quotes redux

On shirking:

This guy always wants to shirk. He's a lazy bastard.

On algebra:

Before we start doing enough algebra to make your noses bleed, are there any questions?

On the direct revelation mechanism:

So this is what you get, and give me all of your money. The only other option is for the consumer not to wake up in the morning.

And one last one:

Did I do this right? Aha, this is all correct but completely irrelevant.

good things come in twos

Two classes, two TAships, two tutees. All things are coming in twos this term, and I've realized that I just can't juggle very well. Yesterday, I woke at 7AM to give this student office hours at 8, which she never showed up for. Then, I had two office hours in the afternoon for the other class that I'm TAing. I got a student who asked me a basic question that I couldn't answer, and wanted the midterm regraded, which I didn't grade in the first place. In undergrad, I didn't understand why some of my TAs seemed like they didn't know shit. Now I have to give them a lot more credit. Compared to them, I know even less, and I don't even give recitations. It's no secret that professors who focus on research are horrible lecturers. Teaching takes up too much time without obvious benefits. Theoretically, it's a nice idea to help people and help them improve, but it just doesn't materialize in practice.

Teaching and tutoring is relatively easy despite the annoyance. The material is shallow and doesn't require much thinking. Also, there's an obligation to one's students, which takes some time. I can fumble through my classes, but I have to know the material if I'm going to tutor someone. Moreover, I always put in more effort into helping other people than myself. It's easier to do things that are easier and put the things that we really should do aside. Am I so lacking in self-respect or self-discipline that I can't force myself to do what I think is right?

This non-juggling doesn't even take into account my pitiful lack of a social life. However, my isolation is self-enforced. Considering that I'm not too happy with where I am right now, I'd rather not go out with people and make them miserable as well. Conversely, the thing I miss most about college is having people around to talk to. Just living with people made it all more bearable. I'm not religious or fatalist or anything of that sort, but it just feels that every part of my life is off in some way, and more connected than not. I do believe that things can't possibly be smooth at work when things at home are out of place and vice versa.

Nor do I think that I am the only person my age not to have a clear sense of direction. I don't envy people who know exactly where they're going to be ten, twenty, or thirty years from now. However, I wish that I were more content with the process of searching. Contrary to popular belief, not all journeys of self-discovery lead to personal development. I'm not sure that I am a better person compared to myself a year ago. I'm not being fair to myself, and there's some part of me that wants to know when I'll be finished wandering and actually become a productive and happy member of society again.

creepy crawling critters

Yuck...I just saw a gigantic mouse running across the carpet. Why do mice keep on following me? I swear, the mouse that lived behind my fridge back in college made me scared to step inside my own room. I endured that one (a baby mouse for a year). Hopefully I was imagining this one (but probably not). Earlier today, I squashed this enormous bug with twenty flailing legs with an index card (the only thing I had on hand). Half of its legs fell off, but the rest continued wiggling. Now I feel like puking. There's something about small things that gross me out.

Maybe I should work hard just so I can afford a nice mouse and bug free apartment. The thing is, I don't really care about having nice things and I'm lazy, but I can't deal with critters. I'm not the world's cleanest person, but I'm not a total slob either. It's inconceivable that mice seek out my apartment because I don't have food anywhere in sight. The world is injust. Then again, maybe this is some kind of punishment for goofing off instead of doing my problem sets or grading papers, which is what I should have been doing.

I woke up at noon today, which I rarely do. Then I spent some of today watching Black Hawk Down, which also contributed to my feelings of nausea, especially the displaced thumb and the gruesome live surgery in the movie. The first time I saw the movie was my freshman year of college, when I stayed up most of the night to watch it after Armageddon. I think I started bawling at the end. I remember this incident because it was the day of my 18th birthday, and all of my friends were so sweet and surreptitiously cooked me a birthday brunch. My roommate kept on slipping in and out with bags of flour and cooking utensils, afraid that I would notice. Hah. My eyes were glued to my laptop screen and teary. At that time, I hadn't seen that many movies, I was more selective in my movie selection, and I was less jaded and resigned than I am now.

After that, I meticulously analyzed tunebite and started to look at muvaudio. I was surprised by tunebite's high quality. I still have to look at muvaudio before I buy either one. Then I analyzed 128 kbps vs 192 kbps vs 320 kbps. Honestly, I have some music that's 80 kbps, and I could hardly tell the difference between that and some of my other music. But then again, I'm almost completely music illiterate and tone deaf, so that's not very surprising. As for music players, I like the sound of iTunes the best. WMP sounds awful and the sound breaks, even when I attempt to adjust the equalizer. I guess it's always fun to learn things that aren't things that I'm actually supposed to be learning:)

why I hate the telephone

Until recently, I didn't understand why I dread holding phone conversations. Up until a year ago, I would actually have to work up my courage to punch in the numbers and press the little dial button. Then I'd start having a bad adrenaline rush where my whole body was in a complete state of tension. Given that my communication skills aren't stellar to begin with, talking on the phone just freaks me out. There's probably one or two people who I'm comfortable talking on the phone with, but only because I'm so comfortable in their presence.

I realized that when I talk to people in person, I rely excessively on nonverbal signals, perhaps more than the average person. Obviously, we all gauge how a conversation is going by the other person's facial expressions. On the phone, I feel like a blind person steering a car. I have no idea where I'm going. People tell me I sound robotic and unnatural on the phone. It's because I don't know how to handle the conversation.

As opposed to awkward phone conversations, I prefer email and instant messanger because the medium matches the method, both non-emotional and simply conveying information. I can't respond as actively to a voice over the phone than a face-to-face encounter, although I feel that the phone attempts to duplicate a live meeting. I can't gather all of the details that I need and I can't express myself purely through my voice. Of course, going through Excel spreadsheets over the phone doesn't work terribly well either. I really had to steel myself for that conversation and promptly went into hysterics the second it was over.

