Tuesday, February 28, 2006
Monday, February 27, 2006
some changes
I've decided to fiddle around with a new template, and this is the result. I admit the blue is a bit odd, but I've yet to figure out how to change that...if you can help, I'd much appreciate it. Oh and, of course, I WISH medschool were like the people in the artsy photos above--languid, oddly hot, and full of gratuitous nudity. Eh, one can dream right?
Thursday, February 23, 2006
Confucius, why won't you die already?
A disturbing article in the NY times Education section gave me a mild temper tantrum today. I usually don't get this bitchy except maybe over bad decor, but still....
The article was about rich asian immigrants (they're shopping for homes in Scarsdale, people! Scarsdale!) moving to the US in order to...you guess it: train their sons for MIT. It is highly ironic, I might add, that the purported reason for this departure from the motherland to America is to 'free' their children from the stress of competing in the rigid formal educations of the Far East (i.e. drone factories for future Microsoft programmers). Apparently, over there, it's just too much pressure; but over here, it's all fun and games like SAT prep courses in middle school, college coaching to get into MIT., and violin lessons even though the son is tone deaf (but Harvard LOVES to see forced-labor overcoming intrinsic lack of talent, so I guess there is a sick logic at work here).
The quote below, from an immigrant mother whose businessman-husband in in Beijing while she lives alone in in the States to tend to their coached prodigy, sounded freakishly familiar to me:
"Seven more years before he finish[sic] college. Then? I don't know," she said. "Whatever he will [sic] do, where[sic] he will go, I will go. To give the boy good life[sic]. That is all."" (Sick!)
Damnit woman! It ain't the 1800's anymore! Get a life! Let your son get a life! Jeesh! Enough with this Confucius bull crap about the 3 duties of a female: 1) attend to parents until you marry 2) attend to husband until he dies 3) attend to son until he...is sufficiently suffocated to death from your relentless cultural tyrrany!
Just you wait until he tells you he's gay, dropping out of college, and dating a black transvestite name Yvonne. Oh yes. God has a great sense of humor too.
Okay, so I actually pity her, and the son, and this whole warped mindset of achievement that makes victims out of everyone. After 5,000 years of cultural brainwashing, Confucius is still going strong. Damn old bastard.
The article was about rich asian immigrants (they're shopping for homes in Scarsdale, people! Scarsdale!) moving to the US in order to...you guess it: train their sons for MIT. It is highly ironic, I might add, that the purported reason for this departure from the motherland to America is to 'free' their children from the stress of competing in the rigid formal educations of the Far East (i.e. drone factories for future Microsoft programmers). Apparently, over there, it's just too much pressure; but over here, it's all fun and games like SAT prep courses in middle school, college coaching to get into MIT., and violin lessons even though the son is tone deaf (but Harvard LOVES to see forced-labor overcoming intrinsic lack of talent, so I guess there is a sick logic at work here).
The quote below, from an immigrant mother whose businessman-husband in in Beijing while she lives alone in in the States to tend to their coached prodigy, sounded freakishly familiar to me:
"Seven more years before he finish[sic] college. Then? I don't know," she said. "Whatever he will [sic] do, where[sic] he will go, I will go. To give the boy good life[sic]. That is all."" (Sick!)
Damnit woman! It ain't the 1800's anymore! Get a life! Let your son get a life! Jeesh! Enough with this Confucius bull crap about the 3 duties of a female: 1) attend to parents until you marry 2) attend to husband until he dies 3) attend to son until he...is sufficiently suffocated to death from your relentless cultural tyrrany!
Just you wait until he tells you he's gay, dropping out of college, and dating a black transvestite name Yvonne. Oh yes. God has a great sense of humor too.
Okay, so I actually pity her, and the son, and this whole warped mindset of achievement that makes victims out of everyone. After 5,000 years of cultural brainwashing, Confucius is still going strong. Damn old bastard.
Monday, February 20, 2006
Maine...
If I am ever going to a frozen tundra (again), I must remember to bring long underpants. I literally felt myself disappearing into...myself, sensing what it must be like to be a woman with penis envy.
