New Blogger Introduction: Ayman Siraj
by Ayman Siraj ‘18
Fighting On from the Haleakala Crater in Maui, Hawaii. 📷: Heng Wang
It’s funny that in my native mother tongue of Bangla there is no word for ‘Hello!’ When I’m writing in English, my brain is thinking in Bangla while my hands translate to English. On that note, Hello! My name is Ayman and I’m a sophomore majoring in Chemical Engineering with a Nanotechnology emphasis and Cyber Security specialization (I know that is a mouthful). I’m stoked to be blogging for Trojans 360 and would like to thank Andrea & Felicia for giving me the opportunity to do so.
Background
My story starts of in Leicester, England where I was born and spent the first few years of my life. I moved to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia afterwards and spent a good 6 years there. After that I finally moved back to my native Bangladesh. It’s not over yet, after completing middle school in Dhaka (the capital of Bangladesh) I attended an international boarding school in Kodaikanal, India. Then I winded down here at USC. I’ve been lucky to travel the world growing up – as such when someone asks me where I’m from; there’s the short answer and then the long answer, but I’ll usually let the person pick which version they want.
Owing to my parents hopping regions around every few years, I’ve gotten to visit different corners of the globe - from Hawaii to Petra in Jordan to Thailand I’ve traversed a lot of the globe where most people don’t end up visiting (no I haven’t gone on an Euro trip yet). So if ya’ll need any travel tips feel free to message me.
Changing landscapes so many times meant that I’ve attended 7 different schools in my lifetime and have had to make new friends constantly. That also means keeping up with so many friend groups and believe me that is a challenge when each group uses a different instant messaging app. Moving around so much has made me into an amicable person and that’s why I’m literally the easiest person to become friends with.
As I talk about friends no group has shaped me more as a person as my group of friends back in Dhaka, Bangladesh – there are exactly 19 of us and we grew up playing football and going to school together. It’s been four years since we were all together but even though we’re on different corners of the globe we still have a Whatsapp chat that’s buzzing 24/7 to keep in touch.
My friends from Bangladesh, with whom I’m still very close to till this day. We affectionately call ourselves ‘Street’ as we grew up playing on concrete. [I’m the one in the minions t-shirt].
My Interests
Bangladesh is a cricket crazy nation and I’m pretty cricket crazy as well! If I’m back home and there is a game – I will be at the stadium. I’m also an avid follower of football (also known as soccer in American) and have been supporting Liverpool since I started watching it. That also implies having to wake up at 6am on the weekend to catch the games. If you’re around me long enough you realize that:
- I’m always cracking the lamest jokes possible.
- I’m always happy (leading to my friends calling me Beams).
- I’m obsessed with the color red and strawberries.
I’m also a huge fan of anything comedy – so Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, Russell Peters and the list goes on and on. Stand up comedians are my everyday heroes and as such lot of my everyday conversations rely on satire and humor.
I’ve played in four seasons of USC’s Cromwell Premier League, been runner-up three times and semi-finalist once. Hope I get lucky soon. 📷: Audrey Moore
People I look up to (and you should to):
1. Tony Fernandes – He bought a debt stricken Air Asia for 26 cents and turned it into US$650 million company.
2. Elon Musk – If you think about this man knows how to disrupt industries. He’s single handedly taken on the banking services industry (Paypal), aerospace industry (SpaceX) and the auto industry (Tesla).
3. Dr. Muhammad Yunus (Bangladesh’s first and only Nobel Laureate) and Sir Fazle Hasan Abed – These two visionaries have dedicated their whole life to tackling poverty.
Why do I Want to Write for Trojans 360?
Here’s the thing with studying Engineering, it’s basically all math but with no numbers but a boat load of letters. At one point those letters don’t make any sense even after pulling consecutive all-nighters. Writing is my avenue of making sense of letters again.
My goal in writing for Trojans 360 is to expose Trojans to all the great things that are going on in our campus – the cool startups, Engineers doing cool research (no we aren’t holed up in our rooms all day) and the superb events I get to cover as photographer for USC Program Board.
With my Media Team buddies for Spring Devo at Joshua Tree National Park. 📷: Daniel Zhu
I’m also pretty good with tech, gadgets and apps so expect a whole lot of that. Besides that I’m always on the lookout for new cuisine to try so I do consider myself a foodie, a few restaurant reviews and recommendations will be coming up in the future. If there’s anything you’d like me to blog about shoot me a message on Facebook.
Brunch with my Habitat for Humanity crew.
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