On The Right Path

I am at a crossroad.  Don't worry, everyone is healthy and I am very blessed to have such an amazing family support.  Everyone in my family just seems to have a lot of things going on right now.

It is my belief that nothing in life is coincidental.  Everything is meant to be, you just need to be open to receive the "whys."  So... I had the bizarre coincidence of meeting a highly talented intuitive about 6 years ago.  My mother in law gave me her contact info and convinced me to meet with her because she was so creepily accurate with her own reading.  I met Annar, tested her talent and yes she proved to be deadly accurate about many aspects of my life that only close family members know.  She is human so of course, her future predictions so far have only been 50% accurate.  Considering that the actual stats of knowing your future are usually zero, 50% is pretty damn amazing.

I felt it was time to schedule another reading to try to give some insight into my crossroads.  The reading was suppose to be this upcoming Friday but she rescheduled it for yesterday.  Chris was originally going to come along but of course his beloved Canucks were playing so I was once again a hockey widow.  As instructed, I drove to her home with a blank cassette tape, my photos of the people I wanted to discuss and $90 cash.  I arrived on time but had to wait in her living room for about 30 minutes as she was running behind her appointments.

Annar called me in and I handed her the tape so she could record the session.  She popped it in and tried to record it but for whatever reason the recorder jams.  She starts cursing that she just bought it and then attempts to wrestle with the machine only to have the tape unravel in her hands.  She apologizes for her recorder eating my new cassette tape so she rummages through her desk to see if there was a spare kicking around.  Of course, there wasn't.  It then occurred to me that my camera was in my purse so I go grab it and ask if it was okay to record the session on video mode but I wouldn't point the lens at her.  Instead I would aim it at the tissue box on the desk.  She gives permission so I started recording in movie mode.

The last time I was at Annar's she mentioned at the end of the session that a maternal spirit, probably my grandma, "popped" in to visit.  I was highly confused at this comment because both my grandmas are alive.  Annar then said her name starts with the letter E... like Evelyn, Eleanor.  It just occurred to me that it might have been Chris' grandma Elaine who was very close to Chris and passed away from cancer when he was really young.       

Well when we started the session yesterday the first thing Annar mentioned was that my grandma was here with me.  Again, I told her both my grandmas are still alive.  Again Annar says, "Well the spirit is definitely maternal and her name starts with the letter E".  Realizing it was Grandma Elaine again, I told Annar to tell her I said, "Hi!"  On my list of questions to ask I had written down, "Is Kaiya the reincarnation of Grandma Elaine?"  I wanted to know because Kaiya's birthday was 2 days after Grandma Elaine's birthday so I always wondered if it was possible.  Well considering Grandma Elaine was still hanging out at my readings it was pretty clear that she didn't cycle back into this lifetime.  Suddenly, I noticed my camera retracted it's lens and shut itself down.  Frustrated, I tried to turn it back on and it never did.

Annar then asked, "Do you jam technology?"  "What?  No, not really.  Why?" I replied.  "Because your energy levels are so high!  I sensed you were arriving about a block before you actually were here!  People with your energy levels sometimes jams electronic things."  I raise an eyebrow and challenged that maybe it's not me but it's my "friends."  She then stares intensely at my forehead and tells me she can't read past 3 months into my future because my chakra is changing.  Apparently it's going from a purple back into a bright green which means in the next 3 months my life will be intensely changing and I will be entering the next phase of my life.  She tells me to come back in July because my purple aura is blocking her abilities to see past the immediate future.  I stare at her like she has two heads.  She reads my confused body language and attempts to explain something about a Saturn rising in my fifth moon... wait... or was it the Unicorn will be rising above the happy Leperchaun?  I can't recall because she spoke so quickly and I don't have a damn taped session to review.

