Accomplishments over the past year

18 04 2011

Okay, I have some thoughts to share with the universe and with my readers of course. I’m really happy with the way some of the thoughts I have been putting out in the universe have been received. They are getting accolades and that makes me very happy indeed. I just realized that I will be reaching the one year anniversary of my return from my trip abroad at the end of the month, April 26th. It is crazy how fast time has passed. It feels like just yesterday that I was on a beach in Goa with Ritz, just chilling and getting burnt. And now its been a year since that event, more than a year, and yet, it feels like moments have passed.

I was thinking about last year, and what I have accomplished in that year, and I feel proud of myself. I have managed to put in almost 15k into my loan repayment, without actually having a full-time job, which in itself is an amazing accomplishment, I must say. I have this feeling inside of me, oh, I cannot pay off my loans, unless I have a full-time job. That is a stupid feeling, a weird feeling, an unnecessary feeling, and that is the reason, I do not believe in it anymore. I do not need to have a full-time job or a high-paying job to pay off my debts. I am doing great the way I am going at it right now. In one more year, I should be almost at the end of the debt-paying journey, which is kind of a feat, I believe with a server position part-time that too.

I have made some great new friends, Carly, Michelle, Zina, Tom, Anna, and I have made friends with a politician in my backyard which is nice. I have learned a lot about politics and gotten involved in my community. I have read at least a hundred books in the past year. I have gone out a great deal and partied it up in my twenties, as I wished it to be. I have been going to yoga since I came back from my trip, so I have been going to yoga constantly without any breaks for about a year. I have taken a bartending lesson, which helped me with my getting a physical, movement job. I have been spending more time with my family and loved ones, which is nice.

I have been using cash only for the past six months, and using my credit cards only for rare online purchases.  The cash is king idea is so helpful to people in debt. It has helped cut down my spending by 80%. I feel uncomfortable now putting anything on my credit or debit card. I use only cash that I have on me. I don’t even carry my cards with me anymore, they sit at home in my purse. I have cut down on my personal belongings. I have given away all the clothes I do not use, and I have cut down my cosmetic jewelery garbage by giving that away to a craftsperson. My life feels less cluttered, in every way possible. I have cut down as well on the number of activities that I say yes to. If I feel too overwhelmed I just say no. I do not try to do everything.

I have finished writing my first book about my travels abroad. I have grown my hair so it looks nice. I am in the best shape of my life with yoga and eating healthy. I am learning more about where my food comes from to figure out whats in it. I have been using fewer chemicals in my home and body, less product, and less cosmetics. More natural. The only product I really use is eyeliner. I use a natural eye cream, cocoa butter for my body lotion, aveeno naturals for my face morning and night, and lipbalm. I use natural coconut oil for my hair to make it soft and condition it.

Looking back, I feel good about this year and what I have accomplished in it.  Onto the next year and a lot more good stuff to come.


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Categories : Fitness, Food, Life, Money, Reading, Relationship, Travel, Universe, work, Writing

You dont have to go it alone

14 04 2011

What is this urge inside modern human beings to go it all alone? Why do we feel like we alone are carrying the burden of everything on our shoulders? Why do have a hard time accepting any kind of help from any other mortal? What is wrong with the scenario, where we believe we are the only ones experiencing a certain kind of dilemma, when thousands others are probably in the same situation as you?

I am the prime example of the go it alone human being. I have this need to do everything by myself. Why should I ask for help? That will just make me seem weak and no one wants that, do they? Some examples of when I should ask for help, but dont, are

- when I am applying for jobs, asking others for references or asking them to give your resume out to the HR person in their company is a good move.

- when I am dealing with  a bad relationship filled with trauma and heartbreak, the best thing to do in such a situation is go to your friends and pour all your anger, frustration, sadness out.

- when I am dealing with a bully at work, the best thing to do is talk to your boss, and the people around you to see what they think you should do, just the fact that you are spreading the word about the stupid bully could make them stop.

- when I have an ailment that is kind of embarrassing, the best thing to do is to talk to someone, a doctor, a specialist, your girlfriends, and most importantly, your mother, there is a chance they have been through something similar to you, they could tell you better what is going on than the internet.

- when you have a big event in your life coming up, like a beauty pageant, or a convocation, telling your loved ones is the best thing to do, you get thousands of hours of support from them, you get monetary support if you need it, without asking, and if you need any other help, they will mobilize their friends and their friends’ friends to ensure you get what you want.

