10 May 2007, early morning
My plane touched down in Toronto yesterday afternoon. While waiting for my bags a random police officer person asked me what I was up to, where I was coming from, etc. I repeated everything I had told the people in customs 10 minutes back. I wonder if I look particularly suspicious or not. I’m always so curt with the immigration officers at airports because I always assume they think i’m trying to scam my way into the country. I guess they are paid to be rude, though. (Is the comma between “rude” and “though” appropriate?) It’s nice being back, though I really enjoyed my trip. Shima had tidied the apartment up while I was away. I need to tidy up for more when I get home tonight. I am so broke. I think it’s time to sit around at home and play some WoW.
[5] Life
4 May 2007, terribly early in the morning
I haven’t been back to London in 12 years now. Being back has been nice. One day into the trip, I’ve spent most of my time between two houses. As such, I have no real sense of what England is like now. So far it seems to be more of the same. In case you are wondering about the lack of links, i’m out of the country for a few days.
[2] Life
2 May 2007, early morning
My hair, which was long and messy this past weekend, is short once more. Not super short, but short nevertheless. I have to attend a wedding and didn’t want to deal with the constant harassment I know I’d receive from my mother if it was still long. Still, right now, at this very moment, I feel like a total goober.
Life
28 April 2007, early morning
Rain’s delayed the game. I might be able to make it back before the first few overs get under way. Sri Lanka need to be playing some good cricket today.
Update: Gilchrist was amazing to watch, scoring 149 off way less than 149 balls. Sri Lanka need 282 to win. This was a shortened game, only 38 overs an inning. Australia’s score is pretty damn impressive. For a while it looked like they were going to get upwards of 300. The Sri Lankan bowlers were really performing poorly. The commentators were saying it’s a good pitch for batsman, so we’ll have to see if Sri Lanka have some luck as well. The Sri Lankan batsman really have their work cut out for them.
Update: Sri Lanka lost. Sucks. They had a good run, but Australia are like robots.
[3] Life
24 April 2007, late morning
It’s the semi-finals, and Sri Lanka are squaring off against New Zealand. Sri Lanka are batting first, and off to a so-so start. The run rate is good, but they have lost two important wickets: Jayasuriya was out for 1, and and Sangakara was out for 18. Both wickets were particularly lame; I’m sure they’d both be a bit disappointed in themselves. Nevertheless, Sri Lanka soldiers on. I’m hoping it’ll be a good game — I took the day off to watch it.
Update: 289-5! What a great total. Tharanga got the team going with a really good start, but I think most people will say it was Jayawardene who really got things done. In the early part of the inning Jayawardene’s strike rate was around 30% or so, but he really kicked it up in the last 10 overs, ending the game with a 100+ strike rate — great stuff. Dilshan and Silva were both out for pretty unlikely LBWs, but that happens sometimes. New Zealand will have a tough time batting with Sri Lanka’s entire bowling line-up well rested and ready to get some wickets. Should be a good innings.
Update: Malinga takes a wicket in the second over. Holy shit. Sri Lanka’s bowling attack is killer.
Update: New Zealand are all out in the 41st over. Sri Lanka played a kick ass game. New Zealand were looking good during the 10th to 20th over, and then pretty much collapsed. I was impressed that Franklin and Patel managed to rake up 64 runs between them. Sri Lanka are on to the finals.
[2] Life
12 April 2007, mid-morning
Vaas has bowled four overs thus far in the New Zealand vs. Sri Lanka cricket match today. Of those overs, 2 were maidens, and in 2 he allowed one run a piece. He also has 2 wickets to his name already. Vaas may be getting old, but he can still bowl like a beast. New Zealand are off to a very rocky start. Sri Lanka are killing it this world cup.
[1] Life
5 April 2007, early morning
I peaked through the blinds this morning to find the city covered in snow. Not a lot of snow mind you, but still, its snow — in April. We have had one of the mildest winters I can remember. I just wish it would end already.
[1] Life
1 April 2007, early afternoon
Dilshan follows up a 4 with a 6 to end Sri Lanka’s innings — that’s how you play cricket. Sri Lanka posted a score of 303 for 5. That’s a great score, and its quite likely they can win this game. They got off to a very poor start, losing Tharanga and Sangakkara very early in the game. After 10 overs they were only at 30 something runs, which is quite uncharacteristic for Sri Lanka. All this changed at around the 15th over, when Jayasuriya started whacking away at the ball. He didn’t really let up till he got his century. Sri Lanka have been playing great this world cup. I expect some great bowling from them in the upcoming inning. The West Indies have some strong batsman, but they haven’t done much yet this world cup.
