tangerine century

The drive from Delhi to Agra was unexciting, generally. The guest house was really, really nice and made us up ...coleslaw?... sandwiches that tasted like salt and pepper. They were really good (v. intense), and I had them for breakfast. The driver went ridiculously fast on the almost empty mornings roads and we got there in four hours. He was chewing this stuff that he'd need to spit out every so often, but Charlie said that the MIT kids said that this was, in fact, not chewing tobacco but something much stronger. I was skeptical (what other drugs do you chew and spit?) but was later to be surprised.

Animals we passed on the highway:
Camels towing things
Horses towing things
Donkeys towing things
Cows, just chillin'

The sky was overcast, so it wasn't hot. At the Taj Mahal we were greeted with a ginormous swarm of vendors, and acquired a guide with a good accent and large reflective sunglasses. It was impressive and beautiful, although I mentioned that it's cost was really borne by the country and laborers, not the Shah who commissioned it, so it's really less of a temple of love than a huge economic rent. (But really. It's amazing and the design is really impressive. I've never seen anything like it, even in the East. And it's so PRETTY, which was something lacking in my China trips. They were more about sheer age and massiveness. Or else everything was too old and worn to still be pretty).

Mm. Then we went to Agra Fort, which was actually more interesting. It's a giant palace for the Moguls and I didn't realize how complicated the layout was until we got lost; everyone just kept adding to it, sort of on whim (it seems). I love how one king would be like, hm, I want a life-size Parcheesi board where I will use my concubines as pieces, build it. The walls are hollow so they can be filled with water (they're about a foot and a half thick on the outside layer) as heat sinks. What you can do with infinite money!

And of course everything was really, really pretty. We came into the fort where everything is sandstone (Akbar's work), and you wander along all these rooms and passageways and suddenly everything is blinding white marble. There are floral patterns of semi-precious stones inlaid in the marble and the walkways are all built of tessellated shapes. There's also this repeating rhombus pattern on the inside of the domes that makes it look like the marble was crumpled, like paper, and spread again; it's really fragile and delicate looking. And many of the rooms were open air (which would be a pain with the bugs, but I suppose there were drapes and stuff). It would have been spectacular with all the furniture in it. I suppose I just like the way it was put together, with all the platforms and open courtyards and little passageways. And all the windows with the carved gratings, with every surface worked into geometric designs.

There were also fountains. I want to find out how they worked, with no electric pumps.

So apparently Shah Jahan went crazy after his wife died and he built the Taj Mahal for her; his window looks out across the river, facing it. Later on he was overthrown and imprisoned in a tower of the palace, which also had a view of the Taj. When his eyesight failed apparently his son (the one who overthrew him and executed his brother for the throne) installed a lens that let him see the Taj better.

Nuts, right?

Anyway, it was raining like crazy (we already had to wade through the walkway coming in -- when I design my own city I'm going to pay attention to where water would run and make sure these places aren't walkways) and we waded back through the entranceway to the car. (It was muddy water and the deepest part was about ankle deep. So my shoes became little buckets. And even with rain gear we were pretty soaked.) We drive out (we had a driver) heading for town, thinking of getting food. We pass a produce outdoor market.

Animals in the veg. market:
Herd of monkeys stealing/eating produce/fruit
Bajillion dogs
Swine, with bristles, in a herd
Oxen clogging up the road
cows getting fed from the produce stands
cows/horses/donkeys/camels pulling carts

Ridiculous, right? We get a flat, the driver spits his unidentified drug and changes it with us in the car and seemingly without jacking the car up. It starts raining and the road turns into a river (maybe a foot or so deep of sloshing muddy water). There is a pileup, cars going the opposite direction start using our side of the road since the other side is flooded and impassable, it's a mess. It's very surreal, all these cars and bikes sloshing along in this muddy river, leaving a wake, drenched in the rain, which is still coming down. Now I fully understand what rain means out here, when they say "you can't go there, it's RAINING."

We couldn't move very well, so we headed towards the highway. After two hours of crawling along we made it, and after an hour or so we had another flat. Having used the spare, the driver hitchhiked to the nearest tire vendor and back, and again changed the tire with us in the car and seemingly without raising the car. This takes an hour or so. After that, we resume our way.

