dead

i thought this was funny.

topix: art-to-go – dead science

Dead Science could be the title by which our era becomes known, especially if the government fails to change hands.

so lazy

i’m so lazy about going to seattle.

but really. i should go today because it’s a nice day. well, it looked like that when i woke up; not anymore.

i have to drive for ~20 minutes to get to the park & ride. then $3.50 for a two-zone round-trip fare. $5 for a meal, and more if i give in to my temptation for bubble tea.

in new york, you only had to walk — at the most — five minutes to get to a subway, and even less to get to a bus stop.

suburbia. so inconvenient. and full of spiders.

the full cost of instruction is $1??

i was just looking at tuition stuff on my account, and it said:

The University of Washington collects tuition and fees of $2,268 for full-time undergraduate resident students. The full cost of instruction is $1 and the $2,267 difference is paid by state tax funds and other moneys.

typo??

i’m thinking the total tuition is supposed to be somewhere up in the 5000’s, so that the “$2,267″ difference is paid by state tax funds, and the remainder by us…

flying sucks

well, i’m back home.

flying from philly to seattle was definitely not a pleasant experience, just as flying from denver to new york was not. in both cases, i didn’t eat lunch and dinner, so i think the nausea resulted from a lack of meals rather than motion sickness. normally, i can handle turbulence, but the last time i flew, the turbulence was really bad, so i think that conditioned me to feel nauseous when i thought about eating on the airplane. ehh. i don’t like flying, except looking out the window and seeing all the amazing things like manhattan island and central park like a rectangular forest in a city, the burroughs of queens and the bronx… the rockies, the cascades, mt. st. helens and mt. rainier… the puget sound… the views make it all worth it.

i’m so glad the plane ride is over. i’m also really glad that i go to uw so that i don’t have to take the plane on a regular basis. whew.

bummer

errands and a paper to finish.

page 12 of 18 broke the printer. the boarding pass was still pending. -__- ha, and i was going to pat myself on the back for finishing my paper and remembering to print my boarding pass.

of all the days i could have come home late, it had to be my very last day. as i was stationed in east harlem. there were flashing lights and police cars in front of the super market down the street when i got off the bus. not sketchy at all.

i’ve been wrestling with not the paper itself, but latex for the past couple of days. my linux box didn’t want to connect to nettie’s wireless network, so it was difficult to work out the kinks beforehand. yesterday, i contrived the tedious effort of editing the .tex file in windows, ftp-ing the file to my dante (uw student server) account, ssh-ing into dante to compile, debug, and convert my file to .pdf, then re-ftp-ing the pdf back to windows so that i can view it without the use of x11.

i didn’t go shopping for cheap jeans or wacky t-shirts one last time; i didn’t get to read ‘the traveler’ at barnes & noble, nor purchase it to read on the plane. it doesn’t matter now because i will be working on my paper while on the plane. take that airplane, latex and linux don’t need no internet.

i love this string quartet tribute to ‘helena’ by my chemical romance.

man, the weather in new york has been beautiful this month.

vitamin string quartet

i have found awesome, professional-level string adaptations of bands like paramore, seether, thrice, and bad religion by the vitamin string quartet. excellent adaptations, excellent recordings. wow, why didn’t i know about them before? here’s a short playlist.

oh this is gonna be interesting…

my future roommate is chinese, just as my mother predicted. when i say chinese, i mean no-spaces-after-punctuation-marks chinese.

bring it on.

after reading that-which-shall-not-be-named, i’ve decided that i’m going to do my best not to let my international roommate slip through the cracks. granted, i understand that her happiness is not my responsibility. intrinsic attitude is everything. your time is what you make of it. but, if i can do something for a person in a wacky country, then i will make an effort. i’ve always done this, ever since i was a little kid. case 1: sally akimoto, the english-japanese girl with asian eyes and hazel hair. it just depends on the person.

i think living in new york has been a great experience for me. i admit, i wasn’t too happy when first got here, i learned that new york takes getting used to. everything turned out well — better than i expected. i made good connections with people at the museum. i couldn’t be happier about being here this summer. it’s such an amazing opportunity. i’m glad i took advantage of it. i learned a lot and had a good time. research is cool.

reblog: the link between teen pregnancy and sexual violence

from feministe

some of the figures from an article from the center for american progress are “stunning” (quoted from feministe):

The Harvard School of Public Health’s exhaustive research on the lives of girls demonstrates that girls who are victims of violence from dating partners are four to six times more likely than non-abused girls to become pregnant, and eight to nine times more likely to attempt suicide.

