Tihar

 

 

 

I’ve done something naughty. I hope I will be forgiven. Things in Asia are definitely cheaper than most places, if you’re willing and in the mood to spend some time arguing over the price, but usually you get what you pay for, and sometimes even less than that. Your room was only five dollars, but when your head is full of soap the water turns ice cold and then shuts off completely, and your sheets are still covered in hair from the past guests. You found a nice bag, or dress, or shirt, or whatever, for a third of what it would be elsewhere, but after one wearing it starts to rip apart at the seams. Your meal was only two bucks but you had a glance into the kitchen that put the extra five you could have spent into perspective. The one thing I’ve found that is pretty much a solid bargain is movies. You can buy DVDs here for less than it costs to rent them on iTunes, sometimes for less than one dollar. The only drawback is psychologically imposed, guilt. If you go to the movies in Los Angeles they always have ads before, about all the work that goes into making movies, a deterrent against watching pirated films and not paying a fair price. Hollywood is going to be so mad at me… I really needed a few days of just sitting around without my brain, no reading, no deciding where to go, no walking, no talking. I’m sorry Hollywood I had to do it! I picked up a few movies, then added beer, falafel, candy bars, and yak cheese; let the One Girl Slumber Party begin.

The first movie I watched was The Way Back. I was really excited about it because I had just read the book it was based on, The Long Walk. It ended up being pretty disappointing. The Hollywood version turned the real life survivors into confrontational characters; liars, cheaters, thieves, and then of course they fictionalized events, to make things more exciting, I suppose. I know this is a common occurrence when a story is adapted to the screen, but it seems unnecessary. The book was not filled with interpersonal conflict and moral dilemma, still it was a captivating story, told in the gentle voice of a man who had an extraordinary will to live. Is it the viewing public, or Hollywood that thinks this isn’t enough? Do we need to manufacture drama and divergence in order to feel excited and involved? Sometimes I think it might be true. Maybe simplicity is not sparkly enough. After that I watched No Strings Attached. Ha. I don’t think a review is in order. I wanted to turn my brain off, and it worked. Bravo to Natalie Portman and Ashton Kutcher. Next I think I’m going to do a repeat of the Twilight marathon Marguerita and I had in Mongolia. Maybe a bit less fun without my homegirl, but it’s always a welcome event to pretend you’re an angsty teenager with a vampire boyfriend.

I’m about a third of the way through my un-refrigerated half-kilo of yak cheese, and I’ve added to that an un-refrigerated jar of mayonnaise, and half a can of tuna, which also has no home in the fridge. My room is not too smelly yet. I’ve been running the software download I started two days ago for the last forty-eight hours. It’s about halfway done. Progress.

There’s a big festival going on throughout Nepal right now, Tihar. Today all the streets are decorated with lights and offerings of food and flowers for the goddess of wealth, Laxmi. It looks like some kind of super awesome and colorful Christmas out there. Kids are running around chanting in doorways until someone hands them a little money, then it’s on to the next doorway, and every shop is decorated with strings of marigolds and lights.

On Sunday I’m heading out of Nepal and into India. When they issued my visa for Nepal they wrote the ending date in wrong, so it said my thirty-day visa expired two days before I entered Nepal. I asked the guy I bought my ticket to the Nepal / India border from if he thought this was going to make problems for me. He pulled out a pen and changed the date. That solves that.