Our way is pretty unique, I suppose. Our driver drove extraordinarily fast and loud, with much application of the horn. He'd rush at about 60 miles per hour up to a truck, suddenly brake to narrowly avoid colliding with it, and attempt to sidle between the half lane between the truck and the dirt shoulder. After nearly brushing the mirror, he invariably decides to get back behind the truck, stick the front bumper almost under their back metal bar, and start honking until the truck moved into a lane (there were two, but no one pays attention to them), and he passes to resume demon speeds (these roads are paved, but 60ish is a bit excessive where everyone else is going 40 or 50 mph). (We read the speed -- 80 km/hr (~50mph) when we were two feet away from the truck in front of us.) Then it started raining (only one of the windshield wipers worked), and he just kept on going, eyes bloodshot and spitting out mouthfuls of red stuff every once in a while.

In three more hours we stopped at a restaurant, 11 hours after I'd eaten my sandwiches. But most of that time I'd been worrying about dying in a car crash.

Anyway. I'm so glad I'm back.

I am terrified of new places. Bit of a homebody. Am a fan of wandering the internet snuggled in with a bowl of soup steaming somewhere nearby. Even in the summer. It's freezing here in the summer. Instead there's a shag rug on the floor, and I'm wondering how its cleaned. If it's ever cleaned.

K's working now, and that's quite odd; he's become like the parents, and my attempt to surprise him after work with my presence at his door ended up in failure. Got off at the wrong stop and after two hours of wandering ended up by the de Young instead. Interestingly, they're doing a Chihuly exhibit, which I saw when I was in StL last summer. Odd.

In two nights I'm off to India and a summer of flying by the seat of my pants. How weird. I wonder how one does that. Why are they flying, anyway?

Waiting to fall asleep, glad of his warmth, when I turned and saw the strange darkness hovering nearby. A reminder of how I hate the darkness of hotel rooms. But not like how it usually is, when I'm by myself, less strange, less menacing. And I realized how its actually the same; he just shifts the emphasis of my world. Does that make sense? Removal of a chocolate strawberry from the proffered party tray of my life, the subtle shift to a new equilibrium.

I miss him already.

It's always fun to read back over my entries and realize how snooty I sound. But yeah, I talk that way to myself in my head. Sort of.

MCAT scores came back a while ago, were fine. Two points above the Stanford Med acceptance averages. Who knows what that means? I wish there were averages and SDs on the score distribution. I bet there are. Hm. But you know the funny thing? I got the StanMed averages on everything but the verbal. I was high in the verbal. Isn't that weird? It's been years since I've written anything for fun.

Mm. What else. Staffing again next year. I'm super excited about rooms, and K is going to be downstairs from me. He's super sweet.

On second thought, I don't want to write an entry.

So. My last post was from the beginning of winter break. It is now the second week of spring quarter. Deductive logic would indicate that this is a long time, and furthermore, the reader infers that an event astounding enough to break the seal of silence, so to speak, and induce this surprising post must be forthcoming. The reader leans forward in the chair, resists the urge to skim ahead.

In fact, this is not the case. Several things of significance have happened, in fact, but they are neither profound nor drastic. The rock formations settling in the event of increasing pressure.

I took the MCATs last week. Started studying for them during break, but didn't touch the prep books at all during the easiest quarter I've had here yet. *Shrugs* Tried to catch up during the week long spring break, when I stayed here by myself, but I have my doubts of how effective that is. Scores come out in a month or so. Am not looking forward to it.

Mm. Oh! Am also going to India this summer. Recently I just realized what that means. Rather than Exotic! Fun! Excitement! Wooo! it was, oh no, 6 weeks at a strange NGO madly collecting data for a paper! How terrible and lonely. But! There is a whole quarter left, so not to worry.

Am also drifting more and more out of the med school track...there was a long phone call, and little levers were flipped in my head. Also, studying for the MCATs was not fun, and involved a lot of silly stuff. And a shadowing experience. And the realization that I hate volunteering for clinic. And that I'm not a kind, caring person at all. But nothing has happened yet, really, so tune in next week for further developments.

