my big fat desi family

the issue with desi familes is that everyone and their mother is in your business. and you can never tell anyone anything, expecting them to keep a secret. and what follows is this convoluted chinese whispers, where someone will tell another something and they will tell something else to another someone and you end up hearing it from the fourth person and you are like what the hell when did i EVER say that. and coz families thrive on gossip, its great if you are on the receiving end of the gossip but if you are the gossip its the worst, coz then everyone and again their mother wants to know each and every detail of your oh-so happening life. will everyone please just let me be.

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love mera hit hit..na kar phir aisi kit pit

so the thing with parents visiting, you can never really gauge their definition of 'fun'. i mean you think certain things will be fun for parents. i.e a broadway show. its not. its all opera music. you picked the wrong broadway. phantom of the opera.

or you think lunch near the river where yachts are docked will be scenic in crowded manhattan. turns out they are serving hard core amrikan food. and not the good kind. and its raining. so again flop idea.. even desi food cant save the day when the odds are against you. i took my mom to this gujurati place downtown, and as a hardcore non vegetarian this isnt exactly my choice, bu i know my mom likes it. but i have eaten at that place before and its pretty unique compared to the rest of the desi places in new york. but we were super tired and after their dozen appetizers (yea each different form the other), we were beat and couldnt eat anymore. i am a big fan of chole baturei but couldnt finish one mini batura either.so what i had built up all day turned out to be a total flop coz my mom was in jet lag mode and nearly fell asleep on the dinner table. but what made my day was the server who was from turkmenistan ( in my head i was like who where? - i have become the cliched american - only im not american), so she goes i have a kind face and kind way of talking and i look like her cousin. that really zapped me and made me very happy. my mom now thinks im like my dad - bas bolnei ki der hai, and hawa mein urtei hai hum.

anyhoo, i went to a netowrking event last week with a couple of friends. me and my friend and her husband. me and my friend sooo lack the normal casual cool networking gene, we sound enforced and frankly im usually having an out of body experience where im going to myself "stupid stupid stop talking" . or on the other hand weird awkard silence are usually teppered with my thoughts on the lines of "stupid stupid say something". so anyway i didnt have any agenda as such, but i thought it would be good to talk to some new people. so, i spoke to a guy who works in a hedge fund but looks like he works for google. (ie think rolled out of bed and came to work). i was also surprised to know that he works on the trading floor, not to be mean or anything, just being brutally honest ,nerdy geeky people on the trading floor are kept well away from clients (anyone read liars poker) , unless your group is intentionally geeky nerdy and in that case you are the prized posession. but mostly its the latter. this is done since you are unkempt (ie not presentable), you prefer it this way,in fact i hve a friend who is like i wish i could just go my whole life not speaking to any client. my friend is a director at an investment bank. so anyway there was someone who worked for electric company, and i was like what-what my dumb desi blonde gene kicking in (no offence to real blondes) anyway apparently having an electric meter where you read your own meter and know exactly what is using what is damn expensive. its a good idea though. apparently now working in energy companies is cool.

in other random news i was watching obama's group discussion today. the program name, prescription something of that sorts. it was really interesting actually for someone who is a pseudo-medico. by that i mean someone in your family is a doctor such that you think you never need to see a doctor since you can self treat yourself. doesnt matter that your own family who are doctors, go to see other doctors. yes, i belong to that breed. anyway, so apparently getting a medical degree here is super expensive and you can rack up something like 300K in tuition. and there was an interesting point made by atul gawande in one of his books where he mentions the average time to recover the tuition costs for a medico is far greater than the time for say someone in finance. and in order to repay your costs quickly, you end up super specializing -coz thats where the money is. and there in lies the crux of the matter, too many specialists and too few gps. so too many unnecessary costs. and very little prevention.

maybe they should lax the the US entrance exams for gps. every desi doctor will then jump ship. and that will blow up the healthcare sector and at that point i will be shorting it.

