This Has Been

A lovely weekend, all told. Nyx came over on Friday, and we lolled about, chattered, and made origami. On Saturday, I went to SHP for the first time in ages. I was placed in cosmology along with Gopika, Rube, Sarah, and this random talkative girl who seems really familiar (there was also a girl from Rube's school who had heeled rainboots (no comprendo) who sat next to a different girl who looked really familiar (I think she was at Math Prize for Girls, and is one of those people who is all into math competition gossip, because that was the discussion while waiting in line for the bathroom)). I don't know if Rube signed up for cosmology because of me, or if he landed his second choice, but I'm not going to ask. I was kind of late (I wanted a latte more than I wanted to be on time), so I ended up between him and this adorable girl from New Jersey (not Gopika, actually). It should also be noted that I really wished the namesake for the Gopika I usually talk about was still around (she's two years older than me, sadly), because our instructor is quite cute. Based her comments to the 15-year-old me back in our neurobiology days, she's the sort to appreciate a good-looking teacher.

I've also been devoting much time to rereading Anathem, which is every bit as engrossing the second time around (I'm hoping to finish it up today, in keeping with the three days I managed it in last time...I also don't think I'm going to get any homework done until it's finished, so I ought to take advantage of this brief period of no-homeworkness).

After class on Saturday I took the 1 line really really far to meet Chao in Chinatown. Her family took me out for dim sum, which was just as yummy as I remembered, though she was on the whole very disappointed in my inability to identify or remember what I'd eaten in the past. I always figure I'm not allergic to anything, it smells halfway decent, I might as well eat it (we discovered, however, that chicken claws (or whatever those were) kind of weird me out). It was nice to meet her family, and the food was yummy. After that, we spent a few hours wandering through Chinese groceries. I saw fish (alive, dead and whole, dead and chopped up, dead and dried, dead and dried and chopped up...I could go on), and all sorts of unusual (to me) fruits and veggies, including something that looked like giant grapefruit. On the whole, though, it was mostly just nice to see Chao.

Since then, I've been at home. I messaged with Gaea a little bit last night, and I think I sent her some ramblings around midnight (though probably before...it was before I left bedcheck (where "bedcheck" refers to "discussing international politics with James in a forum visible to members of the RSI '10 community")) regarding my current internal debate, which is what I want to do with my life. For some reason, "SCIENCE" is insufficient. I have this urge to find a meaningful place in society. I could probably do this by having children, but I was sitting on the train last night and listening to a group of mothers discussing how they managed to get their children enrolled in public school gifted programs (because, as we all know, those are designed to assist whichever students had the most outside help...), and it struck me that I couldn't do that. I am not a person who will be capable of making her family into her life--I love family, I think I want to make my own someday, but that will never be enough for me. I need more--I need science.

But what sort of science? I love physics, but where in physics. Do I do something that has the potential to actually change the world--nuclear fusion, for example, the plasma physics Julie so adores--or do I follow the piece of my heart that wants me to leap off the deep end into the math-heavy world of something like particle physics. I'll probably end up in the former--I love math, and it's beautiful, but I put it under a header more like art, and while art is beautiful, I probably will never create a masterpiece, and I don't want to sit at the edge of my life and realize that for decades of work, I've created a few small pieces of a few small formulas that will be rendered obsolete by the tides of history. But who's to say I'd make a mark anywhere else--how do I know? Why am I so obsessed with creating something enduring when nothing truly endures in the first place?

I'm not sure where I'm going with this. I found out yesterday that I'm still in the running for the Thiel Fellowship. I think, if I land it, I'll take it, because it might be a chance to do something. But I'm also terrified that I don't have the expertise, that the funds won't be enough, or that living by myself would do me in, or that my ideas have no merit, I'll find that out within a month and then be stuck twiddling my thumbs for two years (realistically, I'm not the sort of person to do that, but I worry nonetheless). It would mean going to college while feeling like an adult--I'm not sure how well that would work--and also heading into one of the most rigorous undergraduate curriculums in the country while not having done any schoolwork in two years. But if I actually accomplished something meaningful, it would be worth it, I think.

But that argument is likely irrelevant, as it's highly probable I won't land the fellowship and it won't matter. I'll still be stuck under wondering how I want to change the world--I'm a bit worried my daydreams of academia have become another microcosm of the "what if I just gave up all of this ambition" question--but then, getting to a point where I'm doing research is ambitious.

I have a feeling when I'm older I'll look back at this and laugh, regardless of whether I'm doing theoretical work or telling a large group of engineers what to do.

Second Milestone Presentations

Milestones are far more work than they should be.

On this particular Milestone Morning, I was very tired. I was also rather annoyed, because A) only my group and one other group had presentations this morning, and B) our presentations were combined, meaning that I was going to have to sit through four hours of presentations.

I was also rather happy, because, as I told both Vanessa and Sadie that morning before class started, I'd had a very interesting midnight phone call the night before, and half of my mental processing power was devoted to "did he really say that?" and "whaaaaa?" but we shall ignore that for the purposes of this post.