David and Goliath at the Movies

Having recently watched the Danish import "At the Wedding", it's impossible not to recognize just how different foreign film is from the Hollywood machine. One reviewer had this to say, "Danish cinema has gained an international reputation as cynical and severe. The humor is grim, the drama is grimmer, and the production values are ascetic."

Nowadays, grim is not a word to be found in Hollywood's big budget productions (no one watches the small budget ones). In fact, the trend appears to be tacking a wedding or a happy ending onto the end of every drama to provide some inappropriate and misplaced levity. The lesson learned here is that American audiences don't do tears (except for sappy tears of joy) or seriousness.

Watching "At the Wedding" was disengaging for the first few minutes because the pace was much slower and more erratic. The light seemed overly stark, rather natural. It's so easy to forget that every scene is tinted by hundreds of filters that most 'A', 'B', and some 'C' movies use nowadays. Maybe we would like to believe that the world is a melodramatic and chill blue or gray, or brilliant yellow and orange in hue, but it also takes away from the acting. Similarly, the silences in "At the Wedding" were disconcerting at first because there wasn't any music announcing the mood and emotion of every scene. We don't even realize that music and the camera angles are just as vital as any of the actors.

Movies are technology, and technology has grown unbelievable in the last century. There is an art to better cinematography, more filters, CGI, and the layers of complexity that Hollywood movies embody. It's marvelous and destructive at the same time. With more sophistication, the core of cinema, the acting, is being replaced by visual and audio effects. Cinema has reached a point where the art has grown into a manufactured wasteland of cheap thrills. When the trade is too good, the tools of the trade often cover up the fact that there's no substance.

Independent films, though "inexpertly shot" and crude, capture the human condition and some of the rawness that's missing in overly smooth blockbusters. Sometimes, when we've come so far that we don't even recognize ourselves, it's good to go back to the basics. Then we work ourselves up from there again, and hopefully don't end up at the same place again.

a tribute to amy

Here are a few from my game theory professor:

"Trembling hand perfection is almost like subgame perfection on steroids."

"We don't ask how we got to a node. It's an act of God!"

"At least one person in the room can do algebra, and it's not me!"

"Algebra by consensus. One person! Yes! Democracy works!"

"You think I should change signs randomly? Good! I feel much better now."

the artlessness of cooking

After several summers of dabbling at stir-fry, I’m still below par at making a dish actually taste good. There aren’t really good instructions for stir-frying. Of course, recipes can tell you how much oil to put in, when to put in the other ingredients, etc. etc., but it’s much more complicated than that.

Having grown up in a family that does very minimal stir-frying where pepper, salt, and spring onions are frequently the only condiments, there’s an art involved. The first step is one that I get wrong a fair amount of time: how much oil to put in. I’ve experimented, but I do think that I don’t put in enough. I see stir-frying as a balance between oil and water. You need some oil to get the vegetables jump started, then the natural water in the vegetables should take care of the rest (helped along by a liberal dose of salt). The problem with not putting in enough oil is that the vegetables can start burning before the water comes out.

After observing my dad, I see that he usually puts in tomato or tofu in whatever he’s cooking. It prevents the problem of drying out. The amusing part is that we use the same ingredients and roughly cook the same way, but his food and mine tastes radically different. It’s as if the molecules in his food are dancing and skating, and mine are just limping along.

Usually, I don’t even venture into the realm of meat because it’s so mysterious to me. Besides the standard salt and pepper, there’s the additional cooking wine and soy sauce. That baffles me because once again, I don’t know how much to add of each. Add too little and the meat is undercooked and flavorless besides. Add too much and I get something the consistency of leather. No, I haven’t graduated to the meat stage yet.

I have tried other meals besides stir-fry with varying degrees of success. Chicken pot pie is something that turns out fairly consistently each time. A few months ago, I tried spaghetti carbonera, Sicilian pasta, gnocchi, and other Italian dishes. Everything was rather heavy and not all good (especially the gnocchi). I attribute my 50% success rate to not enough experience in the kitchen.

I love staring at all of the cookbooks in my house, especially the ones with scrumptious desserts. Maybe in another life, I was a five-star chef. In this life, I can’t be bothered to invest the time learning how to cook well. For the past week or so, I’ve subsisted on cereal, whole wheat bread, eggs, bacon, and instant noodles. It’s a diet that will probably take years off of my life. Since I would have spent those years actually cooking, that’s fine with me.

breaking the connection

One of the major questions I’ve asked myself this summer is: Should I get Internet in my apartment or not? This should be a simple yes or no question, but I have created some sort of an insipid drama out of it.

The two main forces that are battling each other are convenience and time wasting. It is rather inconvenient not to have Internet at home, especially since it’s dangerous to walk around the neighborhood very late at night. Then again, is it really necessary to check email once every hour? Am I going to miss a life-changing opportunity if I only check my email twice a day? One of my greatest dreams is to follow a schedule that involves waking up at seven every morning, having an absolutely productive day including ten to twelve hours of solid work, an hour of exercise, and sleeping at eleven o’clock every night. Needless to say, this dream is but a dream. Shifting to earlier hours not only solves the Internet problem (emails sent at 3AM should expect a reply the next day) but also promotes good habits.

Over the summer, I slept remarkably earlier than during the year, typically at around midnight to 1AM. This continued until I realized that the library had a wide selection of DVDs, which brings me to my next point. At home, I typically use the Internet for four purposes: email, watching online episodes of tv shows, reading gratuitous fanfiction, and talking on AIM. I can only justify the first and the last as a means of keeping in touch with people. If I wanted to watch tv shows, I should just borrow them from the library. As for fanfiction, I could be reading much better written works of original fiction, also borrowed from the library. The problem is that I just can’t force myself to wake up at 7AM every morning and to sleep at an earlier hour.

