33 Born at UConn Childhood in DC Teenage years in West Houston Vanderbilt Undergrad UH MBA I have an incurable case of wanderlust and am on my 4th passport. Married my high school sweetheart's worst enemy. The moderate son of a liberal ex-hippie mom and a superconservative Bush-appointee father. (No idea how they ever got married) Hated pro sports until I discovered gambling in college. Quit gambling but still like sports. Mushrooms are my kryptonite.
I'm 22, and currently residing in Houston. I went to the University of Texas where I studied business. During this same time, straight out of high school I was recruited by India's Intelligence Bureau(IB) due to a reference from an uncle who already worked there. The pay wasn't much but it was good enough for a college student. I then had a most unfortunate event that changed my life. I lost my girlfriend in the events of 9/11. The onsuing grief caused me to develop a mild stutter. Due to this I was compelled to resign my post at the IB, due to the fact that I had trouble interviewing 'questionables" and reporting back to my superiors. For the same reason, because of problems communicating, I quit school and went into a tailspin. Luckily at the same time, I was developing my skills in stock trading. I had become proficient enough to trade my personal portfolio. I did that for the next year and a half running my own business. My best friend then approached me to join him at an investment management firm he was starting. So ever since I have been head stock trader at this firm. I enjoy good rock music, such as Interpol, Death Cab, Postal Service, Morrissey, The Strokes, John Mayer and Nick Drake. I enjoy all sports, especially tennis and table tennis. I think I've lived a pretty interesting life. Enough of me now.
I ditto the other guys' ditto(e?)s, but it's great to see that you were able to bounce back so successfully.
I was thinking the same thing. Sort of like the "One window closes, another one opens" kind of thing. Sounds like you're doing quite well synergy! I lost a friend in 911 too.
well i will do this too... my name is robbie. i'm 24 years old and i'm originally from houston. i lived there all my life until i moved up to austin to go to UT. i started off in petroleum engineering just because its something that looked like a well paying career and i am good at math. long story made short....i hated it and gave it up after 2 years. i was so burned out that i was even thinking about quitting school i was hating life so much, but i didn't instead i changed my major to history and one day i decided i would try to minor in french to challenge myself to learn a foreign language. well i did that for about 5 semesters and gave up because its too hard for me to learn a language when i dont have anyone to really speak it to outside of class. i ended up minoring in government, but my last semester i took a spanish course and with my mexican girlfriend, her friends, and my knowledge of french i have picked up a decent amount spanish and i can understand it and speak it somewhat. after i graduated i had no clue what i wanted to do, but i had a friend who was doing some trading in the market with some money that his parents let him trade. the stock market always interested me so i took it upon myself to start learning about it. it was the best thing i ever did. i started learning about investing and then i started learning about trading. i used $600 of the $2000 i won with my team won in my bowling league and i started up a trading account. pretty much everyday i was working towards learning more and more about the market and it because a passion for me. i'm now a professional daytrader at zonetrading here in austin. its a great job and i love it. so in the end i put my history degree to good use lets see i also love houston sports and i am a huge fantasy baseball guy. i love computer games, but it sucks when your computer sucks and wont work when you play them anyhow i should probably post this before my computer turns off...it likes to do that as i finish writing something
so sorry about your gf synergy I know what it is like to lose a loved one, I have lost both my father and my brother. heres my story in a nutshell: I am 30 years old. 4th generation Texan. allan is my real name, and even though it is not a typical hispanic name, I am indeed of hispanic descent with a little german mixed in. lots of people however think that i come from india or europe or something. I grew up in a small town about 100 miles south of houston. I really hated small town life and left as soon as high school was over. I lived in houston for about 11 years. I tried to move to san francisco once in that time but circumstances/fate took me back to houston. which is where I met my current girlfriend/life partner. Since as long as I can remember I was always a skater (skateboard). Even though I dont skate much anymore I can still ride and carve a vert ramp or a bowl. I guess I am what the kids call old school. I have always loved music. I even played guitar, trumpet, and bass at different times in my life. I would like to get a bass again and find some folks to jam with. right now i just cut up music on my computer. My tastes in music i think are quite diverse. Being a skater punk from the eighties, i love punk, thrash and hardcore from that time. but I also love blues, jazz, funk, hip hop, noise, experimental or just about anything that doesnt get played on commercial radio. I truly am a vinyl freak and my collection is all over the map. From albert ayler to zappa. my all time favorite musician/composer has to be charles mingus, his music really opened my mind and forever changed music for me. he is a true genius. Since the age of 16 i have owned 7 different vehicles. a few years back i decided to give up the hassles of car culture for the pleasures of bike culture. I do not own a car at this time and I really like it. I am also a vegetarian. It started out as a one month experiment that has lasted 6 years and I dont miss meat culture one bit. I love to cook and I view cooking as creative, satisfying outlet. Not to mention delicious. I also love good beer. I also enjoy good whiskey and good tequila. I dont smoke cigarettes or do any hard drugs but I do enjoy deew although it has been awhile since I have had any. right now I live in atlanta ga with my girlfriend (soon to be wife) and we are expecting our first child. I am a graphic/production artist but do not currently work in that field. Hopefully that will soon change as I can make more money doing graphic design. Other interests include, basketball (obviously), reading, gardening, chess, art, photography, frisbee golf, building things and i am looking forward to being a father. Hopefully this wasnt too long.
