Found this amusing video.
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'Slumdog Millionaire' dashes Nepal director's hope
This year's wonder film "Slumdog Millionaire," which won eight Oscars and reopened the world's eyes to the talent blooming in Bollywood, has however come as a blow to someone in Nepal.
A filmmaker from the region has had to put off his upcoming project for fear of unfair comparisons to the rags-to-riches story.
"It came as a shock to me," says Nepali director Ravi Arryal, whose new release "Swikar" (Acceptance) is creating ripples in the Himalayan republic for its realistic treatment.
The overwhelming success of "Slumdog Millionaire," the engrossing tale about a young boy who overcomes poverty and danger to win a reality TV show and his lost love as well, has forced Arryal to shelve his upcoming film, which bears an eerie resemblance to the smash hit by British filmaker Danny Boyle.
"I was putting finishing touches to my new script," 40-year-old Arryal says ruefully. "It is about two village children, whose mother dies and whose father abandons them to go to the Gulf, like so many Nepali workers do every year.
"The story of how the brother and sister survive on the streets will now have to be canned because it looks like an echo of 'Slumdog Millionaire'."
Arryal's recent film "Swikar," a tale about marriage between two communities - one of which is regarded as untouchable, is receiving rave reviews in Nepal due to the absence of the formula song and dance and fight sequences that drive most commercial Nepali films and its close resemblance to life in Nepal.
The Nepali director, whose debut film "Purnima" six years ago also had a child protagonist, was seeking to start work on the tale of two street children when by chance, he showed his script to a European friend.
"My friend gave it back to me saying, 'Have you seen 'Slumdog Millionaire'? Your story is just like it'," Arryal says.
The stupefied director then went to watch the film for himself and came back shell-shocked.
"Even my opening scene is similar," he says. "It starts with police chasing the children."
Now Arryal has decided to can the story till the furore and applause over Danny Boyle's film dies down.
"I will think of taking up my script may be a couple of years later when the memory of the film has faded and there won't be comparisons," he says. "But meanwhile, I am happy at the success of 'Slumdog Millionaire'."
In the 1990s, Arryal lived in Mumbai for two years when he worked as an assistant to Bollywood directors, learning the ropes.
"'Slumdog Millionaire' has brought out the plus point of Mumbai," he says. "Portraying stark reality and yet sending out a message of hope."
Source: The Hindu, 03/01/2009
Banged Up Abroad Nepal
In 1992 Piers Hernu was living the fast-paced and wealthy lifestyle of a city trader. The money was good, but the stress sent Piers into a year-long bout of clinical depression. Piers decided to go travelling around South-East Asia, and tasted the escapism he wanted. “It had all the elements of a sort of dream-like existence for a young man who wanted to get stuck into a few adventures,” says Piers. “And that’s what I ended up doing.”
After six months, Piers arrived in Hong Kong to find work. He became friends with Oz, an Australian who was staying in the hostel, and Rhett, a loud, brash American who said that he supplemented his own income with a little goldsmuggling into Nepal and wondered if they wanted in. It paid well, but sounded risky.
However, the pair’s doubts faded when Rhett returned from a mysterious weekend with $2,000 in cash. The prospect of what sounded like easy money was too tempting to resist, and they agreed to accompany Rhett and a fourth man, Eric, on the next run to Nepal.
Rhett took everyone to meet two Nepalese gangsters in Chungking Mansions, a notorious tower block where, says Piers, “dodgy deals could be done and no questions would be asked.” They were shown a multi-pocketed denim waistcoat containing $400,000 in gold bars – weighing over 56 pounds. The four men were to wear these on a flight to Kathmandu, where they would easily get past paid-off customs officials and hand over the gold. Piers wavered, but ultimately agreed. “It became me wanting to prove that I could do something as dangerous and as stupid as that,” he explains.
