waiter can we have the bill please?



what’s the deal with going out to eat? Why is the bill always short? With the amount of schooling that we take, it should be a snap for us to calculate the total of what we ordered (especially since there’s a printout “receipt” right in front of us) and then on top of that, tax and tip.



I think that’s where people get tripped up. Once some math comes into play, especially percentages, people get all flustered and crazy. Tax is about 7.5%, and a generic amt to tip is 15%. “What’s 7.5% and 15% and how do we tip and what do I do?! I’m so confused, here take my 20 dollar bill and give me back how much you think I need in change.”Beware, anyone who throws a 20 at me and expects their math to be done for them will find that they have also paid for ameer’s number crunching service.



Here’s a quick lesson (for those of you who whip out your cell phone tip calculators which I find extremely embarrassing!). If you get a burger and fries for $5.99 and then a soda for $1.49 your total is about $7.50. but if you throw in a $8.00, you’re shorting everyone and the inevitable “hey guys, we’re short” phrase comes out. So what does one do in order to correctly figure out tax and tip? I have an easy formula for all you. It’ll make your life, and mine, much eaiser.



$7.50 is your food. Approx 7.5% for tax, and 15%ish for tip. How does one take 22.5% of their total? It’s not easy to do. So then, we simplify:



10% of anything is just a decimal point move to the left. Ex: 10% of 19.59 is 1.959! easy!



Now then, allow us to apply this mentality to something we can use in daily life. 7.50 is our total for food, and we use our 10% trick, to find that 75 cents = 10%. Afterwards, multiply that by 2. and viola you’ve just figured out 20% of your food’s cost, $1.50.



Here we go: $7.50 + $1.50 is $9.00. if you threw this in you’d be giving a bit less than 15% for tip, since 7.5ish% goes to taxes, you’ll be tossing 12.5%ish to tip. If you feel that the waiter/waitress was awesome, then give them a buck more, and you’re up to 33% tax + tip. That’s a bit much, you want to aim for 23%



There we go. Using our heads, and some simple math… we’ve solved the age old tragedy of someone paying 16.00 for a meal that cost them 8.99 (78% tax and tip). As far as remembering what who ordered, that’s still a mystery to be solved. Finally, for the record, there are only two times which are acceptable for the bill to be bill is split evenly among the number of persons at the table. Those two instances are if the meal was eaten family style (everyone shares everything), or buffets. Other than that: DO THE MATH!! It’ll keep your neighborhood engineer sane.

stress ball



i'm in no way stressed out these days (besides having no job and an unsure living situation). I was however spending a bit of time squeezing a stress ball, when it occured to me that everytime i squeeze this ball, it comes right back to the exact shape and form no matter how hard i try to contort it.



the ball is tennis ball sized, with the globe printed on it. dig your nails into this ball and in 30 seconds or less you will see it come right back to life, as if you hadn't strained every muscle in your hand squeezing the shit out of the "world".



this started to aggrivate me, and after a bit i had to just toss the ball away and take a few breaths. what madness this is. when i'm stressed, i want to destroy something, and see it break. the feeling of exerting lots of energy and effort into something that won't see any results is frustrating and can only add to one's stress. i've just discovered a market for stress balls you can actually break.

mexico, teriaki, computer, freeway



i’m not special. i am unlike those that i admire and have been caught red handed aspiring to be just like. when it comes to communicating, i fail big time. “i failure big, uhhhh english only speak.”



it’s those bilingual/ trilingual/ quadlingual/ quintlingual/ hexlingual/ billion-lingual individuals that i admire. for each language you speak, i feel that you are another person. in a sense these people have split personalities, but in a non-schizophrenic, good, way. becoming a cultured individual is something that i’ve yearned for since i was young… hell, my name is ameer!!!! how could someone with a name as ethnic as mine be a monolingual ignorant uncultured american?



if i were bilingual, i would be able to answer my question for today. i personally don’t speak 2 languages, thus impairing me to make the correct decision. the question at hand is regarding words, and how they are pronounced while speaking another language.



