Category Archives: Friends

Our Story: Memories from the past – Part 7

Posted on May 1, 2013 | 10 comments

This is a continuation of my previous post. Please read the previous posts here, Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5 and Part 6.

After I finished chatting with AS I boarded the plane to my destination, Kathmandu.  My fight to Nepal was around 3.5 hours. During the 8 hours conversation with AS at one point I was thinking, I wish life was simple and I could get a man like AS. At that point I didn’t see any possibility of AS being my partner as I was 100% sure there was no way AS would ever go for a gal like me. I knew him in school and talking in chats and Skype, I got to know him better.

I knew he was a family orientated simple guy who was an introvert while I was an extrovert who laughs loud and talks all the time. A blind person would have easily seen the differences between us.

But that conversation had cleared my mind. I was mentally prepared to get married with someone nice and fulfil all my dreams. I decided that it was time for me to get married and settle down so that I could plan of my future. The marriage thing definitely was blocking my life from moving ahead as I didn’t know what to expect in the future so didn’t plan anything at all.

The flight to Kathmandu was smooth and I was finally in Nepal. When I landed in Nepal, it was very exciting. It was nice to meet my parents after over a year.

My mum had cooked my favourite dishes and I was delighted to eat all the yummy food. I was really looking forward to going on holiday with my parents.

It was Sunday afternoon and we were going to catch a flight for our Nepal and India tour the next afternoon as from Tuesday there was a Nepal Bandh (Nepal closed down due to political reason). It was really annoying that I didn’t get to rest well but if we didn’t fly out on Sunday we might not be able to go on holiday as we didn’t know how long the Nepal Bandh was going to last.

That afternoon I called AS and told him that I was going out of the valley for holiday and may not be in touch for a while. I gave my new mobile number and asked him to message me when his flight to Kathmandu was finalised.

That evening I was going through my old stuffs in my room when I stumble on a box from school and it had lots of old pictures and my memo book.

The old photos were so awesome, so many stories, so many memories and so much fun to look at. It felt like that it was just yesterday that I was enjoying going hiking, going to restaurants or just mocking around with my friends from school. It is true what they say that school days are the best time of your life.

Our old photos (2) Our old photos (1)

One of the things I did on the last week of school was made a memory book and asked all my friends to drop a few words for me. I knew it would be a great memory for future.

Going through that memo book was bringing back lots of memory. Most of my friends wrote few words or half a page but when I reached the page that AS wrote, I was surprised that he managed to write 3 pages. Seriously, I didn’t notice that much before but going through that I was feeling good. He always knew what to say. It felt really good to read it again.

 memo book

I had dinner and spend some time with my parents. Unpack stuffs from Australia and packed a smaller suitcase to take with me for our next holiday.

Next morning, as I was getting ready to go to the airport, AS call me on my phone.

AS: hello

Me: hello

AS: glad I caught you before you left for the airport

Me: Ya, just getting ready to go now. Waiting for mum to finish.

AS: Just want to wish you a great holiday. I know you’re gonna enjoy it

Me: I hope it will be fun as planned. Both my parents are excited to go and I am just happy that I will be with them 24 x 7 for the next 2 weeks.

AS: I think I can call you while you are still in Nepal but when you cross the border into India, I may not be able to.

Me: Let me see if I can buy a sim in India. Let you know if that is a possibility. Either way give me the good news when I return.

AS: Hope so .OK, take care and have a safe journey .What time is your flight?

Me: At 2pm

AS: OK have fun

Me: Thanks. Take care.

He hung up the phone. My parents were ready to leave so we went to the airport to board our flight to Bhadrapur airport. There we would be met by tour guide who would take us around Darjeeling and Sikkim in India and to Illam and Pashupathi Nagar in Mirik in Nepal.

It was a nightmare at the domestic airport in Nepal. It didn’t even look like an airport. It was chaos everywhere and we didn’t even know when to board the plane.  We just waited in the waiting area and hoped that we will hear the announcement for our flight.

I heard someone shout our flight number so told my parents to get ready to board. At that time, AS sent me a text,” Remember to enjoy your holiday. Have fun for me as well.”

It definitely brought a smile to my face and was thanking god for sending a good friend back into my life.

I replied “Thanks and I will have a great time 🙂”

We boarded the plane and took off for a nice holiday away from everyday life. It was my first time to Darjeeling and Sikkim and I was really looking forward to all the nice things the places have to offer.

