Tag Archives: Nepaliaustralian

2012 in review

Posted on January 3, 2013 | 14 comments

Dear friends, readers, commenters, likers, followers and others,

Thank you everyone for awesome 2012. Thanks to your interactions on this blog. Your readership makes this blog worth keeping up and I can’t express my gratitude warmly enough for engaging with me and my posts and helping me reflect continually at different levels and conversing with the quality hearts and minds that you have.

Just sharing  2012 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

19,000 people fit into the new Barclays Center to see Jay-Z perform. This blog was viewed about 160,000 times in 2012. If it were a concert at the Barclays Center, it would take about 8 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Crunchy numbers

15,000 cans of diet soda were consumed at New York Fashion Week. This blog had about 160,000 views in 2012. If these were cans of diet soda, they’d power 11 Fashion Weeks.

In 2012, there were 268 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 363 posts.

The busiest day of the year was November 14th with 1,302 views. The most popular post that day was Kukur Puja: Tihar  .

Attractions in 2012

These are the posts that got the most views in 2012.

Today, I just would like to thank each of  you for your great  support and appreciation which has constantly served as motivation for me and I hope  that you will continue supporting me the same way in future also.

Bring on 2013

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Posted in General

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Sculpture by the sea

Posted on November 5, 2012 | 18 comments

Each spring, artists from all over the world converge on Sydney’s Bondi Beach to Tamarama coastal walk to showcase their work at Sculpture by the Sea, the world’s largest annual free-to-the-public outdoor sculpture exhibition. The scenic walk is transformed into a 2km sculpture park with more than 100 works by artists from Australia and around the world.

Sculpture by the Sea began in 1997 with an exhibition held over one day at Bondi Beach and is now an annual event.

I have been going to this event for the last few years and it is a really nice thing to do on a day off as it provides great exercise, spectacular views, beautiful arts and many photo opportunities.

Like every year, this year also, I went to this exhibition with my husband and my friend SS. This year the exhibition consisted of a variety of works from 49 New South Wales sculptors, 28 interstate artists, and 36 international artists from China, Denmark, England, Germany, Iceland, India, Italy, Japan, The Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Puerto Rico, South Korea, Spain, and the U.S.

Every year there are some wonderful arts on exhibit along with some weird one.

I really wanted to go this year for the sunrise but these days the sun rises at 5am so to be there at that time, I needed to wake up at 4am. On weekend, that was not a good plan so we decided to go around 8am. Unfortunately, it was a gloomy day but it wasn’t raining yet.

We started from Bondi and were surprised to see so many people already there. I saw busloads of tourist everywhere. There were also lots of family with young children.

We started of walk from the first sculpture and followed the path along the Bondi beach to the top of the hill. There were many amazing arts there and some complicated ones.

On the top of the hill, there was a tent with mini sculptures so we entered and started looking at the amazing creations. In that time, it started raining heavily and we felt lucky to be inside the tent. The rain stopped within 15 minutes.

After the rain, we continued our walk toward Tamara beach. We saw two award winning arts. It was so nice to walk the coast and finally reach the last art. Overall we had a great day and quite good exercise.

Sharing some photos from the day.

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Posted in Australia, NSW - Australia

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Nawami: Dashain

Posted on October 23, 2012 | Leave a comment

Today is Nawami (Ninth) day, a day before the Vijaya Dashami. Sacrifices continue throughout Nawami in Nepal. Today god Vishwas Karma, the God of creativity is worshiped. All artisans, craftsmen, tradesmen worship their tools, equipment and vehicles like cars, bikes, trucks etc. for protection against accidents during the year. Animals are also sacrificed to cars, trucks etc. to get the blessing from goddess Durga for protection for vehicles and their occupants against accidents during the year.

The Taleju temple at Hanuman Dhoka is opened for the public only once a year on this day. Thousands of people go and pay their respect to the goddess. Temples of the goddess are filled with people from dawn till dusk. There are local processions – local bands play music and a feast is organized – in the Taleju Bhawani Temple in Hanuman Dhoka Palace premises.

Today also the official military sacrifices are held in the ‘Kot’ courtyard at Hanuman Dhoka. The government allows foreigners to witness this function so hundreds of tourists and diplomats eagerly gather here.

Animals, mostly buffaloes are slaughtered by the hundreds to honour Durga the goddess of victory to seek her blessing. Military bands play war tunes, guns boom and officers with beautifully decorated medals in full uniform are present there. When the function ends the courtyard is filled ankle deep with blood from the sacrifices.

Kumari, the living goddess, also blesses the public on this day from her residence at Kumari Bahal.

This morning we performed car puja as well. I am sure in Nepal, it is performed in a bigger scale but if you are not in Nepal and want to perform the puja, I am sharing how I did it here.

How to perform car puja:

  • Make sure the vehicle is clean.

  • Take your shoe off before puja.
  • Prepare puja thali with sindoor, rice, flower, dhuup, batti, fruits and any other puja saman you have.

  • Also prepare an ankura (vessel) with water. If you don’t have a ankura then use a glass/tumbler.
  • Start the puja by sprinkling water in front of the car and its four wheels.

  • If you have any idol of a god inside the car, perform the puja inside first by putting sindoor, tika and flower on the idol.

  • I have an idol of Lord Ganesh inside our car.

  • In front of the car use sindoor to make a half moon by using the third finger of right hand and put tika and flower. Also do the same on all four wheels of the car.

  • Now light the batti (I used tea light candle) and dhuup and show it to the God inside the car, the front of the car and move to all the wheels by circling  them around three times in a clockwise direction.

  • Normally animals are sacrificed during the Puja and the vehicles are given their fill of blood but we used a hard shelled coconut instead.
  • Crack the coconut in front of the car on the floor

  • Sprinkle the coconut water in front of the car as well as all wheels.

