Happy Late Thanksgiving! Happy Chanukah! Welcome to the holiday season, family, and that means it is just about time for our annual family vacation. This year it will be in the Outer Banks, North Carolina where we will have a beautiful house with guess what Vina Masi!? Two Hot Tubs!!!! Two!!!! In this month’s post we will analyze the survey results, which the Patel Family Blog Editing staff has decided will be a portion primarily written by our very own, Josh Porterfield! Of course, don’t worry folks, I will still have my extraordinary clean hand in it,
Don’t worry, I’ll make sure its up to my standards, folks. After that, we will get into the details about this year’s one of a kind vacation. It will the first in a infinite string of many more family-oriented vacations.
When we created November’s survey, we wanted to get the family’s input on the upcoming vacation, so that it could be tailored to the entire family. We asked for input, and boy did we receive it!
The second question dealt with everyone’s favorite moment of 2012. Again, we had multiple responses about spending time with family at the beachhouse and Christmas. All of us at the blog team are grateful for that answer, and we look forward to trying to change those answers to “The 2012 Christmas Vacation!”.
In the third question, we really got into the upcoming vacation. The question was about what part(s) of the vacation people were looking forward to the most. Given the fact that multiple answers could be selected, I am astounded that only one person (that person being myself) choose “No school/work” as part of their answer. I mean come on, does no one hear value time off work? Or school? I know there are some people in this family who like school, but isn’t a break nice? [end of rant about work/school] Other responses included “Seeing Family”, which 8 people included in their response (I guess someone out there doesn’t want to see the rest of us :-( ), and “Patel Olympics”, which served as a generic name for the competition that will take place at the annual vacation.
The Beach Vacation is sort of like this family’s bread and butter. In the summertime, the middle and young generations go to the beach to be active, but in the winter, we get to do what we all love, and act like vegetables in the company of other loving vegetables and relax. We do play some football and relax in the hot tub(s) but not to the extent that we would do in a summer vacation. This year we have a different house, and it is looking like it is going to be a great vacation, and it even includes a twist. This year our staff has a new set of events planned for you that we think you’ll love, and hope will continue for years to come. It has been democratically voted, by we the people of the Patel family, that these events will be called the Patel Olympics. The vote was a close one, Patel Olympics barely edging out Patelathon by one measly point. Unfortunately for the voters of Patelathon, this is democracy, Patel Olympics wins, life goes on. Right now, we will reveal the basic idea, events, and teams for the Patel Olympics.
The Patel Olympics is a set of five events that will be played over the duration of the week we have at the beach house. (These events will be revealed shortly). Each of these will be worth one point, and in order to make things interesting, a team can bet votes they’ve earned in a double or nothing like situation. If they win, they earn that point and the points they’ve bet plus the point they’ve won will be doubled. If there is a tie, we will add in an event as a tiebreaker which will be announced at that time. The events will each have individual methods of scoring which will be announced before we play an event. Next we will announce the events. The winning team will win an unannounced award on the last night before we leave in an award ceremony.
The events will be played as follows:
Most people will participate in all events, however there will be groups that won’t play specific events, for example those who aren’t physically able to play football will not play football. We will not force people to participate in events, however we would love everyone to participate if possible; this is intended to be a family event. Next, we will announce the teams that will be used in this competition forever unless we see that we have accidentally made them unfair. Our goal however, was to keep the teams as fair as possible, so if they don’t work out we will try, try again!
The Teams are as Follows:
Lily
These teams do have people who won’t always be there and will not be there next year, and we have tried to take that into account when creating the teams. When someone is not present teams will not be shifted, each team will just play with whoever they have and we will try to make it as fair as possible. The team names were selected by the Editors of our staff yet suggested and inspired by those who took the survey, and we assigned the team names partially based on the fact that Rupal Masi works at Sandia National Laboratories, which helps develops bombs, therefore she had to be a bomber. And as a side note, we are the Meddlers because I taught a class in winning once. About twenty young men and women are now leading authorities in the ever growing field that is Winning. Don’t worry though, these teams are fair!
We had a lot of fun coming up with the idea and planning these Olympics, and we hope you enjoy them as much as we do. On a side note, I passed the NJ Driver’s Exam, NJ being one of the most ridiculously tight states in terms of Driving Regulations, my test was 50 questions and 45 minutes long, and to pass you had to receive at least an 80%, which even in the hugely nerd populated Princeton, doesn’t happen for most students on their first try. I passed on my second try. I just thought I’d share that good news. Other than that, we can’t wait to see you at the Winter Beach House for Christmas!!