I will write more about the journey to Darjeeling and Sikkim next so do come back for more. Till then take care.

XOXO

M from nepaliaustralian

Go to Part 8

You may also like:

*Our Story: Singapore airport – Part 6 *Our Story: Back to Sydney – Part 3 *Our Story: Good friends again – Part 4

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Posted in Family, Friends, Our Story, Relationship, Travel

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Babies are born!!!

Posted on January 4, 2012 | 20 comments

If you remember a while ago I wrote a post (I see babies everywhere) that two of my good friends were pregnant. I am happy to announce that both of them gave birth to beautiful babies.

SK had her baby girl before Christmas. The baby was quite big, 4.9 kg. She looked so adorable in her hospital gown. She looked like she was already a few months old but she was only five days old when I went to meet SK. I am in so much in love with her already. She has lots of hair, small eyes and long fingers and toes. While we were in the hospital she didn’t cry at all. She just looked at us and made funny noises moving her arms and legs. I can’t wait to see her in her little pink dress I bought for her. Girls are so easy to buy for as there are millions of choices. They named her SS and here are some beautiful photos of her.

 

Little SS

When I was talking to SK about the birth I was a bit scared to hear what she had to go through.

As the baby was overdue, they induced her to start the labour. They gave her a drip which she said was painful. As she started to have pain, little SS’s heart rate became really high so they decided to do caesarean. It was a last-minute decision but very good one as the baby was big and natural birth was near impossible. Anyway after the birth SK was still in pain. It was a major surgery and it will take her a few weeks to recover. I am so glad she has her parents, brother and sister-in-law there along with her husband who look after her and little SS.

RD had a baby boy last week and they named him AD. He looks so cute and weighs 4.28 kg. RD was also overdue so they had to induce her as well. She spent 2 days in hospital before she had the baby.  She was complaining how she had to be in labour for 7 hours before they decided to have a caesarean.  Lucky for her, her husband and her mum were there every minute to look after her. Here are some beautiful photos of adorable AD.

Little AD

Both moms are super happy and now back home with their buds. They both said they would not have it any other way. Guess the joy of motherhood is beyond comparison.

For me I have two more babies in my life who will call me aunty.  It is such a joy to be around kids and looking at them made me love them more.

 I am sure there will be more posts around these babies in the future.

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Dilemma

Posted on December 15, 2011 | 14 comments

I have a friend from school who used to be very close to me. We used to talk and share our dreams together. We used to have sleepover and share a close bond with each other’s families too. 

When I came to Australia we used to talk often and kept in touch. Our friendship was really strong and my parents used to invite her for all the festivals even I was not in Nepal. I was there to support her and she was there to support me even when we were miles apart. 

5 years ago she decided to come to Australia. I helped her in every possible way. She got a visa to come here and stayed with me. I was really happy to have my friend close to me again. It was going well until one day I found out that she was dating my friend, who I had introduced to her. I was a bit hurt as I would have wanted to hear that information from her but I heard it from a third-party. I didn’t say anything to her. I didn’t ask any questions but waited for her to be ready to talk to me. 

From that time on even as we lived together, we hardly saw each other and had really no conversation with each other. I tried a few times to catch up with her but she seemed too busy with her boyfriend and his family. 

Six months went by and we went from good friends to just room mates. Then she told me that she was going to marry her boyfriend. I was really happy for them as I knew both of them well. I did my best to help her with her wedding but whatever I did didn’t mend the distance between us. 

After the wedding she moved in with her new husband and we didn’t really keep in touch. I called her up a couple of times but I got the feeling that she didn’t want to talk so I stopped calling. I have no idea what happened between us but in this unknown way I lost a friend. 

We still meet during functions organised by common friends but we just say hi and that is all. Last weekend when I went to one of the gatherings, one of my girlfriends informed me that she is expecting a baby. I was so happy to hear the news but I don’t know what I can do. I thought of calling her or writing her an email but I am scared. 

What if she doesn’t response to my email?  or What if the phone conversation becomes awkward? are all the questions that are stopping me from reaching out to her.

I am not even sure she wants me to be a part of her life again. 

Just confused on what I can do next. 

Should I leave things as it is? Or Should I reach out to her?

Can anyone help? If you have been in a similar situation, what have you done? 

