"aujourd'hui, c'est le samedi"
whew. happy belated thanksgiving, everyone. i actually had a pretty nice thanksgiving. i tried to go down to san diego, but ticket prices seemed to be more expensive from sf -> sd than in the other direction. so i decided to stay around here, and relax, and in the last minute, my friend dylan decided to come visit from phoenix and hang out with me. it worked out well, as we both went to shahma's house and stayed overnight. it was so calm and peaceful that i awoke yesterday feeling utterly placid.
the dinner was somewhat of a crazy endeavor. between pomme and i, we managed to have two turkey breasts, butternut squash soup, chinese green beans, salad, two pies, stuffing, and roasted spiced pecans. i seem to remember that, as a child, we used to gorge ourselves full with food until we could barely walk. there seem to have been plateful after plateful of turkey and potatoes and sticky rice. and yet, for this thanksgiving, we didn't eat that much. it was as if, with age, our enthusiasm hasn't been able to match our appetites any longer. yet another sign of aging. alas.
then yesterday, we celebrated mhao's birthday! happy 24, mhao! we had a totally ridiculous dinner hostess. included in her comments were:
"oh don't order that. i don't like that."
"have a happy man! is he here?"
"are you sure you don't want the mango salad? is very good." (to the 4th power)
it's not documented here, but she spent a good 20 minutes screaming orders back at her waiters. i don't know why she even bothered to write down the orders on paper. she certainly yelled loud enough to deafen us for a few hours.
then, after all the fanfare, wchow and dylan and i spent almost two hours analyzing my psyche. so much for my being the psychologist of the group. their theory is that i force myself to be bored and discontent with NGs in order to protect myself from possible disappointment or attachment. that i'm unwilling to let myself boldly venture into new territory, to express my feelings.
true?
hrm. i let it myself ponder it a while today while my disconnected thoughts moseyed down rumination alley.
i think they were pretty insightful.
we all have a propensity for protecting ourselves from that which we desire the most. we either brace ourselves for disappointment, downplay the extent of our desire, or just preempt any possibilities, good or bad. so today i decided i wasn't going to play those games. i suffered for so long at mit and at the law firm because i was simply unwilling to accept what it was i wanted. my personal journey (quote coelho) was not to be a lawyer. but i wouldn't embrace it, simply because i was afraid i'd fail if i left the prestige and stability. but when i finally did, beautiful things began to unfold and the onerous weight of working in a suppressive environment was finally lifted. these days, i find myself unexpectedly excited and driven by what i have to do, even if the day is 15, 16 hours long. with respect to love, i don't think it's any different. the possibilities only manifest themselves to those who are willing to receive them.
and so today i picked up the phone and, in response to his request for me to do so, called my NG. we had a wonderful conversation, rampant with pepper giggling. and, we made plans to see each other in a few days when he returns from home.
i guess i'll be a sap and admit it:
i'm totally excited.
"MIT closing?"
the impossible has happened.
"stanley"
my best friend, stanley, a.k.a. huru, is hysterical. he says the funniest stuff all the time.
last year when i was throwing a dinner party, we didn't have a chair for him. we all sat down and suddenly realized huru was standing. while we're scrambling about trying to find one, he quips, "hey it's okay, i don't need one. i'll just levitate." then there was the time i was belting out some sarah brightman in government center, and huru managed to emit a note that even i couldn't hit. and i've got soprano range. as the note reverberated, i almost fell over in laughter. we thought the glass was going to break.
today, i was talking to him about the new guy (who shall remained unnamed because as soon as you give a boy a name, they become *significant,* and i'm not having any of that). new guy (ng) was a serious runner in college.
and all huru, who is a four time boston marathoner, says is, "runners are good people."
it's funny. i promise you. i'm still laughing.
"rah rah rah"
this weather is unbelievable. not a cloud in the sky for the past three days. what's up with that?
this week's paper is on sex-typing. did you know that in children as young as 20 months of age, sex preferences begin to emerge? that begs the question - is it biological, behavioral or cognitive? are we born to prefer a certain set of sex-related activities and objects, or do we learn it from those around us, or is it something inherent within our minds that allows us to only cognitively associate certain rules and roles of males and females?
speaking of which, i sort of started dating someone. good family values, nice, attractive, intelligent, funny, athletic, sincere, a gentleman. and i find myself totally annoyed at the time that i have to commit. the effort i have to put forth to keep the momentum. so after all the beautiful writing i put into my blog about how i'm ready for a relationship, how i think i can invest in someone, i find myself totally wanting to have my time to myself, my teaching, my work, and my friends and family.
i think i'm doomed to be single.
"the torque curse"
i can't figure out this stuff. it's driving me insane.
why why why?
blahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.
be amazed at the profundity of this blog post.
on another note, can someone PLEASE tell me why the chinese government is so neurotic? why are countries so eager to blow each other up? if the world was run by women, we'd have infinitely more squabbling and catty-ness, but less overly blown up egos and inflated senses of machismo. reading articles like this just get me annoyed. of course if you bomb taiwan, you will destroy the country. of course, if you bomb taiwan, you're going to lose a huge percentage of the businesses and foreign investments that taiwanese have poured into your country, of course you're going to tick off the rest of the world, and start us action, especially with a republican as president. of course you're going to look like an angry idiot. and of course, you're just following suit of all the other countries that like to get mad and blow other countries up.
why why why?
