...contd. When it comes to family...US is all screwed up...

As I was saying, its just different here. People here are very courteous to strangers. When you walk past a total stranger, he might just ask you, 'hey buddy how are you doing?' or he will smile at you for the least. So its very surprising for me when people here are not that nice to their own family members.

Let me now go to the second incident I mentioned earlier. This happened a few days ago. This time again, a girl came to my store and asked to buy beer. She didn't at all looked like she was 21, so I asked her to show her ID. She told me that she didn't had ID on her, but the beer was for her mother. I told her that I couldn't sell her beer unless she showed me her ID and told her to go.

She came in after few minutes with who appeared to be her mother. The mother looked irritated and asked me why I didn't give beer to her daughter. The girl stood by her with the 'I told you so' face. As i was explaining the mother that I couldn't possibly sell beer to the underage, no matter who it was for, a guy stormed into the store.

He was dead drunk and stinking like hell. He began cursing me for not allowing the girl to buy the beer. 'You *&%*,...you never check the *#&*ing high school kids for their ID, but ask her for ID....!' I knew it was useless talking with that guy, but I asked the girl if he was her father. She made a face and said, 'Ew! no! He is just her boyfriend.' So you might be thinking he was shouting at me because he loved the girl, but he was just trying to impress her mother.

Now I thought they would leave and I wouldn't have to smell the stinking guy, but there was a twist coming up. The guy heard the girl's 'Ew!' and was offended. He now turned towards the girl and began cursing her. 'So you don't think I am good enough to be your father, you bitch...if you were my daughter, I would give you poison'. If he was her real father, she would have probably drunk that poison, but thats not my real problem. All the time he was cursing her girl, the mom was just smiling. And when I looked at her, she just shrugged her shoulder like she was saying, 'Look at that! My boyfriend is shouting at my little girl again. What can I do?'

As I said earlier, I do realize that I cannot generalize some people's behavior to all the US families. But to me, these people do provide some insight to the degrading values in the American families.

When it comes to family...US is all screwed up...

America may be about many things, but family value is not one of it. I am not saying Americans do not love their family. But the customs are definitely different here. Once the child becomes 18, parents have no legal right over them. So they can do whatever they wish and the presence of parent barely makes a difference.

As usual, my observations are based on the people I meet at the stores where I work. Father and son come together in the store and buy food separately. A girl breaks up with her fiance, because he stole one cigarette from her purse. I do realize however, that with this very limited exposure with Americans as a family, my observations may be exceptions rather than a rule. But let me share two different incidents which has just added to my belief.

Last Friday, a girl came to the store and asked for cigarettes. I asked for her ID, even though I knew she was 18. She hadn't brought it with her. I told her I couldn't sell cigarette to her if she didnt had ID. So she turned towards her mother, who had just bought a pack of cigarettes from me and asked her to buy a pack for her. Thankfully her mother refused. However her mother didn't refuse because it was ethically (and legally) wrong to buy cigarettes for minor. This is what she said, "No, no. i am not buying any cigarettes for you. You never do anything for me. You never help around the house, you don't work, you don't go to school. You are just a pain in my ass. I am not doing anything for you...".

Now after hearing all that, I thought that girl would leave the store, but she kept pleading. "please mama, I need the smoke.". So now the mother blew the cigarette she was smoking in the girl's face and said, "You need a smoke, here it is." As the smoke blew past her face, I could see the anger rising up in the girl's face.

"You are such a bitch...thats why dad left you...", she cried.

The mother has obviously heard these word before, because she wasn't as upset as i thought she would be. She was angry nevertheless. She began, "Don't you dare...I will burn you with the cigarette you need so much..."

At this point, I could take it no more and other customers were also getting irritated, so I told them to get the hell out of my store.

Now whats wrong with this whole picture? First of all, the girl had guts to ask her mother to but cigarettes for her. Secondly, the mother, instead of upsetting over her daughter's smoking habit, is more concerned that she doesn't help her.

to be continued...

I am out of blue days now. I am trying to enjoy here in any ways I can. With this good spirit i went to the temple yesterday. I just want to share some photos with you all. This temple is the only temple in Oklahoma.

about classes...

