Beginning April 2, 2002, we will no longer provide FTP access as part of our free home page service.
I don't want to pay their $5/month fee. This means that I will be moving this blog to gamalei.net in the next few days, just when I changed the layout too! So update your bookmarks, if you have any.
What is the appeal of television shows like Friends? I hear people talk about the characters' lives like gossip. They can't wait until the show comes on; they have to watch it or their whole world would collapse. Perhaps people are voyeurs. They would rather watch imaginary people squabbling among themselves than tackle their own personal problems.
Maybe a more accurate anology would be life trying to imitate art. The executives planning the show probaby think that it reflects how hip people are currently living. In reality, people are trying to imitate the hip people on television. It must be part of the reason why they're so obsessed with shopping for the perfect clothes or with their own relationships.
If an association with these characters was viewed more as fantasy than reality, we wouldn't be stuck with growing superficiality. People would stop anguishing about how other people perceive them. And I would stop rolling my eyes in exasperation.
Three-year-olds have all the fun. They get coddled by grown-ups, taken to interesting outings, and goggled over by strangers who think their innocent antics are cute. They don't have to go to school or work. They don't have to worry what to do with the rest of their lives.
Toddlers also don't have to put up with people's irritating quirks. They can say, "Your breath smells bad", and get away with it. Tantrum throwing is also tolerated and rewarded with a sparkly or tasty treat.
I wish I could revisit those toddler days when I could ignore pesky things like lunch table taunts and complaints about the weather. Everything would be less ambiguous. I wouldn't have to struggle with understanding the hidden meanings behind jeering subterfuge.
The new version 1.3 is my Ruysch layout. I could have kept the astrolabe but decided that Frederik Ruysch was a better metaphor for this site and blogging in general. While Ruysch breathed life into his specimens with wax, I try doing the same thing to my thoughts and experiences with words.
I should have learned from earlier experience that large doses of caffeine would unapologetically wreak havoc on my system. Feeling a bit warm, I ordered a brain freeze (a cold coffee drink) from the local café. Instead of reveling in a buzzy headache, I started getting really tired. Maybe next time I should stick to the ice water.
Linkage: Google Bombing. Nice to know there's a way to influence search results without paying the company. What Pattern Are You? I am tie-dyed.
There's a meme going around. I'm not going to perpetuate it. See the top of this post. Is it an expression of post-modern nihilism? A silly prank? I'm still trying to figure out what it means although I'm suspecting it may mean nothing at all. The area code, though, is for San Francisco if anyone cares.
I've also been noticing how everyone is using the word snarky. At first I thought it was one of those new made-up words like wazzup, but apparently, it's been around since 1906. Its frequent use is driving me up the wall. Once is okay, but if it's used once every paragraph or more, the adjective loses its edge. The writing begins to sound like a diatribe from a slimy Jack Nicholson look-a-like.
On a sunny day like today (February has no business pretending to be June), I get the malicious desire to see something fall apart. I don't want to see something catastrophic like the degeneration of a culture in Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart; I only want to see the little things that would be irritating. Take for instance the guy riding his bicycle and walking his dog at the same time who I saw this afternoon. It would have amused me to no end if the leash got tangled up in the spokes causing the bike to suddenly jam. The rider would then be thrown, scraping legs and elbows and stopping numerous go-carts that never had a real destination to begin with anyway. The dog would be unhurt, but sensing the ensuing confusing, would take the chance of chasing a passing cat into one of those grassy areas that have signs that say "No Dogs Allowed".
Last night, I found that this site was ranked highly on Blogdex and Daypop: Hoopty-Loops. I took a look and was confused at why it was suddenly so popular. Maybe it was that picture on the right that scrambled my brain for a few minutes because of sheer horror. Yep, it's the guy with the dorky glasses who looks like he has a fetish with licking peanut butter off phone recievers. He reminded me of the crazy dean (deemed "on crack" by the student population)--only about thirty years younger.
Why is the dean crazy? He's been observed on more than one occasion to jump off the deep end. In his crackly French accent, he's ranted about seeing flying fish and dolphins when there's obviously none in sight. He's been known to pretend to be an elephant. Once, he rambled incoherently on about the pleasures of alcohol when another professor was giving a lecture. I think it's an act to win undergraduate affection. I personally find him intimidating and mean. Whenever I have to meet with him, he chews me up like a rabid chihuahua on a naked neck.
If you have e-mail, you know your enemy. Spam. Deleting it is like shooting an annoying person with a super-soaker. Satisfying, yet ineffective. Car loans, horse riding, toner cartridges, porn, sweepsticks, jokes, cellphones, airplane tickets--you name it, they have spam for it. I should have some sort of filter for all this junk, but I'm too lazy to configure it. Besides, it's much more fun watching "You've won $1 million!" getting flushed down the virtual toilet.
Imagine my surprise when I found a note from The Real Diary Critic (another gratuitous link is located in the links section) telling me I got reviewed. Wowie, I'm going to get bashed! My initial glee was dampened by the fact that I got an 8 out of 10. However, the grade was redeemed by a math error (I had too many annoying writing habits and I wasn't unique enough making it a 7 out of 10!)
