A slightly Anonymous Tipster operating via the chimney which is our News tab gifted me with a robust cup of breakfast-reading which perked me right up.
How’s that for two utterly unrelated metaphors? Huh? Yeeeah, boyee.
Now you are surely not asking, “what got you all twitchy and agitated, Anna?”, but I am going to gift you with an answer anyway! I’m hyper thanks to the latest advice column from Cary Tennis, which is published at Salon.
Today’s edition of Cary-wisdom is inspired by a letter writer (LW) who can be neatly summed up by the title of the column:
I don’t want to be a doctor!
Fair enough, LW. A good number of us did or didn’t, but I want to know more about you, even as part of me groans, knowing I will regret it and get all uber-bitch on your ass by the end of this.
Aug. 28, 2007 | Dear Cary,
I am 20 years old, go to a state university, and am severely confused on what I want to do in life.
When I was little, I wanted to be an “artist.” With the beret, paintbrushes and canvas. Then, I moved on. Sure, I loved art, and enjoyed it, and was good at it, but I realized I wasn’t exceptionally creative in that sense. So I wanted to be a journalist. That idea left as soon as it entered my mind in high school. Then, toward the lag end of high school, I got interested in becoming a doctor. It wasn’t out of some desire I had to cure the world or make lots of money. It was because of my parents.
My parents and my family are from the Indian subcontinent and are Muslim. In their minds, the best thing to be is a professional. Especially a doctor. My father always tells me that I should be a doctor to help people and to be independent. My dad works away from home and flies back to my family every three to four weeks. It’s a hard life for him, because he misses out on our lives. It’s important to him that I become independent and have the ability to work wherever I want to. So, in high school, I took some medical classes. I enjoyed them; they weren’t my favorite classes, but they were, I suppose, “all right.”
When I started applying for university, for my possible majors, I would alternate between political science and English. My mother would ask me to write “pre-medicine” next to the others. Therefore, when I got accepted, I was put into the pre-professional advising. I never truly desired to become a doctor. The only reason I wanted to become one was to help people. To fix them. So I kept going. I took biology, chemistry, bioethics.
Then, my sophomore year, last year, I fell apart. I took physics and organic chemistry. I was doing terribly in both. I made a 48 on my first exam in physics and a 63 in organic. I had to decide whether or not to drop physics. I eventually did, and I was so disappointed in myself. You see, I did well in high school. I took many Advanced Placement classes, made A’s, and was an excellent student. And I got burnt out. I just couldn’t force myself to work. I tried, but it wasn’t enough. I didn’t care enough. So I eventually made a C in organic.
It was during this semester that I would get these sort of panic attacks. I would just cry and cry when thinking about how badly I was doing in life, in organic, in everything. This is what really scared me the most. I always prided myself on not stressing out, not freaking out, and doing well in what I was studying for. But here was a class that just broke me down into tears. I couldn’t study when I was like that.
Then, the spring semester began. I took the second part of organic. Struggled through it and was averaging a C in the class. Then I fell apart again. I made a 48 on my last test, which dropped me to a D. I had to make an amazing grade on the final. I didn’t start studying for the final until the night before because I had basically given up. I failed the class with an F. In all my other classes that semester, I made A’s and B’s.
So now I don’t know what to do. I’m signed up for organic again this semester, with the same professor I failed with. I’m already freaking out about it. I don’t want to have those panic attacks again, but I can feel my heart rate getting faster just thinking about it and typing it out. I don’t think I want to be a doctor anymore. But I don’t know what else I can do. I’m majoring in English, and I enjoy writing, reading, and analyzing, but what could I do? I know I’m good at it. I’m thinking about public policy, law school, etc. Sometimes I blame my parents for, in a way, forcing me to do pre-med. It prevented me from pursuing architecture, for example. Or anything else. I know I shouldn’t blame them, but it seems so convenient.
I want to do so much with my life. I don’t want to regret anything. I want to study abroad and travel and do the Peace Corps and help people. But I need to make a decision.