If everybody would please send an email with their t-shirt size to meirranb@ymail.com so that we can purchase you a correctly sized Team T-Shirt, it would be much appreciated. Thank you!!!
Don’t worry, I’ll make sure its up to my standards, folks. After that, we will get into the details about this year’s one of a kind vacation. It will the first in a infinite string of many more family-oriented vacations.
When we created November’s survey, we wanted to get the family’s input on the upcoming vacation, so that it could be tailored to the entire family. We asked for input, and boy did we receive it!
The second question dealt with everyone’s favorite moment of 2012. Again, we had multiple responses about spending time with family at the beachhouse and Christmas. All of us at the blog team are grateful for that answer, and we look forward to trying to change those answers to “The 2012 Christmas Vacation!”.
In the third question, we really got into the upcoming vacation. The question was about what part(s) of the vacation people were looking forward to the most. Given the fact that multiple answers could be selected, I am astounded that only one person (that person being myself) choose “No school/work” as part of their answer. I mean come on, does no one hear value time off work? Or school? I know there are some people in this family who like school, but isn’t a break nice? [end of rant about work/school] Other responses included “Seeing Family”, which 8 people included in their response (I guess someone out there doesn’t want to see the rest of us :-( ), and “Patel Olympics”, which served as a generic name for the competition that will take place at the annual vacation.
The fourth question was the question that disturbed the editing team the most. It was “Did you know this family stole the game ‘Buraco’ from the Brazilians”. Two people answered yes (the correct answer) and two people answered no. To those people that answered no, now you know that this family is indeed full of thieves who fail to give credit to the original owners of things that they steal. The parts that really shocked me were the other answers. One was “No the Brazilians stole it from Veena Patel!!! Get your facts straight!”. To that person (I know who it is, but I’m not telling), know that the blog team carefully researches the content we put in each entry. Buraco was actually created by the Brazilians in the 1940s. At that time, Vinamasi had not yet left India to come to the U.S., and I highly doubt some Brazilians randomly came to India in search of card game that they could steal and proceed to pass off as their own. The second answer was “I don't think its nice of you to call Vina Foiba a thief.” I know for a fact that Vinamasi has been known to regularly cheat when it comes to card games, and cheating and stealing are basically two different forms of the same moral flaw. If she had given credit to the Brazilians for the game, we wouldn’t have accused her of stealing. However, I have repeatedly asked multiple people about the source of the game, and was always told that it originated in this family, when in fact, this family stole the darn game from the Brazilians. Trust me, there is some angry Brazilian who has been reading this blog and is thinking “Os ladrões idiotas indianos!”. The last response stated “Not Brazilian, originated in Uruguay. Archana-masi discovered the game during her gambling tour in Monte Carlo where she learned how to master cheating from Doyle Brunson.” For those of you who are asking “Who the heck is Doyle Brunson”, like I was when I first read the response, he is an extremely famous American poker player who was inducted into the Poker Hall of Fame. Now, I wouldn’t be surprised if she learned to master cheating from Doyle Brunson, but I think that her instinct to cheat comes from the natural urge within all Indians to be cheap, and barter for whatever they can. Now to the important part of the question, the part that claims that the game is from Uruguay. To the person who provided this answer, I urge you to do your research before you attempt to answer a question of this significance. Buraco originated in Brazil, NOT from Uruguay. You are thinking of Canasta, which is the game from which Buraco originated. Canasta came from Uruguay, but Buraco originated in Brazil. Still, I’m glad you didn’t say “India” and didn’t ignore the fact that the family stole the game.
The last question dealt with who wrote the op-ed in November’s Entry. This really was an easy answer: Schrodinger’s Dog wrote it! Some of the answers were quite interesting. One person thought it was someone from the patel family. Since the person who wrote it knew about Ravi, I can confirm that that answer was correct. However keep in mind that this includes the entire family, including spouses of actual Patel family blood relatives. The answer that I found most intriguing was “It depends on who was in the box with the dog and whether they were alive or dead at the time of the writing...”. There was no freakin’ dog in the box! There was a cat in box! We had to get Schrodinger’s dog to do the op-ed as opposed to the cat because we weren’t sure whether the cat was alive, dead, or somewhere in between. I would appreciate if whoever wrote this answer elaborated on it at the Christmas vacation; I’m very curious to know whether the person had specific people in the family picked out depending on whether the cat was alive or dead at the time of the writing.
