Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in Lisa's LiveJournal:

[ << Previous 20 ]

Wednesday, October 25th, 2006
10:16 am	flip-flopping I really should stop changing my mind so much about LiveJournal. See, I originally started LJ because a lot of PROMYS people used it, and because it was hip and exclusive (invite/purchase only) and Diana offered me an account. But most people have stopped using it by now (or post very infrequently, at the least), and only a few people I know from Lynbrook or MIT are using this, which means there are about 5 people whose LJs I read, and vice versa. Now that Facebook (which everybody and their mother uses) has this new "notes" feature, and my group of friends from Lynbrook has a wiki so we can keep up with what's going on in each other's lives, there's really no need for this LJ anymore. Unlike last time (when I deleted my aprilverdandi LJ) I'll probably just keep this account around and use it occasionally to read/comment. If you feel like knowing what's going on in my humdrum life, look on Facebook. (Comment on this)
Monday, October 16th, 2006
3:44 am	tooling and being sketchy GARRGGGG. caught up on most of my reading over the weekend, but still left with craploads of psets/UROP/UPOP stuff to do by Wednesday. If I can make it through Wednesday, I'll be okay. I think my Chinese has been (very) marginally improving since coming to MIT, but for all the wrong reasons. Yesterday, Yingdan taught Becca how to say "I have a gun" in Chinese, which devolved into a discourse on Chinese phrases for masturbation. And today, Harley wrote "yang ju" in huge characters on the lounge whiteboard. Harley's pretty sketchy for a freshman... but that's okay, cuz he's a double Zhang, and double last-names are awesome cuz I'm a double Wang. =) Anyway, I've been getting addicted to the Chinese version of "Atlantis Princess", despite BoA's prononciation and the extensive rhymes. -___-' 不知不觉慢慢忘记 自己的秘密 什麽原因 从长大时起 失去了珍贵的记忆 从今天起 要改变自己 找回希望和梦想 Without knowing or sensing it, I had slowly forgotten my own secret. Why is it that, since growing up, I've lost my most precious beliefs? From today on, I have to change myself, and regain my hopes and dreams. Current Mood: blah Current Music: Atlantis 少女 -- BoA (Comment on this)
Thursday, October 5th, 2006
1:37 am	what's the deal with Course 7? I probably shouldn't have taken so many bio classes this semester. While it's nice that I don't have to do much "real" work, this means I will be getting very much screwed over in the spring. I don't know if it's just the major contrast between 5.310 (chem lab)/7.02 (bio lab), 5.60 (thermo)/5.07 (biochem) and 10.10 (intro to chemE)/7.03(genetics), but these classes seem ridiculously easy and well-taught for MIT. Where are the apathetic, octogenarian professors and the painful psets full of obscure proofs that you'll never derive again in your life? And why do the questions on the exams deal with things that have been taught in class? Okay, that was a slight exaggeration, but it does seem odd to me that my first biochem exam, which I thought I failed, was marked a B after the curve (obviously I should be aiming higher, but I really thought I deserved at most a C- due to my complete ignorance of GroEL/ES and fuzzy grasp of Ramachandran diagrams, both of which were covered on the test). It is also odd that the genetics exam today only had 3 questions and was exactly like the problem sets we've had. The amount of helpful information the professors and TAs give is astounding -- I almost feel like they're helping us cheat. Considering MIT's reputation for biology, it doesn't make sense that their biology classes would be so easy (seriously, Course 7 pretty much deserves its rep for being an "easy" major as far as I can see right now). Then again, I suppose MIT's Sloan school/management major doesn't make sense either. Hum. Friday is 8/15 according to the lunar calendar, which means time for muuuuucho foooood! Apparently, some people like their moon cakes salty... which I find kind of weird. At any rate, Yifei and I will try to buy some legit moon cakes from Chinatown (ones with egg yolks) for a study break in Desmond. =) We just need to find a bakery that gives itemized receipts so we can actually get reimbursed for it from the house. Else we're going to get stuck eating lame supermarket cakes from a box. Last weekend was Leila's birthday, so I took her to this place called Aquitaine on Tremont Street for brunch. Leila got really camera-happy and snapped a whole bunch of photos of brick houses. There are some really cool-looking restaurants over there, including Addis Red Sea, the Ethiopian place I've been meaning to try. It's a "basement restaurant" like Grendel's Den, Chilli Duck, or 9 Tastes. 9 Tastes is apparently "crappy" for Harvard Thai food -- Leila claims that Spice is better. I shall have to try that out next time I go. Speaking of Harvard... I also need to go up to Loeb Theatre and pick up my student pass sometime. And reserve tickets for The Importance of Being Earnest -- in drag! =D The weekend before last, we had an SSP reunion. 8 of us went to Emperor/Empire Garden Restaurant and had dim sum in a cavernous, deserted room. I ended up getting into a discussion about relationships with a certain fellow alum with some very surprising results. He said that he wouldn't continue dating anyone for more than about 2 months if love hadn't already entered the picture by that time. That statement completely blew my mind. It was like him saying he wouldn't be dating anyone if the prospect of marriage in the foreseeable future hadn't arisen within 2 months. Reminds me of the arguments I had with Cathy over the meaning of "love" last year (this guy is Asian too...). I don't know if I should stop thinking about this altogether or think about it until I figure out what exactly it is that I believe. Current Mood: happy Current Music: The Lights of Seoul - BoA (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Monday, September 25th, 2006
1:11 pm	dirty laundry should be aired in private. I ran out of fruit on Friday and didn't eat any until lunchtime Saturday. Apparently, that was too long to wait, as now I have a sore throat/cold. It's not terrible, since I made up for it by eating 4 kiwis, 5 oranges, 2 pints of blueberries and 3 apples in the last 2 days. That's like eating a whole bag of vitamin C pills at once. The ascorbic acid alone will probably kill off all the viruses. Actually, I don't know if viruses die in acid, but I will assume they do. I'll also assume they take a pounding from the antioxidants in fruit as well, though that would make no biological sense. Maybe today I will go back to normal food such as bok choy and green bean sprouts. I have weird dreams. My most recent one involved eating two pints of ice cream in a row without realizing it and then going into bio lab, where we ranked the deadliness of a bunch of viruses based on spectrometric assays. We put them into some solution and determined what biohazard level they were based on how dark of a color they turned. As I was scraping some dark blue stuff into a cuvette, my lab instructor came by and asked me, "So what would happen if your gloves broke right now as you are handling that sample of TB?" -_________-' Current Mood: sick Current Music: Atlantis Princess - BoA (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Friday, September 8th, 2006
