This has been a particularly tiring visit to UK. On Friday evening I attended the Royal Army Dental Corps annual reunion dinner and amongst the 100 who sat down for dinner were eight dentists who joined up with me in 1982 - our 25th! Aside from the social exchange it's always a good source of funding with one chap handing me a cheque for £100 on the evening; more will follow. On Saturday evening I donned black tie again for the second evening in a row to attend a fundraising dinner in Bramcote army camp, near Nuneaton. This time I had to sing for my supper and deliver a speech (a process I never enjoy) and that was very well received. Afterwards two of our mosaics were auctioned for £200 each and we may double that amount overall in general donations that were handed to the organisers afterwards. This evening I drive three hours north to give another talk, this time to Macclesfield Castle Rotary Club. I don't know what to expect from that, but this Club has been very good to us in the past. A few years ago they linked in with partner clubs in Germany, Belgium and Holland and bought us a school bus for the refuge children. With hindsight that's been one of the best purchases we've ever made.
I enjoyed reading an article in the Daily Telegraph yesterday about the rise of "Indlish":
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/09/16/wenglish116.xml
Essentially this profiled a book called "Enter from the backside only" that muses upon the bizarre use of English in India that has become the accepted norm. Those standards have found their way to Nepal where much of the teaching is done by Indian teachers. One of these, Shailaja, is now the Director of our local partner organisation. Or is she? On her desk there is a name plaque announcing "Directress". On top of this there is what I call "Neplish", where someone tries to be clever and instead of using a simpler alternative ends up using entirely the wrong word. A case in point is today's Nepal news online (www.nepalnews.com.np) where a journalist has written:
"In the meantime, the Maoist leaders have begun their internal strategic discussion to evaluate the political developments since their announcement to defecate from the government."