oh yeah, forgot to mention I also have a cat, his name is bird. he is very cool and laid back. he snores and can ride a skateboard.
i have a good friend who went through the same thing with his family (from nicaragua). oh, and i lived in Guatemala last year. so i found your history pretty cool. oh, and synergy - it's good to see you've bounced back so well.
Sorry to hear that synergy, but it looks like your life has turned out ok. Good luck and maybe someday, I can come to you for investment advice if I ever have some spare income
OK I'll get on the bandwagon after ignoring this thread for awhile: I'm 29 for a month and a half. I haev been married 7 years and I have one son(3.9) and we just found out another is due in January. I live outside Beaumont and work for a local school district as a teacher, coach and IT consultant. I also work for the local hockey team. I spend most of my free time looking through 2 of the forums on this website and making sure people don't post crap in them.
Very well, where do I begin? My father was a relentlessly self-improving boulangerie owner from Belgium with low-grade narcolepsy and a penchant for buggery. My mother was a fifteen-year-old French prostitute named Chloe with webbed feet. My father would womanize, he would drink, he would make outrageous claims like he invented the question mark. Sometimes he would accuse chestnuts of being lazy...the sort of general malaise that only the genius possess in the insane lament. My childhood was typical...summers in Rangoon, luge lessons. In the spring we'd make meat helmets. When I was insolent, I was placed in a burlap bag and beaten with reeds...pretty standard, really. At the age of twelve, I received my first scribe. At the age of fourteen, a Zoastrian named Vilma ritualistically shaved my testicles. There really is nothing like a shorn scrotum...it's breathtaking, I suggest you try it.
what the hell.... 22 Irexican (iranian/mexican) from spring, tx currently residing in san marcos. attending SOUTHWEST texas state university, where i'm a marketing senior entering my 5th year. i may try to double major in management as well. proud brother of the Kappa Sigma Fraternity (AO!), best decision of my life. i've been known to pop my collar, i sport a shagg, and i wear a cap everywhere. i love drinking, and do so frequently, especially since this is looking like the last year of my college career. i'll probably take over the family empire after i graduate . i work (if that's what you wanna call it...), but am fully supported by the folks. so i got that going for me.... I definitely have a love/hate relationship w/ the Rox. Led Zeppelin rocks. If malone comes back for one more year, a couple buddies and i are gonna get hammered and go to a game when he's in town and try to heckle him until they kick us out. should be fun. everyone should float the river at least once in their life. thats about it.
Does laughing out loud at this sudden revelation make me a bad guy? I'm 24, single, looking for a job still. Graduated from UT with an advertising degree. Love 80s music. Have about 200 old Rockets games on tape all the was back to 1981 including many playoff games from the 80s (this is my hobby). I have torn off my big right toenail twice, hurt like hell. My Pontiac Fireird was flooded all the way up to about three inches from the bottom of the steering wheel in Nov. of 2002 in Austin. Took a looooong time to vacuum that up. I do not pee in the shower. I watch Bill O'Reilly sometimes because he takes on intelligent people. Moises Alou is my favorite player.
