Specialization is for insects

A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects. -Robert A. Heinlein

Have we as a society forgotten the important skills which one should have in life? I think so. It makes me sad to see college students, people who are supposed to be intelligent beings, unable to perform the simplest of tasks like boil water for pasta or work a washing machine. We spend so much time trying to get our children to absorb the "important" lessons like history or advanced mathematics that we forget to teach them how to perform the important, simple tasks that we need in day to day life. I've met people getting their masters degrees in sciences like computer science and engineering who can do amazing things in their field, yet don't know the proper way to hold a hammer.

I understand that in this highly globalized society we have too much information to learn and not enough time to learn it, but there are some things which I feel people should have learned at a young age. I almost wish there was a mandatory class for freshmen entering college entitled Common Sense 101, teaching them the important information that I seem to lecture my friends about on a regular basis - you don't ingest dairy if you have a fever or congestion problems (it curdles in your stomach and increases the amount of phlegm in your throat), just because people in commercials don't rinse dishes before they put them in the dishwasher doesn't mean you can do it too, and when you're stacking a bookshelf you start from the bottom shelf with the heaviest things and work your way up.

I challenge every one of us to find the places in life where we are lacking usable skills, and work our hardest to fix this blind spot. I think I'm going to learn how to change a tire. :) Maybe that will give me incentive to learn how to drive.

Inspirational Story of the Week

Reposted from Hinduism Today, hope they don't mind:

AHMEDABAD, INDIA, June 27, 2010: Khimjibhai Prajapati, 64 and a beggar in Mehsana for a decade, a few days ago donated clothes to 11 poor hearing and speech-impaired girls at the Shrimati Kesarbai Kilachand School for the Deaf, to the astonishment of the school’s staff.

It was the first time ever that a beggar had walked into the school to share his savings. An unkempt Khimjibhai in tattered, unwashed clothes, limped through the school gates on crutches and placed the brand new clothes in the hands of 11 eager girls. He had used his savings of around US$65 to buy the clothes.

Khimjibhai begs outside the Simandhar Swami Jain Temple in Mehsana and outside the Hanuman Temple. “I just need two meals a day and some money to send back to my ailing wife in Rajkot. Apart from this, whatever I earn I use to buy food for poor, hungry people. Since a long time I wished to do something for girls and I am happy to donate for them,” he said.

http://www.hinduismtoday.com/modules/xpress/hindu-press-international/2010/07/20/the-beggar-who-gave-alms-to-the-poor/

Meditation?

It always starts out the same. I find myself floating in a void, everything around me empty. My body pulses with the energy of the cosmos, and I let myself bask in the total power which I wield. I slowly go through the various forms of energy, bathing my body in their light and letting it permeate the emptiness so that in can reach everything seen and unseen, emitting and absorbing as I go through the color spectrum - red for love and passion, orange for the energy that allows us to function, yellow for the happiness and joy that makes life worth while, green for the healing life force that lies all around us, blue for the serenity that arises from self realization, and finally violet for the creative inspiration and intuitiveness that makes us truly divine beings.

After the last of the colors is brought back into my being, I feel the cosmic energy churning within my being, and so I release the white hot light into the void, feeling the change as everything is created around me. When the extraneous light dissipates, I find myself in the same place I always do- floating in a pool, unusually calm considering the cascading waterfall to which it is attached. I soak for awhile, enjoying the comfort of the cooling waters below me and the warming sun above me. Finally, I swim to shore, where I emerge fully dry and walk among the pristine rain forest that surrounds me. I always know exactly where I must travel, and although I always walk in different directions for different amounts of time, I always reach the same clearing, where I see him.

He is always meditating, and looks exactly how he is portrayed in images when he is a yogi - his black hair long and matted, adorned with the crescent moon, tiger skin wrapped around his waist, his body covered in ashes and surrounded by snakes. I sit down across from him, knowing the serpents pose no danger to me, and meditate with him as long as he feels is needed. It feels as though eons go by, but it still feels like too short a time. When the time of silence is seen as enough, he opens his eyes, and I instinctively know to open mine as well. He never speaks, but he never needs to - everything I need to know is automatically given to me, my questions answered before I can even ask. It is hard to know how long we sit and look at each other, but when he feels I've learned all I can for the time he touches my forehead and I awake, my entire being filled with feelings of serenity and love.

Sometimes there are slight changes - the presence of Nandi, the amount of snakes present, once I climbed a mountain to meditate with him, and once Shakti was there as well - but the outcome is always the same. I always find myself with the answers to my questions, a renewed sense of self worth, and a feeling of peace and love which is tied to the power that exists within my being.

I know that this is not how most people meditate, and I even doubt that meditation is an accurate term to describe the intricacies of what I experience, but I wouldn't give it up for the world. I know there are some who may mock my description of my experience with what I consider as the divine, but I refuse to let that fear of judgment hold me back any longer. I am not ashamed of my religiosity, and I wish to share my experience so that others may feel like sharing theirs as well.

