Friday, November 16, 2012

It's Not the Same After a Few Years

When I first started writing this blog and had arrived in Kathmandu with wide eyes, most of what I took photos of and talked about weren't all that different than what you see in most tourist blogs. But things change after a few years. Aside from a complete lack of time to devote to writing here, I also just don't have as much to say about being here in Kathmandu any more. At some point it becomes home, and all those things that strike my countrymen as extremely peculiar here just seem normal to me.

Still everyone once in a while you go about doing things that make for at least a good photo or two. So here are a few from the last few weeks.

Roman Senator or Nepali Cross Dresser?

Wednesday, November 7, 2012

The Siren Song of Democracy

With the election having just taken place back in the US, this is maybe a bad time for a political post, but I'm going to venture into these waters anyway. To be honest I didn't have a horse in the race that just concluded, and while I know a lot of people who might read this are either elated that their candidate won and America was saved from a a rich guy who wanted to destroy America or distressed that some foreign born socialist continues to occupy the White House and plot America's fall into a second rate backwater country. I think both groups will find that nothing significant changes. The political class will continue to cut deals that benefit them and their associates at the expense of both groups of voters (or those like me who simply abstained for not wanting to support bad behavior), we will continue to meddle in the affairs of countries that are none of our concern and we will by and large over pay bureaucrats at every level while the working and middle class in the private sector continue to see their pays stagnate or dwindle. In a short period of time, those who are elated today will be finding excuses for why Obama does more to support big banks, continues to drop bombs on brown people on at least three continents, and continues to expand things like the Patriot act while the middle class withers and the working class settles for a lower standard of living. Conversely those who are saying they will flee the country to escape it's imminent demise will see that things do not abruptly change, and that the slow march of increased debt, reduced liberty, and greater central government reliance won't look all that different than what happened under the candidates that they have voted for in the past.

Related Posts with Thumbnails