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baat meri suniye tau zara.

its exactly 12 am. my mom is going to be here tommorow (yay). the downside is that means my apartment has to be super clean in 6 hours. considering how tiny my studio is, i should be done in 3. correct?

hell no, when your mom is visiting its not equivalent to friends dropping by - this requires deep cleaning. shit, i feel like im in undergrad now where im scrambling to tidy my room, during random hall checks. i cant remember on whose blog but i did read this list of things you should not be doing if you are over 25. needless to say im doing pretty much everything on the pre25 list. well mostly anyway. anyway, one of them is not living in a dump/hell hole.

ok i exaggerate, its not really really a hellhole but its not one of those typical girly flowery smelling appartments (well not yet anyway). which reminds me i have to get flowers. all hail 24 hour deliveries that are stocked with lilies. most of the time my appartment smells of practically nothing. and its never dirt but like junk and usually stacks and stacks of papers, thanks to my packrat attitude where i lug around everything that i have possibly owned in these last 4 years. plus my whole what if i need this one day, i have stacks of research papers some that i have never read and probably will never read but i just keep them for 'just in case'. just in case i read them. in fact, i have drawers of 'just in case' stuff and i just thrashed quite a bit of stuff. so now i have no stress balls to squeeze just in case i have a meltdown.

i have this phobia that i will throw out something super important so i become a collector of everything from a ticket stub to a free massage coupon dated eons ago, which i will never use and can't use now since its expired. once in a while, i need an intervention (ie mom visits - friends coming over - depending on the type of friend and their length of stay- requires anything from the range of doing nothing to a little facelift. but when its moms then you really need to go at it. there is nothing like the feeling of your mom walking into your appartment and going "dil khush hogaya dekh kar". hahahahah. but the best best thing is when my sibling visits, she completely waxes out my bathroom tub such that i feel like i moved in yesterday. my brother in law changes the lightbulbs, fixes the clogging in bathroom, and changes my watch clocks, which are always an hour ahead or behind, thanks to stupid daylight savings. the perks of having family, i tell you.

anyway have to get back to cleaning the fridge. i cant wait for my mom to be here.

have a great weekend everyone.

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have you ever wondered where the story ends and how it all began?

disclaimer: this is a completely random post.

so first things first, wishing everyone who reads/stumbled on this blog a very very happy new year.. May the year bring you whatever you wish for and more.

I was away the last 10 days on my super short holiday (ok new years resolution: no complaining. no whining) , at least i got a vacation, which is a big thing. So I visited the UK for 4 days, mainly Leicester, Lake district and Birmingham. after that it was a 4 day stop over in dubai. UK is super laidback its unbelievable and i dont know what recession people are talking about coz the days after christmas, all the stores were chaotic, like you would think the stuff was for free the way people were shopping. after christmas, and they werent being cheapos like us picking up holiday cards at 50% to be used in 2009. hahah. but quite a few desis doing that, we all think alike. it may just be genetic.


i ended up sitting next to a guy from tzakistan (sp) on the plane who got terribly offended that i had not heard about the city hes from. For a moment I felt like whats his problem, but then it occured to me, I feel irriated too when people dont know what Dubai is. He then proceeded to show me all his pappers, his admission letter to college. I was quite shocked as to how pple can be so open.

Anyway Leicester, I didnt see much apart from looking at trees and brick houses worth millions of pounds and which incidentally are owned by cabbies. yes, that is the hot profession for the year. =). i kid u not. i think i may have taken some pictures, will post a few.

Birmingham, is desi town, and all desis look alike. The desi girls/ladies,all super thin and have 1 kilo of make up on, and something which i observed and thought was pretty great was how people wore their salwar suits bindaas in malls, that too the young young generation, whereas here in US even in very desi-ish localities like Queens, you wont see too many pple in salwar suits. The desi guys all look like SRK in Rab ne Bana di jodi. They all have the same hair cut, maybe better dressing sense.

Lake district is the place one should go if they want to get away from it all. We stayed in those lodges in the middle of mountains, with no internet connection and cell phones connection and a 12 inch size tv. its the antitech and i was totally loving it.