What should I do, Cary? I trust your advice. I read your column and your advice is always sound. If you could help me, I would be so grateful.
Typical Confused College Student
There is this phrase in Malayalam my Father used almost daily; I wish I could recall it, so I could butcher its spelling right now. It was something to the effect of, I’ll break your bones and GIVE you something to cry about, you little twerp. Or similar. But let’s allow the sensitive Amreekan (whom I’m a huge fan of, normally, btw) to have his say, since it IS his column we are disgusting discussing.
Dear Confused College Student,
We interupt this post to raise a point of clarification: I’ve numbered the paragraphs below , so they’re easier to refer back to and pillage, no need to thank me, it’s just the kind of blogger I am.
1.) Your parents are sitting on the floor in the living room, playing with a doctor doll. The doctor doll wears a nice white lab coat. The doctor doll is good-looking and rich. The doctor doll has a whole doctor household complete with doctor grandchildren and doctor spouse, and the doctor is in a Lexus driving down the street waving to admirers. Your parents have some play money and they have piled it up next to the doctor. The pile of money is nearly as tall as the doctor.
2.) Your parents would be very upset if someone were to take the rich doctor doll away. So you must use the tactic of redirection. You must show your parents something that is just as interesting to them.
3.) You must wave a shiny lawyer in their faces. You must say, “Look, parents! Shiny, famous lawyer! Rich, famous, shiny lawyer! CNN consultant fees!”
4.) In this way, you can induce them to turn their attention from the rich doctor doll to the rich lawyer doll, without feeling that they have lost a precious dream. If all goes well, they will forget about the doctor and will soon be back on the living room floor, assembling a rich lawyer family, complete with lawyer spouse, successful lawyer children and a big expensive lawyer house filled with money to the ceiling.
5.) You would think that you could just talk to parents. But they aren’t like that. You can’t talk to them. You have to treat them like children.
6.) You, on the other hand, are fairly adult. You know what you need to do. You just have to clear some space for yourself to do it.
7.) While you’re at it, in case you are feeling alone, take a look at this article on Sound Vision. It addresses your situation almost precisely: “The child wants to be an artist; his parents want him to go to med-school and become a doctor. The child wants to be a political scientist; his parents want him to be an engineer. This clash seems to be especially prevalent in immigrant Muslim families.”
8.) And it makes one particularly encouraging observation that might be persuasive to your parents: “Muslim leaders have long complained about the lack of Muslims pursuing careers in the media.”
9.) Law is a difficult career, and it may not be exactly what you wish to pursue for your entire life. But I think you have a good shot at it and should give it a try. It can be a springboard to many other occupations, journalism and writing principally among them.
10.) Your parents are right about one thing. They know, as countless other immigrants have known, that though American society is an open place, it is not a kind, safe place. It is a place where you have to make your own way. You have to establish status for yourself. If not, you will be trampled. That’s the way it is here. So they are right to push you to acquire a profession that will afford you some protection from the vicissitudes of capitalism and individualism.
11.) Sure, you will have to change some of your educational arrangements. But you would have to do that anyway. You flunked organic!
12.) Don’t worry. It’s probably the best course you’ve ever flunked.
13.) Law is excellent training for a writer. Look at Salon’s Tim Grieve, for instance, and Glenn Greenwald. They are both lawyers. They are also powerful writers working as journalists.
14.) So drink some coffee and cancel the pre-med studies.
15.) Throw yourself into what you love best. Make yourself happy. Excel. Immerse yourself in it. Go toward what you love. Work. Graduate. Stay healthy.
16.) Keep telling your parents you’re going to law school.
17.) Then join the Peace Corps.
18.) After the Peace Corps, you’ll know what to do.
Oh, my. What struck me first about all this was how– for lack of a better word– unoriginal the dilemma is…a LOT of us have been exactly where LW is, which partially explains my sarcasm-infused title. Anyway, what follows are my thoughts on specific points Cary made (see why I numbered things?).
…….
Re: no. 3 Anyone else sick of people substituting law school for med school, as if the two are super similar? No? Just me? Meh.
