My Brother's Wedding - "We Left to Tomorrow but We Came Back Yesterday."

My mom uttered that pearl of wisdom as we arrived on a 6 pm New Jersey flight that came in to San Francisco at 9:30 that same evening. And although the rest of the weekend did not feature any more sayings from Mom's Book of Proverbs , the weekend still was one of the best of my life. It even topped that weekend I put out that orphanage fire with my fists (that was a pretty good weekend though!). Here are seven reasons why the weekend was awesome:

1) Eddie and Irina's Wedding!
The reason why were were in New Jersey, of course. My brother is now married, and it didn't feel weird at all. He and Irina fit so well together and the whole thing just made sense. I got good chills when they were announced as Mr. and Mrs. Ishak at the reception. I was worried that I'd have to fake-smile the entire time for the cameras, but I was wrong; I was smiling the whole time anyway. Also, I changed my bathroom schedule so I'd be free during the ceremony and reception--what are brothers for, right?

2) Traveling with Family
I've traveled quite a bit with my bro and parents, but it's pretty rare that we get 50 or so family members in the same place across the country. It was nice to wake up and my cousins at breakfast, spend time with my brother and Heather, and then eat dinner with more family and friends. Even the bus rides were enjoyable. And Sunday night after the wedding in the hotel mezzanine...dear Lord; that conversation should never be shared with anyone outside of the 20 people there--yet I have it on tape and you'll probably see it someday. ETO at it's finest.

(That's "Egyptian TakeOver" for those of you who have not seen Copts move in large groups.)

3) Food
The third star of the weekend, besides Eddie and Irina. I really can't describe to you the insanity of the quality and quantity of food at the reception. Maybe a few short anecdotes will help:

• The cocktail hour had over 100 different appetizers. Maybe even 200. They were all well-made, too. Did anyone count? I wanted to try every different kind, and I couldn't, if that tells you something.
• The cocktail hour was described as a "Jay-Z party" by Mounir.
• If you're like me, you've overeaten many times in your life. And when you overeat, you feel bad about it and think to yourself: "I shouldn't have eaten that last ravioli or two" or "I shouldn't have ordered dessert." Even after I was extremely full, I ate my entire dinner and did not feel bad about it for a SECOND. Everything on my plate was incredible.
  I really don't know if I've gotten my point across by now, but the food was like nothing I have ever seen or WILL see in my life again.
• On top of that, there was a "dessert room". You read that correctly. A room of desserts. Not like Tokyo bedroom-sized. Like a room that could hold about a hundred people. I'm fat.

We also ate pretty well the rest of the weekend, including the buffet breakfast each morning, the fantastic Chelsea Grill near midtown, and the rehearsal dinner on Saturday evening. Still fat.

4) New York is pretty neat.
I don't think I'd ever live there (too close to France), but there's no doubt that Manhattan is an awesome place to visit. The subway is efficient, the food is great, and there is always stuff to do. We stayed in Newark but on Friday we did get out to the Big Banana--remember, NO ONE in Manhattan calls it "The Big Apple".

5) Ididn't talklikethis duringthetoast.
I have a habit of speaking really fast sometimes and I tend to mumble and stutter and I have a lisp and basically what I'm saying is that I'd be a great candidate for a public speaking instructor--which is what I'll be doing during my PhD program in Texas (oh by the way, we're moving to Texas). During the toast, I spoke clearly and slowly and I didn't sound like an idiot, which is always a plus.

Oddly enough, there ended up not being a clinking of glasses at all, which is kinda my fault. Oops.

6) Visiting Shea Stadium
We went to a Mets game for Eddie's bachelor outing, if you want to call it that. It was nice to see Shea Stadium before it is eventually torn down. Which it should be. It's like Oakland Coliseum but less...hmm..."acceptable as a baseball stadium."

7) Egyptian Paparazzi
Have you ever seen 20 Egyptians taking the exact same picture of the exact same thing at the exact same time? Something about it amuses me. Heather and I learned a lot about what to expect during our wedding, and we are glad that there is a "No Photography" policy in the church. Even my mom was using her digital camera to video the ceremony. Did you read that? The mother of the groom spent time videotaping the ceremony even though there were three professional cameras there. Not only that, the father of the bride took the official photographer's camera at one point and went around and started taking pictures.

There's only one logical conclusion: Egyptians think they are the only people who can capture a moment, even though EVERY SINGLE PERSON THERE has a camera. I am waiting for the moment when groom pulls out a camera and takes a picture of himself.

Oh wait, that happened at Elmasry's wedding this summer--no joke. It was amusing, though.

::

So Eddie and Irina are now married and their wedding provided us all with some fantastic memories, mainly of the delicious variety. I'm exciting for all the other weddings this year. We're not going to have food like that, but we'll put treadmills in the cocktail hour so everyone can burn off the weight gain from the wedding this past weekend. That's "exer-tainment"!

I'll try my best to have some pictures of the wedding up soon!

10% Off - Week 9 Update

Sorry I haven't updated in a while. Traveling didn't help the weight, but Easter--and the return to omnivorous gluttony, didn't raise the weigh-ins like I thought it would. My pace is not great (I want to keep it above .15 pounds a day) but it's not bad considering that I've only been exercising a few times a week.