Rhyme Time

I'm being drawn quickly, deeply down
Down to the core I sink and I drown
Diving deep into the hot obsession
Desiring the sweet molten passion
So that I may enjoy the state of bliss
That emerges from that ecstatic sweet kiss.

I find my spirit being drawn high up to the sky
Shooting upward like a rocket soaring on by
Flying freely among the planets and stars
My mind can forget my heart's many scars
How can my mind encounter such a blinding eclipse
Whenever there is a meeting of his and my lips?

How can sensibilities even dare to compare
When I constantly feel like I'm floating on air?
I now feel I can defy all of my fears
And no longer do I need to shed any tears
I'm starting to feel this is more than just lust
And instead he is someone my heart can trust.

Wow

One of the groups I follow on Twitter is a site called Scarleteen, a site providing fresh and real outlooks towards sex for youth and those not fitting the hetero or gendernormative standards. While I always love the articles they post, an excerpt from "An Immodest Proposal" really struck out to me. In it the writer is talking about a healthier perspective for young women in regards to their first relationships and sexual experiences, and this really opened a paradigm shift for me.

"Without the assurance or expectation that she has an age-old script to follow that wasn’t written by her, she not only knows she will have to be more creative sexually than women before her, she’s looking forward to it. She has no expectation of being asked to perform or of asking a partner to perform: her expectations are all about both of them engaging in expression, not performance. She’s not expecting porn or a romance novel: she’s expecting an interpretive dance. That also helps a lot when it comes to feeling comfortable about her body from the onset: she knows that the unique way that she looks is part of what makes sex so individual for her and her partners."

If you were to ask me I would probably say that I'm a rather enlightened gal when it comes to these things, but this paragraph made me realize how far I am from being truly comfortable in my own body. I now realize how much I've let myself suffer by refusing to be comfortable with my body being how it is, and how my wishing to be different kept me from being comfortable with partners who said they liked me the way I am. This will be my new project - to learn how to reject the scripts of those who came before me and find my own way so that I can be the best partner possible, in and out of the bedroom. To remove myself from fear could open the door to a whole new world, one which I hope will be more fulfilling then the world I'd be leaving behind.

http://www.scarleteen.com/article/pink/an_immodest_proposal

Tripping the Light Fantastic

Tripping the Light Fantastic

Sometimes the world tries to trip me
To drag me down in an emotional undertow
It revels in insecurities and in pain
Trying to remove the happinesses in the day
Til you become one of the crowd
Alone and without direction
But darling, as long as I am here beside you
I shall be tripping the light fantastic.

There are those who spend their days
Finding ways to destroy others' lives
Over and over they wear themselves out
Never allowing joy to fully penetrate their being
Unsatisfied with themselves, they torment others
Reveling in the adage, “Misery loves company”
But darling, as long as I am here beside you
I shall be tripping the light fantastic.


Some people claim to help others
But are only helping themselves
Day after day they let their ego and greed
Control their lives and the lives of those around them
Til they poison others to live as they
Never being able to enjoy others successes
But darling, as long as I am here beside you
I shall be tripping the light fantastic.

Rant Time

So this summer I had to take Spanish classes to fulfill my foreign language requirement, as SDSU decided to drop the foreign language I was originally taking. Not only did this put a major kink in my original summer plans (traveling, taking major related classes, sleeping in, etc) I tried my best to keep a positive attitude and so far managed to enjoy the time spent with my classmates as best I can.

My main problem with these classes now is that we're being "taught" by grad students instead of actual professors. Grad students!! While my first teacher lectured relatively well and I managed to understand the material with relative ease, this current teacher is driving me up the wall. Instead of lecturing us on the material she just has us do group work for the entire class period, and when no one around you understands the material you all end up more confused then you were before. She refuses to lecture us no matter how much we try to tell her that we DON'T KNOW WHAT'S GOING ON, and she not only assigns random projects and questions to write out, but approximately 30 homework assignments to be due each week, which we are all behind on because she couldn't get the site code to work for the first week and a half.

So now we're not being taught but expected to write 10 questions of our own per week, finish the past week's homework along with the current week's, do writing assignments, make a blog in Spanish about a Spanish speaking country and record vocal exercises, all without her ever explaining what the hell it is we're doing. And this is all in our own time, and doesn't include the large amounts of classwork that she expects us to finish at home if we don't finish in class, which we never do. I'm not a violent person, but this lady makes me feel like abandoning my rule against violence so I can punch her hard in the face.