The Real Diary Critic is (in)famous for being "bitchy" and downright "honest" in her critiques of diary sites. Personally, I like that. There's no better way to spur someone on to improvement if you're not brutal in your assessment. If you can't take harsh criticism, then The Real Diary Critic isn't for you. Well, I figured a little review would be small change compared to the masochistic academic environment I'm mired in now, so what have I got to lose?
So the following is a response to the review. I'd like to point out a few things since I think reviewing is a two-way street; I'm sure no reviewer likes talking to a mute void.
This is an interesting title, which I think must be a name, but why is the SYA underneath it?
Both Syaffolee and SYA are my aliases. It's explained under for those statistics-obsessed in the about me section.
My kind of layout, but what is wrong with making things a little bit easier to read by enlarging it somewhat?
You also forgot to point out that tiny fonts will make people squint thus destroying their vision. I don't want to be a cause of someone getting laser eye surgery down the road so I'll take the advice.
Why is there a link for the blog on the blog? Just curious.
It's for a consistent layout. Actually, I was too lazy to customize every page like what I did for a previous layout.
Are her paragraphs too long or are they just squished into the small table?
They're too long. I have yet to break the nasty, nasty habit of writing seven sentences for each paragraph (instilled in me by my corpse-like fifth grade teacher).
She tricked me by not using them on the current page, but I found loads of ellipses in the archives.
Ah, the notorious archives. I think I'll keep it around as an example of atrocious writing. You'd think I spent my previous years super-glued to the period key.
I also found slang words like sorta, and cause as well.
Slang isn't that bad, especially if you're trying to convey to the reader how you speak.
I almost feel bad about saying this, but I think that the author needs to write out her entries in word format first so that she can use spell check. I found 3 spelling errors just in the quotes I choose from the blog alone. Sheesh.
Isn't it supposed to be "chose" instead of "choose"? But who am I to judge? I miserably failed a spelling bee in third grade because I misspelled "gray" as "grey". (Yes, both spellings are acceptable if you look it up in the dictionary, but the teachers were having none of this wishy-washy alternate spelling stuff.)
Oh no, I'm not mad about this at all, I actually have the spell-checker disabled. I have two excuses: a prof (also a former New Yorker editor) who says it's better to look things up in a hardcopy dictionary (obviously, I've overlooked quite a few words), and spell-checker is a damn annoyance when you're writing science papers and it's auto-correcting every other word. Maybe I just need to insert "kinase", "dimerization", "nucleosomal", "oligosaccharide", and other scientific jargon into the Word lexicon.
I can honestly say I was not bored by this diary, not in the least. I loved her writing style. I even liked how it has evolved from a “daily rant” style, to more of a diary.
I'm all over evolution. No deity would have the courage, let alone the balls, in admitting it created this obviously human drivel.
I'm fed up with people questioning me about the race or ethnicity of my friends and acquaintences. Why does it matter to them whether they are White, Black, Hispanic, or Asian? And if they are of mixed origins, what particular line are they derived from? It's like determining the lineage of a certain breed of dog to assess the animal's temperament. Humans are not dogs and should not be treated as such.
I despise classification. That's probably why I don't disclose my own ethnicity, gender, or religion on applications if it's not required.
I'm tired of being dragged into dreams that are more like bad film classes than actually feeling like I got any rest. Either I need to do something different or take some sleeping pills.
Take for instance the dreams I had last night. One was in third person. The characters were preppy high schoolers. A guy was assigned with a girl to work on a project. He's clueless and a bit naive and doesn't understand why the girl was snubbing him. (I don't even understand why, and I'm supposed to be the omniscient viewer!) Two jealous guys trick the protagonist to go to a park that looks very similar to the one where Charlie Sheen confronts Michael Douglas at the ending of Wall Street. They beat the crap out of him and call the cops to haul him to jail. People inform him that there's no way he can prove himself innocent of charges that he assaulted the girl (even though there's no evidence against him).
In another dream, I had ten kids. I kept wondering: Who was the father? How was it possible that I had two sets of quintuplets? How can I take care of them even though I'm a student? Needless to say, this was a scary dream because of the implied responsibility. Yeah, there are people my age who already have kids going to preschool and maybe ten years from now I might decide to have children, but right now I don't even want to think about having mini-me's running around.
Links with commentary: Judge-it - It's the reviewer's version of meta-metablogs! What Muppet Are You? I am Kermit. What Color Yoshi Are You? I'm orange. Stupid goldfish. (via Daypop) I was pretty suspicious. I thought it was some sort of script at first, but then I realized that the links were to plain html pages and soon figured the whole puzzel out. Hint: memorize all the cards, not just one.
Alpha Girl. I had the luck of being buffered from most of the superficial cattiness that "alpha girls" would have inflicted on me by my loner tendencies. It was easier to avoid the problem altogether. Also, I mostly associated with band geeks (if I associated with anyone at all) who were more concerned with getting homework done and the next band competition than the social faux pas that so-and-so did the previous Saturday.
Of course, it's not so different in college either. People just happen to be smart enough to be a little more covert. I don't hang out with the band geeks anymore--practically everyone I know now knows how to play an instrument--but I do hang out with chemistry geeks. But why chemistry geeks and not biology geeks? A lot of biology geeks exude a subtle snobbish air that implies that they're better than others. It doesn't help that half of them are going to med school. Maybe that's why other science majors make fun of biology majors: they spend their time blowing a lot of hot air while everyone else is busy working.
