A Bag Of Bananas

I went to Chinatown with Marie yesterday, because groceries were cheaper there than our local supermarket, and also because we wanted to go to a bakery. I don't know why I did not get my egg tart fill in Flushing, where the bubble tea was $3 for two compared to the bakery's $3.50 for one, but I bought some anyway and Marie bought a large green tea cake and I came back to the office with three bags of groceries.

Now I have bananas for breakfast for the next few days, so I won't starve in the mornings because I never wake up in time to both chat with Khajiit before one of us leaves and go somewhere to buy breakfast. The smart alternative would be to cook, but since I don't know who is using my only pot (the last time I checked it was full of this weird mushroom-like thing that I am pretty sure was not mine) and the fridge is full, this alternative is not very practical.

Some other things that happened in the past few days include:

• Marie, Violet, Henderson and I played Team Fortress 2, which means I have played one more game on the list of games our computer club's recent LAN game tournament hosted (now there is only SCII and DotA to go).
• In order to friend Marie on Steam, I got Khajiit to buy me a cheap $1 game, and of course he chose to buy this game called Puzzler World that had over 500 brainteaser puzzles resembling those of gbrainy which Khajiit and I played a lot on bus rides to several states (apparently there is a Windows version of gbrainy, so I no longer have to only play it on Linux, although why I would want to I have no idea).
• Violet and I picked up several green bean, squash, and pea plants from some guy who was giving them away. One of the green beans is dying though, so Violet took it home to give it some sunlight, and hopefully it will live happily ever after.
• The guy who lives next to me, #26 (as Khajiit calls him), decided his room was too hot and moved all his furniture aside from his loft bed to the kitchen and dragged his mattress onto the ground. Now whenever I walk by his room I can see his feet poking out from behind the door, and whenever I go into the kitchen there is a bookshelf.

I should sleep now, before it gets too late and I won't be able to wake up tomorrow again, and my bananas all rot like the frozen black bananas I found once in the freezer (partially why I don't ever cook anymore).

On The Other Side Of Oblivion

"I have this aunt," Violet said, in her I-have-this-crazy-story voice. "She had chickens as pets. She bought these pedigree chicken eggs—yes, pedigree chicken—and she wanted to hatch them into chicken and have those chicken lay eggs to sell. Except they're pedigree chicken, so they get sick really easily, so she had to buy expensive medicine to keep them alive. She would stab the chickens with needles one by one and force-feed them pills."

We were in the computer lab, eating our large boxes of poutine with extravagant toppings. Violet's boyfriend, Henderson, stole a particularly large piece of smoked meat, and Rosemary turned her attentions towards him again.

Just yesterday, Violet and I were talking about our futures, what little we knew of it. She and Henderson both wanted to be in academia, like her father. Their dream was to get tenure together in the same university. I told her my future was to see if Khajiit would graduate in the next ten years. We both laughed.

. . .

When I first went to Fish Wings, I won't deny this: I thought it was beneath me. I had gotten in without trying, and a scholarship to boot that had seemed to have fallen into my lap. There were smart people here, of course, but I was just as smart as them, if not more.

This past year has been a lot, and I have met so many people who have changed my mind about that. There is Flynn, who could rival Bryant on anything math and physics related (and who infuriatingly calls everything from triple integrals to advanced algebra "easy shit"). Aishan, who programs with three monitors and will be going off to Microsoft this summer (hopefully with no chair-throwing incidents). Sandra, who works multiple jobs and learned French from a retail job so she can support her way through university. Jessica, who is involved in everything from residence council to engineering teams to student society representative.

What had I to be so scornful about?

. . .

In his spare time, Khajiit works on his beloved programs and websites. He works on them when there is work due soon and he does not want to do it. When there is an assignment due in two days he would fix the scrollbars on the a small portion of the computer club's website, or make a Java program more Windows native, or something, anything, that is not his assignment. He says that his procrastination is never time wasted. He is always productive, especially when he procrastinates.

It used to frustrate me a lot. It still frustrates me sometimes. The new meds will probably help, but we both know he has to work hard too. Some days I want to tell him I believe in him, and I know he will pull through, one way or another. Other days I wish he could do it right now, because with every setback I can feel him slipping away.

Khajiit is not someone my parents would approve of. They asked where he was from, what he was studying, all the usual questions. For once they did not ask if he was a good student. Afterwards, when Khajiit told me to take deep breaths so I wouldn't fall into a state of panic, I wondered if it was merely an oversight.

. . .

Khajiit's dad recently asked me, "Do you like it here? No regrets?"

Maybe it is because his own daughter has chosen a college, and he is curious to make a comparison. Or maybe he knows. He has always known things about me before I do myself.

. . .

They smile when I fix the paper jams. They thank me when help them with their computer issues. The other day, I heard a girl explain to her friend the way the printing system worked, and I grinned. I could not have done it better.

