Category Archives: NineToFive outside the 925

I want to stay another season/see summer upon this sorry land

(3)BeautifulThings, All-Star Crackstar Squad, NineToFive outside the 925

Raindrops keep fallin' on my head
Raindrops keep fallin’ on my head, originally uploaded by yaznotjaz.

The heat wasn’t working at the office today, which means I spent most of the day being aggravated about the cold and – of course – engaging in monologues with God about how much I disapprove of this winter business.

“It’s all in your head, Yasminay,” my father would say, but my father wasn’t the one who had to sit there with blue fingernails all day long, either. It’s enough to make a kid want to turn around and return home, even though it took said kid 1 hour and 40 minutes to get to work this morning. (Californians are idiots when it comes to driving in the rain, apparently.)

Leaving work at the end of the day, I stepped out the front door into the evening darkness and the first words out of my mouth upon seeing the pouring rain were, “Aw, f*ck.” Needless to say, I felt a severe dearth of things to be happy about today, but my earlier comment-gone-too-lengthy over on Chai’s “Three Appreciations” post forced me to rethink the gloominess. (It took far too long to brainstorm all this, though, trust me.)

Driving home too fast on roads that were too wet, blinded by inky-black asphalt and incessant rain, I turned up both the heat and the music and kept my eyes on the yellow line for guidance, smiling wryly as U2 sang, You got to get yourself together…

Here, then, unnumbered and expanded, is my list of rocking things about today, in spite of the freakin’ rain that makes me shake my fist at God:

Co-workers who make me laugh so much about pointless things that my stomach hurts and tears pour out of my eyes. We laughed about falafel, of all things. Falafel are funny.

New philosophy, stolen off the incomparable Z: “I like to call things I don’t wanna do ‘adventures,’ to make them suck less.”

Deciding that I am going to start bringing cocoa powder and milk into the office, so I can make myself hot chocolate while everyone else stands around drinking their (nasty!) tea. Also, this is just an excuse to warm up my hands on a hot mug. The co-worker Zee offered me tea today while making some for everyone else, and I just smirked and shook my head in refusal. “Yasmine doesn’t drink tea,” laughed B. “She only drinks cranbery juice, and eats doughnuts and candy and string cheese.”
“Hey, I bought some dried fruit from the grocery store yesterday,” I protested, but no one believed me.

Friends who check out my gmail status message [“every day is yasmine day”] and IM me with, “Happy Yasmine day!” Another variation:
J: “Yasmine day is today!”
Me: “Dude, what are you talking about, it’s EVERY DAY. Get with the program.”
J: “I didnt say it wasn’t everyday. I said it was today. Isn’t it today? And tomorrow I’d say it again.”

In conversation with a friend, I make a point and finish it off with my requisite threats of stabbing and an emphatic, “The end!”
He responds with, “To be continued,” and I can’t help but laugh: “I hate you, no one has ever waylaid my ‘the end’ line so well before.”

Jogging down to the end of the street to grab the umbrella from my car for a co-worker, I’m reminded of how much I miss running. No – how much I miss enjoying running. (Un)fortunately, I am no longer 12-17 years old; now, I’m ostensibly grown-up and I like who I’ve become, so I don’t have anything to run from anymore, myself included.

Male friends who can admit they have “boy crushes.”
Me, as a wholly rhetorical question: “How come I don’t have any boy crushes?”
MF, generously: “You can have some of mine.”

Trying to explain to the buddy Z where to locate the seat-warmer buttons in his car. Seat-warmers on a day like this? Freakin’ ROCKING. When I become dictator of the world, I will ensure that everyone has seat-warmers in their cars – and their very own personal blue raspberry slurpee machines, too. So, vote for me, kids – I might even have another discussion with God about the weather, while I’m at it.

(More than three) beautiful things: The semi-work edition

(3)BeautifulThings, NineToFive outside the 925


Originally uploaded by yaznotjaz.

Okay, kids, so remember that part where I said I was going to post “three beautiful things” everyday? Well, clearly, it didn’t work so well, because – once again! – I haven’t really updated in nearly three weeks. The good news is, I’ve been scribbling down beautiful things in my lovely little Moleskine notebook, as I am wont to do with all potential weblog posts. The part where it backfired is the part where I neglected to type things out. But I guess the fact that all you all still stop by means you don’t mind reading about things three weeks later. Long live our communal procrastination tactics, rockstars!

Meanwhile, I’m drowning in project plans at work (three of them, kids, THREE!), so I apologize for what’ll be continued sporadic posting. But here’s some short stuff for you to read:

– Regarding the photo above, I recently posted it to flickr with the following title: “My fax cover-sheet got printed looking like this and I was so tempted to append a note saying, ‘Thank you kindly, clearly we appreciate your business/enjoy working with you,’ and just send it off like this.” I make myself laugh so much, you don’t even know.

– Funny subject line on email spam at work: “Hey, our boss got fired?”

– Funny spam subject line #2: “Offices have been closed permanently.”

– We received a shipment of new envelopes and brochures at the office, and I couldn’t stop going into the back room and lifting the flaps off the boxes and sniffing inside. I have decided I love the smell of new paper.

– Also, there was this work-related event where I had to do quite a bit of talking, and the Board has decided I am a “fantastic speaker,” as well as “articulate” and “personable.” Who knew? However (in somehow related news, just take my word for it), some Muslims apparently can’t handle headwraps, though. Muslims are so annoying sometimes. They needa stop with that drama.

Three Things (plus three more)

(3)BeautifulThings, Blogistan and the Wide World of Webs, NineToFive outside the 925

Sunlight shadows on the sidewalk, Friday afternoon
Sunlight shadows on the sidewalk, Friday afternoon, originally uploaded by yaznotjaz.

This afternoon, after clicking over to Blogger.com and pausing before signing in (believe it or not, this is something I do often: I decide I want to update this weblog, I click over to Blogger, and then I just stop, overcome by a feeling of overwhelming helplessness: Where do I even begin? – too many stories to share, and, clearly, I think too much and thus end up writing and sharing nothing)…so, anyway, in the few moments today as my fingers hovered restlessly over the mouse and I debated yet again whether or not to sign into Blogger, I discovered my new favorite weblog: it’s one in the list of current Blogs of Note, and entitled Three Beautiful Things. Someone named Spitfire left a lovely comment there that summed up the entire premise of the Three Beautiful Things weblog:

The natural, simple happiness of the commonplace things is subtle and beautiful, and yet it requires a well-trained eye to appreciate it.
Those who find in the small details the true reason for being alive are to be praised. The search for sources of authentic smiles is a difficult, but noble and delightful activity.

And as Clare herself of Three Beautiful Things notes:

The thing about 3BT is, it’s not that my life is particularly beautiful (although I know as a single woman living in England in 2007, I have a lot to be thankful for) but that I find myself constantly on the look-out for beautiful things.

Leaving work at 5.30pm today, I swung the front door shut behind me, and something about the late afternoon light made me stop dead in my tracks. Seconds later, my bag hit the ground and I was kneeling on the walkway, camera in hand, snapping photos of the sunlight on the grass. When I’d decided a dozen photos was more than enough, I stood up, brushed off my knees, and, before turning away to head back to my car, I stopped and aimed one final, level glance at the shadows, thinking, I have to remember this moment so I can write about it later.

So, because I am nothing if not a proponent of celebrating the mundane (and a lover of the word beautiful), I’ve decided I’m going to try this three beautiful things exercise myself, in order to get myself back into the swing of writing regularly. Perhaps (I’m pretty sure) I’ll end up recording more than three things at a time, but the point – for me – is to just write. Simple, seemingly mundane things would be a good start, because in the last few months I’ve become so overwhelmed by what I haven’t written that it’s been difficult to get myself out of this blogging backlog and actually write.

I’m aiming to try this everyday. Ambitious, I know, but I’ve got to start somewhere. And because I’ve missed Blogistan comment-box conversations with my fellow bloggers and blurkers [blog+lurkers] so much, you are more than welcome to add your own three-things to the comments.

So, here’s my Friday: Things that made me smile, in numerical form. One, two, three, GO.