P.S: I am writing my version of story as her version can be very different from this. 

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Posted in Emotions, Friends

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Penpals

Posted on November 23, 2011 | 7 comments

Yesterday I was just going through my old papers and I came across a pile of letters. They were letters from my pen pals from my school days.

When I was in middle school, we had an English teacher named Sally Baker who encouraged everyone to write. So she had this idea for all of us to have pen pals from different schools around the world. She got around 100 letters from students from US and randomly gave those letters to us.

 I got Emily Roberts from Massachusetts, US. She wrote,

 Hi,

My name is Emily. I love flowers and Unicorns.

Will you be my friend?

There were a few stickers of unicorn.

I felt so special to get her letter so  I send my first letter to her and then we were pen pals. She used to send me birthday and Christmas cards and I sent her Dashain / Tihar and birthday cards. It was fun to know someone so far away. It was really nice and I would tell everyone who listened that I have a pen pal in US.

Around the same time, I also made 2 more pen pals, Ahmed Yakub from Lahore,Pakistan and Raja Gurung from Darjeeling,India.

With Ahmed Yakub, I had a short friendship as he stopped writing to me after few months but with Raja, our friendship is still on. He is my Facebook friend now. He is happily married with 2 kids.

Back then, he used to send me ‘Churpi’ from Darjeeling and it was a big treat for me. Churpi is a dried smoked cheese and they said Darjeeling’s Churpi is the best. He even came and visited me when he was holidaying in Nepal with his parents. It was so weird to see him in person. Even though I had seen hin in photos both of us felt bit awkward when we meet face to face. But I was glad we met. He is one of the nicest persons I have ever met and I am glad he is my friend now.

With Emily, I lost touch after 1998. I am not sure what happened but I didn’t get any reply for 3 of my letters so I stopped writing to her.

I can’t believe I used to use snail mail and wait weeks for the reply to come back. It was really exciting to see the postman coming to my door and deliver the letters from my pen pals. Surprisingly back then my mail was never lost even when it contained birthday gifts and big packages.

If someone asked me to write a letter these days I would never do it but back then I learnt so many things from these pen pals about their country and culture. There was no internet or 1000’s of channels on TV so my source of information was books. I used to go to libraries and read lots of books but to have pen pals had its own adventures. I received first hand information from them. I could ask questions to them and they would write about things in their countries. I used to write about our festivals and send them postcards of Nepal. Emily once sent me the American flag.

While blogging I felt, it is a modernised version of having a pen pal. We don’t know people when we start reading someone’s blog, they are just a name or initial in most of the cases but if we follow their stories, we learn a lot about them. That’s why I guess I started to blog and read blogs.

Happy blogging everyone!!!

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Missing my dear friend

Posted on November 18, 2011 | 6 comments

This post is dedicated to my dear friend SD.

Reason, Season, or Lifetime

People come into your life for a reason, a season or a lifetime.
When you figure out which one it is,
you will know what to do for each person.

When someone is in your life for a REASON,
it is usually to meet a need you have expressed.
They have come to assist you through a difficulty;
to provide you with guidance and support;
to aid you physically, emotionally or spiritually.
They may seem like a godsend, and they are.
They are there for the reason you need them to be.

Then, without any wrongdoing on your part or at an inconvenient time,
this person will say or do something to bring the relationship to an end.
Sometimes they die. Sometimes they walk away.
Sometimes they act up and force you to take a stand.
What we must realize is that our need has been met, our desire fulfilled; their work is done.
The prayer you sent up has been answered and now it is time to move on.

Some people come into your life for a SEASON,
because your turn has come to share, grow or learn.
They bring you an experience of peace or make you laugh.
They may teach you something you have never done.
They usually give you an unbelievable amount of joy.
Believe it. It is real. But only for a season.

LIFETIME relationships teach you lifetime lessons;
things you must build upon in order to have a solid emotional foundation.
Your job is to accept the lesson, love the person,
and put what you have learned to use in all other relationships and areas of your life.
It is said that love is blind but friendship is clairvoyant.

— Unknown

It is so true that you meet three different types of people in life. Some for a reason, some for season and some for a lifetime. Today I am missing my dear friend SD who is one of the few friends who is for a lifetime. 

