Cj Patel

If you ever try to make tiramisu, it’s a somewhat haphazard project. You have these random ingredients like mascarpone cream, ladyfingers, and espresso. And while you’re making it, you end up asking, “Is this actually coming together? Am I actually making something?” Sure, you’ll have your mistakes and things you learn from, like there is such a thing as too much espresso, but at the end, you find you’re proud of what you’ve created and how you arrived there.

 So what’s my point with the Italian dessert? Often times, life is one big pile of Tiramisu, it’s complicated and messy. There are important ingredients and steps that get you to where you need to get, and more than often these unfamiliar pieces come together in ways you don’t necessarily expect to create something quite meaningful.

 It wasn’t until I was participating as an International Co-Op in Germany, interning at DLR, the German equivalent of NASA, where I learned what composed the realm of human spaceflight and what I wanted to do after completing my undergraduate degree in Cincinnati. In Germany, I was able to expand my professional network and develop a deeper insight to a critical ingredient of the future of human space exploration, greenhouses in extraplanetary habitation! It was here where I felt like a lot my metal was tested and where I was able to refine who I was as a person. Lastly, it was here when I didn’t know where I wanted to attend graduate school, my mentor at DLR mentioned, “Have you thought about University of Colorado Boulder? That’s where I went and focused in Bioastronautics.”

 That talk ultimately led me to go to grad school in Boulder, pursue a passion for knowledge and human spaceflight I hadn’t seen before, and in the process, intern at NASA Johnson Space Center in Houston working on spaceflight medical hardware. Similar to my experience in Germany, I expanded my professional network at Johnson and instead of figuring out where to go for further education, I was presented with a potential job opportunity. That potential job opportunity turned into a real one where today I’m working as a flight controller for the International Space Station in life support technologies. I am focused in a discipline where I’m excited to go into work every day, I am excited to learn about how I can help in this next age of human spaceflight, and lastly excited that I get to apply the things I learned in Germany and from Boulder. I feel more confident in my ability to succeed because all these things came together from the opportunity to take on a co-op in Germany.

Only twelve humans walked on the Moon by 1972. The population of the Earth around 72 was 3.84 billion according to the Worldbank. Meaning for a person to have walked on the Moon by that date, they would have 0.00000003125 of a chance.

 According to the Huffington Post, you have a 1/175 million chance of winning the lottery, or 0.000000057 of a chance.

 How about a more modern example? Assume that the first person to walk on Mars has already been born as of 2018. According to Worldometers, the current population is 7,632,819,325, meaning to be the first person on Mars, you have a 0.0000000013 of a chance.

 What’s my point with all this? Not everyone gets the prize. In this case the prize is you. Not everyone in their lives will get the chance to interact with you, build a friendship with you, a professional relationship with you, and only that special person with a 0.00000000013 chance is going to win your heart.

Challenges are there for you to take them on. Things are always daunting but it’s up to you how you decide to approach them. You can be headstrong and be willing to face them or you can shrink back and let the anxiety of them hurt you.

When was the last time, you as a team member, genuinely showed interest in your groupmates’ lives?

 Do you know what they care about, what they’re passionate about, important things in their life, do you show support for their goals outside of what you work on together?

 It probably took you a minute or two, but you had to think about whether you’ve done it or not.

A good leader always remembers one key thing: it’s not about them.

 One day you’ll be a place of power, congratulations. But your job isn’t about the power, it’s about using it to help the people around you. That’s why it exists.

 It’s not easy, you’re going to have put your ego aside, and think about what does your team need to succeed, what are you doing to help them succeed, and are you keeping your thoughts and actions in check to make sure you’re doing the job right?

 Those are tough thoughts to live by, but if you’re willing, they can make the difference between your team succeeding or your team failing. But you have to be willing to take on the challenges, to put in the extra man work, to have faith when it seems like it’s the hardest thing to do.

15 January 2018

 I’m going to be starting something new this semester, and I’m hoping it will help me as much as you may enjoy reading it. It’s about leadership.

 More than that, an imagining of what one my favorite leaders would say and think about to anyone who would seek out that advice. I’m going to put myself in the soul that accompanies Steve Rogers, or you better know him as Captain America.

