After attending educational institutions in four other countries, working in ten and travelling in another 30 or so countries, after spending most of my adult life abroad and operating mostly in the fourth language I learned growing up in Nepal, moving to Nepal has had its challenges.
There’s obviously been changes to routines, changes how I do things, changes how I view things and how I am expected view things, changes how I think and how I am expected to think etc. some of which are major changes involving a lot of challenges, while others are minor changes.
So, this post is about what’s “In” and what’s “Out.” Not “ins and outs” as one would think of but about things that are now part of my life in Nepal (“In”) which have replaced those that were part of my life outside of Nepal (“Out”).
This particular list is a list of those things that have been “In” and “Out” of my daily, everyday, life accompanying my move to Nepal eight months ago.
| SN | In | Out |
| 1. | Waking up: involves the internal clock (which is absolutely great!). | Waking up: involved an alarm clock (which was always annoying as hell!) |
| 2. | Running hot water in the morning, if you are lucky. If not then cold water. If unlucky, no water in the morning. | Running hot and cold water early morning, every morning. |
| 3. | Breakfast: Warm milk with Mueslix! | Breakfast: Cold milk with Mueslix! |
| 4. | Work day: Start at a reasonable hour. | Work day: Start at some ungodly hour like 6:30 or 7 am (making for a difficult start to a day)! |
| 5. | Getting to office: On foot. | Getting to office: In a vehicle. |
| 6. | Making payments for services and goods: Cash. | Making payments for services and goods: Plastic. |
| 7. | Amenities: Natural heating and cooling of homes and offices (which has its pluses and minuses). | Amenities: Central and/or electrical heating and air conditioning of homes and offices (which has its pluses and minuses). |
| 8. | Beer: Just cold beer. | Beer: Ice cold beer (except in England!) |
| 9. | The concept of time: Fluid and circular (annoying and frustrating the hell out of me!). | The concept of time: Fixed and linear. |
| 10. | Way to a “foot in the door” as it were: Connections (which is annoying and frustrating the hell out of me!) | Way to a “foot in the door” as it were: Personal merit! |
| 11. | Dinner: No time in the kitchen (which has its pluses and minuses)! | Dinner: Time in the kitchen (which had its pluses and minuses)! |
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An interesting cultural comparison, I am interested in more differences and similarities
Hi Michelle,
Thank you for your comment. Yes, different and similarities in the life I had abroad and that I have in Nepal would certainly be interesting. I have documented a lot of that BUT in different blog posts. A single blog post cataloguing a lot of them would certainly be an interesting read.