A Little Here, A Little There

An Interesting Quote

I find that many people I speak with put up this front as to who they really are. I found the quote below and thought to myself how true it is. In this world it seems people always try to be who they are not and in so doing, forget who they really are.

"We become so accustomed to disguise ourselves to others, that at last we are disguised to ourselves."
                                                                              --Francois Duc de la Rochefoucauld

Basketball Country

I've recently figured out that football is not a big venue here in NC. Here, people worship basketball. Of course, UNC and Duke have been ousted but wow, talk about the love of the game here. We've also noticed that there are A LOT of tall men out here. Hmmm...not sure if there is any positive correlation between the men's height here and the love of basketball. 

In other news, we've also noticed that families are quite huge here...like 3-5 kids is the norm. I'm not sure if that has anything to do with us being in the South but it's an interesting thing to point out nonetheless. We of course see families of just two children and we think those might be part of the growing number of transplants from New York, New Jersey, and Mass.

We've also noticed that people seem to love riding on your ass while driving. But, it's different than CA. In CA, people ride your ass because they are pissed that you are going 15 over the speed limit and causing them to be late to work. Here, they just seem to like tailing you - it's all friendly. I don't see those tailgaters with a look to kill or anything like that. In general though, they are much better at driving out here than in CA. At least you don't have some slow mo-fo's in the left lane blocking your ability to pass up slow drivers in the right lane. Here, left lane is for passing and driving fast, as it should be.

I'm Back

It's been a while since I posted and that's a result of being lazy. The weeks leading up to the Holiday's and the weeks after have been crazy. We flew to Wisconsin and spent Christmas and New Year's with my family, as always. It was great. We had traditional Polish food like Pierogi, Barscz soup (red beet soup), and kapusta (sour kraut salad). Some of the traditional food Karan, my sister, and I did not eat because it's too weird, like Goose intestines soup (YUK!). Granted, this soup is not specifically served during the Holiday but it's traditional food of Poland. I sat back and came to a realization that even Polish people have really weird food. They may not eat Bull's testicles like they do in the East Asian part of the world but there is some pretty creative food that is eaten.

The plane ride was fantastic. Alexay was so good that we got comments on how good of a baby he was. The only thing that was upsetting about the whole vacation was that we all got sick and there was no snow. Oh well.

Now, the new year is here and I can't believe that I'll be turning one year younger next month. We've also started to seriously consider moving out of California. nVIDIA has a big branch in Austin, TX. Although I said I would never move below 36 degrees Latitude in the US, it looks like a really great option for the next 6 or so years. With Karan's salary staying the same, our dollar would go a hell of a long way down in Austin. There are a lot of tech companies down there and a lot of California transplants. It's also home to a damn good college with a great Pharmacy School. We'd even be able to buy a huge home for $250K, which in California we'd be lucky to afford a trailer home in a trailer park for that amount. School systems are also much better down there. I'm not really in the mood to spend $10K + a year on private school here in Cali. The weather in Austin may get hotter than the devil's ass in summer but hey, that's what central air conditioning is for! I'll miss cold weather and snow but at least Colorado is a plane ride away! And since we all know and agree we don't want to stay there long term, it's looking like a great option to move to. Plus, I always get bored staying in one place for too long and it's been almost 4 years (plus 3 summers of internships) out here in California and that's just been way too long.

Anyways, everything is in the research and planning phase but we might be out of Cali by the end of the year.

Infantile No-fly Zone

It's 2:44AM and I can't think anymore. So I decided to watch some CNN news feeds and saw that a Robert Johnson is on the terrorist list. I really am so tired that I couldn't even make a facial expression to demonstrate my anger. It will be interesting to see what happens with our little boy Alexay. This is one scenario constantly running through my head:

TSA Official: Umm, your 9 month old is on the terrorist list since his first name sounds like someone from the Russian Mafia. He's dangerous and we cannot allow him to fly since there is the possibility of him distributing rogue Soviet weaponry to groups that may be invovled with terrorist activity.

Me: I'm not sure what my reaction would be but knowing that I'm quite a passionate person, the situation doesn't look too good. My reaction might find me behind bars..hah hah

Oh, by the way, I heard there was a 2-month old that got rejected from boarding a flight due to being on the terrorist list. What's happening to this world?!?!