smooth like butta

there is a nickname i have. it is, and has been for over 8 years, "butta." indeed, upon arriving at the university of michigan, i was given the unfortunate email address of bhatt + a, yielding bhatta. it was sad.

i did not like bhatta. it wasn't my last name. it certainly wasn't my first. it might have been okay if it'd been abhatt, but no. i had no choice in the matter - the university had spoken.

from the very beginning, the difficulty of having a strange email address permeated my social life. when meeting other attractive, sporting, 18-year-old males, perfectly normal conversations would become awkward or fizzle into oblivion:

hot male: great to meet you. let's get together some time. what's your email?
me: oh, it's b-h-a-t-t-a
hot male: hm... that's hard to remember... maybe we should write it down
me: i don't have a pen...
hot male: oh i'll go get one... [exits, never to return]

while it's true that most of these boys simply walked away because they just wanted to get laid, it still proves my point: boys suck... i mean, my email address was frustratingly difficult to remember. hence was born the phrase, "butta."

it was easy. when asked, "what's your email address?" i simply responded, "it's bhatta. you know, smooth like butta." oh my god i was so funny. and catchy. and people liked it, gosh darn it. and it stuck for years and years, so much so that many of my friends continue to call me "butta" to this very day.

so, it is with great sadness that i say goodbye to bhatta and say hello to gmail. i'm okay. at least, i think i will be. but if you feel like sending me flowers to help me cope, that'd be nice. thanks in advance.

<3,
butta

never no more

wednesday, april 16, 2008:

last day of law school.
last day of socratic method.
possibly my last day of being formally educated.

wow.

i'm all done, coming undone, and feeling... accomplished.

i
am
a
LAWYER!

dude.

i'm having a massive breakdown.

yesterday, after a long long long day, i walked into my house, put my bag down, and started crying like a baby in the foyer. my parents came over to try and comfort me while i babbled some nonsense through my tears on the living room couch - they nodded while i talked, the way you do when you're waiting for someone to finish. half an hour later, i was in the wimpering stage. my words had become more coherent but they were punctuated with short breaths every 3 to 4 seconds - the way kids half cry after they've been talked down. an hour later, when i'd done all the crying i could, i picked a fight with my parents and stormed up the stairs to sulk.

i think i need some better coping mechanisms. and thicker skin. and fewer emotions. i should be more carefree. a more "eh, shit happens" mentality.

dammit. i suck at this.

michigan, our michigan

got back home to michigan yesterday afternoon and everything looked so small and felt so strange. it's weird coming back to suburbia when you've been in a city for the last few months. it was such a short amount of time but what i accomplished, who i met, the things i did - it all felt so concentrated. 10 weeks... gosh it feels like a dream... so much happened in such little time. it's hard to accept that it's over. *sigh* i loved my summer in d.c.

coming home is always nice though. there's something about familiarity and tradition that's very comforting... my mom is at mrs. oh's, making indian and korean food for a potluck they're having over the weekend. it's cute watching them laugh and joke around - two little asian women living in troy. and it's nice to see mrs. oh. i've always liked her a lot. and last night i spent the night at my sister's apartment. we fell asleep after watching project runway. i haven't done that with her in months.

comfort is dangerous though. for me, and i think for most people, when things get comfortable, we don't want to move, or change, or question. it'd be harder for me to pursue certain things if i was comfortable most of the time. maybe that's why i like to make things a little hard on myself. take the hard classes, go the road less traveled - it's more difficult but the struggle makes it valuable. i realize that sometimes i don't get things as easily as others do, but in the end i think it's even better.

i don't know how the topic of this post strayed so far, but i can say that it's a good foundation for my next post. i just made a big decision - a career and life-changing decision that a few of you already know about. and i guess to stay in step with the theme, it's one that takes me away from some incredibly comfortable aspects of my life. like i said before though, in the end, i think it'll be even better.

sal mubarak

it's a new year - an indian new year - which quite frankly has always seemed better, more auspicious, i suppose. given the past few weeks and in light of today's good luck, i've decided to share this year's personal list of instant karma. enjoy, and have a happy new year!

• practice being brave
• offer milk & graham crackers to someone feeling down
• be tender with the young
• listen before you act
• visit your neighbor
• give complementary nicknames
• know what to overlook
• accept your own limitations
• follow the yoga niyamas: be pure, be content, be disciplined, be studious, be devoted
• sleep avidly and dream vividly
• help a person die well
• acknowledge hardworking service people
• dance a little bit every day
• yield
• never stop wooing your beloved
• of two evils, choose neither
• start where you are

New faces. New places.

You know the point in your life when you realize the house you grew up in isn't really your home anymore? All of a sudden, even though you have some place where you put your shit, that idea of home is gone. You'll see one day when you move out. Just sorta happens one day and it's gone. You feel like you can never get it back. It's like you feel homesick for a place that doesn't even exist. Maybe it's like this rite of passage, you know? You won't ever have that feeling again until you create a new idea of home for yourself. You know, for... your kids. For the family you start. It's like a cycle or something. I don't know, but I miss the idea of it, you know? Maybe that's all family really is - a group of people that miss the same imaginary place.

CaucAsian316: wow...u must be so excited :-) this is a great stage for u to be in
CaucAsian316: being free and having a job...that inbetween time

today i got my credit card bill: $843. and you know what? i could PAY the whole goddamn thing. ALL OF IT. it felt incredible knowing that i could run a tab that high and still take care of it on my own. granted, i paid my own through undergrad, but this is completely different. my parents still helped me from time to time, slipping a $20 in my bag when i came home on weekends and paying for books when i couldn't make ends meet. but now, i buy them dinner and send my mother care packages... if not just to see them smile, then to feel like i can give something back, though i can and will never be able to repay them. "all we care about is your happiness," they say, like most parents would and do. still, it feels veeeeery good.

with this new perspective, i have finally started to make peace with law schools. when i turned down ucla last year because i couldn't afford it, i was, for lack of a better word, pissed - pissed at my life, my financial situation, my parents,... everything and everyone. i'd always been told it didn't matter how much money i had; i could do anything just as long as i worked hard. obviously that idea is somewhat misleading, but it really came crashing down on me last year. today i feel differently - not about whether i can pay for school, but about changing my attitude. you know, life has a way of surprising you in good ways and if there's anything i've inherited from my lovely brown ancestors, it's karma theory: everything happens for a reason. there is one caveat, of course, and that's that everything that does happen, happens because you directed it to.

tonight i'm getting dinner with jess, someone i never knew i'd be great friends with, but turned out to be because we made the effort (not much effort at all) to get to know each other. next year, wherever i am, no matter what kind of sacrifices i'll have made, i'm sure it'll be the right decision, the right place - a great stage for me to be in.

the act of seeing

is discontinuous. we see only things we are interested in seeing, although we may suddenly develop an interest that makes us discover something we have been familiar with for years.

enjoy the silence

Time. Distance. Change. Sometimes I think I'm so stuck on the warm fuzziness of the past that I can't see what is evidently true in the present. Talk without understanding; silence without contemplation... It's worse than walls and barriers between people - it's empty space.

I am feeling uneasy.