The Beach Vacation is sort of like this family’s bread and butter. In the summertime, the middle and young generations go to the beach to be active, but in the winter, we get to do what we all love, and act like vegetables in the company of other loving vegetables and relax. We do play some football and relax in the hot tub(s) but not to the extent that we would do in a summer vacation. This year we have a different house, and it is looking like it is going to be a great vacation, and it even includes a twist. This year our staff has a new set of events planned for you that we think you’ll love, and hope will continue for years to come. It has been democratically voted, by we the people of the Patel family, that these events will be called the Patel Olympics. The vote was a close one, Patel Olympics barely edging out Patelathon by one measly point. Unfortunately for the voters of Patelathon, this is democracy, Patel Olympics wins, life goes on. Right now, we will reveal the basic idea, events, and teams for the Patel Olympics.
The Patel Olympics is a set of five events that will be played over the duration of the week we have at the beach house. (These events will be revealed shortly). Each of these will be worth one point, and in order to make things interesting, a team can bet votes they’ve earned in a double or nothing like situation. If they win, they earn that point and the points they’ve bet plus the point they’ve won will be doubled. If there is a tie, we will add in an event as a tiebreaker which will be announced at that time. The events will each have individual methods of scoring which will be announced before we play an event. Next we will announce the events. The winning team will win an unannounced award on the last night before we leave in an award ceremony.
The events will be played as follows:
Night of Second Day: Charades
Afternoon of Third Day 3: Bocce Ball, Corn Hole Toss, etc.
Night of Third Day 3: football
Night of Fourth Day 4: Xbox Kinect challenge
Night of 5th Day 5: Talent Show
Night 6: Award Ceremonies
Most people will participate in all events, however there will be groups that won’t play specific events, for example those who aren’t physically able to play football will not play football. We will not force people to participate in events, however we would love everyone to participate if possible; this is intended to be a family event. Next, we will announce the teams that will be used in this competition forever unless we see that we have accidentally made them unfair. Our goal however, was to keep the teams as fair as possible, so if they don’t work out we will try, try again!
The Teams are as Follows:
Bhavnagar Bombers:
Max
Krishna
Maya
Vishnu
Anand
Joseph
Shayla
Raena
Kaushal
Keith
Nimisha
Dave
Mita
David
Radhika
Vishaka
Manan
Rupal
Sushila
Nalin
Vina
Surla
Kamal
Rajana
Chetan
Mumbai Meddlers:Lily
Jaa
Jaya
Narsinh
Ravi
Devin
Ben
Meirra
Josh
Nundini
Minal
John
Mona
Jaimey
Guddi
Minesh
Edward
Nrupa
Shruti
Ram
Archana
Raman
Deepak
Hansa
Jay
These teams do have people who won’t always be there and will not be there next year, and we have tried to take that into account when creating the teams. When someone is not present teams will not be shifted, each team will just play with whoever they have and we will try to make it as fair as possible. The team names were selected by the Editors of our staff yet suggested and inspired by those who took the survey, and we assigned the team names partially based on the fact that Rupal Masi works at Sandia National Laboratories, which helps develops bombs, therefore she had to be a bomber. And as a side note, we are the Meddlers because I taught a class in winning once. About twenty young men and women are now leading authorities in the ever growing field that is Winning. Don’t worry though, these teams are fair!
We had a lot of fun coming up with the idea and planning these Olympics, and we hope you enjoy them as much as we do. On a side note, I passed the NJ Driver’s Exam, NJ being one of the most ridiculously tight states in terms of Driving Regulations, my test was 50 questions and 45 minutes long, and to pass you had to receive at least an 80%, which even in the hugely nerd populated Princeton, doesn’t happen for most students on their first try. I passed on my second try. I just thought I’d share that good news. Other than that, we can’t wait to see you at the Winter Beach House for Christmas!!
If everybody would please send an email with their t-shirt size to meirranb@ymail.com so that we can purchase you a correctly sized Team T-Shirt, it would be much appreciated. Thank you!!!
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