Friday, December 18, 2009

Smart Phones.... again

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.

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?)

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.

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.

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.

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.