An Esperanto-language blog from Nepal

Bona esperanta blogo estas ‘Razeno blogas Esperante.’ La aŭtoro estas Razen Manandhar, el Katmando, Nepalo.
OK, maybe you’d rather I blog in English?

Let me tell you the story of Razen Manandhar from Kathmandu, Nepal. He is a blogger— and he blogs in the international language, Esperanto. I have followed his blog, off and on, for years. While reviving my own Esperanto blog, I decided to check on his. He’s still active. So on my ‘kaj la hundo’ blog in Esperanto, I wrote about his blog. And since I’m being lazy today but still wanted to post in THIS blog, I decided to cheat a bit and blog about the same thing.

Here is my blog post for today from ‘kaj la hundo.’

A good blog in Esperanto is ‘Razeno blogas Esperante.’ The author is Razen Manandhar from Kathmandu, Nepal.

Razeno says:

“Welcome to my blog. In my Esperanto-blog, I show to the world that our international language indeed lives today, and you can find it also in Nepal. You will find short articles about Nepal, its culture, society and my personal life. And I without fail give my personal opinion about the Esperanto-movement in my country.

 

And here is the Esperanto version, in case you are interested:

Bona esperanta blogo estas ‘Razeno blogas Esperante.’ La aŭtoro estas Razen Manandhar, el Katmando, Nepalo.

Razeno diris:

“Bonvenon al mia blogejo. Per mia Esperanto-blogo, mi montras al la mondo ke nia internacia lingvo ja vivas hodiaŭ, kaj ĝi troviĝas ankaŭen Nepalo. Vi trovos artikoletojn pri Nepalo, tiea kulturo, socio kaj mia persona vivo. Kaj mi nepre donas mian personan opinion pri Esperanto-movado en mia lando.”

The cool thing about Esperanto is that you can get in contact with people from distant countries on a more equal level. Razen Manandhar speaks English, and has an English blog somewhere or other. But if I only communicated with him in English, he would be having to speak to me in MY language— an unequal relationship. But when we are both trying to communicate in Esperanto, we have BOTH laid aside our native language and learned another language, Esperanto, so we would be able to communicate with one another.

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Daily Writing Habit:

After having three good days of doing my daily 8-minute timed writing session (and more), I slipped up yesterday. Got all caught up in the IWSG blog hop, and also in tending my Esperanto blog and Facebook page, and did not get to my writing session at ALL.

So today, I did my timed writing session FIRST. I only did 2 eight-minute sessions, but it’s a start and I hope to do more later today.

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Cats:

When I put the kittens out on the porch so I could get things done, I was pleased to note that kitten Alvin went out on his own for the very first time. I guess he’s having fun playing on the porch and in the yard like a big kitty.

IWSG: Reviving my 2006 blog in Esperanto

This is a post in the Insecure Writer’s Support Group blog hop. Join at: http://www.insecurewriterssupportgroup.com/p/iwsg-sign-up.html

My latest ploy to avoid having enough time to work on my WIP is reviving my oldest blog— one from 2006. At that time, my main blog was called ‘Moreover the dog went with them’, after a line from the Biblical book of Tobit. (If you don’t have Tobit in your Bible, you need a better Bible. Tobit was in the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Bible Jesus and his disciples used.)

In addition to Moreover, I started a second blog in Esperanto, the international language. It’s called ‘kaj la hundo iris kun ili’, which is the Biblical phrase from the Esperanto Bible.

Esperanto Bible

I have not posted in ‘kaj la hundo’ in years, but lately I decided to start again. The reason is that I am working on a science fiction novel in which Esperanto is the common language of the Terran Empire and also used as an intercommunication language by aliens, because it’s such an easy language to learn. Using Esperanto as a futuristic language used to be far more common in science fiction, but today’s science fiction writers are convinced that difficult English will be the One True Terran Language in the future. Not very logical, but…..

My revival of the ‘kaj la hundo’ blog is currently concerned with providing links to Esperanto learning material for English speakers. Here is the link, in case you want to have a look: http://kajlahundo.blogspot.com/  I welcome comments on any of the posts there in any language. Well, OK, if you are going to comment in Chinese or Swahili I won’t understand it a bit, but I welcome the comments anyway. 😉

I especially hope to find readers for that blog interested in learning a little Esperanto. Studies show that Esperanto can be learned in 1/10th the time it would take to learn another European language. So it’s a quick way to get a second language into your brain.

More recently I started a Facebook page in Esperanto called ‘La Sankta Biblio en Esperanto.’ As you may have guessed, it’s about the Bible. I try to regularly post verses or groups of verses from the Bible in Esperanto. I usually give the English as well, and for single verses a few other languages. I use the web page Jesus Army Multilingual Bible to help find the verses in different languages. Here is the link to La Sankta Biblio en Esperanto: https://www.facebook.com/sanktabiblio/

I’d really like it if language geeks and Bible geeks would ‘like’ that Facebook page and share it with their friends. Thanks!

