About Me

Sitting on a motel living room floor in San Jose, watching “The Samurai Pizza Cats” on TV, and eating a slice of $40 pizza with every topping imaginable because mom still didn’t know how to order pizza. That was my very first morning in America in 1997, when my family moved to the California from Kuwait. Though my parents both had held rather lucrative jobs in India, they wanted to see the world and make a bit more money.  Then an American company offered mom a job and we were soon flying to a place I only knew through cartoons and Coca-Cola commercials.

All the typical immigrant jive ensued – changing accents, learning American humor, the culture clash…etc. We later moved further north to Fremont, where I attended and graduated from Washington High School in 2006. High school was forgettable save for the Journalism class I took on a whim my senior year. A ragtag band of 15-20 people, constantly seeking truth, constantly writing, each highly opinionated, highly dysfunctional, and me with all the coffee I could breathe – basically, a dream come true. After high school, I attended Ohlone College for two years, where I served as a writer and later Features Editor of the Ohlone Monitor. I transferred to the University of California, Irvine, on track for a degree in Literary Journalism. In Irvine, I wrote consistently for The New University, interned for Orange Coast Magazine and OC Weekly, and founded and edited the student government newsletter, The ‘Vine.

After I graduated in 2010, I moved back to the Bay Area and began freelancing and interning at California Magazine.  Right now, I’m a “media guy.” While I do write and edit a lot, advertising, marketing, and copywriting have held a special place in my heart. When I’m not interning or writing, I do PR work for rising authors and small Fremont-based start-ups. I also recently started The Final View, a weekly podcast radio show. Designing business cards gets a bit complicated...