Anyways, I pushed her to see what she can because I had a list of questions that I needed to rattle through.  She entertains me and discusses the future of my business and the future of Chris' business but then mentions she can't really tell because I am blocking her abilities with my blinding purple.  She starts going through the photos I brought and she tells me I will have a really blessed life and my 3 children will grow up to be amazing adults.  She pauses at Kaiya's photo and says she's very special.  Annar proceeds to tell me that she is an energy giver and highly intuitive like her mother.  What... come again?  She tells me that children like Kaiya, around the age of 2, will point up into the corners and start babbling to the air because they are conversing with the spirits.  Great... this wasn't exactly the talent I was envisioning for my daughter.  I was kind of hoping she was able to sing... or at the very least reflect my witty sarcasm.

Annar throws her hands up in the air and says that I really don't need her at this point in my life - I just need to trust my gut instinct.  She says I have the same talent as she does but I'm just raw.  I stare at her in disbelief.  My entire life I have been given many opportunities to explore this "talent" but never have because I was afraid of opening Pandora's Box.  Seeing that Annar couldn't do a good reading anyways I saw it as a good opportunity to finally ask a trained expert.  I explain to her about my stories of my "friends".  She studies me and then explains that my guardian spirits don't just randomly hang around.  They only come when I ask them too and or in times of need.  I bravely ask her to describe to me my guardian spirits.  She concentrates on my forehead.  She says I have a dominant one that is an old female soul and a distant one that is a younger male.  She also mentions that they are both Vietnamese.  I laughed because the weird thing is that it never occurred to me that my spirits were Vietnamese.  I know that sounds stupid.  Annar then says that my Guardians like taking the form of big birds.  I stopped laughing.

She tells me she will send a blessing to help sell my house and I better start house shopping because as soon as she starts praying it will happen quickly.  She says the house will sell for $525,000 to a nice young couple.  My new house will be beautiful and will have the numbers 8018 in it.  She tells me that as soon as I sell it I need to phone and tell her so she can focus her prayers on someone else.  I ask her why she is doing this for me.  She says because I have helped her more then she has helped me tonight.  Annar says it has been a long time, years in fact, since she has met an energy giver with such an intense purple.  She has been heavily drained for the past 3 weeks helping other people and my own energy has been able to re-energize her.  I look at her funny.  She notices the time and hints to me that my 60 minutes are up.  I take $90 out of my purse and she says she feels awkward taking my money because I helped her and not the other way around.  I said I felt weird not paying her so Annar compromises and takes only $60 with an agreement that I can come see her in July for a follow-up.  By then my purple would have subsided so her reading can be more accurate.

She walks me to the door and I ask her for a prediction on the Canucks.  She says I better have a tissue box ready.  I lectured her to keep the faith and she says, "Well they will need a miracle.  But hey, if you focus all that energy of yours towards them that might be the miracle that they need."

I drove home lost in thought.  I started to digest the evening's teachings and then blurted out loud, "Okay G1 and G2, if you are actually watching over me then send me a sign that I can't miss that everything will be okay."  As I started to cross the Queensborough Bridge, through the dark clouds, a double rainbow appeared.  One was brighter than the other one and to make sure I wasn't crazy, I took a picture of it while driving (which wasn't such as smart thing to do considering I am Asian and driving in the rain so thank goodness I didn't cause an accident).

I came home and told Chris everything and tried to retrieve the data from my camera.  The weird thing was that the camera does not have the video of the first 5 minutes of my conversation with Annar but it did have bad photos of the rainbows.  The other weird thing is that the Canucks did win - like I said, Annar is usually 50% wrong.

I also had the chance to Google the green and purple colors of my aura since Annar didn't really explain it to me in terms I understood:

Purple: Nobility of purpose, Spiritual and visionary leadership, Spiritual teaching and goals. Symbol of power, passionate belief, and respect. Idealism, Psychic manifestations. Abstinence and Sobriety.  Indicates spiritual thoughts. Purple is never a strong point in the Aura. It appears only as temporary "clouds" and "flames", indicating truly spiritual thoughts.

Green: Restful, modifying energy, natural healing ability. All natural healers should have it. People with a green strong point in their Auras are natural healers. The stronger the green Aura, the better the healer. They also love gardening and usually have a "green hand" - anything grows for them. Being in a presence of a person with a strong and green Aura is a very peaceful and restful experience. Green thought indicates a restful state and healing.

