Wagle Street Journal

This blog continues from Chyura Set in New Road

I couldn’t stay long with Yogesh as I was about to get late for the British Embassy press conference. I rushed towards Lainchaur. It was drizzling. I was just in time but these British, they have learned enough from us regarding the respect of time- The Nepali time, half an hour late than the pre-announced time. I have written already about this sometime back and Sangha Bhattarai of the British Council always reminds me of the write up whenever she thinks the program organized by the BC is starting late!

So I was finally in the press conference after waiting for nothing at the gate of the embassy. Why do they make us wait after inviting, that’s strange. And what a press conference it was! British Ambassador Andrew Hall and DFID head in Nepal Bella Bird were to brief us on the latest British aid to Nepali electoral process. That was nice but what wasn’t really nice was the way they handled the press conference.

Instead of distributing the press release at the outset, Ambassador encouraged his interpreter and PR officer Pariyar (forget his first name) to hide it from reporters. Worst, this PR guy starts explaining us how many zeros are there in a million. Shut the fck up, I really wanted to scream, and just give that press release to us. The press release, I later found, contained everything about the assistance.

Why create unnecessary confusion in the name of clarity and pretend that you are really helping when you are not? Instead of giving the press release to reporters, this guy was dramatically making the issue complex by explaining unnecessary things. Plus, the translation was useless, totally useless. Why do you need to translate when you are not translating properly? (Plus, I must say something about these reporters who have no idea about what program they are attending. I must admit that one reporter from THT was actually asking all the questions that were not related to the topic of the press conference. Moreover, he was also asking about the issues that were already widely available on the web. Why waste others time by asking all those background-questions instead of just Googeling? Some reporters don’t really do the background research on the topic that they are going to write about and that pisses me off. Where is the seriousness in your work? Not everything is provided to you in the press release. Even if that is provided, you can’t rely solely on them, you have to cross-check them and verify the fact and claims mentioned in such releases.)

Anyway, after attending the press conference I felt that the whole thing was a colossal waste of time. They could have just sent the press release in email. The interaction with the ambassador wasn’t useful either though I used some of his verbatim in another story later in the week.

Ghanashyam Ojha of the Kathmandu Post who came late in the press meet and I were walking up to Ranipokhari (to catch a tempo) and he spotted Ameet Dhakal’s car. We jumped over the fence and got inside the car. The only good thing about the whole thing was that free ride. Thanks Ameet Dai! Oh…yes, how can I forget the Chyura set!

Filed under: Wagle Reporting