summer part I

Books I’ve read:
The Manchurian Candidate /John Marks
The Count of Monte Cristo /Alexander Dumas
Girl With a Pearl Earring /Tracy Chevalier
We wish to inform you that tomorrow we will be killed with our families/Phillip Gourevitch

Movies/TV shows that I’ve watched:
X3
Pirates of the Caribbean II
Monster-in-Law
Bewitched
What Women Want
2 episodes of 24
1 episode of NUMB3RS
1 episode of CSI: Miami
1 episode of NCIS
1 episode of Without a Trace

Weeks at work: 5

Restaurants/Stores/Other:
Cheesecake Factory: 1
Old Ebbitt Grill: 1
Haagen-Dazs: 1
Smoothie Place: 1
Barnes&Noble: 4
Borders: 1
Apple Store: 1
City Sports: 1

Other sundry items:
Started and finished journal of trip to Europe
Cleaned out room at home
Exercising ~4-5 times per week
Cooking dinner every night

News that I read daily/weekly:
Arts & Letters Daily
NY Times
BBC
CBS
CNN
MSNBC
The Independent
Newsweek
Slate
Time
The Economist
The New Yorker
Boston Globe
Chicago Tribune

eulogy for my laptop

Last weekend, I almost had a heart attack when my laptop obstinately refused to start. After twenty minutes of emergency laptop CPR, I gave up and decided that my poor black machine had beeped its last. I was ready to compose a heartfelt speech of rememberance - and then my dad came in, pressed the on button (which I had pressed about fifty times) and it came to life again.

I don't think I'm a bad person, but I secretly hoped that my thinkpad R32 had chosen to rest in peace before it got replaced with a newer, faster, sleeker, more powerful T60. Anyway, here are some of my thoughts:

Thank you for being there for these four hectic years, and dealing patiently (and not so patiently) with some of the abuse that I have heaped upon you. You must understand, I never meant to drop you from four feet high onto a cement floor freshman year. I simply tripped over your cord. Also, I never meant to download viruses (It was all Eudora's fault) and corrupt your system (But as they say, in sickness and in health:))

By the way, what is up with the passive-aggressiveness (Or I should say: What was up?). You know what I'm talking about. Things like your CD-ROM drive failing to work after a year and the monitor shutting down completely in the middle of running regressions last year (Maybe more on the side of aggressive)? I'd like to believe that this is an interdependent relationship, not a collection of vindictive, petty squabbles.

No matter. The past is the past. I do salute you for getting me completely and utterly addicted to Google and the Internet, my bread and butter. Maybe not directly, but you're a tricky one. I am now a sophisticated creature dependent on instant gratification and one-click shopping. I will miss you dearly, and since you are still around, I'll probably abuse you until the very end. Don't complain. It's mutual.

more cake, please

Oh boy, oh boy! This is the only time in my life that I have been reduced to a quivering, giggling, jumping, and completely loopy fan girl (See the manical grin plastered on my face). The young gentleman in the center is Jonathan Cake, who plays Caius Marcius Coriolanus in Shakespeare's Coriolanus, which Janet and I saw at Shakespeare's Globe Theatre when we were in London.

The theatre was open-air, and we opted to stand for the three hours. The play was performed in a way that was amazingly interactive and engaging (though I make no claims about the authenticity or my level of understanding of Shakespearean English pronunced with British/Cockney accents). Some of the actors were interspersed among the audience and leapt up when they had their lines. They ran through the audience onto the stage and there was even one scene where Coriolanus came into the audience to beg for their approval.

After the play, I was so thrilled that I asked the attendants if I could possibly get some autographs (probably the most daring thing I've done in the past four years). Janet and I rushed through the building and asked two more attendants before we found the stage door and started squealing. A few people came out, including my personal favorite, Sicinius Velutus, who was so dry that it wasn't possible for him to be more dry. Then Jonathan Cake came out, and we got a picture with him! All 6'3" of him! Sir Cake is apparently one of Britain's finest actors and was even on Empire, a dismal mini-series that aired on ABC last summer (I actually saw the first episode before I decided that it wasn't worth watching). But, but...he was a gladiator on the series!!!! I have a special space in my heart reserved for gladiators.

Fewer and fewer actors came out, but Janet and I were on a high, so it was all right. The lady manning the stage doors kicked us out to lock the door, and with our infallible logic, reasoned that the only way that the actors could leave would be through the main door, so we went and stalked the main door. Then this guardian angel (aka security guard) saw two little Asian girls standing outside with bright faces and took us to the cast party in the pub garden next door!

