Lindsey you better be going to see this guy because he's from Chicago and performs live there all the time and is wicked funny

Hannibal Buress. Listen to him. Laugh at his jokes. Love him. If you're Lindsey or in Chicago, see him live. Or I will be very angry with you passing up the opportunity.

Truth.

I have fifteen pounds to lose.

Sucker

Someone brought me flowers yesterday. It was hokey, so friendly and sentimental it was almost suave, and so ... nice.

I wonder what is going on with me right now that I could be so easily bowled over by a bunch of flowers in a cheesy red plastic vase.

30 days

Well maybe for like 29, but that's how long I have to move into a new place. I'm really scared I won't find one!

Updates

Evacuation Warnings, Statistics

NY Times

Four years later

San Diego is burning again.

Updates

Photos

The big 2-2

Happy Birthday Ms Lindsey!
Today is the first anniversary of your 21st birthday :)

Hundred Dollar Baby

My trachcan is a graveyard for bugs. I've got all kinds, but it's mostly spiders, moth, and silverfish, all smushed with whatever book I happen to be reading. And I feel pretty bad about it! I went through this whole great phase towards the end of my stay in LA, where I captured the bugs in a cup and released them outside of my apt. But the owners of this place have this amazing garden in the backyard that I haven't been able to enjoy because it's cold and there are so many bugs attracted to all the plants. As a result, whenever I open my windows for some fresh air, at the end of the day when I'm cleaning up my room, I always find bugs hiding underneath a bag or my pajamas. There are so many and I'm so tired after a full day of work that I just end up smashing them with a book.

Sorry about the boring post about bugs in my apartment, but I feel really guilty about killing so many bugs. Especially after a full day at my work. This kind of helps

What also helps is It's Always Sunny in Philidelphia. The guys who write that show are messed up in the head, in the best way possible. I also like that they use Danny DeVito to promote their show when really the show is really helping Danny DeVito.

Belated Chronicle

Wednesday, Aug. 29., 5:30 a.m.
Harvard MBTA Station - I'm alone with my small duffel, bus tickets, and an old woman carrying many plastic CVS bags. Thankfully (for the sake of packing) and unfortunately (for the sake of my make-believe vanity), I am going to New York now and not during Fashion Week, so my ugly little duffel holds only extra socks, an extra pair of underwear, toiletries, a towel, and a sleeping bag--no Diane von Furstenburg, no absurd heels this time; there will be no parties for the crashing.

South Station, 6 a.m.

State Street

South Station Bus Terminal, above the escalator

Central Park, 11:00 a.m.
I arrive in the city around 11 a.m. It's hot and the last hour was spent listening to another passenger behind me make painfully ignorant comments about Harlem as we made the inch by inch journey (This point in the bus ride is always the least comfortable; everyone is awake and aware of arrival, but everyone still has to stay on the bus for another hour while the bus squeezes its way to the Port Authority). I am waiting for a friend to call. I toy with the idea going to the American Natural History Museum, as I have just seen the Squid and the Whale a few days prior. I muck around Central Park and marvel at the pages of erotic hotlines in the Village Voice instead.

Reminds me of the opening sequence of "The Critic."


Realizing that my companion won't be arriving any time soon, I go to the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum. It is free because they are renovating.

A solar-powered cooking contraption.


Flowers.

He was so excited about the ice cream. Cameo by my sneakers. My companion has called, I am in the final stretch of the wait in front of the Guggenheim.


Finally inside, my friend having arrived and both of us having paid the astronomical entrance fee.

The money shot. Couldn't resist.

I thought his shirt and blank expression complemented the museum nicely.
Next we head to Astoria for the last screening of the outdoor foreign film festival in Socrates Sculpture Park. Put on by the Museum of the Moving Image.
We watch "Crossing the Bridge," a documentary about music in Istanbul. We eat Turkish food. We don't stay for the second feature about bossa nova.

Rather than paying for $40 for a bed at the Hostel International with the wild, backpacking Europeans, I take my generous companion's offer to put me up at his house on Long Island. After munching plantain chips at Empanada Mama in Hell's Kitchen and bemoaning our underage status, we head out on the LIRR.

Oyster Bay, 1:30 a.m.
I stay in the "Library with Bed." I have pulled a volume of chronicles of Siberian travels. I decide that I want my children to have a library with bed. The next morning I meet his parents and they talk to me about art history and their artist friends.

The next morning, early, I return to the city alone-- I tunnel through the humidity in the subway and resurface in China Town. I hope the absurdity of the mannequin's breasts is evident in this photo.

A few blocks and a witnessing of an arrest later, I find myself in Little Italy, where the stalls of ChinaTown morph suddenly into cafes with faux marble tabletops and gaudy red, green, and white signage. I take a coffee and pastry break.

Fire escape; Italian pride.