10:52 pm	le tired Planned to go to sleep around 1am last night since I had class at 9 this morning, and it takes me 45 min to get ready for class, eat breakfast and walk to Stata. Ended up sleeping at 4 after a lengthy discussion of various topics such as facebook-stalking, CCP history and the global economy with 4th floor Desmondites. Good thing none of my classes today required thinking. There was one funny story my biochem prof told, though -- he was probably trying to get our attention, as students in 9am classes aren't always conscious: The professor was giving an experiment demonstration in a lab to a group of students. Most of them were at least mildly interested, but one young man in the back was obviously unimpressed. He leaned over to his TA and muttered, "I can't stand these people who have orgasms over chemical reactions," to which his TA replied, "If you were one of those chemistry people, you wouldn't be getting orgasms." Also, my genetics professor on Wednesday gave a rather unorthodox demonstration of the effects of genetic mutation -- he brought in wildtype and heat-sensitive Drosophila and put them on an overhead. Within about 2 minutes, the mutant fruit flies had stopped moving, while the wildtypes were still flitting around in their petri dishes. He removed the former for a few minutes to allow them to recover and then put them back on the overhead to show us that they would be all right when the temperature returned to normal within a reasonable amount of time. I thought that was kind of cool... albeit a bit randomly cruel. I can no longer wear my trenchcoat dress by itself -- it's a button-down dress, and the bottom button popped off today in class (yeah, that's what you get for buying clothes in China). I had to walk around for a couple of hours looking like a super ho, because the slit went more than halfway up my thigh without the bottom button. -______-' Oh, well. I'll wear it as a super-long jacket, I guess, and pretend it's some kind of hip fashion statement. Random food plug for the day: spinach is insanely awesome (currently I go through about half a pound of baby spinach/spinach leaves a week, though I should probably be eating more). It's rather bitter raw, but the leaves are so yummy when cooked, and the juice that oozes out makes for a mild and pleasant soup. Not only is spinach a complete source of protein, it is also strongly anti-inflammatory (good if you're sick). Half a cup of the cooked stuff packs an insane amount of nutrition into a measly 40 calories (about the size of a small bite of hamburger), including the amount of... fiber in 2 slices of wheat bread vitamin A in 6-8 baby carrots iron in 6oz lean sirloin, raw potassium in 1 banana calcium in 3 oz milk (granted, not much, but 1/2 cup = 4oz spinach) That half-cup of spinach also has about 75mg omega-3 fats, which is a lot less than you'd get from salmon (570mg per ounce), but it's not terrible, and anyway, that's what flaxseed's for! (740mg per teaspoon) So, for a vegetarian like me who sometimes has trouble with protein (meat), iron (beef), calcium (dairy) or omega-3 fatty acids (fish), spinach is like a miracle food. And yes, I know I could totally make my job easier by eating Total cereal or Kashi, but that'd be "cheating." (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Saturday, September 2nd, 2006
12:18 pm	China needs to go on a diet When did Chinese people in China get so fat? Beijing locals are starting to resemble my dad's side of the family, which is creepy, because only Manchurians should be that stocky. And one of my little cousins looks like the Pillsbury Dough Boy, which would be cute if the rolls of fat didn't bulge so much out of his shirt. I guess waistlines are expanding at the same rate as the economy... it seems the only "north Asian" people who are still kinda not overweight are the Japanese, and they're pudgening up too. I went qipao-hunting in Nanjing but couldn't find one that fit. The ones I tried on were too tight in the hips and too big around the waist, which makes no sense because I thought qipao were supposed to be slim-waisted to show off the really awesome figures that practically no one in China has anymore. But at least I got a bunch of other cool shirts... including one that comes with a tie! I've always wanted to wear a tie! =D I also got a dress that looks like a trenchcoat. I've always wanted to wear a trenchcoat! =D!! More seriously, though, if ever I have only 2 weeks of vacation again I'm not using them on China. I got sick twice on this trip, which is more than I've gotten sick in the past 2 years. Also, the food was not that awesome. Mainlanders have a few things to learn about how to make pearl milk tea, and you can only eat eggplant and potatoes for so many days in a row before you're ready to quit being vegetarian or run back to the States. I think I inherited my non-photogenic-ness from my mom. In her college pictures, she also has a super-big forehead and looks pissed off half the time. =P Current Mood: glad to be back Current Music: SweetS - Grow Into Shining Stars (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, August 17th, 2006
7:00 pm	procrastination I don't really have anything to say, except that this will probably be my last entry before I take off for China Saturday morning. Tomorrow will be pretty crazy because I still have a full day of work, after which I have to hop around Boston buying presents before the stores close around 9pm, do my laundry, pack, and finish up all the work I'm supposed to do for my other job next week, which I won't be doing because I'll be out of the country. I think I'd also do well to snag some fruit along the way -- maybe at Star, since that doesn't close until midnight -- or else I'll have to endure 18 hours of nasty airplane food and not enough liquids. Anyway, to keep you amused, here's a survey I took from Hann... ACTUALLY A UNIQUE SURVEY .:BASIC INFO:. NAME YOU GO BY: Lisa AGE: 19 WHERE DO YOU LIVE? CITY/STATE: Cambridge/MA or San Jose/CA DO YOU BELIEVE IN GOD?: No HOW MANY CHILDREN?: 0 WHAT KIND OF PET DO YOU HAVE?: None DO YOU GET ALONG WITH YOUR MOTHER?: More so than before. HOW ABOUT YOUR FATHER?: Sure. AND YOUR SIBLINGS?: Eh. HAVE YOU EVER BEEN HOSPITALIZED?: Yes. IF YES, WHY?: Fever of 41.5C + some kind of seizure, I think. .:NOW ONTO THE GOODIES:. WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE SONG?: This is variable. WHY IS THIS YOUR FAVORITE SONG?: That depends on the song. WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE MOVIE (JUST ONE): Amelie WHY IS THIS YOUR FAVORITE?: Audrey Tautou is cute. GIVE ME A SONG THAT DESCRIBES YOUR LIFE COMPLETELY.: I don't think life is that simple. NAME ME 3 PRESIDENTS BEFORE JFK.: FDR, Truman, Eisenhower. BUSH SR. OR BUSH JR.?: This is like the choice between dumb and dumber... dumb? WHAT SOUTH PARK CHARACTER ARE YOU?: I don't watch South Park. WHAT SONG MAKES YOU CRY?: Kiss - Because I'm a Girl, the music video WHAT MOVIE MOVES YOU?: Hero DO YOU SECRETLY HAVE A CRUSH ON SOMEONE OF THE SAME SEX?: No THERE'S NOTHING WRONG WITH SAYING YES TO THE ABOVE QUESTION. DO YOU SWEAR IN FRONT OF YOUR PARENTS?: No WHAT IS YOUR DRINK (ALCOHOLIC)?: Haven't tried enough to say WHAT IS YOU DRINK (NON-ALCOHOL)?: Water GIVE ME YOUR FAVE RESTAURANT.: Don't really have one, but Cheesecake Factory is quite good. WHAT IS YOUR DISH AT SAID RESTAURANT.: Avocado rolls. EVERYONE HAS STOLEN SOMETHING. NAME SOMETHING YOU'VE STOLEN.: My name. DO YOU COOK?: Yes, but poorly. GIVE ME YOUR MOST EXTRAVAGENT LIE YOU'VE EVER USED.: I don't remember, and if I did, it would certainly be a bad idea to make it public... HAVE YOU EVER GONE A DATE WITH SOMEONE YOU THOUGHT WAS REPULSIVE?: No. NAME YOUR FAVORITE SNACK CAKE.: I'm not sure what counts as a snack cake... I like Chinese taro and red bean pastries, though. HAVE YOU EVER LIED TO GET OUT OF GOING SOMEWHERE?: Yes. .:ARE YOU GETTING TIRED YET?:. WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE RADIO STATION AND WHAT CITY DOES IT SERVE?: 102.1, San Francisco Bay Area WHAT KIND OF STATION IS IT? (WHAT KIND OF MUSIC OR TOPICS?): Classical music -- prevents road rage. =) DO YOU OWN A DIGITAL CAMERA? HOW MANY PIXELS?: Yes. I don't know. FAVORITE SCENT OF CANDLE.: Lemon FAVORITE NASCAR DRIVER. (OR AT LEAST NAME ONE): I really don't know any. NAME THE JUDGES ON AMERICAN IDOL.: I don't watch it. ARE YOU REGISTERED TO VOTE?: No, but I'm doing it when I get back to California. DO YOU VOTE?: No, see above. HAVE YOU EVER BEEN ARRESTED?: No. WHAT WAS THE REASON FOR YOUR LAST