1. The way the late afternoon sunlight and shadows slant across the sidewalk. [See photo above. It took me far too long to decide which photo to post; they’re all so sunshine-y beautiful and make me especially happy because this past week has been all about the rain.]

2. Organizing a conference call for work – and having it go off without a hitch – and crossing everything off Page One of my four-page project plan. (I love the strikethrough function! Pages 2-4 must be completed during this upcoming week, though. Gross.)

3. GMail chat conversation with HijabMan about how he’s planning on flying notes around his office. The mental image made me laugh, and what’s even funnier is that I can imagine my co-worker/buddy B and I doing the same.

4. Phone conversations spent remembering karaoke with old co-workers, back in the good ol’ downtown Sacramento days.

5. Accolades –
HijabMan: “Wow, how did you get so lucky…? Dude, you are so a rockstar.”
Yasmine: “Because they love me!”
HijabMan: “I’ve never heard you say something so…self-centered.”

6. Quick GMail chat conversation with the buddy Z about how, as children, we used to light things on fire, which inexplicably ends with him exclaiming, “You, sire, are a DILETTANTE.”

Three Things (plus three more)

(3)BeautifulThings, Blogistan and the Wide World of Webs, NineToFive outside the 925

Sunlight shadows on the sidewalk, Friday afternoon
Sunlight shadows on the sidewalk, Friday afternoon, originally uploaded by yaznotjaz.

This afternoon, after clicking over to Blogger.com and pausing before signing in (believe it or not, this is something I do often: I decide I want to update this weblog, I click over to Blogger, and then I just stop, overcome by a feeling of overwhelming helplessness: Where do I even begin? – too many stories to share, and, clearly, I think too much and thus end up writing and sharing nothing)…so, anyway, in the few moments today as my fingers hovered restlessly over the mouse and I debated yet again whether or not to sign into Blogger, I discovered my new favorite weblog: it’s one in the list of current Blogs of Note, and entitled Three Beautiful Things. Someone named Spitfire left a lovely comment there that summed up the entire premise of the Three Beautiful Things weblog:

The natural, simple happiness of the commonplace things is subtle and beautiful, and yet it requires a well-trained eye to appreciate it.
Those who find in the small details the true reason for being alive are to be praised. The search for sources of authentic smiles is a difficult, but noble and delightful activity.

And as Clare herself of Three Beautiful Things notes:

The thing about 3BT is, it’s not that my life is particularly beautiful (although I know as a single woman living in England in 2007, I have a lot to be thankful for) but that I find myself constantly on the look-out for beautiful things.

Leaving work at 5.30pm today, I swung the front door shut behind me, and something about the late afternoon light made me stop dead in my tracks. Seconds later, my bag hit the ground and I was kneeling on the walkway, camera in hand, snapping photos of the sunlight on the grass. When I’d decided a dozen photos was more than enough, I stood up, brushed off my knees, and, before turning away to head back to my car, I stopped and aimed one final, level glance at the shadows, thinking, I have to remember this moment so I can write about it later.

So, because I am nothing if not a proponent of celebrating the mundane (and a lover of the word beautiful), I’ve decided I’m going to try this three beautiful things exercise myself, in order to get myself back into the swing of writing regularly. Perhaps (I’m pretty sure) I’ll end up recording more than three things at a time, but the point – for me – is to just write. Simple, seemingly mundane things would be a good start, because in the last few months I’ve become so overwhelmed by what I haven’t written that it’s been difficult to get myself out of this blogging backlog and actually write.

I’m aiming to try this everyday. Ambitious, I know, but I’ve got to start somewhere. And because I’ve missed Blogistan comment-box conversations with my fellow bloggers and blurkers [blog+lurkers] so much, you are more than welcome to add your own three-things to the comments.

So, here’s my Friday: Things that made me smile, in numerical form. One, two, three, GO.

1. The way the late afternoon sunlight and shadows slant across the sidewalk. [See photo above. It took me far too long to decide which photo to post; they’re all so sunshine-y beautiful and make me especially happy because this past week has been all about the rain.]

2. Organizing a conference call for work – and having it go off without a hitch – and crossing everything off Page One of my four-page project plan. (I love the strikethrough function! Pages 2-4 must be completed during this upcoming week, though. Gross.)

3. GMail chat conversation with HijabMan about how he’s planning on flying notes around his office. The mental image made me laugh, and what’s even funnier is that I can imagine my co-worker/buddy B and I doing the same.

4. Phone conversations spent remembering karaoke with old co-workers, back in the good ol’ downtown Sacramento days.

5. Accolades –
HijabMan: “Wow, how did you get so lucky…? Dude, you are so a rockstar.”
Yasmine: “Because they love me!”
HijabMan: “I’ve never heard you say something so…self-centered.”

6. Quick GMail chat conversation with the buddy Z about how, as children, we used to light things on fire, which inexplicably ends with him exclaiming, “You, sire, are a DILETTANTE.”

Hickory dickory dock, the mouse ran up the clock

NineToFive outside the 925

In preparation for telephone interview
Originally uploaded by yaznotjaz.

You know what’s the most annoying thing that could possibly happen right before you have a morning telephone interview?

HICCUPS.

Yeah, that’s right. It was hella annoying and nerve-wracking and made me want to stab someone, which is not the best way to feel five minutes before you’re about to begin an interview, telephone or otherwise.

Also, it’s perfectly fine that I put together a small pile of notecards the night before, helpfully labeled with such headings as “Strengths,” “Org. mission,” “Prepare,” and “Questions to ask.” (We all know I hate phones – because they’re so impersonal, mainly – but, damn, a telephone interview feels like such an open-book exam, since you can sit there with your notes spread out all around you, the answers right in front of your face. I’m all about open-book exams.)

But the fact that I had to add a terse note reminding myself to eat breakfast before the interview? Just plain sad.

I just roll through town and my window’s got a view

All-Star Crackstar Squad, Hit the Road, NineToFive outside the 925


Driving home, originally uploaded by yaznotjaz.

Generally, I will be the first to admit I’m a horrible friend. I rarely manage to pick up my phone when it’s ringing, and then it takes me a week (or two?) to return calls. I don’t respond to emails in a timely manner. I’m always right, and you’re always wrong. Those are just a few examples.

I think I have a few redeeming qualities, though. First and foremost, I can be counted on to do or say stupid things, so that you remember it – and remind me as well as the rest of the world of it – for years. Like the time I retorted, “I wake up looking cute!” Or the time, during freshman year of college, I loudly (and quite justifiably, I believe) cussed Somayya out in the middle of general chemistry, in a lecture hall filled with hundreds of students. Or the time that – check this, this is a crazy story – driving to school one morning, I stopped for gas halfway, only to realize I had literally no money on me. And neither enough gas to get to school (thirty miles to the east) nor enough to get back home (thirty miles to the west). So, basically, I was stranded. After a few minutes of “Oh, shit!”, I frantically called Somayya to brainstorm what I should so. Thankfully, brainstorming was not required; she drove thirty miles to come rescue my sorry ass, and enough gas was pumped into my car to not only get me to school, but also back home that evening.

Basically, if nothing else, you should keep me around for amusement purposes. I’ll have lots of stupid stories to tell my grandchildren someday.

I got so sidetracked on my stupidity, I almost forgot to mention that my second redeeming quality in terms of friendship is that I will drive to the end of the earth, to have lunch with you. As long as I have gas money, of course. Lunch money, I’m not so concerned about; that part always has a way of working out.

Last Wednesday, I drove sixty miles to have lunch with some friends. Oh, I also had to return books to both the Women’s Resources & Research Center and the University library, but we’ll ignore that part. After all, I’d kept those books seven months past their due date. Returning books is just a convenient excuse to have lunch, as far as I’m concerned.

[For the bookworms amongst you, who are curious about such things, here are the two books I loved enough to have kept more than half a year past their due date, plus the third book that I had simply forgotten was still in my possession:

1 – A Life Removed: Hunting for Refuge in the Modern World (Rose George)
2 – Peace Begins Here: Palestinians & Israelis Listening to Each Other (Thich Nhat Hanh)
3 – Her Mother’s Ashes 2: More Stories by South Asian Women in Canada & the United States (edited by Nurjehan Aziz)

You should definitely read the first two.]

