If only the perfect bird sang, the forest will be a lonely place

One of the most frustrating thin in the world is to have an idea, without the necessary fundamentals to host it on.

I’ve an idea. Naturally, I think it’s awesome. Hey, c’mon, as the creator of the idea, I have to have some reservations about it. Hoina? If I ain’t bleating out my trumpet much, who is? Innuendo much?

Back to ideas, we’ll leave suggestive remarks for later.

I have an idea. I can see it in my head. It comes alive in my dreams, stains my sleep and vanishes as the dawn creeps in. Remember the verse that I did about Kathmandu sometime back? It’s ok to admit it that you haven’t read it. I won’t bite. Nor is this a surprise quiz post. (PS: you can find that post here)

After doing what I did in my last post (PPS: I animated something. Check it out. I think it’s awesome, of course), I wanted to convert it into something cool. I wanted some motion in that verse. I want to animate it. I did the last one in After Effects. It took me ages. After working on prototype for 3 weeks, I got around to releasing it.

Not so much luck on the current project. Already in the second week, my patience is stretching thin, my imagination low. And the project is miles away from done. Light years away. Everyday brings new ideas (Pixar quality and all that), but I ain’t no animator. Nor will I ever be. To my liking anyways.

I’ve been downloading some stock footage and template to use this past couple of days. For inspiration. I want to take it far from the stock I am using. The one I got today has kinda inspired me to try something. I’ll sleep on the idea today (literally) and then work on it tomorrow in between official emails.

I have a pretty decent idea where I want to take it. But the unknown buttons of this program haunts me to kingdom come. Not sure, if I can render it as perfectly as I want. But hey, if only the perfect birds sang in the forest, wouldn’t it be a silent place?

I plan to have it ready to the weekend viewing. Wish me luck and all that. More than luck, wish me fast render speed. Aamen.

Tea mugs and conversation

[Insert awesome post here]

This one is for Zinta, whose verses I have taken here to animate. Even if it was insanely tedious to do this, I can see investing more time and effort to make more poetry in motion. I hope you’ll like my first effort.

Tales of Nepali teachers

A guy walked into our class. It was the first class of my +2 level.  He had a French cut and wore a sharply ironed shirt. When he passed my bench, I instinctively moved few inches away. “Can you guess which subject I’ll be teaching you?” he said.

English! a shout came from the behind the class. The teacher shook his head for a no. In similar fashion Physics, Chemistry and Biology was shaken off. Then a lone voice reluctantly dropped in an unusual candidate.

Nepali? someone squeaked. He nodded vigorously, dropped his angrezi accent like an old pile of clothes and started on byakarna. That was the first and the last time I saw a smart looking Nepali teacher.

-*-

In the undergrads level, an undershaved man with a strange smell entered the class. His shirts were yellowed around the armpits; his pants looked like it had missed a couple of laundry days. I acted fast, got out my Nepali book just as the guy was rounding up his introduction.

As it turned out, Nepali wasn’t the language he taught; he’d mastered the language of shamelessness too. Sometimes in mid sentence, he’d abruptly turn to write something non-essential on the board.

As he wrote, the linings of his pants would move up and down along with the letters. When the scratching was done, he’d turn towards the students as if nothing had happened. He acted like he had not scratched his privates in full view of 50 students (boys to girls ratio: 1:2) . After a semester, I’d had enough. I missed most of his classes in the second semester (I got grades to prove for it).

I lost the grade, kept my sanity.

-*-

In school, our Nepali teacher would announce his arrival from 50 yards. Flowers wilted and birds dropped dead when he passed down the hallway. The stench of his breath competed with Karmanasha (small time tributary of Bagmati; big time smelling fiend). Crushed in between those heavyweights were us the first benchers.

I still have the empty shells of the deodorant bottles I used up in the eighth grade. I use it as a motivational tool. When things go tough, I look at the bottles and suddenly the world cannot keep me down.

-*-

I believe there are various reasons behind why Nepali as a subject and language has a such a bad rap. One of those reasons are Nepali teachers. And the thing that gets the Nepali teacher down is something that is advertised proudly by every school. Read any sign for a school, and you’ll find yourself staring at words that spell doom for them : Fully English Medium School.

I remember we had a brilliant poet for a teacher in our ninth standard. No brochure ever mentioned that. He had missed Madan Puraskar by inches. No one told us that too. All the while, he survived the petty salary by giving extra tuition classes.

He had his board hidden beneath a new coaching center, where they taught everything in English. Even Nepali.

Annapurna Mata

It’s a fact that tired people sing out their woes. Loudly and grossly out of tune. Also that their accompanying singers tend to lip-sync and/or just mumble along the words. And, if the cameraman is given any chance to appear on screen, he whines the sweet nothing out of everything. And after a week of extremely tiring but fulfilling trek, even the editor cannot be bothered with subtitles.

There. This is the general notifications about the video attached in this post. I hope you’ll still like it. It contains some golden wisdom about trekking. Or not. But watching it sure a fun thing to do.

Try HD if you want to choke the internet bandwidth. Painfully slow but crisp details.

If you have not already

Do me a favor, will you and watch this.

It’s 39 mins and all that, but the song at the end is worth it. Trust me, I used to be a (very bad) guitar player.

We went trekking

Not the best title I’ve come up with, yeah. So, here’s some images I took. Yup, that’s yours truly above. Ain’t it dashing, the mountains?

We’re not exactly planning to trek to the Annapurna Base Camp. Halfway in this place called Pritam Deurali, few hours walk from Dhampus, an old lady said something that encouraged us to change our plans. “If you keep your pace, you’ll reach the camp in two days,” she said. The three of us eyed each other and voila, change of plans! Screw Ghorepani! Annapurna Base Camp, here we come!

In Dhampus, we did what all enthusiastic trekkers do prior to their journey: we jumped for joy! Look at me go.

I’m glad that we impersonated this jumping jack early in the trek. The moment we changed the track for the base camp, it was more walking and less jumping. Trust me, if you were also walking for 10 hours straight, jumping would be the last thing on your mind. The first thing would be: Where the hell did I pack that damn MOVE?

In Dhampus, my friend found an old guitar to strum. It was missing a string and sang like a drum. Still, it was music to our ears.

We passed lots of traditional houses on the way.

Tired, we rested where we could. In the hotel, by the bridge, on the top of the mountain, you name it.

We made friends with a very entrepreneurial Tibetan refugee in Chomrong. He was trying to sell ‘Free Tibet’ tshirt to every passing Chinese. Bless his cotton socks.

But, what we did best was we trekked. And, man we trekked like there was no tomorrow. Getting to the base camp and back in four days is no joke.

And, boy does the view from the base camp looks lovely or what.This one is from MBC, Machapuchree Base Camp.

From MBC, we trekked for another solid two hours to reach ABC.

This one is from the camp. We requested another fellow trekker to take a group shot of us.

And I think it’s the best shot of them all.

How do I like my earthquakes?

Shaken, not stirred.