THE ANSWER IS 12 #245 Over the Hump...

 THE ANSWER IS 12

 

TAI12 #245 Over the Hump...

(Dusty Desperation in Dhangahell)

03/24/2023 – Day 1,119 out of China

202/101 – Nepal

Greetings Fake Media Followers,

 

Welcome to the Show...

3/24/2020

            The past few weeks have been abnormal at best. Nepal has a national student union group whose elections dismantle classes at several universities across the country. More on that later.

            Today marks a bit of a milestone for my time in exile. I have survived 2/3 of my project. The heat has been settling in across Southwest Nepal ever since I returned from our Midyear Conference in Kathmandu last month.

 

Happy New Year (Pt. 3)

4/14/2020

नयाँ वर्षको शुभकामना Naya Barsha Ko Subhakamana! That is “Happy New Year” in Nepali. They use a different calendar here, and today, Baishakh 1, marks the beginning of 2080.

It has been a struggle to get much writing done as indicated by the fact that I’d originally planned to publish this three weeks ago today to mark having hit the two-thirds mark of my stay in Nepal. The 100F heat coupled with power cuts doesn’t help.

I do finally have great news to report: I landed a job back home in Shenyang! An international school on the southside of town has hired me to teach some undetermined high school English subjects this fall. As long as there are no hiccups with trying to sort my paperwork in time from Dhangadhi, everything should fall into place. I will be able to confront Chairman Wife about her two-and-a-half years of silence and see my favorite fat cat, Wookie.

With an August 1 start date on my contract, this means that I will find myself severely pressed for time during the approximately four weeks I’ll have in WLOTUS. A drive to Indiana and then Ohio to attended the 23^rd Gathering of the Juggalos will consume more than a quarter of my stay. If they don’t have one hell of a lineup planned, I might return my ticket and car pass.

 

My Return to WLOTUS

8/2021 – 2/2022

            The pandemic continued to drag on. I had become a certified teacher in a state that is increasingly making life miserable for teachers who aren’t down with the extreme paranoia of right-wing religious zealots content to liken themselves to the Nazis when it comes to banning books. In another bid to upgrade my resume, I enrolled in a 180-hour TEFL and a 60-hour IELTS preparation course. This leaves me pretty well overqualified for any ESL/EFL/TEFL/TESOL gig that doesn’t require a PhD.

            Custer County’s unemployment office provided me much-needed and appreciated assistance in signing up for the pandemic unemployment assistance. Chairman Wife had lost the job she’d held since we’d moved to China. Stuck in a fantasyland where people didn’t believe in a virus or the preventative methods to counter it, I couldn’t risk working amongst the ignorant masses. The PUA might have saved our butts.

            Nothing lasts forever, and our Trump lackey excuse for a governor withdrew Fucklahoma from the program a month early, because fuck people in need.

            Desperation drove me to some interesting positions. I became a mystery/secret shopper. Signing on as a substitute teacher confirmed my thoughts on whether or not I could ever teach in WLOTUS. I have the utmost respect for the educators in those trenches who take the learning process seriously by treating their students with respect and not hiding information/history from their wards just because we have a lot of embarrassing and uncomfortable periods in our past which many refuse to face. I couldn’t do it. The election of the current miscreant for the state’s superintendent backed up my realization that our educators are going to face an increasingly uphill battle as the conservative religious takeover of our system continues.

            The program I’d originally, and temporarily, left China for was getting back on its feet, albeit slowly at first. They offered me a position as a professor teaching virtually at the Qufu Normal University in Qufu, Shandong Province, China. Waking at hours normally meant for going to sleep after a fun night out took some getting used to. With classes wrapping up around 7 or 8 a.m., many of my days during this time started with a late-morning nap.

            They signed me for a second semester. I went into 2022 with high hopes. The program planned on going back to in-person teaching. Qufu is not close to Shenyang, but at least it’s in the right country. About this time, the omicron variant was taking its world cruise and ended my chance to get into China. Another virtual semester was in my immediate future.

            One very odd conversation took place via text messages with less than a week before my new classes were to begin. My new handler at the university sent my schedule. I thanked him and said that the change in class times would work well to my advantage. The spring semester had me starting between 6 and 8 p.m. and ending between 1 and 3 a.m. He sent a confused response. Nobody had bothered to inform him that they weren’t bringing me over.