When I returned the last book and apologized profusely to B at the WRRC for keeping it so long, she blinked and said, “Don’t tell me you drove all the way up from the Bay Area just to bring this back!”

“Well, kind of,” I grinned.

She looked horrified.

“Don’t worry!” I laughed. “I’m sure I’ll find a few other things to occupy myself with while I’m here!”

And I did, indeed. A few minutes later, I found the Lovely L Lady, and in no time I was lunching it up with L and surprise guests H#2 and Somayya. After that, a free hour, wherein L and I headed over to Borders. You know you’ve got a good friend, when her idea of hanging out includes bookstore trips. While L found a chair, I wandered aimlessly around the store and then settled down on the floor in a pool of sunshine by the front windows, with a copy of East West Woman magazine [Sheetal Sheth‘s on the cover! And there’s an interview with VH1’s Aamer Haleem, whom L – who is Sudanese – instantly recognized while this Desi girl didn’t] and Who’s Afraid of a Large Black Man? in hand.

Then I was off to Sacramento to stop by and stalk some old co-workers. I managed to find a parking spot on Q St., and had a quick moment of nostalgia for all the times my co-workers and I used to fight over the 2-hour zones along that specific block. The ecstatic greetings I got from everyone were both beautiful and mind-boggling. (They: Where have you BEEN?!, I: They really LIKE me?!). I was there long enough to gush over Z’s stylin’ hair, tease K about how tall he had grown in my absence, make fun of H#3’s hair, laugh at A’s bluntness (“I called you?”), and coordinate future plans to hang out with my girls (first week of March!). Perfect.

Half an hour later, I rushed to meet up with my buddy S at Cosi in downtown Sacramento, its only California location. I nearly walked right by him without recognizing him, because he had just gotten off work and was still dressed in his button-down shirt, dress slacks, and a tie. A TIE! “Lookit you lookin’ all spiffy!” I crowed.

I love hanging out with S, simply because he is, to put it mildly, on crack. Anjum will back me up here. I was supposed to do a second lunch with him, but I wasn’t really hungry by that point, so we stopped by Cosi to get some light food and sit around. I ordered a mint-flavored arctic latte, and then nearly picked a fight with S at the register because he busted out with his card and insisted on paying for both of us. Now, to be honest, I have absolutely no shame about letting friends cover my meals when I’m feeling broke. But when I do have money, I’m highly stubborn about paying my own way.

“Aww, let him pay!” said the girl at the register, who thought he was a sweet kid.

“No!” I said. “Take the damn five dollars, S.”

“Happy Valentine’s Day!” he said to me, handing his credit card to the girl.

I rolled my eyes. “You’re a day late and, also, I don’t care about Valentine’s Day. Here’s your five dollars, buddy.” I practically had to throw the bill at him, and then escaped to the huge red armchairs in the corner.

I tried to convince S to come visit the Bay next week. I even picked a day for him, a day he’s off from work.

“Oh, wait, I can’t come; I have work the next day!” he whined.

“So?”

“So I can’t come to the Bay, then. I’m working the next day.”

“Child, that’s why I’m asking you to come on the day that you’re off from work!”

“But I’m working the next day!”

At this point, I figured out he was just trying to give me a hard time. I felt like throwing something at him, but I pointed out reasonably, “It’s not like you’re going to be doing anything important on your day off, anyway. What’re you gonna do, sit around and watch movies on your laptop?”

“Basically,” he laughed. “I do that at work all the time.”

“What, watch movies on the computer?”

“Yeah.”

“And no one notices?!”

“No, I just minimize the movie screen when someone walks by.”

“Dude, you need to calm down with that, seriously.”

He gave me a scornful look, and uttered the best lines of the entire day: “What are they gonna do? Fire me?! You can’t fire me. I’m Employee of the Month, b*tches!”

I collapsed in laughter. While he continued muttering about his “Employee of the Month, b*tches!” status, I promised I’d photoshop him something about that convincing argument of his. [Check it, here!] I also added, “You’d better calm down, buddy, the month’s almost over.”

“What’re they gonna do? Fire me?”

“Yeah, ’cause you’re Employee of the Month, b*tches!”

Ahhh, it was a good day.

After gathering my laughing self up out of the huge red armchair, I bid goodbye to S and hightailed it back to the Lovely L Lady’s place, where I modeled for and played with her shiny, new digital camera. And, then, time to head home! And, man, you can be sure all those miles (that’s nothing!) were damn well worth it.

So… Anyone wanna do lunch?

Well, I walked over the bridge into the city where I live

Bibliothek, Conversations and Encounters, NineToFive outside the 925

Last week, I went to Borders to study for my neurobiology and my molecular & cellular bio final exams.

(As an aside, nothing has made me mentally curse over the past few weeks as much as thoughts of neurobiology do: Friggin’ hell! I understand that NPB stands for Neurobiology, Physiology, and Behavior, but, friggin’ hell, maybe I’d actually understand it if it were less physiology and more behavior. So, once again, friggin’ hell, man! Alright, I’ll stop. Moving along now.)

I walk into the Borders cafe, a bit chagrined to find all the tiny, individual tables taken. The only one that looks nearly empty is the long, rectangular table in the center of the cafe, occupied only at one corner by a mother and her small daughter. I approach them from the opposite end of the table and smile. “Mind if I sit here?”
The mother shakes her head. “It’s a bit too big for just us.” The daughter, sitting in her mother’s lap, regards me wide-eyed.
I smile my thanks and drop my messenger bag on the floor, place my discman and headphones a bit more carefully atop the table, and pull out a chair at the corner diagonally across from them.

“I saw my daddy today!” the little girl tells me as I sit down. “And he brought me this juice!”
The little girl is Asian, although her mother apparently is not. The daughter has lots of shiny black hair and huge, dark eyes, and she’s gulping down an Odwalla Superfood beverage, holding the opening of the plastic bottle right up against her mouth in the manner that little kids are wont to do, so that her mouth is totally surrounded by a large green-black ring. In a word: Adorable. I suppress a smile.
“Is the juice good?” I ask with genuine interest, since it looks really…well, greenish-black, and I’m trying not to wince at the color. She nods enthusiastically.

She points outside in the direction of the parking garage. “We came down here in the elevator!” And then, with characteristic forthrightness: “How old are you?”
“I’m 24. How old are you?”
“Four. No, four and a half.”
“Not yet,” laughs her mother.
A stranger sits down across from me, smiling politely at us before delving into his book.
The little girl watches him curiously “Do you know him?” she asks me. “Does he know you?”
I shake my head, while her mother speaks softly into her ear.
“How old is he?”
“Maybe not everyone wants to say how old they are,” says her mother.

I take my books out of my bag and spread them out in front of me while the little girl watches. “How did you tie up your hair?” she asks, pointing at my headwrap.
“Well,” I say, accustomed to hearing this question often, “I doubled my hair up in a pony-tail, and then I tied a bandanna around it, and then I just wrapped this other big scarf around my head.”
“Can you show me?”
Her mother tries to shush her. “It probably takes a lot of time, and I don’t think she would want to take off her scarf and re-do it all here.”
“I can tie up my hair,” the little girl murmurs. “I can tie my hair around my hair, too.” She gathers her hair in front of her and starts braiding it. I’m smiling to myself, because this is the most talkative, articulate four year old I have ever met. And also because she is sitting in her mother’s lap with her back against her mother’s stomach, and her mother seems to have no idea of the large black ring around her daughter’s mouth.

As I pick my sweater off the table and drape it across the back of my chair (never underestimate the speed with which my fingernails turn blue in air conditioned environments), the little girl remarks, “You look different without your coat.”
“I do? How?”
She shrugs. Her mother smiles and correctly points out, “She wasn’t wearing her coat when she came in.”
“Yes, she was!”
As they get up to leave (the mother finally noticing and trying in vain to wipe the black circle off her daughter’s mouth), I turn around in my chair to say goodbye. While passing by my chair, the little girl gravely sticks out her hand, and I shake it just as solemnly. “I’m Yasmine. What’s your name?”
“Lily.”
“Bye, Lily! It was nice talking to you.”

