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Monday, September 30, 2002 Think You Have a Book in You? Think Again. Instead of making me mad, this New York Times column made me laugh. The fellow who wrote this is bitter and defensive. Perhaps he is trying to save his own livelihood. Perhaps he read too much tripe by student writers. What he doesn't understand is that writing well comes with practice. If 81% of Americans want to write a book, fine, let them. It's not as if they're going to force their creative effort down his throat. I find that most people do have a book in them, even if they don't have the time or energy to write everything down. When people find out that I write in my spare time, their faces light up and they begin telling me their ideas. Usually it'll be some historical romantic epic that stirs no interest me, but far from telling them to keep their ideas to themselves like the above author, I always find myself thinking that they should write their own novel. What's puzzling is why people don't write more. I love writing. Am I deranged and abnormal for liking it so much? I try writing every day, be it via typing or longhand. Sure, nothing is published, but I have scores of fragments, poems, short stories, novellas, and even two novels for the effort. Is it really that painful to write? I will probably blab more about this tomorrow. Meanwhile, for those of you who were around last November, yes, I am in the stages of planning another novel-length draft. If you are curious, crazy, brave, and/or masochistic, I have the novel draft from last November up at Writing Sya. Yeah, I was too lazy to take it down in December. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 5:32 PM : Sunday, September 29, 2002 The convenience store is squashed in an awkward corner of the large building that houses the dining halls. The patrons are slim youthful sprites, trendy in their movements and their purchases. I feel like a clunky and dumb sparrow among flamingos. I feel old and impractical. I don't need Red Bull to keep me awake. Other stuff: Rapture Index. Stockbrokering the world's ills. Checkershadow Illusion. My eyes got tricked like everyone else's until I blocked out the surrounding squares. Chicago Poems. By Carl Sandburg. My favorite: Fog THE FOG comes on little cat feet. It sits looking over harbor and city on silent haunches and then moves on. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 2:57 PM : Saturday, September 28, 2002 In conversations with people I don't know very well, there is always this struggle to come up with something that we have in common. What's your name? Oh, I know someone with your name, it's my uncle's sister-in-law's cousin. You play the cello? Oh, I used to play the cello. You lived there before? I did too! I'm tired of these did it toos. Are they trying to impress me or are they really that similar to me? One example is the oboe. I used to play the oboe when I had more time on my hands. Of course, when I'm in a gathering full of musicians, I expect there to be at least one other person who've played the oboe. But when I find myself at a random gathering, I'm surprised when someone tells me, "Oh, I've played the oboe too!" Are they trying to pull my leg, because what's the chance of meeting another oboist at almost every social gathering I go to? I am currently listening to: Telemann. Too bad not very many people recognize his name today even though he was commercially successful during his time. His oboe sonatas are particularly poignant. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 4:55 PM : Friday, September 27, 2002 "There were many people being living. Certainly very many come together to see something, to hear something, to do something, to see some see something, to see some hear something, to see some do something, to hear some see something, to hear some do something, to hear some hear something, to feel something, to feel some feel something, to feel some hear something, to feel some see something..." The above is from Gertrude Stein's The Making of Americans which inspired the theatrical program Hashirigaki--a melange of light, music, and dance. Hashirigaki was both fun and stimulating to the senses. "As it comes," Charlotte Engelkes, one of the actresses, said of the meaning of the Japanese term hashirigaki. This piece of modern theater was a mix of traditional Japanese music, western stream-of-consciousness, and extraordinary use of lighting that, for me, was pure visual and auditory pleasure. I was part of the smaller group of people who stayed behind for a discussion with the three performers of Hashirigaki--Charlotte Engelkes, Marie Goyette, and Yumiko Tanaka. The very first question offered was "What was the meaning of the play?" The performers hemmed and hawed on the answer, but in the end couldn't definitively pin it down. I suppose looking for meaning in modern art is in itself meaningless. Modern art merely exists--its interpretation is up to the individual. Another question was "Was it supposed to be funny in the scenes where the audience laughed?" Again, this was up to the individual interpretation. If the audience wasn't supposed to laugh, than the performers did a poor job of interpreting the material themselves. Actually, I didn't find the discussion that helpful. Mostly it was the audience trying to sound educated and smart in front of the hapless actresses (especially the snotty moderator) while dissecting their performance. All the posturing in the world won't win my respect. Even if I didn't agree, I valued the more honest comments I heard from the rest of the audience: "It was...cerebral. I guess I was born at the wrong time [to appreciate it]." I suggest seeing it though. There's another performance at The Hop tomorrow evening. Later, the group will tour through Minneapolis, UCLA, and then back to the east coast in Boston. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 7:48 PM : Thursday, September 26, 2002 You know something's not interesting when you sit through a talk and everything goes through one ear and out the other without so much as a blip from any of your neurons. Perhaps it would have been more amusing if those graduate students blabbing about their own research actually sounded excited about it. Of course, some students lose their enthusiasm for things, which only means one thing: they haven't been taking any breaks. Breaks for me means something artsy. For instance, this afternoon, I piled up in line to get tickets to see the U.S. premiere of Hashirigaki, a weird avant-garde theatrical production of dance, visual art, and music. What's more relaxing than putting aside work to do something totally different? Something that is interesting: Kinoko-ya. Beautiful pictures of mushrooms. Manuscript Setup. That is, if you want to submit your great American novel to a publisher, you don't want to be rejected because you are messy. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 5:12 PM : Wednesday, September 25, 2002 Fog cloaked the surrounding pines, maples, and oaks. Cool air stung the cheeks. A squirrel sat beneath a bench to crack a nut with his sharp teeth. I find the morning hours beautiful and mystical, but I'm hesitant to wake up so early. It's not that I'm not a morning person. I just find it difficult to overcome the inertia of actually getting out of bed. After that, I'm fine. I don't even need coffee. On a completely different note, I hate it when books come out in new editions because then I'll have to buy another copy. No, I'm not talking about newer editions of Shakespearean plays where the only thing different is the cover. I'm talking about biology textbooks like this one. I had the previous edition for several years now and was exasperated when the newer edition was required. Apparently, several new chapters and references were added as well as some reorganization of existing content. I suppose in my mind, the only real justification of buying a newer edition is if most (or all) of the content in the older edition is proved false. But that's just the price to pay for going into a field that gets new information every day. It would have been a completely different story if I had specialized in English composition! Links: Here They Are, Science's 10 Most Beautiful Experiments. What defines "beautiful" experiments is that they are simple to implement yet show a universal truth about nature. I was a bit miffed that they didn't show any biological experiments, but I suppose the reason is that physics isn't messy--but biology is. Biology is complicated by mind-boggling systems that don't do just one thing all the time. But hey, they should of at least included Watson and Crick's paper. International Spy Museum. I liked the intro. Sketch Art. Wow. Looks like someone with too much time on his hands. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 3:06 PM : Tuesday, September 24, 2002 I spent three hours slumped in a lecture hall, probably with my eyes glazed over in boredom. The guy sitting next to me was busy reading papers and a text book. The couple in front of me were whispering snarky remarks to each other. The other guys nearby were rolling their eyes. Half an hour was spent wasted on vague rhetoric about the honor code. Another half hour was taken up by a fourth year student not so subtly hinting about beer parties while expounding the virtues of extracurricular activities in the Upper Valley. The last two hours were spent pounding in the sexual harassment policy. It made some guys rather uneasy. How were they to interpret the subtle "cues" that indicated that a woman was uncomfortable? During the question and answer session, it was obvious that some students were strong feminists. It was always the man's fault, even if it was accidental. I'd say communication, not blame, is better to solve such conflicts. Only when the offending behavior continues after you explicitly say "no" (or when you get a third party to say "no" for you because you're not comfortable doing it yourself) do you go to a higher authority. I'm definitely not saying that you should try to solve the problem through ignorance and avoidance; I just find that ignorance and avoidance are not sufficient reasons to pin the responsibility solely on somebody else. Of course, everything becomes more complicated when people's emotions are thrown into the mix. Trying to think logically about any problem is very hard when you're angry. You risk hurting someone else's feelings and making an enemy. Even I find it hard to solve a problem when I'm not angry because I'm not sure how the other person will react. Perhaps that is why I agreed with someone who said he'd rather avoid anything that might potentially become a problem by staying far away from the troublesome source. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 5:53 PM : Here's this week's Tuesday Too: 1. In this fast paced world we live in, is stress keeping you from realizing your full potential? Good God!, who wrote that? It sounds like an advertisement for a weekend workshop on inner peace. I should hope not. I'm terrible when given the chance to procrastinate. I need deadlines to keep myself in check. I'm not saying that a slower paced world is worse, only that it may work for certain people and not others. Otherwise, I wouldn't be able to accomplish anything. 