Other research findings… The average age of first intercourse for abused girls is 13.8, in contrast to the national average of 16.2. Only 28 percent of the abused girls used birth control at first intercourse, compared to 74 percent of girls in the general population.

abstinence-only education? so naive.

facial tectonics

i don’t know why i’ve never noticed this before, but it’s probably due to the fact that i’m used to seeing my face in the mirror every day.

recently — like, as of yesterday — i’ve noticed that my face has a systematic asymmetry. not simply asymmetric, for i’ve always known that my face was highly asymmetric (which goes for the rest of my body, and is another great excuse for why i’m a lousy athlete) — but consistently so. i’ve never noticed that the entire right side of my face just… droops. the right side of my nose is lower, the right side of my mouth, my right eyelid, my right cheekbone… everything is lower. i can even feel it now that i’m aware of it. my eyebrow is the exception, since i can do the eyebrow-lift on that side only.

i’ve always liked the left side of my body better — my left eye eyelid opens more than the right one, and i also prefer my left hand and foot, plus i’m more flexible with my limbs on the left side. so, it doesn’t surprise me that this is the reason why i’ve always preferred the left side of my body. i even cut my hair better on the left side, but that is beside the point.

i don’t know if this right-side droop is a recent development, or if it’s always been this way and i’ve just never noticed it since the dissipation of my baby fat is five years retarded. i wonder if this “great right droop” (think: “great vowel shift”) is the result of facial tectonics. a gradual, imperceptible and inevitable transformation that took place over an extended period of time and is finally manifesting itself on the pre-existing fault line that is the right side of my face. it certainly wasn’t a sudden geological event like an earthquake or a volcanic eruption, since i don’t recall ever being hit on that side of my face (though the other side has been hit by a spiraling football), and i sleep on both sides of my body. no, i think the development was a result of facial tectonics. natural geological erosion. it seems more like gradual muscle atrophy than anything else.

i can’t say i’m worried, unless this results in the obvious half-face degeneration that i saw in one of the women who works in the experimental college. her condition seemed more likely to be the result of a car accident, or something.

bless the people who woke me up at 7:12 am

what a gorgeous morning. the sun is out. the weather is perfect — only about 65 or so. i decided to treat myself to a store-bought breakfast item, and starbucks was the first thing i found. i got a blueberry coffee cake and a mocha frappucino. “would you like cream on that?” “ah, no thanks.” “good, that makes my job a little a bit easier!” aww. waving ‘hi’ to the security guards as i enter the garage. all before 10 am.

i slept from ~3 am to 8:30 am. i’m sure i’ll start my yawning marathon soon. despite being woken up at an ungodly hour (today = sunday = ungodly), i’m glad that all the commotion got me out of the house. the guys (apartment people) are going to fire island today. manuel was singing. i found a condom wrapper in the bathroom and took a picture of it. it had an interesting design — ‘nyc condom’ in subway lettering. i guess olivia and jared really did consummate the sex i thought i was hearing as i was reading a million pages of ‘bleach’ last night. i left at 8:45 am this morning. woot.

i’m really starting to enjoy new york, now that i only have a week left. i don’t know if it’s because [almost] all of my friends are gone and i am forced to occupy myself. i am free to do the meaningless, non-touristy things i want to do. i go to the bookstore to read chapters of ‘the traveler’, shop for cheap clothes at filene’s basement, and look for shoe stores that carry simple shoes. i also like going to whole foods and eating a wholesome meal there, even though the food and a tasty drink costs me about $8 – 10. tibetan tofu burrito vs poorly-cooked mac & cheese? i think the tofu burrito is the better alternative. i’ve started taking the bus now that i live crosstown. it’s really slow, but much more scenic than the subway. i wish i could have visited midtown/upper east side more while i was here. it seems to be the cleaner part of nyc.

mm, blueberry coffee cake. too sweet, but nice and rewarding.

back to work.