But this one goes to eleven...

1
One thing that really bugs the Nepali folk is the way tourists make promises they don't keep.

For example, a Nepali guide told me a Dutch guy came for a trek with an obvious shortage of money. The Nepali, who makes perhaps $240 US a year, lent the guy a few thousand rupees just so he could finish the trek and get back to Kathmandu. The Dutch guy promised to deposit the money into the Nepali's bank account, but he never did it.

The Nepali sometimes give you their song and dance about how squalid their conditions are; it's a real sad situation should it affect your mind in the wrong way. But what is worse is when in a fleeting moment, a tourist makes some promise to help out the Nepali with some sort of aid or sponsorship, and doesn't follow through. That gal Annie I trekked with, the pseudo-psychologist who eventually vanished along the way, told me she promised to give $270 to a Nepali girl so she could go to school. Naturally, Annie disappeared, leaving this girl not only in her state of squalor, but heartbroken.

We do this sort of thing all the time: we say we will be at such and such a place at such and such a time, but then don't bother to show up...and often without telling the person we are to meet the plan is off. Or, if you live in Canada, there is this thing in retail shops where the price is listed at such and such a price, but when you get to the cash and pay, it's at least 15% more expensive than advertised. So this becomes a regular pattern of behaviour...we say one thing, but really don't mean it.

We make promises to do things in a split second, without too much reflection (hmm... more like mindfulness actually), with all the gusto and sincerity that fits that split second, but when we are out of the situation, often times that promise becomes just some lost words we just say to others to placate them for the moment.

Sure there are unscrupable Nepalis, but the way they talk to each other, they mean it in full sincerity. One's word is one's word: it's an oath to fulfill.

My father used to boast in the old days a mere handshake was as good as any contract some corporate lawyer gets far too much money for to ensure everyone involved in business gets their fair share. Even today, the few Jewish diamond merchants who deal directly with De Beers in South Africa only use a handshake to close a deal worth several millions of dollars.

What's my point? Well, we ought to be a little more mindful when we speak, that what we say is a contract of sorts, and try to uphold it as best we can. It maybe a virtue, but like the Buddha says, all we can do is try our best. If we don't try, then most certainly there will be a lot of loose jabber.

2
Well, since I am fond of jabbering, here's the story of Caleb, the American.

In Robertson Davies' book entitled "Fifth Business" (1970), a book by the way you ought to read, for it is delighful and stays with you forever, coming back at you in the oddest moments of reflection, there is a character in it called Dunstable Ramsey, "Dunny" for short, and this character is a know-it-all insufferable prick. Well, Davies doesn't say those words, but refers to Dunny as being a "polymath". It can get downright annoying in a room with such folks because, well, they know everything about everything, leaving very little air in the room for you to breathe, let along speak with.

So, we come to Caleb, who I surmised was either a United States Postal Services employee, a outdoorsy Arizonian guide, a rock 'n' roll roadie, or perhaps independently wealthy (or had rich parents) and got to breeze around on long holidays to all parts of the world. He had a long grey ponytail and a bald pate. It was very hard to guess his age, as he had a youthful earnestness in his grey eyes, but he knew far too much garbled jibber to be too young to know this type of stuff.

Up at the end of the Langtang valley (3,400m), two German boys, a Dutch guy, and I curled up around the wood stove (which reminded me of when I was a kid thawing my frozen feet in the shack after playing ice hockey after school at the outdoor rink in minus 20c conditions--hey--that's what Canadian kids used to do for fun, don't you know?) and in walked Caleb.

The tranquillity after a morning of trekking was broken with Caleb's tempting gambits:
"I bet the yaks up the valley are about 25% cows."

"Back in the States, I can get an SLR digital camera for way better prices than in Hong Kong."

"You know what these Neplalis should do: set up a co-op and fix all the lodge prices."

"My folks bought me a Eurail pass that you can only buy in the States for fourteen hundred bucks, which might seem like a lot, but actually isn't when you think about it. Anyway, I got to know a lot about the rail system in Europe that way."

"You need gaiters to go further up the valley."

"That British guy Edmund Hillary didn't get to the top of Everest first."

And on and on it went. Name a topic, and he could spew some specious factoid out (I hope you caught the many errors in the above quotations). Actually, you didn't even have to name a topic--he'd just spew this type of stuff out with no prompting at all.

When he took a turn at being the Japan expert, and was saying things that might have been valid in the Crysthanthemum hand-job Edwin O. Reischauer pawned on the world about Japan, but held no validity at all in the here and now, I had to speak up.

"You know, the Japanese are the hardest working people in the world," he chimed.

"No, they are not", I said, "Americans are in fact. Actually, I would say, from experience, the Japanese do put in a lot of TIME into something, but that doesn't mean they work hard. Where I lived in Kinshicho in Tokyo, for two years every night a crew of eight guys would come dig a hole in the street below my apartment, and I would watch them. One guy dug the hole, the other guys just peered into it, and then they all just sat there all night long doing nothing. At about five in the morning, they would apply a new layer of asphalt, and then leave beore morning traffic.

"Kids get into university not so much for how HARD they work, rather they gauge success by how little SLEEP one gets. So if you get four hours of sleep a night, you have a good chance of getting n to university...thereis not much mention of what they do while awake, however."

"Dude," Caleb protested, "You are a little too close to the sun. You need some prespective. Japanese middle management is the most efficient work force in the world."

"Yeah," I said, "Maybe in the 80s. Since the bubble broke in the 90s, middle management, especially in large corporations, including the banking industry, has been the problem. You see some of those wonders of middle management now unemployed by the hundreds living in a blue tarp under the roadway near Takadanobaba (Tokyo), or Fushimi (Nagoya), and any park in any major city has a few of these guys living in squalor."

Caleb refused to believe it. It was like he read some textbook somewhere of how it was SUPPOSED to be in Japan, but when faced with the living current evidence, it simply didn't register.

Changing the subject, he decided to attack Canada for its immigration policy, which he felt allowed terroists into America.

"Yeah, Canada has a very slack immigration policy."

"No," I protested, "as a sovereign country, Canada has its own legislative, judiciary, and executive parliamentary system of government, and as such is entitled to run its affairs freely, as a democratic constitutional monarchy, as it sees fit. Besides, it is probably harder to immigrate to Canada than to the United States. For example, the Tibetan family I live with in Kathmandu are emigrating to New York City at the end of the month. They were sponsored by some people there; however, when they applied to go to Canada, they were refused entry. In fact, they cannot go to Canada from the United States until they get their US green card, and then have to wait a further five years before being allowed to even go to Canada as tourists.

Besides, if you are trying to lay some lame blame for the 911 thing on Canada, save your breath. The Arab guys were trained in Florida to fly airplanes. Enough said."

Again, none of this really registered. It was like his knowledge came to the end of the road there was nowhere to move, except just ignore it. It sort of reminded me of that scene in the film "Spinal Tap", where Nigell Tufnell (Chris Guest) boasts about his guitar amp that went to eleven, to which Marty De Burghy (Rob Reiner) reasoned why not just have it go to ten. Tufnell has a moment of blank time, then reasserts, "But this one goes to eleven."

Anyway, Caleb eventually left us, the Germans, the Dutch, and I, and peace on earth was restored.