Finally, I come to my long-awaited (say 2 years?) destination: 11 Mercer Street. And here, my make-believe vanity is lost forever. As I've mentioned, I decided consciously not to bring another outfit for my 2-day jaunt in New York City, let alone a fashionable frock and flats which may have at least shielded me with superficial, designer dignity before I ruined my future in the social circles of Manhattan forever.

No, instead, I enter the Visionaire gallery in a Banana Republic tee slightly damp with sweat, jeans of a wrong, mismatched wash, and half-broken sneakers from Taiwan whose "label" is scratched out with Sharpie marker. I muster up all my courage to ring the buzzer, and in that fateful motion, I think, lose it all. I hem and haw to the girl sitting at the desk buying Beyonce tracks from the iTunes store, and muck around the spare, one-room gallery. The walls of the "exhibition" are merely white, temporary partitions, and there is doorway which coyly suggests the existence of deeper chambers. In my sweaty delirium, having just emerged from the gaudiness of Little Italy and the smuttiness of China Town, I think it would be a good idea to explore.

The second I slide back the partition door I can feel the conversation and my dignity run out of the room. Do I turn around and go quickly? Do I act with confidence and browse like I belong? The young man and the chic woman siting at a table folding invitations look up at me. I nod and smile in acknowledgment and uneasily look around. I am positively choking on the awkwardness of the situation when finally the woman puts me out of my misery with a patronizing look, "Um. I think she's looking for you." I turn around and the iTunes girl is frantically, "Oh, goddammit"ly coming after me and making every gesture short of pulling me out by the elbow to shoo me out. I leave the gallery shortly thereafter.

I catch my breath and pretend to feel human and wonder why China Town borders SoHo (who could possibly ever be appropriately dressed for both? oh, right.) Escape to the New York Public Library. If there's anything I've done more of at Harvard than lose my fashion sense it's read. I go to the History of Art and Architecture reading room and read about McKim, Mead, and White and New York Row Housing. It's mildly calming and air conditioned. I debate trying to make it to the Statue of Liberty or Coney Island but my nerves are failing me. I pack up for Port Authority.

State Street. 10 p.m.

Basically my new job is to keep you updated on Ray

“I was afraid when I first met them that they'd be like their onstage personas, but they're all really nice guys,” Suen said of his Louis XIV band mates. “I have come to realize, though, that none of my pants are tight enough to be in this band.”

Considering his prodigious musical skills, Suen's wardrobe shortcomings won't be a problem.

Gee whiz, I'd forgotten how clever journalists can be. What a linguistic gem. (I don't mind so much the man's repeated drooling, printed messes of unbridled joy only because they're over my deserving brother, but really? I wish someone else would write about you, already. This guy makes me vom a little in my mouth every time I read . Lindsey, do you think you could plug Ray in the Jewish World News?)

Oh, but who am I kidding, I love Ray enough to smile at things like this:

[Suen's] new gig came about after O (of fluf and Reeve Oliver fame) recommended him as perhaps the only violinist in town who could single-handedly fill the role of the 30-piece, Electric Light Orchestra-inspired string section featured on Louis XIV's next album, due out early next year.

So baller.

Read more here.

My Brother's a Rock Star

Bona Fide. So bright that he's gotta wear sunglasses at night.

He's touring with these dudes all over this dirt-mound. Go see him! Say hello and tell him his sister thinks those glasses are just plain silly!

thought you should know...

I have a job. (<--that's a link)

Oh Well, Okay.

So maybe it's not as easy as just saying so.

I'm choosing classes now, finding I'm not that interested in some of the prospects, and getting really nervous about my whimsical dream of being an architect. I have no qualifications, no experience, and I feel locked in to academic obligations that aren't going to lead to the acquisition to either of those things.

I don't really know who to go to for advice, either. I'm very much more than a little lost, in a way that I haven't ever been while at school. I've always had some conviction or another for the classes I was taking (I'm pretty sure I even came up with a good justification for Choral Conducting freshman year), but now I am not sure why I would take "Body Image in French Visual Culture" (I'm not) and realizing that I can't take the studio and history courses I would like to take because I need to graduate. I am doing things like playing ultimate frisbee and working on a shabby literary magazine when really I should be applying for monkey work entry level positions at an architecture firm so that I can really figure out what I want to do with myself.

Man, I am cranky.

92067

Rancho Santa Fe is the 3rd most expensive zip code in the US.

Rich Motherf***ers.

My roommate listens to Chinese music I don't understand.

Eric went to see Tally Hall tonight. By himself. I wanted to see them last night, when they were San Francisco but I wasn't willing to go by myself. I probably should have, but, that's hard.

Instead, I'm in my apartment, watching Freaks and Geeks and City of God.

Or reading while listening to the NPR live broadcast of the National.

Or on my laptop while listening to the NPR live broadcast of the National.

The National's pretty good.

another thunderstorm is brewing

I should make a photo essay.