On the day, Piers, Rhett, Oz and Eric got through check-in and met their contact. Each was fitted with a gold-filled waistcoat – which felt a lot heavier this time round. The four men were actually carrying nearly 250 pounds of gold between them, worth $1.6 million.
A nasty surprise was waiting at Kathmandu: the paid-off customs official was not there. The foursome panicked, but the replacement official still let Rhett and Oz through. Suddenly, Eric and Piers were apprehended, tested with a metal detector and shoved into a side room. Rhett and Oz were then dragged in by armed police, and the huge haul of gold removed from their pockets.
The men were made to sign documents in Nepalese before being handcuffed and driven to a prison. They hoped that they were merely being held before deportation – but a hearing the next day at the airport’s ‘Customs Court’ saw them sentenced to four years each. With their only other option to pay the value of the gold as a fine, Piers and his shell-shocked friends were taken to jail to begin serving their sentence.
A few days later, an American visited Rhett and told him that he knew people who could help – they were bound to be released soon. But as the days turned into months, it became clear that they were being strung along. It then emerged that they had now passed the three-month deadline to appeal their sentence – and faced a further three and a half years in prison.
Piers and his friends now had to explore other ways of getting out – and their chance came when Piers enlisted the help of Tony, his uncle. Tony discovered that the King pardoned certain prisoners every year on his birthday, and the four men set about writing letters in the hopes of being considered. And in the meantime, Tony’s digging uncovered the sinister reason why the operation had gone so badly wrong –it was a set-up.
Here is the documentary.
The other parts are dis-embedable.. So navigate from youtube to watch the other parts. It's quite easy,
Read More...
After six months, Piers arrived in Hong Kong to find work. He became friends with Oz, an Australian who was staying in the hostel, and Rhett, a loud, brash American who said that he supplemented his own income with a little goldsmuggling into Nepal and wondered if they wanted in. It paid well, but sounded risky.
However, the pair’s doubts faded when Rhett returned from a mysterious weekend with $2,000 in cash. The prospect of what sounded like easy money was too tempting to resist, and they agreed to accompany Rhett and a fourth man, Eric, on the next run to Nepal.
Rhett took everyone to meet two Nepalese gangsters in Chungking Mansions, a notorious tower block where, says Piers, “dodgy deals could be done and no questions would be asked.” They were shown a multi-pocketed denim waistcoat containing $400,000 in gold bars – weighing over 56 pounds. The four men were to wear these on a flight to Kathmandu, where they would easily get past paid-off customs officials and hand over the gold. Piers wavered, but ultimately agreed. “It became me wanting to prove that I could do something as dangerous and as stupid as that,” he explains.
On the day, Piers, Rhett, Oz and Eric got through check-in and met their contact. Each was fitted with a gold-filled waistcoat – which felt a lot heavier this time round. The four men were actually carrying nearly 250 pounds of gold between them, worth $1.6 million.
A nasty surprise was waiting at Kathmandu: the paid-off customs official was not there. The foursome panicked, but the replacement official still let Rhett and Oz through. Suddenly, Eric and Piers were apprehended, tested with a metal detector and shoved into a side room. Rhett and Oz were then dragged in by armed police, and the huge haul of gold removed from their pockets.
The men were made to sign documents in Nepalese before being handcuffed and driven to a prison. They hoped that they were merely being held before deportation – but a hearing the next day at the airport’s ‘Customs Court’ saw them sentenced to four years each. With their only other option to pay the value of the gold as a fine, Piers and his shell-shocked friends were taken to jail to begin serving their sentence.
A few days later, an American visited Rhett and told him that he knew people who could help – they were bound to be released soon. But as the days turned into months, it became clear that they were being strung along. It then emerged that they had now passed the three-month deadline to appeal their sentence – and faced a further three and a half years in prison.
Piers and his friends now had to explore other ways of getting out – and their chance came when Piers enlisted the help of Tony, his uncle. Tony discovered that the King pardoned certain prisoners every year on his birthday, and the four men set about writing letters in the hopes of being considered. And in the meantime, Tony’s digging uncovered the sinister reason why the operation had gone so badly wrong –it was a set-up.
