Forty-Something Years in Ninaland

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Cars, Trumpets, T.V.'s Oh My!---Repost

Our old Zenith T.V. with my trumpet on top...

I did some stupid things as a kid.  Like one time while at a red light my mom was driving and listening to music.  While she wasn’t looking I may or may not have moved the gear into reverse.  When the light turned green, we started moving backwards.  We didn’t thankfully bang into the car behind us but for some reason my mother started freaking out!  She fortunately moved the gear in time to save our lives.  Later that night she told my father and it was one of the few times I got spanked. 

The real problem I had with the situation was that I was never told:  Don’t randomly put the car in reverse! I did a horrible and terrible thing, but I had no idea what I was doing.  I was just messing around.  I to this day protest that spanking!

Of course later, when I learned how to drive I may have repeated my mistake.  The third time I went on the highway with my family and a family friend I may or may not have reversed on an exit ramp because it was the wrong exit.  I mean in my defense, as everyone in the car started screaming, including me, no one was behind me. No one was behind me people!  Look we didn’t die or anything.    

I got my driving permit early.  Not because I was a good driver, but because my father was blind and needed to be driven around.  When I used to drive the car in the beginning with my father, he would hold on to this bar on the door and he looked like he was praying.  Oh he was definitely praying.  I almost killed us a couple times; he was losing his eyesight at the time.  I was going to lose my license because he swore he would take a pair of scissors and cut my license up into tiny pieces if I ever tried to kill him again.  At the time I didn’t know what the big deal was. 

However my problem may have been hereditary. How can I say this without actually being accused of libel?  When my mom came to America she was used to the cars driving on the left hand side of the street because that’s how they do it in India.  In fact while learning to drive she may or may not have automatically started to just go into the left lane, ignoring oncoming traffic.  My father was teaching her to drive at the time; he was fully sighted and fully scared for his life!  They in the end decided to get a driving instructor, I mean I can’t imagine why! 

However once when my mom was driving our family to Bangkok Cuisine, she was taking a left U-turn.  Instead of turning at the proper place, she might have driven over the median, I mean over the flowers in the median and just said aloud to herself, “Where did that come from?” when she felt the car jolt.  My family was silent; I mean we were scared silent.  She turned that car like it was not really happening!  This actually happened and I lived to tell about it!

Before I had to operate large machinery like cars, playing was the biggest job I had as a kid.  I used to ride my hot pink Huffy bike all through the neighborhood.  I used to sing and dance to Madonna tunes in my best friend’s basement all day long.  Of course no amount of singing has led me to be in tune.  At all. 

Imagine pretending like you are Madonna all day long? Of course we didn’t dress like her because that would have been a different kind of pretending.  But the fun never ended.  I mean when I was young I could watch T.V. for like four hours at a time.  Now I watch it for four minutes and realize there is nothing on about four hundred channels.

In the old days we had to get up to change one of five channels and we were glued to the T.V.  We had an old Zenith T.V. that had a knob that you had to screw to channels like VHS.  The screen was kind of roundish at the edges.  It was quite the antique.  People’s heads looked a little oblong.  It had an antenna on it.  

When I was like eleven we got a new big screen T.V.  It was one of the first of its kind and it was so fancy it had oak wood cabinets on it.  I think it cost three thousand dollars.  That was a fortune in the eighties.  That’s a fortune now.

They bought the T.V. for the whole family but they told me it was my birthday present.  I was truly touched.  It was awesome.

Speaking of touching: well I was just hanging out innocently watching T.V. one day.  I went up to the T.V. for some reason or the other; I was trying to adjust the antenna on it.  The screen had these grooves on it.  My nail must have gone over the grooves on the screen and some of my hot pink nail polish made a spot in the middle of the screen.  This was a couple days after we got the T.V.

Let the record show that it was DRY nail polish.  I did not put my finger on the T.V. when my nail polish was wet.  Of course I had no idea that I made that spot but my parents started to notice this hot pink spot on the T.V.  What was it they asked?  Was it a bug?  Did the T.V. come like that?  I had no idea.

