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When you move to a new country- nothing is easy

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Life as an immigrant always has different stories. These are a few examples of my struggle to continue my interest in vegetable gardening.  I like to vegetable garden out of my passion for environmental conservation, the same way I like to buy second-hand stuff. During my studies back home and my professional career, I was involved in environmental conservation work. Composting has always been a good starting point for a household on that journey. After I came to this new country, it took me a year to understand this place in many aspects. I continued my passion for environmental conservation through volunteering in different environmental organizations. I used to talk with other native volunteers and got the impression that rain is a detrimental factor for composting here in Dunedin at the household level. During similar volunteering, I got in contact with a lady who was giving composting training. I participated there and realized it was not as difficult as it had been in my m
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If writing was easy!

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This is my own story - Trying to find time to write a story for a radio program.  The school holidays are the busiest time for parents, especially those who are designated to take care of their children. I am the designated one these years with my wife studying full time. I could not write a story for today’s episode on the office days. I had to wait for the weekends. This time, I had my family members visiting us at the weekend. So, I had technically no time to write the story for today’s episode till last day of school holiday i.e. Sunday 13 th Oct 2019. When Sandy asked me, what is the title for today’s story when we were recording our last episode. I had no answers. I told her- I don’t know yet. Now I can tell her today’s title – If writing was an easy thing? With a recording on Wednesday, after three days of the last day of school holidays, all I planned was to write the story on Monday or Tuesday. I had thought that I will take something from my daily notes, expand it
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Raising a child in small diaspora

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All human being wants their offspring to succeed in their fundamental cultural and social values. However, the global-migration has settled diaspora communities around the globe, where the migrants face difficulties in practice and succeed in their social, religious and cultural principles to their children. This is a story of Nepalese Hindus. Although this is a story of a Nepalese, I assume every immigrant has similar stories, while trying to inherit cultural and social values to their children. We Nepalese people in Dunedin, New Zealand is increasing very slowly.  But we are still way below the critical mass to practice our culture effectively. Today, I am sharing my own experience with the challenges of raising a child. For readers to make their view about our culture - majority Nepalese (like me) believe in Hinduism. We share our religious rituals with global Hindus, but we practice localized (Nepal specific) culture and social festivities. We have our own language, and deve
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Doing things right or doing right things

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The climate crisis has raised several questions in front of us. One of the important questions is “Is doing things right enough to fight this existential threat due to climate change or do we need to do the right things?”  The whole world is divided on this question. However, I am firm with my view - We need to do the right things. Apart from this divide, there are some denials who believe that some miracle will solve this magnanimous issue. If someone wants to risk their future in a miracle, what can we say! I can only wish them good luck. But, as a conscious human being, I can’t stay ideal, which is also not my inherent nature.  It is, of course, true that humans have always been challenging nature, and reached this stage of human development winning all odds against nature. But we shouldn’t be obsessed with these wins of history and believe to win this war against climate crisis with the same old rhetoric. Everyone should remember that the climate crisis is not a fantasy drama
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The single stories about Nepalese - My reflection

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This is the age of social media. We consume lots of information from these sources. The usefulness of these vast quantities of information might be questioned, but if you know what to consume, you will always find some good stuff. This YouTube video published by TED https://www.youtube.com/watch?=D9Ihs241zeg  was shared by one of my friends on social media. This video was published ten years back, in 2009. It is still relevant to us in many ways, and it inspired me to write stories about Nepal. I was strolling in the streets of New York. A guy in his early thirties came to me and asked something in his language. I looked at him with a surprise! He questioned me, “Don’t you understand Hindi?” I replied to him back, "I am from Nepal". Then, he started talking in English. My wife has a similar story to share. On her first day of college at the University of Otago, New Zealand, a student from India came to her and asked, “From which state of India are you?" He didn
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Urgency to act as a global-citizen of biosphere

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Human beings, by nature, are curious animals.  If you remember your childhood “You might have damaged several toys to see - “how is it made?” or “where the sound came from?” or several similar questions.  You might have further tried to remake it, but it wouldn’t be as easy as tearing it down. As a child, you never had to worry about assembling that again because you could always get a new one after some bargains with your parents. With time, we develop the sense and gradually know it’s very difficult to put the things together in the same place once they are shattered. So, we always replaced with the new for everything possible- destroyed toys with new toys, old cars with new cars, aged houses with new houses, and old cities with new cities and so on. The tragedy of the last 1000 years with the humankind is that we never tried to see the actual cost of our blissful desires.  The cost that other living creatures and the biosphere had to bear in those processes of damage and r
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Is climate change a real threat to humanity?

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Climate Change is no more a problem for the least developed and developing countries only. It is now a big problem for the whole of humanity. If we want to preserve humanity on Earth, it must be viewed from the global citizen lens. Yes! there are differences in culture, religion, language, and nations but we should understand that none of these notions are bigger than the earth itself. There are denials of climate change. So, let’s acknowledge them, first. Let's forget about climate change and think. Are there answers with climate denial theorists, for questions like- why there are more deaths due to heatwaves in recent decades? Why the frequency of extreme weather events has been increasing?   What are the answers to the families whose members died in the recent heatwave in the Quebec City of Canada? who can give the explanation to the families of the Farmer committing suicide due to drought in India? How will we face the victims of recent disasters due to the cyclone in small
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