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.

The 10 Best Names of Teams I've Been On

I turning in our form yesterday for the Sunnyvale City Basketball League, and I had to choose a team name. I threw around a few ideas: Flea Market Montgomery, Click CLACK, The House Protectors, and Sweet Trampoline Tibia Dunk (don't watch that last one if you have a weak stomach).

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Okay, you're back, I hope (that was enough YouTube linkage for like four posts). Anyway,...I decided on the name We Talkin' About PRACTICE because of it's basketball theme. My brother Eddie says the name is too long, but I like it.

Personally, when it comes to intramurals and amateur sports, I think your team name says a lot about your players before you even step on the court. It's like a team tattoo. Sometimes the name is familar and it already means something to you. When I played IMs at UC Davis, I would often check who we were playing a few days before the game and--I know this may seem way too intense, but--I would check how a similar-named team performed in last year's standings, since dynasty teams often keep the same name from year to year. For example, 93 to Infinity was the name of a flag football team headed by someone who worked in the intramural department, and they knew how to recruit VERY well. Needless to say, they were incredible every year. A few other dynasty teams I remember were Family, Dingos, and of course, some frat teams. Athletes in Action always had teams in the top ten, so seeing their name on your schedule was always a little worrisome.

But what if the name isn't familiar? That's when the name itself can create an impression. I'm gonna peruse the UCD IM Flag Football and Soccer listings and give you my superficial opinion on what each team is probably like:

Law School Legends B: Any law school team worth it's hourly rate is going to be very good at flag football, because there are bragging rights at stake within the law school itself AND with other law schools in the area, since they often have tournaments. Could "B" refer to being the junior varsity team? If so, they won't dominate, but they'll still be good.

Labrador Casserole: Oh my goodness...no way a team with this name is actually taking soccer that seriously. They obviously chose this name because they have a sense of humor, which can be great because the best teams to play against are fun, friendly, will pull you up after a collision...the kind of people who you think: "If I wasn't friends with my friends, I'd wanna be friends with these guys." It's why playing intramurals can make you feel good even after a loss.

Of course I could be completely wrong and they could be jerks with a sense of humor. That happens all the time, but usually those teams choose a name with some sort of innuendo, like We Kick Balls. I googled Labrador Casserole--it means nothing.

The Gilmore Pirates: Gilmore is a dorm at UCD...freshman teams are usually inexperienced but hungry. The good thing, if you think winning is good, is that you'll often face a team each year that is just out there because someone organized an IM team, not because they actually like football, and that team is usually composed of freshman. It's good to get your dominate on once in a while.

PIKE: Not a good sign. Pi Kappa Alpha at Davis is composed of not very friendly guys, for the most part. We played a few Pike teams and it was never a fun experience because they would trash talk about our players and just be kinda rude in general.

Free Agent Team CB5: CB5 referring to Coed B League, Division 5. They probably just met and won't talk to each other very much, so it will be eerily quiet at many points during the game. If you win, you go home thinking: "Good solid win." If you lose...well, you won't lose because this is a team of free agents and basically they aren't very good.

In light of my brother denying me the afterglow of choosing what I THOUGHT was a fun name, here's my list of my Ten Favorite Names of Teams I've Been On:

10. Bayside Screeches - UC Davis Co-ed IM Softball, 2002-04
I know, I know: Saved by the Bell being retro-cool is soooo 2003. Well we got in on the ground floor of the SBTB retro-cool public offering and rode it for three years. It's just stupid enough that you don't take it seriously, but it was also great for team morale; we would often do the "Goooooooo BAYSIDE!" cheer with our hands in the middle after every game and it made us feel pretty good. I really feel like we were the only team doing this 5 years ago and now it's probably done to death. This name was part of the larger SBTB naming dynasty; for co-ed football, our name was Beat Valley and I'm pretty sure I went with AGC Bayside Tigers at Texas that first softball season.

9. Firefighters - Davis Little League Fall Ball, 2001
The season started two weeks after 9/11 and given that we got yellow jerseys, I think this was the only name we could have chosen. That first game was pretty surreal to me actually. Blake and I had coached AA the spring before and there were no lights on that field, so that first game at night in AAA was actually my first little league experience under the lights. With everyone yelling "Let's go, Firefighters!", it made me feel like I was part of Disney movie.

8. AGC Flower Butterflies - Texas Co-Ed IM Football, 2005
I was athletic director of the Advertising Graduate Council, and Chris Varughese and I went to sign up for IMs in early September. He said we should go with a tough name to intimidate our opponents, and the rest is history.

7. Rainbow Runners - Sunnyvale AYSO, 1987
Another tough name--this was the name of the first soccer team I played on as a kid. Why did they name us the Rainbow Runners? No idea. We were maroon. There is no maroon in a rainbow. All I can remember is that I colored in everyone's neck on the team photo. Again, I have no idea why.

6. Monta Vista Matadors - High School Baseball and Football, 1996-2000
This is a cool team name to have in high school because it's pretty unique. How many high school teams are named the Eagles or Lions or Wildcats or Mustangs? Boring. Matador is literally translated as Killer, so we were the Mountain View Killers. That is ridiculous. The only problem was the amount of "Ole!" jokes during infield practice.

