Tuesday, July 15, 2008

arbitrary direction.

its been a long time and ive got a new blog! my first entry... started writing in nyc and finished in dc. kind of cool. how do i look? hows the look, the feel, the fabric of our lives? i hope you like it. if you dont, you can always suck it.

ok you want an update.

heres an update... go fuck yourself.

ok that was rude... sorry.

well heres one... when theres nothing left to burn you have to set yourself on fire... so i did. the crotch of my new jeans now has a cigaretteish burn hole that makes it even easier for me to get my tip wet in emergency situations like the coming apocalypse.

alright let me try to not be stream of conciousness long enough to give you a blog that actually means something in the literal sense.

these past few months are a textbook definition of arbitrary direction in life and small worldedness. lets take a sample few days/nights...

so i get to ny unbeknowest to me the day of the m.i.a. concert. go to bounce and meet up w cindy and get some free drinks from lauren and head to an m.i.a. afterparty in brooklyn to meet up with julia and milena. get crunk.

next day i get a random text from jeff koz back from some intl trade conferences askin if i was in nyc. get dinner w him and lauren and cindy and then hang on laurens rooftop drinkin fuzzy mimosas and pregaming for the night... some baller (chinese coal import/export) lauren and michelle know from high school has a private room with bottle service at the 40/40 club (jayzs club) cuz hes leavin for china the next day. julia comes with friends who are from all over the place, sweden/france/switzerland, and we were kind of the coolest kids there. says me. and im an authority on these things so fuck you. but yea... got crunk and danced my face off. it was kind of a hilarious place to find myself cuz id been listening to lil wayne all day... pay attention to the lyrics and i think youll get why its funny. anyway we get french fries at pomme frites and make a friend from pa with two first names.

next day hang at mike and katies apartment and meet up with mauricio. saw dont mess with the zohann... actually a pretty funny parody on israel/palestine shit. then me and mau get on the subway back to his place and guess who i see on the L train? sebastian and jocelyn, friends from uva. then i hop the subway and some dude is like how do you get to blah? which is like 4 blocks from laurens. so im like oh just walk with me. turns out this dude, ahmed, is from somalia and we proceed to have an awesome 30 minute conversation about somalia. ive got my paradigms, and i hated the islamists there. i still do. i was ecstatic when ethiopia overthrew them. but ahmed told me there has never been order in somalia like that as long as he knows. so pause for thought... what do you do when a failed state repairs itself with islamism? cry? shit if i know... but i still cant accept islamists... i just cant cant cant.

tangent... speaking of somalia, remember the last iraq blog i wrote? well im pretty sure ive been vindicated cuz im pretty sure it was right. so suck it. ok so i dont bore you, more politics tangent in another entry...

back to story... tiny bit more i promise... ok so next day visit anytime where sams bartending with sebastian, jocelyn, cindy, and mau. that place actually has some pretty ridiculously awesome food. the anytime burger? woah. they deliver too... anyway... get crunk. and cindy and sebastien debate rva vs cville... for the record, im neutral.

next day head to coney island with cindy. betwixt hangings on the beach, i get a call from my parents tellin me i got into the real estate and urban land development post bac i applied for. it was the only thing i applied for... i dont really know why but yea... ate the fastest melting ice cream in the world and rode a rollercoaster to celebrate.

thats the beginning to a whole other tangent so let me just end that by saying it was a terrible few days and my life is boring and uneventful.

so here we go... arbitrary direction anyone? by the way let me explain this whole arbitrary direction thing... so once upon a time, i couldve gone to gw instead of uva. i chose uva. now that lauren hayden is at gw and i hang out in dc often, i keep thinking... what an arbitrary choice. i mean like... my life wouldve been sooo radically different had i chosen gw, but like so much so that i cant even begin to compare because i have no idea what wouldve been different. i mean its like literally EVERYTHING would be different. so much so that i cant possibly begin to make value judgements on what mightve been worse or better or whatever. shit is crazy.

and now its another one of those times. my choices in life are all over the place. lets number them and poop in some background... and a picture...



choice 1... (more?!) school.

originally i wanted an mba... so i was going to get a 2nd bachelors degree at vcu which would give me guaranteed admission. but i got sick of it and applied for the post bac, which is basically half the mba. got accepted for fall. now im thinking i shoulda taken the gmat and applied for mbas all over the place. well woulda coulda shoulda. whatever.

heres my deal now... after this 1 yr post bac thing, i could in theory be done with the vcu mba like 1 semester after that. so an mba in like year and a half from now? could be cool. but heres the problem... well two problems.

problem 1... more school? MORE SCHOOL?! fucking fuck. im so tired of it... i want to quit this game! you know how on the wii its got that little message thats like "why dont you take a break and go outside?" implying youre an idiot and dont know when to quit? well yea.

problem 2... i still havent given up on the international economic development thing. i somehow told myself i would do something cool with like a big financial firm and move into development later in life... but why? what if i can start now? i could at least try and get a job in development and apply to a couple development masters programs and then weigh my options afterwards. makin the big bucks is appealing... but so is toting an ak-47 in somalia. arbitrary decisions! argh!