Every time I ask a question about something I don't understand she gets this self righteous smirk on her face and tells me to ask the question to her in Spanish because "This is a Spanish class and if you don't try to speak it you'll never learn" and I just want to slap her so hard and tell her that if she actually did her freakin job and TAUGHT us instead of acting like a smart ass little bitch then maybe I'd respect her enough to honor her stupid little requests. I did NOT pay $1800 so some little tart would make me do group work all day and judge any and all mistakes I make as if I'm a few IQ points from being brain dead.

This anger isn't healthy for me. I need to find a way to relax before I snap at someone.

A Week of Dates

So, I have recently entered an exclusive dating arrangement with a very charming young gentleman. While it has only been a week and a half, we have already gone on five very lovely dates. Why haven't I written about these dates you ask? Frankly, I haven't had the time! And so, I give you the dating story so far:

Friday the 9th - We agreed to meet up for dinner and to chat. He picked me up, and we went to "The Loving Hut", a Taiwanese vegan restaurant founded by this very nice Buddhist cult lady. The food was decent, and I talked way too much, but apparently he didn't mind because after the meal he still wanted to hang out. We went to the beach in Coronado, then a bar in Old Town for drinks, and finally stopped off at Denny's for dessert (he had a brownie sundae, I had french fries). I ended up getting back to my apartment around 1:30 am, exhausted and happy. He was a total gentleman - walked me to the door and didn't try any funny business.
Monday the 12th - We both had busy weekends, but happened to find ourselves online Monday morning. We decided to meet up for coffee at 2, then went to his place for pool. After being at his place for like, hours, we went for a late-ish dinner at Buca di Beppo, where I got to have gnocchi, perhaps one of my fave dishes of all time. He convinced me to take both his and my leftovers (he had eggplant parmesan), and since I got home close to midnight, I was too tired to argue.
Tuesday the 13th - When I was in class he kept texting about how we need to hang out again, so after work we met up and played some more pool at his place. We then decided to go to a movie, so we grabbed a quick meal at my fave place of all time - Taco Bell :p - and then we headed off to see "Toy Story 3" in 3D. This was my second time seeing the movie but I managed to cry again, and when he realized that I had been crying he declared it was the highlight of the evening. I told him he sucked.Thursday the 15th - We went Downtown and walked around, ate dinner at the Spaghetti Factory, and talked. It was really nice to get to know him better, and once again I got both of our leftovers. I told him that I'm going to get unbearably fat if he keeps taking me to these Italian places, and he just laughed and told me I was beautiful. I like this boy. No one calls me beautiful. This was also the day that we had "The Talk", where I pretty much asked if he thought we were dating and if he was also dating other people. He gave the right answers, so now we are exclusively dating but not in a relationship as we both agreed that's too serious a label for something so early.Saturday we just hung out at my place, watching TV and chatting. I eventually fell asleep, since I apparently can't watch TV with people without doing so. Sunday he came over and did work on his laptop while I studied my Spanish verbs, then we went to Sipz, where I finally got to eat my Thai Coconut Curry, which I've been craving for two months but no one's taken me to get.

He seems like a very sweet gentleman, and I hope that things work out well in the following weeks. It's been exciting for me to find a man who I truly enjoy spending time with and seems to enjoy spending time with me just as much. I haven't really dated much after Abhi, so it's kind of nice to be back out there. He's also one of the few Desi boys I've met who hasn't teased me about my religious choices, which is rather refreshing. He did laugh a bit when he saw my giant Nataraja statue, but it was more of a surprise laugh then a "ha ha silly white girl with her statues" laugh. And he feeds me, which is always more than good in my book. :)

iFail - How Consumerism Backfires

So, I've been hearing a lot of complaints recently about the errors associated with the iPhone 4, and I have to say I am not surprised in the least. In the past decade most companies have become more interested in new fancy gadgetry and less interested in making sure that the products are of a high lasting quality, making people pay more for something that will need to soon be replaced. I always feel sorry for my amigos who go out and buy things without doing what I feel is the necessary research, though I do admit to occasionally laughing to myself when their free time is devoured by downloading patches and updates to phones that they pay so much for.

I won't say that I'm completely anti-materialist - after all, I love my gadgets, and cannot imagine going a day without the internet or cell phone access - but I feel that there are boundaries which one really should set in regards to what is necessary and what isn't, and in this time of economic uncertainty we really should be trying our best to weed out the unnecessary expenses from our lives, and the continual iPhone upgrades certainly seem like an unneeded cost to me.

Of course, I must always remember that I'm incredibly conservative when it comes to my money, and I can't hold others to my rather restrictive standards. And I do believe that some people have more needs than others when it comes to gadgets, so what is fine for one person may not be needed for another. Like, I have no real need for the Internet on my phone, nor do I need the wide array of apps that phones like the iPhone or Droid provide. But someone like my BFF Ly would get a lot of benefit from the Droid that she owns, as she doesn't have a working home computer to check mail from, making the Internet access beneficial, and she gets horribly lost whenever we go ANYWHERE, making the direction app very useful in her case.

