My compassion day

Compassion is defined as a feeling of wanting to help someone who is sick, hungry, in trouble, etc, according to Merrim-Webster’s Learner’s dictionary. Another dictionary defines as sympathetic consciousness of other’s distress to together with a desire to alleviate it. To me, compassion is feeling sad reading news about death told of Japanese in recent earthquake accident and feel the uncomfortable to know that thousands of earthquake victims stranded in shelter waiting for their relief. It is also a feeling of sadness on seeing someone on the streets with a billboard “no home, no food, & homeless”. I think I am a compassionate person in general and have always participated in donating money, whenever I encounter such fund raising people. I have generously contributed some money to victims of Haiti earthquake and, very recently, Japanese earthquake victims. So far, I have also participated in blood donation programs and some charity programs by volunteering my time to food distribution programs or collecting used clothes for street children.

This time, when I was required participating in compassion day for 24 hours for project, initially I was not able to figure out what to do. But with little thinking over the days and events going around, I came up with idea of volunteering all my time in celebrating the Nepali New Year for Nepali students living in Toledo. Nepali New Year always falls during mid of April and is a big celebration in Nepal around this time. It is a big celebration because many people who are involved in farming and agriculture based livelihood are free from their farming responsibilities and completely enjoy this day. As I am here, and there are some other Nepali students like me living in Toledo. I decided to make this event my compassion day. I started with gathering the list of students living Toledo, through contacting other friends and counted the number of students and budgeted the cost required for the celebration. I consulted some other Nepali students and request them to join me for this event as it would be impossible for me to organize this program just by myself. After discussing for about hours, we finalized the event and sent emails to each of the students for their participation and their share of the contribution for the celebration for the New Year. On my initiation, other friends joined me and we shopped for the foods and found a hall. The event was scheduled for Saturday starting from 7 pm in the evening. I am glad most of the friends I contacted participated in the program and enjoyed the celebration with foods and dance. The food served were Nepalese dishes and all prepared at home. Everybody liked the fact that they could gathered at one place for New Year, and they taste the Nepalese food after long time.

conflict

Conflict is inevitable in everyday life. One can confront conflict on a very small issue such as watching which TV program among the family members to big issues such as deciding the best candidate for the job position among decision makers. Therefore, to be able to live without conflict is impossible in present day’s social life. One can imagine of conflict free living in era or small group managed by dictator. But to date, hardly such social settings are possible as more and more people have access to information that breed the thought process resulting in conflict. Here point is not that conflict is bad, point is how to handle the conflict. There is always a conflict between me and my husband over the half of the things we have to decide. It always took some amount of time for us to decide with anything before it goes smoothly. The best thing about our conflict so far is that it is under control and can be resolve with discussion. Besides, the conflict with my husband, I had some big conflicts in my life. One of my big conflicts was with my Aunty about my cousin marrying a guy from different county. In 2003, when my cousin decided to marry a guy she was dating for three years. My aunty was not approving her decision to marry him because he was not from Nepal. In fact he was Indian and my cousin met him while studying in India and determined to marry him. I was trying to convince my aunty about him and his good human being. I was giving the examples of other such couple who were living happily despite of difference in culture and tradition. She was not ready to buy my points and we drop the matter there for some time.

Despite my aunty’ objection, my cousin married that guy and living in India after marriage.

I was in the middle of my cousin and aunty for about two year after that. Both my cousin and aunty loved each other since they were in conflict with each other due to marriage. They were not communicating with each other directly and therefore, I was the sources of information for both of them. During this time, I had to provide the information of cousin to aunty and vice verse. I did not mind doing that but I did not enjoyed it very much either because there were times when I had to filter the information from each other for their welfare. My aunty who was hurt because of her beloved daughter against her wish action, thought of me as not telling everything or hiding some information. It was really difficult to make her understand about my noble cause behind it. During these years, I was trying softly to change her opinion about the Indian guy and finally I succeed after two year when my cousin had a baby daughter. During that period, I kept providing her good feedbacks about my cousin.

Still, I cannot think of any other better resolution for conflict between me and my aunty due to her daughter. Because I think what I did was the only best thing that can be done in such situation.

Aimless life

what a aimless life i m leading? no aim, no way and its just going on.

this is not first time i am feeling this way. i do feel that way. but these days i strongly feel i have no aim in life. i m just leading a life from one step to another step. i doont feel like i m acheving anything out of all these hard labor of day and night. neither any one is benefited from me no i can inspire any one for anything. i wounder how can i be so lifeless in myself. after coming all the way till here, i am no better than what i was over the years back.

some of my friends think that i m never satisfied with what i have. i donot think thats my problem. i m not satisfied becuase, i think, i m not getting what i want.

i wonder, this is the kind of life i want for me, miles away from home and family. though, i have friends to support and they are doiong their best. still, i am alone and strugling to win all the obstacle.