i havent officially accepted the post bac thing and will probably defer it. if i can do something cool this next year or so, itll still be there, and in the meantime i can apply all over and think for a sec before i commit myself to an mba and vcu/richmond for another like year and a half. fear of commitment? never heard of it. (god im lonely...)

choice 2... afghanistan!

can you tell by the punctuation im pretty excited about this? i could work in afghanistan for a year and get started in development. my cousin is there and could help me find some cool development work. i mean... woah. afghanistan! woah! heres the problem. my parents dont want me to go. like really really really dont want me to go. and im not trying to get my cousin in poopcity with the whole family. this is a shitty situation. because im pretty sure this is what i want to do more than anything else. i mean i could learn so much about the development lifestyle and pretty quickly know if i want to do it forever or not. plus id come back seriously fluent in farsi and always have the translator option.

i mean i definitely have my reservations about it. can i seriously survive without crazy parties and getting crunk all the time? who am i going to hit on... massoud the local kabob guy? and of course theres the whole losing a limb or two to think about. (tutu to think about?) shit. but its so dreamy all at the same time. i mean finally feeling like im making a serious difference instead of writing policy prescriptions and academic analyses. shit shit shit.

ive got to convince my parents. my cousin will be in town aug 12-14 and were going to talk with them. i hope this shit works out. and i hope i dont die. im going to freeze my sperm before i go... if i die, please have my baby? (worst sexual advance ever. offer only valid for those with first names beginning in L, J, or C.) seriously though... my parents will raise it if you dont want to.

choice 3... work somewhere at least a little bit cool.

i want to live and work in ny, but most of the cool development jobs are in dc. maybe i can find something in finance? something about being an abused analyst sort of appeals to me and i have no idea why. if this whole afghanistan thing doesnt work out, ill have to decide between school and a job. im leaning heavily to job. just to give me a year to test at least 1 of my competing interests (finance/development) and some time to think and apply to some other schools and get a few more options.

plus theres something appealing about finally having a different perspective on life other than as a student... my only serious experience with a 9 to 5 was my little stint with wachovia which was pretty much nothing. but i remember feeling like a yuppie and it was kind of a cool feeling. so yea... i mean ive done some pretty cool things for my parents real estate developments... but i want to be a yuppie for awhile. just to get my tip wet.

alright those are the choices... oh wait... one more...

choice 4... work at magdas international cafe in brooklyn. so one morning i woke up hungover as hell and cindy was like, come get some brunch at magdas! i stumbled over and cindy was inexplicably slammed with customers. so i was like ill just chill til it thins out a little.

some people came in and i was like well ill just help get them some menus. so i was like here ya go, sit wherever. then i did that for a few more people and i was like well maybe ill get them waters. so i started getting waters too. then one table is like hey can i get a coffee? and i was like well i might as well start getting them drinks. so i started getting drinks... and then i saw some mess on the way back and forth and i was like well i can grab this. so i started bussing tables. before i knew it, i had drunkenly stumbled into waiting tables at a mexican restaurant in brooklyn. what the fuck. that was the moment i knew i had to get the fuck out of nyc. i left and immediately got on the china town bus back to dc. oh the things i get myself into... (rolls eyes / poops pants.)

oh also cool... chinatown bus to dc put me right by joc and lizettes house where they were having their housecooling party. so i told everyone that i couldnt come cuz i was in nyc and then bam... surprise! and paul came with devon knudsen! woot! needless to say the party thinned out real fast upon my arrival, but im used to it. its not my fault im too hot to handle.

also the housecooling was cuz they were moving out... whered they go? have you ever heard of the flag house in dc? cuz woah. like seriously, this shits crazy. its a house with like ten futons on the roof but even nuttier, wierd ass trippy like fake robots and stuff all over. and the flag thing? this house has like 10 flagpoles. the front has the u.n. flag front and center, and the highest flag is a crescent with the word "liberty." kind of awesome. its right near adams morgan... who knows, maybe you can see the liberty flag from there.

sooo anyone notice the sudden burst of bike thefts in richmond? cuzzz ouch. mines gone... remember my bike that helped me outrun the cops? all gone... sigh... check out this commemorative tshirt i made though... (ill post it soon.)

oh and hey so apparantly a cat has adopted my family in nova. its kind of hard to visualize the layout of our house but there is this one section of balcony that has windows into our family room that is incredibly hard to get to from the ground. well theres this awesome orange cat that looks a shitload like my friend mikey from beach week that just hangs there alllll the time and gets really happy when i go outside and hang with her. kind of awesome.



alright ive been talking normal long enough. time for artsy fartsy so fuck off.

ill leave you with a picture of mia the cat who lives in the west village apartment cindy was housesitting this weekend...



awesome.

4 comments:

  1. $mashkan, thanks for coming back to the blogosphere, this is for you.

    ReplyDelete
  2. dude, let's talk about LE FUTUR

    I want to have input on your life choices

    ReplyDelete
  3. i think i know exactly where to put your input.

    ReplyDelete