I almost fell asleep during my classes today. Even though it was Economics(for which I have developed special interest) class, I had hard time trying to keep myself awake. Well what do you expect? Last night I slept at 4:00am then woke up at 7:30am to go to work. I came back from work at 4:30 and went to class at 6:00pm. I was exhausted, starving and sleepy... and the professor was talking about price of money.

Anyways...it will be the same story tomorrow. And I even have an exam tomorrow...Welcome to the American life...

BTW can anyone tell me what is the price of money :) ?

Happy New year 2064

I think I am finally out of at least 3 weeks long 'great depression' period.

I didn't realize that today was new year's eve according to Nepali calender until my friends from Nepal told me. We haven't make any plans here. But lets see what happens tomorrow.

Happy New Year 2064 to everyone. May this new year bring you samyak happiness.

Condolences for my sore throat

I have been getting some really strange response from people when I tell that about my sore throat. Everyone is giving me their own homemade solutions. It is not unusual for people to give suggestions when you say you have some health problem, but lets look at what I got.

First of all, I got condolences for my neck! ya condolences. A Bengali guy who works with me at the store actually said, "You have my condolences for your bad neck." Almost as if my throat was dead. He wasn't trying to be mean or funny. Its just that he has very bad English. I didn't knew what to say to that. I wanted to laugh, but my throat hurt when I laughed, so I just said "Thank you."

The boss at one of the store I work at asked me why I was speaking in such a small voice. When I said, I had a sore throat and it hurt when i speak, this is what he had to say. "Amit, you should drink tea. You know what tea is?" Yaaa...I know what tea is. "You should also put lemon on it. You know lemon... its those green things...wait I will show you." You don't have to show me the lemon. I f&*^ing know what lemon is. Of course, I didn't say that out loud, but he on the other hand did bring me a lemon. He didn't give it to me, just showed me how the lemon looked like. Then he asked me, "Do you know where you can buy these?"

Then there were my friends and family from Nepal, who had their own recipes, but weren't sure whether I could get the ingredients here. Songs asked me if I can get 'beshar' (turmeric) here. Our dear Mr. Raju asked me if I can find 'aduwa' (ginger) and 'marich' here. My aunt had the funniest question. She asked me If I can buy salt here in US. I mean come on...beshar, ginger, marich, i can understand, but Salt! Why wouldn't you be able to find salt here?

Friends, i beg you not to take me in a wrong way. I really appreciate your concern and am very grateful for your suggestions. Its just that some of the conversations I had were really funny. And ya, with your good wishes, I am doing OK now. No need to give any condolences. :)

Scary events...

I had quite a day today. First of all, I almost had an car accident. i was trying to take a left turn, and didn't see the car coming from the side. It must be my lucky day, coz' noting really happened. If I was delayed even one more second, I would have been hit by two cars at the same time.

Next thing that happened was at the store. I was working as usual, and this guy comes in. I didn't realize then, but he must have been high. He paid for the gas and left. After sometime, I went outside to turn the lights on, and he was there. Suddenly he shouted at me. I thought he was just joking, but then he threw something at me. I realized that he was serious, and tried to ignore him. But he came running towards me. He came close to me, pointed his fist towards my face and began to shout in Spanish. He was all angry and crazy. He didn't hit me right away,but I calmly came inside the store. He stood at the door and kept on shouting. I knew he wouldn't dare com inside because of the camera. But it was really scary situation. It was also very strange coz' i still don't know what i did to tick him off so bad.

If you plan to come here in US and work in the stores, you better know the kind of neighborhood you are working on...Too many crazy people here.

Whats wrong with Oklahoma?

No, really. Whats wrong with Oklahoma? Weather-wise, this place seems to be cursed. After two weeks of really hot days, today it was suddenly very cold. And by cold, I mean really really cold. I had to return back to my apartment from work to get a jacket. It didn't snow, but then wind blowing at 13 mph had ice in it, which you could see, by the way.