We went up and met all of the actors, and found out that one of them (Joseph Marcell) actually played the butler on Fresh Prince of Bel-Air:) Now I wish I had watched that show when I was younger. Margret Leicester, who played the wicked and ambitious mother in the play, hugged us so tightly that I thought she'd choke me. The little boy (~15) who played Coriolanus's son and whose only role in the play was to look sad and hold out his hands beseechingly was shooting pool and very embarrassed that two girls wanted his autograph (I told him that he did an amazing job looking sad). Coriolanus's wife (Virgilia) was amazingly pretty in the play and even prettier in jeans rather than a sack dress. The only reason why I mention her is that she and Coriolanus shared a kiss onstage that made a huge popping noise, probably as loundly as I can scream. That was amazing.

Enough digressions and back to Jonathan Cake. What made the play so great was that Coriolanus is a heroic general with so much pride that it was literally spilling out of his ears. And he was a total momma's boy. Cake was very fiery, and had he been on the screen, would have completely overacted. But the acting was solid all around and quite marvelous. Afterwards, when we met him, he just seemed like such a preppie, with a slight whiff of that I'm hot and I know it attitude. It was hilarious. But he was really really nice, not to mention that Janet thought that he had nice legs.

the poisoned apple

I broke my record of eating apples. For the past four days, I have eaten one medium-sized fuji apple as part of my lunch. That's a whopping FOUR apples. Before that, I haven't eaten four apples in the last four years.

Freak. No, I just have an extreme distaste for apples that might even be called hatred. What bothers me so much is the crunchiness. Don't get me wrong. I don't like mushy or soft bruised apples and I'm certainly not against the actual apple taste (though I don't think there's anything amazing about it). It's just the sound and sensation of teeth sinking into the crisp red flesh that makes me want to cringe. It reminds me of chalk scraping on chalkboard. No, it's more like teeth grinding sharply on a scratchy surface.

Once you get through the apple skin (chalkboard), there's the actual flesh, which I almost dislike as much as the skin. It's not soft or soothing. Rather, the white grainy flesh has a sandy, rough texture with juice trapped inside its pores and only released upon more crunching and scraping. To avoid any misunderstanding, let me tell you that I like soft juicy fruits (all popular fruit except for apples fall into this category) that don't make whining noises when I try to eat them. It's beside the point that oranges, peaches, bananas, watermelon all taste better than apples, in my humble opinion.

Why did Eve choose to eat the apple? When she touched the hard, unyielding apple on the tree, how could she have not sensed that something was wrong? Instead, she picked it off the tree, gave half of it to the man she loved, and ate the other half. Dear God. Why couldn't she have stuck to her oranges and peaches?

I could go on and mention Snow White, but I'll refrain. It just escapes me why the apple has been exalted and glorified throughout history and still occupies a large chunk of everyday life. I brought an apple to work today, but I just couldn't do it. I couldn't make myself take a bite out of that hard, rosy surface and hear the accompanying crunch.

Hello from DC

Yup...I've been working for a week again, and I actually have a project this year, which is a massive improvement over last. There's just something very nice about working in DC and on Independence Ave.

Everyone seems to be enjoying their jobs (Or at least living in gorgeous places). I'll definitely try to post more over the summer and let you all know how things are going.

Lots of love.

jump start

There's no better way to jump start a morning than getting frantic calls on my cell phone at 8:23AM. Panicked freshman proceeded to first call and leave a voice message at 8:15AM, then called again at 8:23AM. Apparently, his life was ending because he didn't know which sloan classes to bid for or what he should take next semester.

I'm almost never in a good mood and certainly never at such an obscenely early hour. However, I tried to be helpful and invited said panicked freshman over so he could pre-register for classes on his laptop while I provided ground support from mine. While his enthusiasm is endearing, he could spare a bit to find that the information is all online. Good grief. Clearly, the point is to get as many required classes out of the way as possible so we can move on to bigger and better classes in the future.

Maybe I never took my classes seriously enough to have a full-fledged panic attack (I only started having those this year). Maybe I was still in EECS at the time and therefore dead to the rest of the world. I just don't understand why registering for classes qualifies as a national emergency for some people. I also don't understand why he would assume that I was awake at 8AM, considering that the majority of people here go to sleep around 3 or 4AM. Oh well...I guess it's cute that I can help out, but please, please don't wake me up in the future.

L's birthday

Yay! What a fun Friday night, where there was just the right amount of people, food, alcohol, movies, and general happiness:) Congrats to L on her birthday...it was fun and special and probably one of the last celebrations before graduating from college.