The (sober) party: a lopsided box made of black plastic, various flashing lights, a fog machine, techno, and shadows. People were there all right, mostly taking pictures to document a "successful" alcohol-free party. Previous parties usually had only one or two security guards--this one had six or seven. Were they here to throw drunk people out or for more maleficent reasons? I just grabbed some food and escaped early.
I might be one of the few people who don't follow the Olympics. I find watching sports dull. I don't understand how other people find the vicarious thrill from watching television. But last night I overheard an extremely heated debate between some convenience store workers on the Olympics. The question: Are certain countries suddenly winning more gold medals the result of having more contestants entering the events or something more corrupt (like bribing/intimidating judges)?
The latter seems more plausible given the circumstances. The Olympics itself is extremely self-centered. More emphasis is given to a particular country's team. There's immediate backlash when someone else gets the medal. I'm sincerely doubtful that the Olympics will ever go back to its original premise that it is the spirit of participating in athletic games that matters, not who wins or loses. For now, we'll just have to endure people's pathetic attempts at nationalistic one-upmanship.
The nazi feminist res-life director is sending out surveys to women to determine if people would prefer to live in an all-female dorm. This is elitism and segregationist to the extreme. Granted, the director's motives are quite different from racist conservatives, but the end result is the same. If you want equality for women, you should treat them exactly the same as men--no better and no worse.
A co-ed dorm is part of the leveling ground for both genders and helps both men and women learn how to interact socially with a variety of people. A single-sex dorm will only foster ignorance. I could hold up my roommate as an example. She went to an all girl's school and was incredibly naive about guys before going to college.
Blur Building. So exactly how many people have mistaken this for a UFO?
How To Write A Better Weblog. I'm getting bored of all these self-help writing articles. They basically rehash the same points over and over again. Just get a copy of Strunk & White and stick to it. I'm more in favor of an idea pointed out in Adam Curry's article, Blogging: Tune Out and Switch On, that writing will improve with more practice.
For this year, a ban is in place to eliminate alcohol at parties due to particular members of the house violating the alcohol policy (they set up a "beer fridge" that was easily accessible to minors and an unauthorized alcohol bar was set up at a party last year). The ban will be lifted once a "responsible" party is thrown (which happens to be tomorrow) where no alcoholic drinks will be served.
I'm not squeamish about alcohol itself; I would have no qualms if everyone drank responsibly. But I hate it when I have to worry about and take care of people who are passed out and vomiting. My philosophy is that others can do whatever they want as long as they don't take an advantage over someone else. If I'm forced to take care of someone because they delibrately did something, that's taking advantage of me.
I see this as a failure of society, parents, and personal maturity. If drinking wasn't so "forbidden", this clamor to get smashed might not be a problem. And despite constant warnings, people still just don't get it. In this case, people argue that fighting the alcohol ban is more about principle--that the administration should not be taking away privileges. But if you choose to fight the administration on this principle, choose something else. Alcohol is a poor example for student rights.
I've actually finished Iain Pears' An Instance of the Fingerpost a little while ago, but forgot to evaluate it here. My critique in a nutshell:
Unlike most mysteries, “An Instance of the Fingerpost” does away with the objective observer or detective. Instead, four distinct points of view are offered, each colored by prejudices and individual perception. But despite Pears’ attention to historical and descriptive detail, the solution to the murder mystery is a rude surprise. The revelations stuck at the ending like a shabby add-on destroy the entire framework meticulously built up in approximately 700 pages. One of the characters, Wood, expresses it the best: “I knew that I had witnessed the greatest miracle of history.”
In other words, I completely disagree with all the glowing reviews I've read of this book before I bought it. Umberto Eco remains my top mystery author at the moment. My opinions might change, of course, once I get my hands on something by Arturo Perez-Reverte. (And speaking of authors, I thought it might be amusing to chronicle my life so far by my reading tastes. The reading chronometer might be up later today.)
I walked all the way to the local Tower Records for nothing. I was intent on getting the soundtrack to Dangerous Beauty because it's one of my favorite scores. It's also by the awesome composer George Fenton who doesn't recycle his stuff like John Williams or rips off other people like James Horner. I also want to replace the copy that was stolen last summer, but I suppose the score itself is rather uncommon. I guess I'll just buy it online and wait two weeks for it to arrive.
I submitted a polemical essay to be critiqued by the writing class. Details aside, the writing instructor said it would be a good piece to put in The California Tech since it would probably generate a lot of responses--particularly from the administration who would not be particularly happy. The other students in the class thought it was funny. But hey, I'm a senior. They probably can't do much to me. I'll post the piece here once I finish fiddling with the ending (since I'm not too happy with it). If anyone is curious about the subject matter, check out this site and this previous post.
Apparently the food from formal dinner last night disagreed with a lot of people. The main course was a slab of beef that looked like an amateur lumberjack had mistaken a cow for a tree. People were complaining that it was too well cooked. I thought it wasn't cooked well enough. I left most of it still sitting on my plate while I ate shrimp instead.
Last night was also marked by an eating contest. A couple of guys had their hands tied behind their backs so they could only eat using only their mouths. The first guy done was the winner. I don't know exactly who won, but for the sake of posterity, the entire pig-out was videotaped.