The Internet is a huge time-waster, but I’ve become so dependent on it that I’m slightly lost without it. Since I really don’t enjoy calling people, I enjoy talking over email and AIM, where I feel that I get across more of what I actually mean. It’s also lazier and much easier. One problem is that it’s so easy to get side-tracked. I’ll be looking for an article, and suddenly reading the NYT, BBC, Independent, Boston Globe, and twenty other newspapers. Another problem is that there’s such a wide range of quality in websites. Aside from newspapers, I gravitate towards the simple ones because I don’t have to think about it. It’s easy to spend hours on IMDB and stare at pictures of actors and actresses and read random reviews.

Now as an addict of Internet culture, I’ve bought into the fallacy that ‘the world is at my fingertips’. When I can wiki almost everything and expect instantaneous results, it’s sometimes hard to remember that the real world demands self-discipline and dedication. Many people including myself see the Internet an artificial construct that spews instant gratification and removes the need to think or analyze. It’s true that there are quality websites on the Internet, but with so much floating around, it’s infinitely preferable to enjoy the cheap and instant thrill.

It’s not true that the Internet has somehow corrupted the way I think and taken away my ability to think, but I do think that it actually reinforces some of my perceived weaknesses. After wasting several hours and sometimes an entire day on the Internet, I always berate myself for not having enough self-control. Cheap thrills don’t take away the disappointment that comes later. It’s so much harder to trade the instant fun for the quiet satisfaction that results from doing something meaningful for an hour.

scenes from a sunset

where we live now

Philadelphia is a dump. For everyone who likes the ‘artsiness’ and the ‘uniqueness’ of the city, I’d just like to say that it’s hard for me to appreciate the finer aesthetics when I feel like I’m going to get mugged walking to and from campus every day. Last month, there have been gangs of eight to ten year olds racing around on their little bikes both on campus and around my apartment. Things aren’t looking up when you consider that people have been mugged on campus before. A few years ago, someone was mugged on Sunday at 5PM, before dark.

Despite the new housing projects that are popping up in Philadelphia, the streets teem with homeless people, beggars, winos, and dirt. I try to avoid the subway at all costs not only because it smells like piss on a good day, but because I’m usually the only non-African American there. When I first moved to Philadelphia, I rode the subway until I became bothered by the real or imagined looks others were giving me (probably imaginary). Now I just dish out the ten dollars for a cab ride, which is preferable to the possibility of getting stabbed or shot.

Over Christmas, someone was killed at the subway stop just twenty feet away from my department. Of course, the campus is much better than it was six years ago. Now there are restaurants, a supermarket, and a security guard on every corner for twenty blocks. I suppose that the chances are low that I’ll get mugged if I don’t walk home after 10PM or intoxicated. Sundays are the worst because everyone comes out and wanders the streets on that most holy day. I guess they work or do whatever it is they do for the rest of the week.

Nor is the danger solely from the bums wandering the cracked and dirt filled streets. Penn is aptly nicknamed the Australia of the Ivies. Last year, I was sitting in four classes with an Econ student who was a convicted child molester. In fact, he lived rent free in Buck’s County Prison every night. Having never sat next to him or spoken to him, I was still freaked upon finding out in May. I’ve had many disagreements with my colleagues, who believe in ‘forgive and forget’. I suppose I’m just a bit less forgiving, not that it matters since he doesn’t prefer girls anyway.

Of course, this doesn’t include the marketing professor who went to Thailand and came back with a massive load of child porn tapes, many of which he taped. Nor to say anything about the econ professor who is accused of beating his wife to death, and so badly that she was unrecognizable. Then there are minor cases of some Penn student putting fifteen rounds through his ex-girlfriend’s door at Drexel or something of that sort. At other schools, the largest scandal is plagiarizing. Here, we have events that are grotesquely Hollywood-esque in their scope and execution.

I’ve become a proponent of the nurture side of the nature vs. nurture argument. It seems wrong that there is indeed so much wrong in a city that was once the pinnacle of sophistication and knowledge.

the joys of las vegas

My trip to Las Vegas was mildly disappointing. Too many bright lights, intoxicated white men, a lackluster wedding, and the over-satiated gaudiness of the place all contributed to my antipathy towards returning for a second round. The entire city is a giant conceit composed of its mini-conceits. The first casino’s interesting. It’s all downhill from there. Whether we’re standing in a miniature pyramid or the Eiffel Tower, the gilt, carpeting, and ambience all blends together.

Having actually worried that I would enjoy gambling a bit too enthusiastically before going, I shouldn’t have bothered. Gambling is not terribly fun when you’re extremely averse to losing money. I lost fifteen dollars, but God help me if I had lost any more than that. Maybe I should have tried actually playing at the tables, but the buy-ins were, well…much more than fifteen dollars.

The Rockies were absolutely breathtaking, however. I spent a lot of my time staring at the mountains and wishing I were climbing them. I probably should be more appreciative that people actually built a mecca in the middle of the desert out of neon lights and slot machines, but it’s hard to feel for Las Vegas. Much of it probably has to do with the fact that I’m not a fan of the crowds. Walking on the strip, there is a general crassness about the people. Everyone’s drunk and laughing raucously. Maybe it’s like how teetotalers feel in a room surrounded by drunk people.

A fun lesson I learned in Las Vegas (though not so fun at the time) is that buffets are evil when you want to try everything and when you don’t have much self-control. True, I do have more self-control than I had several years ago. Instead of eating until I can’t move, I merely felt very stuffed. After deluding myself after the first buffet that I would be able to control myself in the future, I ventured into the second buffet a few days later and…presto! Nothing happened. I overate. Yet again.

Still, I’m glad I went. It will probably be the last vacation that I take for a long time. It is nice to spend three days in a place where everyone’s ambling around slowly and having the time of their lives.

my addiction

I suffer from an acute addiction to novels. I don’t read during the year because I know that if I picked up a book and started reading, I wouldn’t be able to stop until 5am…and the next day…and the next week…and the next month. Over the summer, I choose to read instead of watching movies, which is apparently not what the general population does.

