What a crazy month*1.333

Here's a recap of the last 40 days:

Blake and Stacy's wedding weekend - Awesome
Wedding planning and packing - Awesome
Driving from San Jose to Austin - Awesome
Pre-wedding things - Awesome
Rehearsal dinner - Awesome
Our wedding day - Awesome
2-day honeymoon in San Diego - Awesome
Our condo - Awesome
People in the comm studies doctorate program - Awesome
School so far - Awesome
Work so far - Pretty awesome (hey, work can never be awesome)
Coptic group at UT - Awesome
BBQ - Awesome
Heather - Really awesome
Humidity - Eh...

You Got Herbed.

And this is why I hate Arabic television in our house:

Andrew: What are you guys doing for the Fourth of July?
Mom (completely serious): Wait just one second, they're talking about parsley.

K.I.T. Have a Good Summer!

That's "Keep In Touch, Have a Good Summer" if no one's ever signed your junior high yearbook before. Maybe you already knew that, but think about what "Keep in Touch" means. Many people use it as a throwaway line when they know they won't see someone in a while, much like the way we use "Have a Safe Flight" before someone takes a trip.

Regardless of what "Keep in Touch" means to you, there is no doubt that the methods of keeping in touch with a friend have increased dramatically in the last 10 years due to the internet and social networking and cell phones and all that fancy stuff that Al Gore invented. Because of this, I argue that the amount of legitimate excuses for not keeping in touch has run on an asymptotic path during the last decade (non math majors: it's pretty much close to zero now).

I spent some time today with my good friend Kim, and I am sometimes amazed that we have kept in touch as well as we do. After being decent enough friends in high school, Kim and I have seen each other only 5 times in the last 7 years (she lived in Washington and Turkey and I lived in California and Texas), yet we make sure to make semi-regular phone calls to each other, calls that have become as frequent as bi-weekly as our cell phone plans have become a little better. (Here's a photo album from Kim's visit to Davis in 2003.)

The reason Kim was in the area is because she is heading back to Turkey again this week to be closer to her boyfriend, who is in the midst of a PhD program there. Kim and I were talking today in the car about how we can still maintain regular contact without using expensive international cell phone services. Well, even though she is living in the wood age (she has 4 MySpace friends), we came up with a bunch of alternatives, including Skype, instant messaging, e-mail (which we used when she was in Turkey the first time), and messaging on Facebook. I'm trying to get Kim to change to G-mail so we can catch each other on G-chat while checking e-mail once in a while. Pretty simple, right?

Back to "Keep in Touch". I'm looking at my junior high yearbook and literally 75% of girls wrote either "K.I.T." or "Andrew you are weird." I am completely not joking about this. And speaking of junior high, there were pretty much only three widespread, convenient ways to keep in touch in the mid-90s. You could a) call someone on their house phone, b) send them a postal letter or note, or c) talk face-to-face. Remember the days when you would call your friend at their house and say: "Hi is Indupreet home?" and Indupreet's mom would respond: "Sorry, Indupreet is at SAT class, do you have a message for him?"

But of course, Indupreet wouldn't always call me back right after SAT class because sometimes his mom didn't even relay the message. Really, if you wanted to contact Indupreet, or let's say Sandeep or Chittij (I had a lot of Indian friends growing up), the most efficient way was sometimes PHYSICALLY GOING TO THEIR HOME AND TALKING TO THEM. It's a novel idea, I know; once in a while I even got invited inside for some palak paneer and a game of Contra.

And I'm telling you this because: we live in 2007 and there is no excuse for not keeping in touch with people who you want to keep in touch with. There are so many strong options for doing so that you would have to be actively negligent of a relationship to not keep in contact with someone.

