Eid El Fitr in Redmond

Well, being in the US doesn't mean I can't celebrate Eid El Fitr, right? ;)

And celebrate I did, it was an eventful day and full of "first times" for me. Sushi, learning how to use chop sticks, and karting were some of the main highlights. Read on for the details :)

At first we were not sure if Eid El Fitr is gonna be on November 3rd here in the US or November 4th, because Ramadan started one day later in the US than in Egypt. But I woke up on November 3rd to find Helal telling me he's going to pray because Eid El Fitr turned out to be on the 3rd after all.

We had already planned on taking a floating holiday on the day and spend the day together with the Egyptian group here at MS. So I woke up at around 10am, had a pretty late breakfast and took my shower only to find a call from one of the guys asking me if I'm gonna join them for lunch at this sushi place "Todai" in Redmond town center. I'd already told them I wanted to try sushi before so perhaps I was part of the inspiration for this.

I dressed quickly and caught up with them over there at 12 or something, turns out the place is an open buffet sushi place and all the better for it. No better way to try just about everything at once :) I took a quick tour around, took one of everything they had on offer and returned to my table with my plate full of stuff I have never tasted before. The guys were wondering if I should have tasted a few ones first to see if I like it before I fill my plate, but I just love trying new stuff, I didn't really care if I'm gonna like it, I just like the opportunity to try the new tastes.

And for the first time ever I understand the rationale behind the chopsticks. I've been looking for the chopsticks' raison d'être, something that just can't be handled with a fork. And I found it in Sushi rolls. It was an excellent experience overall.

And continuing the "first time" theme we then decided we should go karting. So we went to the closest indoor track. The track (map here)looked kinda small at first, but I was really blown away with all the technology.

The races are about lap times and not an actual head to head race. So we would go 4 or 5 ppl at a time for 18 laps but it's your best lap that counts, you can go as slow (or as sideways) as you like for 17 laps and get that perfect lap just once and you'd come out first.

This was actually my first time ever karting, and did I enjoy it! It was a blast, we were 8 people and we each bought 3 races so they would mix and match between us for us to go against different competitors every time.
The thing is that I knew beforehand about optimal racing lines, and the whole concept of how to do a fast time around the track so I expected to have an advantage, at least over people who are also doing it for the first time. It seems the theory is very different than practice because even though I knew the basics, I did pretty horrible for the first two races, I was pretty much the last. In my defence I swear the kart I had for the first race was slower than the others because I would be goin at the kart's limit on the straight and still be overtaken by others. The guys of course wouldn't just watch. They kept teasing me with comments like "Maybe you should bring the z4, see if it can go faster around the track" and "There is no z4 to help you here". It was all in good spirit and we laughed for hours though :)

To their disappointment I do my last race and it seems that I'm finally getting the kart and the track. The last race was also special because the guys over there gave us a bit of an adernaline shot by giving us the turbo mode during the last few laps, where they put more power into the karts and we were allowed to go faster. 23 mph I think was the number which feels awfully fast in such a small indoor track.

And the biggest surprise of the day was that not only I won the last race. But I also got the fastest time of all for the whole day, pulling an 18.42 second lap (I was doing 23 seconds on my first race).
Actually the lap turned out to be the 3rd best laptime during this month (November 2005). And you can even check it out for yourselves here Of course I was jumping all over the place with excitement.

We then continued on to having dinner together at chili's and went home afterwards. It was a marvelous day and if any of the Egyptian MS guys are reading, thank you all guys for making that day the amazing day that it was. Special thank you to loay for arranging for the most part of this day and always working on keeping the group together.