Sugam Thapa, second-year student at KUSOM, dreads presentations, especially if they’re group presentations. She would rather present her ideas to a teacher individually, preferably somewhere quiet. This is because she feels extremely anxious speaking up in front of large crowds and can’t open up easily before strangers.

After I watched Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter...and Spring and finally sat down to write the review, I paused for a while. The message I received from it was so simple yet profound that I couldn’t find the words to describe it. But here I’m letting you know beforehand that the film was successful in inducing a pure sense of calm in me that I didn’t know was possible through a film.

Generally, people have a divided opinion on cats. Some think they are clean and wonderful as pets while others think they bring bad luck or are too selfish. And while we find a lot of kennels and care centers for dogs here in Kathmandu, cats don’t seem to be as lucky. But if you want to provide a loving home to an orphaned kitten or rescue a cat living on the streets, they can contact Catmandu Lovers (pun probably intended) which has been rescuing kittens around Kathmandu since 2015.

Being an artist today definitely has its perks. For the longest time, art was limited to painting, sketching, sculpting in real life, which once complete could never be retouched again. But thanks to the digital age, artists now have a limitless playground where they can experiment with colors, shapes, and concepts and that too without any restrictions whatsoever.

Deepika Paudel, senior accountant assistant at Nepal Airlines, says she feels pretty safe at her workplace. There are cameras installed in several places around her office and, according to her, her seniors are concerned about her safety both inside and outside office. “I haven’t felt any instance of sexual harassment but I have read and heard of instances of harassment cases that occur at offices,” she says.

Kenji, a 20-something-year-old Japanese, organizes sex tours around Tokyo for foreigners. And while doing so, Kenji has formed his ideas and opinions of the world around him—from high school students working as hookers to the tourists who approach him for his services, he thinks he can read their boring lives like a book. All this, however, is turned right upside down when he meets a new client—an American named Frank.

Personally speaking, I’m not a fan of thrillers. Someone on a killing rampage, people being hunted down and explicit violence and chaos make me feel a little too nihilistic. Also, the whole blood and gore and hide and seek routine that make up most thrillers fail to impress me. But now, I can say that there is one exception. And that is Bong Joon-ho’s 2003 crime drama Memories of Murder.

From the tables, chairs to cupboards, everything here is made of wood and it all comes together beautifully to give Freak Street Kaffe a comfortable vibe. A large Buddha head sits atop the fireplace adding some color to the almost monochrome setting of black, brown, and grey.

Jazz is one of the most popular and significant genres of music that has avid fans and listeners all over the world. Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans in the United States of America in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

We all want to look a certain way and, though that isn’t necessarily a bad thing, many times it leads to us trying out random diets without a second thought. Intermittent fasting has been a recent trend with many swearing by its benefits. Social media further fuels this fitness craze and many turn to Instagram or YouTube as the Holy Grail for weight loss and health tips.

Shiwali Shrestha, media student, swears by an all-black outfit. She can mostly be seen wearing all-black ensembles that usually consist of black jeans, black hoodie, and black sneakers. She describes her fashion sense as being androgynous and often shops in the men’s section at clothing stores. However, ever so often, someone comments on how she dresses ‘like a boy’ or says that she has a ‘weird fashion sense’. Choosing not to follow the gender norms in her clothing choices indeed has a fair share of repercussions.

There was a time when bags were all about utility. You got one or two, at the most, and used it to carry your stuff to school or college and then, as you got older, your sister’s fraying tote was what you shoved your necessities (wallet, tissue, lip balm) in when you were going out for brunch with friends on the weekend.

Usually when I watch K-dramas, I’m expecting a rom-com fluff with some problematic but mostly cute elements. But when one of my friends told me about a drama called Skycastle (which received one of the highest ratings for any K-drama ever) that was not your generic rom-com but something much deeper, I was intrigued. Skycastle is a show about an elite society of doctors (all male) and their families whose only concern is to make sure their children follow in their footsteps and become doctors (sound familiar?) by getting them into the prestigious Seoul National University.

Today, there are a lot of graphics illustrators working here in Nepal and elsewhere in the world as well. Thanks to new media, graphic illustrations have become a big part of the contemporary art culture. However, now that every other artist seems to be making graphics their medium of self-expression, it gets difficult to stay original and unique. According to Dhiraj Manandhar, a graphic illustrator and artist in the making, to create uniquely different work one has to be ready to put in the extra effort and enjoy the process as well.

We have all watched videos on Buzzfeed and Tasty of American barbeques and elaborate sandwiches that made us think, “these Americans really know how to work their meat”. However, when it comes to the availability of these authentic foods here in Nepal, the restaurants in Kathmandu don’t have much to offer, except for regular burgers and grilled chicken wings. And these, I must admit, look nothing like what we see online.

Most murals or street art, along with their aesthetic values, have some sort of social message. Some street art might criticize the actions of the government while others may be telling spectators to embrace their own culture and traditions.

If you are craving some Newari food, like say bara, chatamari, or choila, in Kathmandu, you never really have to look that far. There is bound to be a place that serves mouth watering, authentic Newari food nearby where you are at that exact moment. But if you want to try Newari food that’s really, really good, then I recommend you head to New Road and visit Palu Malta. The food there is to die for.

When I found out that millions of people had joined the campaign ‘Fridays For Future’ in the past two months, I was surprised. We have been reading that plastic is bad, the earth is getting hotter every year, and that snow has been melting for years now.

Bong Joon Ho has officially cemented his name as the best auteurs working in cinema right now. And his new film Parasite further emphasizes this fact. The film, released this very year, won him a Palm D’or at the Cannes Film Festival (becoming the first Korean film to do so). The film stars Song Kang-ho, Lee Sun-kyun, Cho Yeo-jeong, Choi Woo-shik, and Park So-dam.

A family living in rural Nepal set out to cut grass to feed their cattle in the morning. As they are working and singing about the hardships in their lives, the father comes up with one complaint or the other, berates the ones around him and storms off. The son, taking after his father’s loudness, leaves next. It’s the two women who remain behind – the daughter-in-law of the family and the mother. The mother silently complains, “In the end, it’s us who have to do all the work – Be it bringing water from the nearby tap, cooking meals, feeding the cattle, doing the dishes, no one ever asks if we are tired or not.”