Don't Know What to Think About This...

I saw this on ultrabrown.com.

Already talked to my Mom and she's not gonna have it in her stores...


Real Kwik-E-Marts? Woo-Hoo!
7-Eleven may convert some stores to coincide with 'Simpsons Movie'
BY JEFFREY KELLEY
TIMES-DISPATCH STAFF WRITER
Friday, March 23, 2007


At the Greater Richmond Convention Center, 7-Eleven field consultant Gary Groves told store workers about the chain's top-selling items.
It appears as though the world's largest convenience store will get Simpsonized, though 7-Eleven Inc. said the deal isn't done yet.
But at a company event yesterday in Richmond, officials showcased their planned promotional ef- forts with major upcoming films, including "The Simpsons Movie."
If all goes as planned, the convenience store chain plans to refit 11 stores across the U.S. -- Richmond is an unlikely choice -- to resemble the front of the Kwik-E-Mart, the convenience store that Homer and other characters frequent in the classic cartoon TV series.
Customers also will be able to buy products inspired by the nearly two-decades-old show, including KrustyO's cereal, Buzz Cola and iced Squishees (the cup says Squishee, but the contents will be Slurpee).
The chain also will use pictures of Simpsons characters to promote 7-Eleven's line of fresh foods, such as placing the face of Homer and his classic "Mmmm . . . sandwich" quip on sandwich wrappers.
Details of 7-Eleven's plans were showed to employees in a booth at a company event at the Greater Richmond Convention Center. It was unclear yesterday which 11 stores of the more than 4,700 nationwide would receive a cartoony facelift or sell inventory of the Simpsons-inspired products.
The movie hits theaters July 27.
7-Eleven also is lining up deals with the "Spider-Man" franchise in advance of the third installment in May. The promotion will feature Black Cherry Lemonade Slurpees and collectible Slurpee cups with three-dimensional graphics on the side.
Finally, the retailer plans to use the June sequel to "Fantastic Four" to promote the Slurpee energy drink it launched last year, called Full Throttle.
Spokeswoman Margaret Chabris said contracts on the promotions have not been signed with movie studios. She didn't give any further details, saying the company will release more information in coming weeks.
"We've done research, and research shows us that our customers like . . . movies, so we're getting involved with some major studios on some of their properties this summer," she said.

Article Link: http://www.timesdispatch.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=RTD%2FMGArticle%2FRTD_BasicArticle&c=MGArticle&cid=1173350362478&path=!business&s=1045855934855

That Voice...

I think I'm in love....the voice, the hair...and he's (barely) legal!

Hope all is well out there in the blogsphere. Life's been hectic in a good way (and some bad), but I will be back in full-force, promise.

Enjoy your Sunday with some Paolo! Smile!

Happy One Year-Section 2-UPDATED

03/17/07 NOTE: I was re-reading the post (and the wonderful comments) and I realized I forgot the brief paragraph introducing BP's roommate AK (it might have been lost when I was pasting it). Thanks for reading!
BTW, if you have HBO, I would encourage you to watch their insightful series on addiction.


Days before I met BP, I was walking along 5th Avenue, heading to Union Square to hear Jhumpa Lahiri read from, at the time, her latest paperback novel The Namesake. I walked slowly along the street, my legs and brain heavy from working two shifts. As I approached 14th Street, I noticed a small cardboard sign with the words “Tarot Readings by Psychic Joe-$3” propped up against a concrete wall of a store and a deck of tarot cards being shuffled by the man himself. I laughed to myself when I saw the sign. After weeks of therapy, I thought maybe some astrological direction could help me out of the abyss of emptiness that surrounded me.

I sat down on the sidewalk, forgetting about the dirt on the ground, intensely focused on the reading before me. While I realized that sometimes these readings aren’t logical, I was searching for something illogically magical, at a bargain price, by an amusing character trying to make a buck.

“You’re going to meet someone within a month. He’s not ‘Mr. Right’, he’s not ‘Mr. Right Now’, but he’ll be good for you. He’ll be in your life for six months.”

I remember scoffing at his prediction as I handed him his fee. Since when have the “love predictions” come true for me? I asked him for some metaphysical direction, and instead he was pointing me to a man to solve everything. I remember writing down his words in my journal, more as something to pull up to amuse myself when the month was over and there was no “Mr. Right”. Little did I know that almost a week later I would find myself in a cab with my friend from Philadelphia, on our way to a bar in the West Village to meet up with her college friends.