LeeAnn predicted that the troops would come back to Half What in September, and it seems as if she was right. September is a good time to start and finish things. The good news is that my calender is just a little more crowded this month than last month (not just because i'm going to see Andrew Bird this weekend and Rilo Kiley next weekend), and my e-mail inbox and phone are just a just a little more happening since I applied for a billion jobs last week. I don't want to talk about it until I have a little money in my bank account and a couple more pairs of black pants in my closet, but I feel like i'm standing with my bathing suit on and my toesies over the lip of a bright, sunny, glistening pool (to steal a well-worn metaphor from a good friend). The only problem is they left the cover on. So i'm waiting for them to take it off. They're beginning to peel it back.

Thankfully, vats of water aren't the only thing that will keep me cool this week, because it suddenly got a little bit cooler. Beginning: today. And last weekend. In fact, while my family was complaining about the 90 degree heat and lack-of-power in California, I was lounging in the cool evening on Navy Pier, having just survived a trip on the Ferris Wheel. But yesterday it was disgusting. And I know I have to buy a big damn winter coat soon, and i'll be complaining about the cold in a few short months, but right now this respite is nice. My little hidden kitchen in the back of the house with no windows and no air circulation needs a break from the humidity. And my skin needs a break from the harsh, dry (but cold) air of my old little window air conditioner.

I still have yet to decide what warrants posting on a la deriva, and what on Half What. But what the hell, it's September, I belong here.

There were a lot of whats in that sentence.

A Night of Rental Movies...

I'm going to make friends up here, right?

Let's just get one thing straight:

I want to be an architect.

I'm alive!

Okay, if you guys get an email from blogger, totally sorry about that one, I forgot what my login was and they just sent an email to everyone. Also, crazily enough, I honestly forgot this blog existed. I'm sorry, that was really lame of me. Anyways lots have been going on, and I dunno how much you guys know, so here's a rundown:

1) Didn't get into medical school

2) I'm okay with 1) because this means that I can get a job and be financially independent by the next time I apply, meaning I get better loans.

3) The other reason that I'm okay with 1) is that I found out that my dad wants to start his own company and this makes it way easier for him to do that since he doesn't have to worry about paying anything for me (as opposed to having to pay for medical school tuiton and living expenses) for the next couple of years.

4) I've got a job doing research at UCSF, like a real "I'm on salary job not just washing dishes for 10 dollars an hour job"... which means that I'm moving to San Francisco. Currently, I'm looking for apartments.

5) It's been about a month since I got back from Southeast Asia... you guys knew that I was going there for a month, right? Anyways, me and Eric have pictures up on Facebook if you guys are interested. I can't wait to go traveling again!

Edit: Been reading the older posts, the layout looks great leeann. Your posts do intimidate the crap out of me to write anything because I sound like a kindergartner next to you (no offense all you 5-yr olds out there reading this), but they're great too.

remmuS: A Photo Essay

Suckwagon, 2007 BUDA Summer League Champs: In some absurd twist of events, our 8th seeded summer league team won the Boston Ultimate Disc Alliance's summer tournament this past weekend in Devens. We're a bunch of Harvard alumni and students, and we are called Suckwagon. We cheer for dysentery and cholera because that's the stuff that kills you in Oregon Trail (a game in which, I am told, you ride in wagons). I call it an absurd twist of events because for most of the first day of the tournament, we felt and played like this...
ZSRT has died of cholera. Here Lies ZSRT: This is a kid we call "Scuttle." I find that our Harvard teams aren't big on cheering and nicknaming, but a few names stick. Like this one. I think he is called Scuttle because one of his middle names is Sebastian, and Sebastian is a crab in the little mermaid. Speaking of mermaids...
The East Coast: I discovered that East "Coast" is not figurative and that there are beaches, too. And some of them are glorious and lovely, like Singing Beach in Manchester-by-the-Sea. Granted, it costs a $5 entrance fee and an hour and a half of travel on the subway and commuter rail, but that's the price you pay when you live in a godforsaken place like this. I went out to Singing Beach three times (luxury!) this summer, where the water is frigid (brainfreezes from going under!) and there are no burritos nearby. However, there is...
"Eat More Ice Cream": On the ten minute walk between the commuter rail station and Singing Beach is a little ice cream shack belonging to a one Captain Dusty. Not shown in the picture is the flag which commands passersby to "eat more ice cream."

Fresh Frozen Chinese-Takeout: In spite of the captain's orders, my roommate and I tried to avoid consuming an all ice-cream diet. Pictured here is what appears to be Shaw's attempt at spicing up the frozen vegetables section.
More sweets: My mom came to visit, and we hit up the best eats and sleeps of Boston and Cambridge--The Charles Hotel, Casablanca, Legal Seafood, Changsho, Henrietta's Table brunch, Upstairs on the Square, and of course, on the last night, Finale's for dessert and the appropriate dessert wine (here, a Muscat, I believe).

Yellow fever: Went to Chicago, played frisbee, hung out with the Simpsons (and Lindsey!).
Became a Simpson.

