So I mentioned in the last post that Samil got a new phone. I've also mentioned Samil's troubles with his borrowed Palm Pre here and here. Well, he is now the proud owner of the Sprint's most popular Google phone, or so people told him it was. Last weekend when he came home he couldn't get it activated online. Monday night he attempted again...
Samil plunked himself down on our comfy chair ready to set his phone up using mine while I played Modern Warfare 2. After fighting with the Internet set up for a while, he started yelling at his laptop and then called Sprint. He was put on hold for an excruciating (to me) five minutes. After the customer service rep got all of his information, she took a look at his phone details and said "your phone should be activated."
"Really?"
"Yes, it should be working."
"But..." ::his phone rings:: "oh."
Then Samil picked up his phone and started talking to the person who called him while the rep just sat on the line probably wondering what the fuck was going on. He then awkwardly told her thank you and hung up on her. She did tell him one important piece of advice before he hung up, which was to turn off his old phone for 24 hours so there wouldn't be any confusion in the network as to which phone was really Samil's.
When I finished up with my games, I made my way to my room, and I could hear him loudly exclaiming the joys of his new phone. "Oh man, they have a COMEDY App!?!?!?!!" Now, I am very comfortable admitting my addiction to my crackberry because I didn't get a fancy phone to have one, but for all the bells and whistles that make my life easier. Clearly, Samil did not get his smart phone for the newfangled productivity tools bundled with it, such as the To Do List, and the Calendar. We're different people, and honestly, I'm not sure if a calendar would help much. There is such a thing as lost causes.
The next morning I woke up to some little Mozart ditty playing from his bedroom. For 20 minutes. It was probably playing longer than that, but it woke me up just before my alarm, and continued playing through two of my snoozes, so it was at least twenty minutes. Samil was in the shower for part of this, and in the kitchen for the other part. So where could that little Mozart ditty be coming from? My bet was on him not being able to turn off his new alarm, but boy was I wrong.
I walk into the kitchen to make my tea, and found Samil playing with his new phone on the counter, about an inch away from a solid still wet quarter sized spill of blueberry smoothie.
"Your Blackberry - does the alarm go off even when the phone is off?"
"Yes."
"Oh. I didn't know phones did that." (my coworker said his phones been doing that since high school, just thought you should know.)
"Oh."
"Yeah... so my um, my old alarm was going off for a little bit, and I thought I was just hearing it in my head because like, it would always go off in the morning. But it turned out, I guess, that um, it was going off because the phone turned on. That's so weird."
In... his head. He thought he was hearing his alarm in his head. After hearing that, I wish he simply couldn't turn off the alarm on his new phone. Also, its just further proof that smart phones are not named because they make the holder smarter.
Friday, December 18, 2009
Sunday, December 13, 2009
Except for the frozen yogurt...
Samil just got home. His Grandmothers cousin died on Thursday so he went down to DC to be with family. He immediately went to the kitchen, made a bowl of cereal and walked into my room. Parenthetical thoughts are, of course, the ones going through my head.
"Hey, I just got in. Look, I got my phone. I couldn't activate it. Sprint was busy."
"Oh. Hi."
"How are you? Weekend good?"
"Quiet."
"Mine was Awesome. Except for the frozen yogurt. We went to this swanky yogurt place, a chain. It was bad. No bueno."
"Oh." (Awesome weekend consoling family over loss of an elder... except for that yogurt!)
"Yeah - I think I'm going to go to sleep in like an hour and a half, maybe. Oh man, early night."
"Okay." (that would make it 9:30, which is a little early, I guess.)
"Yeah, I'm just gonna eat this and head to bed."
(Wait, what? Its going to take you 90 minutes to eat that?)
"Hey, I just got in. Look, I got my phone. I couldn't activate it. Sprint was busy."
"Oh. Hi."
"How are you? Weekend good?"
"Quiet."
"Mine was Awesome. Except for the frozen yogurt. We went to this swanky yogurt place, a chain. It was bad. No bueno."
"Oh." (Awesome weekend consoling family over loss of an elder... except for that yogurt!)
"Yeah - I think I'm going to go to sleep in like an hour and a half, maybe. Oh man, early night."
"Okay." (that would make it 9:30, which is a little early, I guess.)
"Yeah, I'm just gonna eat this and head to bed."
(Wait, what? Its going to take you 90 minutes to eat that?)
Friday, December 11, 2009
OoooooKkkkkkk
So today Samil told me he was thinking about starting to use HGH, otherwise known as Human Growth Hormone, otherwise known as the stuff baseball players use to get an illegal but undetectable edge on their opponents.
Why?
He's tired. And the first people to test HGH were doctors (um... no shit). My, I feel slightly more logical, solution was to go to sleep earlier. But! He did go to sleep early last night. He went to bed a good hour before me, even.
Or not. Instead he was perfecting an email to send to a girl on OK Cupid. For an hour and a half. Or two girls. So instead he went to sleep a bit later than me. He was also calling people for advice on these emails - girls, of course (he felt the need to tell me, thus I feel obligated to tell you.) I'm glad I'm not a girl, because then he would have woken me up to ask me questions like "should I say that I'm a teacher or should I not? I mean, I want her to be intellectually curious, but maybe I should wait to talk to her about her favorite movies. Should I tell her I'm a revolutionary? Is this too long? I don't want to bore her."
Clearly, the solution to his problem is HGH.
Why?
He's tired. And the first people to test HGH were doctors (um... no shit). My, I feel slightly more logical, solution was to go to sleep earlier. But! He did go to sleep early last night. He went to bed a good hour before me, even.
Or not. Instead he was perfecting an email to send to a girl on OK Cupid. For an hour and a half. Or two girls. So instead he went to sleep a bit later than me. He was also calling people for advice on these emails - girls, of course (he felt the need to tell me, thus I feel obligated to tell you.) I'm glad I'm not a girl, because then he would have woken me up to ask me questions like "should I say that I'm a teacher or should I not? I mean, I want her to be intellectually curious, but maybe I should wait to talk to her about her favorite movies. Should I tell her I'm a revolutionary? Is this too long? I don't want to bore her."
Clearly, the solution to his problem is HGH.
Tuesday, December 8, 2009
Random things...
1) Samil just walked into my room with the, and I quote, craziest thing ever. What is that craziest thing? His keys fell into the lining of his jacket. BUT HE COULDN'T FIND THE HOLE IN HIS POCKET. Eventually he did. Post finding hole in pocket, it is still the craziest thing ever.
2) Samil told me it was okay for MLK to cheat on his wife. Just thought you should know. Guys have needs, after all.
3) We've had an on and off battle with heating the house since early October. Its not that big of a deal, but I don't want to spend money burning gas when I can just put on a sweatshirt. I know - I'm crazy. Samil had been complaining a lot about how cold he was at night and kept turning the heat up because he was freezing. At first, I mentioned to him that maybe the heat wasn't on in his room, because I woke up every morning extremely toasty. About three weeks ago he even moved his bedding (he doesn't own a bed) into the office to stay warm. A week later he called our landlord demanding she put up storm windows. She politely told him that these windows didn't need storm windows since they were brand new, but that it didn't make sense he was cold. So she came over, and told him the heating vents in his room were closed. She opened them. For the last two weeks he has still been sleeping in the office despite this.
4) I know #3 was longer than all the others, making the list very unbalanced. Shush.
5) With any luck, I'll be able to tell you about Samil's upcoming date with someone he met on OK Cupid soon!
6) I need to get more guest parking passes because we want to have parties at our house. Except... you only need a parking pass M-F from 8-5. Samil is aware of this. Suddenly, I think we have different definitions of what a party is.
2) Samil told me it was okay for MLK to cheat on his wife. Just thought you should know. Guys have needs, after all.
3) We've had an on and off battle with heating the house since early October. Its not that big of a deal, but I don't want to spend money burning gas when I can just put on a sweatshirt. I know - I'm crazy. Samil had been complaining a lot about how cold he was at night and kept turning the heat up because he was freezing. At first, I mentioned to him that maybe the heat wasn't on in his room, because I woke up every morning extremely toasty. About three weeks ago he even moved his bedding (he doesn't own a bed) into the office to stay warm. A week later he called our landlord demanding she put up storm windows. She politely told him that these windows didn't need storm windows since they were brand new, but that it didn't make sense he was cold. So she came over, and told him the heating vents in his room were closed. She opened them. For the last two weeks he has still been sleeping in the office despite this.
4) I know #3 was longer than all the others, making the list very unbalanced. Shush.
5) With any luck, I'll be able to tell you about Samil's upcoming date with someone he met on OK Cupid soon!
6) I need to get more guest parking passes because we want to have parties at our house. Except... you only need a parking pass M-F from 8-5. Samil is aware of this. Suddenly, I think we have different definitions of what a party is.
Sunday, December 6, 2009
Go Big Red
Last weekend I was hanging out with one of my friends, K, where a classic Samil situation ensued...
She and I went out to dinner and on the way into the restaurant he gave me a call, and I had no idea why he called after the 4:07 conversation. No clue. He asked me a couple of questions about where I was, what I was up to, and when I'd be home. These questions should not require 4 minutes and 7 seconds to ask, but somehow he stretched it out (the trait of a great teacher).
Then we stopped at the new apartment because its awesome and great. I walk into the kitchen, where Samil was cooking, to introduce K and Samil. Samil was wearing an undershirt and boxers.
Of course, this would be somewhat excusable if he didn't know when I'd be home or what I was up to, but as I mentioned, he gathered this information from me in a four minute and seven second time span not more than two hours earlier. He proceed to put pants on in the most direct fashion he knows how, which is wandering around the apartment looking for where he left them when he took them off.
So we sit down and chat while Samil eats dinner. Samil learned that K went to Ithaca college. K learned that Samil doesn't know that Cornell and Ithaca are two different schools. I counted after the second time he brought up Cornell, and the grand total was 6 references to Cornell, 3 of them after K corrected him about the differences between the two schools.
As K was leaving, somehow we got on the topic of Twilight. I mentioned that this video was pretty much the extent of my knowledge of Twilight's plot, but that the video really did show how creepily predatory Edward was, and how its not totally cool that preteen girls were internalizing their understanding of gender roles from these books/movies. In other words, middle school girls shouldn't think its appropriate for guys to say they want to kidnap them and violently attack them.
Samil disagreed. Apparently people don't get any cues from the books they read. This, I tell you, is a great argument to make if you're an English teacher. K and I respectfully disagreed with Samil, and K walked down the stairs to avoid anymore Twilight conversation, which I couldn't blame her for.
The Cornell comments really, are pretty insignificant mistakes, and when all is said and done, the Twilight conversation is mot terribly important. What I think K really took from the conversation was that Samil asks some really odd questions to people. Like when he addressed the following question in the direction of K:
"Do you know if guys go to strip clubs for bachelor parties anymore?"
This came after I told them about getting stuck driving home from work by a truck blocking the road holding a brand new awning for a strip club (which was a really bizarre situation, I thought). Unfortunately for Samil, K did not know the answer.
