16

I have been tagged.

Rules:

Once you’ve been tagged, you are supposed to write a note with 16 random things, facts, habits, or goals about you. At the end, choose 16 people to be tagged. You have to tag the person who tagged you. If I tagged you, it’s because I want to know more about you.

1. I love the Internet, though it was not love at first sign-on. It kinda just grew. I really like HTTP and am fascinated by TCP. It’s amazing how certainty and order (TCP) is built over uncertainty and chaos (IP). The fact that it all just works is amazing. And then you have HTML, CSS, Javascript and the lot. The growth of entities like Wikipedia, the spread of open source software, communities like Flickr and all. It’s unreal.

2. University years: I did not participate in a single extra-curricular activity during my university years. In fact, I barely attended lectures and only one of my professors knew me by name. I graduated from Computer Engineering, but didn’t actually get in to it. I got into Mechanical engineering and switched the year after. Oddly enough, I had a rep of being somewhat clever. For the record, my highest mark in a course was 95 (in my first year) and lowest was 51 (last year).

3. I started magic when I was 23. I get envious of people who started when they were 9 or 12. They got over a decade more time with magic than I did. I want to make a video of me doing magic for random people, except that I need to get over my shyness in those situations. (I also need a person to operate the camera). Someday I want to do magic professionally.

4. I still wear shirts I wore in high school (I graduated from high school in 2001).

5. Swimming makes me dizzy.
   5a. I once killed a frog with my bare hands.

6. Work: I once co-wrote and performed a skit at a company Christmas party after which people came up to me, shook my hand and said “that was a great resignation letter”, and “well, it’s been nice knowing you”. At another time, in order to make a point, I came into work and started to clean my desk and did no work the entire day.

7. In high school, after having been shown a video on the “top influential people of the millennium” in physics class I argued with the teacher whether Shakespeare should have been that up high. The next day my English teacher asked me, “what was it that you said about Shakespeare?”. My English teacher and physics teacher were married.

8. I don’t like complimenting people, so if I do it, I really mean it.

9. This is the first time I’ve been tagged, or have tagged anyone else in an Internet meme.

10. Living in Saudi, I used to think that “betrol” was the proper spelling and that “petrol” was a typo.

11. I have seen every episode of Grey’s Anatomy (minus the latest episode).

12. I spent over a month in Mumbai in 2007 and did not go sightseeing even once. I am an idiot. I did, however, go to visit family in Hyderabad for one day. We went to visit approximately ten houses that day. My stomach was sick for the next week and a half.

13. A lady at Subway (sandwich/subs) once asked me if I was Australian.

14. I was in the Boy Scouts of America when I was in Saudi. We used to go camping and tie knots and things. I still have shark teeth that I once found during a camping trip.

15. I regret not having taken drama in high school.

16. I want to write a children’s book that will make children cry.

I don’t know 16 people and Iffat already tagged most of the people I would have tagged.

I tag: Basit, Faiqa, Sophister, and Waleed.

Also, 5a is not true.