  • The coconut is kept as prasad (holy food offering given to God during pujas) and eaten later.

  • In Nepal they also put mala (flower garland) in front of the car.
  • The puja is finished.

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Posted in Nepal, Nepali Festivals

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I was reading a blog “living in west with values of east”. I was shocked when I found out who its author is :)

Posted on October 4, 2012 | 25 comments

I am sure by now all of you know that I really enjoy writing and I am blessed to have so many readers following my blog. I am happy to find this online world where I can share my opinions and experiences and above all to find supportive people who read my blog and share their opinions with me.

You must be wondering what the hell the title of this post means.

I have been blogging for a while now and except my husband no one around me knows about it. There are a few people who know my identity and know that I blog but they have all come across my blog first and then got to know my identity later.

Initially, I didn’t really see it as necessary for people around me to know about my blog because I was not sure where this blog was going. Now after a year I think it is not that important to tell everyone around me that I blog. I haven’t really found anyone who blogs so I always assume that they won’t be interested.

But at the same time I knew that at some point of time my family and friends would find my blog. The World Wide Web is so open that if they Google something relating to Nepal or Nepali festival or Nepali culture, there is a high possibility that they will land on my blog. They will recognise me straight away if they are in my Facebook as I use the same photos on both platforms.

I have to admit that my parents will be happy to find out that I write on a regular basis. As you know now that I have a few articles published in +977 magazines here in Sydney. Every time it is out in the market, I put that on my Facebook. I wasn’t sure who was reading it but one time my dad mentioned that he has read all my articles and he loved it. He said it is really nice to see me writing and expressing myself. I had sent a few copies of the magazine to Nepal and my mum was so proud that she was showing it to her friends.

Anyway back to the title of this post. This morning on my Facebook page, one of my cousins wrote, “I was reading a blog “living in west with values of east”. I was shocked when I found out who its author is 🙂 🙂 🙂.”

I smiled reading it because I thought my friends and family would have found my blog a long time ago and it took one of them over a year to do so :).

So I would like to welcome to my blog my cousin sister GA who lives in USA. She said she was reading some blog post from this blog and kept clicking on different photos until she got a post with a photo that had her in it. I think that must have been a bit of a shock for her. BTW here is the photo and she is the small kid in the middle. That photo was taken at least 13 years ago.

I am sure many of my other cousins and family members will find this blog in the future and I am ok with that. Most of my cousins live far from me so I think this blog will give them some insight into me and my life 🙂

While I am at this, I want to address another query. I get lots of people asking me why I am anonymous and why I blur the faces in my photos. I even have some people writing to me angrily that blurring photos are not cool.

I know some of you may not like it but one and only reason for my action is purely for the sake of privacy.

My life is like an open book on this web so I don’t want everyone to know where I live and other details of my life. Also I don’t want to use my real name on the blog because I don’t want people to Google my name and land on this blog especially if they are my future employer or someone looking for me in an official capacity. Anyway after year of blogging, I know now that my friends on blogosphere are happy to call me M or nepaliaustralian. So thank you guys for accepting me with my anonymity. Hope everyone else who is angry with my anonymity will respect my reason for my privacy and accept me as M from nepaliaustralian.

Does your family and friends know that you blog? Does it make any difference if they know? 

25 Comments

Posted in Personal

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Nepaliaustralian turns one!!!

Posted on September 13, 2012 | 21 comments

A year ago, today I was in front of my computer with a dilemma; whether I should start a blog of my own or not. I was not sure who would be interested in my writing. One of the biggest fears in my mind was “What was I supposed to do if no one read this blog?” But after reading so many blogs for so long, I thought I would give it a go and see how it turns out and I am so glad I did. My husband has been a constant encouragement in my life to keep me writing and to start this blog and it definitely has paid off by polishing my writing skills in this last year.

Today 263 posts, 39 pages, 2201 comments, 93,350 page views and 210 followers later I have to admit that it is one of the best decisions I have made in my life. I can’t believe that people from more than 160 countries have visited my blog!

Not only has this blog encouraged me to write regularly, in this incredible journey, I got the opportunity to get to know so many like-minded and lovely people. So I take this opportunity to thank my regular readers and every single one of my followers, the ones who have been with me from the start and also the new ones.  Everyone who has followed my blog, liked my posts, taken time to comment on them or just read my posts has encouraged me to continue and make this blog what it is today.

The world of blogging has introduced me to so many lovely bloggers who I might not have met in person but it feels like I know so much about them. Each day they inspire me with their talent and encouraging words. Thank you so much for all the comments and positive feedback and for inspiring me to keep blogging.

Also everyone who has given me an award in this past year, thank you for your acknowledgments and encouragements.

This blog started out as a culture window for anyone who is interested in Nepali tradition and culture and now has post about my travel around the world as well as my personal journey about being married. You have read my ideas about Nepali festivals, Newari traditions, and my views about issues in Nepal as well as the world. .I am so happy that I have also started Newari language posts which I hope has helped people who are trying to learn this beautiful language.

My first post was titled “Am I less Nepali?” and reading that post today made me realise that I have come a long way. When I was writing my first post I had never thought I would be writing this post. One entire year of blogging, I really can’t believe it.

As a way of thanking all of you and in celebration of my blog, I would like to introduce a guest post section in my blog. Please write to me at nepaliaustralian.blog@gmail.com or leave a comment in my blog if you are interested. The post can be on anything that is useful for my readers . Please click here for more info. Looking forward to hear from you .

Again, thank you all so much for this amazing year.

P.S :I started today in very happy mood as I got retweet from Prabal Gurung for my yesterday’s post.  🙂

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Posted in Personal

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