I hate being angry, I can’t stand it. It’s my least favorite emotion. Majority of the times I get to good “irritated to hell” and don’t really get angry but recently I’ve been battling that urge to go full on HULK mode. Now mind you, it isn’t one thing, it’s.  Let’s start with the asiatoday website. Since November someone has been targeting and hacking our asiatoday website. Now first I thought it was an accident, after getting two companies involved it is become very apparent that someone is purposely doing it. I don’t care who it is at this point I am way beyond that, but do they really have nothing better to do? There is no profit from the website; the sole purpose of the website is to provide information to the community. Share with your friends, pictures, articles about your loved ones. This person or team or whoever it is, has decided that apparently that is wrong, and has done nothing but repeatedly attack our website. The next thing is “greed”. Leave it to greed to ruin everything you like to do. Greed is what runs the world, and it’s also the reason why everything starts to suck. It doesn’t have to do with just money, a person could be greedy for attention (hacking websites for example >:[). The struggle to remain humble in a world that’s filled with what car you drive, how big your house is, what do you have invested…last one not so much, but you know what I mean. My personal experience I’ve seen greed ruin many things, businesses, friendships….relationships.  Now it has interfered with both my personal and business life. I guess when this happens; you can only do one thing! Smile! And move on, oh and write about it I guess! OH and try to fix it, because you can’t just leave it and you can’t just get so caught up that nothing happens.

You never know when you’re going meet people, sometimes you meet the wrong people when you have so much time, and sometimes you meet the right people when their isn’t enough time.  These people came from across the world to study in the U.S for a year. Very recently and probably by the time you’re reading this they will be heading back. I don’t know all of them but a few I got to know very well. I asked them where they like better, here or back home in India. All of them were torn, home is always home regardless of where you go and what you do or who you become. One thing was unanimous, they said life was easier back home then here. When I asked why, the answer was simple, in America all you do is work.  Unless you’re established or are born into a family that can provide for you, you have to work, and you have to work a lot. Even when you get done working, you still continue to work. They described their lives back home and said, they went to college, they went out, and they had fun and worked. Here they did nothing but work. When I asked why, they said everything here requires money. We spent many nights just sitting and talking about the differences they saw, and their experiences while they were here. What they expected and what it turned out to be, and now how they feel since they are about to go home. It almost is surreal, to live in a country where you don’t know anyone, or any place, then go back. Good luck my friends, I wish you all the best and hope we run into each other again, so we can sit and catch up on what we missed out. I’m pretty sure we’ll talk in between, but sitting and talking face to face….there isn’t a piece of technology that can replace that feeling.

Happy Vaisakhi to everyone! There were a lot of good events around the valley, all the gurdawars put together a very nice nagar kirtan, and the Vaisakhi Mela program was great! I stayed there until 7 pm and watched the performances. Vaisakhi is a Harvest festival but more than that, Vaisakhi or Baisakhi, It signifies the establishing of the Khalsa at Anandpur Sahib, by Shri Guru Gobind Singh Ji.  If you have time I would recommend reading the religious significance behind Baisakhi. That part sometimes is overlooked.  Thank you all for coming supporting these events and participating in the Nagar Kirtan. To everyone who put helped create and manage these events, thank you. To all the supporters, thank you for showing up and see you all next year!

Raja Walia
Publisher, Asia Today
publisher@asiatodayaz.com

Our culture is our biggest strength and our biggest weakness.  The culture we as Indians know is very strong; we are a very proud of our heritage, our beliefs.  Yet we still are attached to not only the good but the bad as well. We have segmented people based where they are what they do, and how they live. A culture and a group of beliefs so strong that it teaches to respect the world, respect the spiritual mind, body and soul. Every being has a life, a soul and a reason for being here. We still stick to our old hatreds.  Instead of judging people on who they are, we judge them based on what they are, and where they are from. Do they speak the same tongue? Do they follow the same guidelines that you believe? More and more I’ve seen us judge on the what, rather then the WHO.  What, only lasts for so long, but Who, lasts for the rest of your life.  What a person does, What a person wears, What a person can be seen as, can all change.  To often we try to pretend or fit the role or even worse make others fit a role, because of what we believe to be true. Never looking at who the person is, just what they are.  Our traditions go back longer then we have been alive, longer then most people even alive today.  We live in the now but never think of the future, is what we believe still going to be passed down from generation to generation?  Our ultimate wish, our desire is that what we know is passed down to our kids and they pass it down to their kids.  The world is changing all around us, what our culture was and even traditions have changed since even when my parents were kids. WHO a person is will last through generations, WHAT a person is will only last until the end of their lifetime.