Here is the documentary.
The other parts are dis-embedable.. So navigate from youtube to watch the other parts. It's quite easy,
READ Nepal
A short documentary about Read Nepal, a non-profit that has been establishing libraries in different parts of Nepal. Click here to visit their website.
Read More...
Narayanhiti Palace Opens for Public
Above video was by Nepalnews, below it's from some Indian news organization.
Here is a video by a reporter from BBC that was embed-disabled. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6Yie5W19ak
2012 - THE MAYAN FINAL AGE
2012 is sometimes claimed to be a great year of spiritual transformation or apocalypse. Many interpret the completion of the thirteenth B'ak'tun cycle in the Long Count of the Maya calendar (which occurs on December 21) to mean there will be a major change in world order. The Mayan civilization was and is the most advanced in relation to time-science knowledge. Their main calendar is the most accurate on the planet. It has never erred. They actually have 22 calendars in total, covering the many timing cycles in the Universe and Solar System.
In Mayan mythology each Long Count cycle is a world age in which the gods attempt to create pious and subservient creatures. The First Age began with the creation of the Earth, and it had upon it vegetation and living beings. Unfortunately, because they lacked speech, the birds and animals were unable to pay homage to the gods and were destroyed. In the Second and Third Ages the gods created humans of mud and then wood, but these also failed to please and were wiped out. We are currently in the Fourth and Final Age, the age of the modern, fully functional human. Is it possible that these Ages referred to evolutionary change? What might occur when the current age finishes on December 21, 2012?
The tzolkin calendar is said to spring from the Sacred Tree. The Sacred Tree is at the center of Mayan Creation Myths. Lord (Ahau) Pacal by way of divine kingship, is equated with the sun, and he is portrayed "entering" the Sacred Tree. The day the sun conjuncts with the crossing point of ecliptic and Milky Way would be an important date. In the pre-dawn skies of this date, the Milky Way would be seen to arch overhead from the region of Polaris (Heart of Sky) and would point right at where the sun rises. This is the only date when the Sun/Lord could jump from the ecliptic track and travel the Milky Way up and around the vault of heaven to the region of Polaris, there to enter the "Heart of Sky." 1300 years ago Polaris was much less an exact "Pole Star" than it is now. It wasn't a Pole Star that the Maya mythologized in this regard, it was the unmarked polar "dark region" symbolizing death and the underworld around which everything was observed to revolve. Life revolves around death - a characteristically Mayan belief. These dates change with precession.
The Maya were adept skywatchers. Their Classic Period is thought to have lasted from 200 A.D. to 900 A.D., but recent archaeological findings are pushing back the dawn of Mayan civilization. Large ruin sites indicating high culture with distinctly Mayan antecedents are being found in the jungles of Guatemala. Before this, the Olmec civilization flourished and developed the sacred count of 260 days known as the tzolkin. The early Maya adopted two different time keeping systems, the Short Count and the Long Count. The Short Count derives from combining the tzolkin cycle with the solar year and the Venus cycle of 584 days. In this way, short periods of 13, 52 and 104 years are generated. The Long Count system is somewhat more abstract, yet is also related to certain astronomical cycles. It is based upon nested cycles of days multiplied at each level by that key Mayan number, twenty:
Number of Days / Term
1 / Kin (day)
20 / Uinal
360 / Tun
7200 / Katun
144000 / Baktun
Notice that the only exception to multiplying by twenty is at the tun level, where the uinal period is instead multiplied by 18 to make the 360-day tun. The Maya employed this counting system to track an unbroken sequence of days from the time it was inaugurated. We find Long Count dates in the archaeological record beginning with the baktun place value and separated by dots. For example: 6.19.19.0.0 equals 6 baktuns, 19 katuns, 19 tuns, 0 uinals and 0 days. Each baktun has 144000 days, each katun has 7200 days, and so on. If we add up all the values we find that 6.19.19.0.0 indicates a total of 1007640 days have elapsed since the Zero Date of 0.0.0.0.0. The much discussed 13-baktun cycle is completed 1872000 days (13 baktuns) after 0.0.0.0.0. This period of time is the so called Mayan Great Cycle of the Long Count and equals 5125.36 years.