Dubai, nothings changed really in terms of infrastructure. A new mall has popped up again and has an aquarium inside,which honestly is pretty neat. The bad news is that dubai is on the verge of being bankrupt, and had to ask Abu Dhabi for help. The effect isnt immediate but a lot of pple have been laid off at banks and real estate companies, people who had taken loans be it personal, home, car loans and now can't afford to pay back the loans, so apparently they leave. Some huge number of cars were found at the airport with the key in the ignition. The situation will be even more grave in Dubai than in the US, since its a smaller country and made up of expats who take personal loans to actually build a house in their home country and for the Dxb govt to actually take possession of that will get messy and Im not sure if there are any laws that will help. jo hoga dekha jayega. a friend of mine who gave up his job in the US to move to Dxb, now cant find a job no one is hiring.

Me and doctorsaab (aka as my mom) finally did the road trip of Ras Al Khaimah and Fujairah. And since we dont have a GPS system in Dubai, we relied on highly built up places from the internet. So we ended up driving around aimlessly in Ras Al Khaimah. Considering it was new years, the park, the mall all were empty. And Fujairah, an older version of Dubai, definetly pretty was a bit shady I thought. We ended up eating at a dhaba and everyone kept staring at us. Finally we decided to ask someone, anyone kya hai at least to see in Ras Al Khaimah. We see a pathan walking on the road, we stop the car and motion to me. Heres how the conversation
went.

me: Khan saab, Ras Al Khaimah ki beach kahan hai
Pathan: Beach, toda paani hai wahan par, jidhar bachei shaam ko kheltei hai. Par aisi koi beach nahin hai.
me: Ras Al Khaimah, mein dekhnei kei layk kya hai
Pathan: Kuch bhi nahin, hum logh khud pareshaan hai. Dubai wapis chalei jao. Kuch bhi nahin hai yahan par. Chalei jao wapis (im sure he wanted to add aur hamein bhi lei chalo)

and so, we drove back home.

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bas yun hi.


so latest news is that SRK will be the chief guest at the annual ICICI event in dxb. mainly a networking banking kind of event. and although i do want to see SRK in real time, i really cannot understand why an actor should be or even want to be at this event.( i mean as chief guest) sure everyone needs a your-money-and-u-education and everyone wants to know how much they have made. and where the market is heading etc etc. but honestly having an actor do an item number in front of other bankers and corporate types is just a waste of time. really. i mean, how is that even relevant to your bank. i mean what is the bank trying to show here, that SRK invests in them so one should. herd mentality. if its good for him its good for us. seriously, people are smarter than that.

im not undermining SRK's intelligence, but really would he know where interest rates are headed. and how the asian economies are doing. are exports down/up. wat are the tax implications of the new budget. are foreign investments the way to go? are latin american stocks in? i doubt he would know all this. i dont blame him. its not his job, to know. but shouldnt they be inviting someone like the Finance Minister or some economist or something. But then that would be boring and informative. and why would banks actually want to educate their investors and give them gyaan. the less u know the better.

mom: quit whining.
me: there's really no point to this event.
mom: fine, give your pass to someone else
me: *very inaudible* err..ok. can you get me an autograph though?

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jaanei kyun logh ghar kareed thei hai...(dil chahta hai style)

so we went to see the palm jumeirah, after having read in the newspapers that people have gotten possession of their apartments. and one of the real estate agents we know offered to take us since some parts are restricted, something like that. i cant say that im spellbound by the work done and that it looks very awesome or something. we saw the shoreline apts and it looks very normal, nothing spectacular. no fancy architecture or anything. apparently there is a rumor doing the rounds that the canal that was being built has been scrapped. the signature villas on the branches of the palm are built so close to each other, almost like u can stick out your hand and touch your neighbours window.

however, the choknei wali cheez (suprise factor) is that its all built on water and that is truly remarkable. the real estate agent was like i think its still quite risky, especially after tsunami happened. even then not a single apt is up for sale from the original property development company, all are in resale.

we went to see another projects in the international city. its in the middle of nowhere, on the outskirts of the city, very sandy area of dubai. perhaps like 50 buildings or so, are all ready and hardly anyone stays there. even the real estate agent is like we dont know what is going to happen but we take a lot of risk, "jab tak chalta hai chalnei do"

recently a very famous construction company came under fire, after having promised investors that a 10% down payment is all they need and 90% would be financed by the loan giving company. the loan company refused on the basis that they couldnt guarantee the materials being used for the construction and of course whether the company was profitable enough. the construction company sent a notice to their investors that they are cancelling their contract. but not only that, that their 10% was not being returned. some pple fought it out and got back their money, some didnt. and some just couldnt.