"incognito"
SUM(one 30-page paper, one apa abstract, one twenty-person party for which i cooked all the food from scratch, four friends who are undergoing pepper psychiatric treatment but really need to see someone who is licensed and actually aware of what she is doing, three exasperated labmates, two stressed out professors, 6 week-old dishes and 3 pans in the sink, ground coffee bean leftovers to decorate the counter top, a car that was broken into, a drive to sacramento, 34 hours of sleep deficit in one week, one cankersore, three fun dates in one weekend from which i emerged excited and interested in 0 of the prospects, one lost family heirloom, one decision not to go home for thnxgiving)
=
one seriously bitchy, cranky, overtired, and exhausted pepper. i'm going into hiding for a week.
"quelques seconds de silence"
three years ago, my grandmother passed away. not a day goes by when i don't think about her. she was just that beautiful, that amazing. and she was my best friend. i frequently find that when i witness something remarkable, she's the first person i wish was there with me.
damn.
i still really miss her. i'm damn lucky i had someone like her in my life.
"i want to be john nash"
i spent 4 hours today running regressions, t-tests, correlations. i have 50 million patterns to observe, findings to relate, correlations to study, mediators to define.
i wish i was john nash. i want patterns to jump out at me.
instead, i'm just me. little ole' pepper. data would be so much fun if numbers just highlighted themselves and became alive.
"revolutions..."
saw it on imax, found myself overloaded with all the fight scenes, felt incomplete after i left. fight scenes weren't as good, and most of it didn't even include neo or trinity. still, it left me wondering -- what the heck happened?
"j'ai trouve la solution"
i solved the physics problem. you calculate torque from the axis of rotation, not the center of mass. i'm sure you all were dying to find out the solution. thanks to wchow for giving me the answer.
so this week has been much fun. i think everything finally clicked with respect to psychology papers. i've been cruising on this one. mhao, shahma, pomme and a few others and i went out karaoking on friday night. it's been an extremely long time since i've gone... i don't think that i've gone since january 2001 when i came out here to visit some friends. people in boston do not seem very much into it, and i'm actually a little embarassed to go sometimes because i don't want others to think that i'm showing off. but i love singing, and i'm reminded everytime i perform how much i really enjoy it. doh. who knows what could have happened if i had decided to wait in the american idol line?
other than that, i just have to say that i really dislike dating. i've had my fair share of the first polite dinners, trying to act coy to catch the other's fancy, dressing up, getting nervous, giggling excitedly, and i really despise it. it's not fun for me. i don't like the game. i don't like to spend time sitting there, trying to get to know someone, when i feel that my life is filled with plenty of people who already know me and who i know i already love. it feels to me that i have to wade through a quagmire of pretense before i finally get to know the other.
i think the worst is that although you're having a good time, you know that both you and the other person are analyzing every action that is committed, and you find yourself searching within the other for a sign that he has the qualities you wants. even if you don't do it consciously, there's a mental checklist, perfectly itemized, waiting to be scored. everytime something happens, you scan down that list. "did he give up his seat to the old woman?" or, "damn it, i just snorted my milk, i bet i lost 40 points there." for some, the questions may run the grain of, "does he look good tonight?, could i kiss him, would he look even better after i'm drunk?"
on a more substantial level, does he understand what i'm saying, does he appreciate how beautiful the sky is tonight, how does he talk about his parents, does he appreciate everything he has?
sometimes i find myself wanting to find him, but so tired and bored of the process. and then i realize that it shouldn't be easy. it's not supposed to. it took me 6 years to find what i wanted professionally and personally, and 6 years of changing, some very sad times, and a lot of hard work to settle myself into happiness. and that just involved me. if it is going to involve someone else, it certainly should take much longer. i remember that and it makes me feel better. and i talk to friends who want to find love, and i remind them that it's not supposed to be easy. if it was, no one would treasure it. love would become dispensible because it was so easily replaced.
so i guess i just wanted to say that i know it's supposed to take a long time. i'm annoyed at the process, but i'll be patient and keep doing what i'm doing. in the meantime, if i'm still condemned to the fate of first dates, i'll just go to karaoke to make it up and drag mhao with me. she's good at singing chickee songs.
"uhhh.... torque?"
okay. so it's been 6 years since i've opened a physics books, except for when i occasionally open up the book my high school physics teacher gave me and reminesce over the days when i actually had a *good* teacher.
so yesterday, i was teaching my physics student. usually, i can muck my way around things, and even derive formulas i never really understood. but yesterday, i was met with doom:
a remote control, 21 cm in length, .110 kg in mass lies on a table with a length L jutting over the edge. that is, the distance from the end of the remote to the edge of the table is L. at the end of the remote that is jutting over the edge, there is an "on" button that requires .365 N of force to press. how far, L, can the remote hang over the table and have the button pushed before it falls off? you can assume that the weight is equally distributed throughout the remote.
uhhh. what?
so i got the answer after fiddling with numbers, but it makes no sense to me. if you can figure it out, without integration or calculus, free brownies on me. i vote for either cohene or goonley to get it.