last week, mom and dad had a small bike accident. they didnot told me coz they didnot wanted to worry. i was anxious for them and worried when i get to know from other person. i know my brother is there, he takes care of everything and he is better than me at those things. still, i wias worried and concerned. when i had to think all that,, i just feels exhausted. i donot whether its the path i m following. i m not sure ni ta whats next, i know i want to have this degree finished and then may be phd... what aftr that,,, no wonder,, i can never figure out what i want from my life,,

i feel like one day i will go mad about all these things and opt to sanyas,,,, hahah

unny,,

i need to figure out

why i m so,,,

i donot know how

Me and My Cell phone

Me and my cell phone, i borrowed this line from famous hindi song & quote "mai aur meri tanhai " because this sounds sweet and pleasant.

yeah, my cell phone is becoming a life savour for me in my present life. i dont know what would have done without my cell phone. thank god, i made right decision by carrying my mobile set to here. it would hard to imagine that i spend so much of my time over phone talking friends and relatives. one thing is really good about here that is, there is no charge on phone calls made after nine pm within us and also no charge on Saturday and sunday for whole day. so, its been easy for me to hang over phone whole days on Saturday and sundays and after nine on other days. i dont understand whether to call it a privilege or unneccessary time consuming. i spend so much time on phone i sometimes, get problems in managing time. still, as i mentioned in the beginning, it is a life savour for me. its connects me to friends and family. i donot feel left alonoe and ignored. thanks to cell phone, me and my cell phone; phone will continue be like this for days to come...

Yes Man and Coffee house

Yes Man is the movie i watched this week for the second time. why coz, i liked it so much. every thing in this movie encourage for a step foward in one's life. i think one should watch this movie atleast for once. Coffee house is movie with strong social message and very contextual to the present day. Both of this move are poles apart in every aspect still, i enjoyed both of them thoroughly.

one is hindi movie with social values and other is english movie with message from life which is common to all of us. we are suffering from same syndrome in our life and want to get rid of it. in an attempt to get rid of it, we forget to live or say yes to lot of things. anyway, both of them are worth watching and good time pass.

Meeting a prospective husband

I think everybody has communication apprehension in life and it should be accepted as normal though it is difficult to deal with it that way. There had happened a couple of communication apprehension in my life too. But the one that is impregnated in my memory the most is my first encounter with prospective husband. In my society, most marriages if not all are arranged by parents at the consent of bride and groom. Though things did not work out well and that encounter did not shape into long term relationship. I think that was really a very awkward situation for me and him as well but his case may be different as I believe he is man. I was going through this feeling of apprehension the moment I heard about the news and the meeting. My parents and his parents decided the date of meeting considering our availability and convenience. This whole procedure was going to undertaken my relative’s house and that created different kind of thoughts and feeling inside me. I was going through how my relative member will be reacting about this encounter and what my reaction would be during all this process. Finally the day of encounter became reality and I was sitting with this gentleman who could be my husband and his brother. I was going through several modes of anxiety and nervousness though my relatives made things little easier by starting the introduction session. I am sure both of us were not very sure about the questions to ask and things to say. Most of the time my uncle and aunti dominated the conversation and lead to different topics that could explore our interest and expectations. I knew within myself that this is important for me because I may end up whole life with this man and therefore I need to know the stuffs I think pertinent to our life. But as we were accompanied by other members in house, I dare not to say important things and kept the conversation surface. We were asked if we wish to have separate conversation just by ourselves. I do not know why but both of us decline the idea and finally the meeting with prospective husband ended with further communication.

Now at this point of life I am married to the person I loved and living happily, I would say I can suggest something important to improve this situation. First of all, one should do some background check. I did not know that person already had lot of information about me from other source while for me he was complete stranger. I think if I had some preliminary information about him had helped me feel better understanding and comfortable throughout the process I was trying to get information though I could not. Secondly, one should be clear and prepared for the situation. This could be true to a guy as well because sometimes I hear similar response from the guys as well. I was not very clear and prepared about the situation.

self esteem

Determining self esteem by self is difficult task in my opinion. Because self esteem in me, varies from time to time or place to place. For instance while I am at home with my relatives and family member I feel more confident to talk to them and share and say I have high self regards of myself. But while I am at work place surrounded with my senior coworkers I would feel shy to say even “how are you all doing”. I think self esteem also varies with place you are living in other words if a person in foreign country than the self esteem is lower than when a person is in home country. Currently, I am away from my home country and I feel my self-esteem is lower than while I was in my country. Despite of given rise and low self-esteem mentioned earlier, I would consider myself with average self-esteem at the current atmosphere. I handle most situations in a very average way.

In my opinion, my current circumstances could be one possible reason for my average self-esteem. As I am away from my home country I feel more awkward more often than before. I am not sure if I understand every situation here the way it should be. For example few weeks ago, I had a car accident because of bad weather. I was issued ticket and summon a court for trial. While I was in court throughout the procedure I was nervous and anxious. The setting and ambience was so alienated to me at that moment. Though I understood the denotative meanings of the words said out there by judges and other employees. Still I was not sure if I understood everything to the standard. I was there puzzled and confused looking for help to understand. I feel I donot completely understand the customs and culture here I feel uncomfortable in mass or group interaction. There is always this fear that makes me feel that I m not doing things right.

Some of the ways to improve my average self-esteem could be expanding my horizon by befriending with more and more people from other countries and United States, exposing myself to some of the group events like community festivals or rallies or parade such as on Independace Days.