how to make ema datshi (failed miserably) and here is my failure

How to make ema datshi

i've looked and looked into and through the whole world wide web but i counldn't find a video that shows how to make ema datshi. sure, there are many recipies on the web but i think visual aid will do justice to the revered dish of Bhutan. Ok...so here it goes....video on how to make ema datshi coming soon...

welcome video

a mini explosion of Nepalese restaurants in queens, new york

within five blocks (39th street to 44th street in queens blvd.), there are three Nepalese restaurants to choose from. whoa! that's quite a concentration of Nepalese restaurants. tangra on 39th, hanami on 40th and yeti on 44th. unfortunately, the gloomy sub-text truth these restaurants depicts: Nepalese restaurants cannot stand on their individual authenticity. tangra specilizes in hybridization between Nepalese and Chinese. hanami and yeti specializes in Nepalese food but also has a side Japanese menu as the names suggest. as you enter yeti, you are greeted with a side bar, a perfect place to have a pre-dinner drink while you wait for your always-late friends. and immediately to the left cubile style seating made with beige woods creates an ambience of seclusive exclusivity accentuated by the dim atmosphere. need more seclusion: you can get a vip style japanese private room. three items i order without fail-unfiltered sake, beef sukuti and momos. setting wise, hanami is open, small and shoulder to shoulder. it's relatively new hence nothing really stood out of the menu. spacially, tangra yells grandiose granduar with corinith coloums and exotic woodworks. their sizziling menus, you must simply try one for the sake of the aesthetics of eating with your ears!...

photo journals

psyche of addiction

It almost felt like an internal bite of a soldier bee on defense, instant, a few inches below the curve of my left chest aligned with my nipple. I press my right index finger on the miniature isolated pang with no relief. Then I take a wolfing puff and fling the box as far as I could throw. The box goes beyond the backyard fence, through the oak tree leaves, into the dark, stirring the dead leaves and awakening the squirrels and the birds.

That was a good dinner…chicken biriyani, chicken curry, friend cauliflower and beans, dal (lentil soup) and a wicked pickle. I can do this, come on, you can do it, will power baby, that is the difference between you and the rest. I can stop whenever I want to. Im a man, I don’t need help from anyone or anything. This is it man, my last one and I am done.

I sit on the milk crate on the wooden patio overlooking the sparkling green fuzz of grass I recently planted.

I read…no I saw on youtube that the best time to sow grass seeds is during April, the rainy month. I thought, what the fuck, I know I am couple of months late, whatever, this bag full of grains cost me like seven dollars, so if it doesn’t grow whatever…as least I tried…and “the greatest risk a man a take is not take a risk.”

I inhale my puffs more deeply into my lungs to enjoy the last one for the rest of my life. I take a sip of half empty Heineken. I’ll call it half empty because it was full to begin with. We are not really questioning the dasein of the drink but our own dasein. We meme-infected apes. Society’s will to classify things into mainstream, the norm, intelligence…I don’t know what the fuck I am talking about.

I see the fire scorching and crackling through the dry branches. It’s cool and everyone will appreciate the warmth of the fire. I think I should go get some more wood. Oh, fuck it, it’s fucking dark out there and I need a another Heineken.

I puff the last one and carefully throw the butt into the empty Heineken bottle, pfzzzzz, smoke rises up to the middle of the bottle and then fizzes out. It’s reverse engineering baby. When one drinks the beer, it fizzes in our mouth and the shoots straight down to you gut, adding depth. Haha belly. I know I once told mom or dad that I’ll never let myself be obese. I am not obese, I just have a little beer belly. If one week of cardio won’t do the job I don’t know what will.

I pull up my sweater and look at my stomach, holding my breath and sucking it in to see any hint of a six pack. Then I let it go, Yeah, my six pack is definitely got to be in the refrigerator. Talking about refrigerator I need a beer and I am going to go upstairs and get a few beer.

I slide out the basement door and I see someone on the mirror coming down the steps.

I stand outside to see who it is and what it wants. As the figure turns at the end of the steps and starts walking on the hallway straight towards me, a girl I met today, “Hey do you have a cigarette?”

nostalgic

Chubachu

chubachu is a small neighborhood in Thimphu at the lowest point of the valley where Chubachu creek meets the mighty Thimphu chu. Bhutan’s capital city, Thimphu, is the largest city and is more rural than the most rural towns of America. One main road, Norzim Lam, divides the city into upper and lower Thimphu. Chubachu creek separates east from west Thimphu.