As for the “famous†and “CNN consultantâ€-bit, I thought there was a glut of lawyers, who are often an ambitious, deliciously ruthless bunch (I speak fondly because like every other quondam debate dork, I almost went, you know), who will annihilate this sniveling child as if they were an amuse bouche.
…….
Re: no. 5 You can’t treat your parents like children. Not if they’re desi. Well, you can, if you enjoy the sensation of a Bata chappal as it glides upside your head, but that’s all you. Seriously though, I know I’m officially ancient because I’m indignantly offended on behalf of this kid’s parents. You know what’s awesome about being 32, though? I DON’T GIVE A SHIT.
…….
Re: no. 6 “Fairly adult†my callipygian rondure. This kid has been directed and pushed, their entire life, “guided†forcefully by parental decisions. That’s why LW can’t make an important choice—they don’t know how. Believe me, I speak from experience, after being raised by an over-protective Father who chose MY major for me, as well.
The one thing Cary SHOULD have told LW is to take a deep breath and prepare for some harsh-but-necessary emotional growing pains. Hie thee to the student counseling office, honeychile, because you gonna need it. It’s awful and challenging, but learning how to make your own choices MUST be done…long before you mindlessly traipse off to law school or whatever else. Take it from one who knows and has the scrapes and scars to prove it.
…….
Re: no. 7 “especially prevalent in immigrant MUSLIM families (emphasis mine)�? As opposed to the obvious lack of clash in immigrant homes which religiously identify as Christian, Jewish, Sikh or Hindu? Come ON. This is not a Muslim thang. Mira, this is a BROWN thing. An IMMIGRANT thing. Really, a normal thing.
…….
Re: no. 8 I really don’t think the Muslim community needs more problems—LW can’t speak on behalf of themselves, let alone a massive world religion. One thing at a time. See: my response to number 6.
…….
Re: no. 9 STOP TELLING PEOPLE WHO DON’T KNOW WHAT TO DO TO “GO TO LAW SCHOOLâ€. This is why every lawyer I know (and I know almost a hundred), with the whopping exception of four of my friends, HATES THEIR LIFE. The Law is not an easy-way out. Respect it, don’t use it when what you really need, is a year off to backpack around Turkey or Nepal or just chill, while you figure out what you think you want to do for the foreseeable future. Taking out loans which will later encircle your ankle like a golden chain, keeping you trapped inside corporate law will not make you any happier than flunking O-Chem, LW.
My most miserable friends are the ones who regret going to law school, who work at “big firmsâ€, who wake up to find hair on their pillow, because it’s falling out, who have ulcers and budding substance abuse problems. I find the “Oh, well…if I can’t figure out what to do, I’ll just go to law school!â€-attitude offensive, because I really love the law. One of my friends who is a medical resident said something to the effect of, “Be damned sure this is what you want to do, because it’s not worth the sacrifices unless it’s what you love.†Um, yeah. That goes for everything, because just about everything requires sacrifice, if you want to achieve success.
…….
Re: no. 10 Your parents are right about plenty of things, LW. I started to grok this around age 23. Don’t get it twisted— you, LW, and I, will NEVER know what manner of struggle our parents survived, as new immigrants to this foreign place. There was no internet to utilize as a resource for information, and if they came here in the late 60s, early 70s, there was no community to cushion their landing, either. My mother didn’t know that Oklahoma would get cold in the winter, so she didn’t have a proper coat. She shivered until she could save enough to afford one. My father, who was worried that everything had some meat byproduct in it, unless he cooked it, was a borderline manorexic.
Your parents suffered, too. It made them fierce and strong and it taught them ridiculously valuable lessons about life, which they are using to guide you because they love you more than anyone else will and want to see you thrive. I could never pick up at 21 and move to a totally different country, where I didn’t have a single family member and knew nothing about the local culture, and build a life for myself. I can’t do that at age 32. But my mother did it, when she was more than a decade younger than me. And I worship the ground she treads on, because of it. When I’m not swearing in two languages in her long-suffering, tolerant presence, that is. My point is, your parents, more often than not, unless they are advocating extreme things like forced marriage, are right.