I am probably the only kid in the world whose parents don't want her to be a doctor and want her to get a PhD instead. Yup.

I'm surprised I didn't write about K coming to StL and our trip to Chicago. How silly of me.

There's some unspoken rules about how to transport to and from school. The Margaurite is off, so you have to rush to get to the Caltrain before it leaves. If you're classy, you'll supershuttle. And if you're really, really classy, (which I am), and have cool friends, (which I have), someone will drive you there. *grins* Thanks, Loren!

But most importantly of all, you have to wear Stanford gear.

Because there's nothing like realizing your half-full flight is half full of people you've semi-seen before.

My flight was delayed, and as I was eating cup noodles I'd swiped from the open-kitchen when I see her in the terminal, my terminal, my gate. She spots me before I can duck away and I get rounded in, reluctantly, to join the other misfortunates she's already collected. On the way I snag someone I recognize in my subconscious (hey, don't I...know you? "Yeah. you were in my house last night, eating chestnuts with my mulled wine." Oh, yeah, um. hi.)

There were five of us waiting together. We weren't wearing red but we knew each other. And then when I boarded I saw -- every fifth row there was that big blocky S and I remembered that St. Louis is a lot bigger than in my memories.

And you do it, because you remember that if you're from school too, then you can casually start a conversation with someone you've never really talked to, and ask them how they're getting home, which oh! happens to be right next to where you want to go...

instead of riding the Metro home in the fat furry flakes of snow coming in every time the door opens and ripping through that California sweater.

But damn, it's good to be back.

"(I must also ask readers' indulgence for a paragraph that Robert's Rules of Order would call a "point of personal privilege": Conway Morris has chosen, less in this article than in his book, to be imperiously dismissive of my ideas, as if no sensible or experienced person could ever advocate such prejudiced nonsense. But he never tells us that Wonderful Life treats him, in his radical days as a graduate student, as an intellectual hero. I developed my views on contingency and the expanded range of Burgess diversity directly from Conway Morris's work and explicit claims, and I both acknowledged my debt and praised him unstintingly in my book. I even suggested—although it's surely none of my business—that Whittington, Conway Morris, and Briggs should receive the Nobel Prize for their exemplary work. Conway Morris is certainly free to change his mind, as he has done. Indeed, such flexibility can only be viewed as admirable in science. But it is a bit unseemly never to state that you once held radically different opinions and to brand as benighted, in some obvious and permanent sense, a colleague who holds the views you once espoused. I do therefore object to Conway Morris's strategy of working out his own ontogenetic issues at my expense. Lest readers think I am being either peevish or idiosyncratic, may I cite our British colleague Richard Fortey, who generally sides with Conway Morris on the scientific debate, from the October 10 issue of the London Review of Books: "What is peculiar about [The Crucible of Creation] is that the casual reader…would never guess from it that Conway Morris ever entertained views different from those he now holds.…It is this selective amnesia which accounts for the passion of his disillusion with Gould, for Gould has preserved in the print of a best-seller ideas that Conway Morris…now repudiates. He is furious that his past misinterpretations have been so eloquently placed on record.…The way Conway Morris goes about biting the hand that once fed him would make a shoal of piranha seem decorous.")"

http://www.stephenjaygould.org/library/naturalhistory_cambrian.html

Damn.

I love my family. It's nice to be warm (and for it to be cold outside) and cared for and worried over. It's good to know that someone of that intelligence values me so highly, and it's good to be pampered. There has been amazing food and good discussions. Every time I come back I feel like I learn a little more about what life should be like, and how a good person should act and think.

After a wonderous meal we flew a hong ming dun (a something bright light). I'll find a good wikipedia link later. It's like a mini hot air balloon that you tie to a string (or not) and it floats off into the darkness. Like a kite, for nighttime. It was beautiful.

Then we went to Ted Drews, even though it's below 20F out. There were a surprising amount of people there. We sat in the car and split the banana split. Just like old times.