There were clutches of high school students wandering around with bookbags and pamphlets. I believe they were visiting to get a feel for college life. In other words, inadvertently getting recruited. I'm not exactly against the idea of deciding whether or not someone wants to go to college by visiting the local campus, but there must be some better examples. Caltech is notorious for appearing happy and fun to visitors but slamming incoming students with the dirty reality.
But wait, maybe there are no good examples of college campuses. I remember visiting other schools when I was a high school senior and meeting some really odd students. At Emory, there was this really psychotic and hyperactive tour guide who kept ranting about how it was so exciting studying everything and going to lab that he completely lost track of time and sometimes forgot to sleep. At Johns Hopkins, the biochemistry students there said their life was so idyllic they could choose to sleep in every day (or if they were a little more industrious, go running every morning) and not miss any classes. The MIT recruiters were so glowing and enthusiastic that it made me as nauseous as swinging around on a freeway with too many sharp turns.
The main thing is, all these obviously phony people never even touched on the more negative aspects of the college experience. I suspect there's more pressure to impress a parent's checkbook than the student's interest.
I guess it's no different here. I've run across Techers who've blabbed about how they're comfortably juggling three jobs at once and still keeping up with coursework to groups of clueless prospective students.
An annoying yet intriguing game: Battleground God. Okay, so I performed rather average on this philosophical test. But the whole thing brought on bad memories of people arguing with me that I was always wrong and boring lectures on philosophy.
Scientists and Psychics Hail Rare Time Symmetry. The big fuss is about 20:02, 20/02/2002. It's interesting in a tangential way, but I think mathematicians (and psychics) have more important things to do rather than go clockwatching. Besides, this whole time/calendar thing is completely arbitrary. Why, according to the Chinese calendar it's the year 4699. That's not palindromic. And what about the tedious Mayan Calendar? 12.19.9.0.1 10 'Imix 19 Pax G1. What a mouthful!
BodyLove: An Interactive Workshop to Explore Body Image Issues
Students-both women and men-will have the chance to tackle the issue of a healthy body image in an interactive and fun workshop...[it] examines how women are depicted in advertising, and the impact of those images on women's health. [It] addresses the relationship between advertising and women's obsession with dieting and thinness.
Lunch will be provided.
I must have been psychic by talking about this before in the post below. It sounds more like a lecture than an "interactive" seminar, but isn't this sort of "group therapy" counter-productive? It doesn't seem helpful to be talking about your problems to a bunch of other people who need to work out their own problems first.
And lunch? I bet all the attendees will skip it because eating it will make them fat.
It's funny when a guy strikes a coquettish pose and asks the ever eternal question, "Do I look fat?" It's sad when a woman asks the same question.
When a woman loudly complains that she's too fat and needs to go on a diet, I cringe. The people who publically obsess about their weight are nowhere near overweight. In fact, they probably bear more resemblance to Kate Moss than Roseanne in the first place. When will they learn to find a medium that they will be happy with?
If people think I'm maladjusted with my tendency to collect bizarre quotes, read opera summaries where most of the characters die, and listen to Disney songs, they've got their priorities crossed. I might have a few odd interests, but it doesn't compare to starving oneself. Do you think denying yourself food is a viable lifestyle? Sure, if you don't have money to buy food, I think I can understand the situation. But if food is readily available, why would anyone want to subsist solely on rice and beans and call it a banquet?
Is peer pressure or media to blame? Maybe. Girls like flipping through magazines like Cosmo and comparing themselves to the models. Perhaps parents are partially to blame trying to get their daughters to lose weight. And of course the double standard: obese women are less socially acceptable than obese men. I could, of course, turn this into a rail against societal stereotypes, low self-esteem, and people's obssession of appearance over personality.
But what does it say of a woman's personality if she so willingly lets herself waste away into nothing?
At twilight, the clouds look like bloated corpses.
There's too much work. I'm either going to start screaming and running for the hills or I'm just going to crumble like weak sandstone under the force of a hammer. On my way home, I saw a small yellow bud peek out from a lot of dirt and weeds. I see it as hope. There's still about fifteen weeks until liberation yet it looks a long way off.
Just lovely. Instead of women in overblown white gowns, guys in tuxes, and silly girls in multicolored satin complaining about their looks, the grounds are overrun with families. Small kids are screeching about while their parents are pushing strollers and smiling indulgently. Instead of students on bikes whizzing by, I have to contend with children in bicycle helmets and their wobbly silver scooters nearly crashing into me because of their underdeveloped hand-eye coordination.
The weather here always manages to put me in a sour mood. The ground is damp: some of the water collects into indentations on the ground so they form eroding puddles and sometimes I accidentally step into them. Yech. I noticed some trees, completely naked except for large pink flowers the size of a grapefruit. And I saw a sleek black cat with piercing yellow eyes who glares at me from his hiding place in the surrounding bushes.
What can I say? On my desk, the rose sitting in a root beer bottle is beginning to wilt. Its edges are blackened and crinkled. The head droops downward, dejected.