The Lube: I worked in a space known fondly as the Cube. It is part of the Media Lab at MIT. It looks like this. It is a Lab... in a Cube. By another absurd and welcome turn of events, I will keep working with this professor and possibly accompany him to his opening in Beijing next year.
Fighting the power, lo-budge: We do wacky things like (clockwise from left) make Unmanned Aerial vehicles to track anti-immigrant vigilante groups on the U.S. - Mexico border, jackets which can be activated to shock aggressive attackers, and unmanned ground vehicles to protest outside Foster-Miller, maker of such military devices as SWORDS.DeWolfe: My humble abode.
The first thing I did when I got to my humble abode was put up the things that reminded me of the good people back home.

Danger!

There were five of these signs on the ceiling of North Station.

LeeAnn runs the show

I love what you've done with the place :) I feel like I never do anything worth mentioning on here anymore. I suppose my baseball roadtrip which ended in Chicago with a visit with Lindsey on her first full day there is probably worth mentioning.



And perhaps my visit to one of the new wonders of the world, Chichen Itza would be worth mentioning and maybe even putting a picture or two up.



Now I'm just back to working my hostess job, finished up my resume, and hopefully applying to be a real life grown up in the working world soon. That's definitely not exciting. I'd much rather read about all your adventures in places that we haven't all lived in for at least half of our lives (San Diego... yes I'm still here).

So there's my input. I didn't want LeeAnn to feel alone. I'll be back in a couple months to type a couple more paragraphs.

edit: I added pictures and after adding these I realized that both the days I mentioned ended it tremendous downpours (the first picture you can see it's about to come and the second one you can tell Nicky and I are soaked)

new project!

While I continue to muck around at TECH and MIT (waiting for the end, really), I've decided on a new, time-sensitive project: christening the mailboxes of the newly relocated. This week we start with a nature center in Alaska, an apartment in Lincoln Square in Chicago, what I'm sure is a crumbly old house in North Park in San Diego, and some flat in London... where will my precious parcels land next? You decide. Email me your addresses and I'll feed your long starved mailbox, too.

hullo?

I have a lot of things to do for work and play and to prepare for my mother's visit, but I got the urge to mix up Halfwhat--just to see if anyone's watching. Lindsey, Jen, Juli-- pictures? witty tidbits? suggestions for links, photos, etc.? I am learning CSS so I'm going to try to make it look less boring. Eventually. And Juli, I don't actually know if you're in San Diego, I was only guessing.

This feels like an email. It actually is sort of an alternative since I don't have all of your email addresses. Anyhow, I was just telling my friend the other day that I write for a group blog with three girls I knew from high school. I was thinking about how it started, with Mixedtape, my defection from the other blog, with Hankerchicks and Cherry Pie a la Mode (Orange you glad?); and I was looking through the years (!) of archives, and thinking about how incredible it was that we were blogging here when I was still in high school and you were all graduating. Now that you've all graduated again and this blog has become a one-woman shitshow (perhaps that's too strong, but yeesh that last post was horrendous), I'm wondering if Halfwhat's just in another dryspell or if I am scaring everyone away with my posts. Soo... anyway, holla back if you're alive?

Venus im Pelz

Titian, Venus with a Mirror, ca. 1555

Venus in Furs receives her slave. I see that you are no ordinary dreamer. You at least don't lag behind your dreams. You are the sort of man who carries out whatever he imagines, no matter how insane. I must confess I like that, I am impressed. It shows strength, and only strength is respected. I even believe that in unusual circumsances, in an era of greatness, you would reveal your seeming weakness as a wonderful strength. Under the first emperors you would have been a martyr, at the time of the Reformation an Anabaptist, during the French Revoluations one of those inspired Girondists who mounted the guillotine with the Marseillaise on their lips.

Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, Venus in Furs, 1870

Upon recommendation, I just finished reading Venus in Furs, a novella written by von Sacher-Masoch as part of the larger work Testament of Cain (sometimes Legacy of Cain). It was a short, strong whirlwind of a narrative--utterly insane and passionate, a story that makes one believe that love is more important than going into work.

I find that I spend much of my time with friends who are immersed and believe fully in the complete, unquestionable nobility and truth of the sciences--in biology and physics, in chemistry and medicine, in the engineering of new technologies housed in aluminum, enlivened by electricity, powerful with their capacity of language and memory--commands and digits writing new worlds in mesmerizing high definition. They find ultimate meaning in prolonging life, in growing cells that will one day cure breast cancer, uncloud the brains of Alzheimer's patients, or bring back hearts that are intent on stopping.

Another large majority spends a good deal of time and zeal analyzing and reimagining society, laws, management, business-- they patiently and carefully pick apart the complicated mesh of a million-word world of contract and currency either in order to climb the structure or else to bring the whole thing down or else to make it more sustainable.

