When the pandemic first started, I wanted to journal and write about my experiences during this time. A year into the pandemic and I’ve yet to write anything. Earlier this week, I was blessed to get my first shot of the Pfizer vaccine at the Mountain View Community Center. I’ve spoken to a few different people who’ve had their shots in the Bay Area and elsewhere. Since it seems experiences are varied, here’s a short account of my experience.

Getting an appointment

The hardest part of my experience was actually getting an appointment. A few weeks ago, I signed up with Dr. B…

About a decade ago, I learned about a defunct car plant in Fremont, CA, called NUMMI through a This American Life episode. It’s one of my favorite This American Life episodes — it’s meticulously researched and well structured and narrated. It’s OK you can go listen to it now. I’ll be waiting right here.

The NUMMI story has stuck with me and I’ve even listened to the episode a few times since it’s original airing. As a Bay Area transplant, the idea that there was a time when actual products (let alone cars!) were manufactured in Silicon Valley fascinates me…

I remember it like it was yesterday. It was the spring of 1998 — my senior year in high school. I had stayed a few minutes late after my first period class, Advanced Placement English, to ask my English teacher a question about an assignment. As I was gathering my stuff and getting ready to hurry to my second period class, my teacher casually told me, “You know you’re a good writer, right?”

My English teacher was notoriously difficult. And the class was ridiculously demanding. It was the sort of class where we’d read two books at the same time…

August 2nd marked the 30th anniversary of Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait. The invasion uprooted my family’s life and changed the trajectory of my future. Like the nearly 400,000 Palestinians who lived in Kuwait at the time, we had a really good life in Kuwait. It was a life that was built around a large community of friends and family.

And the foundation of that community was my uncle Adel Samara. Khallo Adel passed away yesterday and with him a big part of that life left the world.

Khallo was an extraordinary man. He was so much more than an uncle…

I spend a lot of my time at work writing research plans for my research projects and providing feedback on other researchers’ plans. I can’t stress enough the importance of a well-scoped and documented research plan. It’s the foundation of your work as a UXR (I’ll spare you the house metaphor). A good research plan sets you up for executing a successful research project. Without a good plan, you’re unlikely to produce good research. Engineers use the expression “garbage in, garbage out” and the same is true with research. …