the agent mentioned that there had even been a case where someone in sharjah had duped a whole lot of people in purchasing freehold property in one of the buildings. recent news came out that the man had no building, it was a fictitious office and he had ran away with many peoples hard earned money and perhaps their only savings.

its so sad, i cant understand how one can trick another and feel no remorse or no guilt. conversation grew randomn and we started talking about doctors duping others, something ive already written about. but what shocks me is that i used to think its perhaps poorer people, people who arent educated, people who perhaps have seen little less of the world and its ways that are easily duped. but surprisingly it includes those who are in a cut throat competitive industry, supremely educated are being duped. there is a "doctor" (read quack) in mumbai who apparently sells this miracle tonic. its made of certain chemicals, and can be used for any disease/illness. an uncle of ours who during his medical checkup was found to have 3 blocks in his heart swears by it. wat crap. how can there be one treatment for any and every illness. he has even tapes where a deaf and dumb girl starts talking after using his treatment. wat madness. my sister and my mom went to his "clinic" to check it out. which was in a very shady area. but neway, my sister asked him what degree do u have,w here did u study from. he replied zero degree. how can u cure something that you have no knowledge about? alrite, how about where you do your research? at these questions, he grew very agitated and irritated. at the end of the cross examining =), he asked my mom to take his cards and recommend her patients to him and send him some patients. first of all, no credible doctor will advertise like this or ask for recommendations so shamelessly, and if you're treatments are any good patients will get to know about this. H-uncle still thinks hes feeling a whole lot better after having gone to him. perhaps, they are vitamins which make you feel better. perhaps its psychological. but will vitamins and psychology make blocks go away. no. it wont. another "hakim" my aunty had gone to, used this oil to give massage, but not only that he would stand on the patients feet, imagine a 60-70kg man standing on an elderly's feet. it sounds so ridiculous.

sadly people will try anything for immediate relief. and sometimes they will make themselves believe that they are getting better. in this madness of living and trying to make a living we forget ourselves and we neglect ourselves physically and emotionally too. the people who are duping pple perhaps they are increasing their wealth, but im sure they are super stressed of being caught one day too. all this will have its toll on their health too. wat goes around eventually does come around

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an apple a day..

a visit from one of the medical reps led to some discussion and debate on the standards of medical practices, here in dubai. the increasing medical charges by many of the doctors. and the mushrooming of polyclinics everywhere. recently lot of patients have come to my mom where the doctor has so to say taken the patient for a ride. asking them to do tests which aren't necessary. prescribing medicines that arent necessary..etc.

a particular hospital where many a patients were being reffered to, since it was the one which had the least "magaj maari" (headache) and probably was one of the more affordable ones. but now ever since they changed their salary scheme for their doctors from a fixed pay to a pay based on salary + commision on pathological tests, the "treatments" have extended from one visit to three/four visits. not to mention the "international" hospitals that keep popping up and charge an arm and a leg(almost like youre staying in a 5 star hotel) for one nite. as one doctor friend puts it its the pits for those without medical insurance here. theres a certain rumour doing the rounds that a mere consultation at the dxb health city will be a good 2000 AED ( approximately 600 USD).

lets face it no one really comes to the doctor coz they want to. or feel like it. its only when they dont feel like it, they do. =). and mostly people go to the doctor when "paani sar sei upar hogaya hai" i.e when you're in the worst state. there is also no, of lack of a a better word, "output" so to say. no fancy haircut/manicure as when one goes to a parlour. or great clothes to show off after a visit to your favourite store. many think its an added expense, and sometimes there is so much attitude by patients as if its the doctor's fault that such a thing has happened to you. of course this doesnt apply to a gynaecologist or a plastic surgeon. so you can imagine how much whining is going to occur for those hike in fees. but fikar not, one still has medical insurance. at least we think so.