There is something refreshing about swinging the keys attached to the network cards, going off to fix a ghost paper jam and hearing people talk about why they need to print so urgently. Sometimes it's an assignment due in ten minutes. Sometimes it's a document they need to file their taxes. Once it was a girl who needed her transcript to apply to grad school.

Maybe that's why when someone knocks on the door I tend to get up to open it. I hold the record for most printing money sold last semester, and although there is no prize or recognition for it, it's surprisingly satisfying. All those hours I've put in this computer lab make me happy.

I had first joined because I saw Flynn at the front desk, and I knew him because he was friends with Sam and Denise. I had stayed because it was fun, dizzying fun, all the late night laughing and crazy antics and large group outings. We are all good friends, I want to say, or maybe we are family. We are a family complete with wise, mature ones and scream-in-your-face immature ones, and the one or two people no one likes and the one or two people everyone likes. Lots of outside drama. Lots of inside tension.

My residence advisor said that living in residence was supposed to give us a feel of home, to make long-lasting friends and to feel like you belong in a group. I never got that from my residence (going home at 2am all the time probably did not help), but it's nice that I found it elsewhere.

. . .

Today is Mother's Day. I should call my parents. I have been putting it off, and the more I do so the more I want to, the harder it is to pick up the phone.

. . .

The title was sentimental me thinking I had sentimental things to write about. It is too late for me to think much, although I have had a four-hour nap today, and should not need to sleep too much, even if sleeping patterns for me are too elusive.

Overloaded

I knew, going into this semester, that taking six classes was going to be a hefty amount of work. That, along with my commitments to all of my other activities, should have taken up most of my time. If I were being completely logical with my time-budgeting and I adhered to the schedule, I probably wouldn't have time to write here right now.

But I'm here right now, while my Java code runs through its cycle comparing 1,000,000-sized lists, so technically I am doing work. What I really should be doing is finish my base-conversion assignment, or get started on my integrate-acceleration-into-velocity program, or really a thousand other things than this.

At least I'm getting some work done, which is more than what Khajiit can say, because he is currently sitting in an armchair with his headphones on reading My Little Pony fanfiction. A fanfiction that uses underlines for emphasis, rather than italics.

My dad said I should be involved in only one extracurricular activity, or at most two. It makes a lot of sense, but I'm just getting to the good parts of programming for the robot (although it is basically a netbook on a fancy frame so it's not that ultra-fancy), and I got approved for my funding application for the environmental documentary that we'll now be screening in March, so I'll definitely have to work more on that, and I've signed up for at least three hours' worth of office hours commitment to the computer club, plus the new environmental committee that I am half-heading which will definitely be exciting.

How could I possibly choose?

So I am going into this semester with so much work, already, and I have been barely maintaining above that 3.7 I needed for my scholarship (thanks to linear algebra), and there will be so much more to do. But I am postponing all of that because I have just been tempted with at least $100 worth of Lego products, and so I will instead go to New York this weekend (among other things, likely possibly visiting Paperclip, although that is rather tenuous right now).

Also, I have been drinking so much Nestea and lattes. I need to find new sugary drinks to replace them before I grow tired of them and run out of suitable water-replacements.

You Don't Come Here To Work

Or so I have been told, by the computer club people. I spent four hours or so working on two half-written java programs, and although it's not as productive as I normally am, I did learn some new things. Like commenting with /** * */ (and more * if necessary) for java docs and using PrintStream to avoid typing out repetitive, long commands.

I also discovered a bunch of really creepy Windows backgrounds, had the most bizarre conversation on pedophilia that I ever have had (to be fair I have not had many of those to begin with), and watched our club presidents get turned into an arbitrary communist government's head officials.

Well, if you ever wanted to be surrounded by weird things at Fish Wings, you know where to go now.

Sleep Deprived

I am surprised this is not a previous-blog-post-title.

To be fair I have stayed up later than this for more consecutive nights, most of them involving Yuma coincidentally also staying up very, very late and even more coincidentally we would be talking with each other. Those were the days I fell asleep in my afternoon classes (hello, econ) and generally felt like my head was exploding.

Well, hello, college.

In what could possibly be either a really good decision or a really stupid decision (or both, they're not mutually exclusive), I joined Fish Wings' computer club. I have not had a good track record with computer clubs, and I definitely have not had any track records with a computer club that requires weekly office hour commitments. So this could turn out to be a major time-sink (three hours a week is a lot of time, and although I could always program or whatever during that time, the nerdy people + constant availability of various games I refuse to download onto my lappy because it will suck all remaining spare time from me = not a lot of work done).

My weekends are also paaaacked. And not even with partying like Jessica is doing every Friday (along with the rest of her very, very busy schedule). I'm doing things like learning self-defense and planting trees.