2. Due to the nature of question number one, it is suggested that you answer it anyway you can, and then leave your own question for the next person, or persons to answer in the comment. On the other hand, you could just hit the back button. Mine's simple. What little thing are you doing for amusement this week? I'm reading Sev Trek comics. 3. What's really on your mind? Organizational meetings (there are too many of them), new research, where I want to do lab rotations, pesky vaccinations. I'm at a loss as to why there's so much administrative stuff I have to do. Most of it is people repeating what the previous person said. I don't understand why they don't condense everything into a one hour lecture so the rest of the time can be spent more productively. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 7:24 AM : Saturday, September 21, 2002 Why is it seem so natural to form cliques? And why does it seem so natural for me to feel like the outsider? I thought I left all of this nonsense in high school--the jocks, the cheerleaders, the political activists, the preps, those weird people who always wore black, heck, even the nerds. During my undergraduate career it was a little more subtle, but the cliques were still there--separate houses (i.e. dorms), the biology majors who all wanted to go to med school, the weekend drunk partyers. And now, you would think twenty-somethings would know better. Departmental divides, foreign students, people with significant others, bitter singles. It's a headache. I don't even try to keep up with everyone. Another headache is the constant barrage of phone calls and door banging I have to put up with every time I come back home. And they're never for me. I didn't come here to become a secretary and a doorman, so I'm quite tempted to buy earplugs and never answer the phone and the door. I'm not complaining about my roommates. They're nice people so far, but the aggressiveness of the people following them around is seriously testing my tolerance levels. Having an active social life is completely fine by me. It's when someone else's social life threatens to spill into mine that I start to worry. Linkage: Hallmarks of Felinity. A cat comic to bring a laugh and a foil for all the dog people I've met this past week. (Note: Never give beer to a dog.) Annotated Scrabble Games. Facinating for word freaks, in particular anagram freaks. How Does Human Consciousness Work? By electromagnetic fields creating a feedback loop? Give me a break. Consciousness is going to be a lot more complicated than that. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 4:50 PM : Friday, September 20, 2002 Two words: bonding, alcohol. To clarify: bonding with other grad students over margaritas. Please come back tomorrow when I'm more lucid. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 8:26 PM : Thursday, September 19, 2002 I'm exhausted. Yesterday and most of today, I was in Vermont at Killington for a retreat that was held by the biology department. Too bad there wasn't any snow for skiing, but I went hiking during my free time. Now all I want to do is to go to sleep because tomorrow I'm going to attempt to sit through an entire day's worth of mandatory laboratory safety seminars without dozing off. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 3:40 PM : Wednesday, September 18, 2002 I never follow the clock: hours were made for man, not man for hours. François Rabelais (1494–1553), French author, evangelist [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 3:57 AM : Tuesday, September 17, 2002 A library I visited today was a room within a room. The inner room was floor to ceiling glass and cramped with shelves. Shelves of old, rare, and very expensive books. Tuesday Too: 1. Are you willing to remain silent on something you strongly believe in, in order to avoid confrontation with your friends or family. Why would you, or wouldn't you do this? If they are friends and family, no, I trust them enough to speak my mind without backlash due to irrational associations between my opinions and my character. As for other people, it depends. If they expect an opinion from me, I give it. Otherwise I remain silent in fear of making a potential enemy. 2. Do you think trust is necessary for a "real relationship?" Do you trust easily? Do you find your faith in others is usually justified, or have you been betrayed one too many times? My relationships with people, the good ones at least, have always relied on trust. I don't trust as easily as I did, say, two years ago and I will probably find it even harder to trust two years from now depending on what I end up doing. My faith in people depend more on common sense rather than outright betrayal. 3. Have you bought something on ebay, or another auction site? Tell us about your experience. Was it positive or negative? What did you get? Would you do it again? No. I rarely do online shopping due to my paranoia with using credit cards and checks in general. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 3:06 PM : Monday, September 16, 2002 Coca-cola and chicken. They have nothing in common except for that fact that they both start with the letter "c" and that one of my roommates likes microwaving frozen chicken with coke. Maybe she's using it as a substitute for sugar. Amidst irritating computer troubles amounting no e-mail access and a dead power supply, I've been thrown into a whirl of orientations and seminars and little graduate student get-togethers that have people moaning, "I want to go back home and lock myself in my room." This morning alone, I've been subjected to horror stories about apartment rentals, service providers trying to wheedle out the extra activation fee, and careless drivers. There are so many new faces to learn. Perhaps they (and I) should keep a name tag plastered on our foreheads for the next two months. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 9:56 AM : Sunday, September 15, 2002 A word I made up on my way out: wibble (verb) jiggling but messier: The leaking water balloons wibbled as they rolled out of the basket. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 10:14 AM : Saturday, September 14, 2002 I've never really been to an open-air farmer's market. I've been to places that have been labeled "Farmer's Market" but were actually just crates of produce stacked in a concrete building. This morning, I caught a ride with one of the roommates and her friend who happened to have a car. We went up to Norwich where a small plot of land was decorated with plywood stalls. The rough platforms held baskets filled with fresh vegetables and fruit. Small white signs with black markered prices stood above tomatoes that ranged from red to yellow to green. A small heap of leeks decorated a bench. Canned preserves and jams lined a shelf like jars of colorful paint. And there was this smell--a pungent earthy odor--that made me perk up, be a little more alert. Afterwards we rummaged through a couple of yard sales. I was fascinated by a table of wrought-iron tools, lovingly used, a bit worn around the edges, a bit rusted. There was a slender saw about a meter long with tiny jagged teeth tinged orange. I love looking at odd things, but how useful would a saw be to me anyway? Eventually my roommate decided on a three dollar floor lamp that looked like a cross between a crane and a water lily. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 10:30 AM : Friday, September 13, 2002 Sure, some people have positive raves, but I've never had any other operating system crash as many times in one sitting like Windows XP making the "blue screen of death" as cosy as a frayed comforter. The only thing I'm glad for is that I tried it out on someone else's computer first and that the free copy of XP beta I once possessed was stolen sometime last year before I got around to installing it. I've finally got around to updating the "about" page as well as the decoder. I'm sure I'll be updating the decoder some more the next couple of weeks as I meet interesting characters, erm, people. A Link: Kurukshetra. I just wanted to highlight a journal by another ex-Techer and one of the few people online who I know in real life. Mike is articulate, funny, and very math-centric. He's also going to Cambridge for a year. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 12:44 PM : Wednesday, September 11, 2002 Above, the sky bore rain clouds. Gusts blew into open windows making shades rattle. At noon, for one hour, there was a break in the clouds with a little sunshine. And then the clouds rolled in again. There was cold rain. On Main Street American flags hung along posts, damp. Another flag, the biggest one, was half-mast. Volunteers tediously placed white cloth bags onto The Green for the lighting ceremony in the evening. The ones in the middle genuflected to the numb, biting wind blowing from the north. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 2:03 PM : Tuesday, September 10, 2002 As a friend recently pointed out to me, yes, the "about" page is out of date. That just means I have to bug housing again about the ethernet. The Tuesday Too: 1. Today in Maryland, and in 11 other states in this country we are having primary elections. Do you participate in the election process at the local level? Do you feel your vote counts? Did your feelings on this change after the last US presidential election? I can't participate due to my citizenship status (but I would if I could). I don't think I'll feel my vote would have counted if I voted, and I thought the last presidential election was just a big circus. 2. On the eve of September 11th, is the United States in danger of losing her civil liberties? Is there some right you would refuse to give up even though it might present a security risk? Why is it so important? There's a certain amount of risk in everything, but I'd rather be free and be out on a tree limb than safe but gagged. 3. Do you have a local issue you'd like to gripe/rant about? Go ahead spit it out? I still have the excuse that I'm still too new to the area to be aware of any issue, but I have noticed propaganda pasted in people's front yards. And apparently, Hanover is real big on grassroots causes. The gripe is that it took about a day or three but the hot weather has followed me here. I wish it will just go away. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 12:22 PM : Monday, September 09, 2002 There's something to be said for touring a museum alone, not just going by yourself, but actually having most of the building to yourself. Art appreciation can't be pigeon-holed into one thing, but I find the quality better if I weren't distracted by chattering tourists and know-it-all connoisseurs. Last afternoon I took a look at the Hood Museum of Art--small yet with an extensive collection. Many of the pieces, not surprisingly, were donated by alumni. On a completely different note, I discovered a cemetary behind the dining hall. It's not marked on the campus map. Other links: Chinese - American Teens Look at Ancestor Worship Today. (via Blogdex) I don't know much about ancestor worship (in fact, I don't know much about my ancestors, period) but this looks like an interesting site. Eilzabeth Bishop. And here's some lyrical poems to brighten your day. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 5:58 AM : Saturday, September 07, 2002 I'm confused. So I noticed from all the receipts (except one) that there is no sales tax. All right, that I can live with--compared with other state sales taxes this is pretty good. And even discounting the sales tax of other states (such as California) the prices are pretty good too. For example, there are some items in California that cost twice as much as the same item in New Hampshire. But the confusing part is this: there was one receipt in which there was a sales tax added. I'm positive it wasn't an old receipt from back home and I'm doubly positive that I did not accidentally step into Vermont where there is a sales tax. So what gives? On another note, I decided to try out some bus routes. One of them goes into some residential areas. The houses looked battered and worn--peeling paint, chipped clapboard and vinyl, crooked shutters--like out of a verbose H.P. Lovecraft description of haunted houses. I'm not sure if any of these houses were larger than, say, houses in L.A., but the yards were certainly larger even if weeds had chocked out the remaining grass. If anyone had the motivation of cleaning the neighborhoods up, they would probably look startlingly like the neighborhood in the beginning of Oliver Stone's film Born on the Fourth of July. And there are creeks and streams that run through the area like veins. When you look down from the bridge, you can see that the water is clear. Straight to the bottom, there are stones smoothed down by the running water. In the afternoon sunlight, they gleam like dark ivory cabochons. I feel as if I've rode into a scenic postcard and can't find my way out. I'm not sure if I want to find my way out. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 6:47 AM : Friday, September 06, 2002 Fall is wheedling its way into everything. This morning, the chill permeated my room because I left the window open the night before. I woke up wanting to stay huddled under the blankets. The trees are showing signs of changing color--the tips are already orange. And outside, when I breathed out, I swore I saw a faint white mist coming out of my nose. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 5:43 AM : Thursday, September 05, 2002 I have moved in. Well, I suppose not quite. I didn't remember to bring everything. Like a desk lamp or an umbrella. It was quite overcast this morning and I'm afraid I felt a couple of raindrops on my way to the library. Dartmouth seems to be in perpetual construction. I woke up around seven this morning (east coast time) to the sounds of construction next door. Not all of the new apartments for the graduate students are finished yet. And as I type this in the library, there are loud drills and jackhammering a few feet away. Unlike a loud and confusing dorm, the apartment is relatively quiet. The entire apartment complex is probably populated by foreign students with a poor grasp of English. I have to speak slowly and repeat everything three times (and sometimes even that doesn't work). The next door neighbors like to come into the apartment to rummage in the fridge and burn milk on the stove. I have a feeling that I'm living in a bad sitcom. Anyways, I'm probably going to be updating pretty regularly again, even if housing still won't hook up the ethernet until a week or two from now. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 6:57 AM : Tuesday, September 03, 2002 Here's the Tuesday Too: 1. What, is it Tuesday again? Yep. Okay then, what is the day most likely to be if yesterday was Monday? Tuesday. But sometimes it has been known for Monday to repeat itself. 2. Now here's a real question for you. What is the most important/significant thing that you have on your plate today? And no I don't mean spinach or potatoes; I mean nuts and bolts. Finish packing what I've forgotten yesterday. Go to BNA. Endure a flight to Manchester, New Hampshire. Find some place to sleep before driving up to Hanover to get the key to my new apartment. 3. Ask me anything you'd like to know, and I just might tell you, or I might not. What's your dream vacation? 4. Is the Tuesday Too person losing her mind? Not more than anyone else. 5. Is this the end of the Tuesday Too? Yikes. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 6:03 AM : Monday, September 02, 2002 My time is almost up and I find procrastination a self-defense mechanism. Of course, the people around me don't find it particularly amusing that I haven't finished what I should have finished a week ago. I've spent the day packing, stuffing as much as I could into baggage that is below the size limit of 62 inches. Sometimes I wish I weren't going so far away from home--then I could have just rented a U-haul to cart all my needs away. Sometimes I wish I weren't heading to a town where the inhabitants didn't despise large stores so I wouldn't have to literally hitchhike to the next town to get a toothbrush. Of course here (Tennessee, that is) it's nearing the height of ragweed season. I'm a sniveling mess and I suppose that's one reason I'm glad to be leaving. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 6:43 PM : |