By law, buildings in Bhutan has to be built according to the aesthetics of Bhutanese architecture and style. The houses are usually two-storied with an apex slope roof made of pine shingles and rocks throughout the roof to protect from the monsoon rain and wind gust. Rammed mud supplements the half-timbered walls in white. The red windows, etched into the wall with their arching buttresses always come in the shape of a human head to shoulder silhouette, in four rows and four columns. Most of these windows face the south and are equipped with sliding wooden shutters.

I wait for her to go to school with every morning. I don’t like going to school with girls but Uma insist I accompany her.

she is twelve, a few months younger than me. she has dark black hair, and wears thick glasses.

the moment she comes out of her house she starts talking and continues to do so for the one hour walk to school. She is as indifferent to hearing my thoughts as I am indifferent to hearing her talk. Every once in a while she startles me by saying something like: “If we are both in our thirties and single we should make a pact of getting married.”

My classmates tease me, “Is that four-eyed girl your girlfriend?” at which she scolds them,
“Leave him alone jeghotos, he didn’t do anything to you.”

Uma says when I was born I was as silent as the darkness. In school, teachers, girls and my classmates think that I am shy and timid because I am quiet all the time. I didn’t make too many friends either.

Hide and seek is my favorite game in our neighborhood. When it comes to my turn to hide, I always go underneath the waterfall of the creek to my secret hiding place, a small cave besides the waterfall to smoke the cigarette I stole from my dad. However, on one particular evening, thank God I had already finished smoking, I see someone approaching the cave.
“Can I hide with you?”

It’s dark but I know its her. I think for a second, “Only if you stay quiet.”
She stands there in silence. I squeeze to the left to make more room for her in the small cave. In silence, we rest our chins on our knees. The splash of the waterfall and the cool night breeze starts to give us goose bumps as water droplets sprinkle our faces. Every so often, she takes off her glasses and wipes them with her t-shirt. She complains about the droplets underneath her breath.
I whisper in her ear, “Shhhhh.”
“No one is going to hear us with the water splash” she whispers back.
“Then, why are you whispering?”
Still whispering, she replies, “because you are whispering Jeghoto.”
No sign of the seekers. We wait in silence. Getting restless, I ask her, “do you want to go home?”
“NO!”
“Why not? This game is boring. Let’s go back and ask the guys if they want to play kingball instead.”
She speaks in silence in the darkness. We wait, and wait and then wait some more.

Why can’t the fucking seekers find us…but what if those bastards gave up? They are probably playing another game by now or maybe they are still looking for us, I think I might have come too far to hide, maybe they didn’t want to cross the stream. Yeah that could be it, I’ve heard my mom say many times that its bad luck to cross a stream during the dark. How did Tshering find me in the first place? Was she following me? She must have because only I know this place. If we stay here too long, mom and dad are going to get worried and then they will give me the beating of a lifetime. Shit.

Paranoid, I whisper to wake her up. Silence.
Then, she lays her head on my chest and wraps her arms around my torso and is falling asleep. My initial reaction is to shake her but smelling the afternoon warmth from her jet black hair, and a faint smell of lemon relaxes me.

The moon finally comes out. I can feel the warmth of her body and her breath through my t-shirt. I lean back on the rock wall so she can rest her head in comfort and I stretch my legs tiring from sitting in the same position for a long time.

“Hey, wake up, it’s getting late…we’ve to go home.” She moves her head trying to get more comfortable and makes a sleepy moan.
I nudge her a little bit harder, “come on, wake up we have to go home or my mom is going to give me a whipping for worrying her.”
she takes off her glasses and hangs them on her t-shirt collar and rubs her squinty eyes from years of wearing eye glasses to wake herself up. I hold her hand climbing the ledge around the rock through the bridge. After we cross the bridge I let her hand go gently and we walk silently to the party.

“Where were you guys? we were looking all over” says a boy, “and some guys are still looking.”
“Well, we got tired of hiding …” says the girl, in a sarcastic tone, “…never would've found us. Losers”
Curious, the boy asks, “Where'd you guys hide?”
she looks at me. I give her nothing. and she replies, “sorry, no hider ever reveals their secret spots…sorry can’t do…”
“Come on, you can tell me, I promise I won’t tell anyone. it will be between you and me and well I guess…” looking at me, “…him as well?”