Being a book reviewer would probably make me the happiest person in the world (or a photographer for National Geographic), but I can’t even write coherently, let alone elegantly and persuasively. I have immense respect for novelists, because it seems impossible to be able to create people and ideas from nothing, then fixing them on paper. In my eyes, writing nonfiction is less difficult because the idea is already present, and crafting the style requires less subtlety and skill than for fiction.

The best books I’ve read are those which have excellent characters, superb language, and a good to excellent plot. It does seem slightly abnormal to rate plot as the least important of the three (though still very important), but this is also how I approach most things in life.

When I was very young, I started off exclusively reading horror, Tom Clancy, and John Grisham. It was all very straightforward and I got my kicks from the shock, the intrigue, and the violence. I believe this was followed with a brief sci-fi/fantasy period, where spaceships and dragons were what I thought about all day (and being a CIA agent). Fantasy is great for ten-year olds because well…everything is great when you’re ten years old and everything seems so new and exciting. Even though I no longer read espionage novels, the best I have read is Robert Ludlum’s The Bourne Identity, which gets a 9 out of 10 for plot and average marks for everything else. Even though I adore British dryness, sarcasm, and literature, Le Carre is just a wee bit too dry and aloof for my taste.

Following the fantasy period was the historical period, Jean M. Auel and Margaret George. I still think that Auel is one of the most, if not the most creative author in fiction. In research, what you really want to do is to take a leap onto something solid or bridge a gap. There’s a mess of disconnected pieces lying around, and Auel comes along and she’s the only person to not only see that they belong to the same puzzle but also which way the pieces fit. Her main characters are amazing and impossible not to empathize with, and her style is solid. On the other hand, Margaret George’s books seem painstakingly researched (I rather think she would make a better historian than author if she’s not already), and her writing falls slightly on the flat side. One aspect of history/fantasy that I never liked was the King Arthur stories. I did not respond positively or negatively to The Once and Future King, The Mists of Avalon, etc. and I don’t know why.

After this, I only read for school, and these were without doubt the best books I’ve read in my life. I had to dissect each one, turn them inside out, break them apart, and put something back together again. When you spend that much time and effort on books, you find yourself on an entirely different plane. I don’t think I’ve done much critical and creative thinking since high school honors english. The two books that I enjoyed the most from that period were 1984 and Candide. I can’t even describe how I felt after reading those two books, which is perfectly fine since thousands of critics have already done it for me.

After high school, I couldn’t go back to reading books just for plot. Character became more important, and I viewed plot as something that was a part of the character. The plot basically revolves around the decisions that people make and their response to events (usually calamities) that happen to them. Essentially, the characters in a novel carry the plot along. If the two are separated or not correctly joined, then it’s a pretty crappy book. That was when I started getting into my humanistic and magic realism period.

During this period, I adored John Irving and Pat Conroy, both because they created such amazing characters, original storylines, gorgeous imagery (Conroy), and virtuoso style (Irving). At the time, I thought that Irving’s novels were so close to perfection, especially The Cider House Rules and The World According to Garp. His characters made you think that Irving knew just about everything there was to know about being human and life itself. The only problem with his books was that every climax was anticlimactical. There were usually several climaxes per book, and the ending just felt lifeless by the time I got to it. Conroy’s characters were alive more so than Irving’s, and his writing style was superior, but Irving just had that something that made me think that he was so close to the ideal.

Of course, magic realism followed, which was a combination of humanism, witchcraft, rituals, and miracles. The two authors that I enjoy in this category are Isabelle Allende and Gabriel Gael Marquez. Of the two, Marquez’s novels are more put together, and Allende’s were slightly inconsistent. The ideas were wonderful, and the writing flowed, but there was always something in their books that made me think that there was a piece missing or a chunk that didn’t fit correctly. Moreover, the magic part reminded me of my slight distaste of fantasy. Sci-Fi and fantasy has been bashed over the years and accused of being lower quality then most other novels. In some sense, I think that it’s true. Since fantasy is appreciated mostly for its ingenuity and ideas (as well as generally being written for younger readers), character development and style are sometimes sacrificed.

Since then, I’ve been reading Nick Hornby and Dave Eggers, which I would describe as realism. Their books are a combination of the sad and the poignant and the funny. Essentially, both authors point out the problem with modern life and modern people, but do it in such an uplifting and graceful way. Since I’m an overly enthusiastic fan of sarcasm of any kind, I love Hornby’s matter-of-factness and dryness. I admire how much Hornby can get across in so few words. It’s quite a feat.

I’m now in my Jane Austen/George Eliot phase, which is a mix of extremely clever writing, less emotion, and some history. It’s almost the antithesis of Conroy’s tense emotion and Irving’s melodrama, but nice and balanced, which I enjoy. I’m also attempting to reconnect with my sci-fi/fantasy self of more than ten years ago. However, it’s not going terribly well, seeing as my computer’s almost an extension of myself and there’s nothing intriguing about the matrix and data streams present in sci-fi novels. And I think I’ve just grown out of fantasy.

The two books that I will always go back to are The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. Those books are the closest physical approximation to the excellence of the human spirit. The sheer magnitude and drive of the ideas and characters wrapped in those two books transcend anything else I’ve ever read. It is the one case in which the ideas in the book are so important that the characters and the style don’t matter. The words just live and breathe on their own. Although I know I will never reach that level of excellence, it’s worthwhile to get a glimpse once in awhile, however fleetingly.

teaching...or something like it

Now that my prelims are over, I can no longer shirk my TAing responsibilities and hide in the topmost corner whenever I skulk into class. Since there's a midterm coming up, I've been wound up at the thought of giving office hours. Considering that the students had a month's head start on me (not to mention an intro class) for learning the material, I freaked myself out. Originally, I was supposed to hold a review session last Friday and freaked myself out in the process (It's what happens when there's nothing at all going on). In class, the professor announced that he'd be holding it...okay...I did a double take and was given a temporary reprieve.

