One more month to go

It was a good week at home for Thanskgiving, a much-needed break before the end-of-semester push. Our academic calendar rocks - whole week off for Thanksgiving, hence the age-old H-Y game chant "School on Monday!" I got to visit my high school, chat with a lot of former teachers and old family friends...I also somewhat caught up on sleep, though I didn't get nearly as much work done as I should have =P At least the weather's been pretty nice - even now highs get into the low 60s, which must be really confusing for the plants. I even saw one tree starting to bloom in the courtyard this afternoon (photo to left).

Still, the holiday decorations are starting to go up, like this (not blooming) Christmas tree in the courtyard and lots of festive evergreens/icicle lights festooning the common room. Koffee Too? went all out and semi-painted their windows into a holiday scene. I hope it actually does snow before we leave for winter break - it would be rather strange to have this weather for much longer.

I had a semi-philosophical discussion with some friends today about the upcoming stress of finals and such - all of us had ambitious plans about catching up on work over break but none of us seem to have accomplished that goal. In the end, though, what needs to get done is finished one way or another, and you look back and realize that one paper or one not-so-good exam grade isn't a big deal in the grand scheme of things. It like Timon says in The Lion King: You gotta put your past behind you. The only thing that really helps is take a deep breath and keep working toward what you have to do next.

The next two weeks are going to be pretty crazy. I need to decide if I'm writing a 15-page research paper or taking a final exam for "Molecules, Life, and Disease in the 20th Century" class, analyze data and write up the results for my Caplab project, prepare a poster with Sydney for the Perspectives on Science symposium, hopefully finish YSM production, clear out a bunch of Phoenix paperwork for UOFC funding and props/costumes purchases...next week isn't going to be fun just because of the Genetics exam Thursday and the last organic chemistry in-class exam Friday. Grr.

It's not all just work though. Winter IMs started tonight - my goal is to make it to at least half of the women's volleyball games and go cheer at more than half of the ice hockey games. The hockey games start super-late at night and the rink is halfway up Science Hill, but getting there and back is half the fun as long as you're walking with friends. Silliman is doing its share of holiday stuff too - we're having our traditional holiday dinner at the School of Management since we don't have our own dining hall, plus some other yummy things like "Fireside Fridays" with s'mores and kareoke night study break at Yorkside Pizza =D

For now, though, it's back to coding capuchin behavior patterns and then maybe some genetics reading...

A thought-provoking trip home

First of all, this guy's story is incredibly touching...

Secret Santa, Facing Cancer, Encourages Generosity in Others

There were a lot of interesting conversations going on around me on the train from Boston to New York, and even a few before then. Waiting on the Quad for the shuttle to Harvard Square, a guy (presumably a senior) was talking about his research taking MRI images of people while they meditated, perhaps something related to the work of Dr. Jeremy Gray. In the South Street Station, I was waiting in line for my sandwich at the ABP stand and a woman with a bright blue Yale scarf almost ran up to me smiling. "Wasn't it a wonderful game yesterday?! So many people came, the weather was wonderful..." We chatted for a bit - turns out she was an alum (duh) and her son is currently a sophomore in Saybrook, so that was pretty cool.

The train itself was full of Elis and Cantabs. Two people sitting behind me were a Harvard alum and a current student, the girl sitting next to me was a Silliman '06 graduate, and the group across the aisle included a Yale law prof with his young son and another Harvard alum. Understandably, the conversations were rather on the intellectual side - the merits of Harvard vs. Yale law school (the Yale law prof had gone to Harvard law school); the revitalization of one alum's neighborhood in northern NJ; etc. but some were fun too, like the the adults were asking the young boy what were his favorite school subjects and his favorite sports to play.

For me, though, the most interesting group was the four women in front of me - three who were apparently visiting from Australia (judging from the conversation and their accents) and one American. Their conversation ranged all over the place and provided an interesting cross-cultural comparison, but there was almost an element of bragging or competition underlying the subjects, at least on the part of the non-Australian. For example, in talking about the different holiday customs, the Australians were talking about fruit pudding - how they made it by boiling the mix in cheesecloth instead of baking like fruitcake, the consistency and taste - and her response was, "That's the silliest thing I've ever heard!" They talked about the custom of giving out gifts to wedding guests and at one point she said, "Oh no, that would be considered a cheap wedding here..." and went on to talk about a wedding where each guest received a commemorative pottery plate with the bride/groom's names and the date inscribed on the underside. Seriously, isn't the point of a wedding to celebrate the happiness of the two people who are getting married?