 You’re probably wondering, why? Well honestly because I need it. This semester I’m doing something that involves more leadership and I’ve had my experiences with leadership in the past, but I’ve made a lot of mistakes and hopefully learned from them too. I’ve been too soft at times and not firm on people. Other times I’ve let my anger get the best of me and forgotten to think about the other perspective. I have been weak in judgement, lacking the confidence I needed to carry myself as a leader. And the biggest fault of all is that I’ve let my own brain get in the way of thinking I wasn’t doing a good job.

 I’m hoping that if I think like Steve Rogers, get those good and focused thoughts down, it can help keep me grounded. I know he has his faults (i.e. see Civil War), but there’s a lot from his character that I can take away: putting ego aside, focusing on the team, and having faith in myself to do the right thing.

It’s been a long time since I last wrote, both on here and with my own stories, sometimes I wonder what it is that holds me back, I mean I have a perfectly good book setting on a drive waiting to be published and it’s been over 4 years at this point.

  But that’s not what is on my mind as of late. If you know me well, then you know I love the CBS show Elementary, starring Jonny Lee Miller as Sherlock Holmes and Lucy Liu as Dr. Joan Watson. What I love about this adaption is the richness these two actors bring to their roles, especially Miller as a former heroin addict. The show strongly ties with the struggles of addiction and overcoming it and what the world of addicts looks like.

  Just as well, I love how much contemplative thought Holmes shows in his meetings for drug use. Many queries he ponders that have no real answer but just deep reflective thought. About who he is, how he views the world, and how he views the relationships in his life.

  In that sense, I love connecting to Holmes because it’s something I always have on my mind, just thinking about these ideas. As of late, I think about who I was when I started college, 5 years ago, and who I am today and the differences in my character from then on. Am I wiser, smarter, kinder, more of the person that a 7-year-old version of me would come to respect? Am I a better son, brother, and friend now than when I was younger and considerably more naïve?

  Some notions of things feel like they haven’t changed, as in how I view emotion, well a certain emotion. There’s an overwhelming sense of overanalyzing, concern, hope, and an ever-changing spectrum of flow that haunts and enlightens me.

  People tend to say you learn from your mistakes, I tend to say when it comes to this emotion in particular, you don’t. At least in my case, you don’t. I still find myself catching into the same routine traps that come along and it just hurts. It hardens me yet breaks me every time, and I hate myself so for it. Because I’m not intentionally going out of my way to seek this, but my mind pushes and sways me in a way where I can’t help but to think of feelings in such a fashion.

  I’m glad there are some ways where I’m able to restrain my mind, one of which is asking the deep questions. Is this about me, or I am trying to go out of my way to think of something greater? Am I imaging realistic scenarios or false realities? Am I remembering the mistakes of the past to learn for the future? Am I keeping focus on my goals as opposed to true or false distractions? Am I overthinking things or am I believing real insights?

  In this sense, I wish I was like Sherlock Holmes, because while he has a hard time coming around to his emotions, he eventually is able to deduce true from false, and more than often, it makes him a better man. For me more or less, it feels like a war being fought in the heavens, angels fighting against demons, and I’m never really sure who is right, and at the end of the day, I just rather leave the battlefield and not let things consume me.

  One thing I’ve learned as I’ve grown older is that stereotyping phases, certain trends, can be more fake than true. Just because it worked for A to become B it does not certainly mean B becomes A or necessarily A will become B through the same pattern. I think in our engineering psychology book it was discussed that humans love to view things linearly but in reality, much of life is nonlinear, as sometimes for A to become B, there may be a myriad of variables that could lead to that path.

Sol Zweihundert- Acht und Zwanzig—Das…ist Uns.

 228 Days. I was technically abroad from December 28, 2015 to August 12, 2016 for 228 days. Enough for a one-way trip to Mars and part of the way back I think I ended up learning more and experiencing much more than what I thought would fit the cookie cutter mold.

 To describe it like Sherlock Holmes, I began to look at things in a different way. Perhaps not like his typical look close for the details but not too deep to miss the big picture, but in appreciating, examining, understanding, and seeing the essence of food and how it is ever-evolving just like a human mind. I began to examine things in a wider context, a character trait, I hope to carry on henceforth.