PULL-OVER?: None. HAVE YOU CRIED TO GET OUT OF A TICKET?: No. HAVE YOU EATED OR DRANK SOMETHING IN A SUPERMARKET AND NOT PAID FOR IT?: Yes. But not illegally. HOW LOUD ARE YOUR HEADPHONES? (ALL THE WAY UP OR MODERATE): Very moderate compared to most people. SERIOUSLY, THERE IS NO RHYME OR REASON FOR THIS QUIZ IF YOU SMOKE, WHAT'S YOUR BRAND.: None. IF YOU DON'T SMOKE, GIVE ME YOUR #1 REASON YOU DON'T.: My uncles do it and they're disgusting. HOW OFTEN DO YOU GO TO CHURCH?: Used to be every Sunday and Wednesday night. Now I only go as a tourist. WHAT CD IS IN YOUR CD PLAYER RIGHT THIS SECOND?: None. WHAT CAR DO YOU OWN? (OR AT LEAST DRIVE): '95 Mazda, beige WHAT WAS THE LAST SHOW YOU WATCHED ON TV?: Um... this is embarrassing, but last night Cathy and I were in the lounge and she wanted to watch the season finale of "So You Think You Can Dance." WHAT WAS THE LAST MOVIE YOU WATCHED IN THE THEATRE?: Pirates of the Caribbean 2 IF THE SKY COULD BE A DIFFERENT COLOR, WHAT WOULD YOU WANT IT TO BE?: I like the sky the way it is now, but lavender would be interesting. HAVE YOU PLAYED IN THE RAIN IN THE PAST TWO YEARS?: Yes. DO YOU HAVE STRETCH MARKS?: Not that I know of. ARE YOU AFRAID OF THE DARK?: Sometimes. DO YOU BELIEVE IN GHOSTS? AND HAVE YOU EVER SAW ONE?: Not really... except in anime? HOW MANY HOURS OF SLEEP DO YOU GET AT NIGHT?: Around 7. DO YOU TAKE A NAP ONCE A DAY?: No. WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE DAVE CHAPPELL CHARACTER?: Who? WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE SNL CHARACTER?: Um... NAME ME 3 HARRY POTTER CHARACTERS.: Hermione, Snape, Nearly-Headless Nick WHAT CHARACTER IN TV OR MOVIES IS JUST LIKE YOU.: Lisa Simpson. Uh... not really. WHAT CHARACTER WOULD YOU LIKE TO BE?: Athos! Er... well, I'm sure someone's made a movie about the Three Musketeers. PRO-LIFE OR PRO-CHOICE?: pro-choice WHAT DID YOU WANT TO BE WHEN YOU GREW UP AT AGE 5?: I didn't know I was going to grow up when I was 5. HOW ABOUT AT 15?: I didn't know. AND NOW, WHAT DO YOU WANT TO BE WHEN YOU GROW UP??: I am grown up. And I still don't know. WHAT SPORT DO YOU FOLLOW?: None, really. Occasionally ice skating or soccer. WHAT SPORT DO YOU HATE?: American football NOW, NAME 3 PLAYERS IN THE SPORT YOU HATE.: John Elway...? I don't know. YOU HAVE 10 MILLION DOLLARS (PRETEND I GAVE IT TO YOU) WHAT IS THE FIRST THING YOU BUY?: My parent's house (it's more expensive than my tuition, so it makes sense to pay for that first... in case someone robs me of the 10 million =P) WHAT CHARITY DO YOU GIVE TO (IF ANY)?: I don't know. Would have to research various charities a bit more to answer, since a lot of charities with good goals are not so hot on implementation. BESIDES YOURSELF, WHO ELSE IN YOUR LIFE WILL BENEFIT FROM YOUR MONEY?: My parents and sister. WHAT ONE THING WOULD YOU SPLURGE ON THAT YOU DON'T NEED, BUT ALWAYS WANTED: A telescope. With a ridiculous amount of accessories. HAVE YOU ALREADY THOUGHT ABOUT THIS BEFORE THIS SURVEY?: Yes. Someone asked me a very similar question about two weeks ago. CAN YOU HANDLE MORE QUESTIONS? DO YOU THINK MASTERBATION IS WRONG?: No. DO YOU THINK THAT PEOPLE SHOULD BE SPAYED OR NEUTERED?: Uh... how would we reproduce as a species? INTERRATIAL COUPLES..YAY OR NAY?: Why not. My GRTs were black/white and they seemed much saner/happier than most couples I know. DO YOU THINK THAT GAY PEOPLE SHOULD BE ALLOWED TO GET MARRIED?: Yes. HAVE YOU EVER PROTESTED ANYTHING?: No. Good mainland Chinese children don't do silly things like that. IF YES, WHAT?: n/a IF YOU COULD GET FREE PLASTIC SURGERY, WHAT WOULD YOU GET DONE?: Hm... is there a way to make my forehead smaller? =P IS RACISM ALIVE TODAY?: Yes. HAVE YOU EVER CHEATED ON SOMEONE?: No. WHAT DO YOU THINK IS A GOOD REASON FOR DIVORCE?: Domestic abuse, especially if the kids get involved. DO YOU THINK THAT HUSBANDS GET THE RAW DEAL OR THE WIVES?: I don't know. Both happen. WHAT ABOUT THE OPPOSITE SEX ARE YOU JEALOUS ABOUT?: They have a much easier time renting/buying suits and formalwear. WHEN IS THE LAST TIME YOU WENT TO THE DOCTOR?: Last summer WHY DID YOU GO?: MIT health forms WHERE IN YOUR HOUSE DO YOU USUALLY EAT?: Dining area. DO YOU USE COASTERS?: No. That's what tablecloths are for. APPROXIMATELY, HOW MANY BOOKS HAVE YOU READ IN YOUR LIFETIME?: Between 10^2 and 10^4. DO YOU OWN A DVR?: No. IF YES, WHAT IS THE LAST THING YOU RECORDED.: N/A WHEN DID YOU LISTEN TO YOUR LAST CASSETTE TAPE?: Wow. Those are so antiquated. Maybe like 1st grade, I listened to Muzzy to learn English. CAN YOU DANCE??: No, unless it's DDR, in which case... no. HAVE YOU EVER BEEN ON WELFARE?: No. DO YOU KNOW WHAT A BRIDGE CARD IS?: A card you use... to play bridge? TELL ME A JOKE: I can't think of any that fit within the length restrictions of this survey. WHAT COLOR IS YOUR SHEET ON YOUR BED?: Dark blue. WHAT IS THE LAST THING YOU BOUGHT?: Golden Delicious Apple. Take this survey | Find more surveys You've been totally Bzoink*d Current Mood: busy (Comment on this)
Thursday, August 10th, 2006
2:45 pm	walking like a duck I went to the Z Center on Tuesday after 2-3 months of sitting on my bum. Well, not really. I use the fitness room in New House downstairs sometimes, but because I'm an adamant believer in runner's knee, my sneakers have about as much sole as vegetarian fish (LOOK! it's a clever pun! ahaha...ha...ha?) and most of all because I am really lazy, I've only done stuff on ellipticals (like speed walking, but easier), ergs (like rowing, except not on a river) and those weight-lifting benches that work your arm muscles. Which means my butt is now the size of a hippo rear and my legs are... (fumbles for an appropriate analogy) similarly attractive. Anyway, back to the Z Center -- I did a few reps of thigh presses and now I'm waddling around bow-legged because my muscles hate me for making them come back from the holidays. Moral of the story: be more like Scrooge--no vacations for adductors. Bah, humbug. Also today, London's terrorists decided to mix it up a bit (no pun intended... though supposedly they were planning to stir liquids together to form explosives) by attacking the airport instead of the subway and now Scotland Yard is running around like a chicken with its head cut off. Good luck to anyone trying to get within a Molotov(sp?) cocktail's throw of Great Britain, like Adler and Timi, who are both highly suspicious because they'll be international students from super-sketchy places like China and Hungary. I mean, China's practically Indonesia, which is where all the Muslims live. And Hungary's practically Turkey, which is practically the Middle East. More Muslims! It's a conspiracy, I tell you. Hmm... hopefully 3.5 hours will be enough at La-Guardia next weekend. I'm taking JetBlue from Boston to NY and Air China from NY to Beijing, so I'll have to check out all my luggage and check it back in. Hopefully the "terrorism" alerts will be back to semi-normal by then, because else I'm going to have to be one of those hoboes who sleep in the terminal overnight. And get picked up by security for being a public nuisance or something. I think the liquid nitrogen coolant in my lab smells like Chinese snacks. That, in combination with a dream I had last night about going to the doctor's and being told I was getting too fat, makes me think maybe I need to stop eating like an American. edit: I have been inspired! Yarrrr... =) (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, August 4th, 2006
