Or should I say, plastic culture?

Disposability seems to be the keyword these days. Disposable pens. Disposable containers. Disposable clothes. And disposable people.

Don’t get me wrong. Some things are supposed to be disposable. I am not the type to keep all sorts of memos; I’m no Sherlock. And if I did that, it’s very likely I’d have already drowned in seas of papers that I’ve written on. Information is paramount in my family, which means that there are sheets and sheets of information written in various hands, located haphazardly throughout the house. A book there, a memo here, some random receipt on the piano, a post-it note from seven years ago stuck on my Bach. But that’s not the point.

The point is, things are getting too disposable.

Maybe this is just a trend occurring in the very consumerist countries. But of course, I haven’t really lived in any country but first-world, which are all becoming very consumerist. Expensive items bought cheaply, hen thrown away as soon as it’s not functional seems to be the keyword nowadays; “fixing and using” seems to be completely out of option. So there goes the cobbler that I used to frequent.I’m all for mending shoes, since many of them are good leather and I’ve worn them for years, and it is a rather common knowledge that leather shoes fit to your feet and undoubtedly become “your shoes”; meaning, they are fitted to your feet and no one else’s. But If the current cobbler that I frequent decides to close shop, I’m in serious trouble.

Shoes are one thing. But what about people?

I’ve had friends for years. Some date back to when I was still in year three. I’ve kept (semi) regular correspondence, a letter now and then, a phone call… and they know me well enough to keep in touch, despite my ups and downs that make my correspondence rather haphazard in frequencies. Relationships aren’t very disposable for me, and I’m the kind who remembers my year 1 class – everybody – by name. (Oddly enough, I don’t remember 99% of my high school class. Goes to show just how much I disliked that school, but that’s for another day.)

But that’s me; and that’s only with a handful that I’ve come to cross paths with, out of hundreds. And I mean hundreds. With the advent of Facebook, suddenly it became very easy to keep in touch… but it also meant that it was well nigh impossible for the most to keep in touch with those who didn’t. And ever since I joined the latter group, my “friends” list – a misnomer, if there ever was one – has been whittled down to about six out of six hundred. That’s 1% of the friends list. It appears, in the end, that “friends” now mean those who update regularly on Facebook, or those who have regular parties with you.

But to be entirely honest, I don’t consider those people to be “friends”. “Friends” are those who come to your rescue when you feel you are all alone and desolate, and we all have those times. “Friends” are those who remind you that they are there when you’re quite sure they’ve forgotten about you. And when it comes to that – most fail.

But surely those relationships that one had to resurrect on Facebook died for a reason. Perhaps either party wasn’t committed to keeping the relationship alive; perhaps common interest was no longer common; but the reason is there. You don’t just fall out with people for no reason. As long as each party is committed, and as long as both parties have things in common, friendships can last. Maybe it won’t be as dense; maybe it won’t be as frequent; but it won’t die.

So a friendship died for a reason. Why resurrect it? I’m not entirely sure. I’ve lost touch with James for years, and I don’t really regret it, as all we’ve had in common was school and that commonality ended when I moved away and changed schools. And what exactly is one to talk about with someone you haven’t talked to in years, who have no common interests with you? “Hi, how are you?” “Good” is probably all that the conversation amounts to… and if all you want is that, then you can do that in Starbucks.

Stanford recently released a study that Facebook users are more likely to be miserable and depressed than those who aren’t. I wasn’t surprised; these social networks create a false sense of human contact when all there is are windows into someone else’s life that you most likely won’t have much part in.

Richard Bach once said,

A farewell is necessary before you can meet again. And meeting again, after moments or lifetimes, is certain for those who are friends.

Well, then maybe that last farewell you said to the person who sat next to you in year five was the last farewell because of obvious reasons. Beating a dead horse isn’t going to get one anywhere, and continuing to beat it in vain hopes that it might be resurrected is just clinging on false optimism that is bound to crash. We talk about consumerism often and how “bad” it is, but we never stop to consider “why” it’s bad; just that it’s bad. But one needs to know why it’s bad before one stops doing it, and because no one actually considers the why, we continue down the road of falsified relationships that can end with one click.

Message that I receive everyday from the silence of the phone is:

People are disposable. You are disposable.

(Many thanks to all of you who continue to write to me in my utterly selfish campaign to not use electronic communications. Your efforts are very appreciated… and I keep all your letters.)

It’s been a common complaint throughout the ages that “the younger generations are worse than us”. It was said during Marlowe’s time, Hardy’s time, Waugh’s time, my time, and probably hundred years from now. But just how much of this is the truth, really?

The truth of the matter is: in matter of things that require long time to develop, probably.

Our lives have been getting busier and busier. Back in Hardy’s day it’s rather clear a woman could learn handwriting and had time to read; then Waugh’s time came and girls were flitting around having parties; nowadays handwriting is almost virtually unheard of.

Busier and busier means less and less time. No, a day is still 24 hours, but there is less time to spend per activity. And as our lives get busier and busier, things get more mass-produced and quickly digested (seriously, how many books have you read the past month?). Reading is out. Movies and games are in. And if you read, well, congratulations, you are now a minority group. Borders is closed, Spenser is kicked off the bookshelf… if such thing even exists in people’s houses.

I’m not saying yesterday is better, but I think we had a bit more emotional capacity in the past. People used to write love letters; now skype and text have replaced them, and quite frankly, they’re about as dry and tasteless as a week old slice of bread.

Sarcasm, it seems, would be the English virtue, and not much of a virtue anywhere else. Of course, for those who consider the world to be a stage, sarcasms are just as witty as any other types of humour, and taking jibes at each other would be something that shows witticism and brevity, not a personal insult.

This would be a personal insult:

“You are ugly.”

This would be sarcasm:

“Your face is so beautiful I think I want to gouge my eyeballs out.”

The thing is, sarcasm can be taken as a way to circumspectly insult someone else, but the insult has to be received by someone who has an equal or better comprehension of the motives behind the word choices. In other words, one needs a sarcasm sensor to not get offended by it.

In many cases amongst the islanders, sarcasm is so ingrained within everyday conversations that one doesn’t even consider whether it is a personal insult or not.  This would not necessarily be meant to be hurtful, rather the acerbic tone is just a characteristic, and not meant to be taken personally. It’s a fine line that does not seem to translate, even if there are very little language barriers.

Case in point:

A: “I hate Dostoyevsky.”

B: “I find him quite interesting.”

A: “Don’t be ridiculous, you haven’t read a book in your life.”

This is rather direct, and therefore meant as an insult. It better be taken as an insult, otherwise Speaker A would officially categorise Speaker B as an imbecile and any kind of discourse would be over. Oh dear, this person can’t even identify insults. He would need to be fed and taught how to sit on hind paws would be what speaker A is thinking, in all possibilities.

However:

A: “I hate Dostoyevsky.”

B: “I find him quite interesting.”

A: “You read?!”

This conversation leaves B with two choices: one, to take the final remark as an insult and get mortally offended, in which case Nesbit’s observation that a person gets angry when the truth is told might be proven true; or two, B can come back with a witticism, in which the ball is back in A’s court. Thus a lively banter continues, a competition of wit as well as patience.

However, this kind of verbal tennis requires training, of which most do not grow up with. And then they get mortally offended, and the speaker A walks away, shaking his/her head, thinking “so much for humour and esprit. What happened to the sense of wit?”

First off: oops.

I completely forgot about the blog’s existence, which is a bit of a shame, because I’ve kept one since Junior High. I think that must be some kind of a record. But things got utterly hectic and I couldn’t do it.

Anyway, I’m back.

And the layout is different, because my web server disappeared while I was on hiatus and I can’t find my files. So here we are…

Rosin makes a world of difference.

Seriously. My eyes have been opened. Hello, Pirastro. Goodbye, Paganini.

Recently I have been wondering why my bow wasn’t resonating as I wanted it to. My vibratos weren’t getting through, my resonating pitches fell flat, and the double stops at the frog sounded squeaky and forced.

Now, my boyfriend uses Evah and my lover (?!) uses Tonica, and while I was browsing JS Fisher I found that Pirastro actually manufactures rosins tailored to these string sets.

OMFG OMFG MUST GET NOW!

After a quick permission, I purchased them, and it came in mail today. As I’m practising Tchaikovsky after leaving it alone and forgotten in some dark corner of my music cabinet for seven years, I applied the rosin, and played the intro.

OMFG. Is that really me?! Actually, is that really my bow?! My bow glides effortlessly, while the sound is richer, more vibrant. The traction’s better. I need to force less. The sound’s more powerful, the higher registers more smooth, the lower registers sweeter.

Being a conzertmeister ensures you do one thing: practise.

I’m starting Nel Cor Piu Non mi Sento and Ernst’s polyphonics. My hand is going to die.

My family recently decided (recently as in for a few months) to purchase an espresso machine. As some of the readers may know (or not), my family is a huge lover of teas and coffees, and it didn’t really make much sense not to have one. Oh, we had one, yes, but it was one of those really old manual style ones before the semi-automatics came into being. So I was sent on a hunt.

Now the thing about espressos (or coffee or wine or tea, for that matter) is that it’s sort of an art. Not a science, no. It requires a very sense-based adjustment that doesn’t have a formula, and the opinions vary from one to another: aluminium is good. Aluminium is not good. You want a big portafilter. You don’t want a big portafilter. the grinder should be separate. The grinder shouldn’t be separate. One shouldn’t buy a grinder at all, but instead by ground beans. E.t.c. E.t.c.

To be honest, I don’t think it makes that much difference. I have never heard of anyone going “Oh, you rotten person, you didn’t brew this correctly! Clearly you didn’t use a big portafilter” upon imbibing. But clearly they make a difference, or something.

Anyway, after much consideration and seeing a $100 off from a Gaggia machine, we decided to purchase it. It shipped fast (yey for UPS); it was packed quite well; and the price was good. And it arrived today.

I should have known it would be a perilous quest to get my first drink of espresso, considering that it’s a freaking Italian product.

First, the beans. As we don’t have a burr grinder (yet), I was sent by my mother to buy the beans on the way back home from uni. Fine. I searched on Yelp, found Lavazza very close to my other campus, and after surviving through the physical chemistry exam and a differential equations class, I hopped onto the shuttle bus. I got dropped off. I turned on my GPS service on my phone. Yelp stated that they close at 9:00 PM. Fine.

So I walked from E. Pearson to Walton, which is about a five minute walk. Mind you, this is before five pm. Clearly still normal business hours. The Lavazza was a teeny tiny place, but looked cosy. I pushed the door open and…

nothing happened.

Pushed again. Nothing happened. Some fat git inside (I think he was the barista) looked at me, but did nothing. Pushed again. Nothing. Puzzled, I looked at the operating hours.

… FOUR PM?!

If this was NatWest in the colonnade at Guy’s Campus, I’d give up. But this was Michigan Avenue. I was irritated. Six might be a reasonable time, but four clearly isn’t. There are still businessmen working at 4 pm. What if they wanted a cup of coffee? Starbucks would be operating; Lavazza would lose money.

But clearly they weren’t concerned.

Irked, I walked down the street, went to John Hancock Centre, and went into the Italian food shop/restaurant. They were open (they close at 7.30). Bought the beans. Went home. Unpacked the espresso machine. Ate supper. 

And then came the time to use the Gaggia Baby Black. First thing that puzzled me was there were three filters, while the manual clearly indicated just two. One was clearly just a single; the two others were doubles, but one just had one hole and the other had slightly larger holes (plural to a greater degree). Not sure about which one to use, I dug out the manual.

Nothing.

Read again. Nothing. Irked, I looked through the French translation. Utterly nothing. What kind of a manual was this?! I looked through the directions to making an espresso. Still nothing; what was even more puzzling, it said “to fit the filter (10 or 11) into the filter cup holder (9), then fit 9 to 11. How can you fit something into another, then fit that other thing back into that thing? That is physically impossible.

After searching on google and coming across a post by someone who had the same query, I proceeded to make my first cup of espresso. I used the double cup filter, pressed on, and waited…

and brown liquid sprayed out, some into the cups and a lot on the table cloth.

I was beyond irked at this point. I was also hating most Italians at this point, and was cursing most of the famous modern Italians, starting with Berlusconi to Carla Bruni (who is politically a French but she’s still an Italian). Italians clearly can’t be related to Romans; Romans made the aqueducts that are still in use today, while the Italians can’t even properly make a freaking espresso machine. The manual said NOTHING about “OUR MACHINE CHEERFULLY SPRAYS COFFEE ONTO YOU AND INTO THE CUP” clause. Instead, there was a curious black plastic part that evidently was supposed to go with “the good crema device”, but the good crema device wasn’t even in there.

“Maybe that black thing goes into the holder”, said my mother.

“That’s not what it says in the manual.”

“Oh, come now,” said my mother, “do you really thing Italians would read the manual before using this machine? Just try it.”

So I did. And lo and behold, no more spraying. My question is, why didn’t they just scrap with the retarded engineering which clearly is a failure and just make a better filter holder? Instead they just added this black plastic thing the size of my pinkie fingernail and did away with it. It’s prone to loss, breakage, and it’s just plain bad planning. I knew Italians weren’t exactly Germans (my philosophy professor or S. Git Giachetti, is a prime example) but this is beyond belief. Can’t they do anything right (apart from make shoes)?!

Needless to say, I can never live in Italy until I retire and no longer care about personal growth. When I’m seventy and am just looking to live my life as hedonistically as possible, I might move there. But spending 30 minutes trying to figure out the manual is just a waste of my time.

Gaggia, I am very very disappointed in you.

I have slept for the total amount of 12 hours for the last three days. Last night, I had to write three papers that are due next week. I have a physical chemistry exam this Thursday, a Modern Physics exam next Monday. And it literally feels like somebody is whipping me to trod forth, as if I am a racehorse that needs to finish a three hundred mile race before the end of the day.

Needless to say, not happy. At all.

This is literally how America works. You start running. And then you run faster. But everybody's running faster than before. So you run even faster, trying to get ahead. Some people still run faster. You run faster and faster, and the lactic acid's killing your legs, but you just can't take a rest...

What I'd love to do is take a nap. But I have a student coming in for writing instruction in 23 minutes. Lovely.

Contrary to what everybody tells you, majors evidently do count when it comes to the hard green cash. Of course, you’re better off majoring in mathematics when applying to law school just because your scores will be better, but looking at just bachelor levels, it seems that you’re better off doing cold, hard sciences.

The top achievers were engineering (of course), but other scienc-y stuff came in as well, such as applied mathematics and physics.

On the other hand, those which are generally called as Humanities came in quite low. What was surprising was, fashion design beat psychology. Granted, they seem to be the same in rigor of the curriculum (do you have to trudge through 50 pages of nothing but formulae and derivations? No. Do you have to sit in the lab for three hours watching the proverbial paint dry? No. Do you have to solve 50 problems for homework and hope to god that what you’re doing is right and not quietly developing an impossible physics phenomena? No.) but I think this is because of the flooding of the psych majors.

As for Philosophy (cough-junkie-cough), all I’ve learned so far is that as far as you write semi-coherently, you’ll get an A. This conclusion came from my philosophy class taken over the summer of which, I learned precisely the following:

1. Italians can’t understand German or English philosophy
1. This is probably due to the fact that they don’t need to suffer much. Good looking women, good food, good weather? What do you need to suffer about? (said Dietrich the German, not me)
2. Italian professors evidently have penises for brains
3. As far as you use big words and write something that vaguely sounds intelligent, an “respected professor who writes books” will give you an A. Never mind that I did not even crack open any of the assigned texts, missed half my classes, and wrote my final 2 hours before it was due (PS: I don’t understand why people try to establish “this professor’s very respected” just by the amount of stuff they published. If Naomi Campbell can publish a book, then it certainly doesn’t require much intellect to do so. And no, publishing papers in the Journal of Philosophy means nothing to me. If Socrates said an orange was an apple just because he was purely delusional on hemlock, we’d be tested on it and be forced to analyse it to death today.)

But then again, I’d better get paid better than those English majors, thank you very much. I have to sit in a lab, derive equations, argue with professors for hours on end just to see how time expands.

And for those of you who say “you go there to expand your horizon!!”, I don’t know what you’re talking about. I have not improved my writing skills since I graduated high school, not because I don’t learn, but because my university decided to place me out of the writing curriculum because evidently I write spectacularly. And training cognitive processes aren’t what you do at university nowadays; that’s what you used to do, back in the “good ol’ days at Oxbridge” as J’s father said once, but you are thrown information of which you are to digest it and regurgitate it on paper as much as possible and as fast as possible. Mathematics and the sciences may require some understanding (induce, deduce, the works) but English? Anyone with some reading skills and some thinking ability can do that, as I’ve learned.

Of course, if you say “Well, I’m certain I will become the next John Locke! People will analyse my texts and my notes for eons”, then I defer to thee, my friend. But as long as what you did in university was sit on your rear end and get stoned, too bad if you don’t land a job in this career-appalling day and age.

Said IM yesterday morning.

And to be honest, I’m inclined to agree.

IM and I have been faithful T-mobile users in the US. Heck, I was a T-mobile user back in London. My best friend in London uses T-mobile. My best friend here and my research professor both use T-mobile. And apart from one crappy incident during which I had no service over the weekend, the company’s doing fine. I like their monthly pay as you go plan, and I don’t mind not having top notch smartphone. It’s a good enough company that offers my needs at a cheap price.

It certainly beats AT&T, aka “the demon reincarnate from hell”, as IM said. AT&T just plain sucks. Dropped calls, bad customer service. E.t.c.

So when those two merge, we’re in big trouble.

A. We hate AT&T. That’s why we chose T-mobile. As internationals (as opposed to ‘I’m rooted to the USA and will never leave this country’), GSM is a must. Only T-mobile and AT&T offers this.

B. AT&T are just plain more expensive.

C. Their customer care stinks.

D. Did I mention the DROPPED CALLS?

So it’s either half the nation petitions Verizon to get GSM service, or we're going to hope to all the deities out there that the DOJ would block this merger.

On the other note, I managed to ding – ever so slightly, to the point you need magnifying glass to notice it – my new phone. I’m greatly annoyed. Why does that bloody phone have to be so difficult to open?

Of course, JB is gloating, much to our chagrin. IM and I use android, but he’s a freaking iPhone (jailbroken) user. In fact, he uses MacBook and an iPhone. I’m surprised he hasn’t proposed to Steve Jobs.

Guess who’s more computer savvy? Definitely not the Apple User.

I suppose this is a hypocritical thing to say.

IM is trying to whittle his class down (two sections, 80 people each) into 60 people (2 sections, 30 people each) or less. He originally requested one section of 30 students, but the department screwed something up. And then told him too bad.

Monsieur IM is not a happy chap, and therefore went ahead and decided to do everything he could to get as close as he could to his goal – 30 people class – and evidently this means being as cruel as possible to the poor, hapless medical student wannabe freshers. He figured that most people do not like 8.00 am class, nor do they like ridiculous curves for an A, and so decided to do both. He declared he had no office hours, so it’s appointment only. A is 95% and above. The class begins at an ungodly hour. Et cetera.

JB is faring only slightly better. He is a lab assistant and leading a fresher research team (part of the curriculum, evidently), and is wondering what sort of a bad thing he had done in his previous life to merit such a torture. His Rachmaninov went from cool, collected and passion hidden beneath a collected facade into a general overtone of “I’m just tired and need to sleep”.

I, as you may know, have taken upon myself to endure 21 credit hours of work. This includes Physics, Chemistry, and Mathematics classes. And an English class (of which I am slightly peeved; if you are an university student and do not know the Protestant Reformation and why it happened, and how it was caused, then your educational institution was clearly a failure.), and a completely inconsequential philosophy class of which the assignments have nothing to do with the lectures whatsoever. And two researches. And two volunteerings.

I’m exhausted most of the time, but when I think about my friends, I can’t exactly sit down and take a rest. I feel that I need to keep moving. This isn’t a pleasant experience, but I suppose that’s what I came back for.

Having attended both American and British universities as a full-time, non-exchange student (aka you’re my homie and you won’t be pampered like a guest), I’ve come to realise that there are quite a few differences across the pond. So, instead of sucking up to Stefano the idiotic philosophy professor (who, by the way, is a freaking communist and evidently thinks Nietzsche is the greatest man ever to grace this world) by reading some asinine chapters from Machiavelli, I will be reviewing the differences of these to types of students. Let’s name it…
the inter-continental face-off.

	US	UK
Study time	US wins hands-down. I’m amazed we don’t keel over and die from the amount of stuff we have to do (I have no idea about the humanities, but we sciences have it rough).
Partying		Gotta give it to the UK folks. I was getting clubbing invites EVERY SINGLE DAY. And I know some people went EVERY SINGLE NIGHT.
Stress level	US hands-down again. Loans, homework, “OMFG I got a B and now I can’t get into law school”…
Relationships	Easy screws are common. But I certainly don’t see any girl bawling her eyes out over a man.	I saw a girl bawling her eyes out over a guy at least once a year.
Maturity	US kids are much more mature. You have to be, if the tuition’s sky-rocketing. That, and marks count for your future career.
Extra comments	American university students are American workers in waiting, and therefore the lifestyle is a cushier version of it. Which means, by the end of the term, half of us are blue with worry, half of us are white with fatigue, and half of us are green from just ill health. Our lives are ruled with gadgets, e-mails, and professors demanding papers turned in via e-mail because the professor doesn’t want to carry 50 papers home to grade. Coffee is the staple of our diet.	British students seem to enjoy the last vestige of childhood before being sent out to service the unemployed and the Royal Family, but it seems in the inside they are envious of American yuppie-esque life-style with Starbucks runs and laptop totes. Nevertheless, they seem not to realise that the reason we need Starbucks is not to look cool but because we are so freakishly tired most of the time with the exams and we need caffeine to wake up. Well, some of us. Either way, they seem to have more fun.

So that’s it, folks. My comment? If you want to work like a racehorse and actually do something with your life that involves career advancement, come here. You’d certainly get paid for all the hard work you’re doing (at least, it won’t go ignored). Looking for family holidays every summer? Forget it. Stay in England.

Okay, maybe not. But people are DESPERATE.

I’ve always been interested in how people decide to mate. With primates, it’s fairly easy; the biggest, baddest, toughest gorilla gets the biggest, strongest, most fertile gorilla. The end. No “that gorilla is skinnier” or “that gorilla is funnier”. It’s straightforward and simple.

Evidently mankind had to take it a step further and make it all confusing, because I have signed up for okcupid under the pretence that I am looking for a boyfriend, and… –gasp!- men are desperate. I’m supposing to get laid. Is sex that important over here?! I’m not saying Europeans or Asians are any better (after seeing JB’s perverse preferences in poetry, I’m inclined to say that he has pretty weird fetishes going on there), but crikey, as soon as one says “I’m not going to sleep with anyone until marriage”, goodbye.

Anyway, so here is what I’ve found out:

1. American men of white descent (dunno about European or Australian or New Zealander) are REALLY picky. Message them, no response. Nada. Sorry, boys, you are not that good looking. As far as I’ve seen, I have not seen anyone on par with J… and he’s certainly not that cocky.
2. European men dig my looks. American men don’t at all. Hmm. Wonder why.
3. What is conventionally artistically beautiful is NOT attractive over here (dunno about Europe). A rejected snapshot of my modelling portfolio is gaining more attention than what I deemed a better photograph.
4. JB is now officially a really cute, sophisticated, and utterly handsome nerd. Which is a rare species.
5. IM is one HELL of a hot dude.
6. J is a freaking Adonis. End of discussion.
7. Some people try too hard to be nice.
8. I evidently only get attracted to people who are mostly pure-blooded (90+% one nationality).
9. African Americans like Asian women. Unfortunately that is not reciprocated.
10. Some people cannot spell to save their lives.

So, folks, here is the lesson to be learned today: hanging on in quite desperation is not just the English way, it is THE way. But hey, what the hell, most people are looking for sex anyway.

I wonder if they’re aware that they’re really barking up the wrong tree. As the trio of men can testify quite extensively. I have half a mind to say yes to JB, but he’s currently seducing a drow priestess into joining his cause (JB, weren’t you a sun elf paladin? Are you supposed to be seducing people…?), so maybe I’m doomed.

Also, Benjamin Bunny is FREAKING MARRIED. There goes the first love of my life.

So the Royal Wedding occurred. Good for them.

Or not.

I was never a fan of the Royal Family of Great Britain. Their scandals were a bit too numerous to hold them in high regard.

JB, on the other hand, didn’t hold them in high regard, but didn’t have anything against them either. Until now.

JB: I can’t care less if Kate Middleton drowned and died tomorrow.

Me: That’s hardly loyal.

JB: I can’t be. Throwing a costly wedding when people are losing jobs is hardly responsible. I have had enough with the Royal Family. I certainly don’t seek the Jacobins to come storming in, but this is disgusting.

Do keep in mind that this gentleman was educated in Eton, went to Oxford, and is fully ingrained in… well, Britain. He even votes bloody Tory.

I’m not saying that professors are all backstabbers and they deserve to die a most painful, gruesome death, but this one bites it.

A few months ago I applied to one of the professors in the biology department to do research. I, unlike others, have no plans of becoming a clinical physician. I don’t care that there are three million people dying of horrible diseases everyday. I just don’t. I want to become a researcher, yes, a researching physician, yes, but at most all I want to do is sit in a laboratory setting and not speak to anyone all day.

Well, the scheduling REALLY didn’t work out, so I didn’t get the post. The professor, however, told me that I should reapply this semester, because one, I sound like such an enthusiastic researcher, and two, because he’d want someone who isn’t looking to buff up a med school resume for once.

And then he goes ahead and gives it away. The post. To someone else.

I’m not saying I’m the most deserving, but COME ON. I am getting really peeved here. It doesn’t help that most Physics research needs a substantial amount of prep work before you even get to say E=mc². Biology is borderline non-science, and that’s why it’s easy to do research. It’s mostly luck, and almost no theory.

So here it is. The fucking biologists deserve to die. They waste the most money and don’t do shit.

So after the earthquake our university, like any other university, is hosting events to aid those in NORTHERN Japan.

Keyword being northern.

The thing is, they are doing bizarre things to get this done. Let me give you examples:

• Folding a paper crane when someone donates – no, you will not get the crane – and then sending it to Hiroshima, which is nearly on the other side of the country
• Raising money, and then, for some inexplicable reason, sending it to a sister university, which is located approximately 200 miles away from where the earthquake happened
• Expecting that people nowadays are good-hearted enough to walk by someone asking for a donation and then donating

Umm…?

I am baffled.

Do they even know where Sendai is?

That is not fabricated. That is an actual view from the library at my university, on the second floor, overlooking the lake.

Seriously? I would not be surprised if polar bears were walking around.

The library wall is glass-panelled, so it offers a maximum view of the lake. During the summer it is beautiful; during the winter?

Well, I am now certain that I had somehow teleported to the North Pole.

As much as I admit that I am biologically fully qualified as a female, it seems that I had completely missed out on female friendship lecture given throughout one's life. Most often the small intricacies are lost on me, nuances go over my head, and inevitably I am no longer able to keep up with the minute dynamics that hold the female friendships together, and all around me it tends to go caput. So understandably most of my friends are steadfastly male, meaning that I get even less chance to get exposed to the said social rituals the females go through.

What I had noticed recently is that there is A LOT of backstabbing in female friendships, and evidently that is what friendship is about. Which baffles me; if you don't like that person, I'd call it self-inflicted torture to be in that person's company, and certainly I'd avoid that experience at all costs. But their relationships are convoluted on so many levels; they maintain a facade of pleasurable company, then whenever there is something that they do not like they go to a common acquaintance/friend and complain as if that friend is a customer service, then when it gets bad they proceed to stab each other in the back under the justification that it is all because of "the other person", or "they had it coming".

What I cannot understand is why men deign to date and eventually marry these females. Do they expect they would get a preferential, sincere treatment just because they have a Y chromosome instead of X? As much as I am not knowledgeable in this matter, I doubt it; of course, there is no 'common friend' this time (apart from the offspring), and so there is no wonder that the divorce rate is so high.

In conclusion: females are more treacherous than the males. Of course, there is a caveat to this statement, but I digress. And people wonder why I don't dally with females too often.