…….
Re: no. 11 You know what I wish Cary had said at this point? What I wish the dean at the College of Letters and Sciences had said to me, when as a miserable Freshman, I said that I hated my major and wanted to transfer schools, but didn’t know what to do, since I was a sheltered, barely-18-year old. Here’s what the dean said:
“College is tough, but at least your parents are paying for it…you’ll be fine. Political Science can be fun! And much more useful than South Asian Studies, which you’d have to go to Berkeley for…â€
Here’s what I wish he said:
“There are these amazing resources called pell grants and student loans—if you’re concerned about the financial implications of standing up to your parents, head to the financial aid office and see what your options are.â€
If this kid is worried about getting cut off financially, there is no better country in which that could happen. Especially if you’re at a state school, which is cheaper than a private one.
…….
Re: no 13 (and now I have the Pixies in my head, 🙂 …Law is excellent training for a lot of things, but as my embittered ivy-league JD/MBA ex-bf reminded me, ad nauseum, when he got home from work every morning at 1:30 am from his “big†Manhattan firm, for his five hours of restless sleep, IT IS NOT REQUIRED IN ORDER TO BECOME A WRITER.
…….
Re: no 15 Yes. Do what you love. If you are passionate about something, you will give up jealous boyfriends, reading for pleasure and half of your social life for it, even when you don’t get paid. LW, once you find something which fulfills you to the point where you can’t imagine NOT doing it, you’ll be all right. College, where you can have a range of different experiences and the opportunity to sample so many classes, is an excellent place to start the process through which you uncover your bliss. 🙂
…….
Re: no 16 Sigh.
…….
Re: no 18 Maybe. Sometimes, that sort of experience/perspective-gathering/kick in the kundi is exactly what we need.
…….
What do you think (like I need to ask)?
And, I would imagine that what “I want to do” changes over time. There was a geriatric study done in the UK a while back that found that people were happier changing careers over time, especially because they were living longer lives.
I am one of those software engineers who loved his 8-to-5 (well, theoretically) job, but after about 20 years in the business got bored with making stuff work.
Now, if a kid who is going into college has it hard changing (or choosing) careers, it is probably harder for somebody who has a mortgage, kids in schools and other stuff, and doesn’t want to change the lifestyle. And, what I want to do when I “grow up” now is be a therapist, which calls for a bunch of training that I don’t have, and will not pay what I make now.
So, like Sriram suggested way back there, I would probably work 4 days a week on my “job”, and contribute one day a week being a counselor at a shelter without being paid. Interestingly enough, it has made my paying job more fulfilling since it has more of a purpose now.
Irrelevant factoid: My two year old daughter wants to be a baby when she grows up. 😉
cute.
i have a friend who went to med school and dropped out in the second year. after a few years of re-assessment (start-ups were prob. the best ‘buying time’ jobs) he couldn’t decide whether to do his MBA or JD, so he applied for both, and ended up doing the JD. he once joked that he was going to take the gmat just to have a grand slam on the standardized tests 🙂
puli – being a teller is a bad thing? or just so to the aunties and uncles?
camille, thanks for this new addition to the vocabulary 😉
hetal and kapila – it’s been too long!
oh, i dont look down on any work. but, to the aunties and uncles. “my beta is a doctor” vs “my beta is a bank teller”. are on 2 different leagues. and, when it is “my beta is a banker”, it still sounds $hittier than doctor.
the ironic thing, is that they think its $hittier, because they assume your poorer than a doctor (when one of the reasons i decided to do banking was the lifestyle the career would afford my future wife/kids, and my parents in their old age)
Puli in #’s 155-56
Puli, my friend, soldier on, head held high–knowledge of the i-banker success is spreading like wildfire among the younger generation!
Seriously? Brown parents aren’t all aboard the I-Banker bandwagon? I didn’t realize that. Most of the Aunties/Uncles I know are fine with their offspring going in to banking, as long as it IS investment banking.
