Kuenza's Diary

My daughter has always had some kind of craze for shoes. When she was a baby, she would play with shoes and slippers. When we were in the shops, she would try on the different shoes and would tell me that she wanted them. But she has never really asked for them like she did yesterday. She has been putting on my slippers and she likes the ones that make the ‘trok trok’ noise on the floor. That is why we have the name for such sandals – trok trok slippers. I told her that I will buy her a pair of such slippers. After that, she clung on it and yesterday, she wanted it so badly that she wouldn’t even eat (she had not been having a good appetite too though). So as soon as her daddy was ready, we had to go to town. It was barely 9 a.m. We loitered around for sometime in the vegetable market and then went to Etho Metho Plaza. Luckily a shop that was just opening had such slippers. And she got them. Oh boy, she was so happy! She put them on immediately and at home, she boasted it to e...

I had an official dinner, which wasn't compulsory. But I chose to go because sometimes it matters. I am sorry that I wasn't there to put you to bed. This is how you greeted me when I got home just now. 

This is a question I have been asking myself for a long time now. If I knew that I couldn’t access it, I know I wouldn’t have the temptation to open it during office hours. I agree that it sometimes gives us a refreshing moment of break from work. For example, the other day I was kind of bogged down with work – somewhere in between, there was something I didn’t know, which made me stressful. Taking a break from it, I was talking to three friends in a group chat, which definitely gave me the freedom and the space to share my problem, thus relieving myself. But often, such break can stretch to an hour or more. And when it does, it doesn’t quite seem right. Acting on this impulse and conviction, I blocked it. I tried thrice in fact. And each time, I got a call from staff asking me if it has been blocked. If I blocked a site other than FB, I am sure they won’t notice it at once, or their response won’t be that quick. They will not immediately telephone me to find out wh...

I have never written a post directly on my blog but I am doing it now. I know I have grown a year older today; as my friends wished me to have all my wishes come true in a healthy, long life, I couldn't help feel a little sad as well. It is not that I am unhappy that I am growing old. The feeling I am getting is something like a grace you feel in the face of a morning sun, or the tears you feel welled up in your eyes in an audience of a high lama.  Last year I chose not to display my birthday in my Facebook profile thinking that it actually burdens people to wish me even though more than half of them didn't remember it or didn't care. But I changed that later because I realized that it actually gives my friends a reason to contact me, at least on this day and it is in fact nice to hear from them, even if it is superficial. And who doesn't like hearing from their friends? It also has a positive psychological effect on me. It makes me feel that my friends have cared to sa...

The question that the presenter threw back to the audience had me thinking. Professor Martin Carnoy from Stanford University, who was the resource person for the seminar on Education and Democracy organized by the Bhutan Centre for Media and Democracy asked this question to the audience. It was a reaction to the advices that the Bhutanese audience gave to the teacher who was feeling lost being placed as a primary school teacher in a very remote school after completing the training as a secondary school teacher. The young teacher said, he was everything at this remote school – from sweeper to principal. While he knew that the job as a teacher would be difficult, he didn’t imagine it to be as challenging as it was, as he experienced. He said, ‘I am still feeling lost.’ There are students from classes PP to two. He takes classes PP and 1 simultaneously, which is extremely hard. Not knowing how to tackle the challenge, he consulted the parents of those children. The parents thought he sho...