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T - 3 weeksBefore
we embark on the strange journey that was Muthu's wedding, I must
explain one thing. Some sundry years ago, four young men in their early
twenties, mere saplings compared to the hardened codgers they have
since become, had the (mis?)fortune of taking common residence in a
humble abode known then as Rains 29C. The members of Rains 29C had the
curious property of representing four completely different races.
Brian, the white oppressor. Muthu, the curry-eating Indian. Pedram, the
bomb-making Iranian. And me--well I'm just a chink. (I should probably
say here that I'm not a racist, I just thought my ex-roommates would
get a kick out of reading that. On with the story!) The first three
were CS majors, programmers of the highest caliber, l33test of all the
l33t hax0rs. And me, I was just an EE major. (Oh wait. And I still am
an EE major! Sigh.)
Many
would not consider computer scientists and electrical engineers to be
the coolest cats around. The four tenants of Rains 29C were aware of
that common misconception, so they saw fit to invent a name for
themselves, a name SO STUPENDOUS
that nobody ever again would question their true status in society.
Brian, Muthu, Pedram, and Pat were henceforth known as...(cue dramatic
theme music)...The Gangsta Programmas! The author of this blog would
like to point out that he was not the one who picked the name.
Not
stopping there, the Gangsta Programmas thought it wise to coin names
for each. Brian became Vanilla Mice. Muthu, Notorious Hash Table.
Pedram, Buffa Ovaflow. And Pat, being the lone EE, was called MC
Hardware.
(If you think I'm making all this up, check out
Pedram's site, http://graphics.stanford.edu/~pkeyani/pictures/friends/index.htm, where
this is documented in its entirety.)
W for Website! Except for Muthu. He's alphabetically challenged.
The
Gangsta Programmas partook of many arcane rituals, such as flashing
gang signs, eating copious amounts of Mongolian BBQ, trash talking over
heated games of ping-pong, thrusting their pelvises to their trademark
cry of 'bang bang bang!', and speculating about Muthu's true sexual
orientation.
Well
perhaps to clear the ambiguity once and for all, Muthu went and found
himself a wife. Where will the Gangstas go from here, now that married
men are in their midst?
Goin' goin', back to back to, Jersey Jersey
So yeah, now
that the intro is out of the way, I can talk about Muthu's wedding in
NJ. Strictly speaking, it was a wedding reception, since the actual
ceremony had already occurred in India.
At
the airport before my flight, I bought Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell
from the bookstore; I had meant to read it for a while. Quick
conclusion: great book. Very rich. Too many footnotes! And
British-English just isn't for me. But great book. I read it during all
my flights to NJ and back, and also for the few days after that, when I
should have been doing work. I'm so easily distracted. No wonder it's taking me so long to graduate!
Back
to NJ. Being a grad student, and therefore exceedingly wealthy, I
tracked down a room worthy of my relentlessly first-class tastes:
Howard Johnson Inn. Pedram and Brian stayed there with me, and we were
all...um...delighted by the exquisite odor of stale cigarrette butts.
When we asked the hotel receptionist for a non-smoking room, he looked
vacant, then confused, then agitated, and then something which can only
be described as dizzy. We thought it best not to bother him any further.
Being in the "garden state" reminded me of many things I hated about NJ during my years at princeton. Like why the f$#@# can't I make a left turn from any of the roads?
Muthu's Wedding Reception
Muthu
and Isai kicked off their reception with a choreographed
ballroom/Bollywood dance. If I were a girl, I probably would have been
like, 'Awwww! How cute!' but since I'm a guy I don't entertain sissy
thoughts like that. Not even for a second. ... ... Ok, FINE, it was
cute. His sister and father gave long speeches, but all I remember is
that Muthu's
name means Pearl of the Sea and that as a child he fell many times and
"broke his head." Pedram also stood and gave a nice speech.
Indian weddings are cool. You
may think of Indians as a race of nerdy engineers (I know I do, hahah),
but they can all dance! Even the older generations. I find it amazing
that grandparents, parents, and children can all occupy the dance floor
simultaneously, all doing the same (I think) kind of dance. When I
compare it to the Chinese weddings I've been to, I can only conclude
that Chinese people and maybe (east) Asians in general don't have the
same strong cultural ties to dance. Sure, there are classical Chinese
dances, but those are strictly for performance. Nobody dances that way
for fun! Lots of my Asian American friends like to dance, and I know
lots of fobs love to dance, but we're more of the hip hop generation.
