conquering the world one oxymoron at a time
Archive for February, 2006
February 27, 2006 at 12:29 pm · Filed under life thoughts
Have I gone off the deep end? What does that even mean, to go off the deep end? Usually one would say that if there seems to be a general loss of control. I don’t feel out of control, or more rather I feel like maybe I am going a bit out of control, but I know exactly what I am doing. I am in control of my being out of control, whatever the hell that means. It was yet another crazy weekend, full of socializing/partying, but also plenty of introspection. In fact 7 hours worth of straight introspection. I think I found another rare, rare soul mate, the kind you meet maybe once every 3 or 4 years.
February 24, 2006 at 2:43 am · Filed under daily grind
It has actually been quite an eventful week, and quite productive as well, if I should say so myself. I think this week will go down as one of the more important ones of 2006, just in terms of the sheer number of things that got done, resolved, settled, and started.
I think that I am on the verge of something big. I think I may have found an inner source of motivation, previously hidden. I started dreaming big again. It has been a while since I’ve dreamt big; I usually just toss aside any ideas that remotely resemble one requiring energy to implement. This week, I felt like I could implement any idea (or at least I thought I could).
In addition, I have also realized the true beauty of being single, and I LOVE it. I told a friend last week that I really don’t think I have gotten the “single-ness” out of me yet, and this past weekend further cemented that point. All I want to do is to hang out with my friends, girls and boys, and live it up. Men? They’re fun to be around, to flirt with, but they’re not incentive enough right now for me to give up my freedom, my joy, and my current party-hardy lifestyle.
February 21, 2006 at 11:55 pm · Filed under dating/relationships
excerpts from a convo earlier today …
him: but i’d like to know, how exactly does one romance u?
me: honestly, when we were together, i felt like i was always being romanced
him: wow
him: the thing is, i can’t take credit for it
me: haha, wow, was there a mastermind behind it all this whole time??
him: yes
me: who?
him: u
him: i dunno why, but u made me feel like i was 8 again. u know? like when u kiss a girl on the cheek at that age and are so over come with emotion u run off? well i constantly had butterflies in my stomach when talking to u (unusual for me). so yeah, i always tried to do all i could to make u happy.
him: but i got a favor to ask of u: should someone ever sweep u off your feet, let him know
me: why? would it have made a difference with you?
him: actually, yes
me: this whole convo’s getting framed and put on my wall
him: yeah well, i’ll always remember it and that’s all that matters
February 20, 2006 at 6:25 pm · Filed under going out
As indicated by the lack of many strike-throughs on my to-do list, I hardly got anything done this weekend. Instead, I spent a lot of it partying, sleeping, and being dazed and confused about life.
Usually when I am confused about life, I am complaining about how I lack direction professionally/career-wise. This time, for once, I am not going around in circles because I am debating where to go academically, educationally, schooling-wise, etc. etc. I am dazed and confused about the sudden turn in my social life, my precipitous transition from “quiet night with thoughts of marriage on my mind” to “party party party like there’s no tomorrow and no looking behind.”
This self-reflection was brought on by the fact that, while trying to explain to someone why I didn’t have time to meet up this weekend, I myself realized, and ultimately became quite embarrassed by, just how ridiculously much I party and drink now-a-days. It goes completely against the shan of yesteryears who frowned upon clubbing (in fact, I used to hate clubs), bar-hopping, drinking, and general debauchery. I am torn between letting loose/having fun and being ashamed at having an image of “hard core party girl who drinks like a fish.” I have always looked down on people with that image, and here I am, building up my reputation for that exact image I shunned in others while sitting on my high horse a couple of years ago.
I look back on this weekend, and it consisted of a blur of nightclubs, pubs, beers, drinks, and men. Imagine one of those music-infused collage sequences you see in the movies: heavy metal banging in the background as disco lights flash and the camera cuts from one party to the next to the dancefloor to the scantily-clad beautiful people gyrating their hips to dim lighting to the drinks to the bar to waking up the next morning groggy-eyed with the sun beating down on the pillow. That’s about how my weekend went Friday AND Saturday nights. Sunday, I suddently felt that perhaps life ought to have a bit more meaning than partying and going out. Partying seems so superficial. But then again, what more meaning is there a need for when I am simply doing things that I enjoy, that make me happy?
There is also a second part to the daze (and confusion) of this weekend, but since I strive to keep this blog abstract and general, I will skip the second part. (Don’t you hate it when people do that? When they say that they know something, but then say that they can’t tell you what it is? Yeah, I always hated that, too. But if you have talked to me recently, like REALLY honest-to-goodness talked to me, then I have probably already told you, to more excruciating detail than you ever cared to know, what this second part is about. So quit moaning and complaining and accusing me of withholding information! ;)).
February 16, 2006 at 1:00 am · Filed under daily grind
- plan Friday’s class recitation
- work problem set in prep for Friday office hours
- debug francesco’s webpage
- add a links page to francesco’s site
- clean apartment
- buckle down and analyze data
- prepare slides for lab meeting next week
- write kyla back
- start new batch of cells/experiments
- find/invite panelists for Grad School 201 series
- find orientation chair replacement
- plan Thursday night study break for House 4
- submit receipt for orientation dinner
- not take on any more responsibilities
- call parking/transportation office about parking passes
- buy a new pair of gloves, and then stop losing them
- start figuring out this year’s tax returns
- drop my french class
- buy daffodils for cancer
- return properties to their rightful owners (flash card, book)
- go to the gym
- drop off dry cleaning
- sleep
Ugh.
February 14, 2006 at 1:17 am · Filed under grad life/MIT
Something like this could have only come out of MIT …
Happy Valentine’s Day everyone!