*****

Psychic Joe’s prediction didn’t come to mind after the confession that night over calamari. In days, BP and I became that inseparable. We spent many evening sharing whispers and kisses in the cab on our way to various restaurants in NYC. Usually our evenings ended with us walking hand in hand along the East River Promenade, with Randall Island blinking at us at a distance, before he dropped me off to my apartment. It was autumn and the crisp air invigorated me, the changing leaves capturing my emotions. BP never spent the night; I wasn't ready to share myself with him and he gave me my space. Later that Halloween, we were invited to a couples party where we had to dress up like our favorite lovers. BP and I appropriately picked Annie Hall and Alvy Singer, characters who we would later muse reflected the essence of our short relationship.




I continued my therapy and BP was there to provide the support when therapy could not. For one of my classes, we would convene once a week to discuss our cases at our respective internships with our professor. As my fellow classmates would share their cases, we would all discuss ways in approaching the case. One evening, a student shared a case where her client confided that she had been sexually assaulted and sought therapy to cope. My eyes started to get moist as my classmate shared the case, sounding very familiar to my own story. Impulsively, I got up and left, unable to hear the case or the approaches recommended. When BP came to pick me up from school after my frantic phone call, I ran out and wrapped my arms around him, releasing my tears on his waiting shoulder. BP held me tight as we got into a cab and headed to his apartment, where he spent the evening wiping my eyes and feeding me dinner. Later that night, I fell asleep in his arms, feeling the warmth of safety around me after a long time. I felt alive.

I made BP the light of my dark world. A month into the relationship, I introduced him to my best friend JR and RJ in NYC after work in Chelsea. I remember sitting across from JR as he eyed BP over his matzo ball soup, trying to read his face. When BP got up to have a quick after dinner smoke, JR looked up at me and asked: "Is he treating you right? Does he make you happy?" When I answered with a nod, JR shrugged his hesitant shoulders. "I don't know sugar, he just doesn't fit right with you. But as long as he's treating you well, I'm happy." Although I was confused by his statement, it was much more important for me to get his blessing, after all he was the only "family" I had in NYC. Other friends from out of town, coming to visit NYC, also met him and had the same reaction: "there's something up with him" and "I don't know b, I never pictured you with guy like him". I ignored their comments, thinking that I know him better than anyone. His friends, on the other hand, appeared to like me and would joke around and call us the original "Beauty and the Geek", a comment we would, in private, laugh at since BP was the real beauty taking forever to get ready while I would be the geeky one reading as I waited for him.

One of those friends was AK, a friend of BP’s from Penn State, who had fallen on hard times. He was in debt and had recently got kicked out of his apartment in Jersey City. AK was trying to get his life back on track after losing his job and had began a job working at a car dealership in Manhattan. Three months into our relationship, BP offered his couch to AK until he found a place of his own either on the island or New Jersey. It was supposed to be two weeks. BP also wanted to cap his stay since AK was a “pothead” and he didn’t want to get wrapped up in that again. BP smoked out heavily during college and it died down when he attended graduate school. And considering his past abuse with alcohol, he did not want to be a part of that addiction again. Or so I thought.

It was two weeks that turned into three months.

*****

As winter gave way to spring, I noticed BP's behavior change gradually and he became more distant. BP was always someone that was particular about his appearance, ironed shirt and pants, hair combed. Before AK moved in, we would spend our mornings getting ready together, including me picking out his shirt for the day from his closet. Eventually, BP would wear whatever was on the floor, whether it was washed or not, and take a hit before work. He would begin his day with a hit and end it with a blunt, ignoring that I was by his side. One evening we found ourselves in Murry Hill to meet some of his friends and during the party, he called his "guy" to drop off his stash at the corner of 35th and Park Avenue for him to get high. Even on the morning of my birthday, he didn't want to celebrate with me instead choosing to spend the day in New Jersey smoking out. I ended up celebrating my 26th birthday with my best friend and his partner watching "Hotel Rwanda", wanting to also share the day with him, too. While he was my world, the weed was the top priority in his life. I kept quiet, not letting BP know how this was affecting me. I was afraid to lose him and be alone again.

*****

AK had also started to pick up on how his marijuana use was affecting our relationship. On the evening that "Melinda and Melinda" came out, BP, being a huge Woody Allen fan, bought tickets the first evening show. I was excited to have an evening out with BP since most of our evenings were spent in, eating take out while AK rolled the blunts and I just sat there. When I got to the apartment, BP was dressed, ready to go, standing by his television.

"You know what would be fun? Watching this movie stoned. AK, roll me a blunt."

"BP," I pleaded, "please just for one evening can you not smoke out? Please?"

I was sitting on the couch, and the coffee table between BP and myself contained their stash. AK walked in from the kitchen, obviously listening in to our conversation.

