It Starts With Hello

Taylen’s point of view on how she met this person.

There was a time when I thought that Declan was the more annoying younger sibling, but perhaps I’m realizing now that I think we were both equally annoying to each other; more now I feel sorry for our parents dealing with our shenanigans and making dumb home videos. Over the past couple years, I’ve been thinking about how interesting it has been to see our relationship change from when we were younger. I think that because we are older now and we have both went through our teenage years to learn more about how to deal with life, not that we didn’t talk to each other in our teen years, but I think having that time “allowing “apart” allowed us to appreciate each other and the time that we have to spend together when we can. Even though we currently still live in the same house hold, these last few years of having different schedules and not really seeing each other, it did feel like that we grew apart. In a way, I think that helped our relationship as now I feel that we have grown closer and have a different understanding for one another; and this makes me excited for our relationship in the future into adulthood together.

This or That

You can only choose one…

• Salty or Sweet
• Winter or Summer
• Air Guitar or Air Drums
• Coffee or Tea
• Dogs or Cats
• Sleeping or Eating // That’s a tough one

Five Facts of Fun

What are 5 facts about yourself?

1. I am an industrial chef.
2. I like to workout and go to the gym.
3. I enjoy finance and investing and stocks.
4. I like listening to music, rap and R&B.
5. I really like cars.

Drop a Bop

Pick a song that is the theme song to your life and discuss why.

Fudge, that’s a hard one. I would say “Love Yourz” by J. Cole. It simplifies falling in love with myself, in which that I (in a humble way) want to be able to carry out my everyday life being happy and accepting myself for who I am. But also not pretending to be something else that I’m not; and the song just simplifies that there’s “no such thing as a life that is better than yours”, and using that one main lyric in the chorus, it simplifies that if there was a group of people, no matter their success, I still would probably not trade my life for someone else’s. I find a lot of the time in life, people are upset about where they are, or where they would rather be. But I think, it’s about making the best of where you are and not wishing you were some else, right? So I don’t know, I just think that song “Love Yourz” by J. Cole resembles a lot of my life and how I perceive myself.

Debate Time

What is your perspective on the following question: Is a Hot Dog a sandwich?

Yes, it is a sandwich. My reasoning behind a hot dog being a sandwich is it’s 2 pieces of bread put together with something in the middle. I do not consider a wrap a sandwich, but consider a hot dog a sandwich because I go strictly of what the guidelines say in what a sandwich is. So I bet you if we search up ‘what is a sandwich‘…

“An item item of food consisting of two pieces of bread with meat and cheese…” but the thing is…hmm okay, so the verb sandwich is “[to] squeeze something between 2 things” and the definition of the noun sandwich is “between 2 pieces of bread”.

But the thing is if that the hot dog bun is only 1 piece of bread, it depends. So if you just slide the glizzy in the hot dog at first, it is not a sandwich. But if you had “Chad” handing out the hot dog buns and he rips it apart, then puts it together, then it’s a sandwich. So, it depends. So it’s like the process of production. So if you’re making a smoothie, it’s just fruit, but once you blend it, it’s a smoothie. So it’s a sandwich until Chad breaks the buns apart. So a hot dog can be a sandwich depending on the variables that exist in a certain scenario.

Some Deeper Small Talk

Chosen from a group of questions, the person answered the following question: What’s the most exciting improvement that I’ve been seeing in myself recently?

Probably the biggest improvement that I’ve been seeing in myself is… I’d have to say, my time management skills and my discipline; I’ve been on top of myself about my discipline lately. Simon Fraser University’s wonderful Beedie [business school] program has allowed me to do some really good MANDATORY goal setting on how to improve using my S.M.A.R.T. goals, I don’t know the abbreviation of S.M.A.R.T. cause I forgot, but they made me make one and they really made me implement it into my life. I was just gonna make one up but then I ended up doing it to the best of my ability to help capture the real essence of the improvements in my life. So, yeah I would say I’ve been more disciplined.

The Final Spotlight

If you had the final opportunity to say anything to the world, what would you say?

I would say that life is too short to be stressing about the little things. You need to take one step at a time with anything you do and not be down on yourself on the sense that… I find that a lot of people in life, they mess up something good and search for something better, to only end up with something worse. And to count your blessings, and life is too short to be stressing about the little things, so.