U.S. Tightening Rules on Keeping Scientific Secrets. What secrets? If their sole reason for witholding information from the scientific community (as well as everyone else) is anthrax and other possible bioterrorism agents, the government is acting like a pig-headed, conspiracy-addled schizophrenic. Not that it is already. By not publishing experimental procedures, the experiment can't be reproduced in other independent labs. By obscuring the "nuts and bolts" of research, the knowledge that can be gained would also be lost. If I am to read a paper without its methods section, how am I to understand the results? Studying science would become pointless--just like trying to study history even though people failed to record past events.
I usually don't care what other people wear. It's their business and not mine. Want to wear loud Hawaiian shirts? Fine. Shiny clubbing shirts that make you look gay? Fine. A classy evening gown even though you're obviously not female? That's fine too. But it is just plain wrong for a guy to wear an electric green sari. Maybe I should be clued in this particular (and bizarre) custom, but somehow I feel it's strangely appropriate to laugh.
I think the Page boys were indulging in their annual grease fetish party this afternoon. It was a bit chilly, so it was perhaps a little silly for them to be dancing around in swimming trunks at the Court of Man. Or maybe not. They were dousing each other with gallons of lard. Passersby were standing around gawking. One girl was holding a cell phone giving a play-by-play to a friend on the other end. Not surprisingly, security dropped by with their white go-cart to see what was going on.
I wonder which house's showers they invaded this year to clog up the drains. Last year, they headed en masse to Lloyd but fortunately people redirected them to the set of Legally Blonde (that was being filmed here at the time), which they subsequently crashed.
Maybe I'm just a washed up cynic, but I'm more than a little suspicious when I see some guy buying a horde of flowers and a bunch of chocolate after Valentine's Day at the grocery store. Sure buying things after the holiday saves money, but it's not like Christmas. Chocolate will go stale. The flowers will wilt. Christmas lights and stuffed bears don't. Besides, Valentine's Day is overrated anyway. People whine about whining and get depressed and sulky. People really don't need an excuse to buy candy.
When someone smiles brightly at me, I feel obligated to smile back however reluctantly. I might be seeing someone's facade (they might be a boiling cauldron of hate underneath) or someone's pathetic attempt at trying to bring happiness to the people around them. Ha! Grinning is hurting.
"Oh! How are you? How's your baby?"
"Great! We're doing fine! Want to see the pictures?"
"Sure." There's a slight pause when they're oogling the photos. "How cute!"
I am not against babies--only the innuendo underneath all the chit chat. Smiling pains me. Smiling makes me feel like an old prune.
On a completely unrelated note, I've read that Galileo was put under house arrest at the end of his life because he believed in the Copernican view of the universe. The Roman Catholic Church, apparently didn't like it, especially when he had already written books and letters basically challenging them. The Church only issued an apology 300 years later, but we still don't know the facts about his indictment. I've heard that Stephen Hawking tried to get the documents surrounding Galileo's arrest, but the Vatican still has them all locked up. Sure makes you wonder if we've even progressed at all since there's still controvery brewing between science and religion (evolution, to mention an example).
Big Brother Is Watching You Read. When I read this, I immediately flashed back to one of my favorite books, Farenheit 451. I first read it in middle school because I saw that the advanced reading class was studying it. They always got to read the good stuff while I was stuck in the regular reading class slogging through asinine prose like Izzy, Willy-Nilly. Someone monitoring what is read--thus controlling what people read--is a scary thing. Limiting information makes people ignorant. And a mass of ignorant people is not a pretty sight.
Today is just one of those days where all I want to do is to crawl into a dirty corner and poke my eyes out with a blunt pencil.
Worrying about whether I pass a class or not pales in comparison to other types of stressors like the bureaucracy of the administration. I don't understand why they've suddenly taken an interest in what I've been doing lately. Maybe they've decided that they haven't pounded my straggling spirit enough. I swear, if they try to bar me from working in the lab (one of the few things that hasn't been invaded by sneering put-downs), I'm going to leave this institute devoid of gratitude and full of bitterness. Yeah, this might sound a little over-dramatic, but I have yet to see any sort of caring the administration feels for the student body. I mean, how would you feel if the president of your college accuses undergraduates of being "uncivilized"?
Happy Chinese New Year! This is my favorite Chinese holiday, mainly because it is bright, colorful, and so much more interesting than western holidays. Perhaps it's due to the holiday's mythology. There's something unruly and untamed about a pagan festival. But the New Year's celebration is more cultural than anything now. Just another excuse to cook lots of food.
As for food, today is also Mardi Gras (French for "Fat Tuesday") which from what I've heard, is a day of indulgence before the Catholic holiday of Lent. My fond remembrances of the holiday usually includes hazarding the kitchen to make a King Cake drowned in purple and green icing for my high school French Club. And don't forget the silly plastic baby in the middle. This evening there's going to be a huge BBQ outside the student houses featuring Cajun cuisine. I won't be surprised if there's "entertainment", particularly for the guys. After all, last year, there was a Hawaiian BBQ with hula dancers.
Hm. Maybe I should be outraged by this female objectification.
In honor of the 2002 Olympic Winter Games, the tables in the dining hall were shoved to the fringes of the room. The waiters practiced ice hockey and figure skating on roller blades. The luge was relegated to those boards with four wheels. Snowboarding was attempted, but it did not go well with tiled floors.