This week, I held 5 total hours of office hours, which is pretty crazy. The first student that walked in had a PhD in EECS and wanted me to prove that certain formulas were equivalent to others and certain approaches could be the same as other approaches and could I please prove all of this. Um. No, I can't. Sorry? I walked into that room, and he whipped out his list of questions. After he asked his first question, I just felt my stomach drop. It's one of those moments when you know that you're falling and that you're just going to keep falling and nothing's going to stop you. Thankfully, he only stayed for half an hour after he became aware of my incompetence.

The other students were nice, and I was able to answer some of their questions (I hope). Today I sat sown with this student that came down from Boston and went through both practice midterms with him, step by step. For someone who can't even concentrate for an hour of lecture, it was intensely tiring. Two hours and some change later, I felt like my brain was going to melt into a puddle in my skull.

Actually being a professor and orating for three hours must be draining beyond belief. Honestly, I can see how people can't get research done when they're teaching. Obviously, teaching a class requires knowing the material and much more. I realized that I knew exactly how much work I've been putting in for the last three weeks (shocker) and not much more. In fact, I probably know as much as the average student in my class. That's not too encouraging, but how much I put in is how much I get out (I'm descending into the valley of triteness).

These executive MBA students are pretty dedicated. Imagine being a VP at some job, being married with kids, and coming to class every other weekend to top it off. Then again, they didn't get to where they are in life without working hard and sacrificing something (sleep, no doubt). The eMBAs are much nicer and less openly aggressive than regular MBAs, who lug around egos the size of a small island and exude an overpowering combination of youth and insecurity. I'm not intimidated by eMBAs when I'm sitting down next to them, but I don't feel like an instructor either. I have a healthy respect for people who got to where they are in life, successful by all counts, by the time that they're thirty. I can only hope to be so lucky.

Velvet Revolver in May

Evanescence Concert in May

exams and the like

After spending approximately five weeks studying for the last exam that actually matters in my life (not to mention the three weeks studying for finals), it's been predictably flat since then. The only thing getting me through was deciding exactly what I was going to do Thursday afternoon at 4:30. What ended up happening was an extremely depressing round of drinks, a less depressing dinner, and an even more depressing round of drinks. I did not a) go crazy b) wake up unconscious c) have the time of my life.

Before an exam, the stress is piled on so heavily that you can't help thinking about the whoosh of relief that comes when you walk out of the overlit and gloomy room that you spend days in and even more nights dreaming about. The problem is that the anticipation has the exact opposite effect. I walk out of a six-hour exam thinking: that's it? That's what I've spent a year sitting in classes and a month freaking out over? There's a profound sense of emptiness and a faint feeling of being cheated.

After the exam, all of us made a pact not to speak about the exam, which made the rest of the day even more depressing because we all realized that we had precious little else in common. Once we take away the major link, it just felt like a few acquaintances being forced to go out to dinner together. It might also have been that everyone was so tired that making polite conversation didn't seem humanly possible at that point.

The exam...right. It wasn't the best thing in the world.

the days fly by

I got nothing accomplished today. Absolutely nothing. First of all, the only other girl in my program came in after a week of hiding in her room, and I was so excited that we spent hours giggling and not getting anything done. One of my coworkers told me that his noise-cancellation earphones weren't advanced enough to mute our giggles. We gossip a lot, make exploding sounds, draw stick figures on the white board, talk ghetto, sing bad songs, and torment our colleagues. Basically, we're like five-year olds.

Of course, I also worked on my tennis ball catching skills today (I can catch with one hand!) and realized that I can't beat guys in arm wrestling (or anything sports related). It's not fair that I'm so deficient because I'm a girl. On a different note, I realized that I can get things if I pout and/or whine enough. This disturbes me slightly b/c I feel like I get my way just because I'm a girl and it seems like I'm cheating. I'd rather fight for it (but I'd lose).

The highlight of my day was picking out a birthday card for one of my colleagues. I think my sense of humor got the better of me because he's going to know right away that I was the guilty party responsible. We insult each other within an inch of our lives. Poor boy. I'd like to think of it as honing my sense of humor.

I'm mostly just glad that my cough is almost entirely gone. I barely slept last week and almost went crazy because I was putting in 16 hour days of studying. The guy who lives in the room directly above mine told me that he could hear me coughing at night. That's pretty bad. I would sit in classes and really hope that I wouldn't die coughing. I think I definitely started pissing people off with my coughing. The worst was not being able to sleep. I became scared of trying to go to sleep because I knew that I'd just start hacking my lungs out. Of course, that made it even more difficult to sleep. I became even bitchier than usual.

But classes are over, and I can't bring myself to be too stressed yet (maybe tomorrow). Maybe I'll go to the office and actually get something done if I can stay away from the temptations of playing catch and teasing my coworkers.

doom and destruction

My marathon weekend of bad movies continues with Doom and Chronicles of Riddick, both of which I watched for one actor. Watching bad movies is sometimes fun because I can laugh and mercilessly tear everything apart. You need to go in there ready to laugh and to have absolutely no expectations at all.

It strikes me how few actors actually make it to the top in Hollywood. There are only a few dozen faces which get recycled over and over again. I don't have strong feelings for the Rock, but I rather enjoy Rosamund Pike's cultured, quiet way of acting. She reminds me of a less intense version of Cate Blanchett. I liked her in Pride and Prejudice and thought that she did an admirable job in The Libertine. Anyone who's able to hold their own opposite Johnny Depp should receive several awards.

Doom was utterly horrible, though perhaps not as bad as Chronicles of Riddick. Although Chronicles of Riddick had some sort of half-baked story (Doom's storyline was even worse), the cinematography was off-putting. The necromancers didn't seem so much aliens as having bad hair and even worse clothing. Whoever said Vin Diesel was hot must have been on drugs. His voice sounds reminds me of the Sahara desert. Not to be shallow or anything, but I can't appreciate men who sound like they've swallowed an entire colony of frogs. There's nothing hot about him. Everything about him screams gangster and blue-collar.