for example, if i were to say “let’s eat a carne asada burrito” do i pronounce carne asada burrito as someone who was born and raised in minnesota would pronounce it? or do i slap on the accents that i learned from mrs. le’cakes traumatic spanish class? i’m speaking english here, not spanish. so do i do the switch over? do spanish people bust the switch when they are asking for a burger with fries/pizza/hotdog?



on the other hand, i heard my chinese friend talking to her mom on the phone the other day, and i caught “*chinese babble*lilly doo-ah-eh downtown *more chinese babble*” and distinctly heard the words “lilly” and “downtown” in the american english accent. this is where my confusion sprouts.



when people speak english, and then switch over to another language, they rarely use the accent of that other language. however, when people are speaking in a language besides english, they’ll say the english word with the english accent, instead of with the currently spoken language’s accent. is this different where english isn’t the primary language? does everyone in germany bastardize all words in french with their german shiza von newton accent while speaking primarily german?



this is the stuff that needs to be settled and standardized… one could spend hrs debating what is correct and what is not! one already did, instead of practicing spanish as to better myself and become that bilingual person i’ve so aspired to become.



but i’m only really learning one thing at a time, back to photoshop cs for now

in woken dreams



i met san francisco back when i was in college. a few buddies of mine and i drove up in a white corolla and we spent the weekend in san francisco. the year was 2000. i didn’t tell my mom or dad that i would be going to see san francisco that weekend, i just up and went… a typical college impulse decision. little did i know what was in store for me due to that weekend.



the actual weekend didn’t have a significant event or epiphany that i’m able to reference, but something stuck… i knew this wasn’t the end of san francisco and me. oh no, there was more to this story for certain, but i had no idea, and neither did anyone else at the time.



fast forward (or chapter select ahead 4 years if you’re using the dvd version of this blog) and here i am… 50 miles south of my new found object of affection [san francisco]. i now live 350 miles closer than our first encounter in 2000. the year: 2004, and that impression that she left on me back in 2000 that i couldn’t forget, has since blossomed into a crush. full blown puppy love is what we’re talking about here, and it’s the kind that hurts when you see each other because you know that you can’t be together. yet.



it’s rough to be so close, and so far at the same time… i go see her weekly and there’s a tingle in my spine from the bottom up to the back of my neck that gives me goose bumps and forces my hands to shake when i drive up the freeway and see the noble lights of the financial district buildings next to the lights of the bay bridge. that view at nighttime is 100% gorgeous, er… maybe it’s only 99%



why 99%? a crush of this magnitude should be 100% or the unattainable 110% that football coaches demand. simple explanation: i’m not a part of that 7 mile x 7 mile area that we refer to as san francisco. i gaze upon her from the highway 101 bridge and have no place to point at and say “that’s where i live”.



her and i see each other once a week at minimum, but i live in san jose… the antagonist of this story i call “my life”, yes the evil san jose. feard by all, known by middle class computer creating geeks, and current residence of our hero for the moment, san jose is the orange county equivalence of northern california. the lovely san francisco sees us together and turns her head, she knows not the depth of feelings that i’ve developed for her.



i will prove my love to her, and we will be together one day. it started as a weekend fling, evolved into a crush, and now… yes boys and girls, it’s true love. i fell in love. and if i learned on thing from numerous viewings of the princess bride, i’m certain that nothing can defy true love! my love and i will soon be united, although first things first i gotta work on getting a job!

my phase



i’m sure this isn’t something new to the world but it’s new to us. this new phase i’m talking about, is it really new, or maybe it’s just come round again, cyclic they say? what phase am i talking about? why this phase, the one i’m sitting in and soaking up like a new sponge. allow me to define the phase of topic: out of school, in the work force, and free! free to do as i please!!! (within reason of course)



i feel that the generation before me was not given this opportunity. i feel that most of them got jobs, got kids, and got grown up right after school. i don’t know if there was an “out of college, making some money and enjoying it on stupid things like bars and cars” phase for people a few decades ago. back then (in the old days) they were fighting off sharks and pirates in order to make it to the land of opportunity, the land where they’d have children in order to give them a better life. to the generation before me, i have that better life, and i’m lovin’ it. thanks!