Only after she is out the door do I realize I could have added, “We both have flower names!” But maybe that would have been overdoing it. After all, I do laughingly refer to my own as a “generic flower name” often enough.

I find a small table of my own and move my stuff over, but now that Lily and her entertaining chatter are gone, I’m bored already. I watch everyone else around me, in an effort to distract myself from studying, and cringe at the too many girls under twelve who sashay about in their ruffled mini skirts. My blend of pity and irritation is soon alleviated by my amusement at the old man gravely reading “eBay for Dummies” across the room, and the South Asian boys next to me fervently discussing the merits of “Nintendo Power.”

I look up for a split second, and the woman sitting with her back to me at the next table is perusing a book whose pages address concerns such as “Flaking Eyeshadow” and “Bleeding Lipstick.” I want to say, “Buddy, eyeshadow is fun, but seriously, makeup is not worth all that drama if you have to read a whole book about it,” but decide to leave her to her reading.

When I get bored of biology in all its various forms, I wander over to check out the real books, because we all know textbooks don’t count. The Calvin and Hobbes compilations hold my interest the longest. I stand there and laugh, speedily flipping through the pages – like I used to with those mini animation booklets we made in elementary school – then drag the books back to my table, against my better academic-oriented judgment. “I’ve got nothing but consonants!” continuously exclaims Calvin in outrage, spelling three-letter words as Hobbes condescendingly put far more elaborate tongue-twisters. It reminds me of all the times I’ve played Literati over at Yahoo! games with Chai & Co., and whined about not having any vowels at my disposal.

A middle-aged gentleman leans over my table on his way out and says, “Thank you for brightening my lunch,” then turns and scuttles away before I can even think to formulate a proper reply. I don’t know why exactly he was thanking me, unless, knowing me, I had probably smiled absently in his direction whenever I turned my head to scrutinize the local Persian artist’s paintings hanging on the wall just behind his table. I laugh silently at how I am The Most Oblivious Person In The World™ (yes, it merits capital letters and a trademark symbol, it’s that bad), and am reminded of H#3 and his habit of shamelessly flirting with every girl at our workplace. One morning, I walked over to his cubicle to grab some paperwork and greeted him with my standard, “How goes it, buddy?”
“Better now,” he said smoothly.
“Oh,” I said with concern. “Were you not feeling well?”
His winsome smile slipped away, replaced by a wide-eyed, incredulous, “ohmygod she totally didn’t get it” look. Meanwhile, I wandered off obliviously, and then laughed out loud when it finally hit me while I was sitting at my desk, a good hour or so later.

I listen to Amos Lee on my headphones while consuming ice-blended chocolate drinks and a raspberry latte. Two years later, and I sadly still don’t know the difference between espressos and mochas and lattes and whatnot.

As I am leaving Borders at the end of the day, I catch a flash of movement out of the corner of my eye, and turn to see a little boy running by, exclaiming in wide-eyed awe, “Dad, I SAW BUTTERFLIES!” My wide grin comes naturally, as does the irrepressible laugh that follows. The other cafe people look up with vague interest, then return to their magazines and coffees and books and muted conversations.

Those were the best parts of my day: Lily and Calvin and The Butterfly Boy.

so you think you can hold the world up by a string…

Casa420 and Familia, NineToFive outside the 925, Rhymes and unrhymed lines, Suckool

so you think you can hold the world up by a string.

You’re a tough crowd, Blogistan. I recently update this joint after a three weeks’ hiatus, and I get complaints that the post isn’t sufficiently about me. Not to mention the fact that every time I write about male friends/acquaintances/nice guys at Borders/old men at the post office and at cafes, my audience (that would be you) invariably articulates their suspicion that said male figure is hitting on me. JESUS. Peace be upon him.

Lucky for you, I have a love affair with post-it pads (and, more recently, pocket-sized Moleskine notebooks, discovered while shopping for birthday presents for my brother), and carry one (or two or three) around with me wherever I go. The end result? Three weeks’ worth of words, phrases, experiences, snippets of conversation, lines randomly recalled and quickly scribbled down in the midst of lectures and discussion sections, just so I could share them with you all on the weblog. That hiatus turned out to be a but more extensive than I had anticipated. I need to get all this stuff out of my head, and, although I could probably make individual weblog entries out of each of these, I’m far too lazy to even attempt such an endeavor. For your edification and amusement, then, I present an update almost entirely about me, list-style based off my post-it notes, and with minimal references to guys. Imagine that.

– The past month’s conversations included such highlights on my part as:

“Hi, I’m calling to check on the status of that tow truck I called in for, about forty minutes ago… What? No, I’m not in Southern California!”

and

“I’ve taken almost enough English classes at this campus to declare a minor in it, if I wanted. What do you mean I still need to take English 101?!”

Between these and a host of other disagreeable experiences, I’m sure you’re starting to see why I mentally referred to these as my What the French-Connection-UK! weeks. They were filled mainly with thoughts of homicide, and attempts to squash an ever-present rising surge of profanity in my head, and made me feel, by turns, like crying or smashing something. And since I’m not much of a crier, being a lean, mean, green smashing machine felt like a good option. Except I think Najm already has first dibs on being the Incredible Hulk. It felt like one really, really long day, the kind you’re just itching to use the “fast forward” button on.

– Let me tell you about my major advisor. My major advisor has the expressionless, dead stare down to an art. It’s highly disconcerting to be confronted with that blank look when I’m stopping by to get some questions answered and to ask for advice. Because she’s an advisor, no? No, apparently not. My advisor is not supposed to make me do a teeth-gritting, fist-clenching, sidewalk-stomping dance of annoyance in downtown Sacramento while trying not to shout on the phone at her that, “No, my minor is from the College of Letters & Science! So my minor petition is not supposed to go to the Dean’s office at Ag&ES; it’s supposed to go to the Dean’s office at Letters & Science, even though my major is at Ag&ES!” My advisor is also not supposed to ask in response to this, “Are you sure?” Yes, I’m sure, dammit, because I’ve made phone calls and tracked people down and verified everything I needed to know and even everything I didn’t need to know. Why are you not sure, is the question.

My major advisor also has a deplorable habit of answering one single freakin’ question of mine, then getting up and crossing the room to stand by the door while I’m still sitting next to her desk, mouth half-open to launch into my next question. Apparently, this is her signal that my time is up. No “Do you have any further questions?” No “Is there anything else I could help you with today?” Not even an “Okay, bye.” As I mentioned to my sister once, “I want closure, dammit!” The last time I was there, my advisor pulled the same “getting-up-and-heading-for-the-door” maneuver. I rolled my eyes and followed, accustomed to this by now. At the door, she flicked her finger against the stack of papers I held in my hand and asked, “What are these?”
“These,” I replied coldly, “concern other questions I wanted to ask you, but apparently you don’t have time for them today.”

My major advisor is an incompetent buffoon, my minor advisor is never available and should thus never have been granted that position, and how come I have a faculty advisor I never even knew about? No one tells me these things. Also, people who are getting paid to supposedly make my life easier should be doing exactly that. But, no, I am surrounded by morons.

Yes, I’m kind of bitter. I’m almost over it, don’t worry. Like I said, it’s been a long few weeks.

– H#4 (I have too many friends with “H” and “S” names. I swear I’m going to start numbering them like this) tried to talk me out of skipping class one day by grimly informing me that, based on her calculations, each time I skip one lecture, I am wasting $25 of that quarter’s tuition. My friends are such engineering nerds, can you tell?

– My new favorite word to use in everyday conversation is “periodically.” I do a lot of things periodically. Like skip breakfast, skip class, and not study.

– The last two movies I watched were Fida and The Notebook. I know, I know, I can’t believe I watched the latter either. If I could, I would surgically remove the memory from my mind. The best part about both movies was that everyone dies in the end. There, I gave it all away. Anyway, The Notebook was horrifically sleep-inducing, and I can’t believe all the girls I know kept recommending it to me. Geez louise. My sister and I were not impressed. Bean summed up our disappointment and disgust by pointing out, “Maybe it’s just that we’ve lost our sense of subtle details. We’ve gotten so used to the desi films that we can’t handle stuff like The Notebook anymore, because we’re just waiting for a full-out brawl.” Besides, that night I had a nightmare related to the movie. I swear. And I don’t usually even have nightmares.

