A Season For Forgiveness

Forgiveness lesson from flowers (Photo credit: juliejordanscott)

Looking For A Few Holiday Parties
Charlie O'Donnell At His Inspiring Best
Tips From Gandhi
Happy Holidays

Temba Sherpa, I forgive you. Now get back your driving license.

Fred Wilson. I forgive you. Just because. And also because you have a kickass blog.

Binod Shah. I forgive you and your clinic in The Bronx.

Anjan Shrestha. I forgive you and your obsession with public restrooms.

Mike Bloomberg. You seem to be running for Mayor one more time. I forgive you.

Barack Obama. I forgive you. I mean, how about a second term, eh!

Marissa Mayer. I forgive you. I mean, after all those page hits you have given to this blog of mine.

Nabil Mouzannar. I forgive you. Here's to hoping you will find me a few good parties this month.

Pemba Sherpa. I forgive you. Even though your name rhymes with that of Temba Sherpa.

Benoy Thanjan. I forgive you and your misleading last name.

Julie Irving. I forgive you and I also forgive the NY Tech MeetUp. Oh, the long virtual lines.

Tsepak Dorjee. I forgive your singing voice.

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The Significance Of Eating An Apple

I'd like to believe I am health conscious. And I wish the same upon others. I weigh the same that I did when I showed up in this country. That is no small achievement. Exercise, food and sleep are the basics you have to stay cognizant of. I am capable of going for long walks. And the primary motivator for me there is what I see, not the muscles I exercise, although those walks always lead to good nights of sleep. Similarly the apple for me is the good taste. I don't think of it as a prescription drug. As in, it is good for me, so I should eat it. I do freehand exercise. Long walks are for when I feel the strong urge to see. And the vastness of Queens speaks to that urge. Used to be The Bronx, but I took care of that weeks ago. I camped out at a friend's for a few weeks and walked all over The Bronx. Now Queens is the borough I have seen the least. And the borough is just so big, and most parts are far far away from train stations. I sleep plenty. I think that is key. For the past few weeks I have been eating a lot of uncooked food. There are people who eat out, they don't cook, they eat out. I have been experimenting with the cook as little as possible thing. But for me the fill in the blank has meant a lot of uncooked food. Like apples, for example. No, I don't eat it every day, not several times a day, not for meals. No. But the dependence on uncooked food means the apple has to be a ready snack. An apple can be a great snack. For one, it tastes so good. For me it is about the taste. It also is good for you. That's there. There must be something in the apple that you get an immediate boost, you get uplifted, you feel fresh. Maybe it reminds you of cold climates or something. You end up feeling fresh. Oranges are good too, as are carrots. And I grab cooked, packed vegetable dumplings from a nearby Chinese store. You put it in boiling water for a few minutes and they are ready to eat like instant noodles. And I get to put hot sauce all over it. There is no limit to how hot I can eat. Recently I cooked chicken curry into which I put a whole bunch of green chili, the Indian, hot kind. I have not cooked rice at home in months. There's a food cart a block away where I get some lamb over rice when I feel the urge, which might happen every few weeks. But rice has been displaced by whole wheat pita bread. When you eat it you feel like an Afghan.

The Bronx (1)

Facebook Photo Album: The Bronx (1)

Manhattan?

"Where do you live?"

What do you do? Where do you live? When you go to an event, those are some of the first questions people who don't know you ask you. They can be nice ice breaker questions. They open up the conversation.

Where do you live? That can also be a question asked by someone who really prides himself/herself in knowing the names of many different neighborhoods in the city. When I was new in the city, I did not realize that. I'd say I live in the city. Then I started saying I live in Brooklyn. People would say, where in Brooklyn? I'd say near Prospect Park. And people would get impressed. Wow, we have a Park Slope dude over here. I did not live west of the park, but south.

Cultural diversity is my favorite thing about this city. People from every little town on earth live here. How do I know that? People from every little town in Nepal live here. I know that. And Nepal is the poorest country on earth outside of Africa. So I am extrapolating that. People from every little town from every country must live here. I think that is true.

I had a whole bunch of audio cassettes of Hindi music with me  when I came to America late in 1996. My next door neighbor in college - Luke Payne - once asked me, "Can I ask you something? Why do you listen to the same song again and again?" And the dude was a music major.

Do all Chinese faces look the same to you? Then you must not be Chinese.

You have to have my global perspectives to see the texture of Queens. Black might be a race, but brown is not a race. It is not even a race.

When I was living in Brooklyn, I was living in Little Bangladesh. When I went grocery shopping, people would start talking to me in Bengali, which I understand a big chunk of, but can't speak back. They just assumed I was Bengali.

"Are you from India?" I have never replied to that question with a no anywhere in the US. I am half Indian, I was born in India. Wtf! It is just that I grew up in Nepal.

But in the "heartland," when you get asked that question, there is usually a follow up question.

"Are you a Patel?'

"No, I'm not."

"Are you a doctor?"

"No, I'm not, but I am very smart."

No, thank you. There is no town in America that does not have at least one Indian doctor. And Patels own motels all over the place. I once saw a huge billboard by the interstate highway in Tennessee: "Motel, run by Americans!" That does not happen all that often. My people pretty much have the motel business covered.

Where do you live?

That is sometimes a class question. Are you rich enough to live in Manhattan? Or do you live in the outer boroughs?

I have a healthy feeling about money, but money does not even begin to grasp the cultural diversity of New York City, and there Queens rules. New York City is the Amazon forest of humanity, and Queens is a big part of it.

The Dying Languages, In New York New York Times The chances of overhearing a conversation in Vlashki, a variant of Istro-Romanian, are greater in Queens than in the remote mountain villages in Croatia that immigrants now living in New York left years ago....... the languages that make New York the most linguistically diverse city in the world. ..... languages born in every corner of the globe and now more commonly heard in various corners of New York than anywhere else. ...... New York is home to as many as 800 languages — far more than the 176 spoken by students in the city’s public schools or the 138 that residents of Queens, New York’s most diverse borough, listed on their 2000 census forms.

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