The major problem I had with Chronicles of Riddick was Vin Diesel's glowing white orbs. Honestly, the entire movie seemed pointless. There are evil people who are taking over the world (they don't seem too evil) and less evil people (but still evil) who must prevent them from doing so. Add in a few metal headpieces, double sided pikes, people who disappear, and the indifference just explodes.

Doom isn't better, but at least it doesn't pretend to be important. The strange thing about this movie is that there isn't much action. Considering that Doom is the forefather of first-person shooter video games, the fact that the movie goes on for half an hour without a shot being fired is disconcerting. There's an unconvincing sappy family story and some genetic mutation crap that tries painfully to be semi-intelligent. Spare us. There's a lot of mystery and dark things lurking around even darker corners, but not much in the way of substance or action.

clueless

It's been so long since I've indulged myself in chick flicks and otherwise pointless movies. When Clueless first hit the theaters, I wasn't even in double digits. When I started watching, the first thing I thought was: People really wore that in the '90s??? Was there a plaid revolution? And where are the bagpipes that go with the kilts?

Despite the cluelessness of it all, there's something to be said about the movie. Some of the dialogue is way sharp and Alicia Silverstone has a sweet, pouty air about her that doesn't exactly inspire nausea. I admit that I love Paul Rudd, despite his insipidness. He's just the nice, all around big brother but not big brother with a really nice smile. Even though Cher's so fake, they're still totally adorable together.

I enjoyed watching Clueless so much more than Cruel Intentions. Cruel Intentions just felt like young adults trying to be teenagers trying to be grown-ups. Ryan Phillipe comes off not so much as angsty as trying to be angsty and self-important. I find that I enjoy watching older actors and actresses much more than those around my age because they're more sure of themselves. They know who they are and have the experience and depth to convey more emotion.

Generally, ultrasweet and sappy girls onscreen annoy the hell out of me (i.e. Kirsten Dunst). It's even worse when it's forced and feels like it's forced. I dislike watching actresses who don't have the capacity to be anything but the sweet damsel in distress. It's not that I'm an incredibly deep and angsty and complex person, but I'd like to see it onscreen once in awhile.

Sarah Michelle Gellar was all right in Cruel Intentions, though nowhere as evil as she was supposed to be. Selma Blair was just an idiot (I guess she nailed her part dead-on) and Reese Witherspoon was all right. Frankly, I expected the movie to have a little more bite, but I guess I'll live.

ad infinitum

Yup. I'm at a new motivational low...yet again. The predictability of my life is becoming slightly grating. When you're prepared for the peaks and the troughs and they're exactly where you thought they'd be...it's hard to drum up any feeling for anything.

In theory, there's some crap like I have control over my life. Everything always works perfectly in theory, but reality is just a mass of gray splotches. I feel like I'm going blind. It's wonderful to have dreams, but then I wake up and life's about paying the rent, paying my taxes, wondering when I'm going to fit getting married and having kids into my life, if I'm going to finish all of my problem sets on time, if I'm going to become a professor, and if I do, if I'll get tenure, how much fatter I'll get if I don't exercise...so it's easier not to have dreams at all. It's easier just to not care because it hurts too much to look outside and not see anything.

It's frightening because I think that I had dreams at one point. Now I just don't care. Reality's gotten the best of me. It's easier to take the path of least resistance. I'm tired of fighting and tired of trying to change. Honestly, people don't change that much after a certain point unless they're traumatized, and I could do without. I think the worst thing would be if I still felt like this in ten years. It's not so much the world rushing by me as the feeling of everything standing still. What's the point?

10 signs that your friendship might be doomed

1. Your potential friend (male) asks you (male) if you wear long-sleeve shirts to cover up your arm hair.

2. When you try to sit across the table from your potential friend, he shifts so that he's sitting next to you and explains that he needs his space and can't make direct eye contact with you.

3. Your potential friend thinks that you're his weekly ESL teacher.

4. You accidently get at least 50 calls and incoherent messages a day from your new friend who can't figure out how to work his cell phone and your name just conveniently happened to be Aardvark.

5. Your potential friend has a habit of spitting all over people's faces when he's drunk.

6. Your potential friend asks you why you don't shower. When you retort that you shower twice a day, he promptly tells you that his kids won't have clean water because of you.

7. When you joke about wanting to see what your potential friend's classes are like, he emails you his entire schedule complete with suggestions.

8. While at lunch with your potential friend, he tells you that his father once told him that there are only two things in life that men should handle with their hands, chickens and women.

9. Your potential friend calls you to invite you over to his apartment to watch the super bowl. Ten minutes later, he calls you back and tells you that there's no more space at his place.

10. You can't decide whether or not to start a conversation with a guy, mainly because he's been standing over the serving tray of sausages for the last twenty minutes, has two sausages sticking out of his mouth, and is glancing around to see whether anyone notices him.

10 signs that your date might be doomed

1. You met several times at the allergist's clinic before going on a date.

2. Your date is an ex-almost-pro football player who weighs three times more than you do and has a jealous girlfriend who weighs twice as much as you.

3. Your date (female) thinks that you (male) are a homosexual.

4. Your date brings you to a two hour long Hebrew service and you don't speak Hebrew.

5. At an ice-cream parlor, your date (female) orders two scoops of chocolate and you (male) order one small scoop of mango sorbet. She then stares at your sorbet and comments, "It's light and fruity, kind of like you."

6. Your date asks if you would ever consider dating someone twice your age... (See 7)

7. Your date asks you if it would bother you if you dated someone with kids your age.. (See 6)

8. You break the ice with facts about dieting before your date informs you that she used to be anorexic.

9. You're watching a movie with your date about the African-American experience (neither of you are African-American). Ten minutes into the movie, she turns to you and loudly asks you why everyone in the movie is black and all of the black people in the theater (everyone) turn around to look at both you.