            Having this rug pulled out from under my feet would leave me in Funklahoma and keep me out of China for an unknown amount of time to come. While I was stewing in yet another new pandemic low, my searches for a job had turned up an international school in Guangzhou that was willing to fly me over for a two-year contract. Guangzhou is even farther south than Qufu. In what would be the last live conversation we would have, Chairman Wife told me not to take the gig. While some of the larger cities were slowly reopening and bringing in foreign employees, domestic travel still represented a nightmare of lockdowns and quarantines. The chances of us seeing each other were incredibly slim. If any of that changed during my two years there, then I’d still be locked into a contract way down south. She advised me to wait until I could come home to Shenyang. Outside a couple of voice messages and a few text messages, that would be the last I heard from her.

            That looks like a decently miserable spot in which to end this pandemic recap.

(To be concluded…)

 

Drowning Out 2022

and

Tepidly Welcoming 2023

December 30, 2022 – January 6, 2023

I rang in the new year in Kathmandu, because my handlers refused to allow anyone in our program to leave the country during our universities’ semester breaks.

Tracy’s (Fellow in Pokhara) daughter had flown in for Christmas, so it was up to Amy (Fellow in Chitwan) and I to drink Kathmandu dry. Our favorite person from the Nomad, Koshis, took us out to Thamel to hit a couple of joints on New Year’s Eve. We sent our middle fingers flying to 2022 at Plan B. I’m still waiting for my first kiss of the year.

On my final day in town, I wandered down to Thamel, Kathmandu’s notorious foreigner playground. It delighted me to no end to have lunch with an old friend I haven’t seen in three years. By old friend, I mean Niulanshan, my favorite cheaper brand of baijiu, China’s notoriously delicious firewater.

 

A Quick Bit of Kidnapping

January 8 Sunday

Most every person I meet in Dhangadhi owns a school of some sort and wants me to teach their tiny terrors for free. Ramji, my main NELTA connection, wanted to meet so that we could sign the certificates for the participants of December’s workshop which hadn’t been printed in time. We agreed to meet at Niko Restaurant for lunch and to sign the certificates. He offered to pick me up, but I told him that I was going for a bike ride to do some shopping.

He somehow outwitted me. He didn't even eat and then suggested a drive to the mountains to our north. This allowed us to pass through Attariya, a small town outside of Dhangadhi that is hosting our next NELTA workshop. The drive took us to an old bridge across a gorge in the foothills of the mountains. Plenty of vendors have set up shop there to sell snacks, water and tobacco to folks visiting the out of service bridge for selfies and Tik-Toks. We didn’t exit his vehicle. We simply turned around and headed south.

He deviated on the return trip and stopped at Bhat-Bhateni on our way back which destroyed my made-up shopping excuse.

He hadn't brought the certificates, so we had to drop by his school he founded and serves as its current principal. Still too wet to sign, he sent me off with a teacher who showed me every single room in the four-story building. She introduced me to every person we met. All of the teachers were there grading tests. I even met the accounting, custodial and canteen staff. Guess how many names I can recall. That’s right, zero. It ended with him inviting me to his school's big function when the spring semester gets underway for his 1,200 PreK-10 students. He hopes to add grades 11 and 12 soon.

I explained to him that this wouldn't be possible, because it would look like I was doing work at his private school. Every other jackass with an education company who wants a piece of my ass would be able to point to that event as evidence of my willing to slut myself out.

 

Mountainous Cancellations

March 5 Sunday

            None of the plans made for my five-day excursion into the mountains to deliver a trio of NELTA workshops to educators who lack the means to come down to one of our events closer to Dhangadhi even matter. My Nepali boss just dropped the bomb on me that they have aborted the entire plan. When I asked for a reason, he answered that the Embassy doesn’t believe the roads to be safe enough and that the hotels aren’t nice enough. One of the reasons they chose me for this gig was thanks to my experience roughing it. I am an unhappy ninja who requires heavy doses of booze and additives to calm the fuck down.

 

Holy Holi!

March 6 Monday

            Last Monday, some of my English for Language Teaching students criticized the pace of my teaching. They feared that we wouldn’t get through their text by the end of the semester. Nothing more was said on Tuesday. Then they took off the rest of the week to play volleyball, ping pong, soccer, badminton, cricket, and some games I’ve never before seen.