The stuff we dance to is basically the stuff you hear on American
radio, whereas many of my Indian friends seem to listen and dance to
Indian music. And you sure aren't going to find my folks dancing to the
same music that we do.
I am pretty coordinated.
I've done martial arts of some sort for most of my life. I have good
control over my hands and feet. But I cannot for the life of me conjure
up the subtle shoulder movements necessary for Indian dancing. That part
of my brain doesn't exist. There's probably a hole in my cerebellum.
Anyways, with help from some of Muthu's Indian friends, I learned many
indispensable moves, such as "screwing in the lightbulb" and "throwing
the pizza." Can't wait to go to another Indian wedding so I can bust
them out!
Indian
weddings are huge. Muthu and Isai had 500 guests, and that was just in
NJ. In India, I'm sure they had even more. I can't imagine organizing a
wedding and mustering up that many friends and family members. I don't even think I know 500 people.
I
had never met Isai before, as Muthu only started dating her after he
left Stanford and started b-school at Columbia. I was glad (and maybe a
bit relieved) to see that she was a nice genuine person, just like
Muthu. In fact, Muthu is probably the nicest guy I know so I know those
two will be happy together.
T - 2 weeksAnother Gangsta feels the tug of the leash
The
week after Muthu's wedding reception, Pedram went and got married! What
is this world coming to? For years, the rest of us have been in awe of
his prodigious talent for talking to women. Sorry ladies, he's taken!
This time for good.
The
night before the wedding, Brian, Muthu, and I moved into a nice rental
home in Bodgea Bay. No more of that Howard Johnson crap. We smoked
cigars on the patio. To people who may think I've become corrupt in
recent times, I have to point out that I did not inhale! I just sort of
puffed on it. In fact, I'd never smoked anything ever before, so I had
trouble just getting the damn thing lit. I kept accidentally snuffing
out the match with the butt of the cigar. Immediately after my first
puff, I became dizzy and had to grasp the railing to avoid keeling
over. Brian told me that it was the nicotine. For the next half hour it
was all the same. I would take a puff, and then grip the railing and
hold on for dear life. But by the end of the night I flatter myself by
saying I was smoking like an old pro :).
I
want to tell a funny story that happened when we were looking for beds
to sleep in. We didn't see a bed for Muthu, but we thought a particular couch
would fold out. Only we couldn't fold that couch out because a
large ornate treasure chest was blocking its way. Taking one look at
the chest, Muthu cried out with despair, "We can't move that. It's too heavy!"
How he came to that conclusion so quickly, I'm not sure. The next
moment, Brian nudged it and it slid easily across the floor. Brian and
I laughed at him the rest of the weekend.
Pedram and Rah threw their wedding Sebastopol. Some interesting
characters were in attendance. Orkut, made famous by his social
networking site, was there. Pedram, of course, works on the Orkut
product at Google. I've heard many tales of Orkut's flamboyance and
ambiguous sexual orientation. Well, I guess he's completely come out of
the closet since then because Orkut was there with a date.
While
I was talking to Brian, he mentioned he wanted to quit his job at
Google. He was like employee 450 when he joined, and is now amongst the
70 oldest employees still working there. I was surprised that anyone
would want to quit the hottest company in the world, but hey, it's not
like Brian needs to work anymore.
The 25-year box
Pedram
and Rah had two time capsules where guests could leave messages. One
was to be opened on their first anniversary, and the other on the 25th.
It was really strange to think that by their 25th anniversary, Pedram
and Rah might have kids who are close to our age now! I left a message
in the 25-year box. At the time, all of us agreed that it was very
funny. We'll see.
More dancing!
Persian
weddings are crazy too! It was very reminiscent of the Indian wedding
the week previous, but with boisterous ululating that makes you jump
with surprise when you first hear it. Pedram and Rah were tearin it up.
Everyone danced...young, old--it didn't matter. It was cute seeing the
older people actually teaching the younger kids how to dance. More
crazy shoulder movements that I couldn't quite wrap my mind around.