 With the research I was doing on the history of food, I began to understand how so many different recipes came to fruition out of necessity: busy people, type of ingredients available, etc. I began to respect how the real world applications of engineering could apply to farming, and specifically understand how certain crops with my job, could be used in other, extraterrestrial applications. I earned a chance to interact with new people and see their customs and ideas about food and reasons for what shaped them. It could have been at work, with new friends I made during my travels, or even with my German family. I think for me, this experience is two-fold because it ties me to so many people I met during my time in Europe and I don’t think it so easy to forget them. Food brought us together for so many occasions, holidays and other celebrations, family events, and even random moments.

 As for the future, I think I’ll enjoy to randomly wonder about the history of certain foods, look it up, understand them, and see why it’s important. I guess the same technique applies to an engineering mind as well. I think that’s one of the other important things that this experience taught me, it’s the curiosity and desire to learn. I’ll also try to bring up discussions of food and smile quietly to myself as it quickly brings a conversation together.

 But the biggest thing I gained out of this experience that I didn’t see so easily coming? It was respect. Respect for the food I have in life, and the relationships and experiences that come with it. Respect for how certain foods have shaped my cultural identity as an American, Indian, in some aspects African as from my dad’s side, and now? As a European.

 I proudly say to anyone thinking of starting a project like this one to do it. You’ll be exposed to a world you may never thought of before and you’ll gain not only some incredible knowledge out it, but you’ll shape stronger relationships, appreciate the bonds that come from it, and begin to think in a unique but fruitful way.

 Food is one of those things that can be so hard to describe, it brings vehement emotions that can shake you like the sea or be calming as the waves of the ocean. It can inspire memories, experiences that wouldn’t be the same without food. It’s an essential cornerstone of work, social, and family cultures that become so colorful just because of it. A boy telling his German dad about his home garden on the other side of the world, a student sharing a family recipe for a work dinner, a bodybuilder aspiring new recipes to become healthier on the microscopic scale, or a chocolate truffle melting cold hearts standing on top of Jungfraujoch. These all were me and so much more. These were the experiences and essentials that defined the times I spent in Europe, and I can only imagine how they shape the lives of 7.4 billion people on the 3rd terrestrial orb from the Sun.

Sol Zweihundert- Vier und Zwanzig—Jeera

Jeera. In Gujarati or Hindi, it means Cumin. It’s an important aspect of a family recipe called Jeera Chicken that my dad’s side picked up on when they lived in Africa. My mom learned it from them, and later I got the recipe from her.

 When we were talking at a concert at a Bier Garten before my last week of work, several students and I decided that we could cook it for my last day at work. It would be a fitting sendoff from me, and a chance for me to brag about my cooking skill.

 Several friends gathered the ingredients Wednesday morning, and with prep completed in the morning, we were ready to cook at the evening twilight. I look back to when I filled out my honors proposal for the experience and one of the things I was aiming towards was sharing my food and culture with others, and in some cases at work. I found it funny that on my last day of work, I was doing that. Cooking nearly a pound of rice if not more, having my friends roast pita breads for the 5 of us, and of course cooking the chicken itself. Let me tell you, it is so much nicer to cook when you have other people helping you prep and cook, not to mention clean, so I give a major shout out to everyone that helped.

Sol Zweihundert-Drei und Zwanzig —Dann Wir Sehen Uns

 The second is when I went to my landlord’s home in the artistic town of Worpswede last Sunday to grab some tea and cake. He was urging me two times over the course my stay to go visit him and his home. With encouragement from my mother and friend back home, I realized I should take advantage of the time I had left in Germany.

 It was a great experience, my roommate picked me up where the bus dropped me off and we headed off to the home. My landlord was taking a nap when I got there, but my landlady gave me a beautiful tour of their home and their very large garden. Several types of trees, plants, everything swaying in German breeze like rain in palpitating in the sky. I got to learn about their neighbors, my roommate’s childhood drawings, and in a way feel at home, my German home.

 My landlord and I went on talking about politics, religion, books, geography, and who knows what else for several hours. I was connecting to a kindred spirit. Mrs. Landlady made a fantastic cake with rice puffs (commonly used in Indian snacks!), chocolate, yogurt, fruit, and delicious black tea that felt so nice to drink in shifting atmosphere. I’d suppose homemade cake can always bring such a wonderful kick to things. Although it’s not always true, I don’t bake my own cakes enough!

