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?”

friday night lights

it's friday night. and yes, that's an Irish bar. damn good one too. simply because it's one of the very few bars in queens that offers carlsberg on tap.(perhaps i may be wrong, if there is another bar please do let me know...appreciate it in advance}. a few times i've been there, i don't ever remember drinking anything other than carlsberg. the motto of the bar says, "opening time is guinness time" but it might as well say: opening time is ara/chang time due to the prevelant crowd of bhutanese and tibetans. for some, it's an habitual excersise in nostalgia. and still for others, it's a place to hook up with himalayan chicks and dudes.

interior: as you enter, to the left is a small hub with wall sofas and few tiny tables. the long bar-table almost occupies the entire length of the room except for a small space at the rear, the dance floor. yes, once again, it's an Irish bar (Irish bars in woodside and sunnyside are popular among new Irish immigrants)but the dj has certainly acknowledged the crowd springkling the dance floor with hit bollywood hindi songs. hindi songs in an irish bar.

crowd diversity: majority: tibetans. bhutanese: a fair representation. the rest: very minimal including the bartender, the dj and security.

food: haven't seen anyone order as of yet or spotted a menu. however, right across the street, there is a food-vendor cart that sells some wicked momos and a hellish aze (a chilli paste) that left a few blisters on my tounge but does wonder to the state of drunkeness.

suja, momo, jitsi ema, and doma

as cliche as it sounds, "you can take a bhutanese out of Bhutan but you can't take ema out of a bhutanese." such is the sentiment a bhutanese abides. and where do all bhutanese get their ema from? the institutionalized subji bazaar: patel brothers-located at the heart of jackson heights. any given day, a SAARC conference is underway in the neighborhood. at the base of the stairs leading up to the 7 train, on 73-19A 37th road (b/w Roosevelt Ave and 74th St.) is the nameless store that sells momo and suja. there is a good chance that you'll run into another bhutanese. and on top of that, right around the corner is a pan shop where the shopkeeper usually gives me a weird look of "do you know what you are about to eat sunnyboy!" 

year of the femal ox in nyc

A conglomerate of Bhutanese of New York congregate yearly in an obscure Aremenian church hall tucked underneath the overhead tracks of Long Island Rail Road to celebrate Losar. The year of the Female Ox was no different.

majority of the bhutanese population resides in Sunnyside,Queens. However, we bhutanese are obscured among the growing community of Tibetans and Nepalese.
Perhaps it’s our affinity for speaking influential dominant languages of Hindi, Nepali, and English that we become ever more obscure. it is next to impossible to differentiate among tibetans, northern nepalese and bhutanese. 

I was riding the 7 train with a Bhutanese friend, when a group of teenagers entered the train. They all had himilayan phenotype of Tibet, Bhutan and Nepal. Refraining from initial judgment, I eavesdrop their conversations. They spoke English but I noticeably heard snippets of Nepali and hindi. Unsure, I asked my friend for his opinion. He thinks they are definitely bhutanese.

Unsatisfied, I looked toward the group to make an eye contact with anyone. A young lady standing by the door caught my eye and I hesitantly blurted, “Happy Losar, Tashi Delek”. The group wished us the same sentiment and I knew that they were either Tibetans or Bhutanese. Then I asked if they were Bhutanese.

I felt rather occidental with jeans and shirt among my own countrymen and countrywomen who were dressed in the most extravagant designs of Ghos and Kiras.I learned minutes prior to the entrance that the ambassador of Bhutan to the United Nation was invited as the guest of honor. As he entered the hall, almost everyone diverted their attention towards the door from peeking at each other over the tables across the room, and everyone got up to show their sign of respect, ingrained within the Bhutanese society. Mr. Wangchuck went from table to table shaking hands with the entire mass.

The host in the most gracious mannerism of Dzongkha invited the ambassador to say a few words. His sensibility was apparent as he said; “I’ll speak in English” taking into consideration of the ever growing young generation of Bhutanese assimilated into the American society. “I am very happy to be here today and I cannot praise enough about what the Bhutanese community here is doing to help people in Bhutan.” He then talked about how every Bhutanese living in the States is an integral part of the Bhutanese society. He ended his speech on the note that the counsulate is an open door and welcome any issues or problems promising a resolve.

“Acho Tshewang, Happy Losar, Tashi Delek”, said Pema, the young lady I met at the 7 train. The cultural show began with a video of a monk thanking us for the money that will help maintain the monastery raised by the sales of the entrance fee, $30. As the show went on with singing and dancing we were served with Suja, a buttered tea, a national drink. As the tradition goes, the older generation took to the dance floor dancing to traditional music in a circular pattern.
Although I didn’t take part in the dance, I immersed myself into a little piece of home culture away from home and waited like the rest on a long line to get some traditional Bhutanese food.