And I will say this flat out: if someone does not keep in contact with you, it means they do not want to keep in contact. Period. Dot. Small round subscript punctuation mark. It's too damn easy to communicate now for someone to claim that they have been too busy to reach you. We have cell phones, e-mail, and social networking, and despite how fashionable it is to complain about your cell phone provider, they are all very reliable methods of communication. Most of the time, "I have been too busy" either means "I wasn't that interested in contacting you right now" or "I forgot." I forget a lot, and I'll tell you when I do. But I hope that I have never been too busy to call a good friend back or send a quick e-mail. You know e-mails are free, right?

So today I salute people like Kim who still keep in touch because she obviously thinks that I am a person worth keeping in touch with, and that's worth at least a salute in this widely-read blog that has a readership of 11 people in over 2 countries. So keep in touch and have a good summer, hope we don't get Mr. Lattuada for math next year, peace sign, happy face, home phone number, Andrew.

Or Just Say You Gotta Blast a Dookie

I'd like to think I'm a pretty helpful person, and I hope that we can all benefit from my personal experiences from time to time. Take last Thursday for example: I had back-to-back meetings at work, but I had to use the restroom as the first meeting was wrapping up. How would one appropriately excuse him or herself in a situation like this? Easy, really. Just fill in this sentence:

I have to _______ before the next meeting.

Your choices are:

• create some worklogs
• streamline the back-end
• synergize channel flow
  
• check on my deliverables
• get the numbers out (numbers 1 and 2 at least)
• optimize legacy portals
• recontextualize integrated content
  
• visit corpoorate

You're welcome.

Extreme Normalcy, Brah!

Hey, what's the best way to make people think you're interesting? Maybe do interesting things? Have something interesting to say? Use the word "interesting" when describing yourself? What if you use "interesting" in five straight questions?

No, I have a better idea: tell everyone how extreme your everyday situations are. Next time you get less than 8 hours of sleep, let me know about it; it's so interesting, right? Or when you sit in traffic on the way to my house, tell me how crazy traffic was. Was it the craziest traffic ever!? Really!? Exciting! Extreme Sitting in Traffic! SITLMAO!

Hey remember in college when you studied soooo much for that test? You couldn't even take a break to eat lunch! Because you were studying so much! Make sure to tell that story next time we get together so that we will all be aware of how unique you are. I never studied, not even for a second! And I totally baced that test (it's like acing a test but getting a B)! Look at the both of us: we both totally beat the system in our own unique way.

But wait. What if, say, you eat so much--but you're so skinny!--that you were about to burst at the seams, like that dude in the old Kirby GameBoy commercial? What if it's just not enough to tell me that you "ate a lot of food"?

Use the phrase "you don't understand." As in, "No, you don't understand, I eat so much, it's ridiculous. You Don't Understand, Andrew."

You're right. I don't understand--I cannot comprehend the idea of eating a lot, as I am not like you, but rather a casing of organic material wrapped around a hyperalloy endoskeleton, sent from the future to protect a rebellious child and his mother. I have so many questions. Why do you cry?

(On a side note, I'm noticing that it's only small guys, really small girls, and big guys who talk about how much they eat. I've never met a girl on the thicker side who boasts about her eating abilities. Except me.)

My friend Taryn tells me about her friend who exaggerates everything so negatively that she doesn't value any of his complaints anymore. It's like the boy who cried wolf, but in this case the wolf is how you much you just paid for gas and no one really cares.

But seriously, I just paid like 60 bucks for gas. No, seriously. Forget it, you don't understand.

Allergies: Still Not as Bad as Killer Bees

Isn’t there some old adage that says you can always talk about the weather? Think back to the last time you were seated on an airplane next to someone you’ve never met. Really think about it. Assuming they are not holding a framed lithograph of BBMak, you can only be sure that you have two things in common: you’re both flying to New Jersey, and you both live on planet Earth. And because you both live on planet Earth, something else you have in common is that you are both experiencing the current weather.

That’s why you can always talk about much it’s raining or how hot it is. It’s pretty much the only thing you can talk to anyone about at anytime. You can even talk about it at a funeral, and it would be considered polite conversation—unless of course you said something like: “Hey how ‘bout this heat? It’s making Jeff’s rotten corpse smell terrible.”