I often tell people, when they ask me how Harvard is, that there is one common characteristic of the students I meet here--it is as close as a generalization can get to encompassing everyone here--it's one that bores and saddens me at times and utterly fascinates and humbles me at others: everyone has something about which they are very, very serious. And I don't mean that everyone has a talent. Whether its music, or sports, or cooking, or academics, or romantic obsession, or just keeping a daily, disciplined routine, there is, hardwired into the system of almost every person, a very serious streak. It didn't exist in everyone I knew in San Diego. It doesn't exist in all the people I meet elsewhere. And so now I find myself writing, in the flowery way that I do when I've just read something very moving, and wondering where the dreamers have gone.

It's been a long time since I've read something about humans. I've taken to reading non-fiction about architecture, textbooks on engineering, and reports about army technology. Venus in Furs is recognized as one of the seminal literary expressions of sadomasochism (it contributed to the introduction of "masochism" as a clinical category in the book on sexual psychopathologies and is often cited in writings on the subject). But though it is fiction, von Sacher-Masoch himself subscribed to this sort of life--he and his lover played out the dramatized story in the novella, of a mistress and her love slave who live by alternately struggling against and riding on the throes of pain and love, both physical and emotional. There is little significant consideration or analysis of society and/or historical events of any kind, it is focused completely on two lovers, out of time, out of place.

I have met people here who dream about ways to save the world, ways to hike all the Presidentials in one day, ways to live their lives fully and well and maybe even recklessly, and yet, I don't think I've really heard anything or experienced anyone who lives life appealing completely and solely to emotion. I hear successful classmates poo-poo their black sheep younger siblings who smoke and drink and do stupid things. I hear rebels in blueblood clothing assert their repression by counting their inebriated and incapacitated nights. But that's disdain of recklessness and that's recklessness for the sake of rebellion or revenge. I know no one who is so completely true only to passion, who is obligated to no one but themselves, who cares always and only to dream and realize dreams--I don't miss recklessness or rebellion, I miss honesty to desire. I don't think it's that true dreamers don't exist in the world--I know they do, I've met at least one.

So now I suppose I am also wondering if that's the kind of life I care to live. It is hard to really, totally indulge and really be a hedonist. I just wonder if I could do it. It's an intriguing idea. I don't mean to drop out of school, or quit jobs or drop out of society, I just mean to live for myself. To be wild, and to be a lover, always. It's all crazytalk, I know. But I do wonder if I could live like that. I wonder how it would suit me to really live in furs.

Integration... that's an MIT thing right?

A few weeks ago, my boss/professor friended me on the Facebook. Okay, weird, but you can't refuse, right?

Yesterday, in response to my email about the flexible spider couplings arriving, he replied:

MMmmmm, spider couplings.

Spider Couplings!
Spider Couplings!
Does what ever a spider coupling does!

Spins a web? No it doesn't. It's a coupling.
Look out! Here comes the spider coupling.

(I just had my first half cup of coffee in 4 days)

Good thing I saw the Simpsons movie last night or I wouldn't have been able to come up with a properly hilarious response.

Today, he sent an email to the group with no body and the subject line: "ouch. hard drive crash. my life sucks. I blame leeann."

(For context, earlier this week my hard drive crashed for the second time this summer. Dell, I hate you. I hate you so much.)

Generally, I would say it's a bad thing when your boss/professor blames the suckiness of his life on you, but I think this may just be a sign that I'm finally being integrated into the group. The Harvard jokes have decreased drastically, and I proved myself a few weeks ago by helping lift the 135-lb. battery we got for the kayak. I may not be an engineer, but perhaps I can find a niche at MIT as resident book-appreciator and weight lifter.

(Oh, and for more context, his fiancee was my tutorial leader this past semester and he basically took me upon her recommendation. And he went to UCSD for his MFA. And his father was one of the leading scientists in the positive psychology movement, and wrote a book that my other boss at Harvard adores and gave to me as recommended reading.)

Humility, Forgiveness, Hospitality

I think that people mistake humility for a lack of pride, forgiveness for weakness, and hospitality for prostitution. I think people mistake acceptance for copping out.

I think that love doesn't last because people have learned that they should fend for themselves and that they shouldn't tolerate anything less than what they deserve.

I think that sometimes you will be treated badly, and sometimes you will make mistakes; I think that no matter how much you really care or really love or really want something you are going to mess up and be a bad person, a bad friend, and a bad lover, and that you should always try, even if you aren't forgiven. I think you should take the lessons given you, even if they tell you you are unwise, you are petty, you are lacking, you are wanting. You should take the lessons given you, and try again. And try to be better.

I think you should always forgive. You should always be able to forgive, no matter what's been done to you.

Ultimate Post

I am making a new calendar.

I love making new calendars, new schedules, new plans. There is so much potential I can just feel it; I could work it and squeeze it like meat through a grinder. (What a weird simile. I was thinking something juicy and mushy and a little bit gross but powerful. Did I tell you guys that I'm a vegetarian now?)