1:50 pm	les chateaux en Espagne These people from my dorm are awesome. =D And so is Mongolia. I'm not intentionally plugging random Sinaean countries, by the way. I just think it'd be cool to visit slightly less popular places (as opposed to Paris, Rome, Hawaii and the like) that haven't become huge tourist magnets yet, though some of those are fun too (south of France, Valencia, Geneva, Tuscany, Singapore and the Australian outback, in particular). I think the top of my list right now would be something like Lhasa, Ulanbataar, Reykjavik, Istanbul, and Transylvania. Of course, I don't speak a word of Tibetan, Mongolian, Icelandic, Turkish or Romanian (or even German, Norweigian or Arabic), but "Spanish castles" are all about complete and utter impracticality anyway. Someone from the MIT Alum Association called me yesterday to do a survey. One of the questions was "How do you feel about MIT today, on a scale of 1 (very cold) and 10 (very warm)." I have no idea what these alums are thinking, calling people in the middle of a heat wave to find out how warm they're feeling about their school, because without any psets, exams, sub-freezing weather or the Macgregor wind tunnel blowing snowdrifts at you both ways down Dorm Row, I'm feeling pretty toasty about the 'Tute. Another question was "Name three famous MIT alumni." I came up with "Kofi Annan" and "that guy who took over Alan Greenspan's job" (I forgot his name -- Bernanke or however you spell it). I also almost said Madeleine Albright too, and then realized she was from Wellesley. -___- It occured to me afterwards I should have just started listing names of buildings and rooms around campus (Raymond Stata, Vannevar Bush, etc). This is rather ironic, as I've read several articles on the very subject and such facts are roundly touted on those glossy college brochures that I spent so many hours poring over during high school. Maybe I just had a brain freeze -- I was paying more attention to Cathy making chocolate hazelnut truffles at the time -- or maybe MIT alums just don't really do anything. Probably the former, as Google later reminded me that there are many more notable alums than that one guy who gave money to MIT to build an ugly orange-yellow-silver building, include Eastman (photos), McDonnell (aircraft), Hewlett (hardware), Bose (acoustics), Buzz Aldrin (astronaut), and the founders of Texas Instruments, Campbell Soup and 3Com. But I guess those are slightly obscure. Now, if anyone had asked me for 3 famous alums of Harvard, I would have totally nailed it. Natalie Portman, John Quincy Adams and the Unabomber. =) (5 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, August 2nd, 2006
1:41 pm	blahhcky wednesdays Stephen G is in Boston for the week visiting colleges with like... 10 of his relatives, so yesterday I took him to dinner (at Chilli Duck, which has very good Thai food and rather oversized servings) and to see Taming of the Shrew, which was showing for free on the Boston Commons by the Commonwealth Shakespeare Company. I'm not sure what to make of that play... in a modern context, it's terribly misogynistic, but then again, The Merchant of Venice is really anti-Semitic. If you take away the political correctness considerations, though, there's a certain fine irony. And who's to say that in an Elizabethan context, the use of a Jew or shrew as a plot device was not as acceptable as the jester or the fool? I was being supremely bored one of these days and googling all the random cool places in China that I've never been to... and I got around to thinking that it's a shame China does not recognize dual citizenship, or even offer something like India's OCI. This makes sense as a political policy for the PRC, since a large part of being "Chinese" is going through the rigorous education (indoctrination, if you must) process that is as much about Chinese civics, history and culture as it is about science... but it still seems a shame that overseas Chinese who adopt American, Canadian, Australian etc citizenship for the sake of economic/social benefits in their country of residence (as well as facilitating travel abroad -- the French customs officer at Charles de Gaulle looked at my passport for about 2 seconds while chatting with a coworker and didn't even stamp it) must apply for visas and the such every time they visit their homeland. Maybe this is just me being lazy and cheap (because driving in SF is a pain and visas cost like $50), but it really doesn't make sense to restrict that type of travel... it's not as if most overseas Chinese plan to go to Beijing to stage massive protests in defense of Falun Gong, freedom of the press or Tibetan independence and whip out their foreign passports when the police try to stop them. No one who likes being alive and likes their Chinese relatives being alive too, at least. Perhaps, though, this is a case of wanting to have your cake and eat it too. As a side note... Singaporeans must be really awesome or something, because everyone seems to have tourist visa waiver agreements with it, including just about every country in Europe (even Turkey), the US, Canada, and basically all the Eastern Asian countries (including Mongolia and China, both of which are total Nazis about who's allowed to land in their airports). As far as I can see, the only countries that actually require Singaporeans to have visas are Macedonia, some African nations, and maybe like... North Korea. That's pretty weird, considering how Hann says terrorists and drug smugglers like to live in Singapore, and I swear the reason we all got patted down for that plane trip to SJ during spring break was because of the Singaporean students from MIT who were going to visit Stanford. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, July 27th, 2006
4:26 am	i have too much free time... So, over the last week or two, I've been utterly bored and reading all sorts of random junk in the news, and some of this stuff is incredibly infuriating. The Israel-Lebanon conflict, for one: I'm not anti-Israel, but their behavior (and what's more, the US's) in this incident has just been unbelievable -- bombing ambulances, mosques, UN representatives, tourist destinations... are they waging a war against Hezbollah or against Muslim civilians? And the Bush administration is not only against an immediate cease-fire (or even cessation of hostilities, as Kofi Annan put it), it's providing Israel with more weapons as time goes on. Another thing that really frustrates me (and has for a long time) is America's treatment of China as a second-class country. Seriously... I bet small South Pacific countries like Tuvalu get more respect than the PRC. Sure, China commits a lot of "human rights violations" by American standards, but what are American standards? Spending more money to furnish prisons with gyms and satellite TVs and libraries than any public school could dream of getting? China is very heavy-handed when it comes to dealing with crime and social unrest, but in the context of Chinese culture, it is not quite as extreme as the Western media makes it out to be. I don't want to revert to the "Asian values" argument, but things considered cruel and unusual punishment by American values are widely practiced in many Asian countries; however, it's only popular to hate on China and North Korea. Singapore canes people for sodomy and hangs them for drug trafficking, and most Americans have nothing to say about the city-state except that it has good food, funny English and a kickass economy. I won't argue that caning is cool or anything, but just because America is opposed to any kind of corporeal punishment does not mean that corporeal punishment is some kind of absolute evil. And yes, more freedom of speech, press and religion would be good. But China's not America -- and even if there was a vote, I doubt the Bill of Rights would get passed. Stuff like "religions have the right to do almost anything, including smoking illegal drugs (Rastafarians) and keeping their kids out of school (Amish)" or "people have the right to harass and blockade any institution under the protection of peaceful assembly (Falun Gong)" just would not fly in China. As for all the stupid territorial arguments... even the Dalai Lama has said he does not seek Tibetan independence but only stronger autonomy as a Chinese province, so why are so many college students in the US agitating for a "free Tibet"? While they're at it, could they go free other regions in which minorities want