Most of the time, though, it’s a safe area of conversation. Maybe a little boring to most people, but safe nonetheless.

So yes, it’s been hot around these parts the last few days. It was around 90 yesterday in Cupertino AND in the Sunset District. And apparently, very dry heat and the surrounding grassy hills join forces to administer the repeated slaps to the face collectively known as severe allergy symptoms. They are not going away any time soon either, so go to Target and get your generic loratidine as soon as you can.


SLAP. (I sneezed.)

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.

I just visited Austin

...and Mom had a question for me:

Mom: "What's the difference between grad students who are single and the ones who are married?"

My answer: "They procreate?"

The Sun's Corona is the Limit

I really wonder how astronauts attempt to instill an attitude of aspiration in their children. They can't say "The Sky's the Limit" because they've actually gone beyond what the sky is generally defined as, which is the atmosphere and outer space of Earth. They probably wouldn't say "Shoot for the Moon and You'll Land Among the Stars" or some garbage like that since they have first hand knowledge that if you shoot for the Moon and miss you're likely headed for the asteroid belt or the vacuum of space.

You know what I think astronauts tell their children? "Pluto's no longer a planet because it's small and no one cares about small stuff."

Astronauts can be snippy.

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."

Define Godbrother

While talking about weddings with Kugali, I found out that "godbrother" is technically not a word in any dictionary, at least according to my cursory research. How am I supposed to refer to Mike G, since he is distantly related but I consider him more than a distant relative?

Godbrother (noun) - son of one's godparents

Since Mike's parents are my godparents, he is now my godbrother. Godday to you sir.

Have a Safe Trip, as if You Were Planning to Have Any Other Kind!

I used to get annoyed when my parents would tell me to "drive safely!" as I left to go back to Davis after a weekend at home.

Really? Drive safely? Because my plan was to ram a few cars off the road and then play chicken as I crossed the Benicia Bridge.

Well, you know how as you get older, you notice more of your parents' traits in yourself? Lately, I can't help but tell my fiance Heather to drive safely every single time she gets in her car. Why do I do it? She's a conservative driver who has never been in an accident, yet I remind her every single time. I wonder if it's just one of those things that people say because "See ya!" can get boring.

You know, my friend Justin used to tell me "Take care" every time we separated, and I really felt like he meant it. But I think with most people, those compassionate directives (?) can become so ingratiated in our minds that they no longer mean much other then "bye!" or "later." When was the last time someone told you to "Have a safe trip!" right before you got on a plane?

Right! I'll make sure to relay that message to the pilot!

But the fact remains that rational, logical people still tell their loved ones to be safe. My theory is that we say it more to appease ourselves than anything else. When I tell Heather to drive safely, it's probably because I want to make sure that I have done everything in my power to ensure that she arrives safely. I want to be certain that I at least say something so I don't feel useless.

Dad's approach to the compassionate directive is a little different. He checks my tires, asks if I have cash in my wallet, and usually asks something else that is somewhat out of the blue: "When was the last time you checked your wiper fluid level?" "Is your spare tire full of air?" "Have you ever tested your air bag?" I swear, I get the spare tire question about once a month. You know what though, my spare tire IS always full of air, and I know that.

So we say "drive safely" because we have to do something. If we don't, and something bad does happen, then we may feel even worse than we already would have given the circumstances. And I think it does help to know that people care about you; personally, I do think I drive more conservatively sometimes because I an reminded that there are people who would be very let down if I were to be at fault in an injury accident.

So keep saying "drive safely" and "take care" and "have a safe trip." And I will make sure not to use my iPod during takeoff and landing.



Comedian Brian Regan has a funny bit about responding to a cabbie saying "Have a safe trip!" with "You too!" and then feeling like an idiot. I couldn't find that clip, but here's Brian Regan about eye exams.