"Sorry BP, I smoked the last bit."

I looked up at AK, knowing full well that they had a full stash in their coffee table drawer which I could see and BP could not.

"Fine then! Sugar, let's go!"

As I put my jacket on, I nodded towards AK, silently thanking him for letting me have this one evening.

*****

When BP and I began dating, I had started becoming more involved with the desi community in Queens through my clinic. Nevertheless, I decided to spend my free time with BP, cutting myself off from a potential community of support and activism. I made BP my world. As he was smoking out, I was hoping for him to look over at me. I was searching for the BP from the beginning of our relationship, looking for that light. Instead I found BP sucking the life out of the relationship with every hit he took.

I was worried about him. While I still had the support of my therapist and my work to prevent me from regressing back into my living corpse state, BP had no support, aside from me. I brought up my concern to my clinical supervisor, a substance abuse counselor herself. Usually personal matters are only discussed in relation to the client that you are treating, however, in this case, I needed a professional perspective. According to research, while marijuana is not considered an addictive substance, but for some, depending on how they treat the drug, he or she can become dependent on the state that being high causes. I discussed BP in supervision as a case study, sharing with my supervisor the client's history, behavior pattern, and his relationships with others, mainly myself. In the end, she encouraged me to help BP seek treatment, and possibly a psychiatric evaluation, so that we could get to the bottom of his addiction.

I remember after the meeting walking to the subway station, reflecting on the time that BP and I had spent together. Those three months before AK moved in, when BP was taking care of me, were the best months I ever spent. It startled me to think that this whole time he may have been suffering from something else and me, being a therapist-in-training could not pick up on it. The three months since AK moved in were tough, with BP falling deeper into his addiction and I knew I had to do something, not so much for the relationship, but to help BP.

*****

BP and I met up for Thai food on the Upper East Side. On the way to restaurant, I rehearsed what I was going to say to him. When I sat across from him, I noticed that he needed a hit, considering I made him meet me right after work. I saw before me a man that had transformed from the night on the other side of town all those months ago. The attentive caring man had turned irritable and antsy with his hands tapping out the moments until he could get into a cab back to his apartment. I took another breath, preparing myself to make a promise to be there for him, much like he promised me.

"You're wrong Sugar, wrong! I don't have an addiction. I'm stressed, work is intense and smoking calms me down. You go to therapy and make stupid necklaces as a stress reliever and this is my stress reliever. If you don't like it, then we can stop this right now!"

BP got up and left. No one was there to wipe the tears from my eyes.

It had been six months and two weeks since Psychic Joe's prediction.

Doing Her Part

My parents own convenient stores. While I used to be ashamed of it when I was younger (Apu didn't help), over the years, I've become proud of the work they do.

This past weekend, my mom shared some of her stories from the store. It just goes to show that this world still has a long way to go.

Incident 1:

Customer hands a $100 bill to purchase a pack of cigarettes. Mom holds the bill to the light to make sure it's real.

Customer: Don't worry, it's not from your country.

Mom: Excuse me? You think that just because India is considered a 3rd world country that all counterfeit money comes from there? Take your money and never come to my store again! Please leave!


Incident 2:

Customer standing off to the side, scratching away at a lottery ticket.

Customer: So tell me, why do you only hire Indians? They don't even speak English properly.

Mom: Do you know how hard it is to immigrate to a new country? This store is a stepping stone for them. Think about it, say you, as an American, went to India to find work, where would you feel most comfortable working? Admit it, you would feel more comfortable working with Americans, right? Same thing here. I'm proud to give those opportunities to people who want to work hard than those relying on a lottery ticket to change things.


I love my Mom!

Multiple What???

You gotta love the aunties... ;-)

http://www.abcdlady.com/2007-03/chaiNoon.php


Thinking about making a Punjabi version of this-watch out Gurinder Chadha!!!

Happy One Year-Section 1

NOTE: I’ve been mulling over the past couple of days on whether I should post this or not due to the personal and painful content of it. I’m not an expert prose writer, but I felt compelled to write this after an interesting call last weekend and I was not planning on sharing it. I decided to go ahead and post it more as a part of my healing process on this anonymous forum than anything else. Also, a situation with a friend left a group of people I adore confused by my behavior, and maybe writing this can help explain it more for myself why this is a pattern in my life. Anyways, I tried to keep it short, but it turned into a much longer piece, so I’m breaking it up into parts and posting over a period of time, in between less personally intense posts.

