My Nepalese Experience

1 week left!!! At this time next week, I’ll be heading back to the states. Time flies when you’re having fun… and even when you’re not! Haha. (For the record, we are having fun, but it’s not always fun and games… such is life). Truth be told I really can’t believe I’ve survived this long without Starbucks. Yes I miss my bed and I miss my friends and family and car and home, but I have a bed to sleep in (albeit not a very good one, but I am usually too tired to notice) and due to the wonderful world of advanced technology, I am able to get in touch with the people in my life to fulfill that aspect. I have yet to find a substitute for Starbucks though! There is just no replacement here for a giant extra-hot triple-shot vanilla latte. The coffee here comes in one size (small) and in one strength (not strong enough). Ah yes, I long to give my lovely Starbucks gold card some good wear and tear; it has been so lonely in my wallet from not being used! Ok ok I know I talk about Starbucks far too much, but it really has become my make-a-bad-day-better "vice." I mean, wake up late? Case of the Mondays? Missed the train/bus? Bad hair day? No problem. With a $4 latte, you too, can turn that frown upside-down. In just 7 days, I will have access to around 8 starbucks within a 1-mile radius!

Ok I’m off my soap-box. lol. Onto the reason y’all read my blog… travel updates!

Yesterday was pretty unproductive. And that is an understatement. The team in the U.S. decided that the application environment needed to be brought down at the end of their day in order to fix a few things and apply patches. Well, their day-end affects our day-beginning so we got in to work to find out that the environment was not in service. It was only supposed to be down half a day (Europe time), but it ended up that this down-time window kept getting longer. They finally told us to head home around 3:30pm. Needless-to-say, we did not meet our testing targets yesterday, but it was an extremely nice surprise to be able to head back to the city when the sun was still up. My 2 colleagues and I went back to the hotel and all took naps! All this traveling, working hard and then partying hard to compensate for the work/stress/craziness that defines this project was definitely catching up to us. I actually feel like I’m getting a slight cold, so I increased my sleep and tea intake earlier this week to hopefully ward it off. Anyway, we all slept a little while and then woke up in time to head out for a late dinner and perhaps after-dinner adventure.

We bundled up and took the tram to Leidseplein, in search of some good food and drinks. Walked around a bit and settled on a Nepalese restaurant which the other two had eaten at and absolutely loved the first time around. Me, the American girl, was just thinking, I don’t even know where Nepal is on a map?? And I have no idea what is involved in Nepalese food, but I was in a very laid-back mood so I went along with it. It literally felt like I had stepped into Nepal with all the authentic decorations in the little restaurant and it looked as if the owners were sporting clothes straight from Nepal. So my colleagues and I sat down and began discussing the Middle East and it just proved even more how incredibly white American I am. This may be a blanket statement, but I really do think that Americans are clueless when it comes to the rest of the world – the languages, the culture, the traditions, the way of life. Yes, this includes me – I am a bit clueless – but I am learning, and probably the best thing we all can do is to travel! It’s interesting that the U.S. doesn’t really focus on world news, but when you turn on a radio or TV over here, they always start with the world news. And furthermore, most people over here know at least 2 different languages (fluently) as they all grow up speaking multiple languages at once. So we are sitting at dinner and then we start talking about India (they are both 100% Indian, but now live in L.A. – one is a U.S. citizen and one is an Americanized Indian although not a citizen), and it dawns on me that the U.S. was originally populated by Indians. Now granted, I was not exactly born with the gift of remembering history (or geography for that matter), so once I brought this up, it pretty much proved my ignorance. I started remembering the story though… 1492 Columbus sailed the ocean blue. He planned on reaching India so when he hit America, he thought it was India and thus, called the people that inhabited it, Indians (ok now that you mention it, U.S. History 101 is coming back...). And Laura the politically correct term these days is Native American. Gosh I am so blonde. For the record, Native Americans and Indians are unrelated. So back to the food. It was good – a mix between Indian and Chinese palettes since (as I found out), Nepal is between India and China.

I tried a little of (almost) everything including the Nepalese cocktail.

Post-dinner plans entailed a Jazz bar across the street. I had read about it and wanted to check it out so we headed over and it was actually quite crowded. It was a narrow, dark bar with plenty of locals, but a good spot to have a drink, enjoy the scene, do a little people-watching, and then head back to the Victoria.

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For entertainment, some work photos:


Yes, this project makes us all a little border-line crazy at times!