Thursday, September 29, 2005

follow through

I had these things I was going to say, things I was going to do. I backed down. I couldn't follow through. I never was good at this kind of thing.

Really though, it's for the best. I'm not sure what I was thinking in the first place.

Wednesday, September 28, 2005

afterthought

Projecting was pretty fun. Looks like it'll be a fun show this quarter, even if the movies aren't particularly compelling. That all turned out so well, and I'm finding myself ever more amused with how everything else is working out. Yeah forgive my being cryptic. Anything more and the people involved would probably catch on and give me shit about it.

finances

So when is it ok to ask somebody about their finances? Obviously there are situations where it's ok. Namely, when it's volunteered. But presumably, most of the time, for varying reasons it's considered impolite or worse still, a terrible faux pas, to ask somebody about their income or expenditures. I mean sure, there are some people I will freely discuss my finances with. Some, for example, because they are underwriting my life, that is, obviously my parents can and do feel free to inquire about my spending habits, because much of it is their money. Some people get to ask because I told them about some grand scheme or they're collaborating with me or are simply close enough to me that I had already volunteered it at some point. I guess then you've got the people who might have been privy once, but are no longer welcome to it. But short of overstating it, bluntly, it's hard to convey as much to them.

And so I guess it's probably convenient that it's usually not something people ask, because it can sometimes be uncomfortable denying somebody an answer, and worse still if they press for why not. It'd be easier if they stuck with the guidelines, silly though they may think them, and didn't ask at all.

Tuesday, September 27, 2005

on break

So I'm sitting here at my computer, tired of doing practice tests and math homework. I'm $70 bucks poorer because I had to change a flight itinerary to accomodate the fact that I've got a math midterm on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. I'm in a state of near panic about this LSAT and I'm not really sure why.

Rather, I'm not sure why I'm even taking it. I got it into my head sometime early this calendar year that I might want to apply. I even did a fair bit of prep last Spring. Then I talked to some people, and in general got the impression that maybe I didn't really want to go to law school. Sorry folks, no refund on that test though. Well, maybe there is, but since I'm taking it on Saturday, and have prepared so much, it seems a waste not to take it at this point, though that's pretty stupid logic. Espically if I do shitty on it anyway.

I have this imagined situation where I get my score back in the mail, and I open it, and I freak out. I read the score, calmly drop it on my desk and go and do something stupid. I'm not even sure what that stupid thing would be. The scenario changes every time I rethink it. I wonder what might be read into there, dreaming up how I will deal with a bad LSAT score. So optimistic, right?

But whatever. So far, the school year has been pretty bland. I haven't really seen many people. Said hi to a few people, seem to have fallen out of touch with a few others. My classes look like they'll be... ok. I just don't feel excited about anything. I'm not impassioned about my classes, my major, this school, this city, anything. I'm not even sure I ever really have been.

All these talks and emails telling me I need to get on top of finding a job serve only to make me wonder what I even want to do. It seems short sighted and foolish to go blindly pursuing jobs I wouldn't even want to do. But at some point I need to swallow my desire for something interesting to do, and realize that there are bills that will need to get paid too. How do I balance all these competing needs?

I can't stand to sit around my apartment. It's very stifling to sit around with only homework, downloaded TV shows and 8-year-old computer games for company. I think perhaps it says something about my social life here when I think that I'd probably find better company were I to spend my time sitting in the library instead.
I've been on break for a while now, but it's not even 10 PM yet. There's nothing I really want to do right now. Maybe I'll go to sleep, though I'm not tired at all.

I was supposed to do laundry, but now all the machines are in use. Maybe I'll write some letters. I'm not up to the task of dealing with apologies just yet.

Monday, September 26, 2005

phoenix rising

It was weird going to the event and looking around and finding nobody I really wanted to talk to.

Sunday, September 25, 2005

would it be weird?

Only if you ask first.

Thursday, September 22, 2005

a random cross-section

Yesterday, I decided to take out this poster I have, and flatten it such that I might hang it up soon. To do so, I grabbed a random selection of books off my shelf and placed them around the poster.