– Somayya and I saw a Hummer limousine in Sacramento a couple of weeks ago.

– The first day of NPB lecture, having come to class unprepared, I asked the girl next to me, “Can I borrow a coupla sheets of paper off you?” Yeah, I know, how do you borrow paper? I guess I should have said, “Would you mind if I asked you for a few sheets of paper?” Not that it matters anyway, because I only took about two lines worth of notes and then ended up sleeping through most of the lecture, and the girl gave me a cold stare on my way out. I’m sorry I wasted your paper that I borrowed, geez freakin’ louise. Would you like it back now that I’m done borrowing it?

– My new favorite poem is T.S. Eliot’s Ash Wednesday. Deja vu when I got to the lines, Teach us to care and not to care/Teach us to sit still. I have read those somewhere before, a decade ago in a book I can’t recall.

And pray to God to have mercy upon us
And pray that I may forget
These matters that with myself I too much discuss
Too much explain
Because I do not hope to turn again
Let these words answer
For what is done, not to be done again
May the judgement not be too heavy upon us

[…]

Lord, I am not worthy
Lord, I am not worthy
but speak the word only.

– I am taking two science courses this quarter – NPB (neurobiology, physiology, and behavior) and MCB (molecular and cellular biology). Yes, gross, I know. God knows why I felt the need to put these off until now, seeing as how I’m not a science person, except for the fact that I used to be really good at physics. But as long as they don’t start talking about cellular respiration and the Krebs Cycle and all that drama, I should be okay. Taking classes with freshmen and sophomores is always amusing, though. They’re the ones who show up to line outside the lecture hall twenty minutes before class even begins. But it’s okay, because I keep getting mistaken for a seventeen year old anyway, so I blend in just fine. Plus, I’m still perpetually dazed and confused all the time, and I rarely look both ways before crossing the street.

– The first day of class, a guy in my MCB lecture leaned over to ask, “Excuse me, you’re not Fatima, are you?”
Who is Fatima and why does she look like me, is what I want to know.

– I’m officially losing my mind. The following three conversations are all the proof you need:

1) In a phone conversation a couple of weeks ago, Somayya and I were bemoaning the fact that we rarely see each other this quarter. “I know!” I said, “and we don’t even do our regular family weekend visits to see you all anymore.” Except I accidentally said “weekend wisits,” and Somayya and I both dissolved in laughter. It’s over, kids. I am officially a fob.

2) Last week at work, my co-worker K kept urging me to hurry up and finish the stuff I was working on, so that we could have our meeting. “We need to meet before 12!” he kept repeating, “because at 12, I’m leaving to go skiing in Lake Tahoe.”
“Stop trying to rush me,” I finally snapped. “Just because you’re going snowing does not mean our work schedules have to revolve around you and your stupid Lake Tahoe trip.”
“Snowing?” asked Somayya innocently. “What’s that?”
“I meant, skiiing. Or snowboarding. Or whatever the hell he’s planning on doing up there.”

3) “Tuesday Morning’s having a sale,” remarked my dad over dinner the other night. We love Tuesday Morning. How can you not be in love with a place that has everything 50-80% off?
We peered at the ads together.
“I don’t get this one,” I said. “They’re selling watches. Why are there random sunflowers in the picture?”
“You know,” said my dad. “Sunflowers? The sun? Time? Watches? See?”
I continued looking blank. “I still don’t get it.”
My dad gave me a pitying look and rolled his eyes, which is always hilarious to watch, because he absolutely does not know how to roll his eyes, so he always rolls his head around instead. “Okay,” he said. “You know how you can tell the time based on the position of the sun?”
“Ohh…” [pause] “Wait, why are the sunflowers there though?”
“Because sunflowers always face in the direction of the sun. Duh.” Except my dad doesn’t know how to say “duh” either, so it always comes out sounding like “daa.”
“Oh yeah. I think I used to know this, a long time ago.”
In the next life, I am going to be blonde.

– My NPB teaching assistant pronounces the word “iron” exactly the way it’s spelled: eye-ron. [I say “eye-yern.” How do you pronounce “iron”?] This was in reference to the structure of hemoglobin, or something. Clearly, I do not know anything about hemoglobin. Or anything about science at all, for that matter. Biology is bidah. The end.

That was a joke, by the way. I mentioned in an email to a friend the other day: “As one of my favorite Bay Area scholars/students of knowledge said in a speech recently, re. the Muslim community’s tendency to point fingers at one another and obsessively label things as haraam/bidah: ‘Well, you know what, YOU’RE HARAAM!’ “

– I’ve also recently realized that I never pronounce the “d” in “fundraiser”: Funraiser.

– Halaqa outing: As we were driving up Mt. Diablo, I remarked in reference to the hardcore bicyclists who were pedaling up the mountain: “Man, that’s hella exertion.”
My sister: “You just used ‘hella’ and ‘exertion’ in the same sentence. There’s something wrong with you.”
Me: “Hey, I’m a California girl with vocabulary, what can I say.”

– Yesterday, my right eye finally stopped twitching after three weeks. That’s an indicator of stress and exhaustion, someone once told me during freshman year. Some things just never change.

– Not to say that there weren’t good things about the past few weeks either. Like the Friday that was filled with rockstar friends, two (count ’em, TWO!) real meals, ice cream, offers to race down the stairs, jokes about the FBI watch list, and hilarious white-girl renditions of “I love you, 50 Cent! Holler!” And the officially labeled Tuesday From Hell, when I decided to “screw it all” (one of many such decisions in recent history) and finally escaped to the public park and sat on a sunny hill, eating french fries and watching the elementary school team play softball. And…well, I know there have been more memorable (in a good way) moments like that. It’s just difficult to be suitably grateful sometimes, and to keep track adequately. I think this post is an attempt at that. Sort of.

– The funniest thing to happen this week was when I set off the alarm at work. Apparently, you still need to have the security guard swipe you on your way out the main doors after 6pm, regardless of whether you have your employee ID card on you. I, inefficient multitasker that I am, dialed a friend’s number on my cell phone just as I was about to leave the building. At the exit doors, I swiped my ID card, heard a beep, and watched the little red light turn to green. At the exact moment my friend answered the phone, I pushed open the door and the alarms started blaring. It was great stuff, and I think the friend at the other end of the line was just as amused by the whole thing as I was. Luckily, the security guard was, too.

– Does your father call you on his rainy drive home to leave voicemessages in which he sings, “Raindrops are falling on my head! La la la la la lalala”? No? I thought not.

– I’m not a big fan of grape-flavored anything. Except real grapes, and sour green ones at that. But someone’s gotta finish all the popsicles I bought back when I was getting my wisdom teeth pulled. All those mornings of grabbing a red/green/orange popsicle out of the freezer for breakfast on my way out the door to school are over, and the purples ones are the only ones left. Six whole purple popsicles. Not so bad after all, actually, although I’m still not really a fan. But it leaves your tongue looking so dark purple, it’s almost black, which is pretty slick.

– I attended the Birth of a Prophet event at UC Berkeley a couple of weeks ago. It was even more beautiful and spiritually uplifting than I had hoped it would be, and you can keep your outcries of “Bidah!” to yourself, please. Amusingly enough, the event coincided with Cal Day, so I was bombarded with ads and posters and pamphlets and “Hi, do you have any questions?” while making my way through Sproul Plaza. Listen, I know I look like a seventeen year old, but no, I’m not a prospective incoming freshman, okay? I have enough issues being a prospective graduating senior, as it is, thanks.

– Every morning on my way to school, about forty miles from home, I pass a huge yellow/orange billboard advertisement for San Diego, advising, “CHANGE VIEWS, NOT CHANNELS.” 2Scoops, I’m looking right at you: Stop trying to infiltrate Northern California.

