Tuesday, January 29, 2008

Interviewing

Do you know the best part of interviewing?

No, it's not learning about exciting new opportunities that will allow you to grow both professionally and personally. And it's not learning about creative and innovative technologies that are changing the world.

It's getting to talk to beautiful women who actually listen to what you say, and who call you instead of the other way around.

It's like this weird parallel universe.

Sunday, January 27, 2008

One step closer to my final resting place...

I moved my stuff into the basement today. I was fine up there for the first couple weeks, but then I slowly realized that there was no phone connection or cable connection in the upstairs bedroom.

The basement, oddly enough, has both in the big open room. So that's where I sit now, after a full day of cleaning it out and a lot of errands. The latter of which ended in me buying a TV!

I've been passively looking for a new TV for close to a year, and my dad thought that I may as well have a nice TV in the basement instead of using the ten-year-old 19" one.

After the day of errands, I've further confirmed the following about my parents - 1) my mom would rather spend more time to save some money (whereas the rest of my family would rather spend more money to save some time) and 2) my dad is much more willing to lie in order to get a good price.

In case you're curious, this is the TV I got.

My basement's all set up now. I've got my phone, laptop, TV and bathroom all within 6 feet.

Oh, and on a side note, I would've beaten The Godfather if I had stayed in Dallas. Just saying.

Thursday, January 24, 2008

Friday, January 18, 2008

2 weeks

I finished Water for Elephants (great book!) and rented Hot Fuzz (funnier than Shaun of the Dead!) and Smokin ' Aces (not even worth a free rental!).

Redbox is the coolest thing ever - especially when they keep sending free rental codes. I've spent a total of $2 to watch 2 movies, and that's only cause we were snowed in yesterday and couldn't return it on time. I'm thinking of getting another movie today, so that'd be 3 movies for $2. I'm also going to get American Psycho from the library.

My mom watches this Indian soap opera everyday, and I'm kinda getting hooked. It's pretty cheesy, but it's not any worse than say, Gossip Girl (which is a great show). To give you a brief summary, there's a couple that lives together in this house and the sister of the husband is trying to kill him so she can inherit the property. Here's the kicker: the wife is pretending to be pregnant so that killing the husband wouldn't help since the inheritance would go to the child instead of the sister. It's getting intense.

Last weekend was pretty fun. I went to dinner with a family friend and he had some good advice and suggestions about how to proceed. Saturday I met a friend in Baltimore (he lives in Delaware and I'm staying in Virginia, so it was a good midpoint). It was nice to catch up and gossip about old co-workers.

As far as the job search, it's going kinda slowly. I've applied to roughly 20 positions and haven't heard anything.

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Now playing: Kanye West - Good Life
via FoxyTunes

Sunday, January 13, 2008

Back in DC!

So after the thing that happened on Friday, I'm now unexpectedly back at my parent's place in the DC area. I don't know how long I'll be here, or where I'll ultimately end up.

The last week hasn't been that bad and I've somehow kept myself busy, but I don't know if this next week will be the same. Luckily, I'll have a car for the first few days so maybe I'll get to know the area a little better.

Everyone else seems to be more optimistic about my future than me, but I think it's a lot easier to see someone else's future as being bright when you are stable yourself.

I wonder if coming up here was such a good idea after all. It's weird not having all of my stuff and depending on my parents for everything. It feels like I'm back in high school. I kinda want to go back home, even though there's no real reason to return.

Sunday, January 06, 2008

Even? Really?

According to blogthings, my year was "average":

You Had an Average Year



While you had some setbacks, your year also brought some good things.

All in all, things mostly evened out. That's just how life works.

Focus on what went well for you - and what you can improve.

A new year is a perfect reason to give yourself a fresh start!

How Did Your Year Rate?

I don't know if that's true, but after that thing on Friday, this year will be anything but...

Tuesday, January 01, 2008

Holidays Recap

The Christmas holidays were pretty fun. A tad hectic, but still fun. We seemed to have people over for dinner almost every night. I don't know where my parents get the energy to entertain that much.

My mom was in an exceptionally good mood and that always makes the holidays go a lot smoother. I got to see my Australian cousins again (who I had met for the first time 4.5 years ago), and they were just as friendly and awesome as I remember them. I wonder if it's because they're in my family, because they're Indian, or because they're Australian. Or maybe it's a mix of all three.

My parents loved the photo album my sister and I made for them (my mom even cried!), but unfortunately my sister couldn't keep any of the DVDs she got (since the DVD players in Europe require a different region encoding).

I didn't ask for much this year, but I got the 2 Wii games I wanted (Godfather: Blackhand Edition and Super Mario Galaxy), food from Belgium, a Simpsons calendar, a pajama set, and some other gifts I can't remember ;)

As my sister wrote in her blog, I think we're one of the few people left in our age group that still get excited about (or even celebrate) Christmas. Oh well.
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"Overall, 2007 kinda sucked." ~ my sister

The year had its highlights, but the negatives handily outweighed the positives.

I don't like my job (it pays less and isn't as exciting/challenging as my previous job). I don't like my apartment (it's smaller and more unsafe - I got robbed in October - than my previous place). My uncle passed away in September. It's always hard when a family member passes away, but this one was especially hard since he had been fighting cancer for so long.

Oh, and the way we celebrated the end of 2007 was pretty fitting for how crappy the year was. We went to a friend's apartment to watch the ball drop since he has a really nice TV. Well, we found out when we got there that his cable went out and he didn't even have network TV! We tried in vain to find live streams from Times Square on the Web, but ended up looking at our watches at midnight to know that 2008 had arrived.

And how did we start 2008? By playing drinking games to old episodes of The Office.

Hopefully, the year gets better...