Organizing eight people with completely different schedules was pretty painless, especially if you know anything about Microsoft Excel. At any rate, all of us are doing Franz Schubert, a rather nerdy looking guy if I do say so myself. The Schubert Octet is a bloated mass filled with strings and winds and modeled closely with the Beethoven Septet. The concert, I believe, is the day before commencement. I'll probably blab about it more as the date gets closer. But if you're curious, here's part of the score which shows the first movement.
Rejected Valentines. The cynic in me just chuckles at this. Every year at our house, the girls meet over the weekend to make valentines for all of the guys. I have always been relegated to be the "factory"--churning out a pile of mass-produced, generic valentines for the guys who are obscure, living off-campus, disliked, or don't have girlfriends. In other words, I'm the girl who makes valentines for the misfits.
Yeah, yeah, call me charitable, but honestly I feel used. It's exactly the same thing as forcing me to bake cookies for a party that I will never attend. Well, this year is different. I was at lab during the weekend. And now they (the other girls, I mean) aren't even half done with the valentines. And who's going to get short-changed due to their selfishness? That's right, those misfit guys. They might be too macho to show it, but they'll be pretty disappointed if all the other guys got cards.
And you know what's worse? I'm feeling bad for them. I might end up making all those valentines myself again this year. My roommate just shakes her head and says I should train a replacement.
Yikes! Talk about highly competative. Apparently, the number of applicants to a faculty position usually numbers around 100 to 150. That's a lot. However, at Caltech, there's a molecular and evolutionary biology position available which is a faculty position with a lot of administrative duties. There were about 600 applicants. And only 1% were invited for an interview.
Geez. If I had ever aspired to be an academic, this would have turned me off pretty quickly.
High School Dress Codes. Yep. I remember those. In the high school I had gone to, shirts with "offensive" slogans were banned. If a teacher spotted you wearing one of the offending shirts he/she made you wear it inside out for the rest of the day. Shorts were also banned. Apparently they could get too short--but slutty girls always got around the rule by wearing skirts. One good thing that was banned was spandex, and surprisingly no one grumbled about it. Piercing anything other than the ears was not allowed. A Pakastani friend argued against it because of her religion and culture (she had her nose pierced). Others, instead, got their nipples or belly buttons pierced--places which were undetectable because of clothes.
And no "extreme" hair colors allowed. That was sorely disappointing. You could guage the passage of time by how often people colored their hair.
Being in the sidelines at a waltz in progress is just plain voyeuristic fun.
People clad in ball gowns or tuxedos dancing in the dim light--it's like being transported back into the late nineteenth century. So romantic you think. Ha! I was laughing at the bad dancers and taking incriminating pictures. I promise I'll have photos sometime next week.
Two small children in bright bicycle helmets and neon plastic buckets scour the lily pond looking for frogs. An elderly couple power walks past them. A small white short-haired dog drags along his owner, a six-foot tall man, intent on sniffing at every passing bush. Under some gently swaying trees, a couple of people lounge on their backs, reading or watching clouds go by. A horde of Japanese tourists trample down the walkway, their cameras clicking wildly.
I don't understand why some people insist on being my "parents". I already have parents, thank you very much, who already understand me and my motivations. I don't want pseudo-typical-Asian "parents" who question my whereabouts and duties. Unlike some piddly undergrads who watch television all day, I know my responsibilities. I've never been the "rebellious teenager", but I can be if people who have absolutely no authority over me chooses to exert this "authority".
And I hate being grilled by people (not my parents, mind you) on why I don't want to be a medical doctor. I am not your typical overambitious nerd driven by uptight relatives who want to live vicariously through me. I am not your typical anything.
Perhaps in this way I'm like my Mom. She rolls her eyes whenever a snotty Asian woman spouts a lot of hot air about her son's/daughter's achievements: awards, high scores, and strings of degrees. "Sure, they've got all of that, but is any of that practical? What are they going to do for the rest of their life? Earn more degrees? Those women are just forcing their children to do what they want and don't let their children choose what they want to do."
A U-Haul truck sits on the road in front of the Atheneum, the upscale restaurant/hotel where only professors have accounts. Waiters in their pristine suits stand by their fancy tables, glaring at the scene on the front lawn.
The students are having a snowball fight in 60 degree weather.
Someone had rented out the U-Haul and drove to the nearby San Gabriel mountains to fill the moving truck with snow. And now the cold white stuff is on the Atheneum's lawn. There's a sign that's been erected in front. It says, "Ski Area Closed. No Sledding. Snow Play."
I think I was one of the last people to sign up for Blogger Insider. Anyways, I got paired with A Woman for this round's question and answer session.
1. I get the feeling from reading your work that you are an only child. Am I correct?
Pretty close. Actually I have one sister. I've read somewhere that the eldest usually acts like an only child, although in this case, I think only my writing shows this tendency. We're pretty close--she's the one who helps me find those weird used bookstores when I go back home for break and drags me out of bed for those sales at the mall.
2. Where do you see yourself in 10 years?
I have this vague notion that I'll be working for some biotechnology firm and be writing on the side. Then again when I was in first grade, I wanted to be a teacher when I grew up--but obviously now, I'm not majoring in education. I'm very hesitant to look so far into the future. Right now, I'm just concentrating on getting into grad school.
3. "Additional Makeup" hit a note with me. Will you be posting more of your poetry?