Otherwise, the trip was fantastic. Mikey and I ate too much curry (because I had mistakenly planned to cook for 12 people instead of 2). We rented a cottage by the seashore, where the water was so cold we could hear its ice sheets cracking and churning in the shallow depths, crushing gravel. We had roaring fires, which began at first as smoky plumes that rose from the hearth and spilled into the living room because of dampness in the wood. My clothes still smell of charred timbers.
This was a rare weekend--thank god for President's Day--that made possible the plan for an escape to Bar Harbor, Maine. We took the scenic route from Boston, getting lost several times due to my habit of navigating via intuition--he was good-natured about it. There was no snow in Maine, so all of our plans for skiing or snowshoeing were dashed. Our adventures outside were brief-- snapping photos on a cragged jut of rock here or there, trespassing on private property to sneak a view of moss-lined valleys emptying into the pale-gray emerald bay, and getting yelled-at by an impish woman, in spandex stockings and a facemask, for picking up a few rounded stones along the coast. Maine was desolately beautiful: bulbous mountains appeared to tumble into the sea, leaving tall evergreens to hover perilously above the icy gray water below, with a surf driven by wind that pummeled itself against the juts of granite on which the pines stood tall. We defrosted ourselves in the car and watched gulls hover on the sub-zero gusts that whipped and howled around us. The air tasted of frozen salt.
Indoors, I cooked. We played board games and watched HGTV as I discussed the merits of mauvre over taupe for dressing recessed beams. Mikey tended to the fire, avoiding my musings on interior decorating by smiling and nodding his head repeatedly no matter what I said (I'm used to it by now). On the way back, we stopped in Portland Maine, where waitresses greeted us as 'friend' and streets with eclectic buildings had patriotic names like Congress, High, and Free. How very Quaker of them, I thought. We caught a movie. We drove home in the dark.
It was a largely uneventful vacation. And it was exactly what we needed.
Happy President's Day.
Otherwise, the trip was fantastic. Mikey and I ate too much curry (because I had mistakenly planned to cook for 12 people instead of 2). We rented a cottage by the seashore, where the water was so cold we could hear its ice sheets cracking and churning in the shallow depths, crushing gravel. We had roaring fires, which began at first as smoky plumes that rose from the hearth and spilled into the living room because of dampness in the wood. My clothes still smell of charred timbers.
This was a rare weekend--thank god for President's Day--that made possible the plan for an escape to Bar Harbor, Maine. We took the scenic route from Boston, getting lost several times due to my habit of navigating via intuition--he was good-natured about it. There was no snow in Maine, so all of our plans for skiing or snowshoeing were dashed. Our adventures outside were brief-- snapping photos on a cragged jut of rock here or there, trespassing on private property to sneak a view of moss-lined valleys emptying into the pale-gray emerald bay, and getting yelled-at by an impish woman, in spandex stockings and a facemask, for picking up a few rounded stones along the coast. Maine was desolately beautiful: bulbous mountains appeared to tumble into the sea, leaving tall evergreens to hover perilously above the icy gray water below, with a surf driven by wind that pummeled itself against the juts of granite on which the pines stood tall. We defrosted ourselves in the car and watched gulls hover on the sub-zero gusts that whipped and howled around us. The air tasted of frozen salt.
Indoors, I cooked. We played board games and watched HGTV as I discussed the merits of mauvre over taupe for dressing recessed beams. Mikey tended to the fire, avoiding my musings on interior decorating by smiling and nodding his head repeatedly no matter what I said (I'm used to it by now). On the way back, we stopped in Portland Maine, where waitresses greeted us as 'friend' and streets with eclectic buildings had patriotic names like Congress, High, and Free. How very Quaker of them, I thought. We caught a movie. We drove home in the dark.
It was a largely uneventful vacation. And it was exactly what we needed.
Happy President's Day.
Thursday, February 16, 2006
damnit!