10. Your date enthusiastically picks off all of the croutons in your salad without asking you first.

Juicy's Quotes

Babel:
"I'd hate to be stuck in Afghanistan with a bullet."

March Madness:
"I'm not in the pool. I don't know anything about football."

TV:
"You watch Law and Order:SUV?"

Physics and Wheelchairs:
"Isn't Stephen Hawking that guy who used to play superman? I thought his name was Stephen Stocking."

Obesity:
"Poor people are genetically disposed to be fat."

Oregon:
"Are you going on the Oregon trail with those covered wagons and oxen? How are you going to cross the rivers with those oxen? And watch out for those indians. They'll shoot arrows at you."

Atheism:
"Does that mean you hate God?"

Crime:
"The guy got his wallet stolen and knocked up."

airing my dirty laundry frustrations

What a fraking awful day...it's not like today was going well by any stretch of the imagination anyway. Between the coffee rush and subsequent crash and general neurosis and paranoia, I remembered that today just happened to be the worst day of the month---laundry day. You'd think that sorting laundry, shoving it into the machine, pouring detergent over the mess, and inserting a couple of quarters would be brainless, but it's anything but in this crappy grad dorm that I live in.

First, there are about 20 washers, about 19 of which work on a regular basis, and 20 dryers, about 20 of which don't dry. I'm wondering if this might be a slight problem. In the beginning of the term, I decided just to wash my clothing and hang it up in my room to dry. That worked wonders. My damp clothing gave my room a definitive Amazon rainforest feel. Of course, I didn't have enough hangers for my underwear and socks, so I spread a sheet on the floor and waded through undergarments for several days. The end result of this little experiment is that all of my M sized shirts could now comfortably fit someone who's XL, and everything else is stiffer than cardboard and feels like cardboard when I wear it.

Everything that could possibly happen has happened when I try to do laundry. It's like running an obstacle course with a loaded laundry basket. So many of my quarters have gotten stuck in the machine and gone to the evil laundry gods. Once, I was so out of it that I starting washing a load, then pushed in another rack of quarters for no good reason. I dread doing laundry, so I only face extreme and intense pain once a month rather than spreading the pain over the month...I don't go for strong torture methods. I prefer a bullet to the water drop torture method.

So out of the 20 dryers, three semi-work. We define semi-work here as drying half a normal load successfully. All of the other dryers apparently can handle a max of five pairs of pants. Five cotton t-shirts are apparently too much and still come out damp. I have never in my life encountered more useless dryers. I could seriously stand in front of my clothing, blow vigorously, and they'd probably dry faster than turning in these monstrosities. It's probably not a good sign that you can see the beads of condensation trickling down the inside of the glass door.

The whole trick is to snatch the three semi-working dryers. Otherwise, it's entirely hopeless. Today I was unlucky and had to wait for one dryer...which also turned out not to work. On top of that, I got bitched out by the girl whose wet clothing I took out of the dryer two hours ago. So I had to resort to only using one of the semi-working dryers and a couple of the non-drying dryers. Honestly, it would probably have been a better use of my time and money if I had just sent everything to the dry-cleaners.

Laundry is not supposed to be painful. I don't understand how I can take something this simple and make it into such a huge deal. Life can't be as frightening and complex as I make it out to be.

ICA

The new ICA (Institute of Contemporary Art) in boston is rather small, but easy on the eyes. It's not the nicest building in Boston, but it's in a prime location by the waterfront. The views of the water from inside the museum is amazing.

If there's one part of contemporary art that I don't particularly care for, it's the AV stuff. I can do without the jerky camera movements and either meaningless objects falling on top of each other or ugly, earnest people puffed up in their own self-importance. Of course, there are entire movements of modern art devoted to Marcel Duchamp's canned excrement and porcelain urinals, but that's somewhat amusing...

frak it

I'm sick...and midterms are coming up. There's nothing to really worry about, since I've adopted the philosophy of refusing to panic until I panic. I'm more concerned that I somehow got sick by watching 15 straight hours of Battlestar Galactica and then some last week. I know it sounds ridiculous, but I ended up with a massive migraine, runny nose, and a deformed spinal cord. It's a tragic sign that I'm not as young as I used to be. I was whipping blithely through 24 marathons, pizza, and massive loads of sugar just a year ago. Then again, that's probably why I can't do it anymore, not to mention the coffee that's totally fraking up my sleep patterns and the alcohol that's fraking up my brain. Frak me.

I didn't know anything about Battlestar Galactica a week ago, then familiarized myself with everything about the show, and now I'm fraking sick of the show. Coining the word 'frak' is definitely the master stroke of this series...I'm ambivalent about the rest. For a sci-fi show, it's surprisingly gritty and pseudorealistic (dark and gloomy is always a plus on my scale). BG's a departure from the usual shows that I indulge in since I like the plot and hate the people. It's always the other way around.

The people on this show are so...human. It totally blows that all of the characters have an assortment of flaws. We're not even talking about stupidity or selfishness or something equally insipid. Instead, we have genocide-supporting, pill-popping, religious maniacs on board. Even I don't have such a grim view on humanity. I find it amazing that these people were the ones left after 99.9995% of the purported human race were destroyed by the machines. I can't sympathize with shows that don't have a moral center...BG does have a moral center, but no one's following it.

To me, the part of the show worth watching is how it addresses the question: What constitutes being human? BG embraces Descartes' "I think, therefore I am." Although the machines were responsible for the human massacre at the beginning, we are shown repeatedly that the people behave no better than their machine counterparts. In fact, the most interesting concept is machines trying to emulate people. We see that machines want to experience love and community, and what happens in their quest to become more like us.