She and I went out to dinner and on the way into the restaurant he gave me a call, and I had no idea why he called after the 4:07 conversation. No clue. He asked me a couple of questions about where I was, what I was up to, and when I'd be home. These questions should not require 4 minutes and 7 seconds to ask, but somehow he stretched it out (the trait of a great teacher).
Then we stopped at the new apartment because its awesome and great. I walk into the kitchen, where Samil was cooking, to introduce K and Samil. Samil was wearing an undershirt and boxers.
Of course, this would be somewhat excusable if he didn't know when I'd be home or what I was up to, but as I mentioned, he gathered this information from me in a four minute and seven second time span not more than two hours earlier. He proceed to put pants on in the most direct fashion he knows how, which is wandering around the apartment looking for where he left them when he took them off.
So we sit down and chat while Samil eats dinner. Samil learned that K went to Ithaca college. K learned that Samil doesn't know that Cornell and Ithaca are two different schools. I counted after the second time he brought up Cornell, and the grand total was 6 references to Cornell, 3 of them after K corrected him about the differences between the two schools.
As K was leaving, somehow we got on the topic of Twilight. I mentioned that this video was pretty much the extent of my knowledge of Twilight's plot, but that the video really did show how creepily predatory Edward was, and how its not totally cool that preteen girls were internalizing their understanding of gender roles from these books/movies. In other words, middle school girls shouldn't think its appropriate for guys to say they want to kidnap them and violently attack them.
Samil disagreed. Apparently people don't get any cues from the books they read. This, I tell you, is a great argument to make if you're an English teacher. K and I respectfully disagreed with Samil, and K walked down the stairs to avoid anymore Twilight conversation, which I couldn't blame her for.
The Cornell comments really, are pretty insignificant mistakes, and when all is said and done, the Twilight conversation is mot terribly important. What I think K really took from the conversation was that Samil asks some really odd questions to people. Like when he addressed the following question in the direction of K:
"Do you know if guys go to strip clubs for bachelor parties anymore?"
This came after I told them about getting stuck driving home from work by a truck blocking the road holding a brand new awning for a strip club (which was a really bizarre situation, I thought). Unfortunately for Samil, K did not know the answer.
Friday, December 4, 2009
I'm not a doctor, but...
If I had hives all over my body, I think I would wait less than a month to check with the doctor.
Also, I don't need to see them to believe they exist. Just sayin'
I got home today after a long day... week... of work to get a long continuous ramble from Samil while I was unpacking my bags and changing my clothes. I'll summarize:
Samil went to the doctor today, where they discussed medical options to curb his anxiety. They also almost got Samil a referral to see a dermatologist about the hives he's had all over his body since the beginning of October and medicine to cover his digestion problems (see: Hemp Protein). The hives are in fact, real, I think. He showed them to me while he was in the unlit hallway, so I couldn't really see anything. No, I have not been getting hives, so its probably not the apartment. 30 Rock is a great television show. Also, he's really concerned about mixing anxiety drugs with his self medicating option of marijuana, so he's not going to take anything until he runs it by his therapist, who he says would have experience with that situation (I think he meant knowledge of drug interaction, but I'm not sure.) . Also, if he does get drugs for his anxiety, he intends to take it between his classes at work.
That's about it, which, I have to say was no where near amusing as this morning when he knocked on my door really subtley and slowly walked in asking if I had a minute.
He was worried that the water he put in his water bottle might not be safe to drink. He heard someone talk about water contamination recently and was concerned that the faucet water from the morning before might be dangerous. The water had been sitting in there all day, you know, and maybe it would kill him if he drank it. I guaranteed him that it would not kill him, which, not being a doctor, I probably should not have, but I did anyway. Maybe he's just paranoid, but he definitely didn't think that if he just emptied out the bottle and refilled it, he would have saved himself a solid minute of time, and I would have saved a few brain cells.
Also, I don't need to see them to believe they exist. Just sayin'
I got home today after a long day... week... of work to get a long continuous ramble from Samil while I was unpacking my bags and changing my clothes. I'll summarize:
Samil went to the doctor today, where they discussed medical options to curb his anxiety. They also almost got Samil a referral to see a dermatologist about the hives he's had all over his body since the beginning of October and medicine to cover his digestion problems (see: Hemp Protein). The hives are in fact, real, I think. He showed them to me while he was in the unlit hallway, so I couldn't really see anything. No, I have not been getting hives, so its probably not the apartment. 30 Rock is a great television show. Also, he's really concerned about mixing anxiety drugs with his self medicating option of marijuana, so he's not going to take anything until he runs it by his therapist, who he says would have experience with that situation (I think he meant knowledge of drug interaction, but I'm not sure.) . Also, if he does get drugs for his anxiety, he intends to take it between his classes at work.
That's about it, which, I have to say was no where near amusing as this morning when he knocked on my door really subtley and slowly walked in asking if I had a minute.
He was worried that the water he put in his water bottle might not be safe to drink. He heard someone talk about water contamination recently and was concerned that the faucet water from the morning before might be dangerous. The water had been sitting in there all day, you know, and maybe it would kill him if he drank it. I guaranteed him that it would not kill him, which, not being a doctor, I probably should not have, but I did anyway. Maybe he's just paranoid, but he definitely didn't think that if he just emptied out the bottle and refilled it, he would have saved himself a solid minute of time, and I would have saved a few brain cells.
Thursday, November 26, 2009
UPDATE: Social Skills
I came home tonight, and golly gee, Samil was still home. But it appeared like he was about to leave, since his stuff was thrown all over the living room. As you know, the first step in packing for Thanksgiving is tossing all of your stuff around the living room.
Also, he was walking around the house yelling "What the fuck, man! Aaaarrgh! How does this happen?!"
"Hi Samil."
"I lost my phone - twice in two days." (I knew that, since I had to call his phone a few times yesterday).
"That sucks."
"This time its for real. I've been looking for it for two hours. Wait... one hour. I took a nap and woke up and I couldn't find it. Its going to straight to voice mail. How does this happen to me?"
I did not offer my best guess on why these things happen to him. Instead, we talked about his predicament. You see, he needs his phone on Monday to meet with an English Professor. (FYI, its still Wednesday). So what to do? Well, he could a) Beg someone to give them a phone and try to find a Verizon store open on Thanksgiving to activate it, b) Look for the phone some more or c) just fall asleep mid conversation.
(Yeah.... it was c)
Also, he was walking around the house yelling "What the fuck, man! Aaaarrgh! How does this happen?!"
"Hi Samil."
"I lost my phone - twice in two days." (I knew that, since I had to call his phone a few times yesterday).
"That sucks."
"This time its for real. I've been looking for it for two hours. Wait... one hour. I took a nap and woke up and I couldn't find it. Its going to straight to voice mail. How does this happen to me?"
I did not offer my best guess on why these things happen to him. Instead, we talked about his predicament. You see, he needs his phone on Monday to meet with an English Professor. (FYI, its still Wednesday). So what to do? Well, he could a) Beg someone to give them a phone and try to find a Verizon store open on Thanksgiving to activate it, b) Look for the phone some more or c) just fall asleep mid conversation.
(Yeah.... it was c)
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
Social Skills
It's been quiet lately. I think for the most part I've become desensitized to Samil's idiosyncrasies. We've also been not around at the same times a lot, so its a smaller sample size per day of things that would be mentionable here. That said...
This morning I didn't see Samil until right before I was out the door. The following exchange took place:
Me: "Hey, are you going to be home tonight?"
Samil: "Um, yeah, I'm going to my aunt's for Thanksgiving."
Me: "All right, I'll see you late when I get in... 10ish"
Samil: "No."
Me: "Huh?"
Samil: "I'll be at my aunt's."
Me: "Right."
Samil: "I'm heading there tonight."
Me: "Oh, okay. Well, have a good Thanksgiving."
Samil: "Okay. Yeah, you too."
I open up the door to leave and take one step out...
Samil: "Oh! By the way."
I stop and look wondering what on earth could have just crossed his mind.
Samil: "Oh, um. I. Oh, yeah. I just got this hemp protein and I had it today in my smoothie. As soon as it hit my stomach I could feel it working on my digestion."
Me: "That's...good"
Samil: "Yeah." (Self congratulatory look) "I'm really happy with this stuff. It's AWESOME."
Me: "Um. Bye, Samil."
Samil: "Bye!"
This evening, I was on gmail at my laptop at Starbucks. I sign on and a few minutes later, Samil starts up a gchat. "Yo dude." So I respond. No joke... 20 minutes later he gets back to me. "I meant to talk to someone else." Oh, okay.
Last weekend he went to an English Teacher's Conference and told me that he thought most of the early seminars he went to were really dull, useless, and a waste of time, and he wished he noticed that people were walking out of them freely. Because I dunno, a guy who has been teaching for a year and freely admits he has no idea what he's doing should be bored by the ideas presented at the nation's top conference on teaching English. Those people clearly didn't know what they were talking about. That said, he found it really important to tell me, as he was walking out of my room, that he met this really cool guy who wanted to change the name of English class to something else. "oh?" He wants to call it Personal Studies. Now THAT'S valuable for his professional development.
There's something really unique about Samil that makes me just have no response so often. I don't know how he's developed this ability to just throw out topics that are totally absolutely uninteresting to me, not even a little bit. It has to be a combination not just what he talks about, but how he presents it. You have to wonder how some people function in this world when they spend so much time having awkward relations with the people around them. I hope that my students become much better socially adjusted, which I'm not really concerned about at all, since nearly all of them can make it through a conversation with me without me raising either of my eye brows or forcing me to pick my jaw off the floor. And this is in middle school, which well, as you should all know, is an awkwardness cesspool.
When he had his report card night last week, he told me about one mother who found out her daughter was doing very poorly in Samil's class. The mother had, what I think was a look of anger on his face, but when Samil demonstrated it, it just looked sorta blank. Samil ended the telling of this story by saying "I don't know if I should have been happy that her daughter was in trouble or" he paused, I looked at him for a second, and then he started talking about tomato sauce.
This morning I didn't see Samil until right before I was out the door. The following exchange took place:
Me: "Hey, are you going to be home tonight?"
Samil: "Um, yeah, I'm going to my aunt's for Thanksgiving."
Me: "All right, I'll see you late when I get in... 10ish"
Samil: "No."
Me: "Huh?"
Samil: "I'll be at my aunt's."
Me: "Right."
Samil: "I'm heading there tonight."
Me: "Oh, okay. Well, have a good Thanksgiving."
Samil: "Okay. Yeah, you too."
I open up the door to leave and take one step out...
Samil: "Oh! By the way."
I stop and look wondering what on earth could have just crossed his mind.
Samil: "Oh, um. I. Oh, yeah. I just got this hemp protein and I had it today in my smoothie. As soon as it hit my stomach I could feel it working on my digestion."
Me: "That's...good"
Samil: "Yeah." (Self congratulatory look) "I'm really happy with this stuff. It's AWESOME."
