For Sumit . . .

Today I found out that my best friend from freshman year of college has passed away. Of course something like this makes you think a lot about life and friendships and all of that, and I realize that anyone who reads this blog his probably never met Sumit Mallik, but I'm still going to share my top Sumit moments because I know Sumit would have done the same for me except that he would have done it better than I will.

I met Sumit after my first few weeks at Purdue and he was the first person who I knew I would be friends with for years to come. If you watch The Muppet Movie, Ganzo sings a line in the song, "I'm Going to Go Back there Someday" that says "There's not a word yet for old friends who've just met." Now I realize that this line is coming from a Muppet, but this is what it was like when Sumit and I met. In our first meeting Sumit and I only talked briefly, but it was understood that we would meet up the next night to trudge to the dining hall for dinner, and we would probably repeat this routine week in and week out - which we did.

We spent a good deal of time in the first month watching the Mets vs. the Yankees in the World Series. I could care less about that, but Sumit supported the Mets so I'm glad he got to see it.

For some reason Sumit wanted people to think he was an asshole, but he was not. In my exhaustion of trying to figure out college I would often fall asleep on his couch (usually during the Mets/Yankees series), and I'd wake up the next morning to find that I was covered with a blanket and somehow obtained a pillow in my sleep. If other people were around, I would still wake up with a pillow and blanket, but I'd find out the next day that Sumit would have led a charge to take incriminating photos of me passed out on the couch surrounded by lotion, Victoria's Secret catalogs, and (strangely) blocks of wood. Like I said, he wanted to appear to be an asshole.

A few months into college I bought a computer, and when I got it Sumit told me to bring it over so I could set it up. Now, it takes a real friend to realize that when an 18-year-old guy gets a new toy like this one all he wants to do it play with it and not hang out with his friends. Sumit, both realizing this and being an IT guy, made me a big list of all the programs that I'd need (such as WinAmp and Snood) so I could have the computer that every college freshman in the year 2000 should have and then left me alone to play.

One time in second term Sumit wanted me to come with him on an impromptu road trip to see his friends at Thee Ohio State University. I had a scholarship application that I needed to finish, but this served as no excuse for Sumit. He went off and wrote my scholarship essay for me (which was probably better than I would have done myself) and then dragged me to Ohio. (Now, neither of us promotes cheating but I think we both knew I had no chance of actually getting this scholarship.) Needless to say, X-hours later we arrived at OSU, met his friends, went to a crappy house party, and had a relatively miserable time. Sumit, however, refused to let a night end badly. So at 2:00am we stop off at Steak and Shake. Now because this was Steak and Shake at 2:00am, it took about 3 hours to get our food. The food couldn't have been better than mediocre, and I don't remember what we talked about, but by the time we wandered back to his friend's dorm room it was a pretty good night. I think you are always in a debt of gratitude to the person who takes you on your first unplanned college road trip.

Sumit decided that he was going to transfer out of Purdue (a good choice for him bad news for me) and when it got near the end we decided to spend one night taking pictures around campus. Me, Sumit, and a few other people got together, put on stupid clothes, and wend all round campus taking photos near all the statues and landmarks that all colleges seem to have. I can't explain why, but this ranks as one of my top 10 nights of college.

And finally . . . I always thought it was awkward to tell people it was my birthday in college - this goes double for freshman year. My birthday (April 30) was during finals week and everyone was busy enough. On my birthday freshman year I had taken couple of finals, and I only had one test left so I was studying for it at Sumit's apartment while watching TV. I don't know what we were watching, but on the show it was one of the character's birthdays. I say, "It's my birthday today." Sumit doesn't believe me and after a few minutes of arguing (most things with Sumit were an argument) he checks my driver's license to which he replies, "Holy shit, why didn't you tell me it was your birthday!" I was happy just to concretely win an argument with Sumit, and it seemed like it wouldn't come up again.

A few days later, I go with Sumit to his house in Ohio to hang out for a few days, kick off summer, and to catch a U2 concert in Columbus. (Our original idea was that we would always get together at the beginning of summer to catch a concert but, sadly, that trip never happened again.) The first night I'm at Sumit's house his mom cooked us a nice, traditional Indian meal, and we were all just chatting and having a good time. All of the sudden, at 9:00 sharp, the front door opens and a whole ton of people come pouring in shouting "SURPRISE" and "HAPPY BIRTHDAY!" Sumit disappears into the kitchen and comes back with a birthday cake. He says, "I know you don't know any of these people, but they are my friends from high school and they've heard about you. I told you you should have told me it was your birthday." It was truly a surprise party.