how else was i able to drop my entire life in search for a new one simply because i wanted a change of scenery and had a dream to live in a certain city?? if i had a girlfriend/kids/house/established career it would have been much more difficult if not impossible to do what i did. no way no how no sir no ma’am, that’s a negative captain. i’m in the phase!



this phase was no piece of pie to achieve. it started with my parents, if they hadn’t done well for themselves i’d be sticking around to make sure that they had a roof over their heads and food on the table for themselves, but they’re on top of things and can sustain on their own. they also prepped me to do the same for myself, that’s right, momma taught baby how to be independent! pushing me to go to school and do well at something i was horrible at [studying] and hated just as much, was also part of the process. college and a few grand of debt, viola! here you have it… a well equipped, no responsibility, young gentleman able to do whatever wherever however, only condition is that i’ve got nothing else coming from those two who’ve started me out…. m & d. and why should they fork over anything else? they’ve set up the pins, moved the line closer, showed me where to throw the ball, and are now cheering my name with pomp pomes from the sidelines… all i gotta do is knock em down!

a list of things i like compiled in 5 [timed] minutes:





hoodie sweatshirts,

vans shoes,

gel pens,

external harddrives,

performance tires,

frosted pint glasses,

stackable containers,

knit beanies,

rechargeable batteries,

music videos,

teflon fry pans,

state parks,

silver rings,

argyle socks,

crushed pepper,

acoustic guitar,

vitamins,

girls with short hair,

journals,

pocket watches,

concerts,

instant messengers,

headphones,

messenger bags,

gloves,

sappy romantic comedys,

remote controls,

real leather couches,

paper towels,

vests,

car stereo amplifiers,

thick guage wire,

adidas shoes,

skateboard videos,

skipping rocks at the beach,

quoting movies with friends,

t-shirts,

vintage wood furniture,

downloading mp3's,

shag carpeting,

window tint,

adobe photoshop,

japanese anime movies,

air conditioning,

technics 1200 mk3d turntables,

belts,

turbocharged reciprocating engines,

powertools,

ergonomic keyboards,

sd memory cards,

shiny pocket knifes,

nalgene water bottles,

used sketchbooks,

subwoofers,

and talking on the phone.

love that love song



i’m like every other romantic sap punk loser who’s got nobody significant in their life and as a result is strangely attracted to every sappy stupid romantic comedy. wait, is every punk loser like that? (if not then i totally retract my earlier statement)



sitting at home looking for a job, and of course downloading and listening to thousands of mp3 files, (i recently was given a few thousand mp3s from a fellow electronic music fan friend of mine and have been listening to these files all day however, when i’m not listening to the dark and energetic sounds of jungle/drum & bass/breakbeats) i’m watching some of my female roommate’s sappy dvd’s and listening to the radio’s sad sappy love songs.



i’m not a hopeless romantic by any means, but the thought came into mind that real people were the inspiration for these songs. the artists (or paid songwriters in almost any pop-song’s case) are writing about someone in their life that made them feel this way. and i thought that there are quite a few girls in my life (ahem, were in my life) that i could write songs about expressing how i missed them, how they hurt me, how i want them back, how i don’t want them around at all, etc… but then i flipped the table…



turned the table, fipped the coin… whatever.



what if… (big what if) one day on the raido, i heard a song and it was about a girl who missed a boy. and later found out that the song was written by an ex girlfriend of mine. and later found out that i was the person she wrote the song to/about. and later found out that she was single, rich, more beautiful than before (honestly, would i be caught with an unattractive girl?), and wanted me back!!! would i take her? (she’d prolly be the girl who treated me the worst, yet i would have liked her the most. yup the girl who i caught cheating on me, the one who’d not answer her phone when i’d call, that one girl.. the one who’d i’d catch eating the last french fry, you name it… she did it. yea, that one.