            Following those three days, we have three days of national holidays to kick off this week. I wasn’t actually certain that today would be a holiday until I visited an empty campus this afternoon.

 

March 7 Tuesday

            My morning began with a phone call from…I’m not actually sure who it was, but he knew me. It might have been one of the NELTA guys, although I’m not sure how he got my number. Whoever he was, he wanted me to attend some Holi celebration this afternoon or evening. A strange thing happened while he was talking to me, another call came in. I asked the first guy to hold while I checked the other line. The first guy hung up as I dealt with the student who had called. He didn’t call back, and I don’t usually carry any talk credit on my, so I couldn’t return his call.

            The day dragged on with no end in sight, as most days here. As the afternoon churned on, I grabbed my bike and took off on a ride. Seeing thousands of Nepalis walking the streets covered in a rainbow of brightly colored powder couldn’t help but remind of mingling among the Faygo and confetti-coated masses at the end of an Insane Clown Posse concert. A turn down a side street took me outside of what constitutes our town and into the countryside in less than two minutes.

            Music blared from every few houses as people danced in their yards in circles, all covered in powder. Mostly loose chickens, cows, dogs, and goats paid them no heed as they went about napping in the heat or foraging for morsels in whatever confines they were subjected to, be it pens, coops or short lengths of rope tied around their necks to various objects. My ride south soon hit a near impasse at the construction site for a bridge over the local version of the Rio Grande (except that south bank is also Nepali, but it’s pretty damn close to the border, so you get what I’m putting down).

            Back to Main Street I peddled as surprised exclamations sometimes erupted from those I passed. Few shops sold the stockpiles of white Holi 2023 t-shirts they’d been hocking for days. Many of them had odd logos such as one with Nike’s Swoosh that said, “Holi Let Pla It.” It felt strange to see so many people wandering the streets with so few businesses open.

            Main Street’s western terminus occurs when it hits the Mahakali Highway, a stretch of road that begins at the Indian border on the southern edge of town and ends 325km north at another spot on the border below the Lesser Himalayas. The city blocked off the northbound lanes to hold a party. A truck decked out with a large speaker system sat across the road. People covered in a rainbow of powders danced and milled about the road. I peddled my ass out of there before anyone could hit me with a handful of color.

 

                                    KMC Exorcism                

March 7 Tuesday

            I make it a point to put in an appearance in my makeshift office a few minutes before each of my classes. A handful of professors usually lounge around on the pair of distressed loveseats in this room I share with the head of the department. These seats are often pulled out to use for special events in the school’s seminar room or on outdoor stages for cultural events, the school’s birthday and sporting events.

Walking into the room today, I had to push through nearly two dozen students surrounding a bed that looked like a hospital gurney, except that this had no wheels and was constructed with a frame of 2”x2” boards. A green sheet covered the thin, narrow mattress. A pillow case of the same shade of green encased a flat pillow.

A female student was lying on this strange bed that has never before graced my office. She began writhing and moaning a little bit. A couple other students were engaged with holding her down. Her infrequent sounds landed somewhere between mild retardation and a milder orgasm.

Asking the students about her condition only confused matters for me.

“Ghosts,” several kids replied when I asked what was wrong with her.

A male student directed me to check her temperature. I placed one hand on her forehead and the other on my own. I was warmer than her.

“Our campus have many ghosts,” two students explained.

I pulled out my phone and offered to call Madan, my ambulance driver/ride and used rum provider to get her to a hospital.

Just then, a much older professor entered the office with a handful of leaves. He instructed a student to pour a glass of water from the ever-present plastic pitcher of tepid water floating around my office. Professor Leaf dipped his greenery into the glass, parted the students in front of him and shook the leaves over the girl. Her moaning and movements increased for a minute. A student rushed into the room with a larger leaf which she unfolded to reveal a pile of ashes. The professor dipped a couple of fingers into the ashes and rubbed them on the patient’s forehead.

I asked if there was anything I could do to help, but my services were turned down. Several of my students from my ELT class had dropped in to see what had happened to me as we were now five minutes into our period. My office was empty by the time I returned from class.