independence as well? Let's start with Puerto Rico, Hawaii, the Basque country (France) and Valencia (Spain). Much of the argument is that Tibet has a unique culture/language -- if this alone justifies its own country, then Guangzhou (Cantonese speakers), western Pennsylvania (Amish), Utah (Mormons), Quebec (French-Canadians), Alsace-Lorraine (Alsatians) and large parts of the southwestern US border (Mexicans) would need to split up. But there are few (if any) student groups rooting for Hawaiian independence and plenty for Tibetan independence, despite the fact that the US annexed Hawaii without the consent of the natives only a hundred years ago, while Tibet and China proper have cultural ties that go back at least 800 years. But hating China has become some kind of hip, trendy political statement, like calling potato wedges "freedom fries." The same kind of reasoning goes with Taiwan. When they lost the revolution of 1949, the KMT lost its sovereignty over the country of China, which included Taiwan. Ripping the island out of the PRC is like dividing the Koreas or splitting the city of Berlin in two with a big wall -- it might be convenient politically and lots of other countries will think it's cool, but it doesn't make any cultural or historical sense. Then again, US foreign policy has never been big on making sense. What boggles my mind, though, is how the KMT maintained its claims on the mainland for more than 40 years. You'd think after getting kicked out of the UN in 1971 and having about a hundred countries break off ties with you to go set up embassies in Beijing would be a bit humbling, but until 1991, the KMT was still claiming that the capital of China was Nanjing, that the 1.2 billion people on the mainland belonged under their jurisdiction, and that Mongolia was the 24th province of the Republic of China. And now, they want to join the UN under the exact opposite argument -- that the PRC and ROC are two separate governments ruling two separate territories. -__-' There's speculation that Taiwan will declare independence at the 2008 Beijing Olympics --- in which case, we may have a 4th Taiwan Strait Crisis... =| When a country has a long documented history and a vibrant culture, its people tend to have a lot of pride in their ethnicity and stick up for their "motherland". But it seems like since arriving in this wonderful melting pot of tolerance and multiculturalism, I've never been able to say I'm Chinese with my head held high, nor defend my country and people without being written off as a crazy pinko. Not even in San Jose, where the only socially acceptable thing to do to China is denounce it: Stenseth: How many of you are from mainland China? Or have relatives in mainland China? [out of a class with 15-20 Chinese students, two raise their hands -- Lina and me] Stenseth: How do your relatives feel about the Communists and the political situation there? Lina: Well, they supported the revolution, but afterwards they became very disillusioned by everything the Communists did. Of course, they can't say anything about it because there's no freedom of speech, so... [a round of sympathetic nods] Stenseth: And what about you, Lisa? How do your relatives feel? Me: Um... they're not really opposed to it, I guess. They supported the Communists in the revolution... Stenseth: And now? How do they feel about all the human rights violations? Me: Well... they don't really talk about that. I mean, the Communists do bad things, but the Kuomingtang was very corrupt too. They just see it as a different political system... you just have to learn the rules and play the game. One of my grandfathers was in the army and the other was in the government... they're not going to turn on the party that helped them so much... Stenseth: Well, in that case, what are you doing here? dot... dot... dot... [At this point, I realize I probably should have never raised my hand. It wasn't the kind of thing I could explain in a few sentences, not to a group of Taiwanese classmates and a teacher whose perception of Communism was shaped by Berlin Wall-era professors] I think I said something like "My dad isn't a Communist." Which is the truth. But what I really wanted to say was something more like "We're here for the f***ing money. Not because your sh*tty country is the embodiment of all ideals pure and good, because my president only f***s over his own country, but your suck@$$ president screws over entire continents at once." Which is also the truth. Current Mood: contemplative Current Music: V6 - Change the World (10 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, July 23rd, 2006
7:06 pm	i taste like bug food Maybe I should lay off the mango body wash -- apparently I smell so much like fruit or something that about a few hundred bugs thought i was dinner. I'm not exaggerating about this either... I count 70+ bites on my right forearm alone and now I look like I have some kind of gross disease or burn injury. Either that or I have an allergy that I don't know about. Or maybe I accidently rubbed some nasty skin irritant on myself in lab when I wasn't looking. Though that doesn't explain why I have them on my back and legs too. Maybe working with chemicals is just not for me -- when you've made more money over the past 5 years from writing than from science (even counting the pay this summer), you've gotta start wondering if you should really be in engineering school. Anyhoo, saw part of Schindler's List this weekend. By part, I mean about 10 minutes. I was in a room where the movie was playing (LSC) for about 90 minutes, but if you subtract all the time I spent with my eyes shut and my fingers in my ears it's less than 1/4 hour. And Schindler's List is about 3h15, but I left after about half of it because I just saw no way for there to be a resolution that held a single shred of hope for the Jewish people (or anyone in that movie, really). Though, considering the current Hezbollah crisis, the Jews are still a long ways away from finding peace as a people. The Israeli government really needs to stop bombing the crap out of Lebanese civilians -- you don't defeat the Nazis by killing German sausage-makers, even if their sausages are feeding the troops. And shelling Muslims isn't really going to endear Israel to the rest of the Arab world either. Speaking of governments, apparently people haven't gotten tired of the "let's blame China for everything" game. Today, on the walk to Chinatown, I must have met two or three dozen Falun Gong practioners handing out flyers and brochures about organ harvesting. Dude... you could probably change the "Chinese Communist" in those papers to "French Socialist" and people would eat it up -- after all, hating countries like China, France and Saudi Arabia is just so hip nowadays that a lot of Americans will believe any propaganda anyone puts out that disses those countries. Now, organ harvesting (if it occurs) is just not cool, even from condemned prisoners. But as for banning and prosecuting Falun Gong? Did anyone not see that coming? These Falun Gong practitioners make it sound like China's throwing people in jail for doing yoga, but that's not really the case. The leader says crazy junk like 1) he's God, 2) he's single-handedly responsible for natural phenomena like the rate of expansion of the universe and the lack of asteroid collisions with the Earth in the last 10 years, 3) people who don't follow his teachings will die and go to some Dafa version of hell, 4) racially mixed children (or anyone with "white" ancestry) are incomplete human beings, 5) homosexuality is a bad deed that doesn't meet the "standards of being human" and most importantly, 6) that sick people should stop taking medicine because he will cure them through Falun Gong (this has led to the deaths of something like 2000 people). Now consider how the US dealt with Davidians in Waco, Texas... and consider that China's a country of 1.3 billion with an unhealthy surplus of males now entering the "aggressive" teens/twenties stage. Some guy comes in encouraging superstition, hatred of "different" people, contempt for ordinary society (including the government, I would assume) and other cult behavior (such as giving up medicine, harassing critics, killing people who try to leave the group)... should China just twiddle its thumbs and wait for another Taiping Rebellion? Because that's what these quasi-religious cults have led to in the country's past. Of course, the PRC government is sketchy at best and brutally authoritarian at worst, but Falun Gong is being ridiculous. Their people want to do stretching exercises in peace? Fine -- then they should either stop acting like a cult or move to countries where public self-immolation, hunger strikes and killing people are culturally acceptable; instead, these people take the route of "hey, let's tell a bunch of countries that china's communist. maybe if we're lucky, dubya will decide to introduce china to democracy the way he did it to iraq. then all 56 ethnic groups and hundreds of religious and spiritual groups in the country will live together in peace, just like the sunnis and shiites are doing!" Current Mood: irate Current Music: Utada Hikaru - Automatic (Comment on this)
Wednesday, July 19th, 2006
8:03 pm	China's population control programs are starting to look pretty humane... Michael Brown must have got hired by Jakarta, because if I'm reading this correctly, the government there basically said, "eh... we knew about the tsunami. but figured we shouldn't tell the people, just in case it didn't happen." Um, yeah... so now a bunch of people are dead. Good job, Indonesian government. I wish the New York Times could run headlines on happy things like cookies instead of sad things like little kids getting bombed in Lebanon. =( But that would require little kids to stop getting in the way of bombs. And vice versa. And Israel to stop bombing the crap out of civilians. And Mr. Bush to stop being an idiot. None of which will happen because America looks at Israeli-Arab relations the same way it looks at Taiwan-China relations. That means the Israelis, like the Taiwanese, are never ever wrong about anything, even when they are. Looks like Americans are still following the words of Stephen Decatur -- "My country, may she always be in the right, but my country, right or wrong!" Only Israel and Taiwan are not part of the US... or so the government wants you to believe. =-O edit: woohoo... bush uses first veto in 6 years to support... south korea's future hegemony over bioscience! i have a feeling pretty soon the religious right is going to start calling for bans on birth control because condoms aren't jesus-approved. where by Jesus, i mean the Catholic Church. and by Catholic Church, i mean that pope who used to be part of Hitler's Youth. (Comment on this)
Thursday, July 13th, 2006
9:58 pm	the head-butt heard around the world I deleted the last post because I realized I was getting way too excited over the whole Zidane-Materazzi thing and turning the post into a novel-length rant. I still think Zidane is a great footballer and a generally good person, and that it's going to take a lot more than FIFA's "Say No to Racism" campaign to alleviate Europe's problems with bigotry, but it's not worth a whole entry. I do think Chirac showed a marvelous piece of diplomacy by thanking Zidane (imagine the protests that would spark anew if the president bashed the Algerian for not single-handedly solving France's socioeconomic problems by winning the World Cup), and that Zidane, though he could have handled his interview on Canal+ better, at least acknowledged that he had set a bad example for children -- which is probably the most important impact his "coupe de boule" will have, as he is undoubtedly the role model for immigrant and first-generation youth across Europe, many of which are so embittered by institutionalized marginalization that the merest incident could send them rioting. This is also the perfect time for FIFA to teach the millions of kids who were watching World Cup that while violence is bad, racial slurs are unacceptable as well. Since the last entry is gone, that means my rant about the super-sketchy Manhattan guy is gone as well. For those who didn't read it, basically after I got off the bus to New York, some bus employee hit me up for my phone number and I accidentally gave him the right one because I've been memorizing it wrong for the past few months. Now, this episode has made me realize something: I am an incredible retard when it comes to guys. I do not know how to read them at all. In fact... for quite a few months, I thought that a particular guy at MIT (whom I called JC in conversations with Srini and will do so here) was hitting on me. As I was not interested, I began being rather rude to him, though nothing terrible like calling him the son of a terrorist whore or anything. =P JC continued to be quite friendly, which I took as a sign of being clueless rather than just being amiable, so one day, when he asked me how my day had been, I replied with the (somewhat) non sequitur of "I spent it with my boyfriend." To which his reply was very calm and unsurprised. Only about 30 minutes later, I found out that not only did JC have a girlfriend, but that they had been dating for some time already (and, as he's a rather typical Asian EECS guy, I doubt he's the wannabe pimp type). Now, I suppose what I said was not exactly a total gaffe, but I do feel slightly embarrassed now for having been rather presumptuous. Which is why I decided I was going to start being slightly less paranoid about males in general, and not to interpret every "Hi, how are you?" as a lewd innuendo. But obviously, that also got me into a bit of hot water last weekend. So... yeah. I definitely need to take some lessons in figuring out how guys work. How does one avoid the bad type of sketchiness without acting like a nun? Or karate master? Because I'm neither Catholic nor a black belt. PS: thanks to jon and lauren for reminding me that LJ has an "edit post" option. ^_~ Current Mood: annoyed (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Wednesday, July 5th, 2006
6:09 pm	TV5 Monde rocks my world Apparently American stations just don't want a piece of the football/soccer action, because the only channels I can find that show the World Cup matches are in French and Spanish. Anyway, I was expecting Germany to win against Italy (because hosts usually seem to have this enormous psychological advantage), but apparently no one else did except Yunus, who doesn't count, because he first thought the final would be between Argentina and Brazil, then decided after quarterfinals that Germany was going to win the Cup. =P Maybe I should stop basing my opinions of the teams on the hotness of their captains. Though I do think that if soccer players were pirates, Beckham and Robinson would be the Captain Sparrow and Will Turner of the group (they kind of look like those people too... except Beckham is more blond than Johnny Depp... and has no dredlocks). As for the France-Portugal game -- Yunus was wrong yet again in rooting for Portugal (mwahaha!). The game started at 3, and as soon as I got done with some stuff in the lab that could be left sitting for a while, I ran over to Building 66 where the game was being shown on a projector. I didn't expect nearly so many people, but the room was nearly full with at least 50 spectators, mostly Chinese and postdoc-looking. Unfortunately, Zidane had already scored by the time I arrived at 3:40, and no other goals were made during the 2nd half. And because it was the stupid Spanish channel rather than the supremely cool French one, they didn't show endless repeats of the winning goal for me to ooh and aah over! >=[ Anyway, it didn't seem like France played too well this time; Zidane, especially, seemed very worn out in the second half. But the game got pretty amusing towards the end, when all the players started tripping over