Weight problem?

My own news today is that I've decided to head for Sauraha in Chitwan province the day after tomorrow - at the invitation of Chuda and his wife. He works at a college there, but seems to have various business interests too - as well as his trusteeship at the Namuna school. He is building a fish-farm, which is at the stage of having the diggers do the excavating. Fish farms seems to run in the family - 'cos his sister-in-law (who I also met today) has one too. Chitwan's principal claim to fame is as the home of Nepal's main wildlife national park (with tigers and rhinos and elephants, and lots of smaller animals too). So it should make a pleasant change from the city.
I'm finding the Nepalis very welcoming people in general. Sumita, the polis I met a few days ago, is married (to another polis), and they invited me to have a meal at their home the other evening. I don't know why she was so interested in my marital status!

On the Nepali politics front, of course the news is just what has been expected about the declaration of a republic and asking the king to move out of his palace. All this seems to have gone off pretty peacefully, and in fact the air in the city is of celebration more than anything else.

And now to the weighty matter. My pal Tom reminded me very recently that I had stated that one of my main objectives was to lose a bit of weight while on my travels. The truth is that I rather feel that I have remained exactly the same weight - but I decided to check it out today. The first attempt was with a fella whose business idea is to squat on the pavement with a set of bathroom scales in front of him, charging a couple of rupees for a go. It's a competitive business though; there are about half a dozen of them all rather too close together. My man had expanded into combs and shoelaces. At any rate his machine read 85kg - which would represent a 1kg loss since my day of departure. A little disappointing considering the litres of sweat I lost going round Annapurna, I thought! His machine did look a bit rusty; so I decided to seek a second opinion from a hi-tech machine at the Kathmandu Mall - which isn't quite as grand as it sounds. This promised not just to give me my weight reading, but height, horoscope and some words of worldly advice - as well as my lucky numbers for the next lottery. Not bad for 5 rupees! I was a bit more encouraged to get a reading of 83.6kg, but somewhat offended that the machine had the cheek to tell me that in its humble opinion I was slightly overweight. All will be forgiven if the lucky numbers come up!
By the way my maths tells me that the average of the readings is that I've lost 1.7kg. Not a lot, but better than nothing I suppose.
Tom, I hope that answers your question. Apologies to anyone else who found that all pretty uninteresting!