Me: "Um. Bye, Samil."
Samil: "Bye!"
This evening, I was on gmail at my laptop at Starbucks. I sign on and a few minutes later, Samil starts up a gchat. "Yo dude." So I respond. No joke... 20 minutes later he gets back to me. "I meant to talk to someone else." Oh, okay.
Last weekend he went to an English Teacher's Conference and told me that he thought most of the early seminars he went to were really dull, useless, and a waste of time, and he wished he noticed that people were walking out of them freely. Because I dunno, a guy who has been teaching for a year and freely admits he has no idea what he's doing should be bored by the ideas presented at the nation's top conference on teaching English. Those people clearly didn't know what they were talking about. That said, he found it really important to tell me, as he was walking out of my room, that he met this really cool guy who wanted to change the name of English class to something else. "oh?" He wants to call it Personal Studies. Now THAT'S valuable for his professional development.
There's something really unique about Samil that makes me just have no response so often. I don't know how he's developed this ability to just throw out topics that are totally absolutely uninteresting to me, not even a little bit. It has to be a combination not just what he talks about, but how he presents it. You have to wonder how some people function in this world when they spend so much time having awkward relations with the people around them. I hope that my students become much better socially adjusted, which I'm not really concerned about at all, since nearly all of them can make it through a conversation with me without me raising either of my eye brows or forcing me to pick my jaw off the floor. And this is in middle school, which well, as you should all know, is an awkwardness cesspool.
When he had his report card night last week, he told me about one mother who found out her daughter was doing very poorly in Samil's class. The mother had, what I think was a look of anger on his face, but when Samil demonstrated it, it just looked sorta blank. Samil ended the telling of this story by saying "I don't know if I should have been happy that her daughter was in trouble or" he paused, I looked at him for a second, and then he started talking about tomato sauce.
Friday, November 6, 2009
Smart Phones Reviewed
I mentioned in an earlier post that Smart Phones are not named that because they make you smarter, but because it requires some intelligence to operate them.
This has been painfully clear to me on a regular basis in the last week or so, mostly because Samil has one of these phones.
To review: Samil this summer decided he REALLY wanted Pandora Radio on his phone. He wanted this at the expense of being able to accept text messages and add entries into his contact book. I sold him an extra memory card I had, which I hoped would resolve this situation, but he didn't put it into his phone for a number of weeks. This made his phone situation difficult while we were attempting to find an apartment, but also came into play when we were trying to get our Internet set up. Ultimately, Samil was hesitant to spend the 2 minutes it would take to do that because he's technically borrowing this Blackberry Pearl and will be moving to the Palm Pre, something he is very excited about.
Last week I got two calls during one class while I was teaching. After the class I saw it was Samil and got concerned. Something has to be up if he's going to call me twice in short succession while at work, right? So I call and leave a message saying when I'd be free to talk.
After lunch he calls again and I miss it since it was during class, so now I'm really wondering what is up because he called when I told him I wasn't free. This time, though he leaves a message. I play the message on speaker phone with my colleague. It was a very nervous plea of background classroom noises and lots of noises sounding similar to say... a phone rubbing up against a pant leg.
After school is over, I get a call from Samil "hey, what's up? You called earlier." I explain to him that he'd been calling me throughout the day and he found the whole situation to be amusing. One thing most Smart Phones have in common is the keyboard that requires a key lock on so that you don't pocket dial anyone. I told him about that, to which he said "Oh, yeah I forget about that sometimes."
This weekend I found out my Grandmother died. As I was packing up to leave, I realized that Samil still had not finished setting up the kitchen. No, that's not true. I knew he hadn't done it. I realized it was November all of a sudden and Samil had still not finished setting up the kitchen, and wasn't going to be home all weekend. So I called him to tell him he needed to do it. He responded with "well, it was a bigger task than what you did, and I've been really busy, and I've been wiping up in there, and that takes time." 1) It wasn't a bigger task (see previously linked post), and I also did everything in a week, he had a month. 2) I've been working 80 hours a week. How busy are you again? 3) Wiping up the kitchen after you cook is not special... its what you do after you cook. I do the same thing when I cook.
The next night I was at my Grandmother's wake. I get a phone call from Samil that I don't get a chance to pick up. Then I get another call. I excuse myself and call him back, but he didn't pick up. Then he calls again when I can't answer, so I quickly text him, "If you need anything, text me, I cna't pick up the phone while at the wake." Two minutes later, another call, which I was able to pick up because I wasn't talking to anyone at that moment, only to discover I was being pocket dialed again. The worst part... he never got the text message I sent because his phone's memory was full.
This has been painfully clear to me on a regular basis in the last week or so, mostly because Samil has one of these phones.
To review: Samil this summer decided he REALLY wanted Pandora Radio on his phone. He wanted this at the expense of being able to accept text messages and add entries into his contact book. I sold him an extra memory card I had, which I hoped would resolve this situation, but he didn't put it into his phone for a number of weeks. This made his phone situation difficult while we were attempting to find an apartment, but also came into play when we were trying to get our Internet set up. Ultimately, Samil was hesitant to spend the 2 minutes it would take to do that because he's technically borrowing this Blackberry Pearl and will be moving to the Palm Pre, something he is very excited about.
Last week I got two calls during one class while I was teaching. After the class I saw it was Samil and got concerned. Something has to be up if he's going to call me twice in short succession while at work, right? So I call and leave a message saying when I'd be free to talk.
After lunch he calls again and I miss it since it was during class, so now I'm really wondering what is up because he called when I told him I wasn't free. This time, though he leaves a message. I play the message on speaker phone with my colleague. It was a very nervous plea of background classroom noises and lots of noises sounding similar to say... a phone rubbing up against a pant leg.
After school is over, I get a call from Samil "hey, what's up? You called earlier." I explain to him that he'd been calling me throughout the day and he found the whole situation to be amusing. One thing most Smart Phones have in common is the keyboard that requires a key lock on so that you don't pocket dial anyone. I told him about that, to which he said "Oh, yeah I forget about that sometimes."
This weekend I found out my Grandmother died. As I was packing up to leave, I realized that Samil still had not finished setting up the kitchen. No, that's not true. I knew he hadn't done it. I realized it was November all of a sudden and Samil had still not finished setting up the kitchen, and wasn't going to be home all weekend. So I called him to tell him he needed to do it. He responded with "well, it was a bigger task than what you did, and I've been really busy, and I've been wiping up in there, and that takes time." 1) It wasn't a bigger task (see previously linked post), and I also did everything in a week, he had a month. 2) I've been working 80 hours a week. How busy are you again? 3) Wiping up the kitchen after you cook is not special... its what you do after you cook. I do the same thing when I cook.
The next night I was at my Grandmother's wake. I get a phone call from Samil that I don't get a chance to pick up. Then I get another call. I excuse myself and call him back, but he didn't pick up. Then he calls again when I can't answer, so I quickly text him, "If you need anything, text me, I cna't pick up the phone while at the wake." Two minutes later, another call, which I was able to pick up because I wasn't talking to anyone at that moment, only to discover I was being pocket dialed again. The worst part... he never got the text message I sent because his phone's memory was full.
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
Cooking with Samil!
I'm going to share with you what is carefully guarded family recipe: Samil's Brownie Recipe. Here are the ingredients:
The cooks among you might be wondering what the hell is wrong, but, the answer is really elementary- Samil takes one serving size of all the ingredients necessary for brownies and puts them in a bowl. I mean... duh, right? (fyi, this is not his brownie recipe. I only chose brownies because that was the most immediate ludicrous cooking example I could think of to make my point...)
Last week Samil asked me how to use my blender for a smoothie. He was very concerned about screwing things up, and was very worried that his smoothie would not turn out right if he used the Mix setting instead of the potentially more appropriate Stir setting. I calmed him down by saying "just throw everything in and hit a button. they all work just fine for smoothies."
Only its not so simple! I come out to the kitchen about ten minutes later and discover massive amounts of pain and misery. The smoothie did not go well. It went so bad, he had to put WATER in it after mixing everything up. You see, to make the perfect smoothie, he decided to put one serving size of everything into it for maximum enjoyability. The flaw in this is that when you have essentially 3x the solid stuff to liquid stuff, your smoothie won't be so, er, smooth.
I think as time goes on, Samil will master the art of good smoothies. Until then, I'm hoping he avoids attempting to master the complicated art of that quesadilla making.
- 1 ounce square of unsweetened chocolate
- 1 tablespoon butter
- 1 egg
- 1 tsp sugar
- 1 tablespoon vanilla
- 1/4 cup Flour
- 1/4 teaspoon Salt
- 1 cup chopped
The cooks among you might be wondering what the hell is wrong, but, the answer is really elementary- Samil takes one serving size of all the ingredients necessary for brownies and puts them in a bowl. I mean... duh, right? (fyi, this is not his brownie recipe. I only chose brownies because that was the most immediate ludicrous cooking example I could think of to make my point...)
Last week Samil asked me how to use my blender for a smoothie. He was very concerned about screwing things up, and was very worried that his smoothie would not turn out right if he used the Mix setting instead of the potentially more appropriate Stir setting. I calmed him down by saying "just throw everything in and hit a button. they all work just fine for smoothies."
Only its not so simple! I come out to the kitchen about ten minutes later and discover massive amounts of pain and misery. The smoothie did not go well. It went so bad, he had to put WATER in it after mixing everything up. You see, to make the perfect smoothie, he decided to put one serving size of everything into it for maximum enjoyability. The flaw in this is that when you have essentially 3x the solid stuff to liquid stuff, your smoothie won't be so, er, smooth.
I think as time goes on, Samil will master the art of good smoothies. Until then, I'm hoping he avoids attempting to master the complicated art of that quesadilla making.
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
Fire roasted
I wish there was a larger context to this, and maybe there will be in the next few days and I'm jumping the gun, but its just too funny for me to not post right away.
I walked into the living room about five minutes ago with Samil enjoying a nice bowl of tortilla chips and salsa. I was bringing some stuff to the sink to clean - accumulated tea cups and my breakfast dish from this morning. Samil started telling me how disappointed he was with his salsa. I respond with a generic grunt, and he continues on. "I really wish I had bought some fire roasted salsa. Have you ever heard of fire roasted salsa?"
I confirm that I have, in fact, heard of fire roasted salsa to him, and then I notice the salsa on the counter. "Hey Samil, that's funny, did you buy the same agave salsa that I bought yesterday?" I turn to look over to Samil, who is giving me his best deer in headlights impression. "Um..." He gets up and looks at the salsa. "Oh shit, this...." shuffling through the cupboard "here's my salsa. Oh damn its warm."
"But I DID buy the fire roasted salsa."
I walked into the living room about five minutes ago with Samil enjoying a nice bowl of tortilla chips and salsa. I was bringing some stuff to the sink to clean - accumulated tea cups and my breakfast dish from this morning. Samil started telling me how disappointed he was with his salsa. I respond with a generic grunt, and he continues on. "I really wish I had bought some fire roasted salsa. Have you ever heard of fire roasted salsa?"
