Wangdue Dzong Across Time

I am growing increasingly interested in old pictures, and often I imagine myself being there in the times captured in them. The nostalgic moments I spend with old pictures add fourth dimension to my life. Cameras made it to Bhutan in 1907, evident from coronation pictures of first King but we hardly have more than few pictures until recently. We had painters as far as history stretches but they have never tried anything other than religious and spiritual symbols.

1783 Wangdue Dzong- only difference visible is the rounded edge of the walls.

But in 1783, Samuel Davis, lieutenant in the Bengal Army, joined Samuel Turner's Mission to Bhutan and Tibet as draftsman and surveyor has done us a great favour. It's only through his painting and journals that we can look back as far as 1783 into our history. And it's of course Michael Aries who gave us the access to these rare picture in his 1982 book "Views of Medieval Bhutan".

Wangdue Dzong by Samuel Davis, 1783

Of all the pictures in the book I am awed by the paintings of 145 year old Wangdue Dzong. In 1783, the dzong Samuel Davis painted was the original Dzong from Zhabdrung's time because in 1837 it was destroyed by fire. And later in 1897 the dzong was again destroyed by a severe earthquake. Thus, the dzong we saw before 2012 fire was not actually from Zhabdrung's time. But from Samuel Davis's painting we could conclude that the Dzong has always maintained its original Zhabdrung architecture despite two big disasters.

Wangdue Zam by Samuel Davis 1783

The tower bridge that was very unique was a big compliment to the magnificence of Wangdue Dzong, any old picture you see of the Dzong would have the bridge in it. It's as if the bridge was part of the Dzong. Wangdue Zam even fascinated the painter Samuel Davis back in 1783 that he went on painting it thrice.

Wangdue Dzong by Samuel Davis 1783

The magnificent Wangdue Zam stood bravely by the dzong until early 1970s. It was said that the bridge maintained it's original beauty and form until it was demolished to give way to motorable bridge.

In 1783 paintings there were two things that weren't not seen during our times, not even in 1970s pictures- the village below the Dzong and the Ta-Dzong. I wonder what must have happened to the village to have completely disappeared, in fact the landscape has changed altogether that small patch of plane where once several houses stood is now the riverbed. 

What is the story of the Ta-Dzong. Paro and Trongsa Ta-Dzongs are intact but what happened to Wangdue Ta-Dzong? It must be located below Rada Lhakhang, where the new Dratshang was constructed. Even the foundation is gone forever now.

1914 by John Claude White

1910 by John Claude White

Last days of Wangdue Zam in 1971 Stamp

Wangdue Dzong as Seen before 2012 Fire.

Wangdue Dzong was undergoing major renovation when the unfortunate fire incident happened on 24 June 2012.

To be continued. I have a picture from 1953 which went missing. 

School Diary with a Difference

You could sense my fascination for diary just by going through this blog-PaSsu Diary. I have tried pulling as many people around me into blogging; to tell their stories, to archive events in their lifetime and to make differences. Over 20 students started blogging along with me last year and since the same club continues despite not having me on board I hope there will be more this year.

While blogging is not easily possible with every students we have introduced school diary for students since last year. My friend Ugyen Tshering and I worked on it to stress on the importance of letting students know how their character certificates are rated and to record the evidences of their contributions in the school.

Diary 2014 and beyond

That wasn't just enough. School Diaries are generally boring and so was ours. This year I have revised it to make it work like a real diary, that has spaces to put every little thing and that can work like a guide book for living.

Therefore, the diary has more than bio-data; it has a page title "Know Me Deeper and Better" where children can pen down their dreams, their skills, their values, etc that are not written on the face.
The diary has the SUPW rating and Character Certificate rating rubrics to help them work on them. That is followed by six pages of "Record of Conduct", where they can gather evidences of their contributions in school.
The diary has empty event calendar and timetable for them to fill. It's empty so that the diary can be timeless. It can used this year and beyond. It has six pages for "To do list" for students to work on organizing and managing time.