This graph looks uglier for some reason.

Hey how do you spell that again?

G-L-A-M. O-R-O-U-S.

Thanks Fergie. I'm really happy you made that song educational for me.



Now seems like a good time to mention that I bought a Spice Girls CD in 7th grade.

No Sexy Magazine

(I wrote this last week and I never got around to posting it.)

I just had a really arduous conversation in a Persian/Middle Eastern grocery store, and I'm pretty sure the difficulty had nothing to do with language.

I took a mid-morning walk down Stevens Creek Boulevard, and I stopped at M&M Food Mart to check out their selection of pickles and feta cheese (Easter is right around the corner!). I was not planning on buying anything until I saw a few Middle Eastern magazines with Nicole Kidman on the cover. No, I don't really spend any of my spare time reading about Nicole Kidman, but Heather does, and I thought it would be interesting to read through an Americanized Arab celebrity magazine with her. Because of the high price (Seven bucks!), I wanted to make absolutely sure that I was getting a true People-type magazine, and not 90 pages about hair or pants or some other magazine theme that no one cares about except for SuperCuts.

So I asked the clerk about the shrink-wrapped mag, and I really don't think he could get past the fact that I was a 24 year-old male. I did enjoy his accent though:

Me: Hi! (pointing) Are those magazines about celebrities? What's the title? (I am Egyptian, yes, but I can't read Arabic).

Clerk: No no. Those are for woman.

Me: I know, I'm getting it as a gift for someone.

Clerk: It's woman magazine. For woman.

Me: I know, I'm getting it for a woman. So what does this title say?

Clerk: (sigh) It's not…It's not sexy magazine. It's stuff…has stuff for woman. (And he says this next part in a friendly way) Not for you.

Me: Okay…can you tell me what the name of the magazine is?

Clerk: No! It's not sexy magazine!


At this point, I really didn't want a Middle Eastern Cosmo/Seventeen-type collection of the following articles:

"60 Things That Will Drive Him Magnoon in Bed!"
"Get That Sharm El-Sheikh Figure By June!"
"Spring Break on the Sinai Peninsula!"
"How to Dress Hella Halwa! Hollaaaaaaaa!"

So I decided not to waste my money, said "thank you" and walked out of the store.

It was not sexy magazine.

Just Like a Fergie Song

I have a love/hate relationship with the alarm clock on my phone. On one hand, I usually hear it at 3:50 in the morning when away from my home alarm clock and I have a flight to catch, which is not great because getting up early is...earlier than I want to get up--I mean, it's right there in the phrase itself. On the other hand, I use it when I travel, so I hear it when I am at a friend's house or in a hotel; in that way, the alarm has come to remind me of friends and vacation, which I enjoy as much as the next person.

If you have a Motorola 810 phone, listen to the "Gyroscope" ringer and try to tell me that it wouldn't raise Lincoln from the dead.

Dear Diary, Here's What I Did Today, My Teacher is SOOOOO Lame, and Do You Think Runner Likes Me?

I really try hard to make sure that I don't write about my life on this site as if it was "AndrewsDiary.com"--no one cares what I ate for lunch today or how work was, except my mother--but allow me a n article today.

This past April 1 was Palm Sunday, and it signifies the start of a crazy five month period (crazy in a good way, of course):

We're currently in the midst of the busiest religious time of the year--Holy Week--which culminates with Easter Weekend, always a restless time in our house; family is in town from all over California, and I get to make pounds and pounds of meat. Easter is the only annual event the entire year when we can get most of our family together in one place.

Next Saturday is Picnic Day. If you are a UC Davis almuni or student, of course you'll be there. If not, check out that link. Then, Eddie and Irina are getting married the weekend after that in New Jersey. I'm more excited for that than anything else until August. After that, Criss is visiting the Bay Area on the weekend of April 27-29. The visit of a college roommate would be exciting in itself, but Criss has been in Kazakhstan since 2005! And he's gonna be there for two more years. I think we're gonna have to break out the indoor basketball hoop.

May is almost as busy as April. A few smaller events are happening, and our Sunnyvale basketball team will be in the middle of its schedule. We're going to Manhattan for Eddie's graduation mid-May, and we're also having the first annual Ishak Family Cookoff on May 19 (more details later). Also, it's likely that Heather and I will take a trip to Austin, TX or College Park, MD to take a look at housing. That reminds me: we'll be making that decision by April 15.

PCAL starts in June, which doesn't seem that important--it's not, really--bt it keeps me way busier than one would think. Nader is graduating, Heather is defending her thesis, and I think that wedding preparation will really start to get into full swing in June. July is more of the same--wedding prep, finding a place to move in to, wherever we go. I'm excited about that.

And then August would be here. The month starts with Blake and Stacy's wedding and ends with ours. Actually, to be accurate, it ends with us moving to Texas or Maryland. Blake and Stacy's wedding is going to be awesome, and then our wedding should be around the same level of awesomeness but with a hint of brown.