January Wedding - Avett Brothers - I and Love and You

I’m still reeling from the Avett Brothers show I went to on Sunday night. I was so happy when they played this song, which is one of my favorites off their most recent album. I love that it’s just so simple, catchy and optimistic. Makes me want to have a January wedding and have this be our first dance. (But for now, I should probably just be worrying about getting a date in March.)

Because I

a) Have an obsession to try all web services/social media tools out there,
b) Have a lifelong mission to acquire the username ‘amishshah’ in as many places as possible, and
c) Need a place to post things that fall between 140-character tweets and long-form blog posts,

I have started using tumblr. You can find my tumblelog at amishshah.tumblr.com.

From time to time, I may cross-post things but hopefully this will be another mostly-boring, occasionally-entertaining perspective on my life. Or something.

Although my snowboarding ability has improved (in my clearly biased opinion) over the years, if there’s one thing I can’t do, it’s perform when a video camera is aimed my way. You’ve seen it time after time after time. And now you get to see it again. From my school’s ski trip to Steamboat Springs in December:

In still pictures, however, I look awesome. And even more awesome.

Last August, my friend Jake hosted a few of our other classmates and me for a week of adventure and fun in his hometown of Anchorage, AK. I brought my camera along and got a little trigger happy. Some of my favorites are here (I tried to keep it short but there were just too many…)

You can see the full set (400+ pics) here

Our first day out, we took a glacier cruise out of Whittier. This was one of the 26 glaciers we saw. Our boat hung around this one for about 45 minutes to see if it would calve (break off chunks of ice). Sadly, we heard cracks but saw nothing.

On our ride back in, a school of dol-porpoises (I think that’s what they were called?) came and swam next to, in front of, and in between the hulls of our boat.

Blessed with unbelievably clear skies visible from Anchorage, we made a 3-hour drive to Talkeetna to go flightseeing through Denali national park. We boarded a little 10-seater prop plane and flew right up to and around Denali (the mountain, also known as Mt McKinley) and the surrounding range and glaciers. Remember the scene in The Simpsons Movie when the family arrives in Alaska and Homer thinks he’s looking at a poster when in fact he’s just looking out his window? This was exactly like that. One of the most unforgettable moments of my life.

Only in Alaska can you be looking down at ice masses hundreds of years old one minute, then swimming in a lake the next. After flightseeing, we swung by Jake’s uncle’s cabin, a cozy little place on a lake in the middle of nowhere. It was bizarrely warm, and after a few snacks and beverages, we decided to head out on the lake. Jake’s uncle towed Sarah, Dave and me on a tube around the lake and, well, had a lot of fun with us.

On another day in the trip, we donned outdoor gear, backpacks, helmets and cramp-ons for our boots and hiked the Mac glacier.

Unfortunately I was not able to get any pictures of one of our activities that week: pack-rafting. The nature of the activity – a short hike, blowing up a small inflatable raft, and individually rafting down a river fed by a melting glacier – did not lend itself to carrying around an expensive camera. However, it was (mostly) a fun thing to do. I say mostly because my waterproof pants turned out to be anything but, and therefore 3 hours in I was very cold, shriveled, and miserable.

Towards the end of our trip, we took an 11-mile hike in the mountains to a small lake. It was a fun, relaxing (relative to everything else we’d done) way to spend the afternoon and wind down the trip.

Again, check out more pics here. We had an amazing time in Alaska and I encourage everyone to go there. I can’t wait to go back.

Combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell

Because the joke in my most recent blog post is still fresh, I’m posting this song recently revealed to me by my none other than my roommate Noah.  He claims he’s a music expert and has shared a lot of stuff with me lately.  Just when I think he couldn’t possibly be any more wrong about good music, he goes and emails me something like this and TOTALLY REDEEMS HIMSELF.

Let me start this post by saying, yes I am backdating the post date a little, just so I can lie and/or pretend to myself that I didn’t write it more than 10% of the way into 2010. It’s funny…while 2009 was happening, I didn’t think there was that much exciting happening in my life that was worth writing about, but now that it’s time to sum it all up, I am struggling to make it brief while also appropriately capturing the year. Um, here goes…

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Winter: I was in Chicago freezing my butt off while interviewing my face off for an internship. Guess what? Chicago sucks in the winter. Guess what else sucks? Interviewing for jobs in the middle of a recession. So guess what? MY WINTER SUCKED.

Spring: Better than Winter. The crappy weather carried over, but having eventually lined up an internship, I was in better spirits. I participated in a business plan competition, an experience in attempting to launch a business that is one of my most valuable takeaways from school (despite deciding not to move forward). However, it consumed a huge chunk of my time so I can remember very little else exciting that happened during that time.

Summer: Woah summer. So much to say, so much I won’t. Right after school ended, I headed down to Dallas for my internship for 10 weeks. I won’t go into much detail about the internship itself, other than to say that it was a good learning experience and provided me some clarity about my career direction.