I was pre-med my first semester of college. Just one. Random people in my community still ask me how med school is and look all confused at me when I said I decided not to do medicine over 7 years ago.
in my community doctor is number 1. yengineer is number 2. eveything else is someone who failed in getting a “good job”, and is poor and must be barely scraping by.
Ah, so it is an Iyengar problem. 😉
i have a (non-indian) friend who went to law school. landed a job in the corporate div of a top ny firm (paul, weiss) and hated it. so he quit and applyed to med school. everyone thought he was crazy. so he became a surgeon. in med school he founded a medical-related software company and recived venture funding. the company is now profitable and he’s raking it in. he loves being a surgeon and entrepreneur.
that’s what i thought you meant. one of my friends is getting married to this girl, whose parents are both doctors. my friend is an i-banker and makes more than decent money (he worked at goldman sachs when they met). but her parents not only thought it was a lowly job, but of all things, were worried about his salary. i told him he should just give them his W2 and be done with it.
but when he and i were discussing it, we realised that your geographical and acedemic backgrounds have a huge influence on how you look at certain things. he and i both grew up in and around nyc, and we both went to penn (where wharton seems to have a hold on nearly everybody) so we have a lot of friends in finance and banking, as well as many family friends who are in the industry. his gf grew up in a small town in kentucky and went to med school in atlanta – so nothing in her or her parents’ background gave them much exposure to finance. i think in bigger cities, and definitely in ny, being in finance holds just as much, if not more, weight as being a doctor. my dad’s dream son-in-law is an i-banker.
and just to clarify, i didnt say “a doctor” or “medicine”. i said “doctor”, as in “he is doctor”
the warped out thin, is that my community is NY area…
I have an uncle in Toronto – he works in real estate and hosts this weekly Punjabi tv show. Not what his parents, who are back in India, expected. They still ask him if he’s “ok” for money – they have no idea how you pay your rent if you’re not a doctor, engineer or computer guy.
see…and i always thought punjus liked law.
interesting. maybe its specific to (my doctor heavy) community.
the positive part of all of this is that i can be as conventional as possible, and people think im doing someting radiaclly unconventional cause im not doctor or yengineer.
Puli, Punjus are all about the MD [at least among the Punjus I know]. Law is only grudgingly considered to be a good “second choice” option (and this is a recent trend), but it’s for those who were “too stupid to get into medicine.” My mom says she thinks it’s because of the disdain folks have for the legal profession back in the des. It’s like this last ditch attempt: Not a doctor? Not an engineer? Not business? Well, please at least study law! Maybe there is hope for you, and you can do the malpractice lawsuits for a doctor 😛
ANNA, I think this might be generational as well. I find folks in my age cohort are more likely to go into i-banking (with mummy/daddy’s blessings), but there are still quite a few whose parents think they were “too stupid” or “too lazy” to do a “real job” like medicine or engineering.
Wow, that was a lot of ironic quoting.
Looks like everyone has an anecdote to tell…. If you guys think that your parents/family find it difficult to talk about your non-doctor or non-engineer means of livelihood, hear this. I am an orthopedic surgeon (by training)and I gave up practice to work fulltime doing pure research. Pays much less, but I love it. I probably work the same crazy hours as before except no one wakes me up at night and no call duty. Most of my family thinks I am crazy/failure/not confident or you name it… I dont care about that one bit. When my work received a major award, my Mom finally accepted that what I am doing is “good”. Now she tells everyone I am a Big Scientist!
my parents’ social group is also doctor heavy (my dad is only one of two non-doctors) but our caste/community is in business. not finance, but i think for my dad, it’s all about the money – looking at people in the business world, the wealth is concentrated mostly in finance, so he thinks it’s the guaranteed way to make money. plus, he’s heavily into investing (religiously reads barrons, wsj, fortune etc) so it’s a language he can understand. i think that’s partly why he was so against my going into law – he felt out of place re my career.