- when you have a dream that you have been harboring for a long time, but you are afraid to talk about it, because it seems too big, bigger than anything you have ever dreamed, impossible in its bigness. That is the time, you bring in the big guns, your family, your siblings, your friends, your supporters, the people who will support you through thick and thin, you will be there for you when your audition or your dance off doesn’t go as planned. You need them there, do not go at it alone.

These are just some of the examples of when you shouldn’t go at it alone, I’m sure there are others like weddings, pregnancies, abortions, illness, emergencies, and so on. Remember – DO NOT GO AT IT ALONE, Rally your supporters and you will come out stronger for it.


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Categories : Family, Relationship

Co-housing

5 04 2011

I have been reading this amazing book by David Wann, called Simple Prosperity: Finding Real Wealth in a Sustainable Lifestyle. I absolutely loved the book – it has amazing information on how we are affecting the balance on Earth and in Mother Nature and how there are people all over the world, trying to live differently, reducing their carbon footprint, making their living carbon-neutral, in different ways. One of the major things I took out of the book was about Sustainable housing. I consider myself an environmental nut, and I know my family considers me somewhat of a recycling nut. I bring back Styrofoam cups from a restaurant we would go to, to recycle them at home. But I know that the housing that I share with my parents, that is owned by my parents, is highly unsustainable. I tried to do little things like recycle as much as possible, keep the heat down, only use the dryer and washer at night, plant a tree to increase the shade in the area, grow a vegetable garden, but I know there is much more that can be done.

I liked the idea of Co-housing that David Wann advocates for in the book. It is an interesting way of living. I especially like it because it brings back the feeling of community into the world. It feels like you have your own space, your own house to get back into when you need privacy, but that you are living in a joint family, where everyone living around you is a family member or a friend. You actually know the people who live around you, communicate with them, eat with them, play sports with them. You share resources with them, they help you out when you need a hand. There are so many ways Co-housing is better than the way suburbs are built nowadays. I could give a thousand examples in which if we only knew our neighbors well enough, we would have saved a few dollars and a lot of time. For example, yesterday my car battery died. I called CAA. If I knew any of our neighbors, we could have asked them to jump start our car.  If we lived in co-housing, we wouldn’t need to ask, everyone would be there around us, asking us questions, asking if they could help, helping without being asked. We spent $50 for a jumpstart, when we could have just made stronger bonds with our neighbors in a co-housing community.

In addition, suburbs break down the balance in nature that is around them. They use up too much of the land to build the sprawling neighborhoods with no access to proper transit, cut down trees that have been around for hundreds of years, and use up a lot of resources to build and to maintain. Our heating and cooling costs for this huge house are astronomical. We cringe every time we have to pay the bills. It is a source of pride to my parents to live in a mansion like this, coming from where they were born, in the slums of India. But of course, it is not sustainable at all.

I would like to propose something. I am going to live in a co-housing setting in Canada. I used to always think I would like to live in downtown Toronto. That seemed really cool to me. Living next to all the happenings. And I might still do that while I am in my clubbing years, but after that, I believe I will find a nice co-housing setting to live in. I was researching some options and I found there are loads of co-housing in British Columbia, but very few in Ontario.

One that I found was GreenSong. Another one that I liked was Eden Mills, where the village is going carbon neutral. Check both of these out and let me know what you think.


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Categories : Green, Life

Fights over money

28 02 2011

I went out on Saturday night. I had been feeling down during the day, as I felt like I have been floundering for most of my life. I haven’t amounted to anything. I am a waste of space. I am bringing down my family’s reputation for good. I am useless. And so on.

It was not a good day for my self-esteem. I went out with my good friend to her friend’s birthday party. We went to an Irish Pub. I wanted the good humor and cheeriness of a pub to bring me up. The night went well, I wasn’t drinking being the designated driver. I watched the others go from sober, intelligent human beings, to slobbering, crying, fighting messes. At the end of the night, the birthday girl asked one of the guys to pitch in for the pitcher that they shared. He gave her five dollars, considering his duty done, he started to walk off.

She stopped him. You drank half the pitcher, you had more than one glass, you owe me more than five dollars. A pitcher is twenty dollars, you owe me ten dollars.

I didn’t drink half the pitcher. I had maybe one glass, that too a thin glass. I am actually giving you too much. Five dollars is how much I owe you.

And it just escalated from there.

