i'm in

Dharamsala, here I come. I'm an official member of the four person media team for the March to Tibet. I have to leave Friday and so I'm frantically kissing all the girls I haven't kissed yet and using my newspaper contacts in the city to see if I can get some articles published (or even better, a weekly column). I have a meeting with a Hindustan Times editor today and am trying to get something with the Times of India through my two contacts there. We'll see how it goes.

I have decided on my official purpose for the march: to raise awareness of the Tibetan occupation and bring attention to China's many human rights abuses through writing. This stems from my official pithy phrase for the march: if a tree falls in the forest and nobody is there to hear it, does it make a sound? There's a lot of dedicated people who worked to make this march a reality and the possibility of nobody even hearing about it makes me sad. I will do my damndest (great word, better for conversation than print though) to make sure people hear about it.

In that vein, I have one more request that I consider a long shot but why not? It'd be very helpful to have a laptop for this mission. Honestly, it's not a must have for me because other people have them (and I don't want to carry the damn thing anyway) but it would allow me to be much more productive. If you happen to have an old but working laptop or even feel like sending me the money for a new one, let me know. Also, now that I'm officially going, I repeat my call for media contacts. Any paper, big or small.