Driving Fear...

I didn't realize it initially, but ever since my minor accident couple of weeks ago, I suddenly am scared of people driving in the cars behind me. I know I have control over the cars in front of me, since I trust my brakes quite well, but the people driving behind me, now when they come close, I am all scared that they might run into my car. Also when people do not show indicators and cross lanes or drive at high speed when the traffic is slow ahead, makes me think, is it the same place I have been driving for 3 years? Why does all of a sudden everything seem so different? Why are people so less courteous of other drivers..If you are in a hurry, why didn't you actually wake up early, so that your hurry, doesn't delay(because in a hurry you would drive so weird, that the chances of accident are quite likely) the other people who woke up on time to reach their destination on time. If you really have to do makeup, why don't you do it from home, or do it in the parking lot of your office rather than scaring people by applying makeup while driving!!!!!!!!!!!! In one word, RIDICULUOUS is the world here..........

Serenity...

Earlier sometimes, when I used to be stressed out, my best bet was to put on my headphones and meditate. One of the meditations I like is chakra meditation. When I was in my teens, I had learned Siddhi Samadhi Yoga(SSY), which taught a meditation similar to this. Also my parents being much involved in pranic healing acquainted me with this form of meditation which is a savior in almost all situations. This meditation visualizes the various chakra colors and we cleanse and purify the chakras and thus our energy.

These days in addition to meditating couple of times a week during the lunch break, I have joined an aerobics boot camp, where we practice kickboxing and ab workout, which is a highly recommended stress reliever. My instructor there is highly motivating and I am always eager to attend that class.. The other days of the week, I have started practising Yoga at the local gym...This yoga is different from the ones I learnt in India, but it is quite good. Within 10 minutes of the start, everybody in the class is sweating like anything. It has made me more flexible and helped me with gaining balance during my ab workout in my kickboxing class...I also went for the dancing class once, and plan to schedule it in my routine soon...

My sister recently attended a beginner's class on ART OF LIVING and she absolutely loved it.

BE ACTIVE...BE POSITIVE........ BE HAPPY........

Volunteering at National Rebuilding Together

25th April was the National Rebuilding Day where University of Michigan, Dallas Alumni Club decided to volunteer. Being part of the Alumni Club, I found out about the opportunity and was quite excited since this was going to be my first volunteer work experience in the USA. One of my friends Nileshbhai and I registered as a volunteer for the UM Alumni club. It was a saturday morning and we were suppose to assemble at the place around 8 am, so I woke up early quite excited about the opportunity. My excitement had two reasons, first it was an unselfish work which I would be doing, that would make someone happy and the other reason was to meet fellow wolverines. Its been almost three years since I move to Dallas, Texas from Ann Arbor, Michigan, but I miss Michigan a lot since I have some of the loveliest memories there...

The house we were assigned belonged to a 90- year old lady. She was very nice and friendly. The week before some other group had helped clean up the interior rooms and organize things inside. Our assignment was cleaning from the outside like the car garage, the backyard, painting the house exteriors, weathering the windows etc. We assembled in front of the house around 8 am and introduced each other and started working. Initially we started with garage, there was hardly any space to walk into the backyard since the garage was full of stuff. We threw away lot of items and kept some, which were her fond memories like a rocking chair of her grandmother etc.

Next when there was enough space to reach the backyard, we went there and started working on it. It looked like it had not been taken care of for years..The grass and the trees were overgrown. Some of us started cutting the trees while others picked up the twigs and big branches so that it would be easier for the lawn mower to work.

It was fun, but scary at times when we encountered small snakes on our paths...Finally we managed to clean up everything in the backyard and it looked beautiful....completely different from what we had started on....

The next work for painting the exterior house. We needed to apply the primer initially and then once the primer was settled for an hour, we could start painting. We divided into two groups, one group was working on the front part and the other group was working on the back side.

Over the door, it was difficult to reach from the ladder, so someone climbed on the roof to get to it..The enthusiasm of people to work and help was tremendous. It was a pleasure to be a part of such an enthusiastic group..

Around noon all of us were hungry and were waiting for the pizza which had been ordered. We ate the pizza and in the meantime, the primer had dried so we started the painting operation. I painted the entrance door and the lady came out to show us one of her pictures as a flight attendant. It was a beautiful pic.

Some of the volunteers were working on painting the floor in one of the rooms where the carpet had been peeled off..We were almost done, when someone remembered we needed to paint the fireplace. So we started working on the fireplace...It was about 3:30 pm and we were done, with paints on our jeans, hands and t-shirts....The house looked beautiful and totally different from the morning when we started working on it.

It was a great satisfaction to be helpful to somebody in this way....I have decided to look for more volunteering opportunities in the future.

In the news