The problem of going to a second tier research school: MONEY, and available research jobs. I've never had to be near the state of groveling that I am in right now. This sucks. I didn't even get to submit my application, and the research position is filled, one week after it is open. It's research, not I-banking! The freaking receptionist won't even return my inquiries for an application! It shouldn't be this hard, or demeaning, for students who are willing and able to do work to find positions at their own freaking school!
Screw this. I'm calling Harvard. At least they don't treat me like dirt.
Screw this. I'm calling Harvard. At least they don't treat me like dirt.
Tuesday, February 14, 2006
Much Ado About Nothing
For fear of loosing my readership, I figured it was damn fine time I started posting again. The time of course is 2:30 am, but then again I've slept for most of the day.
"Match Point" is a very good movie. It was so good it made me think. A central theme of the movie involves luck, a theme that is very cleverly woven throughout the plot. Talking to a friend afterwards over greasy chiken quesadilla at Rock Bottom, where the drunken fratboys of Emerson College go to pass out (Emerson frat boys...is there such a thing?), I stumbled onto some unfortunate truths: my life has been a series of lucky/unlucky accidents, proven over and over again by my meeting people at the a certain place, at a certain time. While I pretend to be weaving a master plot of career planning to delay an impending midlife crisis, I was overcome by a sense of inadequacy, realizing that it's all largely beyond my control.
Why am I at school in Boston right now? If you say incompetence and a laissez faire attitude that was perhaps too 'laissez' and not enough 'faire', you'd be half right. I sung in college. And it was this serendipitous pairing of my many delusions of grandeur coupled with a voice talent equivalent of Billie Holiday post-heroin that got me traveling the world. I coincidentally also met some very interesting people, like the drunk businessmen in a seedy Tokyo bar that told me a cash-strapped, doe-eyed boy like myself could make a lot of money in this town, in one night, at that steam bath place, in the Harajuku district. I politely declined the invitation for extra cash. Other invitations, however, were more substantial: working in an orphanage in south east asia, for example, sounded like it could have been fun. Four years later, I go to a health conference to find that the position I was offered before had connections to a project I could possibly be interested in. Lucky that. The project manager knows my contact. I could be off in 6 months.
I doubt I'm going to go, however. This opportunity didn't present itself at the right time. I need another round of luckily bumping into people, to work my 'magic' and razzle dazzle my way into a research project, here, in Boston, because it's part of my career planning. And so I'm stuck again in square 1, revising my initial assumptions about luck. Maybe I need it to come in pairs, like twin-prime numbers, ad infinitum. It's only lucky if you have time on your side, along with opportunity. Otherwise, it's just coincidence.
"Match Point" is a very good movie. It was so good it made me think. A central theme of the movie involves luck, a theme that is very cleverly woven throughout the plot. Talking to a friend afterwards over greasy chiken quesadilla at Rock Bottom, where the drunken fratboys of Emerson College go to pass out (Emerson frat boys...is there such a thing?), I stumbled onto some unfortunate truths: my life has been a series of lucky/unlucky accidents, proven over and over again by my meeting people at the a certain place, at a certain time. While I pretend to be weaving a master plot of career planning to delay an impending midlife crisis, I was overcome by a sense of inadequacy, realizing that it's all largely beyond my control.
Why am I at school in Boston right now? If you say incompetence and a laissez faire attitude that was perhaps too 'laissez' and not enough 'faire', you'd be half right. I sung in college. And it was this serendipitous pairing of my many delusions of grandeur coupled with a voice talent equivalent of Billie Holiday post-heroin that got me traveling the world. I coincidentally also met some very interesting people, like the drunk businessmen in a seedy Tokyo bar that told me a cash-strapped, doe-eyed boy like myself could make a lot of money in this town, in one night, at that steam bath place, in the Harajuku district. I politely declined the invitation for extra cash. Other invitations, however, were more substantial: working in an orphanage in south east asia, for example, sounded like it could have been fun. Four years later, I go to a health conference to find that the position I was offered before had connections to a project I could possibly be interested in. Lucky that. The project manager knows my contact. I could be off in 6 months.
