| Family, Friends, and a New Year |
[Jan. 1st, 2007|02:32 pm] |
For the past week I've been in Sacramento and spending time with my friends and family. Little things about my hometown have changed. There are new shops and houses here and there but coming back made me realize how beautiful a city it is. I felt like I was running around most of the time but it was good to see my mom and brother. I had lots of good Chinese food, which does not exist in Baltimore. I tried frog legs for the first time at my brother's behest. They were actually really good! The meat had the consistency of fish.
Now I'm back in Baltimore. I spent New Years Eve with the house. We just watched the ball drop and snacked on appetizers and food. I've already thought of a few resolutions to follow in the new year and I'll try giving it more thought in the weeks to come. |
|
|
| The Experiment that is my life |
[May. 1st, 2006|08:37 pm] |
So the director at the Center I work informed me today that he's going to leaving to another position at another college. This kind of sucks because I was counting on him for a recommendation and so far all the work I have done under him has been menial office work. He's assured me that my job will stay intact, which is a relief. One less thing to worry about. He's going to be leaving in July so we're going to work at co-authoring a paper together that basically is re-analyzing the data that another scientist has used to argue that thimerasol vaccinations cause Autism.
I participated in a psychology experiment today. I had to watch a video of Charlie Chaplin and was told to try to remember as much as I could because I was being tested on it. While I was doing thing, I wore headphones and goggles that would beep and blow air in my eyes. For less than one hour of this I got paid $20. I went home and treated myself and my roommate to some McDonalds. I had a small French fry, 4 McNuggets, two double cheese burgers and two McChicken sandwiches. Pretty full but not feeling sick, which is good. |
|
|
| Movies, a dream, a darkroom, etc. |
[Apr. 30th, 2006|11:45 am] |
I saw Brick on Friday night with my housemate and her friend. I was excited about it after reading a review by Ebert and it definitely met my expectations. It was a very pleasant twist on the noir film genre.
I finally watched Match Point last night. Not only is the film a relief in showing that he can still make good films, but in many ways it's more mature in exploring some of the existential themes he's interested in. It's probably his most sexy movie to date with intensely passionate scenes that is partially due to the fact that the cast is quite young and beautiful. I hear Woody Allen is making another film in London and it seems as though the city has reinvigorated his imagination. It was very exciting to see that I had been to some of the same sites that were filmed in London for this movie.
I also had an odd dream last night. My light meter finally came in the mail but it was gigantic. I was really happy that it came it but the thing was as huge as a door. It's strange because looking back I know I'd be frustrated or embarrassed if such were the case with the actual light meter. This may demonstrate a property of Freud's Id. In his conceptualization, the Id has no concept of reality and in dreams can fulfill wishes/desires even though they are not plausible in reality. Then again, that's only if you believe in that kind of stuff. I find Freudian analysis fun to conduct for interpreting film, literature, dreams, etc. but I'm not sure how much stock I truly have in it as a psychological paradigm for clinicians. I'm still of the belief that our dreams have no real prophetic meaning for us and that it's just a time for our brains to consolidate the activities of the day into memory. I've been thinking about my light meter a lot lately so it only makes sense that it would come up in my dreams.
I'm very much enamored with my tripod. It can reach an incredible height and approximates the kind of composition I want in one of my self portraits. I haven't shot anything yet because I've been slowly working on my darkroom. It's kind of pathetic but I'm a little scared of the dark when all the lights are out. I want to get some portable speakers for my iRiver to use while I'm printing to make the atmosphere more relaxed. But I've been spending money like nobody's business lately. I had the major tune-up, had to get the car realigned, have to buy new tires, and just bought a tripod and light meter.
But I can't let finances worry me as I try to study for the GRE and research grad school programs. My housemate Meg and I are going to study together, which is nice. A new housemate is moving in soon from SoCal, so that will be exciting as well.
I've been kind of lonely lately. I really want to meet someone and start dating again. I haven't really worked on it but how does one put effort into such an endeavor? I'm not a social creature who likes to go to bars, clubs, and the like. I met Brooke through pure happenstance. I kind of feel that's how finding love really works, through chance. Kind of like life. Kind of like the theme in Match Point. |
|
|
| I hate FedEx |
[Apr. 13th, 2006|10:36 pm] |
Ok, I've always had problems with FedEx in the past. For one, they'd never leave anything on my doorstep in Oakland and they can never deliver at a time when I am home, so I'd always have to drive to some random facility miles away. The post office is infinitely more convenient in my experience. Now I have an even greater reason to hate them: Incompetent Delivery Persons.
I won an auction off ebay for a tripod. I tracked the delivery for the last few days and inexplicably they said the package had been delivered at 2:30 PM on the 12th. This is very strange since 1.) The housemate that was there at the time said no one came by and 2.) I work at this time. I e-mailed FedEx and they said someone signed my name for the package at my address.
When I was first looking for apartments in Baltimore, a superintendent told me how he saw people in Charles Village just wait for the post office to leave packages at doors/porches and just take them. It was hard for me to believe at the time, but it's even harder to believe that someone just happened to outside my door as UPS pulled up and just signed my name. How can a freaking driver sign over a package without the person being at least inside the residence where they're supposed to deliver? If FedEX goes through all this bullshit to make sure a person receives their package, they should at least ask for some ID or at least be sure the person lives at the freaking house. |
|
|
| Patching things up |
[Apr. 8th, 2006|10:14 pm] |
I was trying to setup a self-portrait by hanging my camera from some strings in my room. I attached the stings to my walls using duct tape. When the whole experiment failed, I removed the duct tape, and took a chunk of the paint off with it. Meg, my housemate, and I went to home depot and got them to match the paint and it looks pretty good. When then went to Ikea and I purchased a wall clock for my darkroom to keep track of time while I'm developing prints. I decided that when I do my self-portrait that I have planned for my bed I'm going to have to compromise and use a tripod, which I wanted to get anyway. I'm scouring ebay for good deals.
I just received some bad news from home. My brother was driving on the freeway in the rain and he accidentally rear-ended someone. He's physically fine, but the car may or may not be beyond reasonable repair. Things will be fine I'm sure but this really upsets me. |
|
|
| String Attached |
[Apr. 4th, 2006|11:50 pm] |
| [ | music |
| | Morrissey - Suedehead | ] |
So it's been a few days in the wake of taking the Psychology GRE. I'vebeen keeping busy with odds and ends and even the occasionalsocializing with friends and housemates. I've been having fun, saw thecherry blossoms in DC with Paul and this Thursday we'll be seeing RhettMiller. Lately I've been feeling as if our meetings have been more tohumor me rather than mutual enjoyment. I guess I feel that, and I'mparaphrasing Groucho Marx and Woody Allen, I wouldn't want to be partof any club that would have me as a member.
I'm going to get mydarkroom set up again. I've had a sudden spike in creativity regardingsome self-portraiture I want to do. One particularly ambitious projectis to take a picture of myself in bed, with the camera hanging aboveme. I tried setting up the camera this evening. I cut the side of alaundry basket and ripped a hole in the middle so that the lens couldgo through yet hold the camera at the same time. The big problem iswith suspending this above me.
My initial idea it to use twineto hold up the net. At first I was going to drill hooks into the wallsof my room, but it turns out the walls must be lined with someinsulation that won't hold in a screw very well. Then I use thecardboard tube from the bottom of a coathanger and duct taped that tothe wall to serve as a kind of pulley/place holder. The problem now isthat no matter how much duct tape I add, little by little it's comingoff. In addition, keeping the camera level is proving to be extremelydifficult, as it's nearly impossible to center the camera in the net. Ihave to be careful because the imbalance causes torsion and the camerahas fallen a couple of time, albeit onto my bed. Regardless, I amafraid of damaging my camera.
I'm now considering making somekind of frame with wood but that'll take precise measurement at thesacrifice of being able to make adjustments on the fly. The projectwill have to be long term until I figure something out.
Thenthere's the matter of the kind of poses to do in my bed. I have someideas already, and I hope that I am able to try them out sometime inthe future. |
|
|
| Two Dreams |
[Mar. 14th, 2006|12:20 am] |
I had a couple of weird dreams last night. They felt separate and didn’t seem to have any continuity between them. I think they took place in two different REM sleep periods.
One dream was about two of my teeth having the tops halves fallen off. One was the lower canine (pointy one at the lower half) and the other was the two teeth over, in the very center of the bottom. I think they fell off after a meal. I was worried about how I looked of course and kept looking in the mirror. Someone else was there but I can’t remember who they were but they didn't provide any comfort, just had a prescence over my shoulder and told me that we had to get going to some engagement.
The other dream was me accidentally taking out a roll of film that hadn't been totally used. So some of the film was exposed. Then I would try to roll the rest of the film back into the case. But I would accidentally roll it in the wrong direction and end up exposing more of the film. What was strange was that the case and the film kept getting bigger and bigger, though I only realized it in hindsight. As I rolled out the film, it then came out as negatives in a sleeve. I could see all the photos I had taken that were now ruined because they had been exposed. This is a kind of paradox, because you're not able to see the negative image until the film has been developed, which confused me in the dream as well. One was a photo of me, my brother, and my grandfather at a pool table (this never happened, we never played pool or any games together). It may be important to note that a few hours before I went to bed I saw the hustler with Paul Newman, which is about a pool shark.
Unlike the mud dream that I had a while back, I really don't have a lucid interpretation of these dreams. I guess the latter could be about my worries that I didn't have many personal moments with my grandfather or with my brother right now. The former could be about my worry of getting cavities? I think Freudian analysis may interpret fear of losing teeth as a sign of a fear of impotence. I have been panicking about the GRE lately, and I guess my worry about my ability to study can be a sign of impotence. But I think Freud meant impotence in the penile erection sense.
Anway, about to go to sleep again. Who knows what dreams may come this time?
|
|
|
| Funeral for goong goong |
[Mar. 6th, 2006|10:28 pm] |
Over the weekend I flew back to Sacramento to my grandfather's funeral. It was an intense couple of days. My mom was under a lot of stress because she's been making all the funeral arrangements with her older sister. Then, the day before the funeral, someone set fire to my grandmother's garage. Her car was inside and everything was burnt to the ground. It was obviously arson and there is some speculation in my family that it may have been gangs who were taking advantage of my grandmother's situation. She hung a traditional black wreath outside the house and kept a porch light on, which my mom told me was a tradition. There was a lot of traditions during this weekend. None of which I knew or understood. We ate "jai" before the wake. It's a vegetarian dish and apparently we're not supposed to eat meat before the wake.
The wake was a solemn ceremony. I was proud that a photo I had taken of my grandfather was used in front of the book where guests signed their names. I believe it was the last picture ever taken of goong goong and it was the last meal we had together as a family before I left for Baltimore. Each son/daughter of my grandfather and their families took turns and approached goong goong with a thin sheet. My mother, brother and I bowed three times then we covered my grandfather from the chest down in a thin sheet and with some coins. It was strange to touch and gaze upon his lifeless body. I waited for it to come alive at any moment. A part of me still can't accept that he is gone.
The funeral was on a nice sunny day, although there was a cold wind. The family all met at my grandparent's house. There were relatives I hadn't seen literally in years and I was astounded at how much some of my cousins had grown. We had some more traditional dishes before the funeral. Pork, tofu with soybeans, more jai. My grandmother was making a fuss about having the limo take the family to the funeral home which was literally a 3 minute drive away. My mom and her siblings reluctantly relented to another task and somehow were able to get the change at the last minute. My brother and I didn't ride in the limo, just the sons and daughters. All the sons, daughters, and grandchildren of goong goong had ribbons tied around our arms. White signified daughters and their families while black signified the men.
At the funeral there was some drama. My uncle Harvey, goong goong's only son, had prepared a slide show of my grandfather that showed before the eulogy. He had asked for photos from everyone in the family. But when the slide show was done, it pretty much only had pictures of my uncle's family and another aunt, Alice. Aunty Pansy and my mom were livid. The former had no pictures of her children with their grandfather, even though she had taken the time to scan thirty photos. My brother was not in the slide show, and only one of the four my mom was sent was used (the portrait that I took). My mom was especially mad because out of the entire family, even though there was another aunt in Sacramento, she had been the one to take care of my grandparents for the last ten years. That's all the doctor's visits, handling all the bills, etc. Harvey claimed that that was all the photos they got and that even another Aunt, Mabel, helped edit the slide show. But Harvey wouldn't return calls about the photos and was unreachable during most of the week (more on this later). My mom and Aunt Pansy were pissed because this was dedicated to my grandfather's memory and my uncle was trying to hog all of it. He had tried to do things like this before. All the families had pitched in to buy my grandparents a TV and Harvey tried to take all the credit and say it was from only him and his wife. Pretty much everyone in the family hates my uncle's wife, Crystal. They blame her for creating a lot of unneeded and unwarranted strife. I'm somewhat on the outside of it all but from I can tell that Crystal is really selfish. I'll get back to her family later.
My mom was furious and brought to tears because of the slide show. I tried to calm her down and eventually she did. The eulogy was done by a priest that spoke both english and cantonese. I learned a great deal more about my grandfather's life. He was a paper-son too, like my grandfather on my father's side. That means that he used a fake last name to get into the United States. In New York he fell on hard times and took sanctuary in a church. From its generosity he became a devout Christian, something else I never knew about him. He was a part-owner of the New Capital Grill and eventually owned his own restaurant, Tom's Coffee Shop.
My bastard uncle made a speech after the priest spoke. He first talked about how he was unable to see his father die. The fact was, my grandfather was brain-dead after a heart-attack. It was his wish that he be not kept alive in such a state, that he wanted to leave this world with dignity. My mom and when my mom and the rest of the family told Harvey and he said to wait while he came from Las Vegas. For a couple of days no one could get hold of him and no one knew where he was or if he had even left. My uncle was always late to things and for some reason impossible to get a hold of, even in the face of his own father's death. So my family decided they could not wait any longer and had to pull the plug.
My uncle finished his maudlin speech with some memories of my grandfather which I never had heard but heart-warming. My grandfather loved to fish. One time he caught one that was so huge he put it in the bathtub because he was so proud. My grandmother was mad at him thought because the house only had one shower.
Then one of my grandfather's brothers spoke. He was one of the five that he single handedly brought over from the Toishan province in China. I could not understand him but he clearly loved and was stricken with grief over the loss of older sibling. Part of his speech was some kind of chant in cantonese. His voiced quivered as he tried to hold back his tears and carry the notes. I wish I could have understood what he was saying, but I almost cried anyway.
After the speeches, my mom whispered "good bye grandpa" as we passed the open casket one last time. My uncle remarked to me that my mom was "pretty pissed". I acknowledged it and then said that I thought the slide show was nice. I'll never forgive myself for saying that. We then drove in a caravan to the East Lawn cemetery which is very close to my house and I think is probably the nicest one in Sacramento. All the families took turns bowing three times before the casket putting their ribbons on top. The casket was then lowered. Then the families took turns dropping white roses onto the grave. Looking back, I cannot tell what rituals were chinese and which were Christian.
There was a reception at my grandfather's favorite restaurant (and probably my family's favorite too), New Station Seafood on broadway. The dinner was filling but light. We pretty much took up the entire restaurant. I tried taking photos of the even but realized afterwords that I didn't set my camera settings correctly. I hope they're not underexposed and we'll have to see if I can work with the negatives later.
So I mentioned how weird my Aunt Crystal and her family is. Well all the cousins from that family and her brother and mom sat at the same table as me, my brother, my father, and uncle. My God, all of them were just stone faced. You might say that it was because of the funeral but the look was more bored than anything else. I asked Crystal's brother is he had to travel far to get here. I got a terse "no, from Elk Grove." He had the look of a murderer, I swear. I realized then that during the slide show, in all the pictures of Harvey's kids (and there were lots) none of the kids were ever smiling. There were shots from Disney land, the happiest place for children and nothing. It can't just be a coincidence, if you're going to orchestrate and dominate a slide show, you'd choose your best family photos. It makes me wonder if those cousins ever had any prolonged happiness in their life or if they've mostly been miserable. My brother was with them over thanksgiving and he mentioned too that those cousins never cracked a smile the entire time.
This weekend put a lot of things in perspective for me. I realized now that family is the most important thing in this world to me. My mom celebrated her 50th birthday after the funeral as well. It made me realize that she is getting older and she won't always be around for me. She's had a stroke in the past and although she's in robust health from all her exercising, it worries me that one day she'll just be gone from my life. She's the only person who I absolutely trust and have always been there for me. I want to be there for her too.
I saw pictures of my mom that I had never seen before when she was younger. She told me about her having a cat named Finnegan and where the name came from and it was a cute story. I want to get to know my mother and not make the same mistake I had with my grandfather and not know more of my mom's past. I don't have a language barrier as an excuse this time. I heard her say to friends that she would like it if I came back to California for school and work. I'm going to try to find a clinical psychology Ph. D. program in California so I can be close to my family. I want to be close in case anything happens and just to spend time with my family. I'm still looking at schools but UCLA seems to be a really good fit for what I'm interested in. But it's like the hardest clinical program to get into and I just hope that I can get it.
Rest in peace goong goong. I hope that I can live half the life you have and that it is one that you would be proud of. |
|
|
| Goong-goong |
[Mar. 2nd, 2006|08:42 pm] |
My grandfather, Ton "Tom" Chin passed away last Sunday.
Tomorrow I'm going to fly back to Sacramento for the wake and funeral
the following morning. I wasn't as close to him as I would have liked.
There was a language barrier and I didn't visit him too often. But he
was a person I had a tremendous amount of respect for.
His is a classic story of the American dream. Immigrating from China,
he was sent by his family to America in the hope that he would find
opportunity. Over the course of his life he was able to bring all of
his brothers from the East to various places within the United States.
He briefly went back to China for an arranged marriage to my
grandmother. He raised four daughters and one son, all of whom obtained
some form of college education.
I called him goong-goong, which just means grandfather on the mother's
side. I still remember the moment I figured that out as a child. I was
never taught to speak Cantonese so I was pretty proud of my
accomplishment. When I declared it to my younger brother it turned out
he already knew.
I did a report on his life story in middle school and unfortunately I
don't remember all the details and paper is long gone. He owned a diner
in downtown Sacramento. He told me that while he was working as a
busboy in New York he would just watch the cooks and learn how to cook
American dishes. My mom would always talk about what a good cook he
was. His chicken a la king was her favorite. I never had the chance to
taste his cooking. By the time I was born he had long stopped his
trade.
Most of my memories of goong-goong are that of him sitting in his
recliner and watching cable TV. He was a quiet man who enjoyed
westerns. He use to babysit me and my brother when we were younger.
When we got older, we would only see him at meals during the holidays
or other celebrations.
After he died, my mother told me that goong-goong was very proud of me,
especially when I graduated from college. I was so moved by it. We
barely understood each other but he had an unconditional love for me
which I've only now begun to appreciate and have heretofore taken for
granted. I've been down lately but thinking about my grandfather gives
me strength and something to aspire too. I hope that as I go through
life I can be as strong as he was. I hope I can make him proud.
|
|
|
| Should I stay or should I go? |
[Dec. 29th, 2005|11:56 am] |
| [ | mood |
| |  stressed | ] |
I wish I wasn't so neurotic and that decisions came easily to me as they seem to for others. I have been looking for housing for the past few weeks. I found a place that is a little east of Greenmount (Better Waverly). The owner of the two bedroom house is a 27 year old HS teacher. She was pretty nice and she's into photography too and plans to set up a darkroom in the house. Big bonus. The rent is really cheap and cheaper than anything I've come across so far. It's also really clean and renovated and the teacher is constantly fixing it up. It's like a 20 minute walk to my shuttle stop. Everything is just about perfect.
The problem is that everyone has been warning me that Greenmount is really dangerous. I talked to one person who lives around the area and they say that they're fairly there is drug dealing about three blocks from the house. The home owner though says she feel pretty safe and would feel ok walking around at night (even though she's never done so there or in the neighborhoods she's lived in the past). I see a lot of police patroling the area and stationed within a few blocks of where my street would intersect Greenmount so that is comforting. On the other hand, there is an abandoned house behind the teacher's. I drove around at night and for the most part I felt that things in my immediate area was pretty safe. But I did see a few groups of unsavory looking teens. I'll drive around again this Friday and see how I feel. I've been really high strung lately.
I just don't know. I think I'd feel pretty comfortable living there. It's not the nicest neighborhood but I've been reading that there's more crime in Charles Village than Better Waverly even though it's nicer and closer to the school. There's a brightly lit and clean laundromat just down the street with a dog grooming place across the street from this teacher's house. That sounds nice, right?
I walked by a woman and her boyfriend yesterday after work, before 5 pm and this woman got really startled by me and freaked out. I wonder if everyone is that jumpy around Charles Village? Baltimore as a whole isn't that safe a city, from what I've read. But most of the murders and such are between people who know each other through drugs.
I've noticed that the homes in Baltimore are older in general. Some places can be pretty fixed up but still have old wiring. I'm going to see some 1 bedroom apartments but the problem is that none of the utlities are paid for and that along with rent is getting to be a little more than I'm willing to pay. I also don't think I want to live by myself. I keep to myself a lot but I think it's nice to have someone to come home to. I'm looking at a house with four other guys that has a pool table that I'm pretty psyched about. The problem is with this place and others is that there's not a private bathroom for me to use as a darkroom. This is really bottlenecking my choices and I wonder if I should just give up photography. Or just relegate to renting darkrooms for way too much (not something I want to do after putting so much money into my enlarger/equipment). I could wait until people graduate in the spring to see if more housing comes up but that feels too far off and I don't want to wait until the last moment either.
It was so much easier when I moved with Paul and Kent. I at least had someone to confer to. But now all I have is myself and I'm constantly questioning myself. Is the area really unsafe or am I obsessing over it?
I'm checking three more places this week. I really can't stop thinking about housing and I really want to lay it to rest so I can study for the GRE. It should probably be the other way around but I can't help myself. I wish I wasn't so neurotic. |
|
|
| What I do at work |
[Dec. 27th, 2005|10:46 am] |
Advanced Global Personality Test Results | Take Free Advanced Global Personality Testpersonality tests by similarminds.comStability results were very low which suggests you are extremely worrying, insecure, emotional, and anxious. Orderliness results were moderately high which suggests you are, at times, overly organized, reliable, neat, and hard working at the expense of flexibility, efficiency, spontaneity, and fun. Extraversion results were low which suggests you are very reclusive, quiet, unassertive, and secretive. trait snapshot: depressed, introverted, neat, needs things to be extremely clean, observer, perfectionist, not self revealing, does not make friends easily, suspicious, irritable, hates large parties, follows the rules, worrying, does not like to stand out, fragile, phobic, submissive, dislikes leadership, cautious, takes precautions, focuses on hidden motives, good at saving money, solitary, familiar with the dark side of life, hard working, emotionally sensitive, prudent, altruistic, heart over mind, unadventurous |
|
|
| I guess not so suprising |
[Dec. 15th, 2005|10:04 am] |
I haven't been looking at livejournal lately but Brooke took one of these things and I thought I'd take one too:
I also got a myspace account but all it seems good for is for being solicited for porn sites. |
|
|
| Wagons ho! |
[Sep. 28th, 2005|10:17 pm] |
|
So it looks like I'm moving to Baltimore, Maryland. I may be traveling cross-country in my car sometime after Oct 7th. If anyone or someone cool you knows wants to hitch a ride or has nothing better to do than take turns driving and put up with me, let me know and we'll try to work out details: bblouie@gmail.com. |
|
|
| Wanted: Professional Resume Submitter |
[Jul. 18th, 2005|01:25 pm] |
|
I've submitted my resume to over 60 positions and have had less than ten interviews, absolutely no job offers and only one rejection saying the position had been filled. It's too bad I can't make a living off of simply submitting my resume. |
|
|
| Shutterbug |
[May. 10th, 2005|12:10 am] |
Photography has interested my ever since I was a kid. My favorite superhero growing up was Spiderman and his alter-ego Peter Parker was a freelance photographer for the Daily Bugle. I never took any classes until my final year at UC Berkeley. Even since I've been living in my apartment in Oakland I've always wanted to take a picture of my room. Everyone knows me as an insular person and of course my room is a very important place for me. There is so much that has meaning and significance to me.
So I finally got a wide angle lens and was able to exact the composition that I had in my mind. Some of my ideas evolved because of my current situation (graduating from Berkeley). I decided to do a environmental self-portrait of myself in my room. I printed some of the photos and they are almost perfect. The problem is that there is not detail from the curtains in my window because there is so much light they are being washed out. Sometime I'll have to go back and figure out what I'm I'll need to burn them in more. But for now I have working print of my self portrait which is be put up on my deviantart page before I leave Berkeley. It's probably the photograph I'm most proud of so far. Like my room, there's a lot of meaning in it for me but perhaps it won't be that special to others. |
|
|
| Woe is me |
[May. 2nd, 2005|07:31 pm] |
|
I didn't get this Project Coordinator position that I wanted at the University of Virginia. I'm going to graduate in a little over two weeks and I have no job and that really worries me. I need a place that will let me carry out my own psychological research but the other positions I have applied for don't have the opportunity. What on earth am I going to do? |
|
|
| Lost in Translation |
[Mar. 17th, 2005|12:50 am] |
|
It's been a long since I've last posted. I think everyone that I know has stopped using and reading livejournals but cest la vie. So I'm going to London and Paris to visit Brooke. I'm really excited. I hope I've packed all the clothes I'm going to need. I'm going to bring my SLR camera and hopefully I'll be able to shoot off some good shots. I hope I have enough to read on the plane. I'll be traveling for over 12 hours or something like that. Knowing me I'll be sleeping most of the time though. Hope all of you are going to have a great spring break! |
|
|
| Computer Crisis and Love Across a Pond |
[Dec. 15th, 2004|07:13 pm] |
So I haven't written in my livejournal for quite some time. I haven't had any pithy insights to espouse (which I usually end up not agreeing with later or regret posting). I wouldn't even look at livejournals if it wasn't for Brooke. Anyway...
My computer got messed up during finals and gave me a petit nervous breakdown. It makes me realize how reliant and depending I am on technology. A lot of positive things did come out of this ordeal. I put all my Woody Allen movies on CDs which I've been meaning to do for a long time which has cleared like 20 GBs of my hard drive. Also, I've had the chance to update some programs like photoshop to their latest versions.
This semester went well, I did really well in a color perception seminar that involved me designing and executing my own experiment. As most of you know, I'm "colorblind" (or color vision deficient, a more accurate term) so it was interesting to learn about my condition. I even did a presentation on it that went fairly well.
It's been hard being without Brooke all semester. There were times when I got lonely for her. But I'm picking her up at the airport this Saturday. It's going to be a really nice Christmas that I won't take for granted. I got her a present that she isn't expecting and I'm sure she'll like.
Anyway, happy holidays and season's greetings everyone. See you next year. |
|
|
| For those caught in the middle |
[Oct. 30th, 2004|12:42 am] |
Quote from Emerson's review of Farenhype 9/11 (http://rogerebert.sun times.com/paps/pbcs.dell/article?AID=/20041028/ESSAYS/41028002):
we live in the age of the false dichotomy, an old propaganda trap (and logical fallacy) that says, for example: If you're not for the President's way of fighting terrorism (even if you'd like him to provide more information about what, exactly, that is), you are automatically assumed to be on the side of the terrorists; or, if you find fault with Michael Moore's methods, you must be on Bush's side. Of course, neither of these propositions is necessarily true.
That's worth keeping in mind when watching this election year's political docs (or "op-umentaries" or "prop-umentaries") like "Fahrenheit 9/11" and its DID-nemesis, "Fahrenhype 9/11." It should be obvious, but let me say it again for the record: Just because one of them is wrong doesn't mean the other is right. In fact, just because one is wrong doesn't even mean the other offers the evidence to prove it. You know how far the level of political discourse in American has fallen when people are asked to take the word of either Dick Morris or Michael Moore at face value. So don't. And don't take my word for it. Do your own research. (You'll find some worthwhile links to various sources -- including original documents --available further down the page.) |
|
|
| MP3 Player for sale. |
[Oct. 26th, 2004|02:45 pm] |
|
Anyone interested in buying a blue SUB 256 MB MP3 player (also can serve as a voice recorder/file storage)? $100 or best offer. These are great if you'd like an mp3 player but don't have the need for all the storage an Ipod can provide. Also nice for storage of pdf files and files that don't quite fit on a floppy disk but not big enough to warrant burning a CD. I accidentally bought two off ebay and I'm hoping to break even. Let me know if you want pics as well. |
|
|
| navigation |
| [ |
viewing |
| |
most recent entries |
] |
| [ |
go |
| |
earlier |
] |
| |
|
|
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
blouie's journal