I was born in Japan to a former Marine (who worked on F-4 Phantom fighter jets, if you read that without the parentheses, it looked like my dad worked on jets and my mother!) and his Japanese wife. I'm 35 (about to be 36) and live in Dahlonega, GA with wife #2 (wife #1 was my high school sweetheart who cleaned out my bank account, took everything that I had including the ice cube trays, no joke and slashed the tires on my Porsche and IH pickup before leaving me while I was on deployment) and two kids. I was raised in Mobile, AL and later a great part of my mother's family moved from Japan to Houston, TX where my grandfather, a career engineer, found a lucrative job. They still live there and every summer I spent 3 mos. with my grandparents when I was a kid. Christmas break always saw a trip to H-town as well and my grandfather became a die-hard Rox and Astros and Oilers (and now Texans) fan. He took to me to games all the time and his love of sports really rubbed off on me. I ended up playing basketball, football and baseball in high school and my grandfather, to his great credit, made nearly every playoff game to watch me play. He and my grandmother are still with us today at the ripe old ages of 83 and they're sharper than a box of day-old razor blades. I was in the Marines for 15 total years (10 active, 5 reserve) before I was medically discharged with a degenerative condition in my neck which has been cured with fusion surgery. In that span, I went all over the globe including stops in such garden spots as Somalia and the Balkans and survived everything from poor Somalia marksmen to a helo crash that killed several other Marines. I went to the University of Alabama, where I earned a double-major in political science and journalism. I made a brief comeback on the diamond for the Tide after last having pitched in high school, but after one season, I required shoulder surgery and decided to give it up again for good. I just finished my master's in International relations from the University of GA not but a year ago. I've ran for the city council here in Dahlonega, but my flirtation with politics was a mistake I won't repeat until I'm retired and have more time on my hands. I later moved to LaGrange, GA for my first job and was hired later by a paper near Atlanta as one of their reporters, mainly covering the SEC. I now split time between my newspaper, covering local sports and Associated Press, covering the Falcons, Braves and whatever they need me to do. If it comes out of Atlanta, I'm one of several who likely wrote it or edited it. I also do a radio show based out of a little town near Atlanta that is syndicated to a few mom and pop stations in GA and elsewhere. I still love the Rox, even if they disappoint me often. I miss not being able to go back to H-town to hang out with my grandparents as often as I'd like, but they make it up here regularly (they still drive and drive well). I play keyboards (my mother insisted that I take piano lessons in addition to sports) and guitar and play piano in my jazz group and both in my funk group (Funky Japanese Brother). I'm also a whiz at fixing cars, having basically restored both my 928 Porsche and International Harvester pickup's over the years.
synergy - I am so sorry to hear about your loss. I am glad to see that you have been able to bounce back from such a devestating blow. I am 30 (will be 31 in less than a month), single, and have lived in middle Tennessee most of my life (I lived in Huntsville, Alabama for 2 years due to grad school). I started liking the Rockets because of Hakeem and cried when they lost to Larry Bird and the Celtics in 1987. Also, hate to admit this - but I cried when they lost to the Jazzholes in 1997. Besides the Rockets, I also enjoy following the Boston Red Sox, the Denver Broncos, and the Miami Hurricanes football and baseball teams. I got my BS in mathematics from Middle Tennessee State University (MTSU) in Murfreesboro (30 minutes south of Nashville) in '95. Wasn't able to complete my master's in math, but I got the last laugh on the assholes in Alabama as I am making more money doing what I am doing now than what I would be doing with a master's in math (which would be teaching at a junior college). I have worked the last 4 years for a government defense contractor as a number cruncher and I will leave it at that. Many times we are slow which was a big reason for my high post count. However, I have been given increasing responsibility lately and my appearances here seem to be limited. Besides working, I enjoy spending time with my family and my dogs (Jake and Rex), working out and running, playing the OOTP sim which started here, and listening to all kinds of music. I pretty much like everything except the bubblegum pop, nu-metal, bluegrass, hard core country, and some blues music (not all of it). Maybe I will quit buying CDs when I reach 1,000 as I am at 850+ right now!