The point of interest for these early astronomers seems to have been the projected end date in 2012 A.D., rather than the beginning date in 3114 B.C. Having determined the end date in 2012, and calling it 13.0.0.0.0, they proclaimed themselves to be living in the 6th baktun of the Great Cycle. The later Maya certainly attributed much mythological significance to the beginning date, relating it to the birth of their deities, but it now seems certain that the placement of the Long Count hinges upon its calculated end point. Why did early Mesoamerican skywatchers pick a date some 2300 years into the future and, in fact, how did they pinpoint an accurate winter solstice? For some reason, the ancient New World astronomers were tracking precession.
The precession of the equinoxes, also known as the Platonic Year, is caused by the slow wobbling of the earth's polar axis. Right now this axis roughly points to Polaris, the "Pole Star," but this changes slowly over long periods of time. The earth's wobble causes the position of the seasonal quarters to slowly precess against the background of stars. For example, right now, the winter solstice position is in the constellation of Sagittarius. But 2000 years ago it was in Capricorn. Since then, it has precessed backward almost one full sign. It is generally thought that the Greek astronomer Hipparchus was the first to discover precession around 128 B.C. Yet scholarship indicates that more ancient Old World cultures such as the Egyptians and Babylonians also knew about the precession.
Even cultures with simple horizon astronomy would notice the slow shifting of the heavens. They might erect monoliths to sight the horizon position of the dawning winter solstice sun. This position in relation to background stars could be accurately preserved in wisdom teachings. Precession will change this position at the rate of 1 degree every 72 years, within the relatively short time of 100 years or so, a noticeable change will have occurred. The point of this is simple. To early cultures attuned to the subtle movements of the sky, precession would not have been hard to notice.
The Mayan are not the only ones that assign special significance to the year 2012. The following do too. Coincidence?
The Bible Code claims that, according to certain algorithms of the Bible code, a meteor, asteroid or comet will collide with the Earth.
The Nostradamus Code speaks of a series of natural disasters caused by a comet (possibly as above) which will allow the third anti-christ to disperse his troops around the globe under the guise of aid in preparation for a possible nuclear war, although in the strictest sense it is unspecific as to nuclear war or some other natural or man caused distraction.
The Orion Prophecy claims that the Earth's magnetic field will reverse.
2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl theorizes a possible global awakening to psychic connection by the year 2012, creating a Noosphere.
McKenna's mathematical novelty theory suggests a point of singularity in which a great number of things could happen, including "hyperspatial breakthrough", planetesimal impact, alien contact, historical metamorphosis, metamorphosis of natural law, solar explosion, quasar ignition at the galactic core, or nothing.
The Prophecy of the Popes, attributed to Saint Malachy, speculated that Pope Benedict XVI would reign during the beginning of the tribulation of which Jesus spoke, and sometime later a future pope described in the prophecy as "Peter the Roman", the last in this prophetic list, would appear, bringing as a result the destruction of the city of Rome and the Last Judgment.
Many new age spiritualists and philosophers believe humankind will enter an age of enlightenment in 2012. There are a range of varying, generally positive, beliefs shared by a subset of spiritualists from the mundane to exceptional,including a positive social shift and age of peace, mankind becoming psychic and connected by a collective, and/or an evolution of the human race into non-corporeal beings made of "spiritual" energy, or light energy. An alternative view is that we are already thought-forms and will be realizing our true selves in this year.