I am making a calendar for Quasar. A list of skills, a schedule for fitness, some ideas for parties, some hopes for new tournaments. I wonder if everyone feels this way before the start of the season: excited without reserve, cruising full speed in no direction without the drag of frustration because nothing has actually begun or failed. It's much faster to type out a list of skills you'd want to see by December than it is to teach a rookie to throw a accurate, flat forehand with enough spin. But I can't see any downside to excessive buoyancy of spirit at this point. I've got further to fall, yes, but I also have that much more resistance to the downward pull. Besides, our crowd is so social this year (my own class alone can carry a raucous party or a 12-hour car ride: Harvard's ultimate frisbee class of 2009 is not only large, but diverse, friendly, and good-humored) that even if the technical things don't pan out quite right, it's going to be a lot of great camaraderie, stupid inside jokes, and very good mix CDs.

Copy, Red Dog.

So I work in a cubicle during the day and a building called the "Cube" in the afternoon and evening, but once in a every long while, we do fantastic things like kayak on the Mystic River while waiting for the battery to charge from the prof's car battery before remote controlling a rudder & motor attached to another kayak (unmanned water vehicle!). So maybe I just watched the little high school computer programming intern control it, but I will soon be controlling the unmanned ground vehicle. The UWV and UGV and the UAV (air) are all going to be employed in protest against such looming injustice and/or promotion of inhumanity as military use of robots like SWORDS and the Minutemen patrolling the U.S.-Mexico border.

Permissions

Facebook allows a user to set all kinds of different levels of privacy for every part of the profile in order to ensure a sense of safety and degree of restraint (as false as it may be--but I'm not actually interested in debating that here). That's something that makes people so much more open on the Internet; it's like lacking the inhibitions that are similarly dispelled with alcohol, but being able to set parameters that say, "Creepy Joe Shmoe can't see my phone number and photos, but BFF Lindsey Mindsey can," and to have that be so. (Again, let's ignore the fact that entering your phone number anywhere online means that it's out there for CyberStalker Joe Hacker to find.)

Real life is decidedly less simple. There's a variably fine wall that separates hospitality from "come hither," and sometimes, depending on the guest-cum-invader, the stakes are pretty high if one missteps. College is such a strange time and place; the combination of living, working, and playing with your classmates makes for a volatile foundation, especially when additives like alcohol and manipulative (if well-meaning) friends come into play. Setting boundaries requires one to strike some balance between definition and delicacy; too harsh, and you lose or hurt friends; too delicate, and some people just don't get the hint. You end up stiffly spooning with a well-meaning young lad and counting the hours until he leaves.

People are such an easy commodity right now; I've heard many stories about the terrifyingly stagnant pool that is the social scene post-college (one defined by the boundaries of the office and the apartment building), but sometimes I think that the ease by which college folks can meet and dump each other makes us take each other for granted.

Since when did an invitation to dinner translate to an invitation to my room? My door needs privacy settings. Maybe I should be more detailed in my facebook profile. "About me: Prone to hospitality. Eager to cook for numbers and lend couch space to temporarily homeless friends. Disclaimer: helping me make dinner and revealing feelings while drunk does not grant permission to enter my bedroom after I excuse myself for bed. Uncomfortable with confrontation, so just... don't go there."

Oh, dear!

Yesterday morning as I ran errands in the square, a scruffy man walking half-asleep past the Gap window display jumped and sputtered a very audible, "JEEZ-us!" He shook his head quickly like a dog shaking off uncouth fleas and pulled on his red, grease-stained shirt to recompose before he continued on.

As I walked past, I saw the display, three sets of bras and panties neatly displayed on wooden hangers, asking, "What's in your top drawer?"

The whole event was incredibly adorable.

Wow, this blogger's in Thai

We flew into bangkok and stayed for a day, it wasn't all too interesting, so we went on a 12 hr bus ride to chiang Mai. We arrived in Chiang Mai yesterday at 6am. I slept pretty well, Eric and Jordon not so much. No matter, we rented motor bikes and rode them up to the jungle to ride ele[hants. That was alright but overpriced, riding the motor bikes was way cooler, and we rode them far enough to these little villages with no tourists and ate grilled chicken for lunch that was way better then Ell Pollo Loco at a small hut where no one spoke english, we had to point and put up three fingers for the three of us. It was great. it rained on the way back and Jordan and Eric got soaked, but I didn't because i was riding with with eric and he blocked all the rain from me. Then last night we watched Muay Thai boxing... there were fights between like little kids, but they weren't grusome at all (i was a little worried), and there was a really funyn match where they jsut blindfolded the kids and let them go. We're planning to head to Laos tonight.

I realize the messages that I've bene sending people are quick and not written very well, but i don't have a lot of time and i have a lot of messages to werite, so I apologize. I hope to get pictures up somehow at some point, those will be better.