And debugging Eclipse. Because this thing will always find some way to tell me, "Hey, I know you've been using me the same way 100 times now and I haven't given you any trouble, but guess what?"

Ubuntu does that to me sometimes too with the header style.

Maybe all this technology is realizing that I am an aspiring electrical engineer and has decided to repeat my FSAE subteam leader's favorite phrase, "Electronics always fail."

At least blogger is semi-functional and only does weird cursor jumps.

It's Been A While

Since I've written anything. I have been busy with a lot things, such as college applications (most obviously), but also homework and general procrastination. Very, very busy, so much so that I missed the last day to post in October and must now start in November.

What a tragedy.

Anyway, since I have fuzzy memory I will recount things in reverse order. Bear with me as we travel back in warped time.

Tuesday, Nov. 2nd:


Election day! Which means three things: a) no school tomorrow; b) going over to Tea's house to bake donuts with Yuma; and c) checking out how accurate Nate Silver's predictions are. Excitement levels in that order. My mom had no idea there was no school tomorrow, so I wonder what would have happened if I went out at 6:50 and walked to the library and spent my day there? Oh well, she knows now, so that's not possible.

Also, I am very excited to see how baked donuts will look like. And taste like, too. I am so glad I subscribed to, uh... around 109293874 food blogs while I was working on my college essays (i.e. procrastinating), because I would never have found the recipe without it.

Then, of course, actual election results! That, too, is exciting, but I guess it's not as exciting as listening to PM-wannabes dissing each other in French and gluing their hands into their pockets. But I suppose that is a purely Canadian thing.

Monday, Nov. 1st:


ED/EA applications are due today, and guess what? I don't have to worry about them, because I finished them! Yay! Other than that, the day went by fairly boringly. Oh, right, I fell asleep in French today, which was bad, because I was in the middle of a listening test. Luckily, I got through the first trial effectively, and I couldn't understand most of it anyway, so I guess a second listen-through wouldn't have helped much.

But I told my partner-in-crime-in-the-business-of-staying-up-late that I should probably set a bedtime, and he suggested, "11pm?"

Then I told him that I fell asleep in class, so he immediately changed it to 9pm.

Haha. As if. I barely get any work done before 9pm. But I do need to get to bed earlier, and preferably not spend half an hour trying to say "goodbye" in Welsh. Or Portuguese. Or Macedonian. Anyway, now we've set it at around 10-11pmish, which is a good time, I suppose. If only I can remember that, along with the fact that I need to bring lunch money (and money I owe Tea).

Also, NaNoWriMo is starting today! Anyone interested in starting a full-fledged novel (or, really, does anyone have the time to do that)?

Sunday, Oct. 31st:


Halloween! My parents and I went out to buy a printer/fax/scanner/copier/whatever-else-is-there machine. We went to Best Buy, and once there, my mom told me, "Can you look for some whiteout?"

"Mom, we're at Best Buy. Why would there be whiteout here?"

"Why not?" My mom said. "I'm sure they have some."

No, mom, they don't. I asked the guy at the front desk anyway, and he said he has never seen whiteout in the store. Ever.

Then I went to check out the iPads, and started playing Plants vs. Zombies, which is my favorite game of all iPad games. My dad came over and checked out the MacBook Pro to the side. I must say, I'm not a fan. Seriously, Apple. You were great a couple years ago with all those really colorful computers, but these days you're all white and black and silver. So monochrome. Even shuffles have color. Why not laptops?

Anyway, we also checked out several Sony laptops, and we wanted to see a few Lenovo ones too, but Best Buy didn't have any. Oh well. I'm hoping to get a new laptop soon, if only because I'm really, really tired of all the white (yeah, this laptop's white too) and I want to be able to bring it in to school to work on stuff.

Saturday, Oct. 30th:


We (my parents and I) went to the border early this morning (read: we left at around midnight) to sort out our visas, once again. It was fairly successful, and I even finished a lot of my reading/listening homework. Very productive. Then we came back and went to a Chinese supermarket in West Hartford, where I discovered supermarket-porn.

Well, okay, not really porn, but they were selling the herbal version of Viagra, except they call it deer's tail, so I had no idea what it was, and when I looked at the pictures they showed people in very... fascinating positions.

Ahem. Yeah.

When I came home I worked on my Chicago app, and I finished very late into the night (around 9pm, I believe). But Cammie's birthday/Halloween party was today, so I went over and shared in the movie-watching (Moulin Rouge), gossip-sharing fun with everyone else there.

Where, yes, major stuff were revealed, but at least on this blog that is as far as I'll go with it.

And in the morning (which is technically the next day, but oh well) there was chocolate chip pancakes with whipped cream! Yay!

