crucial

I moved out of Khalsang Guest House down to Tse Chowk Ling Monastery. Tashi and I share a house down at the bottom, just below the actual monastery. Its really really quiet. He has a stove, so he cooks tibettan bread for breakfast and sometimes noodles for dinner. We have a peaceful front lawn to lay out in the sun. The monks blare trumpets and crash metal from time to time.

Being up here isn't really India. I kind of miss India, but I'll be back in it soon enough. With the touts and the shop owners constantly tackling you with sales pitches and scams. I missed Diwali, though we had it a bit up here. Diwali is like Christmas, New Years Eve and July 4th all on the same night. Here the valley rang out with fireworks till late in the night. It sounded great with the long echos, starting in different directions. It makes me depressed that the minidisc and microphones I have are not level-compatible so I CAN'T RECORD ANYTHING !!!!! But then again it would just me another unfinished project on the stack. I want to only make music that I can just make in the time I'm making it.

So on Diwali we went up to the Tibettan Institute for the Performing Arts for a concert. The place was bigger and more packed than I was expecting. Sold out, I got one of the last tickets at a very steep 100Rs.($2.50)

I broke my no-alcohol habit to try Chang. Hot fermented barley with pieces of bread floating in it. Tasted really good, like hot apple cider. Not too much alcohol.

I was expecting the performance to be opera with masks and trumpets and traditional singing and dancing. Unfortunately its youths from Chandigargh dancing in different costumes to really distorted loud electronic music from tibet, nepal and india. Some of it is funny. They wear traditional clothes with the long sleeves and do a traditional song. Then the guys come out in blue jeans and glasses and pretend to be really cool to a global trance beat with nepali singing. they do a good punjabi bhangra (modern UK style) and some little plays with morals about staying in school. people tell me the youth from Delhi were much better, and they've heard all the songs anyway. The best part is that when anyone comes out on stage (especially the girls) everybody yells and hoots. Really nice to see traditional clothing and singing with the audience going apeshit like they were britney spears.

My stomach finally gives up, and I spend the next couple of days occasionally uncomfortable. Its not too bad, but the cold that has been threatening for a bit finally gets me, and yesterday I was properly sick. Nice to get it out of the way.

Waiting for his holiness...

His Holiness (aka the Dalai Lama) returned from world tour the other day. Yesterday he was at the TCV children's school anniversary. The whole town shut down to go out there. His entrance was really spectacular, 7 motor vehicles, a huge plume of smoke (!) blaring trumpets and hundreds of school children singing. It was totally atmospheric.

Then some really boring people talked in tibettan for over an hour and a half. None of the tibettans could understand a word they said. An old guy next to us had the right idea, his eyes ecstaticly cked on His Holiness, he counted mantras on his prayer beads.

Eventually His Holiness did talk in tibettan for an hour. The gist of it was: tibettan people have a reputation for honesty (very true), this has helped us in world affairs and in day to day life, so be honest, don't every tell lies, learn this lesson now when you are young; school is a chance to prepare to succeed in the world, work very hard. The children sat there very politely and listened. Then they got up and did elaborate walking formations (32x20 children), writing things like "world peace" and making mandalas. Other than that it was pretty boring unless you speak tibettan; and even then ...