its a different post altogether about how insurance companies remind you to that reading the fine print is somethign you should always do. a friend of mine's medical insurance company refused to pay her bill on the grounds they didnt cover such a case. her brother who is a physician read through the contract, took out the medical dictionary highlighted passages in it and sent a photocopy of it back to the insurance company. the company succumbed and paid it. isolated incident. but how many pple will actually fight back or even know that htey can?

so whose to blame here, the doctor who is threading in dangerous unethical waters. perhaps they have their own majboori, rising costs, spouse and kids demands. medical insurance companies? is it the government who keeps increasing prices? is it the divide between the rich, richer richest and the poorest? who is to say. i really dont know.

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ab kya karenge bhai, ab kahan jayengei bhai.

most of the patients at the clinic are children. probably between 0-6 years. many of them when they come in and are sitting in the waiting area are initially pretty calm, some not so calm. some are agitated, some are curious and want to explore the different rooms, some are stuck to their parents and if you so much as look at them they bury their face in their moms arm. some will converse with the lab technician and the receptionist. some will run around the area and bang into some wall and start crying afterwards. but everything is generally under control. however, once they enter the doctors room its a whole different story altogether. my mom usually has a stock of candy and lollipops for these young visitors. so many of them who know my mom will enter the room and start eyeing the candy immediately. some who arent well trained will rush towards the drawer and pull some out. others will whisper in their moms ear and sometimes the mom may be embarassed to ask for candy for the kid. sometimes not. then there are some kids who look at my mom's white doctors coat and start crying. the crying pattern usually starts with this whimpering sounds and then a monotonous crying and suddenly it will be these loud shrieks. in 5 mins its all over and the kid is hopping and skipping out of the room. usually with some candy in their hand. like nothing ever happened.

today, this kid maybe 2 years old came in and my mom just touched her and she started screeching. no tears just screeching. my mom trying to reason with her was like "ronei sei kya fayda hoga". (whats the use in crying). the kid is probably thinking lady there are a gazillion uses of crying. hahaah. for some seconds the kid stopped crying, probably trying to weigh the pros and cons of crying and figured its best to continue. =). i wonder if ones personality forms from childhood, are we who we are as kids. are we born to be stubborn, moody, extroverted, introverted..etc. or do we become who we are as we grow up. and if we do change, which in these parts of our life were we our true self. the one we were as children, or the one we are now. or are we intrinsically the same and all we do is adapt to different situations/people and once alone in our domains we revert back to our true selfs.

alrite, i know i think way too much.

moving on. recently in dubai i had heard many of these educational institutions which are run in villas have been shut down. the charges have been that they arent affiliated/recognized enough, arent well run, dont give a quality education etc. today, i was in a neighbourhood of dubai and while passing by i noticed this institute and decided to check it out. the institute allows students to obtain their masters and bachelors in computer science/commerce and business and is affiliated with a university in india. it sounded pretty normal. and looked alrite from the outside. inside was a different story altogether, the counselor didnt know which programs they had, they didnt know who was teaching them. many of the students were standing outside and looked totally bored. the counselor was irritated and asked the receptionist to tell them to go inside. it was major chaos. and there was definite lack of respect between the management and the students. its probably too much judging from my side, in 10 mins i come to the conclusion, this isnt a well run institution. perhaps they are doign their best and perhaps they know not of any other way to react. perhaps its just the system. i oftne wonder why teachers are paid so less. when they are the ones who actually impart the knowledge and are probably the backbone of the school/uni etc. i majored in math not cause my parents wanted me too nor was it discussed at home a lot that it became my initial interest and something i just knew i would do but coz i had an excellent teacher which made me love the subject. but when i reached undergrad, math wasnt all it was made out to be =) and i developed mixed emotions. i wanted to major in french even but peer pressure and the whole-what-will-you-with-it-be-a-french-prof-deterred me. i think a lot of people have similar stories to mine. its a noble profession being a teacher, but so few people want to go into it. the only reason i can think of is due to the lack of money. i know that in US efforts are being made, to up the salary of teachers but sadly in dubai in schools and universities alike it remains, when you compare the qualifications required and the work done, in the lower range of payscales.

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