With the help of some Persian girls who really knew how to bust a move
I learned some moves that people said looked right. But I can't for the
life of me remember what exactly it was that I learned. At one point,
they actually played an Indian song, so Brian and I started egging
Muthu on, telling him to represent. Haha, it was good fun.
T - 1 weekMeet
the newest love of my life, the 2006 Honda Civic Hybrid! Since it is
the second generation of the Civic Hybrid, most owners refer to it as
the HCH2. I took this picture with my phone:
My
new baby. I heart my HCH2! This sounds really gay but I was actually
going to make an animated GIF showing hearts popping out of my head.
I
picked up my car last Sunday. I actually had to ride Amtrak all the way
up to Sacramento to get it at MSRP, because all the dealers in the Bay Area were jacking
up the prices a few grand over that. But it was worth it. I just love
the color! I've been getting 48mpg commuting to work. That's 2.5x the
efficiency of my old clunker, the 1988 Acura Legend. Usually, people
refer to cars with the pronoun, "it". But I've caught myself referring
to my car as "she". Is that bad??
Oh yeah, I also turned
28. Recently, during one of my long commutes up to LLNL, I heard about
a study that quantified how people get set in their ways when they get
older. For each category, there was a critical age beyond which people
stopped adopting new things. Example: if you don't listen to a
type of music by the time you're 35, there's a 95% chance that you
won't ever listen to it. So basically after you're 35, you listen to
old music and none of the new stuff that's coming out. For foods, the
critical age was higher, I think it was 38. Body piercing had the
youngest age, it was 23. So if you're over 23 and you haven't had any
body piercings, you probably never will. The study was actually done by
a Stanford prof! (link for the curious:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5652676). It made
me wonder when I would get old and set in my ways. My parents aren't
very good at adopting new technologies. Not a week goes by without them
calling me about some computer problem or the other. I, however, am
always a very early adopter of new technology. But I gotta wonder if
someday I'll need to call up my kids for techno-help. I've noticed that
a lot of the music on the radio these days is beginning to annoy me.
Why can't they play more songs from the good ol' 90's!
I
wanted to keep this blog light-hearted, but with my long commutes to
and from Lawrence Livermore, it's inevitable that I listen to hours and
hours of NPR. And it's impossible not to hear the incessant reports of
Israel bombing Lebanon. Those who know me know that I'm usually pretty
apathetic about politics. But it saddens my heart to know that my
government is helping to kill innocent women, children, and men. Israel
has killed roughly a thousand civilians, destroyed thousands of homes,
and caused billions of dollars in destruction, all in the name of
pursuing Hezbollah. If they wanted their soldiers back, they should
have bargained for them. Sure, I know the argument, negotiating with
terrorists will only encourage more acts of terror down the line. Show
strength, and your enemies will back down. Show weakness, and they will
strike again. But nothing Hezbollah has
done, and no act of terror it was going to do, can compare to the wrong
that Israel has done to the innocents in Lebanon. And I mean that in a
quantifiable sense--just tally up the death toll from all of
Hezbollah's crimes. If the Israeli commanders and military officers had
known how much collateral damage they were going to cause, would they
have still pursued the same route?
Mounting
death toll in Iraq? I can deal with that. The country is in chaos, it's
to be expected. Hurricane Katrina leaving people without their homes?
Well that kind of stuff happens. But what is happening in Lebanon--well
to say it breaks my heart would be an exaggeration--but it saddens me.
We and our Israeli allies are supposed to be the "good guys." I don't
know why Israel is so desperately afraid of appearing weak in front of
its enemies. Nobody in his right mind would deny that Israel is the
biggest dog on the block.
And what tops it off is that there is
no mention of any Israeli reparations to the Lebanese government. How
much money do you think your life is worth? If someone accidentally
killed you, don't you think your family could get over one million
dollars in a wrongful death suit? So taking one million dollars as a
conservative number, Israel should owe Lebonan at least a billion
dollars, not counting all the material damage they caused. The UN is
trying to raise half a billion dollars in charity money for Lebanon.
Israel is not one of the contributors.
Anyways, just venting. I've been listening to the news too much. :P
Now I've
been writing a lot lately. Between papers for journals, papers for
conference proceedings, and other miscellaneous reports I can't get any
real work done! So this made me laugh long and hard. I think it hit
a little too close to home.
| | | Posted 9/3/2006 9:25 AM - 197 Views - 17 eProps - 10 comments
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