themselves and the Portuguese goalkeeper joined the other players on France's side. Hmm... does anyone know if he would have been allowed to use his hands to throw the ball into France's goalbox? Err... (insert segue here): I just "rediscovered" my photobucket account! Most of it is old, but I'll upload more stuff when I start taking pictures again. I need to start bringing my camera when I go cool places. I hiked the entire 3-mile Freedom Trail (and back!) a few weekends ago and didn't take a single picture because I forgot my camera at home. -_-' Plans for the foreseeable future: this weekend, I'm ditching work Friday afternoon and hopping down to New York to stay with YD. Not sure what I'll be doing yet, but hopefully it'll involve some cocaine smuggling, gun fights, and a few million dollars worth of paintings from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Less exciting but still cool next weekend will be a trip to Salem (of witchcraft infamy) to see a maritime festival and the Peabody Essex Museum of... Art? Or something cultural, at any rate. In between, I'll be serving on my house's GRT search committee to mercilessly grill interview a bunch of grad students who, for hopefully not too-sketchy reasons, want to be our GRTs (grad resident tutors). Our current one is set to graduate in November, so we need to find a new one pronto. Oh, and Boston Independence Day fireworks were spectacular. A complete waste of money, of course, but where's the fun in life if you don't occasionally blow a few hundred thousand dollars in half an hour? =D Current Mood: dorky Current Music: No. 1 - BoA (Comment on this)
Friday, June 30th, 2006
1:41 am	you know it's bad when you spend more than half your day unconscious Wow, this is the second day in a week I took a "nap" at 8:30 and didn't wake up for hours. I was reading "Les Trois Mousquetaires" today and just conked out until about midnight. -_-' And the lights were on. And I was still on the preface. And it's actually a pretty good book! And I'm not even sleep deprived! Grrr. No major plans this weekend, except Saturday will be mostly sunny (and above 30), unlike the rest of this week, so I will...try to do something? I'll go to Bostix in the morning and try to get a ticket for Pinter's "Moonlight" which is playing... somewhere. Now that the guy is a Nobel laureate, it seems like every theatre is scrambling to put him on their playbill. "Moonlight" is one of his later plays (1993), and I'm actually more interested in his work from the 1970s and before, but maybe comedy of menace is out of fashion by now, so we'll see how "Moonlight" goes. I very much want to see The Birthday Party, The Dumb Waiter and The Homecoming, which are said to be some of his best "psychological" dramas*. And not just because they include mucho sketchy incest-esque sexual tension. But that's always a plus. =P *By psychological, I mean toying with concepts of human interaction, not "messing with your mind to give you nightmares" like The Ring or The Sixth Sense. And by drama, I mean the Shakespearean rather than soap opera variety. World cup quarterfinals tomorrow and Saturday! Germany and Argentina would be interesting to watch, but I'll be at work (boooo... wonder if I could run one of my reactions super long and join the Ashdown people). England v. Portugal would be cool to watch (and it's on Saturday!), since that's not a given (as opposed to Brazil v. France -- as much as I think the French are awesome, there's just no way they can outscore a country like Brazil where the national language is footballese). edit: WOW. So much for my having little faith. FRANCE 1 : BRAZIL 0!!! The game was pretty awesome, especially Thierry Henry's goal that was friggin' fast and friggin' impossible! And there's no way Brazil won all those championships missing all the goals they did in this game. Plays I must see while I'm still a student and can get discount tickets: Lysistrata, Aristophanes -- original Greek comedy about women who refuse to have sex with their husbands until they stop going to war; that's just thematically awesome. And besides, it's always nice to know that people 3000 years ago were just as sketchy as they are today. Endgame, Samuel Beckett -- there's really nothing better than watching a couple of people do nothing onstage for two hours and then trying to figure out why that's art. Unless it's something that involves lots of cheese, a graham cracker, and 75% cacao chocolate. Then maybe. A Doll's House, Henrik Ibsen -- I've read this play so many times that I'm really looking forward to seeing it performed sometime. Rhinoceros, Eugene Ionesco -- a town turns into a mass of rhinos. The only thing more awesome than that is his 1-act marathon The Lesson where the professor sucks the life out of his pupils... quite literally. Very sketchy. The Birthday Party, Harold Pinter -- just reading this scared the bejeesus out of me and I have no idea why. Anyway, it has a nice Oedipal flavor. And I'm all for kinky stuff like that. =P The Importance of Being Earnest, Oscar Wilde -- this is actually being performed at the American Repertory Theatre for their 06-07 season. And what's better, it's going to be done completely by 2 guys in drag! Woohoo! There's a lot of other plays too (almost anything by all those playwrights is good, as is anything by Moliere or Tennessee Williams and a few Shakespeare comedies)... but I feel like sleeping some more now. Current Mood: chipper (Comment on this)
Monday, June 26th, 2006
12:59 pm	why do i look so sketchy in pictures...? Based on all the pictures I took over the weekend (which is only ~5, but still...), I have to say I am as incredibly unphotogenic as ever. My smiles always end up as some nasty grimace of "I'm going to shoot the photographer in the face as soon as he lowers the camera" or "Nice doggy, please don't bite me?" Weird... but maybe I'm just an uber-sketchy person to begin with. I watched the second half of the England-Ecuador World Cup game on Sunday, and even though the commentators said it was basically a lousy and uninspiring match, I found watching soccer actually kind of interesting. I didn't think it would have been, since it's a miracle if you score a goal every 15 minutes (unlike basketbal or tennis). But it wasn't too bad, and I got to see instant replays of Beckham's penalty shot ad nauseum. Haha... I didn't even know Beckham was a real person, even after I watched "Bend It Like Beckham" and read some article about Victoria Beckham, which referred to her as "Posh Spice and wife of the famous soccer player." I kind of assumed the movie made up some name for a soccer player to alliterate with "bend"... and that by "famous soccer player" the article meant "total amateur, but since it's his 'career', I guess we might as well as refer to him as a soccer player--and tack on famous because he's the husband of a Spice Girl." Ha...ha...ha. I suck at life. -_-' Though one thing I don't understand (perhaps someone could explain this to me): why do they have two 15-min rounds of overtime? I mean, once you hit 90 min, first team that scores wins the match, so couldn't they just say "up to 30 min of overtime" and then penalty kicks? I shall try to get tickets for a Harold Pinter play this weekend. If that doesn't pan out, I'll go to Newburyport and uh... do stuff. edit: Noo... Ukraine beat Switzerland 3-0 on penalty shots! Sorry, I have nothing against Ukrainians; I just think the Swiss are super-awesome cuz they speak like 5 languages and produce awesome cheese/chocolate/watches/banks/yodelers. edit 2: france beat spain 3-1. yay! Current Mood: bored (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, June 21st, 2006