now this song gets big, like mtv big. like, all the 12 year old girls/boys are jamming the songs like no tomorrow and the 18year old kids have heard/memorized/and now hate the song, due to it’s popularity it’s uncool to like. would i then be persuaded to take this girl back?



lots to weigh out here… she’s going to the mtv music awards and paris hilton’s next party while i’m just a nobody-loser-nonworking-engineer guy who likes house music and computers. girls like her get bored with guys like me. stop, check that, reverse, regular non-popstar girls get bored with me. girls like that treat me like the geek in every brat pack movie ever made.



but her song was about me? so then… what to do? eh, i guess i’ll just have to cross that bridge when i get to it. until then i’ll bother my mind with larger life issues- like how to get good mexican food in northern california!!!!!

independence day!



last night i found what i have been looking for. balls? guts? some would say “you just don’t have the plums!” well i found them last night! and it feels good, it feels great!



i’ve always admired those who are independent, the people who are able to go to a movie, dinner at a restaurant, or even a club/bar alone. they have no friends meeting up, and nothing to do besides have a good time by themselves. there’s something about how these people carry themselves and talk that i admire. there’s something about them that tells me that they’re in control and it’s attractive to me, i want to be seen by others as i see them!



there’s only one way for me to do so, and that is to enjoy a dinner at denny’s or the random persian restaurant (yas restraunt) down the street by myself. bring a book, or a newspaper… and enjoy the fact that i don’t have to engage into conversation for a meal. initially i felt very sad and sorry for those 1 person tables when i spotted them. eating alone in public was a depressing sight for me to see. until i talked to someone who actually had done so 1st hand, he told me that he enjoyed doing so every once in a while. the absence of conversation and company allow you to clear your thoughts and reflect on yourself. he said that he learned a lot from being alone, and doesn’t fear a few hrs without a companion.



my admiration for these people has always been great, mostly because i haven’t done what they have done. they have accomplished feats that i have yet to conquer… oh contraire!! yesterday i ventured into the pig and whistle bar off of geary in san francisco. and i did it alone. that’s right ladies and gentlemen, i’ve lived to tell about going somewhere by myself! i contemplated a movie, but that wasn’t going to happen just yet. i need to take baby steps here. i do feel an accomplishment, and that’s what i’m doing up here… accomplishing things.



i talked to the bartender wearing the shirt with a small school bus that said “let’s get retarded in here” and asked him if this pig and whistle was somewhat connected to the pig and whistle in hollywood. he said no, and mentioned that pig and whistle is a famous name for a pub. in my amazement i asked him why and where and how he came up with that… i’ve seen 2 pig and whistles in my life, and this second one i have known of for about 1 and ½ pints. he went on to tell me that back in the uk, in the medieval times wine was called piggins, but then the piggins was placed in a vessel. so pig and whistle is a bastardization of the words piggins and vessel.



i did not spend the entire night at that bar, i can’t give myself 100% credit for being independent, a friend picked me up and we hit up some bars, but the night was more of your typical night out with friends, which was fun by the way.



point being, i have started becoming more independent. hey, i got no friday plans, maybe i’ll go out to dinner alone! becoming an independent person sure can be lonely.

working and blogging



mac and cheese,

peas and carrots,

peanut butter and jelly,

ham and cheese,

socks and shoes,

rims and tires,

mouse and keyboard,

ameer and hot chicks,

shirts and ties,

sweet and sour,

fat and tall,

pizza and beer (somehow it's all about 2 foods)

burgers and fries!!!



these are couples, compliments of eachother. like husband and wife... they're married and will be going together forever...