I confirm that I have, in fact, heard of fire roasted salsa to him, and then I notice the salsa on the counter. "Hey Samil, that's funny, did you buy the same agave salsa that I bought yesterday?" I turn to look over to Samil, who is giving me his best deer in headlights impression. "Um..." He gets up and looks at the salsa. "Oh shit, this...." shuffling through the cupboard "here's my salsa. Oh damn its warm."
"But I DID buy the fire roasted salsa."
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
Devil, Details
Normally, I think I make my decisions on a person's character based on the little things they do or don't do.
In Samil's case, I can't decide whether I'm deciding he has shit for brains because he can't remember to unlock the bathroom door or because he locks the door for no reason. See, I have a separate door going to the bathroom. It has a lock on the inside so nobody walks in on someone doing their business. which is fine, or would be fine, if the person doing their business also remembered to unlock it afterward. No, its not a big hassle because I can walk around to the to the other door (hence, 'little things') but if I have to hear Samil every morning (sometimes awoken to the prettiest of bathroom sounds) of take care of his stuff because a bathroom door leads to my bedroom, I should be able to use said bathroom door.
This is why I think Samil has a terrible case of CRS (Can't Remember Shit, if you've forgotten). Samil also needs to realize that when we have longer heart to hearts, I remember what he says, because when a nerve is touched in a conversation between us and others, he tends to go off in really awkward tangents. For example, Samil has been looking for a steady relationship I think for a good long while. He hasn't had many, so I think not finding someone to settle down with is a point of anxiety for him. This is all fine; I do want him to be happy. I just don't want him to weird out my friends in the process.
My friend John was in one night and we were talking about his long relationship with his girlfriend and his longer commitment to not being in long relationships (funny how long relationships seem to just happen when you're not looking). This caused Samil to go off on how you don't need to settle down early, and its not a big deal because John is young, and he still has time to find someone, and one day he'll find a girl to settle down with and start a family, and lots of people start relationships later on in their lives, and there's no reason to commit yourself to a person if you're not interested in committing yourself, and you really shouldn't worry at all. Not that John was ever worrying, of course.
I also find it incredibly sad but very much not a big deal when Samil gives me the look of an accomplished 5 year old who drew a picture on a place mat. Normally he gives these looks when it has to do with him getting some sexual contact or drugs. This leads me to imagine that said place mat is of a park with people flying kites, and the sky is purple and the people are orange and the grass is blue.
Good example, he tells me he was fooling around with a girl for a few weekends. [cue 5yr old smile] Then the girl dumped him when he said they should being a relationship and she said no. [cut 5yr smile]. Another example "I went over my cousin's house" [smile] "and we got so high. Like really really high." [end smile] I don't really remember much else that we did."
I'm also not sure if I should count this as a big thing, but all of the dishes still aren't put away in the kitchen. He's unpacked about half the box, but still. How lazy can you be to not finish putting a box away after 3 weeks? I mean, they are small things. Who really needs forks, and knives. Little stuff, I say. Good thing I'm not home enough to cook.
In Samil's case, I can't decide whether I'm deciding he has shit for brains because he can't remember to unlock the bathroom door or because he locks the door for no reason. See, I have a separate door going to the bathroom. It has a lock on the inside so nobody walks in on someone doing their business. which is fine, or would be fine, if the person doing their business also remembered to unlock it afterward. No, its not a big hassle because I can walk around to the to the other door (hence, 'little things') but if I have to hear Samil every morning (sometimes awoken to the prettiest of bathroom sounds) of take care of his stuff because a bathroom door leads to my bedroom, I should be able to use said bathroom door.
This is why I think Samil has a terrible case of CRS (Can't Remember Shit, if you've forgotten). Samil also needs to realize that when we have longer heart to hearts, I remember what he says, because when a nerve is touched in a conversation between us and others, he tends to go off in really awkward tangents. For example, Samil has been looking for a steady relationship I think for a good long while. He hasn't had many, so I think not finding someone to settle down with is a point of anxiety for him. This is all fine; I do want him to be happy. I just don't want him to weird out my friends in the process.
My friend John was in one night and we were talking about his long relationship with his girlfriend and his longer commitment to not being in long relationships (funny how long relationships seem to just happen when you're not looking). This caused Samil to go off on how you don't need to settle down early, and its not a big deal because John is young, and he still has time to find someone, and one day he'll find a girl to settle down with and start a family, and lots of people start relationships later on in their lives, and there's no reason to commit yourself to a person if you're not interested in committing yourself, and you really shouldn't worry at all. Not that John was ever worrying, of course.
I also find it incredibly sad but very much not a big deal when Samil gives me the look of an accomplished 5 year old who drew a picture on a place mat. Normally he gives these looks when it has to do with him getting some sexual contact or drugs. This leads me to imagine that said place mat is of a park with people flying kites, and the sky is purple and the people are orange and the grass is blue.
Good example, he tells me he was fooling around with a girl for a few weekends. [cue 5yr old smile] Then the girl dumped him when he said they should being a relationship and she said no. [cut 5yr smile]. Another example "I went over my cousin's house" [smile] "and we got so high. Like really really high." [end smile] I don't really remember much else that we did."
I'm also not sure if I should count this as a big thing, but all of the dishes still aren't put away in the kitchen. He's unpacked about half the box, but still. How lazy can you be to not finish putting a box away after 3 weeks? I mean, they are small things. Who really needs forks, and knives. Little stuff, I say. Good thing I'm not home enough to cook.
Monday, October 19, 2009
If you can't stand the heat...
Samil just yelled to me, mid-shower, "Do you know the Yankees score?" Because, even though he knows I could not care less about baseball, I might be keeping up to date while he's away from his laptop.
Also, I now have Internet. Oddly, the FIOS guy we had come to fix everything rocked. He also thought we were just starting out in college, so he refused a tip and gave us about 50 bucks worth of stuff on the d/l. Unfortunately, I've been working way too much to put the Internet to good use.
It got cold here pretty fast in New Jersey, and our apartment was fairly cold. In case I wasn't aware of this, Samil made sure to mention it almost non-stop when I saw him. "I'm cold. I don't want to be cold. It's cold." Shocker: he decided to put on an extra blanket one night and wasn't cold. Still, the Cold theme persisted.
I'm not saying it wasn't cold, but when we moved in the old tenants told us their heating bills were through the roof, so personally, I'd rather throw on a sweatshirt than turn my apartment into Little Bahamas.
Still, its pretty absurd when my friend Steve stops by and tells us he looked up our house's worth on his company's Real Estate software. After giving us a number lower than we all expected, Samil's response was "It's probably because the house is so drafty."
This all came to its epic conclusion this weekend, when I get a call from Samil in the morning while at the bank. He was telling me that he turned the heat on the night before prior to leaving for a party. "When I came home there was no heat." I was aware both that there was no heat, since I was home asleep, and that he came home, because it sounded like he fell through the front door into the door into the living room, waking me up. "Okay," I tell him. "Well, I'm going to call the landlord." This seems somewhat reasonable as an isolated case. While responding to him vaguely I'm trying to add up the number of times we've called the landlord for silly little things in the last month and wonder if maybe we can figure this one out on our own. Eventually I say something to that effect, which he goes "I'm cold. I'm so cold I don't want to hang out here. I'm not even going to hang out here tonight because of this, or tomorrow."
This is where I become confused, not just because of the conversation but because the ATM was asking me funny questions. "You're not going to be home?" "No, its COLD!" "Then why do you want the heat on?" This question seems simple enough to me. I don't know, call me crazy. "because its cold." Oh, right.
An hour later or so I get a call from our landlord where she asks me to let the plumber in to look at the heat. "I'm not home." "You're not? Well, someone needs to be home." "Well, I'm at work. Where is Samil?" "I don't know. He's not answering his phone." Great. I don't get any calls back, and come home to a heated apartment.
Now it begins: the epic war of me trying to keep us from going broke from heating bills by lowering the thermostat and keeping doors shut. Wish me luck.
Also, I now have Internet. Oddly, the FIOS guy we had come to fix everything rocked. He also thought we were just starting out in college, so he refused a tip and gave us about 50 bucks worth of stuff on the d/l. Unfortunately, I've been working way too much to put the Internet to good use.
It got cold here pretty fast in New Jersey, and our apartment was fairly cold. In case I wasn't aware of this, Samil made sure to mention it almost non-stop when I saw him. "I'm cold. I don't want to be cold. It's cold." Shocker: he decided to put on an extra blanket one night and wasn't cold. Still, the Cold theme persisted.
I'm not saying it wasn't cold, but when we moved in the old tenants told us their heating bills were through the roof, so personally, I'd rather throw on a sweatshirt than turn my apartment into Little Bahamas.
Still, its pretty absurd when my friend Steve stops by and tells us he looked up our house's worth on his company's Real Estate software. After giving us a number lower than we all expected, Samil's response was "It's probably because the house is so drafty."
This all came to its epic conclusion this weekend, when I get a call from Samil in the morning while at the bank. He was telling me that he turned the heat on the night before prior to leaving for a party. "When I came home there was no heat." I was aware both that there was no heat, since I was home asleep, and that he came home, because it sounded like he fell through the front door into the door into the living room, waking me up. "Okay," I tell him. "Well, I'm going to call the landlord." This seems somewhat reasonable as an isolated case. While responding to him vaguely I'm trying to add up the number of times we've called the landlord for silly little things in the last month and wonder if maybe we can figure this one out on our own. Eventually I say something to that effect, which he goes "I'm cold. I'm so cold I don't want to hang out here. I'm not even going to hang out here tonight because of this, or tomorrow."
This is where I become confused, not just because of the conversation but because the ATM was asking me funny questions. "You're not going to be home?" "No, its COLD!" "Then why do you want the heat on?" This question seems simple enough to me. I don't know, call me crazy. "because its cold." Oh, right.
An hour later or so I get a call from our landlord where she asks me to let the plumber in to look at the heat. "I'm not home." "You're not? Well, someone needs to be home." "Well, I'm at work. Where is Samil?" "I don't know. He's not answering his phone." Great. I don't get any calls back, and come home to a heated apartment.
Now it begins: the epic war of me trying to keep us from going broke from heating bills by lowering the thermostat and keeping doors shut. Wish me luck.
Wednesday, October 7, 2009
AYFKM?
I'm moved in. By "I'm moved in" I mean that I set up the living room, bathroom, and my bedroom. I don't mean that the kitchen is unpacked, because really, I think Samil can handle unpacking a few appliances and figure out where to put the forks, considering I moved the TV, couches, end tables, shower mat, lamps, etc. around and made the rooms livable. Two nights ago he asked if I'd be around this weekend to set up the kitchen with him. I told him that he could handle setting things up alone, since I wasn't going to be home at all during the weekend and I did set up the living room and bathroom pretty easily on my own. He agreed. More on this yesterday...
