Radio Shangri-La_ What I Learned in Bhutan, the Happiest Kingdom on Earth - Lisa Napoli [8]
Could it be real? Or was it brilliant sloganeering, a marketing mirage? Maybe I’d figure out a way to get to Bhutan one day, to find out for myself.
THREE WEEKS LATER, I’d returned to Los Angeles. One particularly frustrating day at work, I was sitting around, trying to invent some idea for a fifty-second story that would please the editors and fill the news hole in the next morning’s show. Once the idea was approved, I’d begin chasing down sources by phone and begging for just five minutes for an interview. At least this wasn’t one of the weeks where I had to go to work at 1:00 a.m. That shift required a different sort of madness than wrangling sound bites into radio news blurbs.
Sebastian’s name in my inbox provided relief once again. It was ridiculous how excited I got just seeing an email from him. I didn’t think I was capable of being so smitten.
Hi Lisa. How are you? Hope all’s well in L.A. Harris is being an excellent sherpa on this trip.
How would you like to go work for a start-up radio station in Bhutan? If so, let me know and I’ll make an introduction to a friend of mine here who knows someone who needs help. Seems like a good way to get to Bhutan and up your alley, too?
—Sebastian
Was this for real? He couldn’t be making up this kind of offer just to impress me. Could he? Suddenly, an exotic foreign experience seemed the antidote to my malaise; without thinking it through I wrote back and said yes.
As soon as I hit Send, the questions surfaced: How would I take more than a week off? I was constantly reminded at work that younger and therefore less expensive talent lurked in the wings; I’d been unemployed for so long before taking this job, I couldn’t just frivolously run away. Besides, impetuous work-related decisions weren’t my style. And yet, even though I had no idea how it would sort out, I didn’t worry for long. The possibility that my few skills might be useful to people in this faraway “happiest place on earth” warmed me.
Sebastian virtually introduced me to a Mr. Phub Dorji and we began an email correspondence. He asked for my résumé, inquired how soon I could get to Bhutan, and told me that if I paid my own way, the station would cover the cost of my room and board. A plane ticket seemed a small price for this kind of experience; who knew what it might lead to? Mr. Dorji sent along a list of goals he hoped I could achieve: taking the station national, improving the professionalism of the on-air talent, figuring out how to better report on and deliver news, creating and selling radio advertisements.
The station was called Kuzoo FM. Kuzu zampo was Dzongkha for hello, which is how in truncated form it became the name of the radio station. The accompanying Web site, Kuzoo.net, looked to be a kind of social-networking hub for Bhutanese kids—as if that would cordon them off from everyplace else on the Net, keep them from interacting beyond Bhutan’s borders, I thought cynically.
“Kuzoo was started by the crown prince for the young people of Bhutan,” Mr. Dorji wrote.
Naturally, I thought, in this happy kingdom, the royalty would be in touch with the youth. When I asked him his exact role at Kuzoo, he was elusive: “I will keep that a mystery until you get here.”
As I worked out the details with this mysterious man on the other side of the world, a steady stream of communication with Sebastian erupted. He became my live human resource for all things Bhutanese. Was there really a radio station? Had he heard it? Were women respected? Was it safe for me to travel to Bhutan alone? While he patiently reviewed my many questions and offered as many answers as he could, I got the sense that he didn’t understand what I was worried about. When you’ve been visiting a place for so long, very little about it seems daunting.
One query Sebastian didn