Holi

Had my night in a nice hotel for the VSO Partner Conference on Thursday, the long soak in the bath was wonderful! Got back on Friday night and before a volunteer forum today (getting a bit fed up with these 6 day weeks) we had a day off yesterday for Holi. This traditional festival originally involved just being daubed in bright colours but has turned into a mass waterfight so we planned to stay in and keep dry. Good plan - Sheila had even declined our landlady's kind offer of participating in their family's celebration - then I was stupid enough to go out to get the newspapers. I thought the front way would be safe and so it was until I got to the main road. Just shops and no kids, should be OK – forgot about the Upstairs Bar (it’s a bar that's upstairs) directly above the paper shop, where the staff and regulars, including some supposed friends, were chucking buckets of water from the roof. Then a self inflicted wound when I went up to see them and was greeted with handfuls of coloured powder.

From Nepal - March...

Sheila's still doing her training in Bhaktapur which has turned from 8 into 10 days and we've got the UN auditors in at Blue Diamond so another busy week coming up. And much excitement because Sheila's sister and brother-in-law arrive for a visit on Tuesday. Apart from thinking that they might have some goodies for us in their bags, it will be great to see them and show them our little world.

A quick update on load shedding. The timetable has gone a bit awry the last couple of days, we don’t seem to be getting all our scheduled power cuts or like the other day when it went off at the designated time and came back on 5 mins later. We suspect that the man in charge of pulling the plug may have decided to ignore his higher-ups and reduce the inconvenience of 6 hours per day load shedding. Maybe we were right in our original thinking (based on experience from Delhi) that living at this end of town where there are VIPs and lots of hotels would reduce the power cuts. Whatever the reason, as I sit here with the lights on when they should be off, thank you Mr Electricity Man. Of course this selfish attitude does not help the power shortage so we'll suffer for it in a month or 2. Or maybe others will.

Cheers
Roshan

P.S. If anyone has a cheap job lot of 6' fence panels going, please deliver to Culver Road which is missing a load after the recent gales. Special thanks to Guy who is sorting this out for me.