one hundred days of solitude

I haven't had a personal life lately. Looking back at college (I know, it's only been three months since graduation), it might actually have been a really good part of my life. I miss the people a lot. Over the past month, the only person I've talked to on a regular basis is me, and that's not very healthy. Talking to myself is fine and dandy. I have lots of things to say, but it's slightly difficult to expand my horizons when there's only one viewpoint.

There've been people that I've met here, but I haven't been able to discern a strong connection (ok, so Rome wasn't built in a day). I feel like I'm past acquaintances but not quite to the friend stage yet. Maybe it's harder because 95% of the people that I interact with now are guys. It's harder for me to pick up guy vibes.

Following are random thoughts about Philly.
Things I enjoy about Philly:
- Cost of living compared to Boston...almost nonexistent
- Pretty campus
- Food truck that sells fruit salad
- More than 10 food trucks on campus

Things I don't enjoy about Philly:
- It's dirty
- It's more dangerous to walk here during the daytime than in Boston at night
- It's got multiple personalities (neighborhoods)

war and politics

Politics is simply a less crude and unbastardized cousin of war. In both cases, there are two opposing sides working against each other for the sole aim of power. The difference is merely in the approach. All too often, war is protected under the waving cape of politics. Take suicide bombers. There's a prime example for you. After blowing innocent people to shreds, Hamas and Hezbollah claim that they were freeing their own people from oppression. Immediately, group members begin running for government positions and take the initiative of rebuilding communities that they indirectly destroyed.

Unfortunately, by its very definition, politics breathes legitimacy. Government officials are assumed to be acting in a higher capacity than the everyman. Hence, the suicide bomber supporter turned cabinet member and the militant turned peace corps are given legitimacy, and by natural extension, their actions are given legitimacy as well. As soon as the protective mantle of politics is donned, we cannot help but acknowledge righteousness. Once a kidnapping is proclaimed to be in the service of helping the oppressed masses, the war is already won through politics. By turning the spotlight away from themselves and onto the wronged, the defense has not only been proclaimed innocent, but the prosecution has also been ordered to pay damages to him on top of this.

Illegitimate war is terrible, and politics is as often wrong as it is right. The horrific happens when we put the two together. We are not just unable to respond to illegitimate actions of violence, we are endorsing it through our silence. What can we do? If we do nothing, they win. If we retaliate, then we are clearly the aggressors and their assertion that we are oppressing their population is true. Where is the solution? Where is conscience? Where is morality?

first bank, second bank, first exchange

Today, per my dorkiness, I went to visit the first bank, second bank, and the first exchange of the United States.

The First Bank of the United States.


The Second Bank of the United States, modelled after the Parthenon.

The first Exchange of the United States.

I'm trying to foster a passion for finance that will sustain me for the next five years. I'd be lying if I said that I'm going into my program with perfect confidence and composure. Going into undegrad was so easy because there were no expectations. I was seventeen and stupid. There were good things and there was crap. It's was all fine and dandy because I was enthusiastic. I was cheerful, and I took things in a stride.

Now I feel like I've decided which way my life is going, which is frightening as all hell. There's no more innocence, only the knowledge that I've dedicated myself to this, and this is what I am going to do.

fish eyes

The great thing about having a father who drags you fishing is staring for hours at a time at the boats passing by and the water rippling ever so gently on the surface, while smelling the combination of salt, fish scales, and deep-fried seafood.

During these father-daughter bonding sessions, my job is to fish for small bait fish (baby bluefish), which he then puts on the hook to lure bigger fish. Wonderful concept. My line has five little hooks with pieces of silver plastic, so when I jerk the line, it looks like a minature school of fish is jumping (very clever).