To this day, they think I took a bottle of nail polish and purposely painted the T.V. screen.  Do you realize how weird and crazy they thought I was? What normal well -behaved child decides to start painting a brand new T.V. with hot pink nail polish? 

I was accused of doing that because many years before when I was five I had painted the stairs with orange nail polish with my friend.  And that my friends; was not my idea even though I got spanked for it.  So no one obviously believed that I didn’t purposely put nail polish on the T.V. screen.  It became a joke in my house many years later. 

We tried everything to get it off, we even put nail polish remover on the screen.  The remover created a three dimensional effect to the hot pink spot.  That spot was there twenty years later, when the T.V. stopped working.  Many, many, years later they still don’t believe I didn’t do it on purpose.  One day my parents were like, “Just tell us the truth, we don’t even care at this point.”  But I stood my ground.  I told them them the truth! I’m telling you the truth!  Why do you doubt me?

Of course before the big screen T.V. stopped working, when I was sixteen my mom decided that she was sick and tired of us bringing food into the living room.  She thought we were ruining the couch and the carpet.  She knew what was driving us to go into the living room: it was the infamous T.V. with the hot pink stain on it.

So she one day took a pair of scissors and cut the cord of the T.V. in front of us, very dramatically. That was it; we had no T.V. in the living room anymore.  My sister and me were shocked and dismayed.  It was like she had shot the T.V. with a gun.  It was done.  We were either too young or too stupid to realize that you can fix a power cord.  We did not dare anyways because she screamed, “There will be no more T.V. in this room!”  She might as well have burned the T.V. down because we didn’t use it for like ten years.  We didn’t use a three thousand dollar T.V. for ten years because someone cut the power cord.   

When we finally fixed the cord, by then the T.V. just didn’t work due to other malfunctions.  I don’t understand OK?  I don’t understand how a T.V. just sits there in a living room for ten years and then brakes.  The T.V. man said it would cost two thousand dollars to fix the T.V.  We are Indian after all is said and done; we ain’t paying nobody two thousand dollars for any kind of labor and parts.  It was enough that we paid more than that for something we never used.   We had someone later gut the T.V. out and we now use the oak cabinets as oak cabinets.  The whole thing enrages me for various reasons.

First of all I’m accused of putting nail polish graffiti on the T.V.  Then someone who will remain unnamed takes a pair of scissors and just cuts the cord of the T.V.  There are no repercussions for that human even though I was terrorized for the nail polish ‘situation.’  I know my mom is a doctor and all, but this was not an umbilical chord.  This was my life.  My T.V.

We had two other T.V.’s in the finished basement etc.  But that was the cool T.V.  Now we have five T.V.’s in our house with cable and hundreds of channels.  The only problem:  There is nothing on T.V.  I have to watch Netflix shows that are hooked up to my computer if I want to watch anything interesting.  We have another big screen T.V. in the living room.  However it is not plasma or anything fancy.  At this point it seems old fashion. 

We didn’t have no Internet, but man I never will forget…

Kid Rock sings that.  He was right…I will never forget those times before technology took over the world. 

Remember when you just listened to music a lot instead of surfing the web?  When I was twelve and this whole nail polish ‘incident’ happened, I was also playing the trumpet.  The thing was in music class we had to pick an instrument.  All the girls picked like the flute and the clarinet.  I may be feminine, but I’m no sissy.  I wanted to play the saxophone.  My music teacher told me I wasn’t good enough to play the saxophone.  He wasn’t going to teach an untalented freak like me the complex saxophone.  In his defense, music was not my forte.

So I picked the trumpet.

I would practice in our Livonia home, in our unfinished basement.  I would play to my own tunes.  I tried the music sheets but reading music was like math.  I wasn’t particularly fond of it or good at it.  Let’s just say in terms of the trumpet, I was last chair.  I would hoot that thing and it would resonate throughout the house, throughout the neighborhood I suspect and throughout eternity I think.  Have you ever heard a person play the trumpet out of tune?  It’s like a loud death.

One day my parents sat me down in the kitchen.  “We think maybe you should stop practicing,” one of them said.

