What?! Another year in the history books? I say this every year, but time sure does fly. Especially when you’re having fun. This year seemed like one of the busiest yet! Let’s take a look back at my photographic year in review for 2011.
See previously, my photographic year in reviews for 2010, 2009, 2008, and 2007.
I got a call from my doctor, who I’d gone to see the day before because I’d been feeling worn out and was losing weight, and wasn’t sure why. He was brief:
“Amit, you’ve got Acute Leukemia.
“You need to enter treatment right away.”
I was terrified. I packed a backpack full of clothes, went to the hospital as he’d instructed, and had transfusions through the night to allow me to take a flight home at 7am the next day. I Googled acute leukemia as I lay in my hospital bed, learning that if it hadn’t been caught, I’d have died within weeks.
I have a couple more months of chemo to go, then the next step is a bone marrow transplant. South Asians are severely under-represented in the bone marrow pool, and I need help.
There’s a few things you can do to help. Are you of South Asian descent? Swab! Or help organize a drive!
This weekend, a number of our friends ventured to Lake Tahoe for some R&R. We stayed in a friend’s family’s cabin, went snowboarding, and watched the Super Bowl.
Of course, the perfect way to start (and end) the trip is by visiting In N’ Out.
Recently, I downloaded a game for the iPhone called “Words with Friends.” It’s very similar to Scrabble, with a different board and slightly different letter values (one would assume to avoid Scrabble’s IP lawyers).
Many of my family and friends are playing the game and we’re all having fun trying to best each other’s scores. I like to think I have a good vocabulary, but apparently I don’t know how to effectively play for points, as evidenced above by the 60-point bomb that Kerry dropped on me, two moves into the game!
No matter though. I’ll just have to brush up on the following video, “Fighting dirty in Scrabble.”
A new year, and a new decade are upon us! Here is my annual photographic review of the year. More travels, moving, a new job. So sit down and come along for the ride.
You can also see my past year in reviews for 2008 and 2007.
While traveling through Europe last year, we stopped for a few days in Barcelona to check out the capital city of Catalonia. The hostel we were staying in gave us a flyer of interesting things to do over the next few days.
One particular entry caught our eye.
“¡Una nit de curts còmic!”
It’s written in Catalan and basically translates to “a night of funny shorts!”
That was pretty amusing to us, especially because we all agreed that Sanjin had just bought some ridiculous and funny shorts right before we left on our trip.
So we made plans that evening to set out for the bar / lounge (called the Mauma Lounge) that was hosting “funny shorts night.” Sanjin decided to pack the shorts in his messenger bag and change into them when we got there, just in case the night ended up being a bust.
When we arrived, we noticed a distinct lack of activity in front of the bar. We paid a small cover and went inside, only to find the place fairly dead. A few people sitting on couches and either drinking beer or smoking.
We decided to make the best of our time there and plopped down on a couch and ordered a few beers. After a few minutes, they started playing some ridiculous and hilarious movie. It was over within a few minutes. Another one immediately started, and it was also over within a few minutes.
One of us turned to the rest and asked, “what’s with all these funny short movies…”
Their voice trailed off and instantly, we all knew what funny shorts actually meant! We shared quite a bit of laughter over our pretty obvious mixup. We sat down, content to enjoy the rest of the evening, watching funny shorts and having some tasty Spanish beers.
As an aside, one of the short films we saw that evening particularly stuck with me. It was an amazing stop-motion film focused on photography. Which is why I think it made such an impression on me. Ten Thousand Pictures of You.
“¡Una nit de curts còmic!”
Funny shorts night. It’s a phrase that will always bring a smile to my face.