Dust Gets In Your Eyes

Today I gave up and finally bought one of those darth vader like face masks the foreigners wear here. Initially when I first saw them in Thamel, I thought that it was some over zealous response to H1N1 (look, I am being politically correct :D). Fast forward to today, more than a week later, and you learn why the foreigners wear the mask after you develop Kathmandu Asthma. It's a very special type of asthma, one that won't kill you but irritate you like hell after layer upon layer of dust enters your respiratory track and nestles itself along the folds of your aveoli. Joy.

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Today I also went for a hair cut. I bet you're going WTF now right, but thing is the hairdresser kind of botched my hair during the last haircut I had in Singapore. Anyway that was about a month ago too. It's also very troublesome to wash hair here what with the hard water and all making shampoo impossible to dissolve. So I went to get my hair cut. It wasn't actually too bad. The lady spent like maybe 20 mins on me (just the way I like it, I hate sitting still for too long) and trimmed my hair till it rested above my shoulders. If it wasn't for the neck snapping hair washing job, it would say it was a pretty good experience. All for 500 NPR (=S$10).

I also walked back by myself today from The Lazy Gringo where Gloria, Loong and I had lunch. This marked the first time I actually walked anywhere by myself in Nepal. I went home, dumped the things I bought from Namaste Supermarket and rest a bit before attempting to find my way to S- Home by myself. I almost got it right, overshooting the two turns I had to make by a little before realising I was heading the wrong way. I ended up taking about 5 minutes more because of that, out of a 15 minute walk. Not too bad I think considering Kathmandu is like a whole series of dodgy small alleys with no road names at all (they use P.O. boxes for mail).

I acutally felt kind of happy walking by myself today. I felt kind of independant. It was a nice feeling, the same one that I had 2 years ago when I first started working and went to eat lunch by myself when out exploring.