Sample Pages of Content of the Diary

 The Diary has Leave Chart that has space for both parents and teacher to sign so that no child wanders between home and school.
There are ten "Books I read" slots and we are expecting that every child to read at least read and write a short review on ten books.
There are 100 lines to note "One good deed I have done today" and there is no marking for that yet they are made to understand that there are few things in life that need not be rated. Right after that we have twenty pages of prayer, which is the standard school prayer book. There is no need for separate prayer book, and having the prayer in their diary makes the book sacred therefore regarded highly.

Sample pages of different contents 

This is personally my first publication, I worked on it from the first word till it reached the hands of my student, and I wanted the best diary ever. I bargained on the price with the printing press and they supplemented my bargain on the paper quality. I think I will never print with them again.  Today, the diary was launched and I gave a thorough orientation as if it was a novel I wrote.

*I am willing to share the PDF. CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD

Bajothang is Becoming a Town Soon

'Bajothang Town' had been a new phrase to describe all the problems in the world. There is limit to failure, Bajothang crossed all lines. It's a town build on problems and it never failed its history. Reconciliation with its failed past was long overdue.

Death Traps

Well now things are happening finally. Looks like we are soon going to have a town around here. I can see people mending the broken pavements and dusting the potholes. I can see thick smoke from the middle of the town where they seem to be mixing blacktopping materials. I can see some roundabouts are resized. I can see some drains reappearing from underneath tonnes of earth. I am happy.

Mending the broken town

Smoke of Hope

There should be strategic planning to make adjustment with irreparable structural errors, because streets cannot be widened now- if every street is allowed for parking there is no room for traffic. With the drains repaired the sewage overflow will find its way and with the roads blacktopped the dust will be gone. This is the town Bajothang deserves to be and I hope the contractor will deliver it, and I hope the municipal will see to it. Because contractors are business people, they will try to make profit from every corner.

Redesigning the errors

I am eager to see how they will go about this!

Work Done so far

The few patches of finished work that are visible aren't so promising but we are optimistic people and we hope the contractor will learn to do better, and that he will leave behind a legacy that he can be proud of rather than endless court orders.

If you are visiting Bajothang these days you will find it too dusty to live but for people who are living here it's the dust of hope and change, it's the last of dust and stink, and we are enjoying it. Wish us best of luck.

Collection for School Museum

I am sharing these pictures with so much excitement. Two members of my club made my Monday with so many artifacts, this is so much beyond my expectation at this initial time. Guess what, they say they have bigger wooden objects collected over the weekend waiting for transportation. I am going with a pickup truck this saturday.

As you browse down the pictures I want you to try naming the objects and stating their uses. Give yourself 1 point for correct name and another for knowing its purpose. There are nine objects and the total score is out of 18. Send me your score. I am trying this because in my staff room filled with adults from my generation there was nobody who could score 100%. Sad.

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I am getting gentle warnings from some concerned people about the danger of spirits following old objects I am collecting but I assured them that I am after things that are of no interest to any spirit. As far as I know spirits follow valuable and conflict objects. Or so I assure myself.

A notable scholar, Dorji Penjor agreed to help me put things in place based on his vast and relevant knowledge. My high school friend Kunga Lhendup promised me his helping hand from across ocean. Here at home some of my teacher colleagues are determined to get me some stuffs though they couldn't do the quiz well. 

Do you have something to offer? Please write to me. 

My School is an iSchool

My school got lucky one more time along with five other schools in the country. We were selected as the pilot schools for iSchool project. I am personally not involved in the project but my friend Kailash Rai is doing a great job in my school. Class IX A is chosen as iClass and there are going to have a wonderful 2014 academic year. The first question on your mind must be: What is iSchool Project about?