It's awesome that you connected with one of my poems. I'll definitely be putting up more poetry sometime in the near future. I'm just one of those anal-retentive people who has to scrutinize every word before reluctantly declaring a poem "finished".
4. "Satellite DNA" was written for the masses. I didn't understand much of it. LOL! I prefer my hairpins to be metal. Has being a science geek girl dampened your potential for dates?
The science editor stressed that the essay was supposed to be "dumbed down" to the level of Scientific American (which roughly translates to an introductory paragraph in layman's terms before launching into jargon). Don't be worried about not understanding. I'll be lucky if a chemist already knew who Dawkins is.
As for date-getting potential, I'm afraid I'm the poorest example to ask. I've purposefully avoided guys because I think it's simply foolish to start a relationship in an academically rigorous environment. Or it may be the other way around, guys avoid me. Whatever the case may be, my current boyfriend is the laboratory, and he's very demanding of my time. Maybe if I went to another college that was less challenging, I might be dating someone who's actually human.
But most geek girls find Tech a dating paradise. It's because of the male/female ratio. I knew someone who at one time had eight guys following her around. To cite an unofficial statistic, 90% of the female population at Tech would have had at least one boyfriend/date by the end of freshman year.
5. Is dating as important to young women today as it was back in 1970?
Dating is perhaps as important now, especially if the young woman in question actually cares about her social life. People are probably a lot more cavelier about it though. They're probably not going to get too serious until they hear their biological clocks ticking.
6. You've been blogging a long time compared to many blogs I've viewed. Do your friends and family know you blog, and if so, do they read and comment on your entries?
Yep to both, but I'm pretty sure most of them don't read or comment. I think it has to do with me being more introspective and analytical rather than chatty. No juicy gossip or other people's secrets. I blame my lack of readership to my egocentricity.
7. Cats or dogs?
Cats. If I get the energy and motivation, I might post a gallery of Tech's cat herd.
8. What do you do for fun on campus?
When I think of fun, I usually think of going off-campus. Far off-campus. However, I do like pranks. Especially the ones for Ditch Day. Tunneling is also a great time waster. There's a tunnel system underneath the entire campus. You can "tunnel" from one part of campus to another, especially if you have a flashlight and mental directions. The tunnels aren't dull either because there are things down there.
9. How long have you played cello?
About 12 years.
10. What the heck is a Neopet and why are they so popular? Where can I get one??
Ah, a Neopet is a cute virtual pet that is highly addictive. You can feed them, teach them, train them for battle (like Pokemon), build homes for them, play games with them, whew, the list is pretty much endless as the creators of the phenomenon are constantly thinking up new ways in which owners can interact with them. You can find one (or two or three or four) at Neopets.com.
I stumbled upon the site when I was simply looking to "adopt" a cyberpet. I soon found out that the interactive Neopets were a lot more entertaining than simple gifs.
11. I took the PTypes Temperment Test after running across the link on your site. I am also classified as "Idealist". Is this a good thing?
My head jerks up. I glance at the closed door beside me. The metal doorknob is not turning. I look back down at the words on the page. It was just my imagination. The presenter is rambling about initiation complexes. I feel my eyelids droop.
Rap, Rap, Rap.
I look at the door again. Nothing. My palms begin to sweat. The presenter is drawing little circles on the transparency overhead. The girl beside me stifles a yawn and flips a page. Somebody's pen scratches against the table.
Rap, Rap, Rap.
The noise continues throughout the hour and I try to ignore it by staring at the paper in front of me. Words waver. At the end of the questioning section, I glance into the darkened window to the room where the door leads. Nobody's there.
Hankering for a little ballroom dancing? Well, if you're in the area--Pasadena, California that is--there's going to be a Waltz Night (free admission!) at Caltech. Just bring along your best pair of dancing shoes and a willing partner and you'll be all set. Ball gowns, of course, are optional. I'll be in the orchestra that's squeezed up in the balcony. We'll be playing like crazy while the choreographer is shrieking for us to slow down. Instead, just to be contrary, we won't.
Coming back from a lecture where the Geraldo look-a-like was expounding on the merits of screening for fruit flies that won't live past the larval stage, I saw the white crane. He was perched on the slate rock that protruded from the center of Throop Pond like an angry hunchback. The crane was a statue, his eyes slanted downward watching the clueless fish lazily churning in the dark green waters.
A couple, past the comfortable line of middle age, stood at the banks goggling like fools. She was a wrinkled woman with unnatural flaming hair. He was a fat man with a fetish for black.
They don't fight crime, but they sure would have made a curious picture if I had my camera.
Two grown men stand at the lab bench gaping at a dead mouse pinned spread-eagled with its insides spilling out. The one with the scalpel pokes at the bloated organs and rambles on about T-cells and lymphocytes. The other nods. "Yep, that's one sick mouse."
After they finish scrutinizing the dead flesh and picking out particularly diseased parts into a sterile petri dish, the body is trashed in a plastic ziplock bag. The dead eyes peer out from the plastic, dully horrified. The mouth is slightly open in a grimace. Its tattered body radiates outwards like ribbons from its head.