Of course, I also appreciate that the not so subtle hints toward Iraq, religious fanaticism, and other heavy political issues are addressed directly. Battlestar Galactica does not shy away from anything. If only I could get over my absolute hatred of the schoolteacher-turned -president, I would enjoy the show so much more. Honestly, sometimes I think she should be shoved out of a fraking airlock. There's nothing worse than a combination of self-righteousness, weakness, religious fanaticism, and totalitarianism.

In all, Battlestar Galactica's a good show, though not fraking good. The ship sailed to another galaxy a few hours ago.

settling down

It's the first weekend in a long time that I haven't gone out...and I admit that it's not a bad feeling. I'm not spending loads of money and I'm not getting trashed. Instead, I've been doing some hefty programming in matlab and using my head for once. Now I'm amused because I'm not actually bad at programming. Considering how much pain CS has dealt me in the past, it's ironic and surprising. Today, I got a real kick out of programming 4-D matrices, though it was impossible to get any intuition from them and I had to downgrade to 3-D.

I guess I actually could enjoy learning if I somehow get past my mile-high roadblocks. But it's so difficult to learn something new very quickly...like matlab. I place too much emphasis on natural talent and not enough on hard work. It's not that natural talent doesn't go a long way, but I only have so much of that and moaning about the lack of it is not going to get me any further. I also haven't been working hard for a long long time now, which could explain why I feel like I don't know anything.

Making intuitive leaps is difficult, made more difficult by the fact that I always feel like I need to come up with such a leap and usually not being so lucky. It could just be the lack of knowledge or whatever. Or maybe thinking about making leaps stunts the part of the brain that's supposed to be making leaps. It's just a massive heap of delusional overexpectations, too much introspection, ...in general, too much thinking.

Sometimes I wonder if I actually would have liked academia in another life. I admit that I do feel comfortable in the environment. I get along swimmingly with my co-students. It's gratifying to find people whose sense of humor complement mine (or maybe it's just because graduate students tend to be nicer than people in the real world). However, there's some part of me that's not quite satisfied. I have a strong suspicion that it's not the actual thing but all of the baggage that comes along with it.

monochrome delirious

I wanna kick the machine
That made you piss away your dreams
And tear at your defenses
Until there's nothing left but me.

- Goo Goo Dolls, Dizzy -

I'm riding on a minor second wind. While I wouldn't describe myself as motivated by any stretch of the imagination, I'm not kicking and screaming every step of the way anymore. That was a fucking waste. Just one word: acceptance. At some point, I switched to jaded without actually experiencing anything worth noting. I almost feel like I've given up. I don't even remember what my dreams were and what I wanted out of my life. A long time ago, I always wondered why people weren't happy and why they couldn't do what they wanted. Well, we all have to work to live, eat, sleep, etc. It's ridiculously simple.

Honestly, life was so much better when I was seventeen and stupid. I had self-confidence, dreams, happiness...then some evil fairy called life came and waved her crooked wand, and *presto*, here I am. That's the other thing, wallowing in self-pity because taking responsibility is too hard. It's so easy to assign blame to anything and everything and just say: I'm irrevecablly fucked up and I can't ever climb out of this hole.

Surprisingly, I'm on some sort of a local peak because I've had a pseudo-social life for the last few weeks and everything else is hiccuping along relatively smoothly. But I know I'll blink and I'll hit the next plateau or trough (probably ~midterms). What happens happens. I know that something snapped, and I can't pinpoint when it happened and I can't fix it.

It's ironic when I consider that my life is so much better than almost everyone else's. The fourth best college in the country. The third best doctoral program in the country. And I can't fucking live my life. Forgive me, I'm just tired and old and bitter at the moment.

total eclipse of the heart

Hallelujah Jeff Buckley
Chasing Cars Snow Patrol
Running up that hill Placebo
Trouble Coldplay
Superman Five for Fighting
Hot Blooded Foreigner

the major fall and the minor lift

Without a Life

Over the past few days, I've been watching the first season of Without a Trace. Well...I also redecorated my dorm room and did six loads of laundry, but I wouldn't exactly qualify the latter as noteworthy.

WaT exhibits rather strong CBSish tendencies and is pretty much by the Bruckheimer. That's not to say that it's a bad show. In fact, considering how long it takes most shows to settle in, the first season is put together amazingly well. The storylines and characters are strong and cohesive, including in the pilot. The show immediately settles in without the rough patches that almost all new shows go through as a rite of passage, not to mention those that perpetually stumble along in a disjointed and half-hearted manner.

As with almost all CBS shows, the casting is excellent, with the requisite older male authority figure, complete with the broody air and dark past and the two men (preferably handsome) and two women (preferably gorgeous) with sparkling and vibrant personalities that complete the team. It's essential that the people are good looking and cheery, since WaT is so heavy at times that I was certain that it would choke itself on self-inflicted gravitas and drama.

WaT feeds heavily on human emotions (as opposed to say...elephant emotions). Each episode recreates a person from the inside out, learning about the tragedy in his/her life (Usually abuse or drugs or any of the other depravities that CBS relishes in showing). We don't see any body parts or the omniprescent morgue that's the bread and butter of the Eye, but it's creepier, like dissecting someone's soul or mind.

The screenwriting is pretty damn good for a TV show, and the dialogue is snappy, sharp, and clever. Overall, WaT almost feels too clinical. Everything is clear cut and you just get the feeling that every element was thought over, thought over again, and fitted precisely into place. Predictability does stifle creativity, but why care when each episode is as solid as a slab of concrete.

Ultimately, I only go for the shows where the cinematography is beyond criticism and the characters are strongly appealing. That's probably why Law and Order and its billions of spin-offs have always turned me off and why CBS, with its camerawork and over-the-top humane saviors of humanity, is my bread and butter. As one critic stated, "Without a Trace is about beautiful people all sleeping with each other". Well...I believe that if they spend all day saving the world and since they're all beautiful, there's nothing wrong with a little fun thrown in the mix. It's all in a day's work.