A couple of things happenend this last week that might give you a bit of an insight into life in Nepal.

In INF, we are just getting stuck into another of our quarterly three-day management meetings involving programme managers, technical advisors and a couple of board members. The meetings are relatively hi-tech with several people working from laptops, and a beamer is used for giving presentations.

Phil is involved through his role in the Donor team and is also taking the minutes, for which he borrowed the FD's laptop. The job of taking minutes is complicated though by a family of little red ants that live somewhere in the machine. Every few minutes, a head would appear fom between the keys and another little fella would appear. Despite squashing them at regular intervals for a couple of days, they are still coming, so there must be quite a colony in there - Nepali wildlife is mostly small and harmless, but ever-present!

Secondly, we were woken up at 12.30 on Sunday night by the noise of a roaring crowd, that seemed to come from all directions and set the neighbourhood dogs barking, making the noise even louder. It was a shock and the reasons weren't obvious - had there been an earthquake or a break in, was it a riot or had someone died? The noise seemed good natured and soon died down, so we went back to sleep.

The next day we had forgotten about disturbance but the topic of conversation among Nepalis the next day was on one subject only - the Indian Idol TV programme - and it became clear that this was the reason for the noise.

Based on the Pop Idol programme, Indian idol climaxed on Sunday night and was won by a chap from Darjeeling - nominally in India, but mainly populated by Nepalis - a hugely popular result here. People spilled onto the streets after hearing the results, apparently causing drunken havoc in parts of Pokhara and Kathmandu until 3 in the morning. There is a whole class developing of young Nepalis who are well off, fashion conscious and face the same issues as kids growing up in Western countries - a fascination with celebrities, peer pressure, alcohol - and who are unable to identify with their parents or communities and have absolutely nothing in common with the huge numbers of rural poor here in Nepal.