We are becoming spoilt for choice where eating out is concerned. With so many restaurants, offering different types of cuisines, in the capital, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to say no to greasy, spicy food.

A lot of startups these days create their customer base initially through social media. A new kind of startup that has been coming up in the past year and is based primarily on their social media influence is those selling small designs and products that you can add to things and clothing items you already own. Here, The Week’s Anweiti Upadhyay profiles three such ventures to help you understand how they operate as well as get to know the people and stories behind them.

The fashion industry, worldwide, has for years been a victim of piracy. Someone comes up with a concept and before you know it there are many inspired (read copied) versions of the same. And Nepal is no exception.

The choices to eat out are aplenty in Kathmandu with a restaurant or café at almost every corner of the street. But fine dining isn’t an option at a lot of these places. Chimes Restaurant at Sanepa, Lalitpur, caters to this need as well which is what makes it slightly different from all the various eateries out there.

The world has gone digital. Everyday people come up with new career paths that are run solely through the internet, particularly social media. One of the new career paths that is slowly but steadily gaining traction as a legitimate profession is the Insta-artist, artists who earn money through their Instagram presence.

Even in today’s day and age, menstruation is nothing short of a taboo. In most households and offices even, it’s still an unmentionable topic – something that’s uttered silently if at all. Ever noticed how women mouth the word ‘pad’ when there are men around at office? In rural areas, the situation is even worse. News of girls missing school for four to five days every month is something we have all heard about time and again and quite frequently.

Fitness has also always been a major focal point at the start of every New Year. Fitness resolutions often fail after the first month but they still make it to every list, a testimony of people’s desire to be healthy and fit.

KATHMANDU, Dec 20: We are becoming spoilt for choice where eating out is concerned. With so many restaurants, offering different types of cuisines, in the capital, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to say no to greasy, spicy food. You might think that eating healthy while eating out isn’t possible. However, if you take the time to search, you will find some eateries that offer healthy, organic food. It will be a short list of places but you do have that option. And in this relatively short list of places that serve healthy meals, Everfresh by Nuwa Estate Coffee has firmly established itself as one of the most popular destinations in Kathmandu.

KATHMANDU, Dec 21: Even in today’s day and age, there are still households in our country that hold a very medieval perception of natural human bodily cycles like menstrual periods. Instead of taking it as a healthy and natural change, families treat it like an unwanted happening that makes the female going through it impure and untouchable. Long time friends and now (business) partners, Shristi Pahari and Nabina Subedi are out to change that perception.

Ashish Poudel has always been artistically inclined. He mentions that he wrote his first poem when he was in the third grade and has been painting and drawing for as long as he can remember. And now, this artistic ardor of his is getting a musical outlet.

The condition of stray dogs has always been pitiful in Nepal. They are kicked, beaten, and sometimes even run over by heavy vehicles. And, time and again, there have been cases where the community or the government has even put them to sleep. And on the exact opposite end of this spectrum are the dogs of “good breed” that most Nepali households buy for thousands of rupees. While a lot of organizations and initiations to help street dogs have started in the past few years, the condition of the stray dogs hasn’t really changed that much.

Unlike libraries in western countries, libraries in Nepal aren’t adapting to the changing times and are still stuck with functioning like a library from two decades ago. Bimala Pokharel thinks that because people value digital media and learning now more than ever, libraries should also adapt that to an extent.

KATHMANDU, Dec 7: The co-founders of Cream and Crackles, Puspa Gurung Dwa, Saubhagya Joshi, and Binita Gurung had been discussing plans of opening up a coffee shop for quite a while before they launched the eatery at Kupondole in Lalitpur. At the last moment, they decided to make it more of a coffee and waffle station after seeing how well other newly opened waffle hubs around Kathmandu had been doing.

18-year-old Simran Piya is quite the fashionista. If you scroll through her Instagram page, you will stumble across hundreds of pictures of her dressed up in the most glamorous of ways. So, we were not surprised when we found out that she is just as flamboyant and modish when it comes to dressing up for weddings and parties too.

On November 15, 2018, the International Cricket Council (ICC) of Nepal declared that the national women’s cricket team would take part in the 9 nation’s Women T20 Smash. The event is set to be hosted by the Cricket Association of Thailand from January 11 to 19, 2019. This came as good news for fans of cricket and sports in general but, less than two months till the event, and neither the coach nor the players have been finalized.

Who does not love pizza, right? But at most restaurants, pizzas are quite pricey. So, sometimes as much as we might be craving for a slice of gooey pizza, we can’t really order it because it does not fit in our meager eating out budget. Sal’s Pizza comes to your rescue during these times. This eatery runs on the dictum, “Almost Round. Almost Cheap. Almost Delicious.” And the dictum frames their business almost perfectly, minus the almost delicious part because that could not be more wrong.

Kirimiri Design started just as Krisha Tamrakar’s graduation project. She was in her last year of Bachelor’s at the Kathmandu University School of Arts (KUSOA), and she submitted her fully illustrated book “Yomarhi” as her final assignment under the branding Kirimiri Design. That was in June. Now Tamrakar has already graduated and is gearing up to launch Kirimiri Design as a design studio.

Waste management is a huge problem in Nepal. Rampant and haphazard urbanization and unplanned waste management system often result in piles of garbage everywhere you look and that affects the country’s environmental health as well as the economy. Doko Recyclers is a social venture started to streamline the unsystematic waste management and work on (and make people aware about) recycling waste products. Their latest project Tatva Upcycle is a creative initiative that prolifically creates new products with creative designs out of discarded waste materials. Although it was introduced in late October this year via Doko Recyclers’ Facebook page, the Doko team had been working on making new useful things out of waste since its inception in July 2017.

We live in a society that’s rooted in tradition, culture, and religious sentiments. And while that’s a really good thing, what bothers me about it all is how sometimes people take things way too far. It’s quite the norm for people to follow certain traditions because that’s just how things are supposed to be without knowing anything about it. And when someone questions why they do certain things on certain occasions, the supposed implications of that question offend them. It doesn’t matter that they can’t justify their actions with logical explanations.

Priya Agrawal claims that she is excited about this year’s Tihar, just like last year and the year before that. The 18-year-old calls it her absolute favorite festival and says that, because the festival has so many things going on, from putting up string lights and cleaning out the oil lamps to worshipping different animals and making rangolis, she is usually super busy during Tihar but doesn’t mind it one bit.