The King Mother

They call her the Queen Mother,

but she's really the mother of the current king, Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck,

and first wife of the former king, Jigme Singye Wangchuck.

Two men who know how to wear a gho.

(Thanks for the pics friends!)

So really that makes her a Queen and mother, or Bhutan's King's Mother. The King Mother is a great title. Not in terms of who your son is though, I just mean, if you walked down the street and people were shouting, "Hey King Mother! What's going on?" that would be a pretty great thing to happen.

Ashi Dorji Wangmo Wangchuck is quite the lady. As should be expected from a lady who is the mother of one Dragon King (Druk Gyalpo) and the first wife of another. First wife because she and three other sisters are all married to the king as queens.

Also, she's a big Elvis fan.

Good ol' Bhutan. Did you know "India is 'intensifying military penetration' in Nepal and Bhutan...[because] the Himalayan Kingdoms have become theatres of conflict between military strategists from India and China?"

Well, believe it!

Also, India is encouraging Bhutan and Russia to get together on military matters. Makes sense when you think about it. Russia and India share a lot of concerns over a strong China, so they should team up. Moscow can so easily be distracted by Europe so it's good to have an ally out east keeping an eye on things.

And Bhutan? Well, like always they're going to play it smart and milk all sides like a a bunch of over-filled yak udders!

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For those interested in who your fellow readers are, we continue to diversify and can now count Japan, France and Brazil amongst readers. I tell you, from Ajax to Islamabad and from Port Elgin to Belo Horizonte, with some Montbeliard and Hodogaya thrown in for good measure, we're doing just fine.

And while I still love the British Indian Ocean Territory, Nunavut's my new passion. It's a Canada thing I guess.

Or perhaps a narwhal thing.

Nothing to say here

I just wanted to say a couple of things here.

Thing number one:

I mentioned this the other day, but I actually saw my blog on an RSS feed today and it looks like NOT GOOD!

Ew.

Fancy pants formatting goes into each and every carefully crafted blog post. Your mother's text-photo-text-photo blog, with one stacked atop the other, this is not.

You lose context through an RSS aggregator.

I shudder to think what some of my triple set of photos look like. I'm thinking right now of my pseudo-toon post of a few weeks past, where the pursuit of an 80s model Buick was captured in the dimming light of a winter, Grey County sky. How does that look on RSS? I'm going to find out.

Be back soon...

Well, the pictures are still arrayed across the screen but they spread farther than they appear in my version. Also, the colours aren't there. The visual experience the blog provides is lost as both text and pictures float on a white background.

Finally you lose the text's specific formatting when not reading directly from the blog. The text interacts with the images, laid out in specific patterns or sometimes actually pointing at an image. My comment about Bhutan's king being handsome was accompanied by a row of arrows pointing at his enormous and obvious photo. In a reader, the arrows point at the row of text above, suggesting profanities or a loss for words? I'm not sure, but certainly nothing of the intended absurdity.

I'm not telling you how to surf the internet, just trying to make your online life better.

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Thing number two:

People from the following countries read my blog:

Canada

United States

Great Britain

Okay, that makes sense I know people in all these places.

Singapore

Sure! Someone has only come by once, but they stayed for 10 minutes or so. I hope they had fun.

Bhutan

I already knew that.

Malaysia

Hey, I've been there!

India

...okay?

Saudi Arabia

Pakistan

Ummm...

I don't really know how the internet works and all the visits from that final clumping only occurred once and lasted exactly no time (that would be 0'00"), but this is pretty great. I'm hoping to get Angola and at least one of the 'Stans (fingers crossed for Uzbekistan) in the next week.

But really, if I could get someone from the British Indian Ocean Territory

I would be a very happy man.