Samil also took off work yesterday to take care of getting his parking pass and wait for the FIOS guy to get us set up with Internet at 1pm. Around 11:30am I get a call from the technician (since I set up the appointment because my credit is still comfortably in the three digits), and I tell him I'll pass my room mates number on to him. I call Samil to see where he's at. He says he's at the gym, so I told him I'd text him the guy's number so they can work the arrangement out right then and there without me mediating.
...
...
At 1pm he texts me going "Yo, you never sent me the number." Twice, the same text, but one without any punctuation or capitalization. I can only assume he thought I didn't respond to poor grammar, seeing that he's an English teacher. He also calls and leaves a voicemail to the same effect. I was in class until 1:10 and was really concerned why my phone was freaking out as I was finishing class. So I get the messages and call him and ask "why didn't you tell me this an hour and a half ago?" to which he responded "you wanted me to to call him right away?" "I did tell the guy you'd would." "oh." My coworker overheard both of these conversations and immediately gave me the look of AYFKM?, aka Are You Fucking Kidding Me? Turns out Samil does not know how to use his phone and couldn't accept text messages when I messaged him. He has since gotten help from a coworker to resolve this, but I should mention there is a reason they call the things Smart Phones, and its not because they make you smarter.
The next crisis is that the technician is not answering Samil's calls. So I call and he picks up, slightly pissed off that no one got in touch with him, but he says he'll be right over. Yay Internet!
Now, two nights ago when Samil and I discussed the kitchen situation, we also talked about what I hoped the FIOS guy would do: 1) run an ethernet line to my computer 2) run an ethernet line to my XBox. I understood if this wasn't going to be possible. Happily, when I got home Samil was able to report that the FIOS guy did everything Samil asked him to do and that we had Internet. Yay Internet!
Except, neither of those were done. For some reason, FIOS guy ran a cable wire to the XBox, which makes absolutely no sense, and didn't put anything in my bedroom. Yay... wait.
In short, Samil goofily sitting on the floor of the office, high with heavy pot fumes filling the room pissed me off more than a little bit since his happy report was entirely wrong. He was also very surprised that neither were done, despite him sitting around watching the entire process. I left, choosing to hang out at the library instead of flip out on him, and told him to call them and fix the situation.
I come home two hours later to find him sleeping and having not called the company. He said his phone died so he took a nap. Great. A while later he gets a hold of the company and is shocked that they are giving him a hard time about coming back out to fix things. Meanwhile, I spent this escapade beating up Gotham's worst, who are all somehow on the Joker's payroll. Where's that guy get his money, seriously.
Meanwhile, I also noticed that the kitchen was all still in boxes. Realize that we moved in 6 days ago. One of these boxes also happened to now be dripping wet at the bottom. Realize that Samil has been sitting at home all day doing nothing. So I brought this up with him, to which he said "oh, I didn't know that was my responsibility." This is the point where I gave him the AYFKM? look and just walked away to work out.
As of today I still have no Internet, I happened to miss an epic Flyers game (Home Opener + the captain, Mike Richards getting a Hat Trick + 11 total goals + Overtime + Winning), and I'm beginning to think I can trust my middle school students more than Samil.
Samil also took off work yesterday to take care of getting his parking pass and wait for the FIOS guy to get us set up with Internet at 1pm. Around 11:30am I get a call from the technician (since I set up the appointment because my credit is still comfortably in the three digits), and I tell him I'll pass my room mates number on to him. I call Samil to see where he's at. He says he's at the gym, so I told him I'd text him the guy's number so they can work the arrangement out right then and there without me mediating.
...
...
At 1pm he texts me going "Yo, you never sent me the number." Twice, the same text, but one without any punctuation or capitalization. I can only assume he thought I didn't respond to poor grammar, seeing that he's an English teacher. He also calls and leaves a voicemail to the same effect. I was in class until 1:10 and was really concerned why my phone was freaking out as I was finishing class. So I get the messages and call him and ask "why didn't you tell me this an hour and a half ago?" to which he responded "you wanted me to to call him right away?" "I did tell the guy you'd would." "oh." My coworker overheard both of these conversations and immediately gave me the look of AYFKM?, aka Are You Fucking Kidding Me? Turns out Samil does not know how to use his phone and couldn't accept text messages when I messaged him. He has since gotten help from a coworker to resolve this, but I should mention there is a reason they call the things Smart Phones, and its not because they make you smarter.
The next crisis is that the technician is not answering Samil's calls. So I call and he picks up, slightly pissed off that no one got in touch with him, but he says he'll be right over. Yay Internet!
Now, two nights ago when Samil and I discussed the kitchen situation, we also talked about what I hoped the FIOS guy would do: 1) run an ethernet line to my computer 2) run an ethernet line to my XBox. I understood if this wasn't going to be possible. Happily, when I got home Samil was able to report that the FIOS guy did everything Samil asked him to do and that we had Internet. Yay Internet!
Except, neither of those were done. For some reason, FIOS guy ran a cable wire to the XBox, which makes absolutely no sense, and didn't put anything in my bedroom. Yay... wait.
In short, Samil goofily sitting on the floor of the office, high with heavy pot fumes filling the room pissed me off more than a little bit since his happy report was entirely wrong. He was also very surprised that neither were done, despite him sitting around watching the entire process. I left, choosing to hang out at the library instead of flip out on him, and told him to call them and fix the situation.
I come home two hours later to find him sleeping and having not called the company. He said his phone died so he took a nap. Great. A while later he gets a hold of the company and is shocked that they are giving him a hard time about coming back out to fix things. Meanwhile, I spent this escapade beating up Gotham's worst, who are all somehow on the Joker's payroll. Where's that guy get his money, seriously.
Meanwhile, I also noticed that the kitchen was all still in boxes. Realize that we moved in 6 days ago. One of these boxes also happened to now be dripping wet at the bottom. Realize that Samil has been sitting at home all day doing nothing. So I brought this up with him, to which he said "oh, I didn't know that was my responsibility." This is the point where I gave him the AYFKM? look and just walked away to work out.
As of today I still have no Internet, I happened to miss an epic Flyers game (Home Opener + the captain, Mike Richards getting a Hat Trick + 11 total goals + Overtime + Winning), and I'm beginning to think I can trust my middle school students more than Samil.
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
DJLSGDHJLSHGFKDJLSGDL:AFSDJKLGSDHJK
I'm going to kill Samil. But I'll get to that later.
Yesterday morning Samil realized he had to iron clothes before work. He found this to be "such a drag." Welcome to the real world, buddy. Now, if you're planning on ironing clothes, with a hot iron, you might not want to plant yourself just around a corner of a hallway, kneeling on the floor, using one of those tiny ironing boards. Because I won't see you until its almost too late. And then I might knock you over. And you're holding a hot iron. Luckily, despite my being exhausted and all, I managed to see him at the last second and avoid catastrophe.
Samil was not so lucky a little later on when he burned his clothes. He didn't burn them so bad that they looked like an ironed shirt in a cartoon, with a big black iron outline on the back. Just a little nick down at the bottom of a pant leg. Still, this was clearly not his fault. He was, after all using one of those "high tech looking irons" that apparently, because of their high tech looks, are clothes-burning proof. Even if you turn the iron to the high setting. And even if you don't put any water in the high tech water reservoir. (this is totally irrelevant, but Samil also couldn't work the high tech automatic electricity cord winder upper, which also tells me he's going to have trouble using my high tech vacuum.) What's most bothersome to me is that he expresses these problems in a way that implies that its my fault because its my stuff. You see, its all my stuff because I lived in an apartment before and bought all the things one has in an apartment.
Later on yesterday I had my after school program while Samil came home and met out landlord to pick up keys for the permanent apartment we'll be staying in (right above this one). When he left the place with the landlord, he for no reason locked the door knob. The door knob is busted up and has no functioning key. The only way into this apartment is through that door. So last night when I went to start moving stuff in, I found myself locked out of my own new apartment, holding a box of books, confused why I couldn't open the door when the new key was working just fine.
So Samil has me call our landlord because he's too busy munching on Chinese food. He also informs me to ensure she doesn't know it was his fault. After going back and forth with the landlord to just explain "yes, the key works, but no the door doesn't open," she got really confused until she remembered the busted lock on the door and said "oh, yes, there is another lock but nobody has ever used that lock and we've never had a key for it, ever." The second ever made me die inside a little. Somehow, our landlord did have a very clear memory of Samil NOT locking the door, or a vivid memory of something that didn't happen. Still, good for him, I guess. "Okay, well, I'm in South Jersey, and I can't get back until tomorrow some time. I don't know what to tell you."
After getting off the phone, I told Samil the news. "That sucks. Man, why would you not have a key for the lock?' This was when I almost killed Samil. Some of us have schedules, and we stick to them. Some of also, I think at least, take ownership of mistakes and things we do wrong.
But I won't kill him, because right after this happened, Samil sprinted to the kitchen because Chinese food was too hot. That was pretty funny, wimp.
Yesterday morning Samil realized he had to iron clothes before work. He found this to be "such a drag." Welcome to the real world, buddy. Now, if you're planning on ironing clothes, with a hot iron, you might not want to plant yourself just around a corner of a hallway, kneeling on the floor, using one of those tiny ironing boards. Because I won't see you until its almost too late. And then I might knock you over. And you're holding a hot iron. Luckily, despite my being exhausted and all, I managed to see him at the last second and avoid catastrophe.
Samil was not so lucky a little later on when he burned his clothes. He didn't burn them so bad that they looked like an ironed shirt in a cartoon, with a big black iron outline on the back. Just a little nick down at the bottom of a pant leg. Still, this was clearly not his fault. He was, after all using one of those "high tech looking irons" that apparently, because of their high tech looks, are clothes-burning proof. Even if you turn the iron to the high setting. And even if you don't put any water in the high tech water reservoir. (this is totally irrelevant, but Samil also couldn't work the high tech automatic electricity cord winder upper, which also tells me he's going to have trouble using my high tech vacuum.) What's most bothersome to me is that he expresses these problems in a way that implies that its my fault because its my stuff. You see, its all my stuff because I lived in an apartment before and bought all the things one has in an apartment.
Later on yesterday I had my after school program while Samil came home and met out landlord to pick up keys for the permanent apartment we'll be staying in (right above this one). When he left the place with the landlord, he for no reason locked the door knob. The door knob is busted up and has no functioning key. The only way into this apartment is through that door. So last night when I went to start moving stuff in, I found myself locked out of my own new apartment, holding a box of books, confused why I couldn't open the door when the new key was working just fine.
So Samil has me call our landlord because he's too busy munching on Chinese food. He also informs me to ensure she doesn't know it was his fault. After going back and forth with the landlord to just explain "yes, the key works, but no the door doesn't open," she got really confused until she remembered the busted lock on the door and said "oh, yes, there is another lock but nobody has ever used that lock and we've never had a key for it, ever." The second ever made me die inside a little. Somehow, our landlord did have a very clear memory of Samil NOT locking the door, or a vivid memory of something that didn't happen. Still, good for him, I guess. "Okay, well, I'm in South Jersey, and I can't get back until tomorrow some time. I don't know what to tell you."
