Welcome welcome to my little blog. I will try to keep this space updated from time to time with the funny little things happen to me as I wander around the place trying to get paid to take pictures.
As some of you know, I’m currently in Kathmandu where I’ve been for about a week. The city is amazing. On one hand is chock full of tourists either going (or pretending to go) on an Everest expedition or stuck in some odd time lapse where the 60s never managed stumble out of bed.
Beards abound.
On the other hand, it’s the capital of an impoverished landlocked nation pulling itself out of a decade of civil war. The city is so polluted that you can’t see your hand in front of your face in the mornings and by the end of the day you have black rings around your nostrils and your eyes sting.
Underneath the café where I’m writing this, seven street children are asleep curled up with stray flea ridden dogs which they spoon to keep warm. When the boys aren’t asleep they huff glue, beg, fight, and search around in the filthy gutters for stray 1 or 2 rupee coins.
Where I’m sitting, westerners sip beautifully made cappuccinos while they update their facebook pages on the café’s dedicated wireless network. “Sebastian is writing about Kathmandu.”
Earlier this morning I had a meeting with a Nepalese author in Mike’s Breakfast, quite the ‘establishment’ I’m told, founded strangely enough by a guy from Northfield, MN, the tiny Midwestern town where I went to college.
As I was sitting waiting for Sushma to arrive, sipping my sugary milky Nepali tea, a shy waiter sidled up to me. “Please, sir. Can you help me with the understanding of this word?”
He held out the back of his order pad. I looked down and in perfect, and I mean perfect, English script he’d written ‘antipathy.’
“Please sir,” he asked again with a very apologetic tick tock of his head, “what is the meaning of this word?”
“Well. It’s kinda like when don’t like something that much. I mean, it’s not like you hate it, but it’s sorta like you don’t care that much. It’s hard to explain, it means, well…”
“So,” he politely interjected, cutting me off, “could you say it is the antonym of sympathy?”
Well, I guess that’s one way of putting it.
I started working as a photographer in 2004. Since then I have published my photographs in TIME, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Sunday Times Magazine amongst many other international read more...
Love the site. I think you should write a book! When in NYC stop in the gym where I’ll be training your mom.
Ah, Mike’s Breakfast. I remember it well — from the days before wifi was even invented, of course. I even took my mother there once! I don’t think Kat was as dirty back then.