5. Terror Alert: Sexy! - UC Davis Men's IM Basketball - 2004
I always liked this name, especially since we would often post that day's terror alert on the whiteboard in the apartment. Two things I remembered from this season: 1) it was second time that five of the six of us in Fountain Circle 12 played on the same intramural team, and it was the ONLY time that the five of us who were actually living in the apartment at the time played together (all of us but Blake played men's softball together in 2002, but Criss and Dan lived elsewhere), and 2) in one of these basketball games, Criss literally shot a ball over the backboard. Needless to say, this was the only season we ever played in which we did not win a game.

4. Team Andrew Ishak - Davis Little League, 2025
Okay, I'll admit this hasn't happened yet, but when I slip Heather some fertility pills and we end up having three sets of triplets in three years' time and they all get to play on the same little league team together and I coach because they all came from me, who's going to be upset if I refer to them as Team Andrew Ishak? I mean, think about it: there will be 9 little Ishaks running around on the field and paying league dues, the least you can do is honor me with a free sno-cone after the game.

What's the line on this post somehow messing with a potential coaching appointment in the future? It's a JOKE. Whatever, just read this, I'm a good coach and I like kids and I would never father 9 children in 3 years just to have them play little league together. Or maybe I would--I love little league THAT MUCH.

3. San Jose Dragon Slayers - Pacific Coptic Athletic League, 2005-present
First, check out our sweet new logo. Then, understand that the iconic image of Saint George--the patron saint of our church--is of him slaying the serpent-dragon. Other teams in the league have cool names as well, such as the Monks and Wonder Workers. I like our name because it could only be attributed to one saint, and the cardinal accent color of our uniforms matches Saint George's cape. Dude was a soldier.

2. Congress - UC Davis Men's Res Hall IM Football, 2000
Scott Ball came up with this name, and it may not sound very awesome to you. It didn't sound so cool to us until we asked Scott about it before our first game: "Scott, why are we called Congress?"

Scott's reply? "Because we lay down the law."

Awesome. I really do hope to write about the best game I've ever been a part of from that season--the Fog Bowl--sometime soon. And at number one...

1. Ryerson.com/softball presented by Nokia - UC Davis Co-ed IM Softball, 2001
Right in the middle of the dot-com burst and wave of corporate stadium names, we came up with a team name that represented the direction in which many fans thought professional team names were going. We all lived in the Ryerson dorm and this WAS a softball team, so most of the name was relevant. The Nokia part was just because. Just because of what, you ask?

Just because LEAGUE CHAMPS.

That was a perfect segue and made perfect sense.

Sweet Sweet Coptic Basketball on the Web

I've been working on http://pcaleague.org most of the weekend and I think it looks a lot cleaner that it did before. It's pretty bare right now but it should get more content as we get closer to the season. I especially like the way the maplinks look on the right side of the front banner. Check the site out, surf around, and PLEASE let me know if you find any problems, or if you think of anything that should be on there. Oh, and if you can figure out how to get rid of that stupid blue border around the front banner (it contains maplinks, I think that's why it's there), I will give you a dollar.

Know Your Role

"Know Your Role."

Some people hate the sound of that phrase. I blame it on the wrestling guy--I think it was The Rock--who made it sound like telling someone to "know your role" is effectively telling them to submit to you.

I think it's one of those phrases that can be a great for keeping people on track towards a group goal. I've played a lot of organized sports. In that respect, to "know your role" means to understand how you fit best into your group for the group's benefit. This can be difficult to do, especially when roles are not clearly defined. Often in business, youth sports, or even something as trivial as planning a group picnic, we aren't told exactly what to do, and it can be so hard to get to the point where you understand your duties perfectly, as well as the duties of others as they affect you, which is quite important. Sometimes we forget our exact role in a group and cross the boundaries of our responsibility, which can sometimes be good, but often isn't.

Everyone has experienced this at some point in their lives. I found that it happened quite a bit on projects in high school and college (even in grad school), and some of the little league teams I coached had this issue during the first few weeks of a season. You may be experiencing this kind of thing at work right now as you read this (man that guy in the next cube is a jerk...you tell him that YOU will do the talking on the next presentation and HE will be making the spreadsheets. Make sure he uses Trebuchet.).

There is no denying that learning how to do many different things--in effect, learning multiple roles--can be extremely effective at keeping yourself valuable AND helping your group achieve its goals. Take work presentations for example: if you only know how to make pie charts, and pie charts are deemed unnecessary because of a change in presentable metrics, well then you are out of luck and possibly out of a job. In the same sense, if Peter Presenter is the ONLY person on your team who knows how to present line graphs and he comes down with a case of the Flaps (it's a stomach virus) right before the big Profits vs. Time presentation, then your whole team is kinda screwed.

My feeling is that with most groups and teams, it's always good to have the starter as well as backups. Obviously this is the case in sports, but I think it applies to work as well. The starter will get most of the time at his best position--whether it's Left Field or Client Researcher or Presentation Closer--and the backups of course learn how to play the position by practicing and even assuming the role from time to time to get some real experience.

