oh man. in DC for work which is great, but my manager invited me to stay with him, which was tricky. I tried to slither out of it and i couldn't because there was some weird run on DC hotels and i couldn't find one below our accepted rate. OK, whatever but now i'm living in the suburbs for the week and dependent on my manager for rides in and out. (e.g. today i wanted to go in early to work, because work, and it involved a 5:40 am bus because he doesn't go into til 8 because he has peons like me. i sound bitter. i might be.)

and the thing is.. south asian. i come from that, i get it. but tonight over cognac (that, by the way, his wife and daughter can't drink but i can because my parents are not those south asians, but a completely different breed). And over cognac he quotes to me the koran and wonders why i work, if my boyfriend can provide for me. And let us leave aside that actually i'm not sure my boyfriend *can* provide for me. or wants to.

But do i work because i need to be provided for or because on some level it is satisfying? i would hope the latter (and truthfully a healthy dash of the former because i need new boots. and probably jeans because mine have holes). And also i don't want to be old and poor. All good reasons to work.

and it was so useful to me when he quoted the koran because for so many years working with this man i have felt his judgement about my situation and wondered whether i was giving something up; giving up some central important element of the culture i was born to. And i went to india to understand it. And i have agonized about this amorphous undefined 'mosaic' of south asian and canada and europe and what are our values anyway and what really matters and who are we and how do we know what is right or wrong?

I mean *I* myself know this. But is that because i was raised on a combination of Catholic School and Immigrant Value System? and how can i hope to recreate that for my own children and would i even want to?

But thank (god?) today, Manager man invoked some arcane line in the koran about the man being the breadwinner and the woman being satisfied home with kids and i thought about my parents, who have found just the right balance of individualism and family values. And my mother, who knows exactly what aspects of south asian she wants to emphasize and *fled* that world for a place that suited her better. And I thought about my family, who i love and who love me, and the family i am going to have one day, and i realized that my manager and i are on different planes (his being arcane) and i don't have to endure his judgement because i am inventing a new reality and he has no idea.

11:26 p.m. - 2014-09-18