The part that I find most difficult is extracating the hook from the fish. It's easy when the hook is simply caught on the fish's lip and I can just work it out. It's much more difficult and becomes torturous when the fish swallows the the hook entirely (greedy fish) and it gets caught in the gills. Then I'm elevated to the position of a surgeon without skill or anesthetics. There's usually a lot of fishy blood involved, and occaisonally pieces of gills and other parts coming loose. The most memorable incident is a fish who got the hook caught in his (or her) eye. The hook wasn't just caught in one eye. It went through it's skin to loop around the other eye as well. With my non-surgical fingers, I tried to inch the hook out, and the fish was free after one minute, sans one eye. One eyeball, oozing red-black blood, was left on my hook. It was mildly disgusting at the time, and upon reflection a few hours later, it was really gross.

Besides baby bluefish, I've also caught baby barracudas (nasty sharp teeth), sea robins (they actually moan), and shad. My dad mainly catches fluke (A relative of flounder) and occaisonally striped bass (huge monsters). Regulations say that only those above 17.5 and 28 inches, respectively, can be taken home. Out at sea, there's massive bluefish and tuna.

Our fanaticism struck at 5:30AM Saturday morning, when we went to fish in the premordial mist and watched the sun rise. The ocean was teeming with bluefish. There were so many that they could barely swim around each other. I caught ~80 tiny fish that morning and promply broke all of my hooks from the wear. That was fun:) Anyway, back to the poor one-eyed fish. It went half-crazy from the pain and leapt between the boards of the deck to rejoin its family...so every story does have a happy ending, after all.

penn

I'm in Philly for today and part of tomorrow. UPenn is gorgeous, although the rest of the city is questionable. UPenn is just like Harvard but bigger and prettier.

I walked to Chinatown with Adam and had Pho...We walked about 6 miles total. Center City is nice with pretty shops (Ann Taylor, BCBG Max Aria, Arden B...), but far far from campus.

It's back to RI for two weeks, moving my stuff down to UPenn, then starting grad school...

Not that much else to say. School startes after labor day. Nine people total in my class, seven men and two women. Many more than previous years of four or five. I've met seven of the other eight people, and the other girl is also an MIT alum.

If this entry sounds so uninspiring, it's probably because I got up at 5:15AM this morning to get to Philly. My brain is shutting down.

fun at the range

Yesterday, I had a world of fun at Blue Ridge Arsenal in VA. Besides seeing Coriolanus in London, it was the highlight of my summer. I was shooting a P220 Sig Sauer, 9mm (~.357), which was fantastic, since I've only shot the Smith&Wesson .22 before and air pistol. Ok, so I have to mention that Jack Bauer uses a P228 Sig Sauer (.38) in seasons 1 & 2 of 24...

In Virginia and some other states, you can openly carry weapons (You do need a license for carrying a concealed weapon), but I think that's cool (not that I can afford a weapon or need a weapon any time in the near future).

At the firing range, it was 80% men, a few old grandmas (that was freaky), a family including teenage children, and me. Yup. Yay for demographics! I fired around 100 rounds, and my arms were screaming at me, but it was supremely fun. There's no adrenaline rush, but something very satisfactory about it. Firearms is really about 90% concentration and 10% strength (the reason for the MIT pistol team's success). Everyone's hand shakes, but you have to have the strength of mind to will your hand to shake less or even to stop shaking until getting off the perfect shot.

I came out of there sweat-covered with powder all over my shirt and a few on my face where the empty shells flew (doesn't hurt). There's also the sweet taste of powder (or lead) in the back of my throat:) Unfortunately, my arms were too short for the M2 carbine, the machine gun. It was loads of fun.

summer part II

Books to study very very carefully:
Principles of Mathematical Analysis /Walter Rudin or Lecture Notes
A First Course in Optimization Theory /Sundaram

Briefly review probability and statistics

Weeks at work: Uncertain

Books to read:
Middlemarch /George Eliot
Arena /John Jakes
Fountainhead /Rand (Reread)

Other sundry items:
Organize pictures of Europe
Sort music
Continuing to exercise ~4-5 times per week

Movies/TV shows:
Preferably None

People visiting:
Andria & Shuai /7.14 – 7.16
Anita & Emily /7.21 – 7.26
Tiff Chen? /8.3 –

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.