My main message is make the best of where you are.

It Starts With Hello

Taylen’s point of view on how she met this person.

Out of the many places to meet someone, who would have thought you could meet someone in the women’s bathroom. For context, it was the first week of university and upon checking out the campus, there were rumor’s that there is a couch in one of the women’s bathrooms. When entering the bathroom, I stumbled upon Amena heading in the other direction and though we saw each other around in the same cohort earlier in the day, we introduce ourselves right then and there surprisingly. As Amena and I are both science majors, we shared some classes together in our starting years of school and hung out together within the circle of friend groups. In our later years of school, we had the opportunity to do some group projects together and found ourselves growing our friendship through the projects we made together. I’m super excited of what else we can accomplish before we graduate and when we do, we will finally be certified as #WomenInSTEM.

This or That

You can only choose one…

• Salty or Sweet
• Winter or Summer
• Air Guitar or Air Drums
• Coffee or Tea
• Dogs or Cats
• Sleeping or Eating

Five Facts of Fun

What are 5 facts about yourself?

1. I used to have a pet goat for a summer and then I ended up eating it without my knowledge. *Laughs and Taylen is in shock*. So background, this is in Pakistan and for Eid, we sacrifice goats. I was just attached. I didn’t realize what was going to happen. It was delicious so there’s that… it was a good sacrifice.
2. I can speak 5 languages. I speak English, French, conversational Korean, Urdu and Hindi (we are pretending that they are not the same language, even though they kind of are, but the writing system is different, so I can’t read or write).
3. I really like poetry and I write poetry on my free time. I need my sad times.
4. I love to sing, but I’m tone deaf. But it’s like “ayo, catch me at 9pm at night just screaming ballad songs”, but it sounds like someone is dying.
5. I was in a sewing competition. I came second out of two people, so I don’t know what that says about my skill but I did come second. But yeah, there’s such things as sewing competition.

Drop a Bop

Pick a song that is the theme song to your life and discuss why.

So there’s Comeback by Carly Rae Jepsen and Bleachers. I think the lyrics are kind of a vibe right now. It goes, *sings* “I’ve been thinking about making a comeback, back to me”. So it’s like about coming back to yourself, I really like that one. And then also, I would say BTBT by B.I, Soulja Boy and DeVita. It’s like a KPop artist that I really like. That’s just been a song I listen too to hype myself up. So Comeback is more of a deep song, BTBT is the vibes. And then The Curse of the Blackened Eye by Orville Peck when I’m really sad. It’s about range *laughs*.

Debate Time

What is your perspective on the following question: Is the Jungle a salad?

Well your not eating the jungle. How does it make it a salad? What’s the debate in this? Who is out here being like, walking through the Amazon forest going *makes munching sounds*. Yeah. That’s it. If you’re forging, yeah I get it. There’s items from the jungle that you can make salad with, but like it’s not a salad cause you can’t eat everything in the jungle.

Some Deeper Small Talk

Chosen from a group of questions, the person answered the following question: What’s the most exciting improvement that I’ve been seeing in myself recently?

I think there’s been 3 that I can think of. One has been, even today actually; so I’ve been working in the service design sector for a little bit now cause of IAT 333 [a SFU course about service design] and then my job right now is service design and I didn’t realize how much I enjoyed it. One of the projects that I’m working on is teaching and building design capacity in other services. And so I’ve been teaching people design. I was looking at service design and I stumbled across the winner of the student category of the service design awards, and I was listening to her give her project and explain it. And it was just so exciting listening to her and what she was talking about and all the things she want to do. I just was like really excited. I feel that unsurety that everyone has growing up of “what am I going to do with my life” and I don’t know if I want to do service design for the rest of my life, but this is definitely something that I want to pursue and I’m super excited about. So that’s one improvement.

Another thing that I’ve been proud of myself for self-improvement, quoting Taylor Swift and Phoebe Bridger’s in Nothing New (Taylor’s Version) (From The Vault), [a lyric from the song] “How can someone know everything at 18, but nothing at 22”, that’s been something that I’ve been dealing with. I was fairly head strong, and I always have been head strong; so I’ve been very self-assured and know what I’m doing. Even when I don’t really know what I’m doing, I’m okay. But I lost that and I didn’t realize that I lost that sense of, I guess security in self; just that self-assurance that everything is going to be okay and I have everything planned out. But yeah, you’re hitting 22 and like everything is falling apart. And it’s really, insanely scary. What’s comforting is that I’ve gotten okay with the knowing nothingness part of it. I’m a total control freak over the littlest things in my life. And just being okay with knowing that I’m still learning and I don’t really know anything is an exciting improvement.

