Summer

Sometimes the referee does suck

I'm pretty down right now.  I've gotten back into refereeing soccer recently which is something I think is a lot of fun.  I've done about 10 games since getting back into it after not being a referee since high school.  Well it's been going well and a lot of fun.  I like getting paid to excercise.  But today I did a slightly harder game than I'm used to.  It was a disaster.  They were boys who were freshman in high school. The first half went ok, but the second half quickly went south.  I messed up some calls.  I wasn't being quick with signals.  I wasn't doing that great.  Well the sidelines noticed and got pretty mad.  Well and then a disaster happened.  With 5 seconds left in the game a player on offense is fouled in the penalty box.  I thought at first it was a normal foul and whistled it dead and was going to award a penalty kick.  But then I noticed he was bleeding.  I called the couch over and the player was crying in pain on the ground.  Well that's when things got bad.  Both sidelines were already rather roudy, but this set it off.  I ended the game without awarding a penalty kick, which I think is against league rules, but due to a time crunch my AR recommended that I end it.  Well this caused the whole team to get mad at me and my referee crew.  They were going at us hard.  Pretty much us referee crew had to run away so that the whole sideline didn't tackle us to the ground.  I know I didn't call a very good game, but it turned into a disaster.  I had never lost control of a game like that.  So I left and went to the referee headquarters.  An ambulence shortly shows up and the kid who was fouled was strapped to a stretcher and loaded into the ambulance with paramedics and firemen.  It took them half an hour to get that done.  The referee crew ran away from the game so I did not award a penalty kick like I should have.  One thing that also made situations different were that one of my Assistant Referees is actually a league assignor and referee mentor.  So overall, it was a disaster.  Both sidelines were fed up.  I got shouted "you need to go back to referee school" many times and got some explitives thrown at me (which are things that I don't care about at all) but worst of all, a kid probably broke his arm if not worse.  If I had the game under tighter control, it might not have happened.  Ugh, that didn't go well. 

In other news, work has been crazy.  I was at work until 8:30 on monday, 3:30am on wednesday, and 4am on friday.  It has been ridiculous.  I've been working on implementing new software to test out hydraulics and it did not go well at first.  We were having a lot of problems with the new tests and since hydraulics are dangerous when they fail, most of the tests are done at night.  It's been quite difficult.  I've adjusted into a 4am bedtime noon wakeup schedule.  Fortunately we did pass the tests on friday morning, so I won't be working nights anymore for a while.  Work has been crazy with hours, but overall it's good.  I love my job. 

My parents are on a round-the-world trip where they are going to all sorts of exotic places and looking at the origination of man.  They are in Mongolia today and i think are headed to Cambodia next.  It's organized by National Geographic.  They are flying around on a chartered 757 to take them to all these places.  It's an amazing trip.  I hope to do something like that one day, but I'll have to ref a lot of soccer games and work quite a bit of OT to pay for that. 

Cheers!

Javid

Life is Good

I thought I'd put a few words here.  Life has calmed down which is nice.  I'm happily living in my townhouse and it's all furnished and looks beautiful in my opinion at least.  I have a roommate moving in next month, so that will be good.  It snowed only two weeks ago which was crazy.  I'd never seen snow at the end of March.  Also I saw a deer outside my living room window last weekend.  That was crazy since I live in a suburb. 

Works pretty good.  I'm established as an engineer now.  I'm not sure what that means, but I have responsibility to handle my own projects now and it's a lot of fun.  Boeing is an awesome company.  It's awesome to work int he final assembly factory of the 737.

I also started grad school last month.  I'm taking two classes: The Air Transport System and Industrial Safety that apply towards my masters degree in Aeronautical Science. 

It finally has warmed up.  I am sunburnt after refereeing two soccer games today.  I love soccer.  It's good to get involved in the sport again. 

Later!

Back to work

I'm back at Boeing again.  I'm now a fulltime employee working on hydraulic systems as well as landing gear and brakes for the 737.  I really enjoy the work.  Officially I am a Design and Analysis Engineer although I like the analysis side more despite the fact taht I work in a design group.  As of now I do a lot of work on the functional tests that check out each component on every airplane as it moves through the factory to make sure that everything works.  I also do various troubleshooting and product improvements along the lines of redesigning parts or improving processes in the factory or field.  I love working in an airplane assembly factory. 

I also bought a townhouse!  It's technically a condo, but I still love it.  I repainted it, got hardwood floors and got furniture for it too.  It has taken so much work to get it ready for living, but it has been worth it.  it is nice having somwhere of my own to live in for the first time!  However I do have two bedrooms, so I am looking for a roomate.  If anyone that I know still reads this and you are looking in Renton, let me know!

Here is a picture of the painting process.

~Javid

Vacation

I just got back from Australia and New Zealand.  It was a great trip.  I am awaiting going back to work in a couple days.  I loved the trip.  Australia was incredible.  I first got there after the 14 hour flight from San Francisco to spend the day at the zoo, taking a cruise across Sydney harbor and going out to a tasty dinner.  I also got to walk around the city, tour to Blue Mountains, and most incredible see the fireworks for New Years.  It was the best fireworks show that I've ever seen.  they use the Sydney harbor bridge and also light fireworks off of buildigns and barges.  It was incredible.  Sydney is a great city.  It kind of reminds me of San Francisco and is a city worth visiting for anyone. 

Next I went to New Zealand.  I went up the coast to Kaikoura and saw incredible scenary with my friend.  We also went through a cave up there.  I then came back to Christchurch to go to my cousin's wedding.  I did a reading at the church in front of everyone.  It was a nice ceremony.  Afterwards they certainly had fun.  It was two days worth of celebration. 

In the end the flights were long and arduous, but the trip was good.  Now it's time to go back to work and resume a normal life.