Ramil Blog

So for the past couple of weeks, I have been helping my sister rebuild her apartment. She just bought her first piece of property in Manhattan, and it was in poor condition. So, in addition to schnazing the place up a bit, she also wanted to add two more rooms. It was a lot of work, but luckily, my dad builds houses for a living. (See Flipping Out for an exaggerated idea of my father's occupation.) And my brother's pretty good at building stuff, too.

It was really hectic getting the renovations done, because my dad had to leave for Germany last Friday, giving us less than 3 weeks to complete the apartment. Aside from the tight deadline, we had to deal with a lot of structural issues, like identifying load-bearing walls, working around pipes, noise restrictions, and garbage disposal.

But everything worked out, and now my sister and her two tenants are all living happily together in their makeshift apartment. If you're having trouble visualizing what the apartment looked like during the renovations, you're in luck because I've created a video documenting the process.

Oh yeah, and there's something you might need to know before you watch. My sister's name is Amira, but you'll hear me call her "Ate" throughout the video. Ate is Tagalog (the language of the Philippines) for "older sister." So, without further ado, here is "Ramil Builds a House:"

So before I explain, some background information is required. For the past few years, my parents have been practicing for their upcoming retirement. In addition to being overly health conscious and cycling though various craft hobbies (i.e. beading, knitting, etc.), my parents have been taking frequent, extended vacations. As we speak, they are on a cruise ship somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. With them out of the house, and with my brother, sister and I off at college, this leaves my grandmother at home with only my dog, my plecostomus, and Bill O'Rielly to keep her company. So, for the last couple of weeks, my brother, sister and I have been going home a bit more than usual.

Today, my sister went home for the day to hang out with my grandmother, but since she had to return to the city for a late meeting, I went home to spend the night. It was a little sticky manipulating the LIRR so that we could pass the baton at the train station, but we managed to make the exchange of keys, the car, and the grandparent. I thought it would be nice if I cooked dinner, so my grandmother and I went to our neighborhood Pathmark. However, according to the produce man, Pathmark had just run out of rosemary, and so grandma and I headed back to the car to hit up Waldbaum's. We got in the car, I turned the key, and nothing happened.

I started freaking out. Grandma quickly sensed that something was very wrong, but she kept a cool head and suggested that I call my brother. He suggested a bunch of different things that I had already tried, and we decided that there was nothing I could do. I then realized that, without a car, Grandma and I would have to make the five block walk to the house. Now, I know it's not that far, but it was cold, she's not a very fast walker, and who walks home from the supermarket ?

In a desperate attempt to salvage the rest of the visit home, I went back into Pathmark and bought a chicken. We walked home, I cooked the chicken, and I think we both felt a little better. However, the car is still in the Pathmark parking lot.

Here at NYU, Thanksgiving break and Columbus Day are the only days off you'll come by during fall semester. As a result, pretty much everyone at NYU gets out of the city for a couple days and heads to their or a friend's home. So, I went home to Garden City Park on Long Island for the weekend, but I ended up spending most of my break back in New York City.

You may remember a post from a while back, "Ramil Builds A House," in which I described how my family and I began the renovation process on my sister's apartment. Although we had made a lot of progress on the apartment, there was still a lot left to do. The cabinets needed to be finished, the furniture wasn't moved in, and countless other odd jobs needed to be completed. So, this past weekend was mainly devoted to putting the finishing touches on my sister's apartment, and Thanksgiving festivities had to take a back seat.

While we're on the topic of back seats, I'd like to introduce a video I made over break. It documents how my family and I moved our old sofa from our house on Long Island to my sister's apartment. Now I don't want to ruin the surprise, but during the video, you'll hear my family discuss topics ranging from African wildlife, Western medicine, and of course, sofa quality. So, here's a little taste of what life is like in the Ibrahim family, titled "Ramil Transports A Sofa With His Family:"

Merry Christmas, everybody! I hope you had a great holiday, ate lots of food, and got lots of presents, because I know I did! In fact, my family had so much cheer this year, we celebrated Christmas twice!

Well, that's not exactly true. We don't have that much Christmas spirit, but we did have two Christmases. We had Christmas I on the 23rd, because my sister was flying to Guatemala that night. So, on Christmas Eve's Eve, we had a big dinner and opened our presents. Then, we had Christmas II on the 25th, and since we had opened all the gifts already, we just spent time with family, ate another big dinner.

It was pretty cool separating the different parts of Christmas. Essentially, Christmas I was all the good parts and Christmas II was all the boring parts, so it was nice to be able to duck out of the bad parts without missing the good parts.

This Christmas was a busy time video wise, and my productivity has reached new levels. So, there's going to be two of my videos in this post! The first one is my family's Christmas video, called "Ramil Celebrates Christmas." The second is my sister's Christmas greeting from Guatemala.

And just in case you're wondering where those Tyra clips came from...

If this last clip was new to you, it means that you should be watching more YouTube.