Today, I was looking at the books that happened to end up around my poster, and thought it painted an interesting little view of me. Here's what ended up on top (most are single books, but a few are little stacks of paperbacks, but looking from where I am, I can't see any but the top books):

Quicksilver, by Neal Stephenson
A First Course in Probability, by Sheldon Ross (text for STAT 251 if I recall correctly)
Java - Software Solutions, by Lewis and Lofts (text for this silly CMSC course I took first year for elective credit)
The Theory of Poker, by David Sklansky
Thursday Night Poker, by Peter O. Steiner
Watchmen, by Alan moore
Backgammon, by Paul Magriel
A First Course in Abstract Algebraa, by John B. Fraleigh (text for MATH 25something, Basic Algebra I-III)
Mona Lisa Overdrive, by William Gibson
The Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger
Catch-22, by Joseph Heller
Advanced Calculus - A Course in Mathematical Analysis, by Patrick M. Fitzpatrick (text for MATH 203-205, Analysis in Rn)


To me, it seems like an uncharacteristically math and computer science heavy selection. Though I guess last year I didn't actually take much ECON at all.

idle hands are the devil's tools

It's terrible. Even though I sit here at my desk doing practice LSATs for large chunks of my day, I find myself struggling to fill the time nonetheless. And when I get bored, I get to the Internet, and when I get to the Internet, I always end up stumbling across some random gadget or deal or thing that I convince myself that I should buy.

So, today, I didn't buy anything yet, but, the seeds have been sown. I imagine if my interest doesn't dissipate in a couple of days, I'll probalby end up buying stuff I don't really need, but for the moment really want. Already I've purchased one of those one-use CVS video recorders, and ebay'd a cable such that I might try and hack it. I barely even know how to use a soldering iron!

I've only been here without anything to do for two days! Maybe tomorrow I'll go downtown on a search for Shaeffer ink cartidges to distract myself from buying random shit. Yes, I realize that to stop myself from buying one set of things I will instead spend money to transport myself somewhere where I can buy a different set of things. But I expect I'll actually use the ink, unless of course I do something stupid and impulsively buy gold-colored ink or something.

Wednesday, September 21, 2005

slow day

Nobody's around here in Chicago. Really, the only thing it is around here is depressing.

Monday, September 19, 2005

eating out alone

It used to be that I was really uncomfortable with the idea of eating out alone. Prior to just over an hour ago, it was something I'd never done before. Well, not really, in that I'm not counting something like a McDonalds or Subway or other fast food. That is, in a sit-down restaurant, I went and dined alone. Not only that, but for some peculiar reason, I was the only person there. People came in and out to carry out from time to time, but it was pretty weird being the only person in the restaurant.

Things are different when there's only you. It's so quiet, and the service was exceptionally fast (as expected, really). Of course, because you're the only one there, everything out of place is obviously on you. Drop your glass? Cell phone ring? The looks all come straight to you. Of course, I'm only speculating on that, as I had a pretty uneventful meal, and there was never cause for any nasty vibes.

It was nice to eat alone. A good bit of peace and quiet. I just sat, spent some time thinking about the coming week, planning out the things I need to get done. I watched people walk by on the street. I paid a lot more attention to things like the silverware arrangement and where I've put down my glass after taking my drinks. The experience was calming, in a way.

I think it might have been more awkward if I had done this if the place was crowded, but as it was it was a fun experience.

Walking back from my dinner, I walked past some people I know, but for whatever reason it seems they didn't notice me. This is stranger still because the streets in Chicago are fucking empty around here. It's weird being in Chicago having spent time in New York. It's so much darker, quieter and less full of people.

It's kind of fun recognizing people who don't recognize me though. I couldn't say why.

notes from terminal B

Typed while waiting to board in the free-wireless-free zone that is LGA.

Here I sit in La Guardia airport at about 1:20 PM, this fine Monday afternoon, on the 19th of September, 2005. Today marks the close of my stay in New York City, and I will be flying to what I've lately been calling home, in Chicago. Honestly it doesn't really feel much more like home than anywhere else, such as Beijing or even the Columbia University housing system, only just a little. That is, in Chicago, I live in a room that is actually mine, rather than a guest space in somebody else's house or apartment, or worse yet a common area.

But, this was not supposed to be a write up on my lack of a place to call home. I thought I might spend the next hour or so reflecting on how the Summer has gone.

New York City is a fun place to be for the Summer. I don't know how well I'd like being there year round, though I won't say now that I think I wouldn't enjoy living in the area. I don't want to say something like "I grew up a lot this Summer" because I don't think that's really true. To say that there was a complete absence of personal growth, however, would also be a lie. Unfortunately, at the present moment, I can't really think of any particularly interesting or telling examples of such, so, never mind that.

Maybe it's too soon for me to earnestly reflect on my trip. Really it hasn't even quite yet ended, as I sit in this limbo of gate B7. There's a lot of people sitting here who are about to board a 2:00 PM flight to Chicago, while my flight isn't until 2:59.