"The project uses the high speed internet network in conjunction with top of the line video conferencing technology to allow a few teachers to reach dozens of classrooms and hundreds of students, across Bhutan in real time. Teachers at the ‘master' classroom will teach and reach students in the ‘remote' classroom via video and will also be able to receive and answer normal questions from the students in any of the classrooms.The ‘remote' classrooms selected to participate in the pilot phase are not really that remote given the short time that was available to set up the project. However, in the future, the benefiting schools could well be extremely remote and yet benefit from the best teachers located in selected ‘master' classrooms located anywhere in Bhutan.Besides having access to top quality teachers on a live platform, the lessons will also be available for download for students who missed a lesson, and these lessons can be downloaded from any school.The iSchool idea is not intended to provide a single solution to cover every issue in the education sector. It is just one tool, that in conjunction with many other programs will help to cover every need in the sector.In addition to providing live video conferencing technology to reach many schools, technology such as the ‘smart' camera and associated software provides innumerable tools to the teacher to improve the delivery process. Smart whiteboards with an unlimited number of ‘screens' that can be switched on demand effectively provides an endless number of blackboards on which to present lessons. A document camera will enable the teacher to show real samples to help explain specific concepts to the students." -Pelkhil School Facebook

Lesson in Progress.

I am so impressed by the fiber-optically connected internet speed, which is capable of streaming live video from five school at a time (see in pic) along with high quality audio. Besides that whatever the teacher writes on the smart-board in the master school is directly broadcast on our white board through our projector, and for a person who loves technology this is heavenly.  

It was formally launched yesterday March 29,2014 by Prime Minister Tshering Tobgay from Pelkhil School and the five pilot schools took part in the event virtually. Lynchoen interacted with students and teachers of five schools. Even Education minister joined us from Phuntsholing. The Launch was a big success.

Prime Minister interacting with the Five Schools.

I wish the project all the best and hope every stakeholder will put their heart in this project to take it where it's intended to reach. 

Rural Heritage Museum in My School

Much of what I had seen in my village as a boy has disappeared over the years. The rural heritage gave way to modern conveniences so easily within these three decades. Even during my days in school we had children who grew up away from their roots and had no idea of the life in countryside. Now we can only imagine how ignorant this generation of children will be about our roots.

Sometimes I wish we could preserve a village, freeze it in time, untouched by the forces of change, to be a standing history of our ancestors. But our hard past could hardly withstand the luxury of modern life. We have changed faster than we feared. Even yesterday is too far away. No village will agree to this idea.

A few year down the line we won't be able to distinguish a Bhutanese home from a western home, we can't do it already in the urban homes. Soon our original heritage will become a piece of memory dying with the last generation or a few pages of some books written by foreign writers.

I am going do a little something to leave behind what I have in my memory in a form of a School Museum in Bajothang. All thanks to my friend Ugyen Tshering for the inspiration. I have begun a new Club called 'School Museum Club' with 22 culturally rich children. We are going to create a house of rural history in our school. We have the perfect building in the center of the campus, which carries lots of history with it to house our idea.

This will be the Museum (Click on the pic to read about it)

In few months we would have renovated the interior of the house to make it look like a typical village home and furnish it with the artifacts that we are collecting now. Our search for exhibits are devided into four categories- Kitchen, Store, Personal, and Outdoor. Four teams are on it.

Our Basic list of Exhibits (Understandable to ourselves)

We are researching and creating picture catalogue of our target collection, but some excited children already came with some interesting items. I can already see it happening. I have called my mother to help me extend my list and to gather old stuffs from my village. She is already on it just like some parents of my club members.

Collection begins...

The whole project will be executed with no fund at all. There are few things that might cost money in doing this, rest will be about passion. The house makeover might cost few thousands, for which I have word from a friend. If you wish to support us please donate old artifacts. 

I will tell you when everything is done, then bring your children over to show them our rural heritage.