Update: Sri Lanka pretty much rocked the West Indies. The bowling and fielding in the second innings was excellent. All the bowlers got a couple wickets each — even the all rounders bowled a fairly long low-run spell. Sri Lanka played a wicked match. I’m pretty confident they can make it to the semi-finals if they keep this up.
Life
30 March 2007, mid-afternoon
If I was ever commissioned to write a Bollywood song, it would be called: “F.Y.I. love you”. I can picture it now.
[2] Life
24 March 2007, early evening
The skinniest of our three fish was named little Ram, after me. This morning we woke up to find him struggling to swim around his tank. He was on his side and things weren’t looking too good for him. We fed him one last time, and that was that. He liked to swim around the fish tank, and eat fish food. It was a simple life, but he liked it. He is survived by Little Shima, his fiancee fish.
[10] Life
23 March 2007, mid-morning
In line with my post earlier in the day, those of you on Flickr who have cute little “oldschool..” banners on your Flickr buddy icons are lame-asses. The period of time between when Flickr started up and when Flickr got bought is pretty big. Pretty much everyone on my contact list is an “old school user” without having posted many photos, joined many groups, or done much at all with Flickr. The internets makes me crazy.
[6] Life
23 March 2007, early morning
Shima was bugging me for a good half hour yesterday because she wanted a nice photo of herself to put up on her stupid-ass Facebook. For those who don’t know Facebook used to be a social networking site for University students, which has slowly morphed into a social networking site for anybody. My friend Matt recently sold out and joined as well. One by one my friends are falling; I get random emails inviting me to join from friends all the time. My opinion of Facebook matches my opinion of MySpace and Friendster and all those other sites: its not very high. Hanging out behind your computer, alone, “talking” to people — stalking people — has its place, but i’m not sure i’d call it being social.
Update: The update I never thought I’d make: Fumio Funakoshi.
[37] Life
21 March 2007, early morning
Shima and I bought three fish for Persian New Year. The skinniest one we named Little Ram, the one with the round head we named Shima, and the other we named Steph, because the real Steph was over when we were discussing fish names. Steph, the fish, passed away this morning. I’m glad she made it to the New Year. She was a good fish, and she will be missed.
[6] Life
20 March 2007, late morning
The World Cup of Cricket is taking place right now. I watched a fair amount of two Cricket matches over the weekend: India vs. Bangladesh, and Pakistan vs. Ireland. Both games were shocking to say the least.
Read the rest of this post. (237 words)
[7] Life
15 March 2007, early morning
Tuesday night I jumped over fire with Shima and her mom for Chaharshanbe Suri (چهارشنبه‌سوری). It is one of several events that lead up to Nurooz (نوروز), the Persian New Year. The event took place at Ashbridges Bay, by the Beaches. Four fires were set up in a row in the sand and people would take turns jumping over each of them. Little children, too small to jump by themselves, would be helped by their parents. It was all a bit disorganized, and the ground was a bit slippery, so I was expecting someone to fall into the fire at some point during the night; while we were there this didn’t happen, though there was one very close call. Going to these events is always an interesting experience — if only because at any given event there will be 40 or so Iranians who all know each other, and myself.
[3] Life
9 March 2007, early morning
Shima bought me an Optimus Prime action figure yesterday. She was in a good mood since she got the Committee of Adjustments job she wanted. I’m always asking her for action figures, and I’m only half joking when I do so. This one is more of a model that a full blown figure. I might leave it at work. My desk has no personality.
[6] Life
5 March 2007, early morning
I came back from lunch at Yasi’s place to find Shima hard at work making Banana Bread. She was letting her aggression out on some far too ripe bananas. (She was mad at me for not taking out the recycling, buying nails I was supposed to buy, and for generally being a lazy-ass.) When I first met Shima she was almost proud about the fact she couldn’t cook. More so, she would make no attempt whatsoever to try and cook, she was so convinced she couldn’t do it. I’m sure she regrets not trying sooner: she may have ate better while away at Waterloo. Her Banana Bread turned out pretty good; certainly an excellent first attempt at the dish. She and I made Ghaimeh Polo for dinner, which also turned out quite well. Cooking for 1 is a chore, and though ultimately satisfying, usually not worth all the effort. Cooking for 2 is infinitely more enjoyable.
[3] Life
2 March 2007, early morning
Yesterday night snow, rain, and ice of biblical proportions rained down upon us here in Toronto. Today the ground is wet, but you’d never know how crap the weather was yesterday. I was all excited about having a snow day. I should have known better.