Saw JG, talked. Time is passing, and it's cold outside. All the pre-med stuff, and what we're doing and where we're going. That's what break is for -- to lift your head from the grind and look where you're going. Is it worth it? Is it the right path?

Where's the maximization of U?

preoperculosubmandibular is a word.


http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v440/n7085/full/nature04637.html
"Most of the glenohumeral joint is composed of a large hemispheroidal humeral head articulating with an ovoid, concave glenoid (Fig. 6a). Typically, this kind of joint geometry permits three degrees of freedom: rotation (supination/pronation), flexion/extension (elevation/depression) and protraction/retraction. In the case of Tiktaalik, however, some restriction of humeral mobility is engendered by cranial extensions of the articular surfaces of the glenoid and humeral head (Figs 3d and 6a; see also Supplementary Information). These accessory facets—a shallowly concave, elongate humeral facet and a convex glenoid facet—are brought into contact as the humerus is pronated, flexed and protracted. Pronation, flexion and protraction are movements that could have been effected by the large musculotendinous apparatus passing posterolaterally through the coracoid foramen and inserting on the ventral surface of the humerus. The simultaneous apposition of the reversed concavoconvex geometries of the anterior and posterior parts of the articulation represents a close-packed, or most stable, joint position. Additional stability would be contributed through the action of the trans-coracoid musculature. With the anterior facets of the glenohumeral joint in full contact, however, protraction and supination are inhibited, and flexor forces simply compress and stabilize the humerus against the anterior portion of the glenohumeral joint."

Do you know what this guy needed? An animation. An animation of a fish shoulder girdle moving (or not moving, as he insists). It would have taken eight seconds. And then he wouldn't have to make up words.

Him: "You're not going?"
Me: "I should study."
Him: "Come anyway."

(seconds pass)

Me: "Well, what's YOUR marginal utility of me going? Coz I know mine."

(seconds pass)

Me: "Uh, okay. Pretend someone gives you an...ice cream sandwich...when you're really hungry. And your utility increase is 5. Five utils."
Him: "Yeah, but it's not linear, decreasing returns-"
Me: "No, this is from zero to one, you don't have any ice cream sandwiches and then I give you one. Your marginal utility is five."
Him: "Uh."
Me: "So, what's your utility of me going?"

(seconds pass)

Him: "So, I'd rather have you go than the ice cream sandwich."
Me: "Okay, good. Would you rather have me go than getting an ice cream sandwich on two separate occasions? So it's linear, for the standard."


(a minute.)


Him: "So...I guess it's okay if you stay here..."

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
*grin* U sub two hours with me < U sub two ice cream sandwiches on separate occasions.

I'm so loved.

Which is why I'm at home, studying econ, instead of driving down to San Jose to get lumber, chinese food, and model rockets.

From my Labor Econ textbook (Borjas, 4th ed., page 99): "Economic growth, therefore, has not only made us wealthier, but also increased the price of children. Because women's fertility is extremely responsive to variation in price..."

There are studies that the timing of births respond to taxation. "It has been estimated that doubling the tax benefits associated with having an additional person in the household would shift a significant number of births form the first week of January to the last week of December." (also page 99).

Because, you know. "Honey, it's almost March. You'd better conceive so we can get the tax deduction for this year." "Ooooh, yes, talk like that turns me on, take me now..."

Chem grades. I did the normal thing, sacrificed the rest of my classes to study for Chem. And this time I'm 3 points from the top of the mean+SD point instead of three points from mean-SD.

There's been a surprising numbing? Lack of feeling surrounding chem. I just can't believe that I'm doing this again. Grades. Exams. Comparing you to me. I've found friends to study with, I've discovered that I want to be a full person. And the conventional wisdom says that I should work the hardest to develop that, not an empty life of points...

(Oh, but you don't understand...now that I am finally getting a hint of what it means to life for yourself, to be the best person you can be, now that I can see a shadowy path that would be uniquely mine...it's hard to step off where I am now. I always told myself that this pre-med thing was just a backup, it was a default until there was something that I found I liked. A certain stability. And now, when it's the time to commit, and I'm on the verge of committing, I have these second thoughts...)

