Relationships in med school pt 9: So you think you know Amulya Iyer

"Rules of being best friends: 

No two people are better than us.  We fucking rock.  No one can beat us." 

          - Mindy Kaling

from our wedding
(Katie and I's)

If you read sidenote you may have noticed me obsessively referring to a mysterious character: Amulya Iyer. He's my best friend (other than best friend Katie) from back home in Needham, MA. Since then we've gone to all parts of the world. I went off to college in the middle of nowhere Ohio to Kenyon, and he in the middle of nowhere Western Mass to Williams. We started out as math majors, but switched to pre-med/biology. Since college we ventured off to the great unknown. He went to Houston, TX and I went to Portland, OR. We love analyzing everything that's wrong with med school, and I still have dreams of riding his coat tails when he's a Dean of Medicine. My plan is to be the Dave Jacoby to his Bill Simmons. 

Which brings me to the core of our relationship. If there's anything I love, it's randomly speculating on ideas. We did a lot of that in the summer of 2008, I was waiting tables at a ranch in Wyoming, and he was living in Cape Cod. Since we were so far apart, and I didn't have cell phone reception, we resorted to emails. We had an email chain that went back and forth for the summer, with the challenge that each email had to be longer than the last. We analyzed our girlfriends, introspected our deepest qualities, and discussed our dreams.

The ideas developed in that email chain have/do serve as the core of sidenote. For that, I give thanks. 

We have a similar endless email chain today, it's not quite as epic but I swear we rack up the 100 mark on gmail at record breaking pace. Anytime I have anything even remotely interesting to say, I'm shooting an email to amulya.m.iyer.

sidenote - three random fun things we do: 

1) We constantly throw out bold predictions on just about anything. Most recent - OKC over Bulls in the finals.

2) Over unders on random things. Best recent one: years until Amulya marriage. +/- 5 in case anyone's interested. 

3) Back in high school we would do fantasy drafts of our classmates based on who we thought would have the most success. Literally, everyone else was working on some calc problems and we were in the corner making a hierarchy of our classmates. I have no idea how we got away with this. 

this might be illegal

We've also done a series of bold fun things together including getting tattoos of David Foster Wallace's commencement speech This is Water.

Another awesome thing we did - last year he came to Portland so we could run the Eugene Marathon together. And when I say together, I mean side-by-side for four hours. I can't quite remember which one of us came up with it, but it stemmed from some of our high school running adventures. Here's the transcript of the story Amulya told at Katie and I's wedding:

--

It was the fall of 2005, our senior year of high school, and our cross-country team had one of its final meets of the season at Elm Bank Reservation. Ken was one of the faster runners on the team, and I was one of the slowest, but on this fateful day that was going to change. 

During warm-ups, for whatever reason, Ken approached me and he told me - he didn’t ask - but told me that he was going to run with me, and more specifically let me draft off him for the entire race – breaking the wind for me and allowing me to run faster. 

At first I thought Ken was kidding, actually. As the race began, I started off in my usual position at the back of the pack. But with Ken leading the way I felt myself getting stronger, mentally and physically, with every stride. Together, we continued passing runner after runner until the finish line, and when it was all over I had surpassed my personal best by more than two minutes. As euphoric as I was in that moment, nobody there was happier than Ken. 

Never before, and not since, have I felt that same exhilaration of exceeding all of my own expectations. My best friend helped me realize something I never thought was possible and more importantly, reminded me of the incredible power of relationships. 

like a boss

--

Years later, running side-by-side again, we miraculously pulled off being at the same fitness level, even though we were training 3000 miles away from each other. This cannot be understated, we barely talked about how much/little we had trained, the last time we had ran together was probably six or seven years ago, and we ended up being almost the exact same fitness level. Must be a sign.

Next up for us: ultramarathon, separately qualify for the Boston Marathon then run it together, co-dean the next big med school. I don't know his birthday - I think it's in August or September but he's too cool to put it on facebook, so this will have to do. To the best friend I could imagine:  

No two people are better than us. We fucking rock. No one can beat us.

Happy birthday.

See you on the other side,

from ken

taking requests for future blog posts. please comment or email.