I think the most important thing is to try and ignore the societal pressures towards technological conformity and instead assess ourselves and our lives so that we can ultimately make the best decisions for us and not the best decisions for these greedy multibillion dollar corporations.

What is White People Food?

So the other day I was talking to someone about how I'm already getting excited for Thanksgiving, and when I was describing all the yummy foods that we make he sounded surprised, saying that he never knew there were so many different kinds of side dishes out there. This kind of made me realize that foreigners have this impression that American food consists of burgers, hot dogs, pizzas, and fried sides, with everything else being seen as other kinds of dishes.

This realization caused a chain reaction where I realized that I kind of developed the same mindset after becoming a vegetarian, thinking that all of our food relied on meat and that I need to look elsewhere for decent dishes. While it is heavily meat based, I guess I forgot that there are substitutes out there nowadays, and I really should try to learn traditional fare along with my other dishes, especially if I plan to move out East or if I want my Dad to eat my food.

And so in the next few weeks I have a newfound determination, to find recipes to make the classic dishes of my forefathers so that my veggie friends and family can also partake in a slice of Americana. I hope to finally master the art of making a vegetarian meatloaf that won't crumble to pieces, and hopefully I can finally understand exactly what a casserole is and why so many people seem to make them while loathing them. These are the great mysteries of the world, I know, but hopefully I can soon unravel them. :)

Journey to the Center of the Earth

One of my $2 Hollywood Video finds was 1999's Journey to the Center of the Earth. Now, this was a made for TV movie, so I didn't really come into it with high expectations. This is good, because the low expectations I had weren't met either. Not only was the movie not true to the book, but the effects were so bad I almost cried from it. No one should be exposed to CGI that horrible.

I guess the thing that annoyed me was their really stupid romantic subplots and the "Caucasian primitives" that they encountered when they were in the world within our world. The combination of unrealistic romance with the really bad acting of everyone involved left me wanting my $2 back.

I planned on writing more, but this movie was so bad I can't even bring myself to give a synopsis. This coming from a girl who watches movies on the Sci Fi channel regularly. I'm used to bad movies, but this one hurt my soul with its epic level of suck.

In summary, DO NOT WATCH THIS MOVIE. Trust me.

Chocolove

I recently had to come to the painful realization that I have a degree of milk allergy. While I am not a milk drinker by any means, the hardest part is admitting to myself that the milk byproducts that I have come to love so much - ice cream, cheese, chocolate - all have to be severely limited. It's not too serious of an allergy, really, but for the sake of my heartburn I really need to cut out the big diet offenders - cream cheese and ice cream.

I've also been working on eliminating foods from my diet that have processed grains and fake sugars, which takes a lot of foods out of my life as well. While these are all good things diet wise, I really end up missing one of my favorite guilty pleasures- chocolate. I am a big fan of chocolate, but unfortunately most brands contain milk products and some even have HFCS, which means that they are off limits.

This is why I am so happy to have found possibly one of the best chocolate brands out there: Chocolove. While their Milk chocolate (33%) does have milk in it, all of their chocolate from 55% and up does not, showing the quality of the cocoa that they use, as a lot of companies add milk in order to cover up the poor quality of the cocoa beans that they use. Their dark chocolate goes from 55% - 77%, and for a 77% bar to still taste rich and sweet is perhaps the biggest sign of their quality.


Chocolove is sold in Target of all places, along with Whole Foods and World Market stores. For their quality they have an amazing price, and I'm determined to stock up next time I visit the store so I don't feel tempted to buy lesser quality products. And I saved the best thing about this chocolate for last- on the wrapper of every chocolate bar, there is a love poem. I think we all need a little love in our day to day lives, and why not make that love Chocolove??

Yay Cleaning!

Now, I want to state right now that I am not by any means an organized person. If it wasn't for habits picked up from my stint in the job from hell (SDSU Housing) and the trauma from living with utter slobs (you know it's bad when you have to put up signs to remind them that moldy dishes mean they've gone too long without cleaning), my apartment would probably look like a tornado ran through it and the recovery team has yet to arrive. While I am someone who is very strict in terms of hygiene, I am a horrid pack rat, and as such I am constantly with too many things and with not enough places to put them.

This is why, when my new roommate was about to move in, I had a minor panic of sorts in trying to clean everything in anticipation for her arrival. After frantically finding places for much of my things, building places to hold others, and regulating the rest to the holding cell that is my closet, I realized how nice it is to have a place for everything. I actually feel happy when people drop by, because I'm not sitting there worrying about all the things I wished were taken care of. I hope this will mean that I'll be better at keeping my place in a more manageable condition. I also like that my statues don't look so crowded now that they have all these nice new places to spread out. Whether my new roomie will appreciate the idols all around my apartment is yet to be determined. :)

Here's a little something to reflect my mood. Enjoy!!