I'm on the right path, though. I've suddenly met so many other Bio/Econ double majors in my classes; last year I thought I was the only one. So at least I know I'm taking the right classes, that I'm not crazy, that there is a whole community of us.

It's just that...I don't know what I want. Everything is so perfectly balanced, an impossibility of precision and strain. I don't even know what the choice is. It's, what? Med school vs. grad school? There are MD/PhD programs out there. (Dear god, do I really want to do THAT?) Between this consulting thing that everyone seems to be doing? (No, I don't want that. Do I? Wouldn't it be good to try it, just for a summer?)

Empirical facts. My study is lacking in empirical facts. Shadowing must occur. Lab work must occur. There will be a plan. I will stop all these useless endeavors that I am doing for these fantasy returns, silly confidence boosters that I do just to be looked up to (it's so sad that these are the things we are rewarded for).

(It's just that I don't want to give up econ in two years -- it's so wonderful. It's the theory, I love the theory, so pretty. These graphs are works of art, everything comes together so intricately, so precisely. Everything represents something else, it's incredible. One should just have graphs tacked to your walls. Amazing. No wonder these graphs win Nobel prizes.)

The trade-off isn't there. It's not personality or stability. It can't be.

I suppose I've just retreated a little, into my own head. You'd think that coming back on campus would help, but it doesn't, really. It's funny when you realize your friends now are people you'd call "acquaintances" in the life before this one.

I've written, to K, to myself.

School's started, I've declared. I've signed up to do a free MCAT, I've started running the race. Can feel the drag of the current. But I don't want to work, and maybe the taste of the real world I got this summer broke me away from GPA fixation.

I did want to scream in Chem131, though. Felt that old familiar painful desperation. Yet I'm not studying.

Too easily forgotten, I suppose.

Have a lack of a will to debate; slowly oozing out the last vestiges of what I used to be. Am thinking of quitting. What will this make me? Managing people's money has turned me into someone I don't really want to be. There's a boring linearity that's beginning to assert itself in my personality.

It's worse than that, though. I'm beginning to lose my respect for spontaneity.

K is in another dorm. We've drifted, a little. The feeling I had for him is shallower, manageable. The investment is starting to be much less profitable.

I love my classes. On Wednesday I came out of my classes (9-5 straight lecture with an hour break -- I'm auditing a class) with that singing feeling in my head that I used to get from IHUM. This is bad -- now is the time to be buckling down, getting the GPA down, getting the recs, so that when I apply next year the force will be sufficient.

Instead, there is this sensation of immense, mind-blowing joy.

God, I love school. I ranted to my dad about it for 40 minutes. It's a much fuller sensation of confidence than what debate gives you; a lot richer, a lot realer. Suddenly you begin to dream about the cutting edge of these fields, you imagine being there, you imagine being it.

Because you can see it, from where you are, this view is spectacular. This is what these classes give me, this is what makes me happy.

Is that so wrong? (Why can't this go on forever?)

This is the strangest summer I've ever had -- it's terrifyingly close to what I imagine growing up is like. We're subletting in a house just off campus, and I can bike through traffic to get to work (bio lab -- developmental bio with a plant model) or carpool in Chris' whiney old '92 Toyota corolla. The lab is sweet, with a very laid back post-doc and two other undergrads who are unusually intense. I aspire. Kevin and I have the master bedroom, and we get excited about the next thing we're going to cook (crab, a week ago, and pho -- with all attendant spices, and some extra -- a regular occurrence). He wants a shrimp scampi on linguine, and I'm getting ready for a curry soon.

The place is interesting. We've subletted from subletters, and there's a constant flux of residents, so the place is full of other people's stuff (are they going to come back? Can we just use this box spring and mattress set?), many of which is pretty random (cooing monkey head in what is supposed to be the dining room). Chris and Sara are the room across the hall, and there are (yesterday) trips to the beach (Santa Cruz, Half Moon bay).

It's not a very exhilarating life. I've learned about things like bills.

But it's good. The grade of school life dropped off a lot sophomore year, and this is a good change. More independence, less convenient, more exploration of life outside the bubble. Unfortunately, what we've seen is not very exciting, is all. I wonder what life as a MS&E coterm would be like. Is med school really for me?