I doubt I'm going to go, however. This opportunity didn't present itself at the right time. I need another round of luckily bumping into people, to work my 'magic' and razzle dazzle my way into a research project, here, in Boston, because it's part of my career planning. And so I'm stuck again in square 1, revising my initial assumptions about luck. Maybe I need it to come in pairs, like twin-prime numbers, ad infinitum. It's only lucky if you have time on your side, along with opportunity. Otherwise, it's just coincidence.
Monday, February 06, 2006
Values, fundamental
It takes a lot for me to get drawn into politics, but my immigrant inclination and vantage point have moved me to comment on the crisis raging through Europe and the Middle East. The freedom to question, to dissent, and to discuss is what enables things like weblogs to exist, but more importantly, it enables the West to be the icon of enlightenment that it is. And it is, correspondingly, irresponsible for the US to stand idly by as long time allies like Denmark, Norway, and (to a certain extent) France are being attacked for the same virtues that we proudly share, the very virtues that millions have fought and died for throughout the course of modern history.
Here are some much needed truths, from a fellow immigrant, the dissident muslim Ibn Warraq on why the west needs to stand in solidarity against this attack on one of the central tenets of Western civilization.
Money quotes:
"The great British philosopher John Stuart Mill wrote in On Liberty, "Strange it is, that men should admit the validity of the arguments for free discussion, but object to their being 'pushed to an extreme'; not seeing that unless the reasons are good for an extreme case, they are not good for any case...."
"A democracy cannot survive long without freedom of expression, the freedom to argue, to dissent, even to insult and offend. It is a freedom sorely lacking in the Islamic world, and without it Islam will remain unassailed in its dogmatic, fanatical, medieval fortress; ossified, totalitarian and intolerant. Without this fundamental freedom, Islam will continue to stifle thought, human rights, individuality; originality and truth."
"...Be proud, do not apologize. Do we have to go on apologizing for the sins our fathers? Do we still have to apologize, for example, for the British Empire, when, in fact, the British presence in India led to the Indian Renaissance, resulted in famine relief, railways, roads and irrigation schemes, eradication of cholera, the civil service, the establishment of a universal educational system where none existed before?... The British even gave back to the Indians their own past: it was European scholarship, archaeology and research that uncovered the greatness that was India; it was British government that did its best to save and conserve the monuments that were a witness to that past glory. British Imperialism preserved where earlier Islamic Imperialism destroyed thousands of Hindu temples....The west is the source of the liberating ideas of individual liberty, political democracy...It is the west that has raised the status of women, fought against slavery...No, the West needs no lectures on the superior virtue of societies who keep their women in subjection, cut off their clitorises, stone them to death for alleged adultery, throw acid on their faces, or deny the human rights of those considered to belong to lower castes."
And finally:
" When the Chinese students cried and died for democracy in Tiananmen Square (in 1989) , they brought with them not representations of Confucius or Buddha but a model of the Statue of Liberty."
We cannot be ignorant of the delicacy of situations, nor can we be ignorant about the values that enable us to live freely, and we must pay the cost of defending these values. This is a war of civilizations, and I hope the West wins.
Here are some much needed truths, from a fellow immigrant, the dissident muslim Ibn Warraq on why the west needs to stand in solidarity against this attack on one of the central tenets of Western civilization.
Money quotes:
"The great British philosopher John Stuart Mill wrote in On Liberty, "Strange it is, that men should admit the validity of the arguments for free discussion, but object to their being 'pushed to an extreme'; not seeing that unless the reasons are good for an extreme case, they are not good for any case...."
"A democracy cannot survive long without freedom of expression, the freedom to argue, to dissent, even to insult and offend. It is a freedom sorely lacking in the Islamic world, and without it Islam will remain unassailed in its dogmatic, fanatical, medieval fortress; ossified, totalitarian and intolerant. Without this fundamental freedom, Islam will continue to stifle thought, human rights, individuality; originality and truth."