– The best way to make yourself feel better about an MCB midterm you more likely failed the hell out of is to sit in the sunshine and drink a medium-size hot chocolate with whipped cream. When the girl making your drink notices your drawn face and bleary eyes and turns around from the machine to ask kindly, “Would you like extra whipped cream on that?” just answer, “Yes, please.” There are few things in life that sunshine, hot chocolate, and extra whipped cream cannot make you feel better about.

– Also, strawberry ice cream with chunks of cheesecake is hella good stuff. Add that to the list. And blue raspberry jolly ranchers, especially when they’re vindictively grabbed by the handful from the candy jar of my major advisor who is a moron.

– As of yesterday, I have officially canceled my minor. Indecisions and revisions indeed. I thought it was going to hurt – and it did hurt for the past three weeks I spent agonizing over it – but, surprisingly, I’m more at peace with the final decision than I thought I would be. So, instead of seven classes (yes, I was somehow registered for seven classes, the seventh one being a microbiology class my advisor thought I needed – which I didn’t, but she’s a moron, as we have already established – and which I had forgotten I was even enrolled in) and twenty-seven units, which is absolutely insane for a quarter system (nine weeks of instruction, tenth week is final exams) if not even otherwise, I am now down to four classes and sixteen units. Much more manageable.

“Pay attention!” I crowed yesterday afternoon to my office colleagues at large, whatever of them remained past 5pm. “This is a monumental occasion!” I typed the “permission to drop” numbers that the Dean’s Office had given me into their respective fields on the computer, then theatrically wiggled my fingers above the keyboard in my best “spirit fingers” imitation.

“What are you doing?” asked K, looking up from his computer.
“I’m saying ‘eff it all’ to the program.”
“What program?”
“The ‘Yasmine wants to graduate with this Social & Ethnic Relations minor that she’s absolutely in love with’ program.”
“Oh.”

Thank you to all you rockstars who offered their input in regards to my “How useful/useless/irrelevant is a minor?” questions. If I didn’t ask you, I’m sorry, I love you, I was lazy, and you’re a rockstar, too.

– That said, this “screw the minor” deal only serves to reinforce my feeling that I’m one of those total slackers who diligently pursues something almost to the end, only to give it up in the last five seconds. This is a recurring theme in my life. Like last week, when I was up until 3am studying for an MCB quiz, only to be late to class the next morning because I couldn’t find parking. So, instead, I skipped class (and the quiz) and slept in my car for an hour, then woke up and, instead of heading over to my next class, I walked over to the student union and took another 2-hour nap in the study lounge. This nap-taking business is outta control.

– This morning, I used the carpool lane to pass a slow bus. I’m pretty sure this is highly illegal maneuver, but, what can I say, I love living life on the edge.

– I’m typing this out at work. K just stalked past me to get to his desk, a grim expression on his face. He pulled out his top desk drawer with a deafening bang, muttering, “I’m so hungry!”
“Yeah, me too,” I said sympathetically.
“And there’s nothing to eat around here,” he continued, fishing around in the drawer.
“Are you looking for your topsecret candy stash?”
“No,” he replied, pulling out a handful of what looked like condiment packets.
“Is that mustard?” I asked, spying a yellow packet.
“No, this calls for honey.”
“Dude. Are you seriously going to eat honey out of the packet like that?”
“Yeah. It’s soo good. See?”
“Good lord. Here, eat some Reese’s,” I offered, shoving my bag of miniature peanut butter cups his way.
“No way, honey is so much healthier.”

– My co-worker B just walked by. He stopped long enough to ask, “Have you ever seen a chicken with its head cut off?”
“Yes,” I replied, “several times,” thinking of all those months in Pakistan.
“Oh. Well, I never have.”
“It’s okay, you’re not really missing out.”
“Oh, okay. Just making sure.”

Why do I work with the weirdest people in the world?

– Yes, I still like Maroon 5, but I have a short attention span and I get highly annoyed when songs I once liked are constantly played over and over on the radio. Therefore, Maroon 5 is not as cool as Keane, whom no one except I seems to have heard of. Besides, how could you not like a band who’s British and therefore sings “cahn’t stop now,” which, to my ears, accustomed as they are to American pronunciation, sounds absolutely hilarious and cool. My lovely L lady, after looking at the cover of Keane’s album, wondered quite disparagingly why rock musicians never have much in the way of looks. Somayya and I contended that it’s because rockstars are more concerned with how good their music is rather than with how good they themselves look. So there, take that!

Yes, I admit it, I have fairly mainstream taste in music. I don’t really know obscure bands. All the obscure bands I do know start becoming rich and famous and everyone else knows who they are, too, and that just ruins the whole thing.

Speaking of music, no song has ever made me grin so widely as Coldplay’s “Yellow.” Perhaps I haven’t heard it often enough, so that explains why I’m not tired of it yet. Which reminds me – Gavin DeGraw, you’re a hella slick singer/songwriter/pianist/guitarist and all that, but I enjoy your music more when I’m listening to it off my discman and less when it plays on repeat on the radio. Stop it. Also, new favorite musicians, discovered while browsing at Borders when I should have been in class, include: Amos Lee, Ari Hest, Joss Stone, and Rachel Yamagata. I think. I’m not sure, since I haven’t listened to everything yet. But still, links are fun. Go explore.

– I need to edit my template. I need to edit the sidebar with the Gavin DeGraw lyrics, because I love that song but not when it plays on the radio. I need to edit my blogroll. I need to edit my life. Lemme know if you have any suggestions. Meanwhile, much love, have beautiful days, all that good stuff.

>continue reading

Do you know where you are in your life/are you walkin’ in between the lines

NineToFive outside the 925

Courtesy of the “Drafts” folder of my email account, I present to you a snapshot of my day at work, “my day” consisting of the fact that I got to work just a few minutes before lunchtime. Look, it’s like blogging in real-time! Except, not.

12noon – Whole loaf of bread + a sauce/dip that tastes like a mix of chutney and ranch dressing = HELLA GOOD food from La Bou.

2:05pm – After hearing nonstop laughter from across the aisle for the past ten minutes, co-worker B calls out from his cubicle that he is slightly concerned at the pin-drop silence that has unexpectedly followed. Yeah, so am I.

2:30pm – Just got back from moving our cars. Somayya got the chorus of the “Brass monkey junky, that funky monkey” song stuck in my head. It’s now playing on repeat in my brain, thanksverymuch. I looked down while walking and exclaimed, “DUDE! It should be illegal for a Pakistani person’s feet to be this white!” My feet, I mean. Also, co-worker P freaked me out by plastering herself against my driver’s side window just as I was about to start pulling away from the curb. On the way back to the office, I made sure to walk without stepping directly on any of the sidewalk cracks. I seem to be doing this a lot lately. Clearly, I have some serious obsessive-compulsive disorder issues.

3:18pm – How come the computer I wanted to use earlier had no mouse attached to the keyboard? I mean, come on, people. I can understand us pilfering one another’s staple removers, but the mouse? Geez louise. What sorta desperation does that take?

3:19pm – I’m hungry. I guess a whole loaf of bread wasn’t enough.

3:34pm – I’m also highly in need of some entertainment. Like, moving my car again, even though I’ve got over an hour left on my parking spot.

3:42pm – I’m cleaning out my work email inox and laughing at an email exchange between myself and G, who now works up on the 4th floor as opposed to the 2nd floor where the rest of us are. Moving on up in the world, aren’t we.

Date: Fri, 11 Feb 2005 2:15:45 -0800
From: Yasmine
To: G
Subject: what’s eating gilbert grape?

ello, g!
life is so boring on the second floor without your lazy self here. who am i going to practice my fobby desi accent on NOW?! just when i got used to this whole hindku/punjabi thing, you had to go and leave us. come visit us soon. also, bring your wife, too! cuz you promised you would bring her to the office. so make sure you do so. i will harass you til you do. meanwhile, be good, and make sure you clean the house nicely so your wife will be all impressed when she comes.
have beautiful days,
-yasmine

Date: Mon, 14 Feb 2005 10:52:32 -0800
From: G
To: Yasmine
Subject: Re: what’s eating gilbert grape?

Thanx fer the advice te will surely bring her over. Meanwhile how is everyone doin downstairs? I make it a point to come there atleast once a day. So let me know your schedule te will be there to see ya.
Bakee all is good.
You take Care.
G

His usage of te [and] as well as bakee [the rest/everything else] are killing me.