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Kitten Picture of the Day

My cat Julianne— the orange one— got pregnant this spring and had to have an emergency caesarian. All of her kittens died. During the grief period Julianne needed to cuddle a kitten, so I handed her the youngest cat we had— seven month old Norbert (who is a girl kitty.)

Julianne has got over losing her kittens, and she’s grown a lot. She was so tiny at two years old the vet thought she was a pregnant kitten. But now she’s almost as big as her brother and kitten-daddy Derek. Perhaps being neutered let her grow more.IWSG

You don’t need anyone’s permission to write

Maybe it’s an artifact from the years of collectivist schooling most of us endured, where we had to do everything as a part of a group. Maybe we are just afraid to do something as awesome as becoming a writer without getting permission. But too many of us are convinced we have to get our parents, children, husband/wife/living-in-sin partner, boss, co-workers, friends/Facebook friends on board before we dare begin serious writing work.

But you don’t need to do that. Do you feel you need to ask permission before you read a good book, have a daily devotional time, keep a diary, or clean your living space? No. You just take it for granted there are some things you are just allowed to do, without consulting anyone. Writing should be like that.

Sometimes there are good reasons NOT to get certain people ‘on board’ with your aspiring-writer persona. For example, suppose your mother has a habit of discouraging you in everything you try to do, and after years of practice she is good at crushing your spirit. Do you need to tell your mom about your writing? No, why would you? At least, you can wait until you’ve been published a few dozen times.

Perhaps you are feeling that your relationship with your spouse, ‘partner’ or friends isn’t good or complete unless you share everything. That’s a silly attitude. Many men who love football have wives who don’t know or care anything about the game. Well, wives don’t have to love their husbands’ sports or hobbies. Just like husbands don’t have to take up embroidery because their wives love it. In fact, both in marriages and in friendships, it’s good to have a little ‘space’ where each person has his own interests apart from the other.

To keep your writing as a private thing you don’t need permission for, you need to do it in a low-key way. Don’t make big announcements about how you are writing and must not be disturbed. You are just busy at your computer. It doesn’t matter what you are busy AT— paying the bills, shopping online, making an inventory of your chickens by wing band number, or— writing a great novel.

In the same way, don’t make writing-related announcements on social media if your friends list consists of the sort of people who might not support you. You might consider having a second Facebook account for your writing related activity— you can join Facebook writer groups and invite the writers you meet to become Facebook friends, and keep your naysayer family members, coworkers and friends out of it.

Exercise:

Make a list: whose permissions do you sometimes feel you need to be a writer? Who do you think needs to be ‘on board.’

Next: read over the list and write a few lines about why you do NOT need the permission of these people or any other people to be a writer. Writing is a method of daydreaming on paper— and who needs someone else’s permission to be a writer?

Last: write a few lines giving yourself permission to be a writer.

Do people with Aspergers empathize too much?

I just read an article which suggests that persons with Asperger Syndrome (like me) don’t lack empathy, but instead empathize too much and become overwhelmed by it.

This theory, if accepted, would prove to be a help for people with Aspergers. The media, once it discovered that an empathy deficit was a part of Asperger Syndrome, seems to have decided we are junior league sociopaths. NOT a good way for people to understand Aspies!

I know that in my own early life I experienced empathy for others. Even imaginary others. I could not bear to watch sitcoms where the humor came from the fact that one character lacked important information or had false information, and then proceeded to act based on that. I couldn’t laugh at a character in a situation like that. I thought it was just mean. When my parents were watching a sitcom with that kind of plot I could not stay in the room because I identified with the character that we were all supposed to be laughing at.

Here is the article, in case you are interested:

Seventh Voice: Theory finds that individuals with Asperger Syndrome don’t lack empathy

Belated Celebrate: Eyeglasses & Bette Davis Eyes

OK, I missed Celebrate the Small Things (a blog hop) yesterday. So I’m doing it today. Because that way at least it gets done.

First thing I’m celebrating is eyeglasses. Eyeglasses that work, actually. Because my eyes recently got worse and my current eyeglasses no longer work. In fact, I have been using the lower half of my bifocals to see at a distance! And taking off my glasses for close-in work like reading or writing blog posts.

Normally to get new glasses I would have to wait to get an appointment with my Medicaid-approved eye doctor who only comes to the clinic once a week. And I’d have to get welfare glasses— I’d have to pick from a handful of cheap, crappy eyeglass frames that are so awful to wear, I didn’t wear my welfare glasses at all but my older pair which at least stayed on my face without causing pain. (The eye doctor said they couldn’t put new lenses in my old frames for some reason.)