One of the men reaches into the nearby cage and pulls out a runt by the tail. "Wow, this one's really tiny." He sticks the mouse's muzzle into a small pastic suction that is spewing carbon dioxide. The runt backpeddles with its hind paws, only making faint scratches as it struggles against the table top. It suddenly stops.
The other man takes the limp body and crucifies it on the styrofoam board. His scalpel sinks past the fur and down to the flesh. He peels the skin back like an orange. "You can hardly see anything," he complains.
Dreams should not make one wake up at 3 in the morning. I'd like it very much if I was allowed to have a long stretch of uninterrupted sleep but apparently my unconscious is scheming against me too.
The instrument itself isn't heavy. Just the case. Like today when I had to lug the damn thing all over campus because I had a chamber music concert (advertised as "A Super Bowl Alternative!"). I was desperately wishing I had a slave to carry it for me. You'll understand how fed up I am with it since I'm seriously considering auctioning it off on Ebay.
I was seriously disturbed when I found this: The Billboard Girl. I know where this billboard is considering it's in Nashville. This woman is trying to advertise for a husband. Why didn't she just place an ad in the personal section of the newspaper? She's just confirming my belief that there's more than the average number of wackos living in Tennessee.
I was following Jenna Elfman into a room and into a closet and ended up in a strange corridor. It was a cross between a high school and a computer lab. There were dark blue lockers with blinking green lights lining the walls. Elfman had disappeared so I was forced to wander around the building myself. I couldn't find the door that I had gone through before--the other doors I opened went to other places that was not home.
I inadvertently stumbled onto a flight of stairs and went to the next floor down. This time, I actually read the plaques above the doors. They led to different places all right--different planets and dimensions. I continued wandering around until a pair of doors slid open revealing an elevator. I hid around a corner and saw two shadowy figures dressed in black cloaks come out. The first one strode down the opposite hallway. The second one took a furtive glance around and exited into the nearest door to the next dimension. When all was clear, I scrambled into the elevator before the doors shut.
The elevator itself was filled with more lockers with blinking lights. There was no control panel for operating the elevator. But it was going down and the doors would open again soon. I felt panicked and I realized that I could program the elevator by programing the lockers. I pressed a button on the nearest locker and a bright green "1" lit up indicating it would stop at the first floor for me. Then I crammed myself into the locker just as the elevator doors opened again.
There was a small viewscreen inside the locker and I saw people getting in, filling the entire lift. I waited until the elevator stopped at the first floor and everyone else got out. The first floor was a huge lobby area that resembled the hub in a train station. The floor and the domed ceiling was covered in brown mosaic tiles. People from different places mingled, coming and going from various elevators. This was a skyscraper to everywhere. I spotted an information desk and proceeded to make my way toward it when I woke up.
I was wandering around when I saw the vending machine restock guy. I took off, trying to look like I wasn't running away. The vending machine guy is a thin leacherous old man who only asks girls what they want stocked in the vending machine. I didn't want to stick around and get into an argument with him about the merits of candy bars and chips when I rarely use the vending machine. Actually, I don't think anyone really cares what goes into the vending machines as long as it's stocked with sugar or caffeine.
There's nothing like mind-numbing experiments bright and early in the day to shock you awake. I suppose it's the mixture of disrupted sleep and hormones that's making me privately grouchy lately. All I want to do is to avoid people and hide under the covers from the real world. I wish I had the luxury of being sulky.
So when I headed out to lab this morning, it was hard not to notice the people in garish historical costumes roaming about. No, I don't think these people got today mixed up with Halloween. It's more like a Renaissance fair invaded campus. I find it rather amusing that people are hobbling around in cumbersome skirts and petticoats, but I don't find any of it very interesting. I'm a geek at some things, but not this.
Currently I'm drinking some dark green toxic sludge called "Green Machine" from Naked Food-Juice. I don't mind the blue-green algae, the echinacea purpurea extract, or the broccoli that was put in, but the banana should have been left out. The taste of banana overwhelms the whole drink.
A three-year-old boy has a girlfriend at daycare. Her arms are always around him. She's always hugging him. She gives him kisses. She helps button/unbutton his jacket. She's always excited when he arrives. My first reaction to the story? "They get younger every time, don't they?" (And don't even tell me it's cute. I remember my parents had put me in daycare once. The kids were violent, not loving.)
Someone was stuck in the elevator for nearly an hour. The emergency phone worked, but everyone was out to lunch. Now here, I think something is wrong. People should have the sense to stagger lunch breaks so that at least one person is available, on call. There should never be a time when everyone is out to lunch, because that's when Murphy's laws will take effect.
I changed around the links section. The actual blogs are separated from the blog-related sites, and more review sites were added to the list. Why so few blogs under the blog list? Well, right now there's only a few I read regularly. I'm always scouring the net for other interesting blogs--who knows, maybe someday you'll end up on my elite underground list. (Hm. Is that a good or bad thing?)
I've never done any roleplaying. I own a roleplaying book, but I bought it more out of curiousity than wanting to actually play. Some games have interesting concepts although the thought of playing out a story with other people seems weird, even against my natural inclinations, for me. Perhaps it's due to my own egotistical nature--I abhor collaborating with other people on a work of fiction. Besides, RPGs are a poor substitute for actually writing. Someone else comes up with the background, world building, and character generations (well, that seems more random than anything). My biggest peeve is that it lacks originality.
