BIll Xu: Sells er-hus. Gives travel Advice. Causes rain?

Over the past 25 years of my life, I have come up with various litmus test questions (or observations) which will allow me to easily assess my compatibility with other people. I believe that how a person responds to these tests is very reflective of their character. They give me all of the information I could possibly need to knoe, without spending 7 hours hearing about all of your lame childhood stories or grilling you on what classes you took your freshman year of college.

They are as follows:
(1) The Kool-Aid question. It’s a two part question. Did you drink Kool-Aid as a child? If so, was it regular or sugar-free?
(2) Do you like Panda Express?
(3) Does anyone in your immediate family, including grandparents have red hair? My mother has red hair. I think the rest speaks for itself. (This is more of a question for girls I am considering dating. p.s. sorry mom!)
(4) Which mechanical pencil led do you prefer? 0.5? 0.7? No idea the difference between the two?
(5) How much thought do you put into the subject heading of an e-mail? (Purely observational here)

This is probably my second biggest pet peeve in the world. (#1 pet peeve: People who drive in the left lane and force me to pass them in the right lane. Do this and you can pretty much guarantee I’m going to cross back into your lane as soon as humanly possible and immediately tap my breaks. Ugh.) I have to preface this by saying that I take the act of e-mailing wayyyy too seriously. I would like to think that the vast majority of the e-mails I send to people are both well thought out and entertaining. From the time you read the subject heading to the overuse of certain words or phrases (‘knoe’, ‘phenomenal’, ‘zamazing’, ‘ridiculously’ etc.) to the last line where I implicitly remind you of my superiority (i.e. ‘Best, Mark’), I want the entire e-mail to be filled with pertinent information, humor, and positive connotations.

Now, I do not expect people to put as much thought and importance into their replies. Not all of us graduated from the #4 Journalism school in the country. Not all of you have enough free time to dedicate 30 minutes to describing every minor detail leading up to the moment when a shirtless transient man propositions you. Not all of you have the mental energy to write a concise argument explaining why my idea for a cat Olympics was far superior to any other idea. However, I am certain everyone does have the time and the mental capacity to write a subject heading that is relevant and sets the tone for the rest of the e-mail. I just can’t phathom how someone can write 500+ words and still make the conscious decision that ‘Hello’ or a simple ‘Re: Whatever my previous awesome subject heading was’ is sufficient. Seriously, people, put more thoughts into your subject headings.

Okay. I’ve sufficiently established the fanaticalness (side note: I love this non-word) with which I approach e-mails. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that no one appreciates a good e-mail better than me. I save pretty much every enjoyable e-mail I receive for future reference. I’ve even started to create a tentative ranking system for said e-mails (Look forward to the methods paper describing the e-mail ranking system using Dirichlet Process Priors in a nonparametric Bayesian framework in JAMA). Without a doubt, though, the greatest e-mail I ever received was from some dood I have never met. His name was Bill Xu and he was a graduate student in the department where I got my undergraduate degree. As he was approaching the completion of his degree, he sent out an e-mail to the entire departmental listserv looking for people interested in purchasing his stuff (1985 toyota camery $50…or free) and offering words of advice (‘Everyone has a pot. Jump inside!’). I can’t do the e-mail justice, but trust me when I say it’s the most phenomenal e-mail of all time. I’ve forwarded it at least 50 times. If I have never forwarded it to you, just *talk* to me.


Two weeks from this upcoming Monday (so 05/11) officially signaled the start of the rainy season. This implies that the city of Lusaka will constantly be under the threat of thunderstorms and ridiculous amounts of rainfall from now until April (I think). This also implies that everything will start to get muddy on the unpaved sidewalks on my walk route to work, cars there will be presented with awesome opportunities to splash me with all of the water collected in any of the huge potholes, mosquitoes will have new breeding grounds, and strange odors will again be manifested. None of this is terribly surprising or noteworthy because everyone constantly talks about the three different seasons that Zambia experiences and how you should brace yourself for how life will change once the rainy season starts.

What was awesome, though, was how the rainy season started. It honestly was identical to those PBS documentaries about life on the savannah for African wildlife. You knoe what I’m talking about. It goes something like:
drought, drought, dryness, sad animals, drought, downpour, downpour, upbeat music, animals not dying, downpour, etc.

What was even more awesome was when the rainy season started. On that same day, a situation arose where forwarding the Bill Xu e-mail to my siblings was the PERFECT response. Literally seconds after I clicked ‘send’, it started downpouring rain. I’m sure most would argue that this was pure coincidence. I, on the other hand, think it is further reflective on the greatness of the Bill Xu e-mail and the enormity of its potential.