After getting off the phone, I told Samil the news. "That sucks. Man, why would you not have a key for the lock?' This was when I almost killed Samil. Some of us have schedules, and we stick to them. Some of also, I think at least, take ownership of mistakes and things we do wrong.
But I won't kill him, because right after this happened, Samil sprinted to the kitchen because Chinese food was too hot. That was pretty funny, wimp.
Sunday, September 20, 2009
Too Much Information, or Not Eating Crap
For the last two weeks, Samil has been really concerned about being healthful. I think he got on this kick after talking to one of his friends, Toast (who I have been told is someone who I should not trust, just because of his name, but of all the people in the circle Samil and I met in, he is possibly the most trustworthy). Toast was talking to him about a lot of the things in Omnivore's Dilemma, and Samil thought I would be a good expert on these matters, since I previously worked at an evil national food chain selling only good foods.
The problem though, is that on issues like this there is a ton of information going around, and its not very well catalogued or filtered. I blame the Internet, since without the Internet people would only have access to information placed in context and organized to give a broad understanding. Instead, Samil can just wander around the information looking for Good Information, even if said Information is totally unrelated to what he is concerned with.
On top of that, Samil is plagued with a pretty massive case of indecision and confusion, so this massive influx of Good Information re: eating well is not exactly healthy for him. So Samil is stuck trying to balance the Local Food issue with the Organic issue with the Whole Ingredients issue with guides for Raw Food diets. If you haven't spent time thinking about each one individually, it can be overwhelming. That doesn't ease the pain for me when he asks questions like "But its not healthy to eat raw foods if like, you get the food from California, right?"
The scenario plays out something like this: Samil is looking for foods with a small number of ingredients, all from natural sources, but is looking on highly processed, full of artificial additives that we call the Internet to identify these foods. So before he even has a chance to eat well, his mind is so polluted with high fructose corn syrup type information, leaving him so confused about what to do that he ends up just eating a falafel for dinner.
Also, call me Debbie Downer, but I'm not totally convinced that we will be able to travel from New Jersey to California in two hours or less any time soon. This literally shocked Samil. Samil is now on the record as believing wholeheartedly that we will in just a few short years develop such a strong Artificially Intelligent machine that all of our energy problems will be solved without us having to lift a finger. They'll also solve a bunch of other things too, he said. I didn't pry.
How is this related, you ask? Well, he became very concerned at one point with the problem of defining Local Food. The problem defining it, to him, was not whether one should be looking at regional America maps or restricting their foods to some place they could drive in a day (this is an interesting issue to me, which I would have loved to discuss with him for a while - the Local Food movement is just as much about carbon foot prints and developing a more stable regional economy as it is eating fresh nutrient rich foods. Unfortunately we never got to have the discussion). The problem, of course, is when we have super rapid transportation, what will be the cutoff for earning the Happy Sticker signifying that a food is local?
Personally, though, I find his assumption of free gigantic amounts of power to be very convenient, which really plays into his personality. Of course scientists (or said robots) are going to figure out how to make a super duper fast train. Why? They're going to do it because Samil wants his nectarines, and he wants them in his fridge 3 days after they were picked, so its going to happen. Of course Human Resources should be available to him whenever he feels like showing up, regardless of whatever other responsibilities they may have during the course of the day (and no matter how clearly they post this on District's website) His thought process normally goes from "what would I like to happen" to "this should happen because" or if not possible "that's dumb because." This thought process occurs in all sorts of places, from super duper fast trains to how his boss should behave. I wouldn't even be surprised if I saw him arguing with some nutrition expert telling him that 'no, its not healthy to eat a box of Newman's Own cookies, because the cookies were made naturally. Its just more convenient inside his head.
The problem though, is that on issues like this there is a ton of information going around, and its not very well catalogued or filtered. I blame the Internet, since without the Internet people would only have access to information placed in context and organized to give a broad understanding. Instead, Samil can just wander around the information looking for Good Information, even if said Information is totally unrelated to what he is concerned with.
On top of that, Samil is plagued with a pretty massive case of indecision and confusion, so this massive influx of Good Information re: eating well is not exactly healthy for him. So Samil is stuck trying to balance the Local Food issue with the Organic issue with the Whole Ingredients issue with guides for Raw Food diets. If you haven't spent time thinking about each one individually, it can be overwhelming. That doesn't ease the pain for me when he asks questions like "But its not healthy to eat raw foods if like, you get the food from California, right?"
The scenario plays out something like this: Samil is looking for foods with a small number of ingredients, all from natural sources, but is looking on highly processed, full of artificial additives that we call the Internet to identify these foods. So before he even has a chance to eat well, his mind is so polluted with high fructose corn syrup type information, leaving him so confused about what to do that he ends up just eating a falafel for dinner.
Also, call me Debbie Downer, but I'm not totally convinced that we will be able to travel from New Jersey to California in two hours or less any time soon. This literally shocked Samil. Samil is now on the record as believing wholeheartedly that we will in just a few short years develop such a strong Artificially Intelligent machine that all of our energy problems will be solved without us having to lift a finger. They'll also solve a bunch of other things too, he said. I didn't pry.
How is this related, you ask? Well, he became very concerned at one point with the problem of defining Local Food. The problem defining it, to him, was not whether one should be looking at regional America maps or restricting their foods to some place they could drive in a day (this is an interesting issue to me, which I would have loved to discuss with him for a while - the Local Food movement is just as much about carbon foot prints and developing a more stable regional economy as it is eating fresh nutrient rich foods. Unfortunately we never got to have the discussion). The problem, of course, is when we have super rapid transportation, what will be the cutoff for earning the Happy Sticker signifying that a food is local?
Personally, though, I find his assumption of free gigantic amounts of power to be very convenient, which really plays into his personality. Of course scientists (or said robots) are going to figure out how to make a super duper fast train. Why? They're going to do it because Samil wants his nectarines, and he wants them in his fridge 3 days after they were picked, so its going to happen. Of course Human Resources should be available to him whenever he feels like showing up, regardless of whatever other responsibilities they may have during the course of the day (and no matter how clearly they post this on District's website) His thought process normally goes from "what would I like to happen" to "this should happen because" or if not possible "that's dumb because." This thought process occurs in all sorts of places, from super duper fast trains to how his boss should behave. I wouldn't even be surprised if I saw him arguing with some nutrition expert telling him that 'no, its not healthy to eat a box of Newman's Own cookies, because the cookies were made naturally. Its just more convenient inside his head.
Friday, September 18, 2009
Belly Rubbing Goodness
Samil just talked to me for a half hour on getting a Ph. D in English Education, with twenty five of those minutes spend looking in our window and watching himself rub his belly while rambling. This might be some sort of pre-party ritual for him as he just left to go to a party, a pajama party actually. That shouldn't surprise you, I guess, since you aren't here in the apartment. If you were here in the apartment, you'd say "that's weird, I could have sworn Samil was wearing jeans when he left." You, dear readers, would not have been mistaken because Samil did decide to wear jeans to a pajama party. He was, and I quote "not going to spend [his] Friday, after wearing dress pants all week, wearing anything but jeans."
Also, this conversation was unique this week because it didn't involve Samil figuratively or literally cornering me to talk. Twice this week we had extended conversations where I had no possible escape from. I wish I could tell you what we talked about in the first one, but to be honest, I spent the entire conversation going "yeah?" "oh" and "interesting" while I read a magazine on my exercise bike. This conversation went on for exactly 14 minutes because I was timing my workout and it ended when I got off the bike and went into the shower. Have you ever talked to someone for 14 minutes where the person didn't respond with more than a word at a time?
The second conversation was a pretty diverse one, but generally centered around Samil trying to rearrange the world to make things easier for him. For example, he thinks we need to rewrite the Constitution because he finds Delaware annoying and they shouldn't have so many members of Congress. Ditto all those big states out West. They're in his way. Also, he wants our President to essentially give up on the health care fight and not pass any legislation and try this again in two years. For some reason he thinks this is a good idea - I tried to figure out why so I could tell all of you, but all I got was some stammering and teeth sucking.
Also, Samil wants to legalize pot. This is not surprising. He wants to legalize pot for two reasons: 1) it would generate tax revenue for social programs and 2) it will get him laid. To his credit, I do think I learned in algebra II that:
Samil + Marijuana + Public Places + Hot Ladies = Samil + Hot Ladies + Apartment - Clothes
(If you simplify that equation, it looks like this:
Marijuana + Public Places = Apartment - Clothes
In other words, getting high in public is the same as being naked in your apartment, which I find hysterical for some reason)
This may become a recurring theme, but yesterday when I got home from work, Samil was sitting on the couch reading Vanity Fair (aside, I didn't know people actually bought and read Vanity Fair - I thought it was the sort of magazine that people just talked about without reading. who knew) with the two rolling chairs in the living room facing him. On one chair was his container of soy milk, and the other a cereal box, as if he had been having a round table discussion with his breakfast foods.
Also, this conversation was unique this week because it didn't involve Samil figuratively or literally cornering me to talk. Twice this week we had extended conversations where I had no possible escape from. I wish I could tell you what we talked about in the first one, but to be honest, I spent the entire conversation going "yeah?" "oh" and "interesting" while I read a magazine on my exercise bike. This conversation went on for exactly 14 minutes because I was timing my workout and it ended when I got off the bike and went into the shower. Have you ever talked to someone for 14 minutes where the person didn't respond with more than a word at a time?
The second conversation was a pretty diverse one, but generally centered around Samil trying to rearrange the world to make things easier for him. For example, he thinks we need to rewrite the Constitution because he finds Delaware annoying and they shouldn't have so many members of Congress. Ditto all those big states out West. They're in his way. Also, he wants our President to essentially give up on the health care fight and not pass any legislation and try this again in two years. For some reason he thinks this is a good idea - I tried to figure out why so I could tell all of you, but all I got was some stammering and teeth sucking.
Also, Samil wants to legalize pot. This is not surprising. He wants to legalize pot for two reasons: 1) it would generate tax revenue for social programs and 2) it will get him laid. To his credit, I do think I learned in algebra II that:
Samil + Marijuana + Public Places + Hot Ladies = Samil + Hot Ladies + Apartment - Clothes
(If you simplify that equation, it looks like this:
Marijuana + Public Places = Apartment - Clothes
In other words, getting high in public is the same as being naked in your apartment, which I find hysterical for some reason)
This may become a recurring theme, but yesterday when I got home from work, Samil was sitting on the couch reading Vanity Fair (aside, I didn't know people actually bought and read Vanity Fair - I thought it was the sort of magazine that people just talked about without reading. who knew) with the two rolling chairs in the living room facing him. On one chair was his container of soy milk, and the other a cereal box, as if he had been having a round table discussion with his breakfast foods.
