A Youth Hostel Tale

Just got back from a trip in South America where I had the pleasure of staying in a couple of youth hostels for the first time since last fall’s Dreamforce in San Francisco. Tonight I was looking for my famous…

Ethiopian Updates

This is a fine pickle, I must say. I’m spending the weekend at the Addis Regency Hotel, which is a kind of mid-level hotel somewhere in the city, because the power has been off altogether at Selamta all day, from…
Empty outside terrace at Bhaktapur Nepal

That Sinking Feeling

It was the eve of my first post-Work-For-Da-Man trip. I’d spent two years in a kind of purgatory, required to bill 30 hours a week, haunted with ever-changing business processes and a persistent feeling that I wasn’t good enough, would…
Temporary housing after earthquake in Bhaktapur, Nepal

Into the Real Place, Slowly

It’s always good to experience the real life of a place, even if you are not good at it. I was looking at the load-shedding schedule for today: 6am – 11am, 4pm -8pm. Nine hours without electricity. My laptop is…

It was, after all, a gas!

I want to call this a near-death experience, but of course, it was nothing of the sort, in the end. I called it a kind of rehearsal. It was nothing short of the worst three hours I could ever remember…
The stupa at Swayambunat

Punctuation

Dateline: New York City, Grad Student Apartment. Outside, 22 degrees F, -6 degrees C, with a wind chill factor that considerably reduces the effective temperature. In Kathmandu today, it was 50 degrees F. The deepest winter cold is over there.…
Man rolling on his side through the streets of Nepal

Heat

I’ve acquired an entirely different perspective on heat, heating, and getting through the winter. I have never thought about what winter is like in Nepal. There are places where it’s just warm all winter and everybody goes around as usual.…

Device Drill

One of the challenges of Nepal is the unreliability of the electricity.  If you have, as I do, multiple devices that all need to be charged enough to be of service, you need some kind of routine to make sure…
Screen picture of Worlds Clocks showing times around the world

Living in Two (or more) Time Zones

[Background sound effects: The group across the that meets for loudspeaker yoga and chanting in the mornings is making tiger screaming noises.] JF mentioned last night how strange it was for me to be heading off to bed on a…
Mountains of Pokhara, Nepal

Bus Trip Back from Pokhara

[Email to Jean-Francois] It was a grueling ordeal from beginning to end, but I kept repeating that the difference between an ordeal and an adventure is attitude. The road is really bad and you know what the driving is like,…
Laptop and tablet sitting on a desk table top

The Mobile Office

What’s in my mobile office? Here’s the list:13” MacBook Pro Charge cord for the Mac Foam/Cloth case for the Mac Big heavy book: Switching to the Mac: The Missing Manual Lightweight second screen. Foam/cloth case for the 2nd screen…

Time Zones

I am time zone challenged. The only way I can tell what time it is in the States while I’m in Nepal is to add 15 minutes to the time and then add an hour and then switch from day…