I learned many invaluable lessons, like how to cook a wonderful swordfish in tomato sauce (complicated), and how to cook an absolutely scrumptious appetizer of mushrooms rolled in bacon (easy)... and took my first tequila shot (liked the salt, hated the tequila, liked the lemon). Something else including ~three glasses of wine, one rum and coke, and a Smirnoff's.

Along with all that, it was just plain fun having a good night with four absolutely wonderful girls whom I've known and admired and loved for four packed years. Cheers!

the meat market

It's strange how young Americans have fun nowadays...going clubbing. Granted, once young people begin working, it's difficult to meet people that aren't your co-workers. But clubbing exists solely to get ass. Any guy who tries to have a meaningful conversation in a club is beyond creepy and should be avoided at all costs. Clubbing is just an orgy of gratuitious groping and grinding. It's basically like making out with random strangers while standing up.

We went to the Avalon in Fenway, which is the largest club in Boston. There were lines and lines of people flooding out of the door. The dance floor is a crowded, sweaty pit with fake mist everywhere (not sure how the mist helps). Some people really did go to dance and danced pretty damn well. Some guys just migrate from girl group to group, trying to dance as many people as possible. Others stood in a ring on the edge of the floor, picked out specific girls in the crowd that they wanted to dance with, and went after them. Honestly, it's like prostitution except that everyone pays the cover fee.

As one of my friends mentioned, it's brutal but honest because there's no pretense. Just by being there, a girl's going to get treated like a piece of property and get hit on. It's understood. The strange thing is that it doesn't feel uncomfortable at the time but sure as hell feels wrong later. At a club, you can just leave your brain at home and just go with the flow...

stupid stupid people

It really annoys me when people drill outside of my room at 4AM in the morning and turn on bright searchlights. It's ok up to 2AM, but not ok at 4-5AM. I was really pissed off because I had an exam today and I slept 3 hours because people on my hall were procrastinating and building the stuff for the prefrosh today.

If I had moved to my dorm as a freshman, it would've been fine. I would build things and stay up 'till odd hours of the morning and socialize. Now, I don't think that way anymore and I wouldn't do many of the things that I would have four years ago.
Each hall has a different mentality and a different feel about it. My floor is fairly normal, no cats, few druggies, but a bent towards operating chainsaws and sledgehammers. 4W is the druggie floor, 3E and 5E are the scary floors with black and red tape over all of their lights. 2E and 5W are fairly normal, 4E and 3W are fairly normal, quiet, and dorky. I don't know anything about 1E and 1W but assume that they're not terribly weird.

When I moved onto the hall last year, I really wanted to live in a place where everyone on the hall talked to each other and had this bond. It never materialized. I have three really good friends on the hall, and two other friends that I talk to. Everyone else is nice, but I've never sat down with one of them and started talking. It's like I have nothing in common with them. People in this dorm are fairly open and original, but sometimes they're irresponsible and childish. It's something I wouldn't even have noticed freshman year. I don't think I'm the most responsible person in the world and I sure as hell make crappy decisions sometimes, but I try. Sometimes, that's all that matters.

classroom squabbles

Whenever I deal with Complex Variables, I always feel like there's a war going on. An insidious guerilla war. Here's the scoop: Prof. B is an extremely young professor (Early 30s) who's lecturing this class for the second time, and Prof. T is a not so young professor (Early 70s-80s) who teaches recitation and had previously been the lecturer for many semesters before B took over.

In the first recitation, T taught various little methods that B covered in his next lecture...and B was probably surprised as to why everyone looked bored...T is a master of the sly, teaching everything his own way and making occaisonal subtle remarks such as "This problem on the problem set was actually mine." B is not unaware and comments, "I had intended T to cover this in recitation, but I guess I'll go over it again." There's a not-so-subtle power struggle going on.

One problem is that neither one lectures particularly well. B has problems teaching such a low-level class, and has a tendency to mumble at the end of his sentences. He also apologizes incessantly and has frequent sign errors (not uncommon among math professors). It's this apparent lack of self-confidence on the outside that bothers me. Since he's a professor here, I fail to see on what grounds he could possibly lack self-confidence. Clearly, B is quite brilliant, but he's nervous and just not fun to listen to.

T speaks and gesticulates loudly, although he also has the tendency to speak too quickly. He is fond of doing arithematic on the board, and dumbing concepts down. He does get a point, because I don't fall asleep quite as often in his recitation as I do in lecture.

For young professors, they always feel like there's something to prove. Case in point: writing a retarded problem set that is pretty impossible to do. Older professors are sometimes too complacent, too sure of themselves, too stuck in their own way. Everything's a struggle. Between you and someone else. Between you and the problem set.