"sick of it, yet?"
i have the best friends in the world. my friends listen to me bawl over stupid hair cuts, they drive me to buy vacuum cleaners in their brand new cars that shouldn't be sullied by things like vacuum cleaners, they take walks with me along the beach, and listen to my rambling about my dreams. they give me advice when i'm confused, patiently listen to me complain and whine about experiences i've had that aren't all that traumatic, and they tell me how wonderful i am. i have friends who i've known for more than half my life and still talk to me, despite all the crazy phases and changes i've undergone. and friends who fly out to see me when they could find better things to do, like going to europe or hawaii. i mean seriously, how much luckier can i get?
so lately, i've been considering more of what i want to do. i'm pretty content with psychology, but sometimes it feels like a poor substitute for medicine. i was actually premed at mit, and aced all my premed classes, but at the urging of family members, decided not to pursue medicine. i was lost after that, mostly because i didn't know where to go, or what to do. so hence i meandered around majors, different jobs, different interests, all in an attempt to find something that caught my excitement the way medicine did.
and now, six years later, i'm back at square one. so in considering medical school, i called two of my closest med school friends to discuss with them their lives and their thoughts. no, medical school is not a career. it's a lifestyle. it requires that you give up almost everything, at times, even yourself, to be a doctor. medical school does not carry with it the romance of saving people's lives. it's bureaucratic, abusive emotionally and physically, taxing, and it changes you. it forces you to overhaul everything you want, everything you need. sure, you're helping people, but at a high cost.
i thought it over.
my friends rarely tell me what to do, but here they were, telling me not to do it in as many words as they could. it wasn't about the ability. they both know i could study forever if given the chance. but i guess they wanted to stop me from a lifestyle they thought would suffocate me. they both know i need sleep, i need to run around and have time to paint, sing, dance, do all my silly little interests.
i think they're right. i've never really based my self worth on *what* i do or how much i make. status doesn't really matter to me, as shown by the fact that i was on a fast track to being a partner at a big five law firm and ditched it for completely poverty. so, i think we all know that medical school isn't exactly for me. i can get the practice in with clinical psychology and the science in with a research slant in cognitive neuroscience and psychology. i think that's better. and i'll still get to teach. good lord, that's scary. the future of america in my hands. hah. shouldn't be allowed, should it?
"so here i am."
i match with the recipient on 6/6 of the tissue types, which is extremely rare, especially for ethnic minorities. the people in the clinic were so excited to see me, because they have been trying to track me down - i guess i am her best shot at surviving. when they told me what disease she had, i burst into tears in the clinic. in this lifetime, i've already known too many people with leukemia and i am all too familiar with how it slyly wreaks havoc on people. all the nurses, i think all in all, 7 of them attempted to draw blood from me, panicked and started to pull the needles before i couldn't explain to them why i was crying. they thought they had poked me too deep.
in the end, after 1.5 hours, they were finally able to find a vein that would put out (blood, that is). i have three holes in my arms, am feeling a little dizzy and nauseous but it doesn't really matter. i found out today i could help save someone's life by just existing. i don't know a better reason to be me than that.
"dementia of this world"
so i got my hair fixed. it's the shortest it's ever been, and it competes with the hair i had my sophomore year at mit. i can put little barrettes in it. i almost look like a boy. and oddly, i like it. i have found my hair stylist. she kicks ass, and saved me today from the jackie-o'-scarf-wrapped-around-head-look i was going to go with for the next month or so.
so something struck me as odd yesterday.
ugly bad haircut: $16
cup of coffee i bought for the homeless man: $1.55
the latter had a much greater worth, although it was 1/10 of the cost. and it certainly brought him a lot more happiness than something ten times that cost brought me.
"my hair exploded"
first my sink, then my hair.
i got a hair cut in august that was quite short. it was a result of several bad haircuts, one after another, that necessitated one final cut to fix the previous ones' mistakes, and bring about the short hair. thankfully, i am blessed with hair that grows quickly, and in the past month and half, my hair grew almost two inches. but in doing so, it became uneven, a little heavy in the front, and difficult to manage. so i wanted to go get it layered a bit more today so that it'd grow out properly.
i told the fellow - no shorter hair, no boyish hair, nothing too exotic. i want clean and simple. i like layers, i like style, but nothing fancy.
and he gave me the worst hair cut ever. i came home and practically cried my eyes out about it for an hour. i swear, i'm not going out into the world with this hair for another 2 months. and when i do, it will be out of necessity and i will be wearing a bandana. i will wear dark sunglasses to hide my identity, or i'll learn to be the ugly woman on the street. this is horrible. as if i needed anything to add to the ugly feelings. pepper-chology says that in time of ugly feelings, one must make decisions to outwardly reduce the sense of ugly feelings.
heh. this certainly helped. not.