Thursday, September 10, 2009
I'll show YOU a WRIT
Its been a while, and I apologize. I’ve actually been working on this post for a bit but haven’t had a computer to upload it with, so its just been getting long and longer and longer.
Some of the things that amuse me most about living with Samil are his idiosyncrasies that I can’t figure out how he learned, ever. Like, when I came home on Labor Day, he was sitting on our droopy* couch, with a bowl of cereal at his feet, two different types of cereal boxes arranged like the top left corner of a picture frame around the bowl, and some soy milk over to the right of the bowl, but not neatly placed, at least compared to the boxes. It looked like he hadn’t gotten off the couch in a week, and he was just staring at the wall when I walked in. I don’t know.
I am pleased to announce that our trash has been taken out. Though, it did take Samil three tries to figure out that the trash bag goes in the can, not next to the can and that a shopping bag was not big enough for a medium sized trash can. After reminding him a few times, he finally put a bag in the can, though instead of using the trash bag sitting on the counter, he used a small shopping bag. So, by the time I went to throw any more trash in there, it had already fallen deep into the dark emptiness of the trash can, invisible with the Chinese food boxes and banana peels covering it on top. I calmly explained to him that this didn’t work after he told me about what he did, and so he eventually found the trash bag and dumped everything into it…. And then left it next to the trash can. Still, I think we can proudly stamp Mission Accomplished on this saga.
Later he told me we needed bigger trash cans, because it only takes a day to fill these up. This was no where near clear, since we hadn’t taken the trash out for a week and the bag he just put stuff in was clearly not filled. I understood his point, but I still don’t understand where he got a day from. Maybe he was thinking of the shopping bags getting filled in a day. I don’t know.
He also volunteered to get trash bags since that was the last one we had. He called me from the grocery store yesterday and said “what size bag do we need?” I was engrossed in a challenge in Arkham Asylum, so I just aid “Thirteen.” He asked me if I meant inches.
Remind me to tell him that if he’s walking through my room at night, to not leave his door open if he turns the light on. It’s a little distracting for me to sleep when a light is suddenly shining on my face.
Additionally, I have had a friend visiting for the last week. Lenore is one of my closest friends, and I’ve known her since High School. She now lives out in the Midwest, though so we’ve been hanging out a fair amount since she’s only in the area every three months or so. Before starting these (semi-)regular accounts, she was able to hear all the exciting things Samil would do. So this meeting between the two of them was pretty exciting, for me at least.
The first time she came over, we ran into Samil as we were heading out to an awesome local restaurant that serves local food. I showed her the place before we left, though, and she described his bedroom as someone who looks like they live in a shelter. Its true. I’ll get a picture of it ASAP, but he’s sleeping on the mattress part of our couch and all of his clothes are overflowing from his suitcases on the floor. He has nothing else. Personally, I’m hoping he has a lady friend over at some point soon to show off his place. Because nothing says swoon like sleeping on a stained bed thing and your underwear laying all over the floor.
*(Quick aside, our couch is almost unsittable… in fact Lenore ran for the chair when she saw how low it was and didn’t give me a chance to even clear it off.)
We went back to my place after dinner for beers, where Samil was patiently waiting to interface. The three of us ended up talking four about five hours. Actually, I think there were a few half hours where I didn’t say a single word and Samil kept talking, requiring Lenore to say SOMETHING.
The conversation revolved around really mundane small talk topics, namely god and politics. I should also mention that Lenore spends her free time blaming the Patriarchy and studying earning a Masters in Divinity, focusing on law, while Samil read a few books about God in middle school, smokes a lot of pot, and can become extremely distracted if he walks past a picture of a celebrity.
The two of them talked back and forth about why Lenore was an atheist and Samil was an agnostic. Samil kept trying to emphasize that there was a chance that there could be a god, and one shouldn’t ignore that. In my mind, I thought that logic was about as good at saying ‘there’s a chance a bear could fly if you throw him out of an airplane,” but I tried to keep my mouth shut. Lenore was just making the point that if you’re a reasonable person, you can be open minded if presented with new information, and that its lame to be a fence sitter. She was really polite though, which only gave Samil more reason to continue trying to hammer his point home.
With regards to the politics, Lenore really kept her mouth shut as Samil continued to put his foot in his mouth. To try and explain through an example, Samil is the type of person who told me that Maggie Gyllenhall is a good actress because 1) she is a WOMAN (say that in a really excited "boy do I wish I could get with her" voice) and 2) she was apparently really good in a role where she had to flirt with her boss, but he never actually saw that movie. In other words, he doesn’t go around hitting women, but he generally has a conception about what a woman should be to be ‘correct’ that generally involves them being objects around him. Not exactly something that meshes well with someone who views all men as brought up to be rapists to one degree or another. So Samil kept talking about how he has a very particular view of what is attractive, and how lots of women will overly PC about his humor concerning women and traditional roles. Being insensitively funny, clearly, is proof you actually care. The way these conversations would go is that he’d say something, she would nicely say “I don’t think so” and Samil would repeat what he said two or three times, eventually moving on to something else that Lenore didn’t agree with.
Truthfully, I thought the night went pretty OK. Samil didn’t do anything really amazingly dumb, I thought. When I talked to Lenore the next day, she just said, “he’s weird, and awkward, and I didn’t want to keep talking to him.” Oops. I guess I’m a little desensitized (now, I only find talking to Samil awkward when, say, he’s standing just inside my door looking right at me, trying to tell me what he thinks about Eddie Murphy being the Riddler in an upcoming Batman movie while I am clearly trying to change into pajamas). Samil also proved able to top himself in Lenore’s next encounter with him.
This was when, at the end of the conversation, Samil animatedly jumped up and imagined himself yelling at some snotty law student “I’ll show YOU a WRIT!” and then proceed to pummel him with face and body shots, using his imagined Black Belt worth of Martial Arts Skillz. The context of this was Lenore talking about law students that hide books from each other, and Samil imagining himself dropping all other responsibilities in his life to track these people down and catch them in the act. Not doing his job was a pretty consistent theme for the evening, as he started the night talking about how he was going to quit his job (again – music to a roommates ears in the first month of a twelve month lease), move to Chicago, live on a couch, join Second City, and become famous. I politely told him that not everyone becomes famous after joining Second City, and he modestly said “But this is me we’re talking about.”
Some more house cleaning… We still haven’t set up our stove. I don’t have a lighter, which we need to take care of it. He does, and has for the last two days not been able to figure this out. The first day he couldn’t find the manual for it, which was fair, except it only took me thirty seconds to find it and clip it to the fridge. Not so fair the second day when he couldn’t find it and didn’t notice the gigantic manual that appeared on the fridge. I wonder if it’ll be done tonight. I would kind of like to make dinner in this apartment, but I’ve been getting home at 7pm or later every night, and it takes two hours to do, and I am normally hungry before 9pm.
I’m going to be out of the house this weekend, so few things to update on then, and hopefully I’ll have a computer to use the following week. See you around.
Wednesday, September 2, 2009
To get this out of the way...
I imagine anyone reading this right now is about to say... "If this guy is such a terrible room mate, why would you move in with him?" That's a very fair question. Honestly, part of the reason I'm living with Samil is for the Lolz. Also, him and I have a fair number of shared interests and do get along pretty well.
That, however, does not excuse the fact that 3 days in, he hasn't set up a single thing or unpacked a single box of stuff we use communally. I mean, really... we have no forks right now that are accessible without digging in a box also containing all of our plates and larger utensils. Nor does it forgive the fact that even though I told him three times, he still threw trash in a trash can without a bag in it, when I had a shopping bag of trashing going right next to it. I don't care if we get along, I'm still not going to pick out his trash for him.
On an unrelated note, I wonder, exactly, how many of you would love to hear your brand new room mate say to you "Oh man, if I got laid off, duuuuude, that would be great. I'd gladly fall on my light saber just like Obi Wan if they told me I was getting RIF'd." (RIF=Reduction in Force, ie laid off because the school is reducing the number of teaching positions) I mean, I know I wasn't thinking about anything like 'how would you pay rent?' Nope.
We're still without Internet, so I'm not going to give him the full introduction and life story here, but I also wanted to mention that I would not be surprised if this space also starts dealing heavily in education matters. We're teachers. We talk about teaching. We're both very opinionated and I'm becoming more and more informed on my views. I may periodically call him an idiot when I talk about education matters, but I use 'idiot' as a term of endearment. Just ask my students.
That, however, does not excuse the fact that 3 days in, he hasn't set up a single thing or unpacked a single box of stuff we use communally. I mean, really... we have no forks right now that are accessible without digging in a box also containing all of our plates and larger utensils. Nor does it forgive the fact that even though I told him three times, he still threw trash in a trash can without a bag in it, when I had a shopping bag of trashing going right next to it. I don't care if we get along, I'm still not going to pick out his trash for him.
On an unrelated note, I wonder, exactly, how many of you would love to hear your brand new room mate say to you "Oh man, if I got laid off, duuuuude, that would be great. I'd gladly fall on my light saber just like Obi Wan if they told me I was getting RIF'd." (RIF=Reduction in Force, ie laid off because the school is reducing the number of teaching positions) I mean, I know I wasn't thinking about anything like 'how would you pay rent?' Nope.
We're still without Internet, so I'm not going to give him the full introduction and life story here, but I also wanted to mention that I would not be surprised if this space also starts dealing heavily in education matters. We're teachers. We talk about teaching. We're both very opinionated and I'm becoming more and more informed on my views. I may periodically call him an idiot when I talk about education matters, but I use 'idiot' as a term of endearment. Just ask my students.
Monday, August 31, 2009
First Night
Highlight of the night was how Samil somehow got into a tangent on Privacy rights when I was explaining to him that it wasn't exactly normal to go to your neighbor and just ask for their wireless router's password. Somehow, he made the jump from that to "You know, like, what about when they put microchips in brains and it makes you so much smarter you'll need one to function. What'll privacy people say then?"
It was also humorous when he relayed this story....
Saturday night he went to a party in Philly and saw a girl he at one point had a crush on, which he told said girl who did not share his interests. This night in Philly was the first time, as he said "she was warm to him," making him feel really good about himself. He stills find the girl as he says slamming (which will pause, then say in a higher pitch and softer than his regular speech in order to highlight it). He also found out that this girl's little sister (by about 3 years, putting a gap of 7 between her and Samil), just got a job working in our school district, which really excited him. This 'silver lining' has a lot of potential, especially if the little sister is just as 'fly' and cool as the older sister.
Oh, the couch is not comfortable w/out the mattress. Resolution has not been found on that. Work starts tomorrow. Should be good.
(Also, I showed up to work today to set up my room for a few hours and got put to work by all sorts of teachers to move stuff. So now my room isn't set up, but theirs is. Do I look like I LIKE moving? I'm sick of it.)
It was also humorous when he relayed this story....
