Aymin (Restart my friend series)

I shipped ten boxes to Boston today. Ten boxes only. It was quite surprised to see how few items I have. Yesterday was my last day in the previous job. It felt a little nostalgia. I think I did a good job in wrapping things up and transfer my duties to my teammates.

As I got out of school and somehow managed to hop from job to job, I have realized that I need to restart my friend series. So here is a new one, starting all the way from A. Of course, all fake names.

Aymin is my colleague in my last job. He joined the team about 1 and a half month ago. Somehow, we got along very well. He was a typical jewish guy, a little nerdier than usual (no offense here, because I use "nerdy" all the time, mostly to myself). He had a bad first job in investment banking, and this job, in comparison, became his heaven. He was very well trained in statistics. He could picked up anything quite easy. He likes to learn things the hard way. (The following sentence needs some CS training to understand) For example, if you gave him a C++ library to use, he would dig up how some of the library functions are implemented, rather than just using them, like most people would do. He used to like Asian girls. Yellow fetish, if you have to put a label. He learned a hard lesson from a mean Hongkong girl. Now I do not think he dares to touch my race:-) Well, that is a joke, and all my best wishes to Aymin. I have to make the joke here because of the way he described that girl -- "soooooo meeeeean!"

So I guess I gave him a helpful hand after he joined in. At the very beginning when he started, I knew I would be leaving, so I just tried to familiarize with what I do, so he could take over it I leave. In the end, he does take over half of my tasks.

My fond memory of Aymin comes from our goofing around. Two days ago, both of us were in a video conference call. It turned out the other side did not show up, so we had half an hour to kill. We began to play with the video. First, we called into a random room, joking that we might get the CEO on the other side. Then we looked at ourselves from the video playback, and soon realized that there was a delay in the video. So I tried to turn my head real quick, and was able to see the back of the neck (and then saw a quick turn). Aymin tried to roll his eyes and then was able to see of white part of his eyes from the video. We alternated to do all weird things that we usually could not see ourselves doing from a mirror. But with the delayed video playback, we felt like we were catching a glimpse of ghosts.

Then I discovered something better. I tilted my head to one side. The video playback showed the opposite direction with half-a-second delay. Then I tilted my head quickly from this side to that, back and forth. Soon enough I figured out the timing to make the video in sync with the real me. That created an illusion of immediate video playback. Then I would suddenly stop moving, observing me in the video screen magically tilted my head once more. We giggled like two teenage California girls.

I know I know. It does not sound too fun when I wrote it out, but we were so cracked up for doing those silly things right at the moment. Soon we found that there was one guy from that random room who was staring at the screen too. Realization: Our silly videos were transmitted to the other side. We cut off the video, a little embarrassed but mostly empowered by our goofiness. Walking out of the video conference room, one guy was staring at us from a cubicle nearby. Our silly laugh must be that loud.

As I wrapped up my last day, I could sense that some of my co-workers will miss me (I will miss them too), and others probably would not give a shit. Aymin is in the former category. As most people in work place are way too pretentiously serious, I hope Aymin will soon find another goofy buddy to share a moment here and there. For me, my new job will be full of sleazy business type too. Probably no more goofing around. In some way, writing this entry is my homage to the good old time that will never come back again.