conquering the world one oxymoron at a time
Archive for December, 2004
December 31, 2004 at 4:06 pm · Filed under friends, music, pictures
Last day of 2004, next to last day at home relaxing. My dad said something about “you didn’t seem to have done much studying over this break.” I lied and said, “sure I did, but only a little bit.” and he said “but it’s not a big deal; breaks are times for relaxing, so you should be relaxing. just work hard when you get back to school.” When has he ever said that before?? It’s always, work hard work hard, do what you’re supposed to do. Wow, it was different hearing my dad tell me to relax, have fun, enjoy the break.
Ali drove through town yesterday with her brother en route to his place in Beaufort, so we met up, got some soup, and went to Old Navy’s. Ali tried on black garbs as her brother and I complained about how expensive nice clothes are. She stayed through dinner downtown with some c/o2k1ers with whom I was meeting for dinner and Jump concert. It felt good seeing govies again, despite my overkill in dressing because Jason told me people were dressing up … thanks a lot Jason.
There are no words to describe the concert, absolutely spectacular. It helped too that Corey and I very luckily got reseated to the front row, center section, just a few feet away from Ward Williams. Altogether, counting this concert, I’ve been to 5 Jump concerts, which becomes even more ridiculous in light of the fact that I’ve only been to 6 concerts ever (a Wallflowers concert back in 1997 completes the 6). But geez, I just never get tired of JLC music.
Picture of everyone at the King Street Kickin’ Chicken during dinner:
Left to right: Framp (sp?), Jason, Ali, me, Corey, Rob, Connor, Phil
December 29, 2004 at 6:47 pm · Filed under the internet
For some reason, the topic of getting a new computer sometime in the distant future came up today in a conversation with my parents. I joked that my next computer will be a Mac because they look sleek and cool. My parents didn’t agree … they said something to the effect of “why would you ever get a stupid idea like that? Macs suck … ”
Wow, I thought everybody’s perspective of the Mac has changed since five years ago, but I guess not. Maybe I like Macs because it’s a little off the mainstream? My little so-called “Mac emulator” gives away my inner desire to own a Mac. But when it comes down to it, I like my laptop the way it is: Dell PC logo, Mac interface. Ah, such is the magic of StyleXP visual styles and Objectdock. Maybe one day when I am on a better connection (my parents are still on dial-up), I’ll post a screenshot of my desktop. It really is very cool looking (and convincing)!
Thus, I’m a wannabe. I don’t have the resolve to actually switch over to Mac completely, but I’m still wanting to jump on the bandwagon of appearing to have a Mac. So much that I spent a whole day figuring out how to get back my StyleXP Mac look after Service Pack 2 was installed on my laptop, and even seriously considered not installing the new Service Pack 2 because the version of StyleXP I had then was incompatible with SP2. Of course it makes sense that the visual look of my computer is more important than the security of my computer :)
December 24, 2004 at 1:05 pm · Filed under the internet
So I check my email this morning to see if Roger, my research advisor, had emailed me back yet about something I asked him. He hadn’t, but I did get an email from a Chinese guy with the subject heading “Merry Christmas!” I almost deleted the email without reading it, thinking it was some email sent over the MIT CSSA listserve …
Well the email turns out to be from a guy in China who saw my name and picture (more on this later) on the BE student board webpage. He goes to (or maybe graduated from already) an university in China and is about to apply to graduate schools (not to MIT, just grad schools in China). He wants to make friends with me because he thinks that I may be Chinese (from my name), and he really likes Biology.
So, according to the okay, but slightly iffy, English of his email, he saw my name on the BE student board page, and from the member picture saw that I looked “handsome and kindly.” Now I ask, since I am not in the member picture, nor is my picture anywhere on that BE student board site, where did he see this “handsome and kindly” face of mine? Did he see Hyung-Do or Diana in the members picture and think, “oh, Asian looking person, must be Shan Wu”?
So now what do I do? Email back and say … “actually, I’m not all that handsome and kindly since the face you saw in the member pictures is not mine, but is instead probably either Hyung-Do or Diana.” Or perhaps, “I am actually a female graduate student with no resemblance to Hyung-Do or Diana’s face in the members picture you saw on the BE student board page.” I haven’t figured out just how to reply to his email yet.
Either way, my parents got a good laugh from this episode.
December 24, 2004 at 11:45 am · Filed under random
My dad bought me a penguin yesterday! Isn’t he cute??
December 19, 2004 at 7:00 pm · Filed under daily grind
I came home yesterday for winter break, but sans my luggage, which is rather a pain. I was supposed to fly Boston to Philly, and transfer in Philly to come to Charleston. Instead, my Boston to Philly flight landed 45 minutes late, which was the amount of time I had to transfer in Philadelphia … causing me to miss my flight to Charleston. The only flight into Charleston that I could get on last night was one that transfers through Charlotte. So I got put on another flight to Charlotte, where I transferred again to finally get to Charleston.
The lady who changed my itinerary promised me that my check-in bag would be taken care of, that she’s already rerouted it, despite my asking her many questions. I don’t think she even understood what I was asking. She kept repeating “Your bag will follow you. I’ve rerouted it. ‘They’ will take it from the bag room, where it is currently and put it on your next flight.”