Thinking about it now, I only spent one good year with Sumit. After freshman year he came back to Purdue a few times, and I made a few road trips to Michigan. He came to see me at ND, and I would spend a few days with him whenever I was passing through Chicago. We'd talk on the phone to catch up a few times a year, but we never got to spend time together like we did that one year. It was only one year, but it doesn't matter. We won't be catching up on the phone anymore and I guess the second U2 concert really isn't going to happen, and "there's not a word yet for old friends who've just met" but there is a word for old friends who won't be forgotten - memories.

Thank you Sumit for all the memories, you are missed.

Your Pockets Did Bleed on St. Valentines

I spent all of last week at a posh all girls school called Farnborough Hill, and in hind sight, it may be the finest finishing school in all of Britain. The school building looked like the mansion from Beauty and the Beast - the live people one from the 80's not the Disney one from the 90's - and all the girls are all forced to dress like tall leprachauns who are trying to camoflague themselves with green deck chairs.


Anyway, all the girls were all lovely and musical and polite and I would expect me to have an interesting Valentines Day story to tell after spending the dreaded V-day as one of a handful of males amongst hundredes of females. I, however, do not.

The only interesting thing to happen to me on Valentines was that I was in Tesco (think super Target) at about 7:00 on Valentines. I walk into the store to find that the entire Valentines card section is swarming with guys, most of whom appear to be on the way home from work, desperately searching for a Valentines card in the 11th hour. And while I neither gave nor received a card, all these scrambling blokes made me laugh. I realized that it sucks to have no one on Valentines day, and it kinda sucks to be with someone and have the pressure of Valentines Day, but it sucks the most to kind of have someone and decide at 7:00pm on Valentines Day that they are actually worth buying a card for and that you will get no better offers.

What It Would Be Like If You Called Me

You: "So what's new?"

Me: "Well, I watched the Superbowl the other day and I'm super happy that the Giants won - actually I'm just happy that the Patriots lost - but here in England the game was on BBC2 which is owned by the government, paid for by taxes, and therefore has no commercial breaks. It was like only watching half the game."

You: "So what'd they do during the commercial breaks?"

Me: "They cut to some British announcers sitting in the nose bleed seats of the stadium who would explain American football. And then they'd just replay what just happened. You really notice how much downtime in football there is when there's no commercials."

You: "That kinda sucks, but at least the Pats lost."

Me: "True."

You: "Hey how's the leg?"

Me: "It's alright. Turns out I don't have gout, but now my doctors trying to get me in to see some kind of 'aches and pains' specialist."

You: "Aren't all doctors aches and pains specialists? Isn't that the point of a doctor."

Me: "You'd think so, but apparently you have to have a letter of recommendation to see this guy."

You: "You're kinda bitter."

Me: "I can't be bitter . . . it's Pancake Day."

You: "What the hell is Pancake Day?"

Me: "It's what the English call Fat Tuesday. You make pancakes and put all the stuff on them that you need to clear out of your cupboard because you can't eat it over Lent."

You: "What, like butter and syrup?"

Me: "Naw, like Nutella and ice cream."

You: "That's stupid. Hey man, I gotta go. Later."

Me: "Later."

XLII - All My Rowdy Friends Are Coming Over Tonight

Today is Superbowl Sunday, and I can't wait until Monday. For me, most of the Superbowl will take place on Monday. I will get to start the mayhem of New York vs. New England in Old Arizona at about 11:00pm Sunday night, and, assuming there is no overtime, the game will finish just before 3:00am Monday morning.

I will probably stay up to watch the whole game, and I hope The Giants crush The Patriots in the same manor that actual giants would crush actual Patriots in an Ultimate Cage Fighting Superbowl. I hope I can rope a few friends here to watching the big game with me, although I'm sure the Superbowl is as exciting to Brits as the Rugby World Cup finals were to me. I can try to explain the "funny commercials," but I have a feeling that Pepsi, FedEx, and Budweiser become less funny at 2:00am. On the plus side, if I do get my British friends to watch the big game I figure it will be natural for the English to root against The Patriots.

As if you don't hate The Patriots already, here are 16 more reasons:
http://touchdown.org/patriots/16-reasons-to-root-against-the-patriots.php

Peri Peri is Portuguese for "Let's go steady."

I have met someone and her name is Nando's. Nando's is the love of my life. The love I've been waiting for. She's everything I've ever wanted with a few peri peri qualities I didn't even know existed.