Me and SD in our school uniform

I met SD during my middle school years and  since then we have been very good friends. You know sometimes you meet some people for the first time and get this impression that they are so carefree that you wish you could be like that too. That is my friend SD. She is always daring, carefree, positive and fun-loving.

She is the youngest of 7 kids of her parents but she is the only girl. She has grown up with 6 protective brothers and as they were her mentor, she is very boyish. I think that clicked between us at first as I was a tomboy myself when I was young. 

We used to do lots of things together and one of the good memories from my childhood would be our sleepover. We used to talk through the whole night, no idea about what but it was super fun.

 Life has thrown us thousands of miles apart but we always manage to stay close and keep in touch. When I came to Australia, she was in Nepal. We kept in touch with emails and phone calls.

 The first time I went back to Nepal, she left to Austria after 2 days of my reaching Nepal. It was really sad for both of us.

Me and SD @ Time Square

The next time I visited Nepal, luckily she was there. I had a great time as she took me to  places, we did  things together and she was just there for me. We did lots of talking and caught up on lost time.

After that every time I went home, she was in the US so we didn’t meet for a while. Then I went to US for my holiday in 2009 and stayed with her in NY. It was like old times again and she was my guide there. We went to Time Square at midnight and had our funny photos taken at Madame Tussaud’s. We went to the Statute of Liberty early in the morning and Central Park at midday.

NYPD

She was up for every crazy idea I had as a tourist. She was the one who took my photo with a NYPD cop. I wanted to take a picture but didn’t know how to approach the cop who was working in the middle of street. She went and talked to him and told him there is this crazy tourist from OZ who wanted to take a photo with him. I had fun shopping with her and tasting lots of American food. I met a few of her new friends as well.

Me and SD in Madame Tussaud

As everything had to come to end, my holiday was over too and I had to come back. I was sad to leave but I had no choice.

Then in 2010, when we talked after my engagement ceremony, we decided that we have to attend each other’s wedding for sure.

In early 2011, things were looking great as she had already filed for her Green Card and was sure that the processing would be completed before June so she would be in Nepal for my wedding. We were so excited but then she got a letter from immigration telling her that they lost her paperwork as there was a mix up with addresses. We still hope that things would fall into place and she would be able to fly by June 20 for my wedding on the 24th. The paperwork did not arrive in time and so she missed my wedding.

She was sad and upset that she couldn’t make it but I did understand her situation. If she had left the country for the wedding, she would not have been allowed back so she had to what she had to do.

I had her family expect her parents in my receptions. Her parents didn’t come as her dad was ill. I went to see her parents before I came back. It was always nice to see them as they always treated me as their own daughter.

Finally in August, she got her Green Card so she decided to go to Nepal for a holiday. Out of blue things happened so fast and her wedding was fixed for 2nd of December 2011.

I was so happy for her and at the same time a bit sad that I would miss out on the wedding as there was no way I would be given any more vacation time from work this year as I had taken so much time off for my own wedding.

We were still constantly in touch and I was advising her on what to do and where to go for the preparation of the wedding, from my own experience. Every time we talked she would day “Wish you were here. It would have been so much better.” and I felt very sad.

Few days ago, I saw her online in Skype and this is how the conversation went,

  “Are you free to chat?”

 “I am not SD; I am her fiancée using her account”

 “Oh, how have you been, how is the wedding preparation going? and how is SD doing?”

 “Actually I need to tell you something,”

 “Yes”

 “Yesterday SD’s dad passed away”.

When I read that I didn’t know how to react. I was really shocked that when I was thinking she is in the happiest moment of her life, she was going through the grief of loosing her dad. He had been a bit sick but his passing away was unexpected.

I called her after that and I felt a bit better that she was coping better than I thought she would be. All her family members were with her. She was very calm and was talking to me normally. She said “Everyone is coping well so don’t worry. There are lots of people around.” Then she told me something that I didn’t expect. “I always wanted you to be there for my wedding so I guess now you have to be present for my wedding as it will be in 2012. Make sure you come this time. “

I couldn’t say anything but I admire her positivity in the rough time she was going through. All I wanted to do at that point was give her a big hug. I wish I was with you there my dear. I am missing you a lot. And I promise to be with you when you get married in 2012. 

P. S: In Nepal, if someone dies in the family, the family will not celebrate any festivals or birthdays for a year and there will be no wedding or any other happy celebrations for that year.

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Posted in Friends, Relationship

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