12:16 am	the great land of Canadia Montreal was not as good as I expected. I didn't get to eat any French food (yay for Chinese takeout?); I couldn't even find a boulangerie that sold French bread. Psh. And they call themselves francophones. Even the French was slightly off (as was the English). It's a rare quebecois who speaks American or British English and continental French. Most of them had this funky patois going on that made them sound like that squirrel on Spongebob Squarepants in English and a whiny aeroplane in French. I exaggerate, of course... with no intended offense to the wonderful Canadans. =P But they are confusing (and maybe confused) people. And anyway, as cool as Canadia may be, it's not worth getting up at 4:30 and standing in a bitchy US Customs line for. Has anyone noticed that getting back into the US, even for US citizens, takes like an hour now? Pretty soon they'll be doing full-body probes on EU nationals because it's obviously a threat to American democracy and freedom if a family of five from a socialist country is allowed to go sightseeing in New York. Goodness... with all the electronic scannable junk on passports now, couldn't they just assign everyone a sketchiness ranking and only detain you if it exceeds, say, the level of Stephen Colbert? (I'm surprised that guy isn't in Guantanamo Bay yet, really.) Also, the lady at Logan Int'l said I looked fugly in my passport picture. Well, no, not really. She insisted the picture wasn't me and it was only after I produced my driver's license and she got a second opinion that I passed through the security checkpoint to leave the country. Yeah, I'm really photogenic like that. I got a restock of French books and summer clothing, so I'm set for the rest of break (including China). Now, instead of staring at that white spot of paint on my white ceiling and/or surfing the Internet reading random people's opinions about whether or not Britney Spears looks like a beached whale... I'll hopefully be reading slightly more entertaining fare such as "Love's Labour's Lost" and Pagnol's "Jean de Florette." Anyone remember French class? It was that movie from the '80s with Daniel Auteuil and Gerard Depardieu. The best part comes in the sequel, "Manon des Sources," though, when the supremely sexy Emmanuelle Beart shows up as Manon. That's on the same level of hawtness as getting Audrey Tautou to play a sketchy Turkish maid and titling the movie "Dirty Pretty Things." Haha, just kidding, dudes. Besides, Mai-K is still hoTTer. Also, today's the summer solstice, so it's been two years... and I'm a total sucker for meaningless symbolism (an oxymoron if ever there was). Current Mood: trivial Current Music: Valenti - BoA (9 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, June 15th, 2006
2:31 pm	distractions Everyday at work, I am painfully reminded of why the pure sciences are... well, to avoid offending anyone, not for me. I suppose the experiment formulations and data analysis take some brain power, but you usually don't get to do much of that unless you're at least a grad student or even postdoc. Regular, undergrad lab work seems rather mundane. Most of it is just knowing what stupid things not to do with dangerous chemicals. I don't know that chemical engineering is any better, but I don't know that it's any worse either. Maybe I'll just keep trying things until I find something I don't hate that makes decent money. I really haven't been very pragmatic about things like jobs, money and the like. I've put off learning useful things like programming in different languages and getting internships in favor of things I thought would be more fun: French literature and making plastic in a lab. It's only a slightly nerdier version of being a dumb blonde. I've also put off taking any biology classes simply because I didn't feel like it. But if I major in chemical engineering, chances are about 3:1 I'll be doing something biomedical in the next 10 years. I don't particularly like biology, but I think no biology is going to mean no (good) job. Which means no money. Which means no retiring to the Caribbean to drink peach daiquiris all day by the time I'm 23. So... I should probably learn to suck it up and register for some classes that start with 7. I was really trying to avoid or put off taking this 18-unit intro to bio lab, 7.02, but that's probably a bad idea. Taking a polymer or materials lab would fulfill graduation requirements just as well, but if all I wanted to do was graduate, I could switch to course 15 (management), take 36 units a semester for the rest of my time here and sleep 8 hours a day. Thing is... I can't even stay unconscious that long for more than two days in a row, so I should probably start taking advantage of MIT's "no credit max for non-freshmen" policy. And stop getting distracted by "fun" classes before I fulfill all those degree requirements. I used to say my biggest fear was failure, but I'm not sure that's true anymore. Failing means I didn't do anything useful. But wouldn't it be worse if I only did things that were morally... well, a bit sketchy? As Srinivas pointed out, the majority of chemical engineers (who don't go into pharma/biotech... which are also slightly ethically ambiguous) go into the beer, oil and weapon industries. Considering that my job for the summer is at the Institute of Soldier Nanotechnology... I may have to concede. I actually think the environment is kind of cool when it's not throwing hurricanes across the Gulf of Mexico and constantly dumping rain over Boston. That's why I eat no meat (well, not the only reason, but it helps), recycle paper and turn off all those damn lights in the bathroom that are on overnight because people are too lazy to turn them off after they use the toilet!... but that results in what, one pound less of CO2 emissions over the course of a year? What if I end up working at a job where I'm responsible for spewing a few hundred tons of it into the atmosphere per day? That would really be the ultimate suck. And to end on a slightly brighter note... movie pickings for the summer aren't particularly promising, but here are a few I want to watch: 6/09: Cars -- because that bucktooth tow truck is just way too cute. 6/16: The Lake House -- it's a remake of a Korean drama, and I heart Korean drama. =D 7/07: Pirates of the Caribbean 2 -- how can you not love Jack Sparrow? Maybe I'll take my sister to see "How to Eat Fried Worms" (8/25) as well. Current Mood: sketchy Current Music: Fly to the Sky - Maybe God Knows (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, June 6th, 2006
6:09 pm	Ennui I'm waiting for my reaction to finish (I added extra catalyst but I'll probably still be here until 7-ish), and since no one has written anything sketchy on my Facebook wall for me to be amused at, it's blog time! This weekend was cold and rainy, but that didn't deter me from window-shopping 'til I dropped. I bought a bird toy from Galleria for one of my cousins and a handkerchief from Filene's Basement for my grandpa. All I need to do now is find a real New York (not Yankees) cap and some not-particularly-cheap-looking New England souvenirs. Haymarket and Chinatown are oh-so-sketchy (that's my new favorite word now) but oh-so-awesome. You get a lot of vendors calling you "honey" and "sweetie" (well, either that or "bitch," I suppose), but hey, whatever gets me those orgasmically-good, juicy, overripe, squishable yellow peaches for a quarter each. ^.^ And on my way back, I walked the wrong way and ended up in Quincy Market (Aquarium) instead of Faneuil Hall (Gov't Center). Definitely earmarking that one for another weekend. Maybe this upcoming one, if the weather's good. Today I had baklava for the first time (that I know of). Wow. I'm surprised the Greeks aren't known for having diabetes, with all the honey in that thing. Massive post-lunch headache, but that's okay. I'm still up for trying any meatless menu at least once. ...Actually, I kind of want to try North African food, and there's this Ethiopian restaurant with awesome reviews called Addis Red Sea, but I have a feeling none of my friends are adventurous enough to go to a restaurant where people sit at coffee table height and eat with their hands. Current Mood: ditzy (1 Comment |Comment on this)