“Nearer the top, people perceive that taste, values, ideas, style, and behavior are indispensable criteria of class,”
Sorry Rob, Not true.
Sure in polite conversation the wealthy will point to values, and style and the like to avoid being crass or ‘common’ as the Brits used to say… Fussell’s book is designed to sell to intellectuals of the middle classes who have no real concept of the rat fuck that is involved in wealth creation. Most of my patrons are hedge fund guys and folks under 45 who have taken their companies public..they know exactly where the power center in their world is.
Yup, even if you do law, there are certain areas you’re expected to practice in: immigration, corporate, or real estate. You should be a trial attorney or work for a large firm, or have a general practice. Any Sikh Punjabi kids that I know in law that aren’t doing those are in public interest setting their people free. Their parents look down their nose at it because they think their kids are going to be starving, but even public interest-type law is garnering some sort of status in the community because it provides a direct benefit to them. I still have to convince my grandparents that I’m not making up something called “entertainment law”.
FD, tell them you’re the next Judge Judy 😉
I don’t want to be an entertaining lawyer – I want to be an entertainment lawyer. ZING!
Sidenote: Any other law student/attorney had every single aunty and uncle ask you if you’re going be a LAWYER or a LIAR and think it is the most clever joke ever?
The Marxist definition goes by your role in the relations of production… i.e. do you sell your labor for wages/salary, or do you own a company? After all, an engineer at Boeing might have a high salary, but it only takes one pink slip to change that, and they have less control over their work than a small business owner who might make half as much money.
John Molyneux has a short essay on the meaning of “class” on his blog.
FD @ 176 – good god, yes! my mama in india (and his whole family) mentions it every time we speak. my dad cuts out and scans to me every cartoon he reads with a lawyer joke (i’m working on making a collage and giving them all back to him). and every christmas is incomplete without some book on lawyer jokes. i’m pretty immune to it at this point, but it’s funny that it’s the only profession where each person has at least one joke that they insist upon telling.
I’d totally be a lawyer if I could wear one of these
It’s more fun to be a lawyer and wear something like this. Hooray for lame law school inside jokes!
As a DBD dad in his mid thirties with 2 elementary school age kids, I was curious to see what your impressions are about growing up in US.
Do you think you have identity issues ? Do you feel like you belong ? Did you ever think why didn’t your parents stay put in Desh and spare you all these hassles of navigating cultural/racial issues ?
The reason I am asking.. I could move back to Desh now and provide my kids with a comfy life, No problems (materially speaking) Would it be easier for them (growing up, future relationships etc…) if they spend their formative years there ?
thx
I hope someone took the time to tell this poor kid that organic chemistry and physics are not the same as medicine or medschool. I for one absolutely hated the above two subjects but am adoring med school and all that comes with it. I’m not trying to encourage the kid to do med, but hating/failing one or two subjects isn’t neccessarily a reason to change your entire career path. Perhaps the kid should go and find a doctor out there, spend a week with them and figure out if that is what they want to do. Also, law school isn’t an easy alternative as some here (including the advice guy) have suggested……..it’s a long and hard road, even tougher than medicine in my humble opinion.
I could move back to Desh now and provide my kids with a comfy life, No problems (materially speaking) Would it be easier for them (growing up, future relationships etc…) if they spend their formative years there ?
I know people that didn’t go back, then resented it for the rest of their lives, then took out their resentment on their kids. If you think you should go back, then just go do it.
Do you think you have identity issues ? Do you feel like you belong ? Did you ever think why didn’t your parents stay put in Desh and spare you all these hassles of navigating cultural/racial issues
Is rootless cosmopolitan an identity? Seriously, though–I definitely feel like I belong. I can’t speak for anyone else, but I think it’s human nature to want to “vent” a bit–my parents, brother & me are all (net) way positive about being here.
Sometimes as a kid I did wish my parents had stayed in India and I could have grown up there, surrounded by my people and my culture (as I innocently perceived it). But this was the late 70s and early 80s, when India was VERY different than today and so was America. Once I got into my teens (late 80s) I became incredibly happy and grateful to be living in the USA.