Well, I tried to tell this to Vanessa and Sadie. My attempts were interfered with by my rather terrible laryngitis. The worse bit was that whenever I laughed, I would squeak all over the place, and then start laughing at myself laughing and make it worse. I am not good at resting my voice.

Sadie had her own interesting story as well, and hers centered around the RSI prom. I can't recall if, at that point, she had a date (though she ended up going with Aziz, and I think that she was one of the earlier askees). Anyways, she was talking to Ash about the prom, and was all "do you have a date yet? Who are you going to ask?" etc.

Ash, who had very limited interest in asking anybody, responded by saying "I'll go with this beef," gesturing at his lunch.

At this point in the retelling, Sadie started laughing, although I didn't quite get it.

Sadie apparently asked whether the beef was willing to go with him, and his response was "I'll ask" followed by "the beef said yes."

For some reason that I still don't quite comprehend, she thought that last line was basically the funniest thing ever, and proceeded to repeat the story whenever there was much in the way of funny story sharing.

I'll admit that, after a while, it did become rather funny.

Regardless, we went in, sat down, and prepared for presentations. I sat with my geographically convenient friends (Gopika and Sarah), and behind Ashley (remember...Ashley=Ash=guy with girly name) and Maxwell. This seating arrangement is irrelevant but for the fact that Gopika got to eat some of my cheetos (I see nothing wrong with bringing snacks to a four hour presentation block), and Ash had cool looking doodles.

I sat through a lot of talks, and got up to go to the bathroom rather frequently, so as to keep myself from displaying my boredom overmuch. The bathroom breaks caused me to miss both Ava's and Gaea's talks, which was probably fortunate, since they were both about (I think) colon cancer, and Ava apparently used very, very graphic images in hers, as she was blackballed for the next two days until she could get a cleaner copy of her presentation to her tutor.

Gopika, Sarah, and Vanessa all had super intense presentations. Maxwell's I don't remember (sorry dude!). Anwar's was also rather beastly. I would like to note that Anwar was in my peer editing group, so therefore some of his beastliness should be credited to me (note: this is a bold-faced lie, as Anwar is just naturally extremely good at giving presentations and writing papers and doing science in general).

As far as my own lab group goes, I am proud to say that I got through mine rather well. It was three hours in by that point, so my voice had recovered a teeny bit, so I squeaked my way through the basics of nuclear reactors and an outline of my project. I thought Didge's presentation was fine, but apparently it lacked basic effort, or something, so he got dumped on probation with Ava. Bashir used the photo of nuclear reactor towers with giant yellow smiley faces on them again.

Eventually, after 4+ hours, the presentations ended. We went back to W20 to eat, and Ash said that I sounded like a Southpark character, and he and Maxwell got annoyed with me for trying to talk, so I went and walked with people who had smaller "must take care of others" complexes.

The Beach

I discovered today that Caleb's profile picture is now of him surfing.

On that note, I'm going to recount beach day.

On this day, we had to awaken early. Possibly before seven. So, like, really early, not just early by RSI standards. Leila and I awoke. I quickly brushed my teeth and washed my face, by which time she'd managed to get herself awake.

I made a half-hearted attempt at packing a beach bag, then ran to W20 in hopes of getting a few minutes to eat breakfast. It is likely that I ran into Chao along the way, since she and I are frequently breakfast buddies, but I have a vague recollection of rushing along with Gabriel, Leila's little spanish friend, on this particular morning.

I inhaled my breakfast while standing around with my counselor group, waiting for Kareem, who was late as usual, and Leila, whose hair was being difficult.

We then walked to the t-stop. In order for me to give you all a complete impression of how long this takes, I'm going to give mini-bios of a few more members of my counselor group, since that was who I was walking with. We covered a few people here, and now we'll discuss a few more.

Leila and Gabriel: Leila is my roommate, and Gabriel is the roommate of my friend on the eighth floor of my tower (hint: the one who doesn't have a single). They both love skype, although they kicked their addiction somewhat the last couple of weeks. They are from Cataloonya, which is where Barcelona is, and is not actually spelled like that. Leila is so short that her head fits under my chin when we hug. I'm not really sure how tall Gabriel is.

Kareem: Kareem is from Saudi Arabia, and he lives on my floor. He isn't really bothered with rules, so he does things like sneak off campus and buy really expensive laptops when he's supposed to be at mentorship, which our counselor, Keyuri, never yells at him for, because she thinks that all Saudis have connections to the Taliban and she doesn't want to make the wrong people angry.

Veer: Veer has a girlfriend (and she doesn't live in Canada. I said hi to her on skype once. It was fun). He actually rarely talks about her, so it's silly to introduce him as such, but whatever. Veer is Indian and occasionally accuses other Indians of acting white. I didn't really talk to him that much, to be perfectly honest, so I can't give you much better than that.

That's good enough for a wait, I think.

I most likely talked to Arthur and Dawson during the walk, because I tend to do that, but regardless, we eventually arrived, and met the other counselor groups, then took the tube to...

A BOAT!!! WE GOT TO RIDE A BOAT!!!!