“But you bought me a trumpet for three hundred dollars!” I protested.

“We think you should stop practicing!” they both said.

That was the end of my trumpet career.

What’s funny is my sister played the flute.  She was a genius at it.  They would not buy her the flute; they rented it for like ten years.  They probably paid three times the price of that flute in rental costs.  She played the flute into adulthood like a master.  She is very musically inclined.  YES we are related!

Yes I still have the trumpet.  Do you want to buy it?  Do you know anyone who does? Yes we still have the Zenith T.V., anyone want to buy that?

I got to get rid of these things before I get the urge to play them again. 

nina

(Join me on Facebook at Author Nina Kaur)

You are a Badass

Start by doing what's necessary; then do what's possible; and suddenly you are doing the impossible.

Francis of Assisi

So I stared reading self-help books. Yeah, I know, I know they are usually cliche and rarely change you in any way.  I think there is a caveat to that rule though...I think you can change if you really want to change regardless of whether or not you are reading self-help literature.

Well, I wasn't exactly looking to go the self-help route, but I needed something to pick me up and get me going. So I picked up this book called, "YOU are a BADASS-How to Stop Doubting Your Greatness and Start living an Awesome Life," by Jen Sincero. 



Yes, I judged the book by it's cover.  But it wasn't just the title, in the self-help world, the language can be really cliche and quite frankly very condescending. Sincero speaks my language.

Sometimes she uses foul language, but she does not do it for no reason. She makes her points by speaking from the heart. I'm not even done with the book, but I'm ready to jump start my life. I'm trying to figure out how to make money doing this blogging thing. Lots of people are making lots of money blogging, so why can't I be one of them?

But really this whole thing is about something bigger, it's about channeling your inner goddess or source to become the person you were meant to be. I mean honestly, are you happy? Are you living the life you were meant to live?

Maybe you are, and hats off to you. However most of us are getting by. I'm not saying this book will save your life, I'm saying it's time to save your life. Someone once said that "Most people live lives of quiet desperation."

I don't know about you, but I don't want to be one of those people. 

Maybe this has something to do with the fact that I'm turning forty, but I feel like I'm a crossroads in my life. I know for my career I want to make money writing and I want to teach/speak. 

Are you doing what you want in life? All I can say is that there is no time like the present to evaluate that. It's not just about my career. It's about my personal life as well. 

At this point in life it would be nice to have a partner. But I guess I have to feel like I'm worthy of having a wonderful person in my life. 

The idea of manifesting things in your life, or getting the things you want out of your life is simple: believe you can have them. 

I believe I can become a famous author, I believe I can meet a 'soul mate' and live a beautiful life. It's saying things like this in my head that will help me. Affirmations, or saying positive things over and over again, actually works. Or so they say.

I'm gonna try this whole positive thinking thing. I'm gonna see if I can make it work for me, because thus far negative thinking hasn't gotten me very far. 

What about you, would you like to join on my on this journey of self-actualization? If not, that's OK, however if you do want to change the way things are in your life, my advice is to find a path to do so. Maybe a book, maybe a coaching program etc. There are a lot of different paths that lead to the same goal. 

In the end I think it's about loving yourself enough to give yourself the life you deserve.

nina


image courtesy of Stuart Miles at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Truly Sweetheart

Nothing defines humans better than their willingness to do irrational things in the pursuit of phenomenally unlikely payoffs. This is the principle behind lotteries, dating, and religion. 
--Scott Adams

So I virtually meet this guy online, his handle on the website is Truly Sweetheart.  Yup, that should have been my first clue. I don't remember that much about his profile except that he claimed that out of all the men out there, he was a good guy. 

He was alright looking as well, so I pinged him. We messaged a bit with the crappy messenger on the website and I asked him if he wanted to talk on the phone sometime instead of using the crappy system. And also I like to talk to guys before I meet them.

He told me that he had been stalked before and he could not give me his phone number. OK, I thought. But he was insistent that we video chat. I agreed even though I hadn't showered yet and I looked like crap. 

So I suggest various methods of video chatting, it takes him nearly an hour to figure out how to video chat with me. Even I, a very novice computer user was getting annoyed. 