You think I'd learn, but like so many times in the past I'm smitten. I have found the answer to all of my problems, this time in a Portuguese style chicken restaurant called Nando's. I've heard about Nando's from a number of young people who I come across on the average work day, but I assumed Nando's served more mediocre food that the Brits rave about (Bangers and Mash, Fish and Chips, Spotted Dick - all mediocre).

What Nando's offers is any fractional amount of a chicken divisible by 4, marinated for 24 hours in Portuguese style peri peri sauce, and served with a wide selection of side dishes. But what makes Nando's so extraordinary is that she seems to have dated and American before and learned a few things from the relationship. Mainly, Nando's offers unlimited free refills on your soda with all the ice you want. Anyone who has spent more than a day in Europe will know why this is such a rare and special treat.

On my one trip to Nando's thus far, I was in direct competition with the twelve-year-old at the table next to me to see who could suck down more Cokes. When I saw that, to the embarrassment of his mother, he was willing to eat his quarter chicken without using his hands, I knew I best withdraw from said competition, but I've never enjoyed getting second place more.

I have high hopes for my relationship with Nando's, and she's even given me the first gift of our relationship - a frequent dinners card. Clearly, she knows I'm in this for the long haul.

"Take off your trousers, but you can leave your pants on."

Over Christmas break I came down with an illness that can best described as Brandon Till's Disease . . . I probably should have seen it coming.

On Christmas day I awoke on the festively green leather couch in my uncle's basement to discover that my left foot hurt. "It's hell getting old," I thought to myself, and I carried on with a day full of Christmas miracles. One Jack Bauer crisis diversion later, I found myself on the same green couch, red-eyed and unable to sleep from crazy, throbbing, novacaneless-root-canal-style foot pain. The modern day wise men (or at least mid-nineties wise men) known as Will, Carlton, and Uncle Phil kept me company, and luckily I couldn't figure out how to turn down the volume on the TV so I eventually woke up my mom (say what you will, but at age 25 I was still glad to see my mommy when I wasn't feeling good on Christmas night) who gave me some Tylenol, an ice pack, and gently explained to me that I need to turn down the damn TV because not everyone is as interested in Fresh Prince of Belair reruns at 4:00am on Boxing Day as I am.

Two days later I still could not walk without looking like a pirate so I decide to go to see a doctor.

Gout. Now gout is a disease that I thought died out with port drinking kings in the 15th Century, at least that's what I thought until college when I discovered that my father actually has the disease. And based on webmd.com and my father's detailed descriptions, I went to the doctor ready for gout. When I got there, however, I was informed that I am probably too young for gout, and then I was asked uninsulting questions such as, "Was your sock bunched up in your shoe?" Finally, I suffered a long line of Colombo style questioning where the doc was trying to catch me into accidentally telling her how I broke my foot in my family's annual Christmas motocross race, but I think she was disappointed when x-rays confirmed that my family's card playing has yet to cause any injury outside of slow forming liver damage. $200 and a load of travelers insurance paperwork later, I get expert medical advice of, "Keep taking the pills you've been taking for 10 days and then see a better doctor."

Fantastic. Ten days later I find myself back in the UK but now with a painful swollen toe, a cankle (calf-ankle) where my ankle used to be, and a knee the size of a fat cantalope (bear in mind my legs are usually a bit on the thin side). I see a general practice doctor as soon as possible. She listens to my story, looks at my leg, and sends me back to the waiting room to see a better doctor. Thus far, aside from assuming that card playing broke my leg, this is the same treatment that I had in the US.

New doctor, unable to identify Brandon Till's Disease, wasn't quite sure what to diagnose so he puts me on two different sausage-sized antibiotics and leans toward the diagnosis of deep vein thrombosis. DVT is a blood clot in your leg from when you don't move around enough. This happens to people who travel on long flights or who watch hour-after-hour of The Fresh Prince of Belair reruns on Nick at Night. He prescribes a third blood thinning DVT drug that came in two syringes to be administer by a nurse at my residence that night.

Now I had a decision to make. Night Nurses are coming to my house. Do I shave in case this nurse is cute and has a thing for guys who walk like pirates? And while every film I've ever heard of involving Night Nurses would suggest that I should shave my entire body, I decide not to. I figure the Night Nurses who work for the free British health care system probably make the same decisions that I do - should I shave my chin or not?

