older woman running
their “kitchen,” a single-burner gas range with an oil-filled wok sitting on
it, had prepared it in a manner I couldn’t quite decipher. It appeared to be
cooked and raw at the same time. When I asked where he’d procured the rodent,
he said that it had come from a field. He wanted 200 rupees for the mutilated
flesh. I held off despite my long desire to eat my way around the Chinese
zodiac chart.
Returning for my afternoon
classes, I found zero students. I waited around for a while and then saw
another professor outside talking to a few students milling about on the lawn.
He informed me that a famous Nepali singer from Kathmandu was performing at the
Trade Show today, so most students had gone to see him. He had three students
there but wasn't holding class with them. He said that we were finished on
campus for the day.
12/16/2023 Friday
The walk into the Trade Fair had me ready to murder as
the asshats shoving their way through the maze of vendors reinforced my belief
that the worst cat I ever met is better than at least 70% of the humans I’ve
come across. These fuckwits formed long trains to mercilessly ram their way
through folks, toppling grannies and children in their way.
At half past five, I found on the main stage sitting
upon a sofa, one of several lined up against the stage’s rear wall. A man is
crooning in Nepali to the delight of many thousands of dancing people. Ritu and
I had wandered off from the American Corner booth to find some snacks. A bowl
of chicken briyani, a plate of noodles and a round of pani puri topped off our
tanks. The AC main man was at the booth which had just shuttered for the night
by the time we returned. He suggested we visit the stage. He and Ritu led me
past a pair of female security guards and into the VIP area. They then
suggested that I go to sit and hang out on the stage alone. I sat in disbelief
through a couple of songs watching the singer do his work over prerecorded
tracks as he whipped the audience into a frenzy. Large swaths of them swayed in
sync while others did their damnedest to crowd surf or ride on a friend’s
shoulders.
Ritu came to retrieve me. Climbing down from the
stage, we entered a tent at the rear of the VIP courtyard. She wanted to go
inside to introduce me to some of Dhangadhi’s mucky-mucks. The of the town’s
Chamber of Commerce sat behind a desk occupying the wall to my left. His
secretary was perched on a couch to his right.
A woman sat at another desk on the wall to my right.
Ritu did not introduce her or explain her position, despite having a nameplate
in front of her computer. We did walk over to her side of the tent after I’d
shaken hands with the chamber president. Mr. Gita from American Corner popped
up from floor with a handful of cash behind the desk.
Ritu had told me earlier that in the afternoon she’d
been randomly recruited to help sell tickets at the Trade Fair’s western gate.
She doesn’t work for the fair and doesn’t know the ticket people, yet they
still put her on ticket duty. Gita was thrown into a similar position, being
asked to count the day’s take. These pairs of examples of random trust are hard
to imagine taking place anywhere else.
We picked our way towards the exit as the concert
ended. The crowd grew thicker. Ritu left to meet her sister and boyfriend,
while I continued on to escape into the cooling night air. The excessive
turnout had prevented me from finally taking part in the rides and shows I’d
wanted to see, but there was still tomorrow.
12/17/2023 Saturday
Saturday was a complete and utter shitshow. Weekends
in Nepal consist of but one day, Saturday. This meant that the many thousands
of people chose by default to flood the usually quiet grounds. The narrow
street feeding into the ticket sales area and the entrance overflowed with a
slow shuffling surge of humanity. I paid my 100 rupees for a ticket and joined
the molasses-like movement to the hired security tearing tickets at the gates.
I made a major mistake within seconds of entering the
venue. The maze of booths offers an escape just past the ticket takers into the
grounds. I didn’t take this option, instead going with the flow as I had done
several times by this point. Funneling that many people into a zig-zagging lane
lined with booths on either side doing their damnedest to attract attention
created a warm sluice from hell.
The chance to turn around was quickly lost to me. The
packed people pushed up the day’s cool temperature to some uncomfortable
numbers. Standing well above the heads of those around me, folks took notice of
me. Those closest to me wiggled their way into position so they could snap
pictures of me with their phones. I lowered me head most of the time leaving
them with shots of my increasingly dusty Stetson.
Creeping along with the crowd was bad enough, but it
was only made worse by gangs of assholes shoving their way through the rest of
us. These reasons for giving up on humanity would line up, putting their arms
over the shoulders of the man ahead of them. Once formed up, they pushed
forward like a train, knocking over old women and little children. The first
human chain surprised me. I was ready for the second and subsequent runners, as
was evidenced by the surprised grunts emanating from those whose guts I rammed
with my elbows. Linked up and moving quickly as they were, they had no chance
for retaliation.
Coming upon one of the final turns, a trickle of
people was peeling off to scramble beneath a length of canvas separating the
maze from the rear of one of the larger booths facing south. The decision to
join them was instantaneous. Ducking and pushing my way through the torn
material felt like a rebirth as I finally escaped the masses of people
shuffling through the maze…only to find myself emerging onto the fairgrounds
which were nearly overwhelmed with bodies as well. Many thousands of people had
turned out to take part in the second and final Saturday of the event.
I worked my way to the American Corner booth to achieve
some breathing room. I didn’t stay long, vowing to return tomorrow when I would
find substantially fewer people.
12/18/2023 Sunday – The Busiest of Days
Part I: Dhangadhi Trade
Fair
I
woke up to what was going to be my most hectic non-work day in Dhangadhi. The
day held another adventure at the Trade Fair, a concert and the World Cup
finale.
Returning the next day, I found a much more subdued
vibe with barely a portion of the crowd in attendance that had piled out on
Saturday. Wanting to see my town from an arial vantage, I traded 150 rupees for
a ticket to the larger of the two Ferris wheels. A female Gurukul Security
Services guard tore my ticket, and I moved into line, climbing a metal
staircase. Standing there long enough for a short line to form behind me equal
to that in front of me, a woman and her two kids shoved their way through the
line, stopping in front of me for no discernable reason.
The machine’s operator slowed his contraption to a
stop to allow me to board a free-swinging, metal cage. It had no door, belts or
any form of safety gear whatsoever. The only attempt at safety he made was to
pull a random man in line away from his female companion and push him down onto
the seat opposite mine to help control the cage’s swinging.
The wheel began to spin. As we rose about the city, the
ride offered me my first aerial view of Dhangadhi. I could see concrete houses
and ramshackle hovels spread across in all directions. Colorful laundry dried
on outdoor lines everywhere I looked. The machine’s speed coupled with the cage’s
unchecked swinging briefly caused a bit of nausea, but I survived.
With the Ferris wheel out of the way, the time for the
main attraction had arrived: I was going to see my first wall of death!
I don’t know why the wall of death cost 50 rupees less
than the Ferris wheel, but it was worth every damn rupee. Dating back to Coney
Island in 1911, I didn’t know that these carnival attractions still existed. I
climbed the metal staircase on the attraction’s southern side and took my spot
along the railing at the top of the circular pit.
A man in white pants, shirt and unbuttoned suit jacket
entered the wood plank-lined bowl that makes up their arena. The rider gunned
the engine of his bright green motorcycle and began climbing to amazement of
the 36 of us in attendance. He flipped his middle finger to physics (or
followed the laws of centrifugal force) as he built up speed and took his
machine horizontal. Zipping around the edge of the bowl where the wood gave way
to the low metal railing keeping us from falling over, he changed positions so
that he was sitting upright on the side of his bike. Taking a break from his
efforts, he shifted to laying back fully reclined.
Hands
gingerly clutching notes of small denomination began extending past the
railing. The stuntman deftly snatched and pocketed them. He collected a ten rupee
note from me. Having run through his list of tricks, he began to wind down
towards the ground to the sound of our applause.
Another
couple dozen people joined us as we waited for the main attraction. The music ramped
up as two different men pushed a pair of motorcycles into the arena. They
hopped on their rides and began circling up the boards on opposite sides of the
space. We witnessed a few more stunts in line with what the first man had done
solo. The bikers caught up with each other and extended their arms to lock
hands as their bikes spun in tandem. The men released, and the first rider started
up a very small four-door car that had been waiting at the bottom of the well.
The
car reached the top after only a few revolutions. The driver controlled his
ride with his feet as he climbed out to sit on the driver’s side door. He waved
at us and collected a few more bank notes. The bikes took turns inching towards the car
from its underside. They shook hands with the driver across the hood before departing.
All three wound their way to the bottom of the well to draw the show to a
close.
It wouldn’t
be a normal day in Dhangahell if I could have exited without being harassed for
a picture. Some man at least my age shoved his phone in my face and asked, “Selfie?”
Before I could answer, he’d already handed his device off to a friend. An usher
was trying to clear the stands and had little patience for this asshat and his tomfoolery,
especially once we both realized that he was actually trying to make a tik-tok
video. I quickly vacated the premises.
My
day should have ended on the high note that was the wall of death, but I’m not
that smart. Never one to pass up a haunted house, I paid my 50 rupees for
nearly a minute’s worth of disappointment. The female security guard tore my
ticket and dropped it to the ground before motioning me to wait. She called out
to someone in the attraction’s door. A man stepped out into the sunlight carrying
a flashlight. He motioned for me to follow him. Much smaller than a
semi-trailer, the structure held four similar displays. Dim lighting and the
guide’s torch gave me glimpses of cheap plastic limbs coated in fake blood as
they hung from string in three of the exhibits. Some sort of witch-creature
from a bad neighborhood Halloween display cackled at me as I headed outdoors
once again.