So finally we video chat. He has a thick European accent, so I ask him where he is from. He is a Palestinian Jew. I find that kinda interesting.  The part that throws me off is that he lives with random family members and he works for a call center. 

I don't know why he just didn't seem my cup of tea. However, he suggests that we meet and I agree anyways, what's the harm I think. 

However, after our video chat I decide that I like this other guy I've been chatting with a whole lot better, and don't want to meet Truly Sweetheart anymore.

I email him that I'm seeing someone else. 

He writes me an insane email back, saying that there was no way humanely possible that I could have met someone in twenty four hours, that I was playing him a fool, probably didn't like his accent and am what he called, "a fucking racist."

He called me a racist and then had the gaul to say "You know what...go fuck yourself, Indian bitch...boy am I glad I didn't have to meet you in person...Would not want to be part of the East Indian bullshit."

I don't know if anyone has ever really said anything that blatantly racist to me before. I would think that a Palestinian Jew might understand a thing or two about racism. 

What scares me is that besides his sketchy living situation and his less then desirable job, he seemed like a nice guy. He told me that I was interesting and pretty. He laid it on thick.

I understand that sometimes immigrants are more racist than Americans, but is that even true? How many people out there are thinking the same thing he is?

When you think about how much hate there is for immigrants in general, ironically, I think there are a lot more people who share this vision that when you get upset with someone, it must be their race that is the reason they are upsetting you.

If I'm a bitch, I'm just a bitch, I'm not an "Indian bitch." Just like I don't think of this dude as a Jewish bastard, I just think he is a bastard. 

This guy is a minority from a war stricken country where the main problem is religious and ethnic racism, and he has come here spreading hate.

For the record I don't think he should go back to his own country, because I think it doesn't matter where you spread racism. I don't think I live in a racist country, I think I live in a racist world. 

This problem is obviously bigger than America and Americans. What's funny is I just recently met a Jewish guy who claims that Indians and Jews are so much alike. 

In some ways we are, but aren't we all sort of alike? I'm a Sikh, a minority everywhere, he's a Jew, a minority everywhere as well. 

I hate to sound cliche but, "Why can't we all just get along?"

nina  

image courtesy of Stuart Miles at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

The Worst Day of My Life...

“Rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.” 
― J.K. Rowling

Have I told you this story before? I don't think I have. It still feels so raw to me, like it happened yesterday...but it was a while ago.

It was when I hit rock bottom. 

This is the worst I have ever felt in my entire life.

I was in the hospital due to a manic episode because I was not taking my Bipolar medication. They gave me a medication, Haldol, and I received the worst side effects imaginable. I became psychosomatically paralyzed. I could not move my body. One of the side effects is Parkinson's like symptoms. However no one realized that this was a side effect and they just thought I was truly losing my mind and body.

For a few days of my life I could not feed myself, dress myself, or go to the bathroom by myself. And I was in a wheelchair. I know there are people who live like this always, and I honestly cannot tell you the extent to which we could learn from them. When you have to ask a friend to feed you because the nurse refuses, thinks you are faking it, as your hands are shaking, you know that this new "friend" is someone to remember. But I don't remember her name, I remember her face though. I will never forget her gentle hands as she spooned food into my mouth.

When you can't function for yourself, there is a certain intimacy you feel for those around you who help. There is a gratefulness, a humility. 

I'm gonna be straight up honest, if you have to ask someone to wipe your ass, and they actually do it, it changes both of you. The nurse I had didn't want to do it but she could clearly see I couldn't. I have never felt so desperate, so mortified as I did at that moment.

If the tables ever turn and I have to do this for someone else, I will know what a sensitive and honorable gift this is.  

One night I had somehow crawled to the bathroom, and I lay there underneath the cold toilet, because I could not hoist myself up. It was the middle of the night and no one was there to help me. As I lay there, I looked at the toilet and I looked at the ceiling. I remember the dirty floor beneath me.