Monday, Oct. 25th to Friday, Oct. 29th:


I don't remember what happened here, except for a haze of college apps and late-night chatting with Yuma and maybe other things, such as, oh, Clay repeatedly asking Yuma and me whether we were going to frisbee. I got the message on Wednesday, thank you very much. I didn't really need the reminders on Thursday and Friday as well. But I think I'm just snappy because I am so exhausted by college apps and not sleeping nearly enough.

But that is all I remember, and all I can recall right now. Time to do homework and maybe, maybe, catching up on some sleep.

UBS Is Uber-Huge (and assorted other adventures)

To sum up the UBS building I visited yesterday as part of my job shadowing program into two words, I would have to pick huge and fancy. If I could have a third, I would probably pick high-tech. In fact, it's been so huge and fancy and high-tech that I don't even know where to start, but I'll try.

The building was tall (and huge, although not more so than an ordinary big concrete building can be), concrete and glass, and by the main entrance, there were two fountain-esque features. They weren't exactly fountains, because they were more like several inches of flat water, but they were calming in a strange way. Then inside, they've got this long, long hallway, which leads to an elevator set, and then, going up the elevator, we (the "supervisor" that I was supposed to shadow and I, but most everyone else as well) walk into this huge, huge, huge room that's around three stories tall and with suspended glass offices at the edges (or so I think, anyway), lots of screens with stock indexes and international times posted everywhere. It was a dizzying experience, trying to take all of it in.

My supervisor, whom I shall call Bob for now for ease of referring to him, took me to his desk, and, as he needed to make several business calls (which were all in a foreign language, so I understood nothing), he gave me a huge booklet on the history of the American stock market ever since the pre-(Teddy) Roosevelt era. I tried to follow some of the business-y news, but instead, I found myself attracted to tidbits such as "Johnson stunned Democrats by declaring not to run for office" and that despite what CNN had told me during the 2008 elections (forgive me if I've remembered this wrong), the Bush administration actually oversaw quite a length of economic expansion (granted, the book ended at 2004, so it did not take into account the catastrophe of the later years).

Then Bob showed me to an ETF trader (and if the terminology sounds bizarre, it's because I only remember some of what he does, since he showed me so much stuff). I was there before the markets opened, so he had plenty of time to explain a lot of the things behind what he did. It was all Excel-heavy and he himself said that he had been a computer engineer major, and, during an internship at UBS in IT, fell in love with the excitement on the trading floor. I bet the multiple monitors each person had was a huge plus as well. They've got about three monitors per person, and sometimes even more, and all those screens were filled with charts and tables and other cool things.

After that, I met with several people involved in futures (whatever that means, I still have not found out). All I managed to figure out was that whenever something happened, there was this really cool sound effect that sounded like cars zooming past, and then sometimes a cash register sound, and sometimes a glass object breaking sound. I tried staring at the monitors, figuring out what was causing the sounds, but everything was flashing, and there were so many of them, and so many bright, ever-changing colors. It was exciting, extremely exciting.

Bob led me to the equity traders next, where I learned a short crash-course on inflation and more importantly, that the international equity traders often woke up at ungodly hours (going to work at 5:30am, or, if you were in Hong Kong, apparently going to work at 7am and still working at 11pm) and that they were assigned specific regions, but they were experts in their region, and knew all the news and such.

Then came the analysts, and one of the head analysts had a son who went to Paperclip. He asked me about my math classes and math team, and relayed the rumor/myth/maybe-true tale of how for several years, MIT only accepted one student per year from Paperclip. Well, I hope the spell's been broken, because there are so many people applying to MIT next year, and it would be awful if they only accepted one. Anyway, then we talked about analyses that contained t-tests and regression lines and r-values. It was statistics in real life, and it was amazing.

I went to an options trader later, but she was busy, so then I went to the economists' back row (the entire room's rather organized, and maybe if I feel like it I'll draw a picture later). I got a ten-minute crash-course of the US economy in the past, oh, 100 years or so (crash-courses seem very popular here, or maybe it's just me). The guy who was explaining everything to me then joked that he would be offering a crash-course in physics next.

I had to leave after that, but it was still quite an experience. Sorta left me speechless (except the always present "thank you") for a while. Yeah. Perhaps an analysis of this experience will come later. Maybe.

In GWTW (my abbreviation for the book I'm reading now) news, I'm extremely saddened. And frustrated. Rhett Bulter is, as Scarlett says, "no gentleman at all," but I had not expected him to be so irritating. I never found Catcher in the Rye frustrating, but I am now finding GWTW the most annoying thing I have ever read, and one of the saddest one as well, all at the same time. I can't believe it's not on some English curriculum at our school. It definitely should be—except that it's over 1000 pages long and most people in my English class right now would probably only Sparknote half of it, if that.

As it is, Othello will have to tide me over for now.

MID—
Rhett: 1.5
Scarlett: 2.5