*shrugs* But it's nice.

*Or, dear god, no wonder people don't behave perfectly rationally all the time. Even though the subconscious is a lot better at doing this than I am.

Given:
~aloneness + raininess = getting up late = eating weird foods at weird times = blood sugar level = -(sadness) = wishing to be alone at t+1. (All positive coeffients have been left out for simplicity) Not all variables are measured on a linear scale and aloneness, raininess, sadness, and (wishing to be alone) can be negative. Notationally, all subscripts on variables denote time with start time = t.

~aloneness is a positively correlated with energy at time t --> aloneness = (energy sub t) + (likable, known people in the immediate vicinity)

~ however, energy sub t = f(aloneness sub t-1) + tiredness

~where tiredness = if (sleep debt over the last week) >= alpha, tiredness = 1 and if not, tiredness = (8 - hours slept the night before/8)

~happiness = -sadness

~Raininess (for simplicity) is distributed N(0,sigma squared)

~utility = happiness at time t + (discount factor)happiness at time t+1 + (discount factor)^2 happiness at t+2... , where happiness is a function of enjoyment and -(energy spent) and a disount factor between 0 and 1.

Find:
~energy (wrt the the least number of other factors) to maximize utility

I've been getting funny mood swings lately. It's a little troubling. *makes a concerned face.*

I also get the feeling that I'm living my life in the wrong way. I've realized that I am different than the people I admire, which is silly. I don't even try to be them. I don't really try to be anything but this perfect-on-paper person...and I'm getting the feeling that that's really stupid.

A friend who was a total wildcard, crazy, setting things on fire, lewd, vulgar, womanizer, finally got into a serious relationship and his facebook picture is, strangely, normal. His hair is even combed.

There's this feeling that time is running out.

At the same time, I like grad students. I want grad student friends. They're defined, know where they're going, have done things. Are generally mild. Benign.

But once in your life, don't you want to jump out of a three story window to prove your claim that you won't die if you do? Don't you want to drive to IL on a whim?

I guess I've done some of those things, been sketchy, been weird, childish, rebellious. But it's not quite as exciting when you tell yourself those stories (and realize that it's been a long, long time...)

But more pertinently...where do I want my life to go? I've always said that I want to do what I want, that I live for joy. Yet I find myself sacrificing things for that step up...happiness? Not really. But ... intensity, maybe. I still don't know what I want. I don't know where I want to go.

My dad asked me why I was staffing next year. It's one of those things I sort of drifted into. I'm not focused. I was a little surprised; I thought that I could just drift for a while, let the life impact me deeply and do something with it later. But I want to staff. Maybe for the wrong reasons originally -- another year in a nice place, a preferred senior year -- but the more I hear I am thinking maybe I can make friends there, connect to someone again.

(Aren't I doing this summer for the wrong reasons? Why do I really want to stay in CA? I know, in my heart. It's not about the resume, this time. It's not really about the lab techniques. It's about something tenuous, something I shouldn't invest in, gamble on. I make my excuses, but I know they're excuses.)

But I appreciate my classes now. I don't know why I shouldn't keep on doing them. So I guess I will.

In this funny place. Where, for the first time, I'll be spending most of my time alone. I guess it's time to get back into the habit of enjoying my own company.

(A four hour hiatus.)

Okay, I'm AIMed out.

Back to being alone.

K squeeking when I squeeze him.

Columbia Tournament. Spoke 4 points up! *yay!*

CP says:
Long Island doesn't look like the Bahamas?!? I thought all islands looked like that.
What's windchill?....ooh, shit! Yeah, wind. chill. I get it.
Times Square...like, a square with a big clock in it?

We actually ended up going to Times Square without him. Awww.

Fun stories:
Ten minutes after we get off the train from Newark she starts flapping her hands and going oh-my-god-oh-my-god-oh-my. It turns out she's left her bag on the train, and she jets off to find it. The rest of us have breakfast.