To add to the obvious nerd-factor already apparent in the Valentine’s Day theorem above, the image itself is supposedly computer generated. See the MIT News site for the credits.
February 13, 2006 at 2:04 am · Filed under random
I guess I shouldn’t be too bitter. Americans pronounce “can” with that hard, wide-mouthed, stretched-out “an” sound. With a name like “shan,” I can only expect people to pronounce it as if it rhymes with “can.” But I must ask … how does one pronouce flan? One does not say flan that rhymes with “can”. One says flan, as in flawn.
So please, pronounce it shan, as in shawn. Except if you’re from somewhere around the British Isles, and then you can pronounce it however you want to. Because 1) you don’t make that hard, wide-mouthed, stretched-out “an” sound that typifies Americans, so this would never even be an issue, and 2) your accent makes everything you say sexy, regardless of how much you butcher the actual pronunciation.
case closed.
February 12, 2006 at 5:22 pm · Filed under friends
Mr. Paul Otto, of care-packages-lore, proposed to Joyce, his beautiful girlfriend of 4 years last night in front of the Rotunda, in the snow, right back where things started at our beloved University. She said yes!
Congratulations Paul and Joyce!!!
I have to confess that I was in the know about this :). In fact, I got Paul a book on buying engagement rings back in August 2003. ACTUALLY, I just remembered that I mentioned Paul’s impending engagement back when I started this blog the summer I was in Atlanta. Fourth paragraph down in that post, the “next engagement” mentioned was supposed to be Paul’s, which finally came now, 2.5 years later!
For a while there, I rather lost hope and thought that Paul wasn’t ever going to actually use the book I got him, since weeks, months, years came and went and there was nothing from Paul and Joyce … until Paul told me last month that he read the book and BOUGHT a ring! He told me he wanted to propose to her in Charlottesville, and even sent me pictures of the ring. It’s puuurty! *sigh* And what better place to ask for the hand of the girl of your dreams than on the serene, snow-covered Lawn at night?
Paul, Joyce — I am sooo happy for you! You two are awesome together, and Paul, you’re one freaking lucky dude. You better take good care of her!
February 9, 2006 at 1:28 am · Filed under grad life/MIT
It is amazing how life can go from merrily floating along to grand rapids rushing toward a waterfall at the flick of a switch. This week, all of a sudden, with the start of classes, came an onslaught of meetings, responsibilities, issues, random happenings, and of course the classes themselves. Last week was relaxing and calm, yet all of my days this week have been filled to the brim with junk. Despite the days being so full, as I sit down at the end of a day to think about what I did, not only do I realize that I have accomplished nothing productive during the course of the day, but I also can never recall what exactly I did do with my day. Hour after hour just rushed on by, gone forever from my life. And saddest of all, I can’t even properly account for them.
February 6, 2006 at 3:01 pm · Filed under life thoughts
jason: you are glitz addicted
jason: you don’t need any more sexy swu
me: oh but i do
jason: you are so sexy you’ve got more men than you can beat off
jason: hmm … bad choice of words
I think I want to be a doctor, but not just any kind of doctor. I want to be the kind of doctor with the most glitz-factor … like a surgeon, or better yet, a neuro-surgeon. I am drawn to that inexplicable/intangible factor of “sexiness” in a career/job/life more than the career/job/life itself (is this a double entendre that applies to my choice of men as well?). I was at a women’s workshop last year, and someone said something along the lines of yes, we are all driven people. If we don’t happen to channel that “driven-ness” into stressing ourselves out through our research, if we instead choose to be a stay-at-home-wife/gardener/mom, we would end up channeling that “driven-ness” into stressing ourselves out striving to be the best goddamn wife/gardener/mom there ever existed.
I think that sums me up pretty well, with the addition that I would stress myself out being not just the best wife/gardener/mom, but also the one with the most glamour and glitz. I don’t want to be just any good wife. I want to be Mrs. good-wife-CEO, the one whose annual black-tie fundraiser for kids with cancer is the rave of the upper echelon. I don’t want to be just any gardener, I want to be the one pruning Asian rose bushes in Cameron Diaz’s backyard, the same species of rose bushes that no one else can get to even bud in North America. In essence, I don’t really care so much about WHAT I do, I just want that which I do to have inexplicable/intangible sexiness.
With that said, allow me to apply this to my life currently. I have no desire to stress myself out being the best researcher there ever existed. I think about the possibility of being a glitzy and glamourous principle investigator, pushing the front of the front of the hottest research field, holding a professorship at Harvard, or MIT, or wherever else sexy. And you know what? These possibilities don’t excite me at all. I just plain don’t care. I don’t care about abstract science; I don’t find protein molecules sexy (unless they are in the form of toned forearms on a guy I’m admiring). I don’t really want to talk to the other big guns–no pun intended–in systems biology or computational biology or whatever else insert-buzz-word-here-biology. Even with the glitz inherently associated with being a world-renowned scientist, I shrug my shoulders, and I say … “eh, not for me”.
So I think this is a good indication that research isn’t my thing. It’s not what I want to do. Just say no to research. Despite being a glitz-driven person, I have no desire to climb to the top of the researcher/scientist ladder, knowing full well that there is just as much glitz and glamour atop that ladder as there is anywhere else, if not more.
Okay, so what? What do I think of all of this? What does this mean?
I don’t know. This is about as far as I have thought on this matter. I guess it’s all a part of being in my 20s and figuring out what I want to do. But really, seriously, being PTA president is pretty sexy. But not just any PTA president, but the PTA president who single-handedly rallied up parents and grandparents and neighbors to mount a successful campaign to increase educational spendings at the state legislature for public high schools in rural, backward, South Carolina. In turn, SC moved up 20 spots in average SAT scores by state.
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