When
I’m on my own, I rarely bother with eating breakfast (or even lunch nowadays),
but a fair full of street food always teases my tummy. Super Egg and Chicken
Roll Corner looked interesting. My 100 rupee snack consisted of a handmade
tortilla wrapped around some shredded chicken and lettuce. I couldn’t help but
feel like a cardboard standee as I ate. Dozens of younger people stood next to
me to have friends take their pictures. They neither asked for, nor did I grant,
consent. My focus stayed on my food and calming myself down. I stalked away from
whomever happened to be next to me when my food was done.
I
would be remiss in my duties were I to neglect writing up this afternoon’s toilet
experience. The grounds of the Trade Fair had no proper toilets for its
patrons. The Vietnamese instant coffee I’d drunk for breakfast hit my bladder
after riding the Ferris wheel. This forced me to face the odorous hell of their
makeshift facilities.
Hastily erected and sagging sheets of corrugated steel
lashed to wooden poles attempted to separate the men from the women, although
all but the shortest of people could easily look over into the other side. On
the men’s side, guys simply were expected to simply walk into the open space,
whip it out and spray away. The slightly declining ground was a fetid damp mess
thanks to all of the men who had done their best to ensure that every single
centimeter of the place had received a yellow shower. Abandoned flip-flops,
hats and backpacks mingled with the bodily fluids, stench and insects.
More sheets of steel towards the bottom of the narrow
run demarcated the defecation zone. This barely semi-private area in which the
brave were expected to bake their booty brownies won’t soon be wiped from the
bowels of my memory banks.
Thinking it would be nice to end the day’s Trade Fair
experience with a snow-cone, I approached a vender close to the exit. A few people
stood ahead of me, but I was unable to get to the table to place my order due
to all of the people mobbing me for a picture. Frustrated, I stomped off
without my flavored cone of ice.
Part II: Nepathya Concert
A
group of KMC students had set up a table inside the campus gate to sell tickets
to a concert. Curious and missing live music from a real band, I happily paid
my 1,000 rupees for the experience.
Nepathya
formed in 1991 and remains Nepal’s most popular band. They play folk rock with
some modern influences. The group also mixes in some of the numerous indigenous
sounds to create tunes to which most Nepalis can relate. They even played Wembley
Stadium in 2013, a first for a Nepali band.
Dhangadhi’s
police had cut off vehicular access to the north/south cross street leading to
the Dhangadhi Stadium’s entrance. Despite this precaution, the mass of security
guards outside the venue didn’t even bother to look in my bag. One man looked
at my ticket and let pass to another who scanned its QR code to check its
authenticity. Rather than tear the ticket along its perforations leaving me
with the stub, he tossed the whole thing into a cardboard box atop a pile of
its brothers.
Going through the gates, the temporary stage sat at
the south end of the grounds. A low concrete wall to the west separated a VIP
seating area filled with two groups of chairs. Half of the seats had metal
frames with white coverings; the other half were plastic outdoor chairs.
Once
inside, the arena was crawling with security in the form of private guards, local
police and national military.
A
screen on the stage’s rear wall ran a countdown to the show’s start when it
wasn’t airing a loop of ads from sponsors.
Arriving
an hour early, I walked up to the stage. Very few people had arrived. Two young
women approached me. Each had a length of red ribbon tied around their left
arms to indicate their status as volunteers for the event. One of them was one
of the students who’d sold me my ticket. They greeted me and took a quick picture
with me.
I copped
a squat next to the wall to catch up on some notes from the day’s activities.
The volunteers returned after deciding that the lone foreigner in attendance should
be a VIP and guided me past a security guard. They encouraged me to sit until
the urge to dance took hold of me. Considering I’d only had one beer, a shot of
whisky and a Clowny, I could not foresee that taking place anytime this century.
I grabbed a seat and waited for the show to begin. The other student who had
sold me my ticket called 30 minutes before the start of the concert to remind
of the concert. This solved the mystery of why they had asked for and written
my phone number down on the stub from their ticket book. How many calls did
they place that night?
Part
of the proceeds from every stop on their ten-stop Music for Humanity
tour go towards a charity, Manavsewa Ashram, a
social organization which provides shelter to the homeless. A video
played on the stage showed the people helped by the charity. It opened on a
shot of an old man whose leg was chained to a pole before moving on to
neglected elderly people, children and the mentally and/or physically ill.
The
first 13 minutes of the show kicked off with a recorded message from a man
sitting behind what looked like a desk in a government office. A pair of
Nepathya music videos followed.
The
band took the stage at last as another video ran through a montage of band
photographs over the decades. While I didn’t know a single song played, I
enjoyed their showmanship and sound. I had rejoined the now-sizable crowd before
the start of the show. A random guy recognized me and dragged me into his circle
of friends. Nepalis love to dance to the exact degree which I don’t. Their
attempts to get me to soberly flail about failed.
