Hello, Dalai!

 

The Dalai Lama has slowed way down (as you would expect a 90 year old to do) compared to only a few years ago. He is only interacting with students and palace staff, and not traveling. A shame that he has never been allowed back into Tibet, and has been away from his beloved home country since his miraculous escape in 1959.

30 years after leaving Tibet, Dalai put out a wonderful picture book called My Tibet. Dalai was looking back wistfully from just the same distance as we are looking back on from when the game first came out. Hopefully, the final game puzzle resolution will come before the 66 year mark.

Dalai's dedication on the first page of this book is the game scribble clue. As always, Dalai is indomitably cheerful and positive. I wonder if his wishes would render as more poetic in the original Tibetan.

My guess that the first symbol in the script is the number '2' turns out to be wrong. Trying to double check on what a '2' looks like from the date ends up not getting us directly to a comparison because the date is not in Gregorian, it is in Tibetan! - counting from 127 BCE, and setting the day and month from the lunar cycle.

The book has a remembrance that makes Dalai even more adorably human - the previous headman, Dalai 13, had received 3 automobiles from western ambassadors. One of Dalai 14's fondest memories was finding those cars parked and forgotten in storage, and escaping from interminable drilling in Buddhist texts to tinker with the cars and bring them back to life with the help of the palace handyman. I can just see the young Dalai careening through the narrow Lhasa streets like Mr. Toad in his vintage automobiles.