A mystery blogger that I regularly keep up with, JustRecently, has today published an interview with me that was carried out over the course of several email exchanges. Here is the link to the interview: http://justrecently.wordpress.com/2012/01/16/the-bozhu-interviews-the-tibetan-blogosphere-is-expanding-but-the-risks-remain-the-same/

The interview is part of a series compiled by JustRecently called the BoZhu interviews. As JR explains:

A blogmaster (博主, bózhǔ) is just a blogmaster (博客的主人, bókè de zhǔrén), explains the Baidu Encyclopedia (百度百科).

It’s a great idea for a series and I’m wondering how I can steal this idea and use it for High Peaks (!)

Here is a link to all the BoZhu interviews so far: http://justrecently.wordpress.com/category/interviews/

Despite the sad end to last year and start to this one, it means a lot to my family that an obituary for my late Uncle Dr Pemba was published in the Daily Telegraph in the UK on December 28, 2011.

To read the full obituary, follow this link: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/8981393/Tsewang-Yishey-Pemba.html

Dr Aghu la revisiting his old haunts at Victoria School

Yesterday was the funeral of my late Uncle, Dr Pemba, in Darjeeling. Dr Pemba passed away last Saturday, November 26. On that day, several members of his immediate family and I went to a Tibetan temple here in New York and offered butterlamps.

I am drafting an obituary and will post it when it’s ready but for now I wanted to post a short video clip of him in November 2009 when he was Chief Guest at the Speech Day of Victoria School, Kurseong. Dr Aghu la (as my brother and I call him) took me along with him that day and I got to hear many stories about his school days. That was my last trip to Darjeeling and also the last time that I spent time with him. I shall miss our conversations about literature and I have decided I will finally attempt to read “Ulysses” by James Joyce, his favourite book, in his memory.

Looking forward to Masala Chai and Momos in Parkdale!

Next week I’ll be visiting Toronto and those lovely people at SFT Canada invited me to give a talk whilst I am there for their “Speaker Series”. The talk will be on Friday December 9 at 6pm, full details on their site: http://sftcanada.wordpress.com/2011/11/22/students-for-a-free-tibet-canada-speaker-series-volume-ii-new-generation-tibetan-voices-from-cyberspace/

Despite getting stuck in traffic multiple times on the way to DC from New York, I managed to only miss the start of the ICT event (!) I gave a short presentation on The Role & Impact of New Social Media on Tibetans and I will try to upload the Powerpoint I showed sometime soon. In the meantime, here is the link to the video that was streamed live: http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/18581849

Behind the Scenes at Kunleng

Then on Friday morning I went into the VOA studios for the first time and spoke also about social media on the programme Kunleng. Here is the video of the programme:

Big thank yous to ICT and VOA for keeping me busy and it’s been fun to meet so many people in person I had up till now only known via emails and youtube!

I'll be joining this smurf in DC!

It’s been over five years since I left my position as campaigns coordinator at International Campaign for Tibet Germany in Berlin but this week I get to “return” to ICT to speak at a panel discussion on Thursday evening titled “Role and Impact of New Social Media on Tibetans”.

I’ll be speaking alongside Louisa Chiang who is East Asia Officer at the National Endowment for Democracy and the event will be moderated by my fellow Brit Kate Saunders, Communications Director at ICT.

Full details of the event are on ICT’s website here:
http://action.savetibet.org/o/6063/t/0/blastContent.jsp?email_blast_KEY=111953

Looking forward to it! For those who can’t make it in person the event will be livestreamed.

Now an interview that the Tibet Support Group did with me about my work with internet and High Peaks Pure Earth has been published on their blog, it’s in Polish but I thought I’d give the link here anyway: http://ratujtybet.blogspot.com/2011/11/tybetanskie-gosy-z-cyberprzestrzeni.html

I am not sure that I mention anywhere in the interview how much I like Polish Bison Grass Vodka

Timed to coincide with the Tibet Film Festival(s) taking place from today onwards in Zurich and Dharamsala, WITNESS has published an article that I originally wrote for the Festival’s programme on the rise of Tibetan video activism since 2008.

Read the full article here: http://blog.witness.org/2011/10/the-rise-in-tibetan-video-activism/