Day 1

I learned to weld and grind hot rolled steel, use a horizontal band saw, and illustrate parts in SolidWorks at at the MIT Media Labs. This is a hell of a lot better than Engineering Sciences 120.

Tomorrow I go into a Harvard office to pitch ideas to Mr. TECH. Wish me luck.

Bring it!

Hey, half of halfwhat will be in Chicago at the beginning of July. Can we up that ratio?

Almost hired.

One job confirmed. Two interviews to go. 10 fingers still crossed.

I just found this photo--perhaps it should have been saved for a post about how you all are graduating...again.

p.s. Who remembers mixed tape?

Bad habits

Mine? I just started reading online personal ads. Like on Craigslist and The Stranger. Not because I'm looking for someone, I just find them entertaining. The missed connections ones are pretty good, but I like reading the actual personals and see how people like to portray themselves. I'm weird.

The Present, The Past, and All those Ultimate Ghosts

Warning: Ultimate post.

I am back from regionals for the second time.

While I was standing on the sidelines of the Dartmouth - Tufts womens final, I realized, suddenly, that this was deja vu. The same teams, the same field, the same people on the sidelines, the same results for us the previous day (2-2, two frustrating games in which we could have played better, a B-team game and a consolation game), perhaps it would result in basically the same blog entry.

Of course, key things were different: our men, in the backdoor bracket this time, had a contentious, heart-breaking loss that lost them the bid to nationals; Dartmouth women handily destroyed Tufts and made them play for the backdoor bid (I don't remember this game being so one-sided last year, but maybe I just wasn't aware); and we, for all the frustration and bad play of our important games, hadn't had a complete emotional implosion that would lead to a sad exodus of departing seniors Saturday afternoon. Instead, Sunday morning's sideline starred a healthy, smiling handful of excited Quasar rookies yelling for their struggling men's team and still abuzz with hope for the years of ultimate they had left to play.

Last year, Spring and I were the only rookies left at the tournament the second day of regionals. The day before had been sad and cold and full of watching for me; I was one of very few rookies who came to the tournament at all and spent most of the time watching the seniors give themselves a hard time for the last time. This year, though everyone, rookies or otherwise, got substantial play, I was playing as an integral part of the team. I'm suddenly a part of the line that gets called when business needs taking care of. By virtue of the numbers on our team and the large loss of players from last year, I am now someone to look to, someone to depend on to make the catch, someone who can be put on Ralph, Petra, or any other girl we call by name because she's so freaking spectacular.

But I'm no star. And really, none of us who are left are stars. All of us have strengths, but none of us yet warrant first-name recognition, I don't think. I don't think this is a problem. In fact, it may well be the start of something very good. I remember taking to a Tufts alum I played with in Taiwan, and she told me that they had had a star player who kept the team going for a few years, but after she graduated, the truly great thing was that they had a huge group of girls who had been playing together for four years and just knew each other so well that everyone was reliable and they were able to make it to nationals, without the star--just with a lot of depth. Of course, depth isn't really depth if throwing and catching and reading and defense aren't improved, but numbers and spirit are always an important start. It isn't reaching to say that we'll be returning 15 of 17 next year: two nationals caliber grad students, one former junior nationals player, two solid second year players, two off of ACL tears, and eight rookies. One departing team member may even be back to coach. Talk about rebuilding.

And now I recognize that I am planting the seeds of what could be a very difficult parting a few years doen the road. I am investing myself--I do want to see this team go somewhere. I want to take this team somewhere. I think it'll be harder for me than I thought to keep the ideal attitude I described last year after watching the seniors go out the way they did:

I'm sure I'll feel differently when I'm a senior or a first-year grad, banking on a bid to nationals, playing my last tournament ever... but I hope that even then I'll be psyched to go up against whoever the current superstars are, and be psyched to get a layout D (have yet to do that) or go deep for Nina or watch Lucy pump us up with pom poms...

Well. Nina didn't play this year and Lucy had pedialyte instead of pom poms... but I can work on making that happen. Ha, and ironically, since I think I've just avoided getting into a relationship with a fellow ultimate player:

Another odd thing I noticed--less to do with playing ultimate than being a part of an ultimate community, was the pervasion of ultimate couples. On day two, I tried to find myself a place on the sideline, somewhere between Kolthammer and Lucy, Mack and McDunks, Katie and Sam, and Jefe and McCrazy's flirtations; keep in mind that Harvard Men's (regionals champs!) coach Josh McCarthy and Tufts Women's (regionals runner ups!) coach Sangwha Hong (?) are also married. I not only felt young and short-- but a little pathetic playing with a disc by myself.

I'm happy to report that all of these couples are still together, as far as I know, and I didn't have to play with a disc by myself on the sidelines. Things are looking up for Quasar, I'm happy to say now --but I hope I'm not posting the same thing again next year.

Hey, would you say I'm on the rebound?

Beulah "The Coast is Never Clear"

On repeat for days. So good.