Normally, cold weather doesn't bring me down, but as i said earlier, this place is wretched. I have a sore throat and it hurts when I swallow. If I were at home, I would have declared myself sick, but here, it doesn't matter. Who cares anyways...?

Send me a SMS

Hello everyone,

you can now send me a SMS!

Just go to http://amitjoshi.com.np/sms

I will be rally happy to get SMS from you guys.
Please bear in mind however that I get charged for the SMS that I receive, so please don't go crazy with it. :)

hilarious mail...

I am supposed to be working right now, but I cant help it. I recently got a mail and this is really funny. It could and most probably is a junk that everyone gets, but its still funny as hell. So I am posting it here. I would very much like to reply to this mail. May be you guys should give me any suggestions as to what to write.

This is how the mail goes.


From : amit joshi { amitr55@hotmail.com}
Sent : Wednesday, April 4, 2007 5:12 AM
To : amit.joshi@hotmail.com ;

I hope I got the right email address...Sweeto, you can not just shut me out like that adn act like i don't exiist. Iam still your wife and u are my husband...please come to ur senses and tell me what you want us to do because iam tried of living alone and being alone waiting on you.. iam not going to go into more detial just in case this is not the right email address..i hope that if it is the right email address that i will hear from you...i did get ur message on the 19th and you said you would call the next week and it has been two weeks..not sure what is going on overthere...remmeber only the positive things..how we met...where we used to go..our songs..and why we fell in LOVE etc.. also, you have to remmeber that i have a heart that aches every day and need answeres...I am not a toy...iits been four months now and we should come up with something..ieither sign the papers or come up with a solution...not fair for me ..if this is not the right email address..sorry

But the fact this came from another Amit Joshi( check out his email address amitr55@hotmail.com) makes it even funnier. i think someone sent this mail to him, and he forwarded it to me thinking I was the one this mail was really intended for. May be I should forward this mail to more Amit Joshi s around the world.

That interseting thing...

I know I promised to write soon, but...Well I don't really have a good reason. May be i was too busy or may be too tired. Or may be both. I thinks its both.

Anyways...

The interesting thing I was talking about didn't really happened to me. I just happened to be there when this happened. So as usual I was working on the store. There was another guy, who is from Palestine by the way working with me. We call him A.K. He is perhaps 15 to 20 years older than me. He has been here in USA for about 5 years now and he seems to be very confident in his ways. It was late into the night, perhaps 11:30 pm or so. There were few people in the store and I was doing this and that.

A girl came in the store. She was perhaps 16 or 17. I know for sure that she was not 18 yet, coz' she wanted to buy some cigarettes and when I asked for an ID, she said she didn't have one. And since unlike Nepal, where a person can and usually does send his 5 year old son to buy a cigarette, it is illegal in US to sell tobacco based products to under 18 people, i refused to give her the cigarettes. She didn't say anything and began to browse the store.

She stopped besides a hanger where we have few T-Shirts. She asked for a price on one of them. Before I could answer, AK jumped in and told her that it was 12 dollars + tax. She fumbled around her pockets and took out everything she got. She quietly counted the money and told him that all she had was 9 dollars 50 cents. She then took turn between asking me and AK, if she could have it in $9.50. I of course said no, but then AK said something that shocked me. He told her that she could have it in 9.50 if she was ready to change into that T-Shirt then and there.

What shocked me more was that she was considering it. She asked, "Here...?", to which AK said, 'ya, you got any problem with that?' She looked around. There were at least 7 more people in the store. She said, "Not really." and began to take off the T-shirt she was wearing. Everyone in the store shopped whatever they were doing and looked in to her direction. She took off her shirt and struggled with new T-shirt for sometime and finally got it down her shoulders.

Now, i know that some of you may be thinking, so whats the big deal? Its US. But the girl i am talking about didn't look like she needed to put on a show to get 3 dollars off in a T-shirt. She was wearing good clothes. she had come in a nice car. you could tell that she wasn't...you know what. She had done it just for fun. May be you are right...this is US...whats the big deal?

And the last word. I leave it to your imagination to decide if or not she was wearing anything inside her T-shirt.