Tunnel Ghost Busted

I had some friends over for dinner last weekend. What was supposed to be a relaxing Sunday dinner suddenly turned cold with fear. A friend, senior tunnel engineer, was flipping through his phone pictures when he suddenly spotted a picture of his worksite with ghost in the background, a whitish girl on the tunnel wall. His face turned white and mood subdued when he showed the picture to us.
I couldn't believe it. But the fear on my friend's face and the intensity with which he refused to accept any of my scientific explanations of possible manipulation of the picture soon gave me goosebumps. His phone doesn't have internet connection to download the picture from elsewhere and he was confident that it was the picture of his worksite and he took the shot himself.
He grew restless and paranoid. He sweared he will never enter the tunnel again. He recalled how his camera didn't work when he took picture of himself. He took out his phone from time to time and looked at the creepy picture, and worse made us look at it. After a while I could look at this picture no more. It was as if the girl would look at me anytime. I even asked him if there's some dirty bloody secret inside his tunnel that's now coming out in the form of spirit.

Rest of the evening went in talking about all sorts of ghost stories. And when the dinner was done one of my guests, the youngest among us, couldn't go home. He is also an engineer but not in tunnel. He doesn't have a family yet and all his roommates were not home that night. He easily accepted my offer to sleep on my couch. (Talking about critical blogger Dawa Knight, lol)

Look Closely, you don't wanna miss the ghost!

Next Day: (I heard) The senior engineer friend freaked everybody outside the tunnel at his worksite. He approached his boss with the picture and it had the same effect on them as well. Their office gathered all IT experts to study the picture, and finally they could disintegrate the picture of the girl from the picture of the tunnel it was photoshopped to. They also managed to photoshop it onto the tunnel of other site and post it to them.

The question remains: It was a flawlessly done photoshop work, who did it? how it came to his phone? Why would anyone do it? The answer same from his wife who spent the next day investigating the same. She found out their kids have played with a camera app called Camera360 which has many options which includes Ghost Mode. Ha ha ha kids can scare the hell outta adults with technology.

The Night Hunters

'The Night Hunters' is a collection of short stories written by my friend Dasho Lingi Jamtsho. We are friends because of the book. It connected us. And because he is my friend I can be biased in my judgement of the book, so it's best you get a copy for yourself and read it.

It's selling at Nu.200. Please don't ask how many pages it carries because it's a story book, not a notebook to be priced by the number of pages. Just know that it's about two mobile vouchers and you get to keep a book. Seriously printing books is an expensive affair in Bhutan, besides there are many people who want cuts. There is no regard for the Authors and their creative works.

I have been selling 'The Night Hunters' in my school and some people might think I am into book business because I have been marketing many Bhutanese books in and around my school however there is nothing business about it, I have no intention of peeling off the skin from the writers' chests. I just love literature and I want my students to love it all the same.

The Author during a Visit to my school.

I am happy that "The Night Hunters" is receiving good reviews from within and outside Bhutan. Here in my school every teacher carries a copy each and most of them have finished reading, they came up with varying verbal reviews mostly pointing toward the simplicity of the stories and some talks about predictable suspenses. Their reviews are some ward influenced by the price and the nature of my marketing- for some it seemed like they were owning a book for the first time (joke intended).

I bought my copy even though I could easily get a signed copy from the author himself because there is its own charm in paying for something. I finished it and I am impressed by the fineness of the language as much as I could relate to the stories. The cover design and the print quality can easily put it at par with any international book. This is one book that will not put Bhutan down, though it's Maj. Lingi's first attempt at writing. I wish him all the best with his second book.

Thank You For The Free Advice

Tonight I met a man at Karaoke Bar who gave me free advice. He sounded like a senior officer, which I found out he was. He approached me gently after I finished singing a duet with my wife and said, "I hope you don't mind me saying-"

I thought he didn't like my voice. My daughter wanted to sit on my lap, I adjusted her comfortably and extended my neck to let him finish. He continued, "I hope you don't mind me saying, you should not bring your daughter to such place. You know, it will impact her mentality. Please don't mind me saying this."
I replied even gently, " Not at all sir, in fact I thank you for your kindness. Any sensible person would say the same about it. I will try not to do that again."

If he could recollect it he said the same to me last year but I am such a bad father that I brought her again. Well I take my daughter along with my wife everywhere I go. They have been to all the places I have ever been to- workshop in Phuntsholing, meeting in Thimphu, Picnic in Gelephu, interview in Paro, lochay in Haa, outing by the river, hiking by the hills, hangout in Karaoke...