3:50pm – Wish I could access blogger.com from work. Or update my blog via email, except I can’t remember how I’m supposed to do that. What a process. I guess I’ll have to post this later, and, by then, it won’t make sense even to me. Grand.

4:10pm – Somayya has abandoned me for the day. Thanks a lot. What kinda family are you?

4:12pm – Just finished composing a difficult email to a good friend. Hit “Send,” and wondered if I had said anything worthy. I rarely have enough words, the right words, in situations like these. I’m such a b.s. advice-giver. Geez. If nothing else, it gave Hijabman an idea for a new website. Good to know I’m at least useful for something. But I wanna know what the friend is thinking, is what.

4:14pm – B stops by with some Cadbury Creme eggs. Yay, chocolate! Now THIS is what I mean by entertainment, peoples. How come I’ve never had one of these before? Damn, I’ve been hella deprived.

4:21pm – Co-worker K stops by to shine the bright fluorescent light in my face. I brandish a self-adhesive fastener at him. “These are sharp for a reason, you know,” I say threateningly. He snaps the staple remover at me, then looks around and remarks, “This cubicle is kinda small.” “YEAH,” I retort, “It’s made for one person. That’s why you should leave already.”

4:30pm – K stops by again: “Time to move our cars. Let’s go.” “Noooo,” I moan, “I don’t wanna.” “Aw, come on,” he says. “Nooo,” I whine, “noooo.” “Oh, come on,” he wheedles. “FINE THEN,” I sigh, “Let’s go.” We walk out, and, at the first stoplight, K slips on a pair of sunglasses. “Are those pink lenses, or red?” I ask curiously. “Red,” he says, “Wanna see?” He hands them over, and I slip them on. “SLICK!” I shout. “Look, the clouds are red!” I hand him my camera to take a photo of me in the spiffy red sunglasses, and he almost gets run over on the street. I still don’t feel like moving my car, so I step into his little yellow Celica as he prepares to move it to a new parking spot, but only after he insists on cleaning off his passenger seat and hauling out all the stuff that occupies the leg-space in front of it. “DUDE,” I say, “I’m this short little girl. You swear like I’m not gonna fit in there anyway.” On the way back to the office, K almost gets run over by our race-car driver co-worker, M. He then proceeds to repeatedly ask me if the sunglasses look good on him. He also tells me they cost $80, at which point I stop dead in my tracks and shout, “EIGHTY DOLLARS?! I could buy four pairs of shoes with that!” “What?” he says, “I’ve bought $180 sunglasses before.” “Good lord,” I mutter.

4:43pm – Back at the office, K and I are attempting to alleviate boredom through AIM conversations –

crackfiendserene: so dude, where do they keep the white paper for the printer, huh huh huh?
crackfiendserene: hahahahaha just kidding
crackfiendserene: you know how that’s my favorite line for you
K: i know
K: im hella bored tho
crackfiendserene: yeah me too
crackfiendserene: let’s steal all the white printer paper
crackfiendserene: and run away forever
crackfiendserene: to go home
crackfiendserene: and eat cadbury creme chocolates all day
K: thats a good idea
K: we can make 200 bux out of it
crackfiendserene: the printer paper? who are you gonna sell it to?
K: um thats a good question
K: well we can think about it later
crackfiendserene: i think we should get ’em and sell ’em back to the office
crackfiendserene: it’d be like holding the paper for ransom
crackfiendserene: HOSTAGES!
K: yeah thats a good idea
crackfiendserene: i think so too
K: hey these stupid yellow folders are expensive too
crackfiendserene: forreals?
crackfiendserene: okay, that goes on our hit list too
K: no, the folders
crackfiendserene: actually, i meant *for reals

I love talking to fobby immigrant children.

K: well we should start from small projects and then go on with the big ones
K: what do u think
crackfiendserene: i think that’s a grand idea, smart child
crackfiendserene : that’s pure genius
K: yeah we need some practice
crackfiendserene: hell yeah you do
crackfiendserene: me, i’m a pro
crackfiendserene: even though i don’t know where the paper is
crackfiendserene: but that’s not really important
K: do u want to start from paper clips??????
crackfiendserene: you think you could calm down with those question marks, maybe?
crackfiendserene: why do you feel so many are necessary?
crackfiendserene: you’re killing me
K: oh yeah?
crackfiendserene: and paperclips are not that exciting, dude
crackfiendserene: how bout the staple removers?
crackfiendserene: those are essential
crackfiendserene: and lethal, too
K: so what else do u want?
crackfiendserene: and while we’re talking about lethal objects, might as well steal the boxes of fasteners, too
K: fo sho
K: u know what, im thinking about these computer monitors
crackfiendserene: HAHAHA
K: they are kind of fun too
crackfiendserene: YEAH!
K: ooooooo u know what
crackfiendserene: what?
K: that wind turbine by front door
crackfiendserene: oooooooh slick!
K: i really like it
K: its a cool one
crackfiendserene: yeah it is
crackfiendserene: hella spiffy

I can hear him laughing maniacally in his cubicle across the aisle, right now. Here he comes now, stepping across the hallway and trying to stifle his laughter but failing miserably. “Ohhhh, we should take this!” I look over, and he’s holding up my heavy-duty hole puncher. “Don’t forget the entire supply cabinet!” I add. “Post-its are important. You got friends with pick-up trucks?”

5:07pm – G unexpectedly stops by. “How are you, beta?” “I’m doing just fine,” I say, “How’s the new job going?” He glares. “No time to breathe up there.” “Ohh,” I laugh, “You mean you really have to WORK now?”

5:15pm – And I’m out! Have beautiful days, kids.

>continue reading

There’s a reason why we have supervisors

NineToFive outside the 925, Salaam Namaste

Okay, so I’m back.

I’m sure you’d like me to elaborate on that, seeing as how you enjoy living vicariously through me, but my life over the past month has been filled with nothing more exciting than four classes, two jobs, and drinking more hot chocolate this quarter than I must have in the past two years combined. Oh yeah, and I’m currently sick, and my tastebuds are down. There’s no worse way to torture me than to ensure I can’t taste my food. Yeah, life is grand, what can I say.

What else have I been doing? I spend my days jaywalking through downtown Sacramento, and my nights…*gasp!*…sleeping, for the most part. I’ve also been grudgingly learning to (kinda sorta maybe, but not really) like shoes. I’ve even worn socks with shoes a few times. This is a big step, as I’m sure you realize.

Don’t worry, all is not lost. I’m still as crackheaded as ever. I’d still rather cut through the muddy grass rather than walk all the way around, “because the only useful thing I ever learned in calculus was about minimizing distance.” [The fact that I was a calculus tutor for two years in college is beside the point.] I had french fries for lunch yesterday. Other than that, I’ve been surviving mainly on chips and candy. And I still gobble down my food faster than anyone in my vicinity. I’m not sure this is quite a good thing.

Why am I trying to justify myself anyway? You know I’m a strange child. We’ve established this numerous times already, because I like being repetitive.

And my lack of updates doesn’t mean I’ve been neglecting Blogistan. I’ve been reading weblogs just as much as usual, but in my lurker mode, that’s all. Also, the vacuum cleaner completely ate the cord off my headphones a few weeks ago, so all you people who’ve been posting audioblogs over the past month, I haven’t gotten a chance to listen to them, so STOP IT ALREADY. The end.

Speaking of jaywalking and Sacramento and crackheaded people, let me tell you stories about the people I work with. Please excuse me if I’m not as funny as I think I am. Happens sometimes.

Let’s begin the rundown on some of my crazy co-workers –

H#3 [This is H#1 and this is H#2, for your information] stops by my desk close to lunchtime one day and mutters a question. After asking him to repeat his request twice, I throw up my hands. “Why are you such a mumbler?”
He asks one more time, louder: “Do you have any ketchup and/or mustard around here?”
I roll my eyes. “Dude, what would I be doing with random packets of ketchup and mustard? What do you think, I keep it in my desk drawer?”
And who uses the term “and/or” in real-life conversations, anyway?