Section 1

It was Oscar Sunday, on an unusually sunny morning in the Inner Sunset, ironically the foggiest part of SF. I had just gotten off the phone with my best friend in NYC after spending a half-hour discussing our predictions for the event (best dressed, not best movie). Afterwards, as I was tidying up my apartment, I hear Mozart’s Symphony No. 5, my ring tone, playing and ran to the phone. I picked it up to see my ex’s name flashed across the caller ID. Usually, I’m shocked when I get a call from him since he is one of those people who is not a fan of any “communication”. But he actually surprised me by returning my phone call from the night before when I tried reaching him while I was re-watching “Manhattan Murder Mystery”. I had called him at 11pm that Saturday night, forgetting that it was 2am in NYC.

“Hey Sugar, guess what? My One Year is coming up on March 9th. Who would have thought?”

One year sober, who would have thought? BP, the man that gave me so much, but took so much away, the man that made NYC so special for me, yet so disastrous, will be celebrating his one year.

And I’m proud of him.

****

I first met BP at the beginning of my second year in NYC in 2004 through a family friend who went to school with him at Penn State and wanted to introduce me to him. I remember first seeing him standing in the threshold of the bar, inhaling the last bits of his cigarette against the noisy August night of the West Village before he entered to join us. He was skinny (105 lbs to be exact) and was dressed in a white long-sleeved stripped shirt tucked into a pair of khakis. BP looked like a little boy wearing his father’s clothes. I was introduced to him and immediately was not attracted to him. He smoked, was a “corporate bastard” from Wall Street, and just didn’t fit the image of the artsy boys that tend to go for. I even got annoyed that he didn’t know how to use chop sticks and ended up giving him an impromptu lesson when the group ordered sushi and it came with no forks. Even though we were sitting next to each other, after the chop stick lesson, I didn’t talk to him for the rest of the evening, instead chatting with my friend to catch up.

The following evening, I was out with the same friend and we eventually ended up a club where BP happened to be with the group from the previous night. I wasn’t feeling the music at the club, me being more of a Brit-Pop sort of girl, so I sat at the edge of the dance floor, drinking my Bacardi and Coke to, hoping the buzz will make the music more bearable. BP wasn’t much of a dancer and sat with me as he sipped his club soda. We both began talking, me commenting about the music and he shared the “wild times” back at Penn State. I remember thinking “oh, he’s just someone to talk to for tonight” not realizing that the dancing group kept looking over to see if there was any chemistry between us. BP invited me out to the smokers' patio for a cigarette break and, even though I don’t smoke, I welcomed the opportunity for a new group of people to watch.

BP lit his cigarette and took a drag while I tried to look through the haze of smoke.

Then BP randomly asked me: So, what’s your sign?

Me: Huh? What is this, 1972?

BP: No really, what is it? Hey, I just wanna make conversation.

Me: Uh…Pisces.

BP: Oh, really? I know a couple of Pisces. You guys are some of the nicest people on earth and that’s why people walk all over you.

I gave him a nervous laugh, knowing that he was speaking the truth about us astrological fishes.

We spent the rest of the evening going in and out of the club, with him asking me questions about what got me interested in studying therapy, my teaching experience, being a Californian in NYC, again, trying to “make conversation”. Before the night let out, we exchanged numbers, thinking that for me that it would be another friend. In NYC, while I loved the anonymity, recently I had started feeling incredibly lonely in the sea of people. I was lucky to have my best friend from CA on the island, but with him in Harlem living with his boyfriend, and me living by myself in a tiny studio on the Upper East Side, we barely saw each other. BP lived around the corner from my school and he suggested that we grab dinner some time. At the time I was working three jobs and going to school, so having dinner with someone new seemed like a welcomed break from eating yet another slice of pizza as I poured over case studies, my evening ritual.

*****

A couple of weeks later, BP picked me up in front of school. It was a warm September night and I was waiting outside, standing under a street light, trying to read a book. I was in jeans and a t-shirt, with my curly hair wrapped in my usual bun, perfect attire to have dinner with a friend. I didn’t hear BP come up behind me and was startled when he tapped me on the shoulder. He laughed as he leaned down to pick my scared book off the ground and handed it to me. Through his giggles, he asked whether I was craving Mexican or Italian; apparently he made reservations at two restaurants, not knowing what I would like. I immediately got nervous since I never thought that this was a date, just dinner with a friend. But I decided to go along with it, after all, it had been a few months since I had a dinner date, plus I could, over a free meal (hey, I was a poor grad student) could kindly tell him that he just not my type.