Some alien-enthusiasts, along with some new-agers, believe 2012 to correspond approximately with the return of alien "watchers" or "caretakers" who might have helped the first human civilizations with developing their technology and may have been waiting for us to reach a higher level of technological and/or social advancement. Beliefs range from the extra-terrestrials having benevolent purposes -- such as to help human society evolve -- to malevolent purposes -- such as enslavement of mankind and/or manipulation.
The Nepalese ascetic Ram Bahadur Bomjon the so called buddha boy reportedly told his followers that he will return around 2012.
http://slimdave420.blogspot.com/2007/03/2012-mayan-final-age.html
Read More...
In Mayan mythology each Long Count cycle is a world age in which the gods attempt to create pious and subservient creatures. The First Age began with the creation of the Earth, and it had upon it vegetation and living beings. Unfortunately, because they lacked speech, the birds and animals were unable to pay homage to the gods and were destroyed. In the Second and Third Ages the gods created humans of mud and then wood, but these also failed to please and were wiped out. We are currently in the Fourth and Final Age, the age of the modern, fully functional human. Is it possible that these Ages referred to evolutionary change? What might occur when the current age finishes on December 21, 2012?
The tzolkin calendar is said to spring from the Sacred Tree. The Sacred Tree is at the center of Mayan Creation Myths. Lord (Ahau) Pacal by way of divine kingship, is equated with the sun, and he is portrayed "entering" the Sacred Tree. The day the sun conjuncts with the crossing point of ecliptic and Milky Way would be an important date. In the pre-dawn skies of this date, the Milky Way would be seen to arch overhead from the region of Polaris (Heart of Sky) and would point right at where the sun rises. This is the only date when the Sun/Lord could jump from the ecliptic track and travel the Milky Way up and around the vault of heaven to the region of Polaris, there to enter the "Heart of Sky." 1300 years ago Polaris was much less an exact "Pole Star" than it is now. It wasn't a Pole Star that the Maya mythologized in this regard, it was the unmarked polar "dark region" symbolizing death and the underworld around which everything was observed to revolve. Life revolves around death - a characteristically Mayan belief. These dates change with precession.
The Maya were adept skywatchers. Their Classic Period is thought to have lasted from 200 A.D. to 900 A.D., but recent archaeological findings are pushing back the dawn of Mayan civilization. Large ruin sites indicating high culture with distinctly Mayan antecedents are being found in the jungles of Guatemala. Before this, the Olmec civilization flourished and developed the sacred count of 260 days known as the tzolkin. The early Maya adopted two different time keeping systems, the Short Count and the Long Count. The Short Count derives from combining the tzolkin cycle with the solar year and the Venus cycle of 584 days. In this way, short periods of 13, 52 and 104 years are generated. The Long Count system is somewhat more abstract, yet is also related to certain astronomical cycles. It is based upon nested cycles of days multiplied at each level by that key Mayan number, twenty:
Number of Days / Term
1 / Kin (day)
20 / Uinal
360 / Tun
7200 / Katun
144000 / Baktun
Notice that the only exception to multiplying by twenty is at the tun level, where the uinal period is instead multiplied by 18 to make the 360-day tun. The Maya employed this counting system to track an unbroken sequence of days from the time it was inaugurated. We find Long Count dates in the archaeological record beginning with the baktun place value and separated by dots. For example: 6.19.19.0.0 equals 6 baktuns, 19 katuns, 19 tuns, 0 uinals and 0 days. Each baktun has 144000 days, each katun has 7200 days, and so on. If we add up all the values we find that 6.19.19.0.0 indicates a total of 1007640 days have elapsed since the Zero Date of 0.0.0.0.0. The much discussed 13-baktun cycle is completed 1872000 days (13 baktuns) after 0.0.0.0.0. This period of time is the so called Mayan Great Cycle of the Long Count and equals 5125.36 years.