So what did I do this Summer? Well the easiest part to answer is that I did a part time internship at Pro Bono Net. What do they do? Well they run these two families of websites. One stemming from probono.net and the others from lawhelp.org. On probono.net, lawyers and students and legal professionals and the like can sign up and coordinate their work, share information, take advantage of group tools like calendars and the like with the aim of promoting pro bono work in a variety of practice areas and regions. Lawhelp is the sort of public access version, in that on the various lawhelp sites, there is information available by state for a variety of legal topics and how to get help from local legal services providers and so forth. But enough about what they do, all this is easily readable on their "About Us" pages. What did I do? In short, a variety of tasks that one might typically associate with the title of "Intern", ranging from scanning documents to helping to coordinate events they were running by calling the invitees list, to finding contact information for people who attended this conference the Executive Director spoke at to helping to manage a listserv that was formed as part of their newly created Katrina relief and support site.

But PBN really only accounted for part of my Summer. Another big thing that characterized my Summer was meeting all these new people at Columbia. While my host, Ani is a senior now, and thus has pretty well established social circles there, I didn't really know anybody. Being on campus all Summer provided me with this fun experience of meeting a bunch of new people, largely through people I did know, though not quite entirely so. In addition to having met and briefly started establishing friendships in New York, this Summer my hand written correspondence has reached new heights and though it remains to be seen what will come of that, it's been fun for me anyway. And finally I also reestablished some old friendships which had been languishing due to a lack of communication. A friend of mine who I've known nearly since birth, but hadn't talked to for a few years, happened to be in NYC for the Summer, and though I didn't get around to seeing him until just before he left, it was a lot of fun talking with him.

Last Summer I feel like I didn't get as much of a chance to socialize in the same ways. Unsurprising, really, given that I was on a different continent, separated by a time difference of +13 hours and surrounded by people speaking a language I wasn't very good at. I still missed a bunch of people I would have liked to see though, and hopefully come Thanksgiving, I'll finally have caught up with everybody I've been meaning to.

Being witness to the lives of other people has provided me with a new perspective on... student life. I guess there's just a lot of things I hadn't really considered doing or not doing or whatever, and I think that my habits have been changed for the better as a result of that. Well, it's actually too early for me to say that, but, I like to think that in the coming month I will be able to do at least a couple things differently.

I have become a big supporter of fountain pens this Summer. In years past, I had considered buying one and trying it out, but never really did much research hand so didn't realize that I could have bought a cheapo pen to try out for as little as six bucks. After a couple months of that, I've now taken the plunge and made the next step up in terms of pens. Alongside my preference for nicer pens, I have developed a new appreciation of not-cheap paper. I suspect as a consequence some people will further get the impression that I am snobby or something.

More than a couple times this Summer, people have told me that both in person and online, I can be somewhat unapproachable, in that apparently my not being so forthcoming with details about my personal life somehow also gives people the impression that it's also not ok for them to ask questions. I guess that's not such an outrageous assumption, but I didn't realize that I gave such an impression of inaccessibility. Note that this is not a complaint. I certainly don't mind not having to put forth whatever details about myself. I was talking about this with another friend of mine who's a bit of a stickler on forming sentences properly and formatting them well too in instant messages. That is, proper capitalization, grammar, spelling and punctuation. Spelling not so much, actually, given that these days in-line spell checkers are readily available for all sorts of chat software. Wait, what was the point I was trying to make here? Something about how this apparently makes us inaccessible but it it's dumb that it should. Though it is fun to condescend.

Hmm it seems the flight before mine is boarding now, kind of late though, as it's 1:55 and the departure time is supposed to be 2:00.

Hahah there was an announcement asking for upgraders or something and the emphasis of the sentence was hilarious. "And you get unlimited snacks and beverages all the way to Ohio!" I guess you had to be there.

All right, I'm tired of writing this. There isn't really much I want to say, and I'm starving so I'm going to go pay out the nose for some shitty airport terminal snack or something for breakfast. Maybe I'll be able to eat and come back before the seats at the gate all fill up again with people waiting for my flight.

Saturday, September 17, 2005

people without names

EDIT: September 18, 2005 -- It's been brought to my attention that apparently the post I referred to and all that doesn't seem to any longer exist. This strikes me as either craven or coincidence and I'm not sure what to make of it.

So I was looking over the logs for my site and saw there was some Chicago dialup user who decided to spend some 30 minutes or so reading my site. They were referred from my 43things site, so I assumed they found me from googling my name. I briefly considered who that might be, and when I couldn't figure it out, gave up and paid it no mind.

But then, shortly thereafter, I noticed this shitless character linking to me and I get curious. So I go, and I read the latest (at the time of writing) entry. Well, let me tell you, I have firmly landed my suspicions as to who was reading on this guy.