Sol Zweihundert- Zwei und Zwanzig —Muci Bode

 My landlord told me about the nickname for gyms, Muci Bode or “Muscle Houses” when I inquired about gyms back in January. If got a chance to know me during the months of March to May, I was attempting to develop a six pack and be beach body ready for my week in Italy. I was actually trying to follow the Kris Gethin Bollywood Body by Design book. And man, left me tell you, I ate more than Loki racing the Giants.

 But it was good, because I earned an opportunity to see a side of Germany that most people wouldn’t necessarily look at first: a nutrition plan to get ripped.

 In my journey of six weeks, I was able to take advantage of certain German food products that I recommend for anyone trying to develop a better body:

 1.     Eiweis Brot—Protein Bread, per slice, it was around 100 calories, 10 g of Protein, 5 g of Carbs, and 4 g of Fat

2.     Quark—This was like greek yoghurt on steroids. Like if you took plain Greek Yoghurt and found a way to make it more disgusting, almost like a pure whey yoghurt. But like it or not, this hard to clean off your face dairy substance held 261 Calories, 30 g of Protein, maybe 2 g of Carbs, and 0 g of Fat per container.

 My goal was to eat around 180 to 210 grams of Protein a day. And there was a lot of sacrifice for this project, I was working out for nearly 3 hrs a day, eating 6-7 times a day, and just exhausted. In the end I did not end up with a six pack, but I did develop healthier eating habits. If anything I’ve learned what I want to build my nutrition plan towards and how I would want to shape my guidelines here on out. I enjoyed eating more vegetables and it was nice to see products of my labor and how it would be affecting my body. I now rank carrots as a favorable snack than chips! It was a fun thing to do, but I don’t think I exercise as extensively, but the diet? As the Germans say, Gerne, or “Of Course!”.

 Some other recipes I ended up using, or as far as I remember included:

·       Healthy Chicken Teriyaki

o   http://natashaskitchen.com/2015/12/11/easy-teriyaki-chicken/

·       Chiptotle Style Sofritas

o   http://www.chefdehome.com/Recipes/429/chipotle-sofritas-chipotle-mexican-grill-s-braised-sofritas-copycat

·       Baked Veggie Chips

o   http://allrecipes.com/recipe/237888/baked-zucchini-chips/

Sol Zweihundert-Ein und Zwanzig—Der Inder

 I’m writing the last couple of entries on the airplane right now back home. I was planning to right the last couple of entries while I was in Germany, but I think right now in the air, it feels very fitting to reflect back on these several recent memories.

 The first, is titled Der Inder. In German this means, “The Indian.” You heard my experiences about America when I discussed “Der Amerikaner”. But one important thing I kept forgetting about was that of the Indian side of things.

 In my experience in the several Indian restaurants I tried here in Germany, I wasn’t a big fan of dishes. They didn’t feel so rich in flavor like Krishna’s would do for me in Cincinnati, however they also didn’t incorporate heavier cream sauces in their dishes. For instance a tikka masala in Germany held more flavor through spice value than the saturations of milk or cream that you would in America. But that’s interesting for me because when I went to India last time, about eight years ago, I remember the dishes being rich in flavor by spices and also the cream based sauces. It makes me wonder why that’s the case in Europe.

 But from me being a snob and saying I could make better Indian food, I tried it and I think it worked for a certain extent. For instance, the local stores all usually have a ready sauce, but after trying a few, I’m not a big fan because they taste way full of preservatives. Instead, I found fortune in the Asian food stores where I felt like a little kid on Christmas morn opening presents at the sight of all the spices and sauces I could buy.

 But I think the best dish I ended up making, indian food wise, was the Chicken Tikka by the recipe of a famous Indian chef, Sanjeev Kapoor. It was dry, yet flavourful, but it was a product of patience and love. I marinated the chicken nearly 12 hours beforehand in a yoghurt bath and it was somewhat exhausting to make.

 However my favorite memory that brings a smirk to my face is when I had my roommate try the Indian food I’ve made for the first time. I think it was specifically Chicken Tikka Masala, and wouldn’t you know it, a few weeks later, he and his friend were making it too. I felt pretty proud that my roommate had never had Indian food prior to meeting me, but he liked it enough that he wanted to make it for himself. Feels good when you can share another part of your culture with someone and they want to embrace it as well.

