Rainy nights

I love these rainy nights, sitting in my room by the window and listening to the rain pour down, and feeling so cut off from the world, so alone and so free, where nothing else really troubled me any more. The rain slowing to a drizzle, accompanied, at this time, 3:30 in the a.m., by the sound of crickets (i know, its supposed to be a garden campus - we even have funny looking white birds and the occasional wild boar/pangolin), and the ****ing birds honking at regular intervals. Ok, actually, its quite therepeutic, when i have tomorrow off and am just languidly looking through my notes - Barthes' semiology - while reading my borrowed copy of the Da Vinci Code. Ignoring the fact that i'm actually ashamed to be caught reading it now (a bit outdated, i know, and hypocritical considering i thought it was just another mystery novel when it first hit the shelves (and i never read mystery) and that i cannot put it down now), i actually cant tell now, after a grand 4 hours of doing both at the same time, that which belongs to which. For example - did Barthes analyse the sacred feminine in modern myths or was Langdon the one who.... And the worst bit yet - I quoted Jacques Sauniere for some semiotic theory. This is looking very bad...

I hence resolve to finish reading the book before going back to my work. There, how's that for willpower and determination.

Going to get my tickets for Vietnam tomorrow - same old place, and i can feel the excitement building in me again. It's gonna be another trip, another journey, and one that i have planned to do almost 2 years ago, as a high school kid poring over maps and guidebooks borrowed from the library.

Decided to push this trip to the 4th of December - so i hopefully get to do my registration exercise first (fingers crossed - and don't get me started on why can't they give us the specific dates earlier), this time older and wiser after the ambulance incident at Chitrasali. Definitely not one i would forget. And probably the best reminder ever to - check your email regularly! and pray hard in a town that has frequent, guaranteed power outtages and crawling internet. And that is in the middle of nowhere on the sprawling Terai plains of Nepal. Lovely.

The rain outside, and the solitude and quiet i so enjoy in the early hours of the morning actually stirs memories of Nepal. Kathmandu, where in the evenings, the skies would just open, deluging Thamel and turning it into a foggy sea of rain and misted lights from the cars and neon signs of bars, restaurants and bakeries.

I also think of Pokhara, sitting in the cosy, hole-in-the-wall Tibetan kitchen eating momos with soup while it rained heavily outside, a torrential downpour that drew us all to under the leaking wooden awning to gaze out in wonder at the pouring skies and the gushing river the streets have become, the herd of buffaloes wading down the street across the tiny shopfront making it all the more surreal and unbelievable. It was my third day in Nepal, and if i could possibly fall more in love with her than i already was, i would, i had.