When the nurse arrives at 11:30pm, I hobble to the door and invite two nice, old, Irish women to my living room. I take off my jumper, roll up my sleeve, and the nurse instructs me to lay down. This sounds a bit like the movies I've heard of but fair enough, as long as she doesn't ask me to walk up stairs I should be fine. I am surprised when one of the Night Nurses (we'll call her the cute one, but only for the sake of the story) tells me to take off my shirt.
"What?" I say.
"I'm going to put it in your stomach," says the cute nurse.
"Shouldn't that be my line?" I wonder as the nurse preps the first of two syringes to enter my 70's style, hairy yet defined abs.

Well, a few unpleasant moments later I escort the Night Nurses out of my house feeling a little queasy to the stomach. I think the films got that part right.

The next day, I head to the real hospital. My doc has upped my condition from "wait and see" to "get thee a DVT scan." I'm on the road to recovery, and it comes with presents. My boss, apparently seeing the carnival show that is me getting in and out of a car, has found a cane for me to use. Now, this is not a cool looking cane per say. No one will look at me walking with my cane and think, "Watch out for that baddiwad droog, me thinks there's a sword in his cane." They might think, that 85-year-old man looks rather good for his age, but someone should update his cane. Very unstylish.

No matter. I feel like Gregory House walking around that hospital with my cane. I wait in the DVT waiting room with all of my DVT peers who seem to admire that I use a cane vs. their wheelchairs, or perhaps I'm mistaking pity for admiration in the fact they may pity me for being in their condition 40-years before they've made it there. The DVT nurse sees how slowly I walk with my massively swollen leg, and quickly finds me a wheel chair, embarrassing me in front of my new cohort. No matter. The nurse takes me in for a DVT scan, measures the circumference my legs so she knows (1) exactly how swollen my left leg is and (2) exactly how skinny my legs usually are.

Apparently I pass the swelling and DVT symptoms test with flying colors, so I don't even get the scan. The nurse phones the Chief of Medicine or Gordon Brown or Queen Elizabeth or someone, and I am patched directly through to the second test. Out of my way pregnant mothers, time for my ultra sound.

"Take off your trousers, but you can leave your pants on," the ultra sound woman says to me.
"Umm . . ." I decide to start undressing until it appears that this nurse is uncomfortable and that will be far enough. Failed plan. I can't bend my left knee so me taking off my trousers or pants or whatever is uncomfortable for all parties involved. Luckily, when I get to my boxer shorts she asks me to lay on the table.

Now this is no Night Nurse, but I am in a dark, semi-private room so the next logical step would be, of course, warm jelly. The nurse puts this warm jelly all over my leg which isn't normally a problem in her field of bulbous, hairless, pregnant women, but my legs, aside from being skinny and awkwardly swollen at the same time, are Germanly hairy. With all the gel my leg looked like that guy with a bad comb-over who still uses too much hair gel. Sadly (or maybe happily), in all her ultra sonic searching, no blood clots were found. I took my cane and left the building.

The NHS down graded me from "Warning, might die soon" to "Meh, whatever" status and the amount of care I receive definitely slowed. I was told to wait three days to get blood tests, then wait five more days for the results. And in these eight days I learned two things (1) when you walk around in public with a cane people pretend not to notice you and (2) whenever you have to walk through a doorway you suddenly become very visible and everyone around you becomes very helpful.

When my blood tests came back I went back to my GP doctor and was sent to see a third physician at the clinic. The blood tests affirmed that what came out of my arm was, in fact, blood but that's about it. It was a little high in this, and a little low in that, and it only tested positively for Brandon Till's Disease. The good news: my knee's swelling is down and I can bend it now but not fully, I've stopped waking up at night in a dead sweat, and my ankle has returned from its cankle status. The bad news: the bones in my feet feel hollow, I no longer can justify the use of a cane, and my third physician (fourth overall) wants to take more blood tests, and this time, test for gout.

"One Is Silver and the Other Gold" or "One is US Gold Standard and the Other Is British Pounds Sterling"

I was back in the US for the last three weeks, and in spite of an increasing number of strange medical conditions, it was a great to spend some time back in God's country. Being back home made me realize what is great about the US and what is great about the UK. Here's the list.

Great Britain:
Kentish Ale
Mika
Trains
Football
The word "Royal" actually means something
Accents
Slang words
Skins (The TV show)


Fabulous USA:
A small coffee is 16oz.
The Fahrenheit scale
Movies that are only $6
Ice
Football
Stoplights
Weeds (the TV show)
REAL Burgers (http://www.lionstap.com)
$1 bills


There are probably more for each, but that is all that comes off the top of my head. Happy New Year and enjoy this Twisted Sister as my Boxing Day present to you: