481ct India Preparations 22/1/2009
India Preparations

- Back in town I went up to Thamel tourist area to look for a second hand India guidebook and then to Chinese market at Boudan Bazaar to buy new headphones....
- 1st hassle is :Seems they don't sell 1/16 inch headphones in Nepal.
- 2nd hassle was that when I borrowed the Irishman's North India guidebook I couldn't find anywhere to photocopy some pages nor use internet as the load shedding schedule has changed and no-one knows what it is.

- When it comes to guidebooks I think you need something 1. As upto date as possible 2. As much detail as possible so in the end I decided to photocopy the Rajistan pages and buy the LP NE India book as 1. It's 2007 2. More detailed and 3. Lighter than the full India book.

- Fri - so I needed to use internet and photocopies, but same old problem load shedding. I had to change money. At least my hotel was cheaper than expeced 150Rp making it about £13 for 10 days. Rushed over to Thamel got the LP NE India book for 800Rp and went over to Rudra's for lunch. But they were all over at the new TV studios by the river.

- Had lunch with Rudra, rushed over to get the book copied, took the wrong micro, took another, internet,

biggest cause of S Asian warming is cooking - BBC

- BBC Science in Action just reported that scientists have proved that "the biggest cause of winter global warming in South Asia is caused by people buring wood for cooking." .. See climate blog

- My own culturally imperialist take is .. Usually I have cooked stuff once a day as my breakfast and lunch are uncooked. Yet I often see poor people seem to be stuck with cultural practices which make life hard work. They ignore readily available food like fruit and insist on having 2 cooked meals a day as well as some cups of tea. So women have to spend so much time collecting wood and cooking. I am not saying with a western lifestyle that I don't use 10 times as much fuel as them, just that I can see simple changes could make their lives a lot easier. What if the whole village cooked together instead of 50 different kitchens ?

- They said the Indian government is actively tackling the dustcloud problem, by promoting other technology.

- Since this research is new The most important thing is if Something that in many areas of the world causes a larger warming effect that CO2 is not in Climate models !

- Given the above I wonder if we can question the Amerciais the biggest polluter assumption ? See climate blog

Typical Nepal ?

- Does this sum up Nepal, the government has banned an Indian film Chowk in China, after demonstrations last night. Why were they demonstrating ? ....The film has one sentence saying Buddha was born in India.
- Well technically his birth-place Lumbini is now in modern Nepal. So some people instead accepting this as meaning the Indian continent or that it just a mistake get extreme and say "you are saying one part of Nepal belongs to India", which of course is rubbish. Whatever a film says makes no difference to the actual facts, surely. Neither India or Nepal existed as countries then, so I guess the film meant Buddha was born in the Indian sub-continent.
- If a Nepali film said the capital of Australia is Sydney would that mean the Australian government would close down Canberra ?
.. Is British history portrayed accurately in American films ? Doh, almost never ! Films are full of much bigger lies from start to finish e.g. everyone being beautiful, love being easy to find .. Yet the demonstrators tolerate them.

- What the F why would any body bother to demonstrate over such a small thing ?
- Haven't these demonstrators got more important constructive things to do with their time ?

- Hang on The government has now banned the film completely ,but the line had already been cut from the film before showing it only appears in pirate DVDs. What difference does it make ? Well Warner Bros and the cinema owners will lose money. Politicians gain divertion from their own failures and some easy brownie points and DVD gangsters gain lots of free publicity and increased sales as the only way to see the film is to buy a pirate DVD... I suspect the DVD gangsters were probably behind the demonstrations.

Friday - Going to india

- 5.30pm I'm late for the India bus ...Darjeeling next

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