That being said, I think it would definitely be easier for your kids in India…being part of the social and economic elite, and being surrounded their own culture (though that’s changing and becoming more and more diluted with time) and their own people as peers. Furthermore, you’ll feel more comfortable with your kids too if they grow up in India…15-20 years from now, you’ll be dealing with entirely different people (in terms of personality and behavior) than if they grow up here. Though personally many people from Mumbai irritate me more than any ABD I’ve ever met.
Lastly, opportunities in America are lessening, and in India are increasing. There is no guarantee that your kids will be doing well in the USA 20 years from now…so that’s another reason to consider moving back.
Just keep in mind all the hassles of day to day life in India, no matter how rich you are.
i’ve started my rants many times, but Harbeer@60?
dude, you are right on!
i should know….premed at 15, graduated at 19, told ‘rents, no chance of med school (decided for me when i was 10!!!), wrote the freakin MCATs, got accepted, said WTF, bummed around for a couple of years (really just so my folks could cool down), caught up with my peers at 21, started grad school (in ENGLISH), met my husband (a very wholesome, awesome indian boy (like, seriously desi) guy who also did all his coursework (up till phd) in engineering and then after years of working in software, said screw it and got his mba (go GSB!) and is a partner in PE. been married for 16 years, have a 13 YO boy, am happier than shit.
oh, and after growing up (if you can call it that) and working in chi-town all my life, i moved to india 8 months ago.
forgot to mention…before i quit my job last dec, was making well into the 6 figures, have travelled the world (on someone else’s dime)….WITH AN ENGLISH DEGREE….all the aunties are calling asking me to give advice to their kids (payback is a bitch y’all).
all this to say, life is an adventure….no prescribed rules….do what comes naturally, be happy, be kind, love the people around you….and let nature take it’s course.
and for everyone who gives ANNA shit, back off! cause i recently stumbled on SM and she is my fellow mallu kick ass girl!
ANNA honey: happy belated ONAM! your posts are great and you make this jaded, pushing 40 (HINDU: but people, in kerala we don’t really give a rat’s ass about these things) mom feel alive! so much more to say, but so many things to take care of as an unemployed, housewife in india :-)))
except for the haters, this site is awesome and the 2 people i love reading most are anna (#1) and puli….
was making well into the 6 figures, have travelled the world (on someone else’s dime)….WITH AN ENGLISH DEGREE….
wait.. Im confused, how is the ‘on someone else’s dime’ a support for your argument?
I was at a South Indian restaurant last night…finally realised what puliogre means…and yes, aviyal was on the menu too. This site has really broadened my horizons.
SCORE!!!! 😀 This is exactly what I am trying to do. I have a dream, that one day, North Indians will know just as much about South India, as we do about the North. 😉
::
Meenu-chechi, you are too sweet. Thank you. 🙂
but, did you eat the puli?
i second that. SM should have exchange programs – northies and southies – alternadesis with non-alternas, ABDs and DBDs etc. how else are people going to know about sundal and onam? or the cultural and career angst of people like LW?
SM should have exchange programs – northies and southies – alternadesis with non-alternas, ABDs and DBDs etc.
OL members vs. non OL members…
what does OL mean?
Oh Anna, teach me about South India! 😀
HMF, how could i have forgotten about the OLs? that might be the most interesting exchange 😉
puli : OL = other land = HMF’s label for people who are oddballs in the larger scheme of ABD ways/thoughts.
like any D who isnt an ABD or a DBD?
no – as in HMF basically thinks my ideas are ‘whack’ 🙂
No…and now that you put it that way, I probably never will. Had idli/vada for appetizer, and onion rava masala dosa for the main course. Talk about carbohydrate load. But it was delicious. No room for dessert after all that.
close, it was OppositeLand. And I don’t think they’re whack, just that they’re non standard.
oh, $hit…i didnt mean it that way. i was refering to food…to FOOD….(its really quite good. click on the website my name is linked to)
oh yeah…i think i took a vacation there once during the mega thread.