 

March 8 Wednesday (Update)

The elderly professor walked into my office the next morning as I was preparing for class. I asked him about the sickly student. He said that she’d had a fever and that an ambulance had come for her. I find this interesting, since I never heard any sirens from my classroom which sits four doors down from my office. Classrooms on the ground floor all have doors that open to the outside. They must have carried her away from the building to the campus entrance to get her to that ambulance.

 

The Most Special Specialist

March 11 Saturday

            Upon completing the ninth episode of my weekly college radio show, Professor Bone’s Musical Scrapyard, I ran into Professor Bhuwam, KMC’s lone professor of journalism. The fact that he handles the program on his own harkens back to my days when I did my degree at SWOSU under Dr. J. Bhuwam expressed gratitude for me taking time out of Nepal’s single-day weekend to come in to make my weekly contribution.

            When I asked about our broken website (radiokmc.com), he explained that the lone person capable of repairing our station’s equipment has been hospitalized in Kathmandu for some time now. He should be released later this month and will visit us to put our gear in working order. I have no clue what the problem is, nor do I understand why only one person in all of Nepal can correct it.

 

KMC Exorcism Pt. II

March 15 Wednesday

            Whether or not it was the same student, I don’t know, but I once again walked into my office to find a young woman writhing on the wood-framed bed gurney they never removed. Girls and guys held her down and she moaned and struggled. A professor I didn’t know told me that she had fainted, as she often does. This time they had decided to trust modern medicine and reassured me that an ambulance was on the way.

 

Electoral Dysfunction

March 20 Monday

I asked two professors last week about the upcoming Free Student Union (FSU) elections and whether or not they were going to affect our schedule. "No," both replied. I walked to my building at the rear of the campus today to find the place desolate with the exception of a large, heated meeting taking place in the seminar room next to my office (I guess it's truly mine, since they removed Packhera's name plate off of his desk after his suicide on Thursday).

The groundskeeper had padlocked my classroom. Two men sitting outside the seminar room between my office and classroom wondered at my actions. One wore a KMC pin on the lapel of his jacket, so I asked him about our classes. He responded that that because of the elections, KMC cancelled classes today and tomorrow to prepare for them and Wednesday to hold them.

We might even get off Thursday while they tally the votes.

Returning home, I just solved one Dhangadhi mystery. A man opened my gate and blew a whistle. I'd heard this from down the street but didn't know what was going on. I went to my door, and the man just waved me away and closed the gate. A farm tractor pulling a trailer was on the street. They were collecting trash. People don’t set their garbage out, hence the whistle, but 4 p.m. feels like an odd time to conduct their pickups.

 

March 21 Tuesday

            Thunder exploded throughout the night, heralding a heavy downfall of rain that frequently took the power with it. When my house’s battery kicks in, the ceiling fan speeds up and becomes very noisy. When the power returns, the inverter connected to the battery kicks out a loud metallic pop. All three of these sound sources conspired to keep me from completing a healthy night’s slumber. The waterworks wouldn’t cease until 4 p.m.

            Taking advantage of the cool weather left behind, I donned my Ariats and Stetson for what will surely be the last time in this country and stomped my way to the KG Hospital along the highway to refill my prescriptions. The long walk left me with a bladder ready to pop from the coffee I had downed during my lazy day of trying to write.

The receptionist pointed me to the hospital’s unisex toilet. Fear has rarely hit me as hard it did in this restroom. The door set into the bare concrete wall barely opened, forcing me to squeeze through it. The size of a porta-potty, the space had a crusty toilet with a rectangular hole above it. The swarm of mosquitos drew my thoughts to wonder what manner of flesh they’d feasted upon before finding my buffet. Standing as tall as I do, I could peer over the ledge at the base of the hole in the wall. People with no regard for sanitary conditions had tossed piles of blood and pus-crusted gauze up there along with other pieces of medical funk I couldn’t discern.

            I convinced a different doctor to refill my meds and got the hell out of there to begin the long hike home.

 

March 22 Wednesday

            My local program supervisor from the Embassy has called me several times after earthquakes, a small flood and a large protest happened in Dhangadhi. For the first time during my time here, he emailed all three in the program a preventative message about the upcoming university elections for Nepal’s Free Student Union. The FSU is a nationwide student union. At least thirteen of sixty-two schools had to postpone their elections due to students protesting and padlocking gates and buildings on their campuses. This peaked my interests.