But the next eye doctor visit I took my prescription to Walmart and found that THEY could put new lenses in my old frames so long as I paid for it. This time out, since it’s kind of an emergency and I don’t have money saved for new glasses, my mom offered to buy me glasses. So I will be able to SEE properly without holding my glasses up with my hand so I can see through the lower bifocal lens.

Another thing I’m celebrating is seeing an old movie on the TCM channel, ‘All This and Heaven, Too,’ starring Bette Davis as a governess who is arrested for complicity when her employer kills his crazy wife. It was a great story based on a novel by Rachel Field, who based her story on real life events that happened to her great-aunt.

I’m reading the novel right now. I bought it because the movie inspired a writing idea, something which is a bit of a change of direction for me. I’m not saying more about the idea right now lest I jinx it, but if all goes well, I will share more later.

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Keto Diet

Last night I was making Keto Bread from the recipe book ‘The Ketogenic Cookbook’ by Jimmy Moore & Maria Emmerich. It’s really just a revision of the Diet Revolution Bread recipe from the original Atkins Diet Revolution book, with unflavored protein powder replacing the small amount of (unhealthy) soy flour in the original.

The recipes involve separating eggs and whipping up the whites. Well, in my case it also involved waiting for the hens to lay a couple more eggs so I’d have the six eggs required.

When I whipped up the eggs it did not work like it was supposed to. It didn’t get high enough and I fear a speck of egg yolk may have gotten in the whites.

What I should have done at that point was to whip out my three muffin-top pans and turned the batter into flatbread ‘slices’. They wouldn’t have been perfect but the size would have been OK. Instead, I baked in the bread pan, and the bread ‘fell’ and the middle was soggy and the bread slices I salvaged were very short.

Since the recipe calls for possibly frying the slices in butter to increase the lipid profile, the slices will be edible. I will probably eat them with cream cheese and bacon bits on them. (Yes, that’s a diet meal.) But I’m going to make another batch of bread sometime soon, God and hens willing, and then perhaps I can make some better bread— and take pictures of it for my blog readers.

Blood sugar: Last night my blood sugar was at 124. Before I went on strict keto, my blood sugars were always over 300 for about a month. (Probably why I have my current eye problem.)

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This is a picture of my kitten Simon when he was younger. He’s almost as big as a full grown cat now, but he’s still nursing from his mother, Consubstantial 2, and his aunt, Consubstantial 1. He has a brother named Theodore, and a possible half-brother named Alvin. Lately, what Simon and Theodore love to do every day is run out the door and play outdoors with the big kitties.

Looking for a few good writing podcasts

Podcasts work for me. For years I’ve downloaded radio broadcasts in Esperanto to listen to at my leisure. And lately I’ve been listening to Jimmy Moore’s low carb diet podcasts regularly.

But what about my writing? I could use some writing inspiration on a daily basis. And since I do housework while I listen to podcasts, I could get finally get caught up with the laundry.

I already listen to author Declan Finn’s podcast The Catholic Geek. It’s kind of a chore to listen to because it’s 2 hours long and I’m more oriented toward shorter podcasts. He interviews a lot of sci-fi authors including some I really like, such as Daniella Bova and Karina Fabian.

But I need more writing podcasts! What I want/need is some writing inspiration about the writing process, especially anything aimed at the indie writer.

I’ve tried The Creative Penn and the podcaster, Joanna Penn, has a cool British accent. But she describes her writing as in the vein of the infamous anti-Catholic novel ‘The DaVinci Code.’ As an enthusiastic Catholic convert, I’m not sure how much of that I can take.

Also, The Creative Penn seems to have no problem with ‘erotica.’ As someone educated at a time when the world made more sense, I’m appalled that anyone is willing to talk about reading or writing a porno in a public forum.

I may decide to become a regular listener of The Creative Penn anyway.  But I’d like to be able to find other writing podcasts that have what I want without praising pornos or anti-Catholic material. I wonder if there are any Catholic or Evangelical Christian authors who have good podcasts? Other than Declan Finn, of course.

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Today is my 12th day on a strict ketogenic diet, and I’m still suffering symptoms of an ailment commonly called ‘the keto flu.’ It’s really just going through withdrawal from sugars and other carbs. When I first went strict low-carb over ten years ago, I had few symptoms, but as I get older it gets worse. Moral— don’t go off the keto diet once you are on it.

Today I listened to the Jimmy Moore low-carb podcast and it featured a lecture by Dr Eric Westman mainly about the use of the ketogenic diet in the treatment of diabetes. Here is the link: http://livinlavidalowcarb.com/blog/the-llvlc-show-episode-1149-dr-eric-westman-2016-low-carb-cruise-lecture/26680

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A storage unit for cats.