$0.02

Something was caught in my throat--maybe my heart, maybe my pride, maybe just my tongue or my breakfast. Whatever it was, it was making it hard to sit without fidgeting wildly as I watched her tiptoe with her words and make commentary with her eyes.

"So you seem to be someone with a lot on her plate," She said, cocking her head to one side and giving me the playful look of suspicion out of the corner of her bright blue eye. Her hair is platinum flawless and her suit is the perfect combination of polka-dot retro 50s hourglass housewife and high-powered, high-priced administrative academian. My Allston Burr Senior Tutor (something like a Resident Dean), whom I've always considered from afar to be a tragic woman (unbearably cute and unbearably spoiled child, distant and only mildly attractive husband), was now giving me a talk about the precariousness of my academic standing.

"You know, I give this talk to a lot of students every semester. And really, I don't know what your goals are. There was one student several years ago who has since graduated who just, who just wanted to...to pass," A wide sweeping gesture with her hand, attempting to indicate his physical passing out of Quincy house, or perhaps to show her own suspension of disbelief in dealing with the student, or maybe this is how she emphasizes her speech. "Give him all Cs, he was thrilled! And I don't know what your goals are, but remember I'm only sad about this if you are."

"This" being failing my first math midterm and being in danger of failing a class and being put on academic probation.

I have been on an ambitious quest to create a concentration here at Harvard that would allow me to explore materials from an engineering perspective, from social and historical perspectives, and in context of their uses in the art and architecture of daily living. Of course, I dicked around so much with courses during my first year and a half here (choral conducting, French A, neuroscience, linguistics, oil painting), that now I am left with a c.v. which leaves me few options for graduation and a resume that is painfully thin in expressing any coherent interest in future vocations.

My quest, with its strong (and I assure you, very genuine) personal motivations and resulting exquisite theoretical expositions on its legitimacy as a study, has crumbled in practice. I withdrew from my Engineering Sciences class after struggling through weeks without sleep or exercise. I couldn't find time to go to classes in order to complete the work for the classes; I couldn't find time to think between problem sets or lectures or reading. I was taking the perfect schedule to accomplish my goals on a 4-year Harvard timeline, and I couldn't hack it.

There is a tremendous and disheartening disconnect between the theoretical ideals I learn about in this liberal arts setting and the manner in which I am told to learn them. While the Resident Dean can tell me through her ruby lipstick that learning is lifelong and that an undergraduate concentration is no blip on the radar, she only says this because she knows that she has to pad her real message with something consonant with the trendy theoretical underpinnings of all the hundreds of pages of reading that social studies concentrators pretend to do every week. Really, she knows that i-banking interviewers, law schools, and whoever else can provide recognition--the keystone of academic success, for in this society learning is only for yourself in coincidental circumstances--needs something more than genuine personal motivation in order to give a seal of approval. She knows that taking more than four years, or a year between graduation and grad school, or taking the summer easy just doesn't look good, and will get you no further than your bachelors. Maybe she even knows that my mother, with all of her good intentions for my wellbeing, places so much less emphasis on hoping for my cultivation as a moral human being and positive contribution to civil society than my current academic success in the form of fellowships and degrees and future economic success in terms of job security and advancement.

I like reading. I like writing. I even like math when given the time to do it. Above all I love comprehension. But I can't do it all--not with only 24 hours in the day.

It's hard for me to keep a level head about this. It's hard for me to keep this in perspective, to remember, as a good and great friend told me as I sobbed to him on the phone just after the meeting, that failing a class is the least of my worries, and that my parents will always love me. It's so simple and so true, but everything in my life signifies messages to the contrary. I have been greatly discouraged by my environment and I would so like to succeed, but failing that, I would like nothing more than to break and live life somewhere out of the way--where nobody cares that I don't have the money for a nice suit or the resume to fill it. I want to keep a good attitude and take advantage of my situation, but I just don't feel like I know how.

I left her office with no solutions, just an ultimatum. And I cringed as I hit the air outside the building--air that, later in the April day, would bring snow--and I started to cry. I was trying hard to be neither jaded nor in despair, and as a result I just felt alone. And I was; I am, mostly because I choose to be. I don't want to share these feelings and I don't know that external advice can do much besides ease the symptoms--dry the tears and so forth. Whatever is stuck in my throat, I will have to clear myself--and if I believe, I have a lifetime to do it.

Southward!

Off on a 15-hour drive for a week and two days ultimate frisbee, Southern hospitality (?) and general spring break revelry. Oh and hundreds of pages of reading on Confucian Humanism.

Onward, ho!

puzzling

In response the the new-blogger, old-blogger question: I don't know who's the creator. I'm not because i just switched over and it wouldn't let me switch this one. Maybe Juli? We're the two admins.

no more booty calling!

My cell phone died, so please e-mail me if you need to contact me.

Oh my gosh, I just realized that means I don't have anyone's number. Oh. Oh, that blows.