 I also learned that my ancestral calling of force feeding people even if they’re not hungry as taken root in me. Must be something about Patel DNA.

The Tranquil Atom Quest

I woke up. I felt so exhausted and disoriented. Some days it felt so easy to be groggy, I was thankful that control packed enough coffee mixes for the trip. I stepped outside of my bunk, exiting my room and walking into the corridor. The five others were asleep, resting peacefully and the system, as always, was on auto.

 As I stirred my mix with the water, drinking in the taste of what reminded me of the shittiest gas station coffee, I still appreciated the aspect of hominess that it brought. The steam felt calming in my face, the warmth of the coffee as it slowly trickled down my throat cleared my head. And as I stared 105 million miles from home, seeing that blue dot in the distance, I couldn’t help but be reminded of it, and what the Earth meant to me.

 Before I joined the nova corps, and right after I graduated from graduate school, I moved to Switzerland. With the support of my family and some friends, I moved myself into the mountains of Switzerland, for how long, I had no clue. I think because I had hiked the some of the trails when I was younger, I felt like I could live and find some peace.

 I had a lot of experiences and hardships that I had to conquer, and a lot of that battle was within my mind. Life isn’t without its challenges, but sometimes it is worth the view; probably the reason why I decided to live on the higher plane of the hillside.

 One of the exercises I had to do every day was bring up water from the creek several hundred meters below. I would hoist a large wooden staff horizontally onto my back with two wooden buckets on the end to carry the water up. I would began the day going down, filling up the water, and beginning the hour long journey back to the top across the jagged and somewhat uncertain path. After all it was a path that was rarely used by mountain folk for several hundred years, and in fact, and the small cottage I lived in was maybe half a century old.

 At the beginning it was hard, I was stumble so easily, half up the water would spill, and sometimes I would yell out in vehement rage, asking myself why I was here, what was I doing, and what was the point at the end of the day? I think part of me always knew the answer, but just wanted to figure it out in more than one way. Like a math problem, I wanted to get to the right answer, but I wanted to understand how to get there.

 And so I trekked. I learned to breathe with each step, to focus my attention and take my time with my foot forward, one after the other. Rushing, overthinking, burning myself out wasn’t getting me anywhere especially with getting enough water so I could take a bath. But it was the act of letting myself understand the patience behind things, to elucidate my mind; it helped give me a form of peace.

 Eventually like any good engineer, I figured out a way to make a good eclectic pulley system to hoist up the water all the down past the twisted cliffs of the mountainside, but it was a solution that came to me with patience and clarity. And it was a solution I came to when I allowed myself to be free of everything else and focus on what I wanted and what I wanted to do.

 I stayed there for 11 months; at the end I don’t think many people would have recognized me. It wasn’t because my hair was long enough that I tied it into a bun like that of Parashurama, nor because I had a beard like him, but because as my sister put it so elegantly when she and my family picked me up from the airport, “your eyes look so distinctive, something more mature about them….must be something in the water there.”

 I was thankful for the patience, because that lesson helped carry me through many ways of life. It helped me think that there is always more than one solution to a problem, sometimes you just needed to carry two buckets of water with a clear mind up a mountain.

Sol Zweihundert-Fünfzehn—Highlights

I figured it might be a good idea to share some of the Food Highlights of the stuff we enjoyed on our tour:

 France

·       Chipotle (I was on cloud nine after not having it for six months)

·       Corn/Maple cakes for breakfast

 Switzerland

·       Chocolate of course

 Italy

·       Italian Pizza (although Pizza Hut still reigns supreme in my heart…and probably arteries)

·       Tiramisu from a place called Chef Express Italy

·       Roasted Chestnuts

 Germany

·       Bretzel, or as we Americans call Pretzels, freshly baked in Munich for breakfast

·       Ice Wine, sweet like grape juice

·       My family really enjoyed the butter biscuits or butter cookies as well as lemon wafer sticks from the grocery stores here, and my dad really enjoyed the mango ice cream

 Amsterdam/Netherlands

·       Really good Gouda cheese

·       New York style Pizza (ironically New York was once called New Amsterdam after the Dutch settlement before the English won it in war)

 Brugges, Belgium

·       Chocolate Waffles, good lord, it was so good

·       Flemish Fries (thick cut and well flavored all around) and Samurai Sauce (a nice spicy mayo)