So, with that said, I guess I may as well address the questions posited by this Sam fellow. Actually, I'll go ahead with full disclosure of everything I can think of. I have met this Sam character in person, though it seems apparent that he does not recall as much. If I recall correctly, I know of this character because we shared a Greek Thought and Lit course way back when, and moreover, I believe he's been working in Harper at times when I have checked out books or something.

Yes, it is peculiar that I should know of these other people. To be fair, those are pretty much outdated entries on delicious, and this has now been rectified. As to the rest of the so-called friend overlap, I'm afraid it is so, there are people that your friends know, who are not you.

And now, in all honesty, I'm rather quite surprised at how much has been read about me. My last.fm profile hasn't been updated since the beginning of the Summer, when I stopped having a computer of my own to play music on, and I'm not even sure who Rilo Kiley is. I'm not sure why he's so paranoid, but then, I don't know why I am either. Ok that's enough tense confusion for one night. I haven't even googled this guy yet.

Friday, September 16, 2005

'wiches and a nap

So now that I've been here for some 3 full months or so, and I'm leaving on Monday, I finally decided to get off my ass and go check out two things that caught my eye a long time ago. These things were a nap at Metronaps and a sandwich from 'Wichcraft. Though these made for what seems to me a somewhat costly excursion, it was fun and informative too.

First I hopped on a train and made my way to the Bryant Park 'Wichcraft. There, I spent a while standing in front of the kiosk considering the offerings on the menu. Since so many of them looked so delicious, I ultimately ended up falling back on an old favorite of mine, and got their roast beef sandwich. It was on toasted ciabatta, and on the sandwich was roast beef, grilled red onions (red onions are so tasty), radish slaw and black-pepper aioli. In spite of the kind of intimidating cost of $9.75 or something like that for a lunch-sized sandwich, it was perhaps the tastiest roast beef sandwich I've ever eaten.

As an aside, while I was waiting in line, some guy who looked just like Elijah Wood came up and ordered some sandwich. I have no idea if it was just an uncanny resemblence.

Anyhow, I got my sandwich and it was delicious. If I had known earlier, I probably would have made a better effort at trying to sample other delicious sandwiches before I left this city. I wasn't so hungry earlier though I now regret not having forced some cookies or something down as well. I'm told that their dessert kiosk thing is equally worth visiting as their sandwich one.

After enjoying my food in the park, I walked down 5th to the Empire State Building in search of this Metronaps place. When I got there, the door was actually locked as the one person staffing it was at the bathroom or something. After a few minutes, she showed up and let me in. I dropped my stuff in a locker, and she led me to one of their pod things. It reminded me a little of a dentist chair in terms of it's elevating feet and stuff, but in spite of this bad association, it was very comfortable. I put on their noise cancelling headphones and tried to sleep.

I woke up when the chair vibrated and the lights came back on, so I did manage to fall asleep, though I couldn't say for how long. I wasn't actually so tired beforehand and so I don't know if I really got as much out of it as I might have otherwise. When it was all done though, I feel as thought it costs a bit too much for normal use. Rather, I find it hard to believe that people would buy individual naps because they seem prohibitively expensive. However, my perspective is that of an unpaid student, while some rich business person might better justify the cost.

Nonetheless, I am still interested in the notion of having a pod available for my own use. It seems like it'd be pretty neat to have a napping pod. Moreso if I were in fact napping regularly.

And that's about all there was to it. I got back on the subway down at Penn station and headed back.

personal stationery?

Paging down through the news aggregator this morning, I stumbled across this link to the NYTimes. It's an article about some woman who decided to go out and buy personal stationery. Ultimately she spent something around $500 dollars for a set of 100 cards and envelopes and so forth. This strikes me as... a bit much, though it did give me pause to consider my recent choices of envelopes and paper.

Lately in my written correspondence, I've been choosing whatever envelopes and paper I could find laying around or if necessary, purchase for the least amount. It seems like it wouldn't take very much to improve to the level of, well, I don't know, but better, for not too much cost. Of course, I expect that as the Summer comes to a close, my letter writing will drop off drastically as well. Such is life when suddenly I'm living within a few blocks of some of the people I was writing to.

With that in mind, I guess I'll continue to not use fancy stationery and instead I'll just quote a line from the article I like, "In this age of e-mail and cellphone text messages, a handwritten note with a real stamp in the upper corner arrives with the urgency of a telegram."

Thursday, September 15, 2005

parting friends

Some time ago, I read something that ended with the line "but your break up with her was your break up with me." Or at least something to that effect. The more I think about how I was going to phrase this entry, the more I think it will ultimately come across the wrong way regardless of the choice of words.