My last one is definitely going to travel. I’ve always wanted to solo travel, do things on my own and be on my own; and I finally have the opportunity too. I’m excited to see who I’ll become and that improvement when I do it, obviously I don’t have it right now, but I think there’s a sense of independency that’s already growing and that improvement is really exciting to me.

The Final Spotlight

If you had the final opportunity to say anything to the world, what would you say?

Climate change is real, can we please do something about it cause I want to live past 2030. If I could shout that off the roof tops I would. Please, COP 27 is happening right now and it just feels like false promises again and I just wanna have a future. Not to end it on a sad note, but that’s what I would scream to everyone and like, bang into everyone’s head, cause please climate change is so, so real. We are feeling the affects of it now everywhere around the world. So, can we please do something about it?!

It Starts With Hello

Taylen’s point of view on how she met this person.

It was Fall of 2006 when my family decided to move to a new town. The change didn’t seem super major in my life at the time as I was still quite young, but I do remember the feeling of being the new kid in school. At the time, it was kind of cool; walking around and being like, “Hey, I’m new here!”, but I remember it also feeling quite lonely; being an introverted kid, I didn’t like being in the spotlight too much, so having to learn new things was also quite scary. I only went to school a couple of times a week before we finally moved into our new house, but then when we did, things started to feel more normal again. Meghan was one of the very first friends I made in my new class and though I don’t remember much from that exact year, what became after would be a life-long friendship that is now 16 years and counting. Although we don’t talk to each other every day, we’ve always managed to stay connected in each other’s lives all these years. It’s been such an amazing journey so far with the memories we’ve made and I’m super fortunate she’s been in my life with me every step of the way.

This or That

You can only choose one…

• Salty or Sweet
• Winter or Summer
• Air Guitar or Air Drums
• Coffee or Tea
• Dogs or Cats
• Sleeping or Eating // Those are like my two favourite things

Five Facts of Fun

What are 5 facts about yourself?

1. I don’t like raw cheese.
2. My car’s name is Bertha.
3. I like ramen.
4. I know how to scuba dive.
5. I love the hot tub. I am a hot tub connoisseur; 103 degrees (Fahrenheit).

Drop a Bop

Pick a song that is the theme song to your life and discuss why.

You that song that’s like, *singing* “Everyday is Saturday night, but I can’t wait for Sunday morning”, I like Sunday mornings, so I think we’ll go with that cause it’s my day off. Sunday is like the start of my week. I plan to do nothing and I look super forward to it. Cause every other day I work, go to school; the typical life stuff that takes more time than you think it would.

Debate Time

What is your perspective on the following question: Is the ocean soup?

No. Because there’s living things in it. I think soup is full of dead things *laughs*.

Chris (Meghan’s partner who is also in the room): Well that’s not explicitly true, I’m sure there’s lots of little bacteria and stuff.

Okay… there’s a lot “visibly” living things in the ocean. You don’t like look into your soup and your like “damn, look at that fish swimming around in there, woahhh”. Or a crab or something. I also think that soup is made with intention. There is no recipe for the ocean, not that you need a recipe to make soup, but like you know. You make it with the intent of eating it. Or to enjoy cooking it, you don’t do anything to the ocean other than pollute it so.

Some Deeper Small Talk

Chosen from a group of questions, the person answered the following question: What’s become more important to you than ever before?

Living expenses. I moved out a few months ago, so I need to pay rent and buy all of my goods; which is fine, but you are definitely more money conscious when you have more to spend. That is the current I think, definitely more aware of how much money goes in and out. Even though I don’t see my parents and brother as much anymore, we still maintain good contact a couple times a week. I think it’s better because we have our own space which is nice, so I think it’s a positive thing; not that it was bad before, but it’s better because then the time that we spend together is more intentional.

The Final Spotlight

If you had the final opportunity to say anything to the world, what would you say?

Nobody cares, really. Nobody cares, go do your thing. Don’t take yourself too seriously. You probably care more than everybody else.