Well, whoever “they” were, “they” didn’t do their job. My bag did not follow me to Charleston. I gave my information to the baggage service guy, who promised that I would get a call today before “lunchtime” about the whereabouts of my bag. I guess lunchtime is different for everybody, but I never got a call from them. I called the number they gave me, and talked to an automated “Alex,” who promised to have a conversation with me. Anyway, “Alex” told me at 1:30 that my bag had already been picked up by the delivery company and should be delivered to me in 4-6 hours.
Here I am … still waiting, 5.5 hours later. No bag.
December 14, 2004 at 4:37 pm · Filed under random
Two down … one more to go. Come on, I need some motivation. Can’t seem to get started on working.
December 13, 2004 at 1:12 pm · Filed under tv/movies, grad life/MIT, daily grind
As usual, I am behind on work yet do not hesitate to procrastinate. This past weekend was rather uneventful and exhausting since it was almost entirely devoted to work. BE.430 had our take home final last week, officially due last Thursday but unofficially today. My goal was to stick to the official deadline, get it over with, and move on to studying for my two 3-hour finals this week. Well, the take-home kicked my butt, and I only moved on (briefly) last night. Today was the first day of studying for those two finals … one tomorrow morning, and one Wednesday morning. Screwed am I.
Despite all this, I still found it wise to go see a movie this weekend. It was opening weekend for Ocean’s 12 afterall. The movie also kicked my butt. There were too many characters that my head spun from trying to keep them all straight. So in the end, I only remember it as an experience, but nothing about the movie itself. If you told me to write a little synoposis of what exactly happened in that movie, twists and all, I wouldn’t be able to do it. Not even in the least bit. This then got me thinking about the original, Ocean’s 11, that I seemed to remember deciphering well. Except, upon thinking about it yesterday, I realized that I couldn’t exactly tell you the sequence of events in Ocean’s 11 either. That made me rather depressed … realizing that my brain just can’t handle stuff like Ocean’s 11/12.
I’m currently waiting for Ryan to call to go eat lunch. He went to the Law School earlier today to study with his law buddies. It’s pretty late now, and I’m getting really hungry. I haven’t eaten since getting up at 11ish, but apparently Ryan and his law buddies are superhuman and don’t need to eat when normal people do.
December 5, 2004 at 2:37 am · Filed under tv/movies, grad life/MIT
My new hard drive came in Friday. It’s already installed, and my laptop’s essentials are up and running, essentials being Office and MatLab. MatLab being an essential is kind of sad, but such is the story of my life this semester. I got Office 2003 from Ryan, and I actually REALLY like it! Some of the auto-correct stuff has gotten smarter; the layout in Outlook is better; overall, the interface just looks more bubbly, kinda like Windows XP compared to 98/2000/NT kind of bubbly difference. Two thumbs up :D
Ed, Grant, Ryan, and I saw Finding Neverland last night at the Harvard Square theater. The theater was kind of small, not the best of conditions, but the movie was excellent. I have always liked Kate Winslet, and Johnny Depp has really grown on me too since Pirates of the Carribean, and the two of them together were spectacular. While I was really looking forward to it, I was a bit skeptical/worried going in after the Kinsey experience. That was a biography of a famous guy; this movie was the biography of a famous guy. Kinsey had >80% fresh rating; so did Finding Neverland. Luckily, Finding Neverland lived up to its fresh rating :)
It’s almost the end. I get my first exam this Monday, a take-home, and the actual exam week starts a week from tomorrow. At the end of exam week is when I fly home again. *sigh* I’ve been waiting so long for this semester to be over, but now it’s actually a bit sad. I think next semester and the subsequent semesters, the comraderie between the first years is going to change quite a bit as everyone gets integrated into separate labs, and as we stop taking the same classes.
I remember someone once saying to me that all the best things never last … “All that shimmers in this world is sure to fade away” - Fuel
December 1, 2004 at 1:33 am · Filed under daily grind
My laptop’s hard drive failed permanently yesterday. I’ve been having problems with it off and on, and it finally quit yesterday. I couldn’t boot up my laptop at all. In the end, it’s just another issue to add to my frustrations lately with the stresses of school and this semester. I also think that my hard drive failure is my own fault. I haven’t been taking the best care of my laptop after coming here to Boston. I’ve been carrying it around in my bookbag, which although it has a special pocket for laptops, isn’t the best place for it especially considering how I just kind of throw my bookbag on the floor and stuff everywhere I go. I’ve certainly learned my lesson of the “do not expose to shock” warning.
So my dad has bought my a new hard drive already, and it will hopefully get here by Friday. So I may be able to have my laptop back up and running before the end of the weekend. However, the timing couldn’t have been worse for this to have happened. With the overload of assignments at the end of the semester plus exam studying, exam taking, I really didn’t need this as another time sink. Also, I’m actually kind of surprised that I’m not more upset about this, and about losing some of my data from my laptop. I have most of it backed-up, but geez, what a pain to transfer everything. And re-installing everything … ugh.