now for all those technical people wondering why it is that i named this blog "working and blogging" when all know that i am indeed not employed. well my friends, i have become a voulnteer for the WCG which is the world contest, yielding the world's best of the best at the latest video games. ironically, i don't like video games! ha. wait is that irony, or is it just lame? i don't know.



but i've managed to get myself in front of a computer, even as a voulnteer! and of course, a computer at the WCG will most definately be connected to the internet. so i'm here, and i'm helping out, entering in data, logged in with admin priveledges, and checking emails/blogs.



so what do i do? i gotta work, and blog. the fact that working and blogging happen in matramony almost brings out tears of joy. and yes, i assure you that there are tears.



more on what's going on later. it's time for me to converse with some fellow WCG people intrested in games.

moving up!



i normally don’t post “this is what i did” entries on this website. i’ve saved that for the millions of other bloggers mainly between the ages of 10 and 17. i guess their readers are interested in what flavor of cold stone ice cream they chose to buy, and how boring class was.



well i did embark on somewhat of an adventure within the past week, and i feel that needs to be documented. it all started out tuesday around 2pm in costa mesa (my place of residence at the time) a friend of mine showed up to the house with his pickup truck and guitar.



before anything was to be done, fank’s philly cheese steaks had to be consumed. and i’m talking good ass cheese steak sandwiches!!! more on that later down the road, (literally).



packing your entire life into a car and a pickup isn’t the most fun/easy thing to do, but things gotta get done and moreso things need to be thrown away! and throw away i did! it’s tough to go thru the sentimental box of stuff that you haven’t touched since you last moved and actually throw stuff out, but i did it.



at around 11pm on tuesday night my life was packed away with room to spare, a quick powernap and we’re off!!! my friend and i left the costa mesa dwelling at 1am, bound for san luis obispo. with walkie talkies, ipods, and plenty of beef jerky we made it to my sister’s apartment in san luis obispo at approximately 5:30am, asleep by 6.



9am general hospital had to be watched so the girls were up (my sister and her roommates) luckily they all had 11 am classes so peace once again settled in the 2 bedroom appt, and more sleep was acquired.



about 4pm we headed up again, this time we were san jose bound. vicki and karen readily awaited our arrival. who wouldn’t be ecstatic about me moving into their living room with all my bins of clothes, turntables in boxes, and bigfat computer with desk… about 7:30 we showed up, just in time for “supper club”, a weekly wed meeting that vicki, karen, and 3-4 other girls meet up and eat then talk about girly things. this week’s topic was a highschool friend’s recent proposal.



after packing my room into the commonspace of the 2 bedroom appt i received a call from a friend living in actual san francisco, not san jose, and if you’ve been in a hole for the past decade, san francisco is where i’m planning to reside. she invited us to come up, and offered a drink at a bar. 1 more hr of driving? we’re down!



all the while i had one thought left in my head. i left something in costa mesa. and it irked me to this day… how could i be so careless? that frank’s philly cheesesteak sandwich sitting in the fridge, that’s right, i ordered a large one, ate half, and left the other half to rot in the fridge i left in costa mesa. tragedy indeed.



got to sf about 11pm wed night. our journey started around 1am wed and ended at 11pm that same day. this 22hr excursion has changed my life in almost every aspect: job, friends, living situation, weather, etc… at least i can still call my mom and get some reassurance that i’m doing a-ok.



i’ve been up here for 5 days and feels as if i’ve been jobless for 3 months! i really have a heavy weight on my chest to find a job and get something settled. not to mention the fact that i left in order to live in sf and not in san jose. i’m basically in the same situation as i was in so-cal. i desired to live in la and instead i was in orange county. so i decided to move up to sf and here i am, 60 miles south of the city that i moved here to live in. but this time i’ve got a different plan of attack. not that i 100% know what that plan is, but it’s i for sure am going to attack something!



once again i apologize that this post was the “this is what i did wed” post, but in the last few years, this has probably been the most momentous wednesday that i’ve had. and i hate wednesdays!!! (see some previous post in the archives)