I had a little talk with god or the universe, or the source in my head. Whatever you want to call her. I told her that if she could get me out of this, I would do everything, anything she wanted me to do. That if I could just get out of this, I could do anything. I would be true, whatever the hell that meant. I would do the right thing, whatever that means. I would do what I came here on this earth to do, whatever that is.  

Low and behold a few days later the drug wore off and I could walk again. 

It's been many years now, and sometimes I think I forget what it was like to be paralyzed for that short period of time. But one thing I did not forget was the promise I made in that bathroom. I wait sometimes, listening to my own self, my own heart, waiting for a sign from god that is going to tell me exactly what she wants me to do.

Most of it is silence, and I think I get it now. She doesn't want me to forget. Compared to that person lying underneath that toilet, I have everything now. And I still don't know it. 

Since this episode there have been times I have been depressed and "paralyzed" in my bed. However even in these times, what I didn't realize is that I could move. I am lucky...

I have the ability to dance, and I'm sitting it out half of the time. Is god going to tell me exactly what she wants me to do now that I promised I would do it? Probably not.

She will show me, as she always has. I've decided that the only thing god wants from me is to live, really move this body and mind, really live. What does that mean? It means experiencing the beauty of life while being myself.  

Maybe you are reading this because she wants the same for you.

nina

Image courtesy of Photokanok at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

A Good "Man" in Politics is Hard to Find

One of the key problems today is that politics is such a disgrace, good people don't go into government.

Donald Trump

Let's have a moment of absurdity and talk about something that actually matters in this world and not the next. I just have to say the name: Donald Trump, and you will react. He's like a dirty joke that went viral. 

I'm not saying I believe in the devil, I'm just saying that if there is per chance and per say an Anti-Christ contest, Trump might be the pageant winner for the role. Mr. America. 

I'm sort of depressed about this whole presidency thing because I was all about Hillary Clinton until she opened her unoriginal mouth. She's got nothing to say that I haven't heard before. She is a master at being a diplomatic politician who feeds off of polls. She talks like a puppet. She will probably win.

What that says about our country...I don't know.

I was thinking I would per chance and per say have an opportunity to vote for a real human during this election. Don't get me wrong, Trump makes for good entertainment. I can't wait to see what sick and twisted things he will say at the debates. I want him to have every opportunity to show his inhumanity. 

However, after the dirty joke is over, and you have laughed, there is usually nothing of substance to do with that joke except be disgusted by it. What would this country do with a Donald? I'm not talking about the duck I'm talking about the man, in case there is any confusion.

I'm going to be straight up honest. I wanted Hillary to win because she is a woman and it is about time. There is a part of me that still supports that notion. Would I vote for Hillary just because she is a woman? No. She is qualified in many ways, however to me she just doesn't really seem like a nice person. Yeah, I said it, she kind of seems like a bitch.

Do I say that because she is a woman? No. I think Donald Trump is a bitch too, a bigger one in fact.

Do we need a bitch up there? Maybe. But the president better be bitching about the right things. Hillary seems like she has her own personal political agenda, not a larger agenda for the country. Yet let's be honest, we vote for parties in this country, not individuals. Presidents don't have as much power as we like to think. I will vote Democratic because it's the lesser of two evils, not because I think the Democratic candidate is going to change the world. We collectively need to change the world, we can't rely on them.   

I think Hillary is a status quo kinda gal. She has got nothing new to offer women. God help me, I love Obama with all my heart, but what has he offered to African Americans?  Maybe there is something you can think of that I can't. Maybe it's just the notion that little black boys say to themselves, "I could be president one day too." Hilary could do that for little girls. Hilary could do that for me and maybe even you.

But she doesn't really impress me as a human. She's not real in any way, she is not authentic. She is probably the definition of a politician. And most likely with the Republican circus that is going on, she will win this election.

However, umm...I am a little impressed by Bernie Sanders. Yeah he's waay left, and so am I. It says so on my Match.com profile: Very Liberal. Maybe that's why I don't have a boyfriend...

Sander's is a little Socialist, and frankly so am I. to the left, to the left...

I mean we have some serious issues in this country that could be solved if we took away from the military budget and enhanced the social services budget. That's just my opinion.