After I read these definitions the whole evening made sense.  Well it's as clear as mud anyways.  I tried to post this entry last night just before I went to bed but the Internet crashed.  Apparently Shaw was down for the entire Richmond network until the afternoon.  Coincidence... maybe?  Weird... absolutely! 

I am adopting the Rainbow as my sign from my Guardians.  I find it so poetic that as I crossed the bridge and demanded "whoever" to present themselves that I would be greeted with not one, but two rainbows through the dark clouds.  Movie symbolism don't get better than this. 

Embrace Your Light

As part of Best Buy's comprehensive training I was shipped (against my better judgement) to Edmonton in the dead of winter for the entire month of January to master the art of pushing imported electronics designed to "create a better life."

I am a reluctant traveller.  Contrary to popular belief, travelling for work is not glamorous and for a creature of habit and comfort such as myself, it's actually a form of torture.  By this point of my career I was already a seasoned traveller thanks to the demands of my previous role at IKEA.  I knew the ins and outs of living comfortably in a basic hotel which meant that yes, I took along an extra suitcase packed with my own pillow and blankie for long hauls.  Ya, go ahead and snicker but it is essential for my sanity.

I remember this day so clearly.  I was trapped in the back of the Operations room learning the archaic system of scheduling people to budgets and paying them properly.  It was about as exciting as watching beige paint dry.  I looked at the time and was excited to see that it was 5PM which meant I would be free from the shackles and finally able to leave the dark room of no windows.  Just before I was going to pack it up and call it a day I heard yelling and then a shriek coming from the Customer Service counter.  I flew open the door and my superviser and I ran into a crazed man holding a syringe to one of our Customer Service reps demanding money.  My adrenaline kicked in which meant my brain usually shuts down.  I immediately started using my big girl voice, "Put that fucking needle down and leave the store NOW!"  The wide-eyed man obviously strung out on some kind of high started to lunge over the counter that separated us from him.  I instinctly picked up the chair that was beside me and threw it at him creating enough aggression that he dropped the syringe and ran out the door.  "V," the General Manager who was also in training with me and was in charge of this ship for the shift came running up from the back warehouse after the other staff alerted him and called 911.  This all happened in less than 3 minutes.  We locked down the store and went through the painstaking process of filing all the police reports.  Luckily no one was injured except for the poor chair which probably had some DNA from the culprit attached to it since it did clip him in the head. 

Let's just say it was a bad day.  As a manager I have chased down junkies, kids stealing toys and yelled back at aggressive customers that felt they were entitled to the world but... being robbed was definitely a new achievement on the old resume.  It was 9PM by the time V and I finally left and we were heading straight to our hotel's bar.  Since all the staff and men in blue were finally not around us anymore, he started laughing like a crazy man.  Although he never witnessed the altercation first hand as he was 3 seconds too late, he did review all the security tapes with the police.  He confessed it was hilarious to see me bolt out the door like a bat out of hell, yell obscenities at the junkie and then hurl a chair at him when he started to climb over the counter.  Ya, really hilarious I'm sure.  I am 5' on a good day.  The junkie was over 6' and we logged him on our paper work as being approximately 200lbs.  It never occurred to me that further agitating the obviously strung out man was a poor decision.  Luckily the chair bashed his head enough to scare him.

My heart never slowed down since that incident and I badly needed a drink.  As V continued to chuckle through my glares I slammed the button on the elevator door to the floor where our usual watering hole was located.  The elevator door was just about to close when suddenly this woman that looked eerily like Bette Midler pryed open the doors and then just stared at me.  Our eyes deadlocked for the longest minute... E.V.E.R.

"Oh my God!  All this energy is from you?" incredulously asked the the stranger who was hysterically waving her finger at me.  I am a person with a very large personal bubble.  On any average day this bubble is usually 3 feet in radius which means no one except my immediate family can enter within it without making me feel uncomfortable.  After today, it had effectively increased to 10 feet, especially for spazzy women rocking a red fro. V can see my fists clenching up so he automatically stepped in between us.  "Excuse me, but do we know you?" V protectively asked.