I am a young father and I don't want to waste any time away from my family, I have chosen my wife over any women I ever met with the promise that I will be with her and love her the best. Two of us decided to have our daughter out of our love and give her our everything. We are very excited parents, we are trying to give her everything. Yes we have read a lot about child raising but we have also seen the world of reality to agree to so many good things written in books. So we decided to raise our child in our own way to see if she goes wrong after all the love we gave. After all I haven't seen a perfectly raised child living a perfect life, I rather read so much about great people who had terrible childhood.

Let me be with her when I can- whenever, wherever!

Two of us are selfishly forcing our daughter to be with us every moment possible. We want to see her every moment, to hear every word she utters and to see every move she makes. If tomorrow something happens to us she should know we were with her when we could.

See,
I was a good son who loved his mother dearly but I went to hostel all my life. If I calculate I would have been with my mother for only five year in total including the hours we were asleep. Eight years ago I got married and I also got employed, then I belonged to my wife and my job. This will happen between our daughter and us. If everything goes well our daughter belongs to us for twenty years, and twenty years is too short to give her all the love we have. We want to give it every day.

But every now and then when I take my daughter to Karaoke I had that fear of someone kindly coming over and telling me about how bad it is to bring my daughter there- someone who must have read some western books on parenting. This happened tonight. I know he is being very professional, sensible, and doing his social duty as an elder. And I know many of you reading this will find him on the right.

But if you were in that room looking around like I did you would find many couples without their children, many fathers with young girls, some mothers with other's husbands and many drunk youth- whom I supposed didn't go to karaoke with their parents when they were young- now tell me how wrong am I in bringing my wife and daughter to celebrate our weekend?

Dasho, Stop drinking, go home and be by your family. Weekend is for family because all week your were in office and your kids in school. By the way, that girl could be your daughter's age.

Ocean is deep and salty, but I took her there too.

Playing Police Where There is no Police

The Dochula Block saga begins again. The road widening works are back, they always wait for the rainy season. The mess from last season has not been taken care of yet and now new works have begun at three locations. Traffic remains closed for hours, there are police on the spot and of course roadside thukpa sellers. When traffic opens on regular intervals vehicles go wild from both directions. There is nobody to manage the flow.
So on a typical day, I was on my way to Thimphu. I waited an hour sandwiched between hundreds of vehicles. I finished reading all the tweets I missed in many days and completed several levels on Diamond Dash. When the floodgate of frustrated traffic opened I landed up after two trucks. We were moving like glacier. Soon a truck from other direction slipped and hit its body onto the nose of the first truck before me. Everybody came out and that's it, the traffic came to standstill.
It took quite sometime for me to dare put my new shoe into the red mud covering the road. I went to the accident spot only to find that the two drivers haven't even started talking. They were facing away from each other and talking with their groups of supporter- you know how people take sides. I looked at the damage, the dent was only about a punch size that could hardly be worth Nu.1000.

Look who is angry!

The driver of the damaged truck blames the other for not stopping and not keeping enough gap but it's clearly visible the there was no room for safe gap and that he had slipped despite stopping. There was rather space on his side and he could have moved a little away. I voiced that. I told them that there is no way any road safety official could reach us from either end and waiting there any longer will only build the traffic jam that could lead to bigger problems. So I decided that they share the cost. With Nu.500 we began clearing the jam. It was another hour before I could finally free myself from the snailing convoy. But damn, only to be stopped at the next block.
It took me six hours to reach Thimphu. What causes this problem? Does road widening have to be road blocking? Do we really have to stop traffic? Well I heard that thing about safety, but where is the safety in creating traffic jam along the unstable hill (remember the incident from last year? I nearly lost a friend. he lost his hi-lux though and nobody paid for it) Don't we have a smarter alternative? Though Bhutanese are generally lazy we still have better things to do than play mobile games at high altitude road block.