Mostly I'm only writing this because when I thought up the title I didn't want to pass up using it. This I suspect was probably a bad way to think about things, as really it's just a dumb pun.

Tuesday, September 13, 2005

Tables, they turn sometimes.

Last year when Doc showed the 2005 Animation Show, there was this one called Hello (imdb, animation show). At the time, I thought it amusing, but ultimately not very noteworthy, when compared to something like the hilarious Ward 13 (imdb, animation show). Lately though, I was reminded of Hello by not just one but many... well not conversations but brief interactions with other people in which it really seems to only be snippets of lyrics and quotes back and forth.

(As an aside, this is a fun toy to play with, though it's not quite what I am talking about.)

That is, I or they would leave put up an away message or something which would be a fragment out of a movie quote or song lyrics or something of that sort, and then the other would reply in kind, with a different, but related, fragment. Maybe this back and forth would be punctuated by a few brief non-quoted remarks, but mostly the conversation would sputter out, never having really begun.

I don't know, it just seemed peculiar how it seems to me like I've had unusually many of these exchanges in the absence of other more substantial things to discuss.

Thursday, September 08, 2005

video game article

I don't know what the people I know who are applying to med schools want to do, however, I did find this article about laparoscopic surgery and video games to be interesting. Having had some such procedures done on myself, I can only wonder if they were performing at 30% better than others.

Wednesday, September 07, 2005

a charming playlist

Madrugada - Quite Emotional
The Weakerthans - Left and leaving
Trespassers William - Lie in the Sound
Rilo Kiley - The Good That Won't Come Out
Thomas Dybdahl - I need love, baby love, not trouble
Ane Brun - Song No. 6
Antony and the Johnsons - Cripple and Starfish
Johnny Cash - I'm on Fire
Joni Mitchell - A Case of You
The Shins - Kissing the Lipless
Kathryn Williams - Beatles
Flunk - Six Seven Times
David Ruiz - Goldenstar
bright paper werewolves - Atom Eyes
Minor Majority - Then You Said Something
Magnet - On Your Side
Damien Rice - The Blower's Daughter
Johnny Thunders - She's So Untouchable

though to be honest, I've only ever heard a couple of those.

Tuesday, September 06, 2005

ties that bind

I'm upset for no particular reason. There are a lot of things that are bothering me in a mild way, but no individual one really accounts for this present feeling of malaise. I think mostly it was just an unfortunate confluence of anxiety causing events, which has left me feeling, well, just... down.

I wrote the preceding lines a few hours ago, and have since mostly put it out of mind, though I have given some new ideas some thought. I remember a while ago I wrote about the idea of cutting ties and leaving town and just moving on. I called it "slipping away". I don't think I could pull it off. Or rather, I spent some more time thinking about the idea of leaving, and I don't think I could successfully execute. A big obstacle for me, I think, is that I am bad at cutting ties with people, and the notion of just dropping everything and becoming so totally isolated from people I know really bothers me.

Sure, there have been plenty of people I met, and departed from, and promptly forgot. Maybe not forgot entirely, maybe yes, but forgot enough to not care any more about them, and they don't cost me any peace of mind by lingering in my memory. I mean, it'd be nice to keep in touch, I imagine, but probably a lot of time would be lost to the task of maintaining contact, more than I'd be willing to put into it.

I mean, right now, I feel like I'm at this point where over the last few months, I've distanced myself from many of the people I knew, and even this seems very awkward to me. And why or how did this happen? Well a lot of things happened that led to this, but that's actually not really terribly interesting or important. The thing is, this sense of being so disconnected isn't really one I am finding I particularly like, and so the idea of picking up and leaving seems all the more unappealing because of that.

Clearly, this is affecting my ability to put my thoughts together coherently, as when I reread what I've typed so far, it looks to me like a rambling mess. I think I'll try to focus on my work for now and get back to thinking about my personal life some other time.

Sunday, September 04, 2005

Kid Show?

I was flipping through channels last night, just killing time waiting for a commercial break to end on another, and I happened upon the old X-Men cartoon. And in the minute I was watching, I was surprised when Beast is talking to Cyclops about who-knows-what and he quotes Emily Dickinson. I guess it just seemed strange to me that this show, which I had always assumed was targeted at a group of kids who wouldn't know who Dickinson was at all, would be quoting her.

For reference, the quote was something like "Parting is all we know of heaven and all we need to know of hell." I can only assume that it had something to do with Jean Grey/Phoenix/whoever, if memory serves.