End of Week One

This morning I called Jasmine on Skype – computer to computer. I went up to the roof with the computer, turned on the video and was able to give her a panoramic view from the top of CECI Place. It really is quite spectacular.

At work I noticed that we are having an indexing problem with a number of the documents that we loaded into the system. It uses the Tika Apache Extractor to pull out the words from the document for indexing and for some reason a large percentage of the documents are being rejected. I believe it may have something to do with control characters but I haven’t found a way to get the extractor to ignore them. From checking the knowledgebase it seems there is a way to do that but I haven’t discovered what it is. It just says that the problem was resolved by ignoring them. Help!

Despite that, we were able to load another bunch of documents into the system. In fact, Ruchi did all the work and I just sat on the sidelines as coach. We both felt wiped by the end of the day but satisfied that we had accomplished a lot.

She was heading off to visit family out of town this weekend. I told her I was heading for Nagarkot to see if I could get a glimpse of Everest.

When I got back to CECI Place, Carly was there ready to wisk me off to the main shopping district downtown (New Road area) where we found a great shop selling lovely material. You can buy a package which contains material for a salwar kurta (also called kameez) outfit consisting of a long top often containing embroidery or some design, pants (either tight fitting or loose) and a matching scarf. I found two packages that I couldn’t pass up and then Carly led me to a nearby seamstress. We had to climb up a steep and narrow staircase (somewhat like the stairs to my attic) to a little shop where three generations were (wo?)manning the business – a toddler grabbing at her wrinkled granny’s glasses and a very efficient mom who measured me thoroughly for my new outfits. I emerged from there excited about the prospect of wowing my friends back home with my new clothes.

Back out on the street again, Carly led me on a shortcut through some back streets to where we could catch a cab home. But the shortcut!! It was camera heaven! The streets were crowded with vendors plying everything you could think of from spices to wooden marionette Ganeshes, from shoes to copper and brass plates. The colours and movement were incredible. There were wonderful old (and I imagine VERY old) shrines with amazing carvings and metal sculptures dotted throughout. I couldn’t get enough of it.

A taxi took us back past the palace where Carly tells me the locals line up to go through the grounds on Saturdays. The king was dethroned over a year ago and is no longer here.

Here I thought I was getting to know Kathmandu but I’ve been cocooned in a very small and quite privileged area. There is a whole big wild and crazy city out there.

After resting up a bit I headed out with a number of the kids to Buzz Cafe to meet up with Anne and Bernie and celebrate with Pakesh – the owner – who is a great friend of the kids. Pakesh enjoys throwing parties for his friends.

Bernie and I are heading for Nagarkot tomorrow to do some site-seeing, try to get a glimpse of Everest and possibly do some trekking.