The high energy woman embarrassedly apologized for the abrupt invasion and explained that she was one of psychics partaking in the "Psychic Circle Convention" that was being held at the hotel.  Her area of expertise is reading auras so when she noticed this huge "light force" pouring out from the elevator she had to rush to see what it was.  The intensity in her eyes as she was studying me made me feel like she was looking at me naked.  The woman with the massive hair just kept shaking her head.  She then explained that I had 5 times the normal person's aura radius which was so different.  She then grew quiet and stared at the space above my head.  "You have a black light that is hovering above your own life energy!  But it's not attached to you, there is an actual gap between your light and the black light.  Do you notice if street lamps or other electrical items surge when you walk under or near them?"

I was caught off guard and highly annoyed because I can feel my coping system shutting down.  I really needed a stiff drink and the last thing I wanted to do was discuss the colors in my rainbow with the short, roundish woman who kept invading my space.  "I'm sorry we have dinner reservations and we're running late."  The woman again realized how poor her social skills were and apologized.  She gave me her card and told me to call her for an in-depth consultation and since my aura was so unique, she wouldn't even charge me!  V pushed her out the door and I quickly pushed the button to take us to our final destination.

Dinner was unusally quiet.  There was no witty banter, no sarcasms about our favorite topic - stupid people... just... nothing.  It was an uneventful dinner where the only conversations taking place was completed with gestures and eye contact.  Finally V broke the silence and asked if I was going to see her.  I told V I already chucked the card, so no.  He seemed shocked that I didn't want to learn more about my aura.  I told him it was like opening Pandora's Box and right now I am not curious enough to handle the truth.  Besides, that lady's energy gave me the heeby jeebies and I wouldn't be caught dead alone with her in a room by myself.  She probably would keep me trapped somewhere and use my body parts for potions or something.

V walked me to my room like he normally does and before we said our customary goodnights, he blurted out in a drunken slur, "You know what was so weird?  On the surveillance tapes your face kept going in and out of focus when you were raging mad and freaking on that perp.  At first we thought it might have been a dust mark but then the cops realized you moved so it wasn't a static thing on the lens.  I didn't think much about it until that crazy lady asked if you surged electronics..."

Uuuuuuuuuuggggggghhh!  I am not having this conversation.  It's past midnight.  My brain is marinated in fermented wheat and my heart is shot from all the adrenaline rush.  I rudely walked past V, slammed the door on him and fell face first into my "comfort" pillow where I happily stayed until noon the next day.

The Man "Upstairs"

I grew up in a Fourplex in Richmond and shared many happy memories with our neighbors the Azures.  They lived directly above us and the common door that separated the two rental suites was often left open so the herd of six children had easy access to whatever toy, playmate, food or parental mentor they wanted.  I often played with Aliea, my brother would stir up shit with Bobby and Stephanie would be creating bad messes around the house with Merissa. 

Our typical day on the weekend would start with one of us yelling "Knock, Knock!" at the actual door that separates the units as a courtesy to let the actual inhabitants know we were invading their territory.  It was usually the babies in the family (Stephanie or Merissa) since they were the first up so the first looking for something to do.  When the afternoon rolled around I would go upstairs and see if I could get someone engaged in a card game.  Lairay and Bob would often be out in the yard, fixing a bike or building forts.  Anytime it was close to meal time, all six kids would check out the offerings of both household and strategize how we were going to fill our tummy.  Would I eat dinner downstairs but have my desserts upstairs?  Or would I secretly eat dinner upstairs and fake I don't feel well to avoid eating whatever my mom prepared downstairs?  Near the end of the day, we would all pile in one of the living rooms, claim some piece of upholstery or floor and settle down to a movie selection.  Our parents had a really hard time sending all 6 kids to bed on time and getting our homework finished.