I chose Mexican and we walked across the street to the restaurant. During the meal, I complained how the food wasn’t authentic (I am from CA, after all) but I was also enjoying the conversation we were having. BP was born and raised in Philadelphia where he was an only child in a Bengali family. He got into his Wall Street firm through a friend and enjoyed the feverish pace of the stock world and the lifestyle that came with it. I also learned that he had been arrested for a DUI five years ago, went to AA for a year, and had been sober since then. Only recently had he started having the occasional wine with his meal. With me getting my degree in counseling, I ignored his confession of drinking and was more interested in hearing more about his recovery process. What was it like to be in AA? Did you complete the 12 steps? How did your family react? All these so-called “shrink questions” that he answered with tremendous candor and it piqued my interest in him.

During dinner, he got a call from his boss, asking if he had left the office. I would later learn that his boss, and all his co-workers, were excited that he had made dinner plans with me, considering he hadn’t been on a date since he began working there a year before. His boss was afraid that he might have blown off dinner to do more work on a project. While that phone call confirmed with me that this was a date, I was strangely excited by the fact that someone wanted to have dinner with me, a bookish, somewhat quirky girl who had a secret of her own. .

As BP was walking with me along Broadway to the M79 bus stop after dinner, I kept on glancing at the little man next to me, surprised that I wanted to spend more time with him. A little bit had to do with the fact that for once I wasn’t spending a lonely night in the Big Apple, but that there was something intriguing about him in the way he carried himself. Here BP was a recovering alcoholic, making a new life for himself after going through a recovery process. I needed a taste of inspiration for the things I was dealing with.

As the weeks went on, BP and I found ourselves spending more time together. Another dinner here, a party in Jersey City there and we found each other getting closer to each other and it scared me. I never shared with him my secret, but it was obvious that I was in my own world when we were together. On one of those warm evenings, he took me to Hoboken to see the Manhattan skyline and there BP confessed, with the lights of the city illuminating behind him, that he liked me and wanted to pursue a relationship. Instead of being elated, I panicked. It wasn’t fair to him that in my state, someone should start a relationship with me. I was just too damaged that I felt that no new person, even BP, could support me with that, in spite of being lonely.






*****

Two months before I met BP, I was sexually assaulted by a stranger in the back of his car. As with many victims of sexual assault, I was traumatized, shaken. Not only did I lose faith in others, I lost faith in myself. I felt violated and became distant and hypersensitive. This, compounded with the fact that I was in NYC, far away from anyone I knew, made my suffering a very solitary experience. My best friend and his partner RJ were amazing and were there for me, but I needed more. I put myself in therapy to deal with the trauma, but therapy is only an hour and there were still 23 more hours in a day, 167 more hours till my next session, to still deal with. I don’t remember ever crying about what happened, not even in therapy, instead I became more withdrawn forming an invisible barrier around me. I thought of telling my mother, but decided against it, scared that her over-protective side would come out and she would make me move back home, not letting me out of her sight. I thought I needed to be stronger and threw myself into school and took on two more jobs so I could avoid reliving the event in my head. Also, I wanted to show the people who knew what happened that I was alright and I moved on from it. Outside, I knew I appeared fine to my classmates and professors, but inside I was falling apart. It was analogous to my apartment at the time, where there was a mess inside with items strewn on the floor, but I could just close the door, lock it, and no one would know. I even contemplated suicide, but after remembering what a friend’s parents went through after her own suicide a year before, I knew I could not put my parents through that sort of grief. I was a living corpse when I met BP and yet he saw something in me, a sparkle perhaps. I was exhausted from putting up a front. Even though I wanted something new, bringing someone new into my world while I was working through things just didn’t sit well with me.

I decided that I had to tell him before it got too far, before either one of us became attached. I invited him out for some midnight calamari at a restaurant on the Upper West Side, wanting to tell him everything. I picked up on the fact that he was a little bit nervous when he emerged out of the subway, especially since I pulled him out of bed to meet me so late. As we sat down, I took a couple of breaths, trying to prepare myself for the confession. After the third deep breath, I began to tell him what had happened to me, how I was coping, and why I could not invite anyone new into my dark world. I kept my eyes focused on the tea mug in front of me, letting it warm my clammy hands, causing a weird sensation. I never looked up at him as I told him more than my therapist knew, more than anyone knew about what happened that night. BP got every single painful detail. As I relived the event, my emotions becoming stronger, tears forming in my eyes, finally feeling something after many weeks of feeling numb.

I heard BP lean forward and felt one of his tiny hands around my shaking hands, while the other wiped the tears streaking down my cheek.

“I’ll be there for you.”

I felt drops of life seep back into me. Little did I know that I would come alive only to have it evaporate six months later...