I am angry because I can't find my people

The downfall of the Nepali culture has not been of the recent times. Our culture has declined for a while with the dominant culture of India over powering the cultures that exist. Yet this blame cannot go to Bollywood, for they are not in the business of culture. They produce movies and distribute them where there is demand. Yet we as Nepalese have created this demand for the foreign good, this demand that over takes that which is ours.

Yet this downfall began not from adopting this glittering world of Bollywood but rather forgetting the small stories from within our nation. We have never been very big on writing things down. Our history has very little of written things and those that we have we have never bothered to analyze and make open to the rest of the people. We pride ourselves in Bhanubhakta translating Ramayana in Nepali from Sanskrit so we all can understand. Yet what importance is Ramayana compared to the writings from the early Newari kingdoms, the stone tablets from the Khasa kingdoms, the stories from the thankas? Have we even bothered translating these into languages so we can share out national diversity with our brothers and sisters?

No we never bothered spreading our cultures, just taking in the cheaper commercialized good from the abroad. Throwing our simpler lives, throwing ourselves and replacing them with foreign goods. In this process we left our stories and took time watching Bollywood movies. Instead of telling our kids our stories we threw in a tape of the new bootleg copy of some Indian start that probably didn’t even know that how different Nepal was from them. We made our selves similar to what the bollywood world showed us and said “yeah our cultures are the same.” We said this just so we can have that glamour’s feel which we didn’t think our own cultures could provide.

Now we wonder why are the young kids on the street? I have one answer that keeps coming to my mind. Take away those stories that your parents told you when you were kids. Then the young kids have no stories to hear or read. Replace them with the Bollywood movie, what will they learn? Well probably nothing other than some new culture that isn’t ours. Look at our old stories, they scared us and those things only scared us as long as the authority was there. When one learns to overcome that authority then those stories will not have any effect. So all these time, all we lacked were moral stories that didn’t scare us, but taught us something. When time came, stories that made us think instead of look for that authority around the corner and rebel against it if we could overcome them. When time came, those stories stopped us and make us think of morality, showed us right from wrong. No we didn’t grow up with any of those. We grew up with glamour of Bollywood that we used to hypnotize ourselves into a better world while we left our world to rot around us.

In these many years, we still go no. Never really explaining proudly no this is Nepali culture. Nothing like Indian or Tibetan or anything else. We are Nepalese, people of Nepal and this is our culture and our country and we will stand proud once again because we have earned it by doing something for our country our selves not just because of our ancestry.

Moles moles digging digging under the WTC

Yesterday was fun. Ditched Statics class to go to WTC site. That was the only way I could get to go. Ah well, missing two HW isn't bad so far I guess.

Got down there on the 45th floor after having been lost for few mins. on the street b/c of the lack of building numbers on the buildings. Then got my free hard hat, protection glasses and bright orange vest to wear. Waited for an hr doing nothing other thank snapping few pics. here and there and chatting with few people from CUNY. Should have gotten there later. I was running on 3 hrs of sleep and looking down was pretty interesting.

Then we went got a little lectures on what they were doing on the site, which was pretty interesting b/c we got a clip of the 4D model of the area. Can't wait for them to finish building the site and see the actual structures.

Then went around down to the digging area saw large cranes and what not. Then went past a #11 reinforcing bars and then realized how big they really are and how heavy they really are. I mean all our class room designs are dealing with #5 right now. But wow, #11.... you can get a good workout just carrying a foot of it.

Learned about slurry wall and then saw few of them, then went to another site where a guy told us this technique they use to get a water from effecting the work where they pour liquid nitrogen into the soil and freeze all the water underneath. I which I could have heard him more but it was kind of noisy and for some reason all the taller people like going to the front which left pretty decent group of us Asians on the back trying to look over their shoulders. I think I was the tallest Asian in our group.

Then there was more walking around until we got to go underground under the subway and below the water table. That was pretty cool. Saw what actually exist underneath the streets we walk on. Old vault walls, wires running, sewage pipes, gas pipes, steam pipes (which I am still not fully sure what the buildings really use it for all the time), water pipes and lots of mud and soil which was fun to walk on.

All in all it was cold, fun and interesting and then when we got back to the 45th floor we got cold lunches. Which I really don't understand why people in the US like cold lunches. Then back uptown to finish the Bus station planning to be handed in by 7pm that night. No computers empty then finally one got empty which no was really using but someone was logged on. Then I got on it when the person logged on came and logged off then realized half of the keyboard was stuck b/c of coffee or something. I wish people would not drink in the lab or at least be careful if they are and if they spilled something let the tech there know so they are take care of it.

Ok that is it for now.