It's really remarkable that I still get excited about these sorts of things, considering the number of boats I've been on in my life.

I stood between Dawson and Bing (Bing is a guy) for the ride over, and I have vague recollections of talking about Arkansas, then learning that, contrary to my previously held belief, Singapore is an island. Who knew?

We got off of the ferry, and, soon thereafter, Ashley (male), James (male), and Chao (female) gathered together a Contact-playing group, and we got so intent on our game that we missed the first ferry.

When the second ferry came, a "particularly smart" group of us decided to wait in the shade until the last possible second to get on the ferry. Naturally, it was full, and the five of us got stuck on the island.

We wandered off to a grassy area and, of course, played more contact. I also got my first semi-explanation of what Starcraft is from James while Ash was looking for some sticks to turn into sandcastle building tools. I also got to lead my first round of contact; I used magnolia as my word, screwing over my science-geek friends who couldn't get magnets out of their heads, although Bing eventually figured me out.

An hour later, we boarded the ferry and went to island number two. Here, at last, was the beach.

I swam, first with Nicholas and Gopika, who spent the entire time attacking each other, because Nicholas derives some great enjoyment from stealing her stuff, then with Bing, who declared the water to be rather chilly, and then with Kareem, Nicholas and a few others who were trying to play beach volleyball in chest high water with a soccer ball.

Then, of course, it came time for frisbee. It was still warm out, so I figured I'd just play in a swimsuit--it wasn't until I'd walked all the way up the great big hill and started playing that I realized that Nicholas and Livny were the only other ones in just swimsuits.

Gopika and I, naturally, took a moment to discuss Livny's shirtless state.

Gopika: Livny has bigger boobs then I do.

Tea: Me, too. Although, yours are bigger than mine, so I suppose that's just a logical continuation.

Gopika: I'm not sure they are, I think it's just the combination of the swimsuit and the dress.

Tea: You're still plenty sexy and curvaceous.

At the last line, Luther (big Chinese guy) turned around and gave us the absolute dirtiest look, so we dissolved into hysterics.

We played frisbee for a bit more, and I borrowed Dawson's spare shirt so I felt a little more comfortable, then uncomfortably returned it with some various interesting wet spots left by my bathing suit.

When walking back down to the beach with Gopika, I ran into Arthur, and I recounted our little tale and Luther's shocked reaction. Gopika said I'd probably gone into too much detail, and Arthur said it was funny, but still awkward.

Then he promptly forgot the entire event, and a while later, when he heard mention of some awkwardness that had occurred involving Gopika and I at the beach, he bombarded me with instant messages asking what the hell it was, and insisting that I hadn't told him anything at all.

Anyways, back to the beach: it rained copiously, so we hid in the main building and played more Contact, which is, as I've said, the best game ever. Then, rain and all, we went on the ferry and rode back to shore.

Gaea tried to talk me into coming on some dinner trip with her, then changed her mind at the last minute because she was apparently avoiding someone on said trip.

Instead, we went back to W20, and I stood around with her, Maxwell and Abe and tried to decide what to order for dinner. Then Abe hug-attacked me, and then Gaea licked me, so I freaked out and went to eat with other people. No pizza for Tea.

Facebook Hacking

Maxwell's facebook got hacked. He posted a link on all of his friend's walls about "How Acai Berry and Colon Cleanse changed my life forever!" My first reaction was to assume he was an annoying facebook user and delete it.

However, Maxwell is not at all accustomed to facebook. He communicates using unusual methods, and he has a profoundly confusing habit of actually ending all of his posts with "Maxwell." I mean, a signature? Really? In this day and age? Regardless, I'm fairly certain that Maxwell only created his facebook after the CEE sent out an email talking about the group, and he only has a hundred some-ought friends. So, he proceeded to apologize to most of them, but not me, because I'd deleted mine.

Take, for example, his exchange with Gaea. She commented "..." on the original post. He wrote on her wall the next day "Sorry, Gaea, this is not from me! Maxwell." Her response? "ok now I'm more confused then ever."

Personally, I am impressed by her grasp of a second language. Gaea lives in Japan, after all, which is very far far away.

Anyways, just to make certain that the entire human population (or, at least, the 105 members of the facebook group) got the memo, Maxwell wrote one more apologetic message, with emphasis on NOT FROM ME and "I really prefer e-mail" (with the hyphen), and a warning about the new "Instant Personalization" setting, which sounds invasive and defaults to on (BE FOREWARNED!).

I commented with the following reminder:

"I wouldn't worry about it. One of my friend's fbs once got hacked, and she sent a link to a website that was either porn or cybersex (judging by people's reactions. I never actually clicked the link) to every one of her facebook friends, and people still talk to her."

An Asian guy who's facebook indicates Scandinavian origins responded by praising the juice that not-Maxwell had been shilling.

Maxwell responded to me with a four line message (two of which were "Hi Tea" and "Maxwell") including two exclamation marks and thanking me for the reassurance, via inbox.

I'm not sure if either of us are being sarcastic, and I'm really, truly uncertain of which side of the exchange is, overall, the most awkward.