What really got to me was at the end, when she went to the cafe car and came back with a tray of drinks. "I wanted to get cocktails for all my new friends, but the credit card machine is broken.[insert more monologue]..I hope you all like white wine!" I didn't realize until later that this woman strongly reminded me of a TV character: Samantha from Sex and the City. Socially aggressive, dominating conversations, ostentatious mentions of wealth (she talked about her husband taking one kid up to Maine to go skiing while she took another one to Florida for that week because he/she didn't like the cold) and connections (his best man flew in from India - he was studying with the Dalai Lama)...she even had the blond hair. It's easy to see why the rest of the world often stereotypes Americans as loud, brash, braggarts who practically throw money out the window...I sincerely hope that's not the final impression that the Australian women will have of this country.

Anyway, the rest of the trip was fairly uneventful - it's nice to be home with good food (chicken soup with mushrooms and qing gong tsai!) and the luxury to sleep for more than 8 hours at a time, even though I have quite a bit of work to do over the break. I doubt I'll end up doing as much as I should, between running errands for Mom and helping my sister de-stress, but you can't do anything but try =P

Yale 34, Harvard 13

Advance apologies to all my friends up her in Boston (especially the ones who were generous enough to host me for the weekend), but Harvard just sucks =P

No pranks this year, minus the streaker in the fourth quarter who had a huge MIT written down his back, but who knows if he was really from MIT? For all the strict rules and regulations, hundreds of Elis still came out to support the team - I even got to see some alum buddies: Quan, my predecessor production manager at YSM, and Will, my ethnic counselor. There didn't seem to be that many problems with the tailgates either, though there were definitely still drunk people and I heard the ambulance sirens a few times. Overall it was a crazy game, from the early 7-0 lead (which we kept the whole time) to the interceptions on both sides, to the Trojan War-themed YPMB halftime show and everyone storming the field as the clock ran out with Yale in possession. Some snapshots:

The Harvard side of the stadium

One of the many plays leading to a Yale touchdown

The final score...this definitely makes up for last year's loss in triple overtime.

Storming the field to congratulate the team

After the game I just walked back to Pforzheimer (incidentally running into a lot of the Duke's Men along the way) and met back up with Vincent from NYSC, who is roommates with Craig from Gov School and who was generous enough to host me for the weekend. I also have a funny connection to their third roommate Aaron - he went to high school with one of my fellow Sillimanders, Jason, yet again proving that it's a small world after all =P

The afternoon was pretty quiet - all the guys have tests/quizzes Monday (our academic schedule is so much nicer and Aaron agrees with me on that) so I just uploaded/edited photos. Dinner was (very yummy) Thai take-out the more down time before going to watch The Ten Things I Hate About You with a bunch of Cantabs. If there's one thing I realized from visiting Harvard this weekend (and I hope some of them realize this too) is that we're really not all that different, at least the people that I've met. We enjoy similar music (as evidenced by the Shared lists that popped up on my iTunes), like similar video games/movies, enjoy similar food, etc.

Anyway, time to go to sleep and head home tomorrow....g'nite!

Cambridge - 1 hour and counting...

We leave for Harvard at 6:00 (well, the buses leave at 6:30 but we have to be there at 6:00).

This promises to be quite an entertaining weekend...stay posted for photos!

P.S. I'm going to Jamaica with Reach Out for spring break! w00t!

Be thankful every day, not just Thanksgiving

I see things like this and feel profoundly grateful for the opportunities I have been given:

Life is complicated at Louisiana school

Reading the New York Times has probably become my favorite form of procrastination, but at least it's educational =P I remember how much of last year I felt like I was in a bubble, not really in touch with what was going on outside of school.

It's been a long day and there's still a lot of work to do, so not going to write much. I presented the Theory of Mind project at Caplab tonight then went straight to do layout for Yale Scientific Magazine since Brian wants to do final copy Weds and Thurs before we all leave for Thanksgiving break. Both meetings went pretty well - got a lot of good suggestions from my fellow Caplabbers about how to quantify the capuchins' behavior and ideas for future experiments...wish I could post some of my photos, especially of the new baby capuchins (there's two now!) but that would probably get me in trouble with various administrators. YSM was amazingly efficient - my team of five enthusiastic frosh laid out most of the articles that were on the server in the 90-minute session tonight, so I think I'll even cancel the layout session and just have final copy tomorrow night. It doesn't seem possible to get this out to print before break considering we don't have graphics and/or title art for most of the articles, but we'll see.

Schedule for the rest of tonight: Spanish grammar practice, working on my Spanish presentation about popular Latin-American music (Enrique Iglesias and Shakira, anyone?), then maybe some HSHM reading? Let's see how far I can push my body to get everything done the rest of the week...I'm definitely sleeping on the bus going to Boston Friday afternoon.