My problem with traditional desi marriage

This is so true.

Love, InshAllah

Eds. Note: This is a response to yesterday’s guest post, How I met my son’s mother. Have a perspective to share on love and relationships? Read our guidelines, here.

Update 11/26/13: Congratulations to writer Aisha Saeed on this post being chosen by the editors of WordPress for Freshly Pressed, highlighting the best posts on WordPress. In an email to LoveinshAllah.com, WordPress said: “Aisha Saeed’s response to your guest post about arranged marriages was a really powerful and articulate call for fairness and equality. She delivers her points with a great balance of passion and reason, which makes this piece engaging even for those who aren’t intimate with the debate surrounding marriage in south Asian communities. It’s a great post that deserves a wider audience.”

 

There’s a befuddling conundrum afoot in the desi (South Asian) community. You must first understand a few things:

a) For whatever reason…

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Chicken Pho (Phở Gà)

Wow!! Yummmm

It's More Than Just Pho

The time has come…I made pho!!

And can I just clarify to all: it’s is pronounced like “fuh,” not “foe.”  It drives me nuts when people say it wrong!

Also, I don’t use MSG.  For some reason, a lot of my friends asked me this when I told them I was making pho.  Pho restaurants typically use MSG to enhance the flavor of soup, but I am not a pho restaurant so I use good old sugar and fish sauce.

I had many requests from friends to make this, so I felt that it was high time I shared my version of the popular noodle soup.  Many of you may be accustomed to beef pho, but I personally prefer to make it with chicken.  I think it’s just because I like chicken better than beef in general.  You can totally substitute the chicken stock with beef stock; the pork bones with…

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Confession No. 112 — A few words and phrases that you never want to hear

This. Is. Pure. Deliciousness.

The Unorthodox Epicure

Ask the average person what words or phrases they despise and most of them will respond similarly. Profanity. Hateful expressions. Self-righteous assertions.

Not me.

Nope. I can handle the occasional swear word, rude comment or pompous ass. But there are a handful of contradictory or foreboding utterances that make my skin crawl.

I hate to tell you this
Other than ‘Beware the Ides of March,’ no phrase in the history of the English language has been more descriptive of impending bad news. And there’s always a ‘but’ afterward. More on that later.

My earliest memory of hearing the phrase came during my high school years. And the person who said it to me was likely lying through her teeth (about hating to tell me my bad news).

I had bought two tickets to a Pink Floyd concert in Dallas. My girlfriend was holding them for us, as we were planning…

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What it has taken me 33 years to learn

Glad I learned these before I’m thirty three. Very helpful, and very true!

The Justin McElroy Institute

-You can be funny and kind or funny and cruel. The second one is easier, but the first one is worth it.

-Dip the french fry in the Frosty. Go on, try it.

-Habit is a powerful force we forget about until it’s turned against us. Be careful which ones you create.

-You will remember the most embarrassing crap you do in your life forever and in perfect clarity. Everyone else will remember the kindest things you do. It all comes out in the wash.

-If you’re doing a remote podcast, it’s worth it to record audio locally and mix it together. Trust me on this one.

-You’re the only one who can let go of your grudges. It’s worth it, I promise. They’re not doing you any good.

-Doing the good, brave, kind things can feel silly if you let your internal critic get in the way. Reminder: No…

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Welcome to My Life

So, my life is basically the story of Cinderella, except I have no step mom and I don’t live in an attic and my father isn’t dead. I know, I know, so, my story isn’t even close to hers. I do feel like her sometimes. I’m the type of person who is smart, extremely smart, but is too lazy to do anything with his/hers knowledge. I’m basically failing school and I’m expected to get all A’s and not fail. Did I mention the not failing part?
Literally everyone I’m my family is either a doctor, lawyer, big-shot accountant, or in school training to be one of the people previously listed. What do I wanna be? I have no idea. Nothing is appealing to me. My siblings are all the good children, and I’m the failure child. Well, according to what my mother says sometimes… My father on the other hand, has faith in me. But when ever he sees a bad grade, I feel bad. He fights with my mother saying ” watch, one day, she’s gonna be ahead of all our other daughters,”. I highly doubt that. All of them knew what they wanted to do when they were in the 5th grade. Hah and I’m almost to college…
My life is a struggle. A struggle between fitting in, and trying not to atleast look like a failure to my parents. All my efforts to make my parents proud always backfire. They think I could always do better. All I truly want is for them to not compare me to other kids. I’m different okay? I’m the “abnormal” child, as my mother says.
To be quite honest, I think science is great subject and all but I’m more interested in the arts… My sisters tried asking me what I wanted to be when I grew up, but I just knew they would try talking me out of it or would yell at me thinking I would actually listen.
Haha, sorry about the ranting blog. Welcome to me; filled with complaints about life and people.

City Dreamer to Suburbian Outsider

“She is a loner, too bright for the slutty girls and too savage for the bright girls, haunting the edges and corners of the school like a sullen disillusioned ghost”
― Eleanor Catton, The Rehearsal

Ever since I moved half way across the country, I’ve always felt uneasy. This place isn’t home. Even if I did move here when I was in 3rd grade, I still remember New York. The fun I used to have, my whole family coming over, walking to school everyday. And now I’m stuck here.
School isn’t the same. I’ve been here for 7 or 8 years now and I can’t handle the kids over here. There isn’t much diversity, and my skin tone isn’t exactly white. I’m not Mexican, nor am I African. I’m simply olive skin toned. Everyone here assumes I’m Mexican. I’m not, but I just go with the flow. In a suburban town where there’s a bunch of good for nothing rich kids, who don’t consider what their parents go through to get them the Beats headphones they wanted, and only care about what kids at school might think about what they wear, I feel like I’m secretly the only person who questions reality. I try to fit in, but they still consider me different…going from a City Dreamer to a Suburbian Outsider.