Fall: After a month break after my internship, I headed back to school for the start of my second year. The unquestionable highlight of the return has been moving into a pretty fancy house (A HOUSE!) with 3 of my classmates, an experience I’d liken to the grad school grown-up equivalent of a frat house. It’s a blast to be around 3 people who are funnier than me (hard to believe, right?), live in a classy spot with funky light fixtures and snazzy bathrooms that’s nice to come home to everyday, and still be able to jam dozens of people in for raging Halloween and New Years parties.

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Despite the varying ups and downs of 2009, one consistent theme of the year was that I traveled. A LOT. I spent a total of 91 days living out of a suitcase, no small number considering I was employed for a mere 10 weeks. And as mentioned a few posts back, 29 of those days were consecutive.

Domestically, I went to Aspen, Scotsdale, Washington DC, Chicago (while living in Dallas), Austin, Houston (twice), Melbourne (thrice), Anchorage, San Francisco (twice), New York City, Bakersfield, Steamboat Springs, and Miami.

Internationally, I spent 12 days driving around all of Scotland and Ireland.

Financially, I am pretty damn near broke!

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I’m still planning on sharing a few pictures from last year soon, but this has been a (hopefully) short, (hopefully) informative, and (unlikely) entertaining update at where I’ve been. 2010 should be an interesting year as well and I’ll (hopefully) be better at telling you about it.

This may be the longest I’ve gone without posting. I’m sure all three remaining readers I have left are dying to hear what I’ve been up to, and I promise you I’m working on some sort of year-end recap as well as a strategy for getting on here more often in the future. I know that sounds like an empty promise but I’ll do my best to keep it.

In the meantime, hope you’re all having a happy new year.

College football is here. Normally this is my favorite time of year, except this year feels a little off. I’m not prepared. I have no clue what’s going on. It hasn’t hit me that it’s time.

I spent all summer in an apartment with no cable television, so I haven’t watched Sportscenter or any of the college football preview shows whose names I can’t even remember. I haven’t been away from the Internet but I also haven’t been able to get enough consistent time on it to do any worthwhile and necessary reading (my google reader has about 8mm unread items). I’ve barely even been around other Michigan friends to talk about the season – when the rare converasations have happened, I’m the guy nodding silently without adding anything. And I’ve been on the road sans computer and TV the last couple weeks while the hype has undoubtedly been building making me evermore clueless.

Apparently some newspaper wrote something about how we broken some practice rules. I don’t know enough about the situation to comment but people are obviously upset. Damn you traditional media! (Does anyone else think that this – writing sensational and inaccurate stories to rile up the new media sphere – might be print’s new business model? Like, every couple of months they’re going to throw out a “Hey fuckers, you suck!” and wait for the mobs to bring them readers, pageviews, ad rev etc…)

Also, apparently all Florida fans continue to be douches. I mean this in the nicest way possible. But as someone who has an above average number of gator friends on facebook withou actually going to school there, let me just say that you all are annoying! You know when you are driving down the road on a beautiful sunny day, the roads are wide open, a brisk cool air is flowing through the windows, and youre doing 20 over with no cop in sight? The fast lane is clear, the slow cars are actually staying to the right and as you pass one you notice a bumper sticker that rubs you the wrong way. And no matter how perfect the day is, you just have to flip the bird? Florida fans, you are the asshole driving that other vehicle.

Anyway, I’m now at the airport again en route to a vacation in Europe, meaning I’ll continue to be clueless for another two weeks. I hope they bode well for the team whose season I know not much about.

Go Blue! (?)

I’m writing this while aboard a flight from Seattle to San Francisco. I’m sitting in first class – a result of Northwest/Alaska frequent flier luck – and the experience has been great. I’ve always been curious about who the first class fliers are – what they do, how important they might be, etc. Today is no different, only now that I am amongst the first classers I have more time to visually inspect them. Most of them seem to be typical businessmen kicking off the week on the early Monday flight, but one person – sitting in 2F to my 2C – has me so worked up about who he might be.

Am I sitting near Mark Zuckerburg?

I’ve perhaps absurdly tried to deduce the answer based on physical observations.

Yes?
- Has same hair, facial features. Basically looks a LOT like him. Or what I think Mark looks like.
- Reading Wired magazine
- Flying first class to SF
- It looks a lot like him

No?
- Dressed in business casual. Not his typical style.
- Using a blackberry. I’d expect an iPhone.
- Appears to be bigger than I expected
- Glasses? This dude has them. Does Mark?

I wish I could take a picture but that seems a little to overboard/creepy. But this has been burning in my mind all flight and will probably haunt me forever!

I’ve never been much of a breakfast eater. I know its supposed to be the most important meal of the day but its never been mine. Occasionally I’ll have a nutrigrain bar or bagel, but in general I get by most mornings on just coffee.

Well, my friends, breakfast could soon become my favorite meal of the day!