Snake

2.6.13

Thunder and lightning before six am, oh wait it’s my stomach, an egg and toast before bed, no one is cooking and rightly so, a day off yesterday, washed out but now the dark marshmallow clouds unleash the Mediterranean sea’s gift to the Himalayas and we’re hungry again.  Chinese tourists appear from the steps below, mountains shyly reveal their parts, it is still cold.

I am no closer to finding work than I was at the beginning of January.  Trouble trouble my feet are cold and I wear wool socks.  Breakfast warmed, rice and gundruk curry and a glass of fresh buffalo lassi.   I gave Suraksha a foot massage, poor kid has one hellava walk down and up every day.  She’s got an extra sweater and longjohns but if her feet get wet well what to do.

Beem comes by with a bottle of milk and together we make black tea.  I have been making paper napkins for the past two hours watching the hurricane Sandy benefit concert, then it’s education reform on the Daily show and the lady goes back again and again to her place where learning is most important; that teacher standing in front of the kids. How would you fare if you were in the public school mix of metrics right now? 

Laxman returned from Pokhara and crashed in room seven.  When he came up three groups came and I was cutting onions, tomatoes, garlic, ginger, potatoes, spinach for  four pizzas, macaroni, tomato, vegetable and mushroom soup, dal bhat for two young deaf Serbians and their guide, and four lemon sugar crepes for two English gals and their guide, and two more pizzas for three fellas from Kathmandu who were travelling with a sixty year old Canadian named Steve who looked like he lost his fortune and nerve a year ago and hasn’t been dry since. 

I like earning my keep.  With Didi gone another day we washed dishes inside while the rain tapered off and I finally returned to room eight after feeling spasms in my back.  Standing and sitting, I am never really comfortable when it’s an all day affair here.

2.7.13

Six Chinese from Guangzhou finished their soups and pizzas and one man with a strange healthy gaunt in his mid-forties said this was the first time he had seen stars. 

Two cleanly bald men from Brittany in the south of France checked in at sunset and are in room five. When I told him I was Detroit, he said it like only a Frenchman can say it, Day-twa.  It made me want to eat strawberries dipped in chocolate I don’t know why.  I said but of course, Day-twa was founded by a fella name Mister Cadillac and Count de Pontchartrain . 

2.8.13

Didi was supposed to return to work today but she hasn’t shown and she isn’t answering her mobile.  She had attended a wedding and that was four days ago. Aside from cleaning the rooms and dishes most of the work is manageable but there are the dirty jobs that thankfully aren’t priority.  For now.

I started writing a letter of reference to explain my time here and I can describe what I do but I can’t use adjectives or superlatives to describe myself or my personal disposition because it is just immodest.  I don’t know what to do.  Jobs in Burma and Mongolia are interesting, I’ve sent the data info to KSA enough, as well as the Emirates.  Four hundred for an Everest beer, paid without a whisper by a soft-spoken American who sat in the garden and drank it standing up.  In room five tonite a peculiar couple who might be Indian but listening to them speak to each other I haven’t a clue.  They could be Libyan, there is that look, but they don’t speak Arabic, Berber perhaps?

2.9.13

I shook hands with Li from Tayuan his wife and twelve year old son who was so excited to see Orion last night and off they went.  A most happy man-his son was also happy he was happy- to breathe clean air, to photo the night sky with his high-falutin camera, to make red Yunnan tea with his portable burner and now at ten in the morning with Laxman in Pokhara Maya is overwhelmed with people in the garden and thank goodness Didi came back but she’s washing clothes and is moving too slow to come up and help.  So why am I sitting here typing away? 

This is the year of the snake in China.  Big deal.  Last year it was the Dragon, big deal too. This morning you could see a thin crescent moon, its shaded circumference just above the horizon.  Would you take a photo of that if you had a three foot lens to carry around? Li showed me his photos of Kathmandu on his smart pad.  How better of a teacher would I be if I had one of those in the classroom.  Yesterday Elizabeth from Riga showed me the letter she wrote and intended to give to the headmaster where she and her husband Martin have been volunteering.  Teachers not in the classroom, students sit on their hands, it is an appalling situation in a dormant system. 

2.10.13

The busiest day in the history of this restaurant and lodge yesterday and this morning it continues.  What is worth remembering about twelve hours of cooking  for locals and Chinese and a foursome of lame Russians?

+ Suraksha answers the phone: “Superview Lodge, can you help me?”

+ Talking to a Nepali man and his wife who live in London and visited the states two years ago. “We didn’t like Los Angeles, too many immigrants.”!!!???

+ The Russian lame-gangsta wannabe wanted fried rice and not plain and got testy: “You forget in restaurant I am a god”  I hope you enjoy the rice and, oh cigarette butts in the rice are free of charge. 

+Li asked how long I’d been here and when I’d be leaving.  I told him when I find a job I’ll go and right now I don’t know where that’ll be.  “oh, you free man.”  Hmmm, free to choose I guess, free from owning anything, free like a bird?  I think birds get pretty hungry and then freedom becomes an act of survival.

Last night Maya’s Aunt and cousin came and were immediately put to work.  Laxman returned in the early afternoon and Didi actually left early.  If there is one thing I do not like about working in the kitchen is when two or three dishes are bubbling and steaming and Laxman or Maya wander off to leave me thinking it’s all about timing, is this soup done, is this curry vegetable done, is this rice done, is this egg done, do something enough and you know when it’s time but cooking in this kitchen is a challenge. 

A deep heavy headache slows me down. Manab has got the Chinese Happy New Year down and the group that checked into rooms one and two give him chocolate.  The hobbit is over the moon. Gimme some kid, ten percent tax right here.