"...Be proud, do not apologize. Do we have to go on apologizing for the sins our fathers? Do we still have to apologize, for example, for the British Empire, when, in fact, the British presence in India led to the Indian Renaissance, resulted in famine relief, railways, roads and irrigation schemes, eradication of cholera, the civil service, the establishment of a universal educational system where none existed before?... The British even gave back to the Indians their own past: it was European scholarship, archaeology and research that uncovered the greatness that was India; it was British government that did its best to save and conserve the monuments that were a witness to that past glory. British Imperialism preserved where earlier Islamic Imperialism destroyed thousands of Hindu temples....The west is the source of the liberating ideas of individual liberty, political democracy...It is the west that has raised the status of women, fought against slavery...No, the West needs no lectures on the superior virtue of societies who keep their women in subjection, cut off their clitorises, stone them to death for alleged adultery, throw acid on their faces, or deny the human rights of those considered to belong to lower castes."
And finally:
" When the Chinese students cried and died for democracy in Tiananmen Square (in 1989) , they brought with them not representations of Confucius or Buddha but a model of the Statue of Liberty."
We cannot be ignorant of the delicacy of situations, nor can we be ignorant about the values that enable us to live freely, and we must pay the cost of defending these values. This is a war of civilizations, and I hope the West wins.
Sunday, February 05, 2006
Un-doing
A one-liner message. A phone call. An argument. This is how relationships end, as I've found out from my unfortunate friends, whose breakups come at the cusp of the season of Hallmark cards, long stem roses, and chalky candies that taste good only because of the messages you devour.
A fellow classmate of mine had just broken up with his girlfriend, amicably; another, with much bitterness. Change is hard, I suppose, for these relationships that were hold-over collegic ties that couldn't bare the strains of new situations. Perhaps it was distance, perhaps it was time. I told them that they saved on valentines' day gifts. A lame excuse for consolation I know, but it was the best that I came up with, my not wanting to be overly sentimental, or worse of all, depressing. The remark gave my friends a slight chuckle or two.
(I know, I promise not to be a psychiatrist.)
For an old friend of mine, the news of an old boyfriend about to get married unglued the ties, once and for all. The relationship had ended, but then again it hasn't, the two of them, lingering in limbo. But the recent news was the death knell that needed to be rung. It's time to move on and have new valentines, I want to say to them all.
But I know un-doing is hard. Change is hard.
And for once in my life, I don't know what to say to make it better.
A fellow classmate of mine had just broken up with his girlfriend, amicably; another, with much bitterness. Change is hard, I suppose, for these relationships that were hold-over collegic ties that couldn't bare the strains of new situations. Perhaps it was distance, perhaps it was time. I told them that they saved on valentines' day gifts. A lame excuse for consolation I know, but it was the best that I came up with, my not wanting to be overly sentimental, or worse of all, depressing. The remark gave my friends a slight chuckle or two.
(I know, I promise not to be a psychiatrist.)
For an old friend of mine, the news of an old boyfriend about to get married unglued the ties, once and for all. The relationship had ended, but then again it hasn't, the two of them, lingering in limbo. But the recent news was the death knell that needed to be rung. It's time to move on and have new valentines, I want to say to them all.
But I know un-doing is hard. Change is hard.
And for once in my life, I don't know what to say to make it better.
Thursday, February 02, 2006
Buy Danish!
This is sad. Really sad. I understand hurt feelings, but this response is medieval and uncivilized. If you don't know what I'm referring to, visit CNN.com, or turn on any news source.
Doctrine
| I'm not Catholic, but if I were.... Hat tip to Theologienne. You scored as Liberal Catholic. You embrace the social justice mission of the Church, and the view of Catholic community as seen in the Acts of Apostles. You have a great love of the American democratic tradition, but tend to want to apply these traditions to the Church itself and the deposit of faith. You want a married and female clergy, decentralization of power, and an endless list of reforms. You feel that you are a true champion of the Second Vatican Council. Like the Neo-Conservative Catholic, your views may be too determined by American culture, and you may uncritically accept many theories that may be harmful to yourself and society; instead you may need rediscover authentic Catholic thinking. You should emphasize the love of God, as your Creator and sustainer. http://saint-louis.blogspot.com - Rome of the West
What is your style of American Catholicism? created with QuizFarm.com |
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