The point of interest for these early astronomers seems to have been the projected end date in 2012 A.D., rather than the beginning date in 3114 B.C. Having determined the end date in 2012, and calling it 13.0.0.0.0, they proclaimed themselves to be living in the 6th baktun of the Great Cycle. The later Maya certainly attributed much mythological significance to the beginning date, relating it to the birth of their deities, but it now seems certain that the placement of the Long Count hinges upon its calculated end point. Why did early Mesoamerican skywatchers pick a date some 2300 years into the future and, in fact, how did they pinpoint an accurate winter solstice? For some reason, the ancient New World astronomers were tracking precession.
The precession of the equinoxes, also known as the Platonic Year, is caused by the slow wobbling of the earth's polar axis. Right now this axis roughly points to Polaris, the "Pole Star," but this changes slowly over long periods of time. The earth's wobble causes the position of the seasonal quarters to slowly precess against the background of stars. For example, right now, the winter solstice position is in the constellation of Sagittarius. But 2000 years ago it was in Capricorn. Since then, it has precessed backward almost one full sign. It is generally thought that the Greek astronomer Hipparchus was the first to discover precession around 128 B.C. Yet scholarship indicates that more ancient Old World cultures such as the Egyptians and Babylonians also knew about the precession.
Even cultures with simple horizon astronomy would notice the slow shifting of the heavens. They might erect monoliths to sight the horizon position of the dawning winter solstice sun. This position in relation to background stars could be accurately preserved in wisdom teachings. Precession will change this position at the rate of 1 degree every 72 years, within the relatively short time of 100 years or so, a noticeable change will have occurred. The point of this is simple. To early cultures attuned to the subtle movements of the sky, precession would not have been hard to notice.
The Mayan are not the only ones that assign special significance to the year 2012. The following do too. Coincidence?
The Bible Code claims that, according to certain algorithms of the Bible code, a meteor, asteroid or comet will collide with the Earth.
The Nostradamus Code speaks of a series of natural disasters caused by a comet (possibly as above) which will allow the third anti-christ to disperse his troops around the globe under the guise of aid in preparation for a possible nuclear war, although in the strictest sense it is unspecific as to nuclear war or some other natural or man caused distraction.
The Orion Prophecy claims that the Earth's magnetic field will reverse.
2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl theorizes a possible global awakening to psychic connection by the year 2012, creating a Noosphere.
McKenna's mathematical novelty theory suggests a point of singularity in which a great number of things could happen, including "hyperspatial breakthrough", planetesimal impact, alien contact, historical metamorphosis, metamorphosis of natural law, solar explosion, quasar ignition at the galactic core, or nothing.
The Prophecy of the Popes, attributed to Saint Malachy, speculated that Pope Benedict XVI would reign during the beginning of the tribulation of which Jesus spoke, and sometime later a future pope described in the prophecy as "Peter the Roman", the last in this prophetic list, would appear, bringing as a result the destruction of the city of Rome and the Last Judgment.
Many new age spiritualists and philosophers believe humankind will enter an age of enlightenment in 2012. There are a range of varying, generally positive, beliefs shared by a subset of spiritualists from the mundane to exceptional,including a positive social shift and age of peace, mankind becoming psychic and connected by a collective, and/or an evolution of the human race into non-corporeal beings made of "spiritual" energy, or light energy. An alternative view is that we are already thought-forms and will be realizing our true selves in this year.
Some alien-enthusiasts, along with some new-agers, believe 2012 to correspond approximately with the return of alien "watchers" or "caretakers" who might have helped the first human civilizations with developing their technology and may have been waiting for us to reach a higher level of technological and/or social advancement. Beliefs range from the extra-terrestrials having benevolent purposes -- such as to help human society evolve -- to malevolent purposes -- such as enslavement of mankind and/or manipulation.
The Nepalese ascetic Ram Bahadur Bomjon the so called buddha boy reportedly told his followers that he will return around 2012.
http://slimdave420.blogspot.com/2007/03/2012-mayan-final-age.html
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