She comes back twenty minutes later. First thing out of her mouth? She got her bag, twenty dollars, and a date. She says:

So I'm flipping out and I get lost going to two different lost and founds, and it's not there. A conductor tells me the train from Newark is still here so I get on it. I'm looking around all panicked and this woman asks me what's wrong so I tell her I lost my bag. She gets the whole train looking for it, but it's not there. Then someone tells me its the wrong train and there's a bag in another lost and found. The woman gives me twenty dollars because she says you need to pay to get your bag out of lost and found. I try not to take it but she won't take it back. I get off the train, but I get lost trying to find the lost and found. Eventually one of the conductor staff help me. He's about 19 or so and I'm flipping out still, and he goes, calm down! Calm dowm! Here, how's this, I'll take you out to dinner tonight. I tell him no, that we're not staying very long because we're going to Columbia U and he goes, oh, well, I live right around there...we get to the lost and found and my bag is there! I try to give the twenty dollars to the guy working there but he gives me a hug instead.

Bottom line? F. is cute when she's panicked.

At the end of the trip, CP goes to visit a friend at NYU. We tell him not to go to the Bronx, Harlem, or Central Park, certain that he's going to and that he won't come back. He doesn't have a cell phone, so I give him change to call from a pay phone when he gets lost.

Five hours later, I wake up to get the team on the shuttle to the airport and there he is. He says:
I get there okay, but I don't see my friend so I call him from a pay phone. He doesn't answer, so I try his other number but he's not there either. Now I've only got a quarter left and I thinking, what the fuck am I going to do? But then he comes up and honks.

It's kinda late when I start back. I get on the wrong train, it's express or something, and it doesn't go to the right place so I go back above ground and I have to run through Times Square to get to the next station. So I saw it. So I get on the right train, and now it's 4:45 or so, and I'm really lucky because just after I get in the gate a train comes. I get on it, but then I realize it's the hobo hangout or something, because there are about seven hobos sleeping in there. The thing that's different about here and Malaysia is the heat, really, cos in Malaysia it's hot inside and outside but here only on the inside...so they all go inside -- but then they really start to smell. But I don't want to risk changing cars or anything, because if I mess up again I'm not going to make it. Then some of the hobos wake up. I never knew that they were so territorial, but apparently one of them had serious beef with another one. They started spitting at each other, and I'm just sitting in the corner, with spit flying everywhere. It was pretty miserable. I'm pretty sure the thing one of them had in his hand was a knife. But I wasn't to scared, because they were pretty slow moving and I figured I could get away pretty easy. Then I realized I was in a train car. But I stayed out of the way and got off before anything happened.

Bottom line? I don't know. Beware of hobos.

I *heart* my novices.

few weeks. Week. Dance Marathon and the high school debate tournament are happening this weekend, and I had a little drama with my reproductive system, and there was a midterm I was really, really underprepared for. It's been a wonderful, stress inducing week that is only about to begin.

DM just reached a boiling point, with checks coming in by the stack. All the error messages get pushed to me. And I end up entering checks for hours. I need a comittee. It's just that there seem to be so many DM filled hours of the day. People keep asking me why I do it.

Bobby's been really nice about the debate tournament. And he put me on front desk (with christine, so I'll learn about reg treasuring, which is really nice of him.) No complaints.

Maybe this was the underlying thing that really wore away my calm. I just had the longest cycle ever -- 35 days. That's a week late. That's frickin' creepy. Scared me shitless. You will not believe the amount of relief one can feel at seeing blood.

The midterm was on Monday. I was stressed about the other thing, and hadn't really started preparing. I looked at the practice and could do about 60%. Couldn't focus. Turned out the real thing wasn't so bad. Think I did okay.

SIG application I finished on Wednesday night, after starting on Sunday. It was one of those things.

It's just that there's been no normalcy for so long, I guess. Like, no homework, skipping classes, worried about apps and other things.

But the real thing starts tomorrow, I guess, when reg starts and I don't get to breathe for the next day or two. It's gonna be great. And a midterm on monday.

At least I have K. *love* And that's all I need.

While I was avoiding all the essay questions for Stanford In Gov't, K. built a spectometer from a cardboard box and a CD. Now he's going around looking at all my lights.

*love love love love*