            A trio of visits to KMC starting at noon to check out the FSU election between job and newspaper interviews took up a decent portion of my day. My first walk down Campus Marg took place shortly after noon. Two groups of regular police in their blue uniforms lingered close to where my narrow street meets Campus Marg. They were stationed there with their riot gear in a big pile in case their brothers and sisters in blue needed back in the unlikely event that my students broke out into a riot. I wish they were than interesting.

            Numbering at least a thousand, students milled around all over the road where it ends at KMC’s gate before making a turn to the right down a rocky dirt road. Amongst the masses, more than one hundred students queued in a line. This, the police carefully controlled as students showed their IDs one at a time to gain admittance to the campus to vote.

            Movement through the masses proved difficult as clusters of students would surround me the second that I halted my forward progression. Pelted with the usual barrage of questions, “What’s you Insta,” “Where from,” and “Where you live,” I found it difficult to evade them all. Numerous students asked to take selfies with me; more just took pictures without asking.

            Some students had printed and laminated single sheet campaign posters for their parties they hung from their necks. Others passed out flyers on colored paper. Most of these went directly to the ground.

            A conversation with one of my students confused me. When asked if she had already voted, she responded that she couldn’t. Her explanation about not being registered didn’t make much sense.

            My final visit came after it had ended. The university’s gate remained shut and locked. A contingency of police had stayed behind to guard the ballots throughout the night. Students had left the street looking like a small garbage dump filled with campaign materials, ice cream treat wrappers and miscellaneous food waste.

 

BYE THE NUMBERS:

·       17,887 – Confirmed COVID deaths in Oklahoma (February 24)

·       799,728 – Births in Japan in 2022, a record low.

·       1.58 – Number, in millions, of deaths in Japan in 2022, a record-high for post-war deaths.

·       1.5 – Number, in millions, of births in Japan in 1982.

·       38 – Rolls of toilet paper used per person annually in Brazil.

·       49 – Rolls of toilet paper used per person annually in China.

·       130 – Rolls of toilet paper used per person annually in WLOTUS.

·       4 – Percentage of the world’s population in WLOTUS.

·       20 – Percentage of the world’s toilet paper products used in WLOTUS.

·       955,261 – Income threshold, in dollars, to be in the top 1% of Connecticut earners, the highest in the country.

·       336,866 – Income threshold, in dollars, to be in the top 5

·       of Oklahoma earners.

·       210,109 – Income threshold, in dollars, to be in the top 5% of Oklahoma earners.

·       374,712 – Income threshold, in dollars, to be in the top 1% of West Virginia earners, the lowest in the country.

·       183,973 – Income threshold, in dollars, to be in the top 5% of West Virginia earners.

·       1,000 – Arrests made as of March 6 of the domestic terrorists who stormed the America’s Capitol.

·       52 – South Korea’s limit on weekly working hours (40 hours with 12 paid overtime) set in 2018.

·       1,915 – Average hours worked in 2021 by Koreans.

·       1,767 – Average hours worked in 2021 by Americans.

·       1,716 – Average hours worked in 2021 by OECD countries.

·       35,000 – Amount, in kilograms, of waste the Nepal Army hopes to remove from four of its mountains, including Everest.

·       300 – Estimated number of corpses on Everest.

·       0.6 – Percentage of people in Seoul who paid their bus fares with cash in 2021.

·       21.6 – Percentage of payments made in cash nationwide in Korea in 2021.

 

 

UPS&DOWNS:

UPS: 

·       Aware of the difficulty I face in Korea and China in finding shoes my size, I brought eight pairs to Nepal to get me through my ten months.  

·       It was good to see Tennessee Republicans finally take action on gun violence, too bad it was only on their Democratic colleagues protesting their lack of action on gun violence. Oh well, thoughts and prayers until the next mass shooting and the ones after that.

 

DOWNS: 

·       Of the eight pairs of shoes I brought, I should have included more than two pairs of sandals in order to better navigate the many months of hot and muggy weather. Also, my Keenes are now more super glue than shoes.

 

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. 

THE ANSWER IS 12 #244 Settling in and Finding a Rhythm...

 

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 31^st 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.