[1] Life
1 March 2007, early morning
Being the scrawniest of all my friends, every single time I’ve had to move I really end up doing the least work. I’ll warn my friend Dave or Mezan that a box is heavy, and they’ll look at me like I’m an idiot and lug it away. (That’s when I have boxes, I have a bad habit of not packing properly.) I think yesterday was some sort of karmic readjustment: I helped my friend Steph move last night.
I arrived at 8:00 at Steph’s new place — I was part of the B Team, the A Team had shuttled her stuff from North York to the City. Steph, who is moving into a 400 sq foot apartment, had three cars and a vans worth of stuff. And as I soon found out, that was just the first round of stuff. Her apartment in North York still wasn’t empty. Moving this first batch of stuff wasn’t so bad, there were a lot of us helping out. However, not wanting to monopolize all of her friends’ time, she sent Jeff, Jessica, and Michelle home, leaving me and Monica to move the last wave of stuff — Monica who is skinny like me.
Moving the second wave was a battle, made worse by our forgetting to bring the dolly uptown. We parked her van diagonally in something that probably wasn’t a parking spot, turned on the flashes, and began several trips up and down the building with boxes of stuff. What’s crazy, is that we filled up a vans worth of stuff, and her apartment still wasn’t empty.
We sucked Shima into helping us unload this second wave. With the dolly and a shopping card we found in her building, it wasn’t too much trouble. It was at this point I left for the night. Steph and Monica went to get dinner. It was midnight.
I wouldn’t call the night fun, but I can say it was an experience.
[1] Life
21 February 2007, lunch time
Someone searched for phrase “How do you pronounce Shima” and ended up at my site. Unfortunately, you wouldn’t learn much from the post they landed on. Maybe this post will show up next time. You pronounce Shima as follows: She-mah.
[5] Life
14 February 2007, early morning
It’s snowing — a lot — out side. I really wanted it to be a snow day. This is one of those times living in Canada doesn’t work out so well. There would need to be several times as much snow before they’d decide to call it a day.
[2] Life
8 February 2007, late morning
My shuffle has been spitting out Faye Wong track after Faye Wong track. The play list I use to make my random mixes contains the songs from almost every single album she’s put out. I guess when it randomly samples that list for songs to put of the shuffle, Faye Wong songs show up more often than not. I’m not complaining: Faye Wong is wicked. I just listened to her cover of Dreams by the Cranberries, which makes me want to watch Chungking Express.
[12] Life | Music
8 February 2007, early morning
In Iran, a shop keeper may refuse your money when you want to buy something; If you compliment someone on an article of clothing, they may offer it to you; A taxi cab driver may refuse to charge you a fare, saying it was his pleasure to give you a lift. These are all examples of tarouf, a sort of faux-politeness Iranians subscribe to. The offers usually aren’t legitimate: you are supposed to politely decline the hospitality. It can get more complicated than that: for example, someone may ask you to come to their home for lunch or dinner, but you don’t know if they are being sincere. There would need to be a back and forth till one can correctly determine whether the offer is legitimate or not. There isn’t a real English counterpart to the word tarouf, though I think what I’ve described is pretty close. I find stuff like this interesting; words or ideas that have no real equivalent in English.
I started thinking about the word tarouf because I learned about the Serbian word inat while reading Drina Bridge. When NATO was bombing Serbia and Montenegro many Serbians reacted by throwing large public gatherings; when you are being bombed this isn’t a good thing to do. This is an example of inat: stubborn reliance or defiance in spite of what the consequences may be. That’s my stab at a definition from reading Drina Bridge and looking up articles on the web. I still get the sense some of the meaning gets lost when you try and translate the word into English — much like the word tarouf.
I can’t think of anything in Tamil like this. It’s possible I just don’t know the Tamil word for forcing your kids to become engineers, doctors, and accountants.
[10] Life
4 February 2007, terribly early in the morning
Listening to Life After Death by Biggie. I found it at a used CD shop on Queen — an awesome find. This CD is really good; I can’t imagine who would want to sell it. I’ve been looking for this CD for ages and ages now. I have all his other music. This isn’t much of an accomplishment: unlike Tupac, Biggie’s musical output took a hit after he died.
Life | Music
2 February 2007, early morning
I’m almost done Bloodletting and Miraculous Cures by Vincent Lam. I’ve really liked it so far, and I can’t imagine ending up disappointed with it in the last 20 or so pages. While reading one of the short stories on the SARS outbreak, which I did during the bus ride home from work last night and the bus ride to work this morning, I felt my chest tense up like I was getting bronchitis. It is strange how your body reacts to things.
Comics and Books | Life
