The King’s Telephone

On February 1st, post-sister’s-wedding, the King declared a state of emergency in Nepal, whilst simultaneously firing the Prime Ministers (that he himself appointed) and cutting off all phone lines and internet, and beginning strict censorship of all news sources (tv, radio, and newspapers). For a while, this Nepali news website was simply blank, but now you can go there to read the censored news about Nepal, and if you’re interested, the King’s address to the nation translated to English! http://www.nepalnews.com/ Take a look at the publisher's note, too. His (the king's, not the publisher's) basic reasoning is that the democracy wasn’t working due to corruption, and as long as the Maoist insurgency continues this corrupt democratic government can do nothing to keep the peace – therefore, the King (and his buddy the military) have resumed power and in order to keep the pesky rioters at bay, anyone who says anything bad publicly about the King will be arrested. (So, people out there, please don’t forward my website on to anyone who might tell on me. Not that I’m really saying anything bad, right? Eeee.) At first I couldn’t figure out why the phone lines got cut off, but it soon became clear that lack of communication does a lot to quell revolts, as well as keep those naughty corrupt prime ministers locked in their houses with no chance of escape. To read an anti-King (pro-democracy) website, go to http://freenepal.blogspot.com/ The cell phones have still not been restored, and in-general censorship reigns. There was no remarkable violence or any danger during this time however. I was selfishly most concerned with my own lack of email access over any other inconvenience.

Quoted! Am I Famous?

So, while I was in India I received an email from my school’s publicist (? I think that is the title), who had gotten an email from a student in Amsterdam asking for my email address. I emailed the student, who is Dutch, and found out that he was in his final year at the University of Amsterdam and was working on his senior research project, which happens to be very similar to my research topic but in the field of anthropology. Happy to have found someone interested in this topic (birth rituals, etc.), I quickly forwarded on my senior comps. A couple of weeks later he writes back a short email saying he is attaching his senior project and that it’s in Dutch but maybe I’ll understand. At first I thought, oh, no, no communication whatsoever! But then I read the documents and found out that Dutch really isn’t that far off from English, and more importantly that he had quoted my paper a couple of times! Now, as if you all reading my emails and this website wasn’t enough to convince me of my fame, this really goes over the top, don’t you think? I guess most importantly, not having anything to do with quoting me, it seems from what I can tell to be a good research paper. I have to figure out how to translate it completely, someday.
“Twee belangrijke werken die specifiek op dit onderwerp ingaan zijn de scripties ‘Vrouwen van Kathajor’ van Anneke Donker en ‘Childbirth in Samsara’ van Alani Price. Anneke Donker deed in 1998 haar veldwerk in Nepal, en Alani Price verricht op dit moment haar onderzoek naar geboorterituelen in Nepal” (van de Reep, 2005). I’m not able to reference this entirely properly but will try if you ask for it. This means something like, 'two works that I reference etcetc, and Alani who is at this moment doing her fieldwork on birth rituals in Nepal.' The other parts are actual quotes from my paper. Which I can send to you also if you like, though it is rather long. If you’re interested in hearing specifically about what I am researching here, though now of course in the midst of it this has changed a bit, I can send the two page proposal I wrote for my application to this grant.