Saturday night he went to a party in Philly and saw a girl he at one point had a crush on, which he told said girl who did not share his interests. This night in Philly was the first time, as he said "she was warm to him," making him feel really good about himself. He stills find the girl as he says slamming (which will pause, then say in a higher pitch and softer than his regular speech in order to highlight it). He also found out that this girl's little sister (by about 3 years, putting a gap of 7 between her and Samil), just got a job working in our school district, which really excited him. This 'silver lining' has a lot of potential, especially if the little sister is just as 'fly' and cool as the older sister.
Oh, the couch is not comfortable w/out the mattress. Resolution has not been found on that. Work starts tomorrow. Should be good.
(Also, I showed up to work today to set up my room for a few hours and got put to work by all sorts of teachers to move stuff. So now my room isn't set up, but theirs is. Do I look like I LIKE moving? I'm sick of it.)
Sunday, August 30, 2009
Getting the Keys
Two days ago we paid our rent and got our keys. We also paid for a few extra days in August to facilitate moving in.
Samil set a time for us to meet with our landlord, Christina, to get the keys and pay rent. I had actually been away for a few days with work, and I am fairly certain he said he'd do this without me in that time, but he didn't and its not a big deal. Still, it made my schedule a little wacky, but I managed to fit it around the frenzy of packing up, getting ready for work (we're teachers), and the daily nuisances. I get there about 20 minutes early, which was really only five minutes early because Samil and I agreed to meet ahead of time to talk things over. Of course, that's when Samil calls and tells me he can't make it because he's at the mechanic to fix his car.
His car failed inspection for about three weeks, and for the last three weeks, he's been riding around NJ with that big red sticker of shame. I guess he had decided to take care of that in the morning, and went there about half an hour before we agreed to meet to take care of it. Oh, did I mention he failed his exhaust test in the inspection? No, I didn't. He had to have his exhaust system fixed. And he dedicated thirty minutes to do this.
So I pay the rent, which was a little more than what I had in my bank account, hoping I'd get money from Samil that day to deposit, drop off a few boxes, and take off. I had to hide his keys around so he could get in later while I did some stuff I needed to in Brooklyn. Lacking a good place around the house to do it, I decided to hide it at the base of the PERMIT PARKING ONLY sign next to the house. I buried it in just enough dirt so that it wouldn't be seen yet easy to get to, and took off for the city while leaving him a message explaining in detail how to find the keys.
Five minutes later, he calls. Apparently he didn't check my message, and when I told him I left a message on where to find them, he responded "oh, where are they?" "I left a message explaining it." "Ok. But um, hm. Where can I find them?" Rather than repeat that exchange a few times, I tell him again how to find the keys.
A few hours later, I get a call from him again. "Hey, so I'm at the house. Where are the keys?" ::Head against keyboard I'm sitting at in a meeting::: I explain again.
***
Yesterday we moved in the big stuff. It wasn't a big deal, but Samil did miss most of the first trip of stuff because he overslept and half of the second trip grabbing me and him pizza. Not a big deal, my dad was there to help and lots of things like that are really only two person jobs. I'm just trying to give a bit of context on Samil, really.
When we moved in, I put my stuff way far in the back of the apartment to get it out of the way. The reason we didn't like this apartment, really, is because you have to walk through one bedroom to get to the other. Of course Samil wanted the room with more privacy, and so did I but really I don't care that much. Him seeing some of my stuff there resulted in a really painful passive aggressive conversation on his part.
Problem: he doesn't have a mattress and is planning on using the mattress in the pullout couch. Okay, that's not the problem. The problem is that he doesn't like using the couch part when sleeping and pulls the mattress off, taking up twice the space. Wait, no... that's still not the problem. The problem is that the couch sit right when you pull the mattress out, so if he's sleeping on that mattress in the far room, I'm going to have to be uncomfortable on the couch. This is a pretty epic problem in his mind, and we're still awaiting word on how he's going to resolve the issue. When I explained it, he was genuinely dumbstruck for about a minute.
Tonight I moved in the small stuff with my buddy Steve. Samil was in Philadelphia hanging out with some people and is coming back shortly. Tonight's the first night we'll be rooming together.* We may not have Internet, but I'll try to keep updating to let you know how things go.
*this does not include the first month we lived in my 1br apartment that I will explain in more detail at a later time
Samil set a time for us to meet with our landlord, Christina, to get the keys and pay rent. I had actually been away for a few days with work, and I am fairly certain he said he'd do this without me in that time, but he didn't and its not a big deal. Still, it made my schedule a little wacky, but I managed to fit it around the frenzy of packing up, getting ready for work (we're teachers), and the daily nuisances. I get there about 20 minutes early, which was really only five minutes early because Samil and I agreed to meet ahead of time to talk things over. Of course, that's when Samil calls and tells me he can't make it because he's at the mechanic to fix his car.
His car failed inspection for about three weeks, and for the last three weeks, he's been riding around NJ with that big red sticker of shame. I guess he had decided to take care of that in the morning, and went there about half an hour before we agreed to meet to take care of it. Oh, did I mention he failed his exhaust test in the inspection? No, I didn't. He had to have his exhaust system fixed. And he dedicated thirty minutes to do this.
So I pay the rent, which was a little more than what I had in my bank account, hoping I'd get money from Samil that day to deposit, drop off a few boxes, and take off. I had to hide his keys around so he could get in later while I did some stuff I needed to in Brooklyn. Lacking a good place around the house to do it, I decided to hide it at the base of the PERMIT PARKING ONLY sign next to the house. I buried it in just enough dirt so that it wouldn't be seen yet easy to get to, and took off for the city while leaving him a message explaining in detail how to find the keys.
Five minutes later, he calls. Apparently he didn't check my message, and when I told him I left a message on where to find them, he responded "oh, where are they?" "I left a message explaining it." "Ok. But um, hm. Where can I find them?" Rather than repeat that exchange a few times, I tell him again how to find the keys.
A few hours later, I get a call from him again. "Hey, so I'm at the house. Where are the keys?" ::Head against keyboard I'm sitting at in a meeting::: I explain again.
***
Yesterday we moved in the big stuff. It wasn't a big deal, but Samil did miss most of the first trip of stuff because he overslept and half of the second trip grabbing me and him pizza. Not a big deal, my dad was there to help and lots of things like that are really only two person jobs. I'm just trying to give a bit of context on Samil, really.
When we moved in, I put my stuff way far in the back of the apartment to get it out of the way. The reason we didn't like this apartment, really, is because you have to walk through one bedroom to get to the other. Of course Samil wanted the room with more privacy, and so did I but really I don't care that much. Him seeing some of my stuff there resulted in a really painful passive aggressive conversation on his part.
Problem: he doesn't have a mattress and is planning on using the mattress in the pullout couch. Okay, that's not the problem. The problem is that he doesn't like using the couch part when sleeping and pulls the mattress off, taking up twice the space. Wait, no... that's still not the problem. The problem is that the couch sit right when you pull the mattress out, so if he's sleeping on that mattress in the far room, I'm going to have to be uncomfortable on the couch. This is a pretty epic problem in his mind, and we're still awaiting word on how he's going to resolve the issue. When I explained it, he was genuinely dumbstruck for about a minute.
Tonight I moved in the small stuff with my buddy Steve. Samil was in Philadelphia hanging out with some people and is coming back shortly. Tonight's the first night we'll be rooming together.* We may not have Internet, but I'll try to keep updating to let you know how things go.
*this does not include the first month we lived in my 1br apartment that I will explain in more detail at a later time
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
Signing the lease!
Yesterday Samil and I signed our lease for a new apartment! Some things about the apartment:
It's in the wonderful "Garden State" of New Jersey, but in the part more associated with the "Armpit of America." We'll be living in a house across from a University in an old awesome house, apparently once owned by some European royalty (or so say our landlords). Its about 10 minutes to work for both of us, and on a gigantic hill. When I mean gigantic, I'm not exaggerating. Its steep. Like, 'those guys that lay down on a piece of wood with wheels and roll down a hill at insane speeds' steep.
Now, the complicated part - due to samil's (and mine to a degree) fascination with a great 3 bedroom apartment on the top floor that wasn't ready until October, we will be living on the floor below for a month. This, of course, means we have to move twice in two months, set up Gas/Electric twice, deal with cable twice, and so on. Possible advantages include waiting to get some furniture and having two housewarming parties.
When we proposed this idea to our landlord, Christina, we were first dismissed immediately. Then later that night she called Samil and said she had talked it over with her husband and decided it was okay. Samil didn't want to pass up our chance at this apartment so told her he would put her on hold and confer with me. He then put his cell phone in the bottom part of his t-shirt, wrapped it around a few times, and then put his hand over it. After a few short exchanges, we agreed to take the place and he told Christina, who I'm sure heard our whole conversation anyway.
The worst of the entire process was when Samil had to call the owner of another place we were only tepidly interested in but wanted to keep our options open with. Samil had been in contact with her for those two weeks, and I have no idea what he said, but it did result in a voice mail from this woman's husband telling Samil that "we took advantage of her kindness, and were unfair, and it was wrong." Like I said, for all I know he agreed to take the place and just never told me. He spent the rest of the evening wondering if he should feel bad for how he handled it, or if he should just let it go (His words). I'd be slightly worried he'll be carrying the emotional scars of not living in that apartment for a long time, but the reality is that he'll probably forgot about it before the end of the night.
It's in the wonderful "Garden State" of New Jersey, but in the part more associated with the "Armpit of America." We'll be living in a house across from a University in an old awesome house, apparently once owned by some European royalty (or so say our landlords). Its about 10 minutes to work for both of us, and on a gigantic hill. When I mean gigantic, I'm not exaggerating. Its steep. Like, 'those guys that lay down on a piece of wood with wheels and roll down a hill at insane speeds' steep.
Now, the complicated part - due to samil's (and mine to a degree) fascination with a great 3 bedroom apartment on the top floor that wasn't ready until October, we will be living on the floor below for a month. This, of course, means we have to move twice in two months, set up Gas/Electric twice, deal with cable twice, and so on. Possible advantages include waiting to get some furniture and having two housewarming parties.
When we proposed this idea to our landlord, Christina, we were first dismissed immediately. Then later that night she called Samil and said she had talked it over with her husband and decided it was okay. Samil didn't want to pass up our chance at this apartment so told her he would put her on hold and confer with me. He then put his cell phone in the bottom part of his t-shirt, wrapped it around a few times, and then put his hand over it. After a few short exchanges, we agreed to take the place and he told Christina, who I'm sure heard our whole conversation anyway.
The worst of the entire process was when Samil had to call the owner of another place we were only tepidly interested in but wanted to keep our options open with. Samil had been in contact with her for those two weeks, and I have no idea what he said, but it did result in a voice mail from this woman's husband telling Samil that "we took advantage of her kindness, and were unfair, and it was wrong." Like I said, for all I know he agreed to take the place and just never told me. He spent the rest of the evening wondering if he should feel bad for how he handled it, or if he should just let it go (His words). I'd be slightly worried he'll be carrying the emotional scars of not living in that apartment for a long time, but the reality is that he'll probably forgot about it before the end of the night.
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