Karma is kind of a funny thing. Throughout my life if one thing I have seen come true more often then any deity being seen in some piece food, somewhere in the world. It’s Karma.  It has perfect timing, most people never see it coming, and it can happen any place any time. Karma is a freakin ninja to the 5 bajilliont power. We live in this world for ourselves, lets face it no one can argue it. The level of degrees that someone lives for himself or herself can change but we overall we live in this world for us.  It’s just when you cross that line, where this ninja known as karma comes into play.  Every try to make someone look bad? Did you succeed? Did It backfire on you down the road? Probably. If you said no, then you probably are lying to yourself. Shitty things happen, but when you go out of your way to make sure shitty things happen for others. Karma will be waiting, and there’s no stopping it.

I hope everyone had a happy holi, this past month. There were a lot of celebrations around the valley I counted 5+ events for holi. A lot of good shows came into town and the ever-popular India festival had a cardinals football super star show up to the event!  Great job everyone, and lets keep this up! Each month we have more and more events to cover! It’s nice to see our newspaper have content that is just Arizona!

Raja Walia
Publisher, Asia Today
publisher@asiatodayaz.com

The older I get, the younger I feel.  I’m turning 29 soon, a year away from the dreaded “30”. Time has seriously flown by. Each passing year I keep thinking, “Man, I’m already this age; I’m the youngest in my family”. What am I supposed to say when I hit 30? The speech of what I’ve learned along the way to hit this milestone of an event, THE 30’S. The next chapter in my life, or….so I’ve been told.  I’ve learned a lot of things so far, and I know I’ll never stop learning. In fact, no one should ever stop learning, because if you have nothing left to learn, that’s when you know you’ve gotten old.  I’ve been asked many times “how old are you?” or even questioned “you’re an adult?”, as I play with Nerf guns with two of my favorite kids in the world. I consider myself mature to a point; when I need to be I can be and when I don’t need to be, why put in so much effort? I’ve been told time and time again and I’m pretty sure everyone’s been told as kids “don’t pretend be who you’re not”. Why does that change as we grow older? Recently my boss at work mentioned a book that I read a long time ago, and to this day is one of the simplest and most meaningful books I have read….“Everything I Learned, I Learned In Kindergarten”

• Share everything.
• Play fair.
• Don’t hit people.
• Put things back where you found them.
• Clean up your own mess.
• Don’t take things that aren’t yours.
• Say you’re sorry when you hurt somebody.
• Wash your hands before you eat.
• Flush.
• Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you.
• Live a balanced life – learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work every day some.
• Take a nap every afternoon.
• When you go out in the world, watch out for traffic, hold hands and stick together.
• Be aware of wonder. Remember the little seed in the Styrofoam cup: the roots go down and the plant goes up and nobody really knows how or why, but we are all like that.
• Goldfish and hamsters and white mice and even the little seed in the Styrofoam cup – they all die. So do we.
• And then remember the Dick-and-Jane books and the first word you learned – the biggest word of all – LOOK.

Basic concepts about how to live and what to do and how to be, take any of these bullet points and put them into “adult terms” and use them in your work life, family life, and very the world around you. You’ll be surprised!

Have I ever mentioned how much I hate seeing things fall into place? Only when there bad things, good things I don’t mind very much. I hate it even more when I see it coming and can’t do anything about it. Recently I had a “situation” come up and I was able to resolve this situation and made it clear where I stood on my decisions. It was sound, it was logical, and it was correct.  I stood by it, firm and proud! Unwilling to move from my stance….after much debate and conversation over the weeks of February, I gave in. I know! It’s really my fault.  I understood and even made sense of the “situation” and it was quite plausible, if not possible!  A few days later, what my initial concern had come true and, everyone who had convinced me into believing otherwise, agreed that my initial position in this “situation” was correct. Which left me with this expression “…….…………” ARE YOU KIDDING ME?  Now if you know me, you know that very rare occasions do I get mad, this was probably not me “mad” or “angry” but it was definitely something that would have made me transform into the “INCREDIBLE HULK” and pick apart portions of the ground as if it was play-doh. It wouldn’t have stopped there, I would made it a habit to make sure I jumped on as many cars as I could before being transforming back into a mild mannered Desi boy. Why? Why? Why do people plan ways around making something possible…then realizing oh wait, I have a concern.  Oh wait, not only do I have a concern it’s the same concern you pointed out at the beginning – Oh Really? What an epiphany you must have had – it is as if the stars aligned and pointed you to a path that you ran around before, like Washington Street in downtown Phoenix.  Next time let’s just sit back, take into consideration EVERYTHING, and then THEN lets come to an agreement. That isn’t too hard to ask right? Right? It’s not getting old that gives me gray hairs, it is times like these.  Raja Out.

Raja Walia
Publisher, Asia Today
publisher@asiatodayaz.com