I never want to share a pitcher with you ever again. You always do this to me when we go out. You are never invited over to my events ever again. You always do this to everyone. And so on.

It was bloodshed. I was sitting there, with my glass of water, and I felt embarrassed for all of us. They are all in their early thirties. The birthday girl is 33, and the guy she was fighting with is 32. The rest of them, besides me, are in their early thirties as well. I don’t know what I expect out of my thirties, but I expect to stop penny-pinching, and fighting over dollars and cents with my friends. I expect to be able to afford a pitcher on my birthday without coming to arms over it with my friends. I expect to be financially more stable than I am right now.

But looking at these fine specimens of individuals, with good jobs, and good futures, I saw nothing of the sort. The only reason I could surmise the birthday girl was fighting over five dollars with a friend and ruining her birthday night is because she is not financially stable. I mean, I can think of no other reason to ruin your 33rd birthday night.

That night is still six years away for me, but I wonder where I will be financially and mentally at that point. Are we ever going to stop fighting over money?


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Categories : Money

Loneliness

10 02 2011

I work as a server part-time to keep myself humble and get some extra income coming in. I love it, surprisingly enough, the new people, the constant movement, feeding people, instant gratification with tips, it all works well with my personality. But working at a restaurant, I have noticed how many lonely people there are. It’s sad really. Everyday all of these men come to the restaurant on their own, and hit on all the servers. They really have no other contact with ladies, so they really do not know how to treat a woman. What do they do? They get really, really drunk and start hitting on anything female. Trying to grab her, or making kissing faces, telling her he loves her, or wants to marry her, or wants to buy her a drink. Whatever it might be. All of us servers just look at each other, because in a lot of cases, all of these men are our father’s ages. They are much older than us but they are lonely. They really have no one else.

It makes me wonder, what causes these people, mostly men to end up with nothing, no relationships or any serious life, after 40-50 years of living. Is it that they were so busy climbing the corporate ladder or working 9-5 in a job they hated they didn’t have time to spend with friends, family or children? Is it they never had any social skills to begin with and never developed them, resulting in them having no clue how to start and keep relationships? I know in a lot of cases, if the wife didn’t intervene and ensure that the family had good relationships with relatives and friends, the husbands being clueless would have no relationships at all.

You have to be careful to nurture the few important relationships in your life, to ensure that you do not end up old and alone in your later years, hitting on random servers in a restaurant you go to once or twice a week, and stay at seven hours at a time, drinking beer after beer, after beer. Steve, my friend, please get a life, and stop  hitting on your daughter’s friends. It is disgusting and it is never going to happen.

Of course Loneliness is also rampant due to the society that we live in – which is all about cocooning and hibernating in the winter. Suspicious of strangers and neighbours, we do not form bonds with the people around us, even if we had the time to form them. We have no one that we can fall back upon. For example, my family doesn’t know any of our neighbors really well, so that we could if we wanted to, leave our key with them, when we go on vacation. And we have been living here for almost a year. How does that work?

Who are we going to count on when we need them? We have no one, and we do not work to cultivate the relationships. Busy or not busy, relationships are important and we need to start building them when we were in our thirties. They will serve you well when you need them, which is when you are older.


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Categories : Relationship

Some thoughts on life

23 08 2009

I have never been the proponent of the saying, ‘ Life sucks, and then you die.’ You must have heard of that one, its an odd one, isn’t it? It must have been written by some crazy pessimist. But I have always tried to be an optimist, tried being key. Its always hard isn’t it? Sometimes, people try to be optimists, by having no expectations at all. I wont expect anything, so then I will not be disappointed. But is that really a good way to live? I dont think so. I think you should have great expectations, high expectations, but expect 90% of them to fail. 90% of them will bomb, and you should expect it to bomb. One great example is your birthday. Isn’t that just the biggest expectation of all? The older you get, the less you expect, but you still expect. If it wasn’t for my family, my birthday would be just another day in the book. Should it be just another day in the book, should we really celebrate one more year passing us by? Maybe we shouldn’t celebrate that particular day, but every single day that we are living, But thats another debate for another day. I have never had a good experience with birthday parties. Some bdays I have had no one show up, with me standing there holding the birthday cake that I bought and the balloons that are slowly losing their helium. Some bdays I spend too drunk to remember what happened, and then wake up with an ugly hangover. The best ones are those where I spend my night holding my friends’ hair out of the toilet bowl, while she proceeds to puke her guts out.