Let's just say it was really rare that our home was EVER empty.  However, there was the odd time when the Azures left their home base and because of our tight relationship we knew for a fact that NO ONE was home upstairs.  That's when we heard noises from the upstairs suite.  Most of the time it was footsteps.  It would start from the front of the house and trek towards the kitchen.  They were always heavy footed and always the same path.  Sometimes we just heard banging in the kitchen.  The first time this happened its scared the crap out of all us Nguyen kids. 

Joyce's boyfriend at the time, Garry is a self proclaimed intuitive.  He claims that he has a knack for picking up "residual energy" and is able to read if they were harmless or malevolent.  When we reported this to Garry he nonchalantly said, "Oh, it's just the old guy that used to live here.  Don't worry, he's harmless."  R-i-g-h-t.  Obviously I never took his word for it so I told my parents.  They too annoyingly mimiced Garry's apathetic reaction.  My dad, not knowing that Garry identified the "ghost" as "an old man" blurted out, "It's okay, he's not going to come down here.  He only lives upstairs."  Wow...

I was 13 at the time.  The only ghost I considered friendly was Casper.  The re-assurance from both sets of parents was mildly insane to me.  So, let's get this right.  When everyone leaves upstairs, there is a lonely old man that I can't see but can hear walking around bored and you're trying to convince me that he won't come downstairs because why?  How is it the adults are not unnerved at the 11th person inhabiting the Nguyen/Azure dwelling?

Strangely, we all grew accustomed to the walking footprints.  As I got older, I had earned enough trust to babysit all the kids while the parents were out.  That's when this story gets weirder.  Almost everytime I was babysitting the kids during the evening, there was some kind of active paranormal activity - mostly objects falling and even breaking depending on the impact.  Being the responsible babysitter, I always reported this and the parent's always questioned if we were rough housing - they never believed it when I blamed the busted items on the resident "ghost."

That all changed around Christmas.  The Azures had set their Christmas tree up in front of their living room window.  It was a typical tree with a typical amount of ornaments.  After setting it up, it fell down a couple hours later. No big deal.  They re-setted their tree and to ensure it didn't topple again, the base was weighted with rocks and water and the top was tightly tied to a ceiling hook.  That baby wasn't moving even if all of us 6 kids tackled it.  Later that evening, we heard this huge crash that caused everyone downstairs to go running upstairs.  Now the layout of the Azure's home was an average rectangle.  The front of the house was the living room and dining room and a wall separated the kitchen which was located at the back of the house.  When I ran upstairs the tree looked like someone threw it against the wall that separated the kitchen from the living/dining room.  Just so you know, that distance was approximately 30 feet.  There was so much force that we found busted ornaments into the kitchen!

My dad was shocked.  Garry was quiet.  The moms gathered the kids out of the way so we wouldn't cut ourselves with all the broken glass.  Garry and my dad went to the front of the house where the tree once stood and just stared at the empty spot.  Now being 14, I already knew from my rudimentry understanding of physics that a 6 foot tree could not have fallen down with that much force - it seemed illogical and unnatural.  First of all, the flooring was carpet so that should have insulated the fall.  Secondly, the tree was some how 30 feet away from it's orginal position.  Lastly, it was tied up and weighted down.

I can hear Garry and my dad whispering.  In his broken English, he told Garry that the man was mad and maybe he should not set-up a tree.  Garry nodded in agreement.  We were all sent to bed while the adults cleaned up the war zone.  I didn't sleep well that night.  My dad's words kept echoing in my dreams and the man finally appeared to me.

In the morning, I was the first to scream "Knock, Knock!"  I was given the okay to come in and I rushed straight to Garry.  Breathlessly I told him I had a dream that I looked into the window of his house from the street and I saw an old white guy with long white hair sitting in the window in a chair looking back at me.  Garry smiled and said, "Well yes, that's why he's so mad we put our Christmas tree in his spot."

Apparently our resident ghost was not as friendly as Casper - especially around Christmas time.  The tree was re-located to the back of the house and it never fell again.  However, anytime something broke on my babysitting shifts, Garry and Joyce never accused us kids again of rough housing.