AZ thinks Persians are the best and everyone else is the worst. He periodically threatens to leave the company because “he doesn’t want to work with India and its neighboring countries.”
“India” would be G, whom I’ll get to in a second; “neighboring countries” is a reference to the three of us who are Pakistani.
AZ also likes warning, “I’ll do a hit-and-run on you with my Persian rug.”
“I’ll stab you first,” I respond, which is AZ’s cue to saunter around the office, showing off his biceps. This is his favorite activity in the whole wide world, second only to talking about how great Persians are.

H#3 IMed me early one morning: “Please come to work today!”
“I know,” I responded, “life is just so empty and sad when I’m not there, huh?”
H#3: “I need you here to donate to my orange juice fund.”

G is Indian, with the accent to go along with it. Somayya and I recently spent over an hour trying to explain to him the plotline of The Princess Bride which happens to be Somayya’s favorite film. We are the perfect audience for it, since we’re so easily amused.

“INCONTHIEVABLE!”
“You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”
“I do not mean to pry, but you don’t by any chance happen to have six fingers on your right hand?”
“Hello, my name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die. Now, offer me money.”
[I love the quotes from this movie, okay. It’s that entertaining.]

It’s the cheesiest movie in the whole world!” Somayya explained.
“What’s ‘cheesy’ mean?” asked G.
“Bollywood films,” I deadpanned.
At the end of it all, he nodded in mock understanding and asked, “Oh, okay. So she is a princess, and she has a bride?”

ZA stopped by my cubicle one morning to gasp, “Have you heard about Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston breaking up?”
G, standing nearby, rolled his eyes and feigned pulling out his hair in a paroxysm of grief, as I watched, laughing.

G refuses to speak English with me. He addresses me in Punjabi and pretends not to understand me when I respond in English, so I have no choice but to reply in my Pakistani dialect, Hindku. So at work, I’m either speaking to G with my usual unaccented fluent English, or in Hindku, or in English with a fobby desi accent. I think the new temporary workers at the office probably think I have multiple personalities, what with my switching between languages and dialects and accents all day long. G once admitted that Hindku is a meetthi [sweet] language, whereas Punjabi sounds more like a siray vich vattha [a rock to the head]. Needless to say, I gloatingly remind him about this every chance I get. But it’s difficult to gloat when he agrees so readily and good-humoredly.

Then there’s B, who showed up to work one day with a whole red bell pepper. I don’t like uncooked red bell peppers, and find the thought of scrubbing one and presenting it at work with a flourish before digging into it with a stainless steel fork slightly disturbing. I mean, there’s VEIRD and then there’s weird, and weird just doesn’t cut it, buddy.

Another day, B wandered by when a few of us were standing around talking about hair. B laughed. “That’s funny,” he said to me, “I’ve never even thought about how long your hair is.”
“Oh, good,” I said, dryly, “I guess that’s the point, isn’t it, buddy.”

G has recently picked up this habit of copying Somayya by calling me “Apaji,” which is ludicrous, considering he’s several years older than me. And then there’s his Master’s thesis, due in mid-February, which is supposed to be about 300 pages total. He took two weeks off from work to tackle the project, and only completed two pages. “I will start it two weeks before the due date,” he always reassures me, waving his hand in that quintessentially unperturbed South Asian gesture of nonchalance. “It’s just a matter of cutting and pasting.”

Conversations between G and me usually always involve sarcasm on my part, so his favorite activity these days is to poke his head over my cubicle during his rounds through the office, fix me with a glare, and mutter darkly, “I don’t like you. You are mean.” If you repeat this in an Indian accent, you’ll understand why I laugh every time. This is especially funny if you think about the fact that I’m 5’1″ compared to his 6’5″, that he towers over me (and everyone else at the office), and that a companionable slap on the back from him is enough to send one practically flying across the room. One morning, he kindly explained the intricacies of turban-wrapping to me, remaining patient even when I sputtered in my ignorant non-metric-system American-ness, “So exactly how long is five meters of fabric again?”

Last week, the company ordered in pizza, so we all lazily at around in the conference room and took a two-hour lunch break. G downed seven pieces of pizza, two slices of cake, and two sodas. I sat next to him and made fun of his eating habits. G tried to stare me down. “How about we finish eating first, then we fight.”
“Okay, fine,” I said grudgingly, trying not to laugh.
A few minutes later, he said reflectively, “You know, usually I am always pissed off. But lately, I don’t know why, I have been in a good mood.”
I smirked knowingly. “When’s your wife coming to the U.S. again?”
“Eleven and a half days,” he said proudly.
“I knew it, that’s why!”

K – who is Persian, like almost every other person there – is one of my favorite co-workers, even though I keep thinking he’s about 12 years old. He’s like one of those annoying little brothers, although K and I get along better than my own little brother and I ever did as kids. When I first started working at this place, K was going through a phase where his favorite activity was to go around and slash his pen across the back of every girl’s hand. I don’t appreciate juvenile activities that involve people scribbling on my hands, so once he annoyed me so much that I picked up my stapler and brandished it threateningly at him, all the while doing my trademark Evil Death Glare with the one raised eyebrow. And, in case he didn’t get it, I tried stabbing him with my own pen (there’s a reason why I consistently invest in 0.2mm micro-point pens; they come in handy as weapons, ya know), but he moved out of harm’s way just in time. Ever since then he’s backed off with the pen marking.

Overall, he’s a good kid, even though his favorite nickname for me is “Troublemaker.”
I IMed him one afternoon after he had left work to go home with the desperate question, “K, where’s the white paper for the printer?!” and he’s graciously forgotten all about the incident, even though I bring it up myself whenever I want to remind people about what a crackhead I am.

K is always sporting headphones, so I have to repeat every question to him twice. Lately, the new extension cord he attached to his beloved headphones allows him to step across the hallway to the communal printer without abandoning his music for a single second. He once recommended I check out the website for some Persian dude called DJ Aligator, which I did, only after grumbling for ten minutes about people who don’t know how to spell “alligator” with two Ls. And after that, I spent another ten minutes grumbling about why the hell the guy had to go and wear freaky contact lenses like that.

I have a sneaking suspicion that K is obsessive-compulsive. A while back, he went on some major desk-cleaning frenzies. Once, he dusted and sprayed off the top of his desk, printed and pinned black-and-white photos of himself and his friends all over the cubicle, arranged every pen and post-it pad just so, and then tackled the desk drawers. He unearthed old, moldy candy; smelly, sweat-stained t-shirts; dozens of ballpoint pens; at least three staple removers [“Dammit, so that’s where they all were!” I exclaimed]; an extra pair of headphones; an empty cookie tin; and endless other odds and ends. I sat as spectator and commenter extraordinaire, laughing nonstop.

I remember the day K chowed down a huge burger for lunch. The rest of the day, he walked around clutching his chest and moaning. Me, being the “heartless bastard” I am, all I did was laugh. “Is it okay if I’m finding this whole thing amusing?”
K: “What’s amusing?”
Me: “Your whole situation.”
K: “What whole situation?”
Me: “Your heart-attack-at-age-20 situation.”
Being a good sport, he burst into laughter, which only aggravated his chest pains further. He clutched his chest and moaned some more. “If I die,” he hasped, “you get my desk.”
“Thanks, buddy,” I said, “but what I really want is your staple remover.”
H#2 was passing by, and I called out, “H, you’re my witness. K is giving me his desk and staple remover when he dies.”
Staple removers are hella difficult to find at our office, and thus in terribly high demand, you see. Anything related to staple removers is fighting words. We are so ready to inflict physical harm on one another, merely for the purpose of safeguarding or salvaging our precious staple removers.

And then there’s the tall, skinny guy in the perpetual showercap, who plays basketball in the courts at the downtown park all day every day and likes pointing out potential parking spots to me whenever I walk past to move my car out of one 2hour zone to another: “There’s a spot right there! If you park there, you can leave your car there all day!” I have no idea what he’s talking about, because all the parking spots in that downtown area are either 45minute metered parking or 2hour zones. But hey, if having the showercap guy save you parking spaces isn’t the height of first-class, preferential treatment, then I don’t know what is. I’m sure you’ll agree.