But back to the point here: you have to Know Your Role if you want to help the team (by "you" I mean the unspecific "you", not actually "you", but also "you" in addition to me). Even if you think your role is boring or you think you should have a different role, when the coach gives you a position, you have to suck it up and learn and play.

I'm writing about this now because of the upcoming Pacific Coptic Athletic League season. (What is the deal with all these basketball posts? It's not even one of my three favorite sports. I think it's because I am trying not to talk about it verbally so much--of course, it doesn't help that I'm writing about it now. *Sigh* I am going to play baseball next year.) Last year I played small forward, a position that I am really comfortable with: drive or shoot the 13-footer on offense, guard a mid-size guy on defense, and grab a ton of rebounds. Well, I did the last two well enough, but the shooting needed work.

Anyway, this year is going to be drastically different. We lost two key players to the East Coast: my brother Eddie who was our starting point guard, and Waseem, who was our starting shooting guard. Remember what I was saying earlier about having formidable backups? Well, we did. The problem is that THEY WERE BACKUPS FOR EACH OTHER. Whoops!

So after talking to our new head coach Walid, I'm moving over to point guard, barring assistant coach Mounir injecting horse steroids into his surgically-repaired knee before the season starts. It would seem that point guard is a nice place to get moved to--you get to handle the ball, and you're always in the action. Well, I've never been a good passer and I certainly don't have great ball handling skills. It's going to be a struggle.

This is why Coach Walid will keep telling me "Know Your Role" from now until August, and he'll keep telling everyone else that as well. I have to embrace taking the ball up the court just like other guys on the team have to embrace their roles as picksetters, hustle guys, rebounders, etcetera.

For a church basketball team, we have a long way to go. The two games that my brother missed last season ended in the highest-scoring defeat in league history as well as a loss to the last-place Sacramento Halos. Waseem was instrumental in the tempo of our offense. We are picking up a few big guys, and that should help, but all us returners have to understand our roles as we get closer to the start of the season.

So I won't get upset if I hear "Know Your Role!" on the court this spring and summer; in fact, it's one of our team mottos for this season, along with "Let's not lose 4 games by less than 4 points" and "Rohan make me a sandwich."

Ishak with the Assist

We all had a good time at our first basketball practice of the season this last Sunday. And by "we all" I mean "I", and by "our" I mean "my", and by "good time" I mean "I drove 20 minutes each way to shoot around on a shoddy rim by myself when I could have stayed home and used our glass backboard and not even have had to get in my car." That's what I get for scheduling practice in between two NFL playoff games.

On the bright side, the enjoyment/cooking-time ratio of my spaghetti dinner that night was pretty high, so that's good.

Boom shakalaka!

Brian and I have been doing some plyometrics the last three weeks and I have been using my Jumpsoles. If you want a full description and sales pitch, you can go to the Jumpsoles website; the best way for me to quickly describe them is that they are weighted platforms that attach to the front of your shoes, and you wear them to increase the workout for your feet and calves.

Maybe your wondering why I'm using Jumpsoles. Well, I'll tell you anyway. There are three things you need to know: 1) I can't jump as high as I'd like to, 2) I'm only 5'9", and 3) jumping high is advantageous in the Sport of Basket Ball. I would love to grow taller but most people stop growing before they turn 24, so I'm not counting on that. I'd also love to invent some sort of basketball game where average-height, small-vertical-leap people have an advantage over tall people. It probably won't catch on.

I've decided to change Point 1, meaning I'd like to be able to jump higher. The Jumpsoles 8-week program supposedly adds 5 to 10 inches to your vertical leap. You should see the testimonials--they are windows into the soul of Caucasian high school basketball players in Ohio. They read like this:

"I decided to use JUMPSOLES before my freshman year in high school. I arrived on campus as the only freshman who could dunk! I was doing WINDMILL DUNKS with my LEFT HAND--and I'm only 5'8" and 14 years old!!! At the first game, after a SWEET BREAKAWAY DUNK, I heard cheers from the crowd: "That white boy can dunk!" My new nickname is Springy Springmeister!"

I'm not gonna fall for these testimonials of people I've never met. Luckily for me, my cousin's friend Symon said that he used Jumpsoles and they DO work. He said he gained about 6 inches on his vertical leap after 8 weeks. Sounds good to me!

Sweet Coptic Basketball Action is only 143 days away, and I do want to improve this year. Yes, I was second in the league in rebounds last season, but my brother was first, and unfortunately he won't be playing with us this year as he'll be married and living on the East Coast. An increased vertical leap will help my shooting as well as my defense. Who knows...with Jumpsoles and a weight loss program, maybe I can write a testimonial:

"I'm 24 and I play in a church basketball league. I was JUST OKAY last season. After using JUMPSOLES, I can do DOUBLE-PUMP LAYUPS now! I did a sweet WNBA-STYLE LAYUP this season and I heard someone in the crowd say 'HE JUST MADE A LAYUP.' Thanks JUMPSOLES!!!!"