While
I saw no crowd-surfing, several guys rode their friends’ shoulders. People waved
Nepali and Argentinian flags along with a soccer jersey or two. A background
video played during one song displayed before and after pictures of those helped
by Manaysewa Ashram.
The
concert ended with no encore. They had no merch booth, so I couldn’t score a
t-shirt or a CD.
The
walk of shame out of the venue was a small piece of hell as people bombarded me
with blasts of “What country?” “You live?” and “Your high?” along with other
random questions. The concert did add a few new queries into the regular repertoire.
People asked my opinion of the show and whether or not I loved Nepal. Several
guys hound dogged me on the walk out of the stadium. The eventual and
inevitable requests for “selfies” struck. A woman on a scooter with another
woman and two young children stopped when they saw me. The driver’s daughter
asked very politely if she could have a “click” with me. The 5-year-old was too
sincere to deny. The hundreds of folks who simply yell at me would do well to
learn from this tiny tot.
Part III: World Cup
Finale Fiasco
It
took some time to ditch all of those following me out of the show. The
bartender at Afecara the Garden had told me a few days before that he’d hold a
seat for me to watch their broadcast of the World Cup’s final match. That didn’t
happen, and they had no room for me on their rooftop bar.
I beat a quick retreat to Niko. Two guys from
Kathmandu who had also been turned down at Afecara entered the restaurant at
the same time. The manager greeted me and offered me a seat at a table next to
the swimming pool behind the restaurant. They were projecting the match onto a
screen on stage set above the pool where they usually have live music.
The Kathmandu men shared my table. They ordered wings;
I ordered a tandoori chicken pizza.
Niko had been too cheap to shell out the 500 rupees
($4) the local broadcaster had charged for their coverage of every single
match. Instead, the restaurant had one of the waiters try to set up a shady
online airing. With much of the town streaming at the same time, our usually
slow internet had turned to mush. The play frequently cut out. Adding to the
headache was that the restaurant didn’t bother to assign anyone to monitor
their broke-ass broadcast. We frequently yelled at the screen and the
restaurant. The Kathmandu guys cancelled their wings order and left in search
of a less pathetic viewing.
I stuck it out and drained bottle after bottle of
Gorkha strong until one of the teams won. Well after midnight at this point,
there was beyond zero chance of finding a ride home, so I stumbled off into the
dark, having put in a long day.
PEANUTS IN THE
POOH:
12/28/2022
Seoul has finally made wise
decision to replace its 8-year-old rapey slogan of I.Seoul.U with one of four
mediocre choices in an online vote set to end on the 31st with the
results being revealed in February.
BYE THE NUMBERS:
· -63.4F (-53C) – Coldest temperature ever recorded in
Mohe, China’s northernmost city on January 22.
· 233,000 – Amount, in tonnes, of whale meat consumed in
Japan at the peak of its popularity in 1962.
· 1,000 – Amount, in tonnes, of whale meat consumed in
Japan in 2021.
· 3 – Number of vending machines in Yokohama dispensing
whale sashimi, whale steaks and whale bacon.
· 0.78 – Average fertility rate in South Korea in 2022.
· 1.3 – Average fertility rate in Japan.
· 1.6 – Average fertility rate in the U.S.
· 2.1 – Average fertility rate required to maintain a
stable population.
·
90 – Seconds to
midnight according the Doomsday Clock on January 24.
·
9,000 – Number of “non-standard”
signboard removed from Kathmandu shops for unpaid fees or words and nameplates
that are too large.
·
5,000,000 – Vinyl records sold
annually from 1995-2010 in the US.
·
43,000,000 – Vinyl records sold in
2022 in the US.
·
945,000 – Vinyl copies of Taylor
Swift’s Midnights sold in the US in 2022, the best-selling vinyl record
of the year.
·
$25,000,000 – Salary of Goldman Sachs
CEO David Soloman in 2022, down nearly 30% from his 2021 pay.
·
$23 billion – ExxonMobil’s 2021
earnings.
·
$45.2 billion – ExxonMobil’s 2008
previous record earnings.
·
$59.1 billion – ExxonMobil’s 2022 new
record earnings.
·
$1,874 – Amount of profit ExxonMobil
made every second of 2022.
peace,
samiam NEARING
aka: Reverend samiam, Nut ‘n Bone, professa kimchi killa,
Richard Lichman, Captain Beer, Dunkin' Doze Nuts, Testicles, Tiny Dick, and The Cowboy from Hell!
*Legal crapola: Unless otherwise noted, all material in this
and every issue of TAI12 are the
property of George Samuel Nearing and his multiple personalities. Nothing contained herein may be reproduced in
any way, shape, form, or fashion without
requesting and receiving permission in writing.
© 2002-2023 Plug-One
Productions.
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