I wouldn’t curse someone else with the birthdays that I have had. This year was the same. But my family pulled through for me yet again. I wonder what I did to deserve such amazing family. My sister came with me to my birthday and we partied it up like it was 1969. Or 2000. It was amazing, there was booze, there were good-looking guys and there was flirting galore, my kind of party. I danced all night, I looked amazing and it was a hit.

Which brings me to my other relevation (the first being no more birthday parties), never ignore your family. Oh sure, you read the lines and said, I never do that. But think about it. Remember that time in college, when you fell in ‘love’ for the very first time, and all you could think of was that guy, day and night, night and day. Every thought of yours was for that guy (or girl). I made that mistake as well. I was in a relationship haze for 2 years, all I thought about was him, and I ignored my family and friends. Stupido! Molto Stupido! I just slapped my face against my hand as hard as I could. I realize now, that there is a priority list in which you should hold everyone dear to you. First comes you, yourself, and I. You are the most important thing to you, because no one will care about your dreams as much as you will. If you dont put yourself first, you will resent everyone else, and spend a lot of your time complaining. No one needs that. Put yourself and your needs first. Second, is your family. You should put your family on a pedestal, especially your siblings. They are your only link to your past, and they are the only ones likely to stick with you. Stick with them like glue. Third, comes friends. Seriously, guys come and go, but friends stay forever. You will rarely see a guy sacrificing his friends for his girlfriend. Its usually the other way around. We girls, need to learn to do that as well. We just have to.

Last, but least, comes the guy. Take care not to give to him, more time or energy that you can afford to give, after you have given to the three avenues above. It will exhaust you. You are not superwoman, no one is. No one expects you to be either. Here’s the list again for easy reference:

1. YOU

2. Family

3. Friends

4. Partner


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Categories : Life, random

Mature

22 07 2009

I was lying in bed last night thinking happy thoughts about life in general and my work and I really wished I could share some of this happiness with the world.

I was also wanted to share some of my thoughts on male-female relationships and the act of coupling. But I wasn’t sure how my blog would be categorized if I did chat about s-e-x :) or about some other mature content.

I am really excited because I got this really cool book, ‘WordPress for Dummies’. I am looking forward to reading more about how I can use the myriad features on WordPress that I’m sure I am not using. I have been dying to create a header for my blog with a picture of me with my beautiful jade backpack ( I am getting too attached to this backpack – thats not a good thing).

I’m taking this Friday off from work, because I wanted to spend some time with a friend who’s leaving soon. You can’t imagine all the agonizing hours of debate that I had with myself, because I didn’t want to spend any money on Friday. I knew if I went out with her, I would end up spending money on food, and then, when we go shopping, which we will, cos she just loves shopping, I know I would be tempted by all the goodies in the store. Avoidance of shopping malls is the reason why I have been able to reduce my spending on clothing. Not that I would buy anything, I am only taking 20$ with me on this day, so that even if I was tempted by something ( I always get tempted and then I forget about the item 2 hours after I leave the store), I wouldn’t be able to buy anything. I hate being like this sometimes, worrying about spending money to the exclusion of spending time with friends. If only my friends were a bit more understanding, but they don’t understand the different goals I have from them. I do not want to accumulate stuff, I want to reduce it, and I dont want to climb the corporate ladder, I want to travel.

But I am happy that I decided to go this Friday and spend time with one of my oldest friends ( known her for about 14 years). I dont have many old friends still keeping in touch with me, like this face to face, because of all the moving around I did all throughout my childhood. Its going to be an expensive weekend though, which is why I am not looking forward to it. Besides the expenses, I’m looking forward to it, as its going to be fun, seeing old friends. I’m seeing another friend on Saturday whom I haven’t seen in 6 years. I guess, this doesn’t really show me in a good light, as I am really horrible at keeping in touch with friends, thank god for FaceBook and MSN messenger.

Im also planning to purchase a netbook this weekend, which is why I’m a bit nervous, its my third biggest purchase for the trip, besides the airline ticket ( $1500) and the backpack ( $215). Eek! I know, I’m probably making a big deal out of it, but after being in save mode for so long, its sooooo hard to spend money, even on the smallest thing. The weird thing is that I’d rather be starving to death, than spend $2 on a sandwich. I hate that aspect about my personality, I try to be aware of it, and not be like that, as much as I can. But it sneaks out whenever I’m not paying attention.


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Categories : Life


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