You may vehemently disagree, which I respect and acknowledge. Maybe you think we should have more bombs and guns or whatever.

You think I'm wrong, I think you are wrong. Let's just agree to disagree on this one. I may be more left of, I don't know, all of you or at least some of you.

I'm not a Communist although I've been accused of being one. Wrongfully so. 

Yes it's true that I lived in a commune for like a week...and I think the idea that people share is good, however I'm an American.  I don't know what the statement: I'm an American, really means, however I'm not a fool. Maybe that's what that statement means to me. 

I realize that democracy and capitalism allows me to live the luxurious life that I live. However there is still a part of me that knows we can do better than this.

Whatever we agree or disagree about in this election, we can all agree that things need to get better. For you, for me, for the little guy, even for the big guy. 

We can do better this election...we can force them to listen to our cries. Whatever it is that you are crying for, let yourself be heard. Cause one day you too, could grow up to make a difference.

nina

Image courtesy of jscreationzs at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Imagine no Internet Shopping

Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world...

You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will live as one

John Lennon

Do you make unnecessary purchases in the middle of the night? It's five o'clock in the morning and I've been up all night and I want to buy this faux leather futon on eBay. Do I need it? Absolutely not. Do I want it? Absolutely. Will I buy it? I'm waiting for the day because I feel like a nighttime purchase is always bad.

I bought this video cassette for forty dollars once, it was called "Facial Magic." I wanted it for my birthday but no one would buy it for me. It is basically exercises for your face so you won't get wrinkles. I still have the video tape that I bought from an infomercial in the middle of the night. I've never used it and I threw out our last VHS player.

What to do? To buy or not to buy? I'm gonna buy it, I know that. What can I say, I'm self-indulgent. I'm kind of a spoiled princess. Sort of. Maybe. I mean am I?

I have a somewhat disposable income right now because I'm living in my parents home. Trust me there is a price to pay for everything, it may not be in dollars, but there is a price. 

Sanity is not always easy in your parents home. I moved into the basement so that I could have a little peace. 

You can't buy peace, although the white futon looks so peaceful. I could even sleep on it, but mostly I'm using it as a couch. In the middle of the night once, I almost bought a really good bathroom cleaner that could transform the nastiest of bathrooms, although my bathroom wasn't nasty, I just thought it was so amazing.

That is the inherent problem with sleep buying. Every gimmick looks so spectacular in the light of the night stars. You think you might need those six-hundred-dollar knives one day. 

I don't need that futon. Why am I spending my money when I should be saving it? Because people, sometimes you got to give. To yourself. No one else is gonna give you anything.

Is that selfish? No, it's just true. If I didn't buy myself cute outfits and cool stuff, no one else really is going to. Is that a valid justification? It depends on what you can actually afford. I can actually afford to be a little materialistic right now. That may change in an instant. 

I mean I probably shop too much, but I've gotten much better and I'm really trying not to let buying things be that important to me. 

I guess the real question is, could I live without my things, my clothes, my stuff?

If I lost everything in a fire, or had to sell everything in order to survive, would I be able to still be happy? 

No.

But I'm trying. I'm trying not to define myself by what I own. I'm trying not to let shoppers high be the thing I turn to in order to be happy. 

My stuff is not going to make me happy, that futon is going to make me smile sometimes, but mostly it something I will have to clean. Like everything else, it will collect dust. 

The only thing that isn't collecting dust, is my soul. Even my mind has got some weird way of losing it's fine skills, but my soul, my spirit, doesn't need any of this shit. 

Give it a loin cloth and a mat to sleep on and it's fine.

The rest of me has a king size bed and some high thread count sheets. Someone once asked Oprah if she felt guilty about having so much when there are people who don't have anything. 

Oprah said no. She said it wasn't going to make poor people any richer if she's poor. Oprah gives when she needs to give. We all give in the ways that we can, to the people that we can. Even if they are our own family. 

But do you give to yourself? Sometimes you are worthy of your greatest gift. Of course your greatest gift is love, but those hot pink stilettos are a close second.

nina 

Image courtesy of iosphere at FreeDigitalPhotos.net