If there is any good that come out of carrying a laptop everyday (apart from the possibility that if you fall over the laptop will crush you and you can end your misery quite quickly) is probably the fact that one has access to all the academic equipment one needs all the time. Nowadays textbooks are online, notes are online, you can take notes online, e-mails are online... and all of a sudden you find that carrying the 400lb textbook around is now out of date.

Except when the school interweb system, for some reason, decides to malfunction in some way and then you are in miserable level of Cania and you're trying to battle that Mephistopheles of that malfunction. Unfortunately, Mephisto owns you and you get beaten into a pulp.

Which is what happened to me today. I was trying to install a printer client onto my laptop so I don't have to log into the school computer EVERY TIME I want to print; unfortunately adobe decides to crash my spooler and then the damn thing won't even install properly at all, making me believe that this school is an EPIC FAIL (remember that phrase, anybody?) when it comes to tech stuff. Hell, even KCL managed to allow wireless printing from private laptops. I'm not asking them to copy KCL web system - it sucked, and I never had proper reception in my hall residence half the time, and bittorrent was decidedly blocked as if they were terrified that all the students would suddenly pirate Microsoft Office - but come on! I cannot be hassled to go and log in, wait for the client to appear, then find the document, click print, type in password, then wait by the printer, swipe card, type in password again, select job, and then finally wait for the product to come out. I'd rather watch sodium acetate crystals form on top of the arboretum roof (meaning that it will never happen).

So here is my advice, from a lowly undergraduate student, to the Loyola IT department: GET A NEW PRINTING SERVER. For Christ's sake, this school charges a ridiculous amount for the level of education it's giving (which is basically rote memorise, spit out on paper). It still does not have Office 2010 making it necessary for me to carry my laptop around, since 2007 and 2010 are NOT compatible. Furthermore, wireless printing from laptops do not work, for some bizarre reason a few computers have Linux installed with VMWare mounted on it (and on it, inexplicable, is a Windows OS), and it still has Internet Explorer as its default browser which drives me utterly insane. It also has useless crap on it that no one ever uses, while more useful tools like Mathematica are not there (I don't understand this. The extra credit problems in the math department must be submitted with a Mathematica file. I am not going to buy that $500 software just for extra credit. So how does one DO them without Mathematica on the school PCs?). The Lenovo Thinkpads that the school rents out to the students, for some reason, has oversensitive touch pads that make typing a pain in the ass. And to log onto the school network from Windows, you really have to select servers, type in passwords... it's all a confused mess. Evidently Loyola likes macs. Well, I am not a fan of it. There is no OneNote on macs and I can't handle non-right-click Microsoft Word. And forget about "well, if you press the command key on the keyboard"... no, that's not right click. That's just clicking while pressing the command key.

So after all this rant, what am I saying? That technology at all universities suck. Hell, even at MIT it sucks evidently; half the time JB gets kicked off while on-campus, only to come back 30 seconds later apologetically.

That reminds me, I have to study for Genetics.

So after two and a half months of living through torture hell of science, I am ready to call it quits. Oh, wait. I can't.

Let me explain. My current schedule is a bit hellish. Orgo lab should never be held in the evenings, mainly because the majority of the students have not eaten, or have not slept, or overexerted themselves from trying to reproduce while stopping the fundamental function of it. Inexplicably, they hold organic labs during the evenings. And it's THREE FUCKING HOURS. Standing through dissection bathing in formaldehyde was one thing, but sniffing ether for three hours does things to your mind and give you an undeserved hangover which is really unfair because all you got was the short end of the stick.

Anyway.

So I am enrolled in BIOL 282, which is a Genetics course with a certain geneticist who shall go unnamed because if he is for some reason looking up his name it will list this site on google. May I remind you that I have no interest whatsoever in X21? Yes, despite my aspiration to become a physician I really don't care for it. Despite that fact, my professor believes that X21 is the most important chromosome in the entire universe. And his notes really do not make much sense, since he jumps around faster than a bunny fleeing from a giant.

Organic Chemistry is a pain in the rear end. For those of you who are reading this and thought Phase I/Phase II biochem was awful, I beg to differ. That was like a needle up the UT; this is a fucking Foley catheter. My sleeping hours have officially been reduced to 2 hours or so every day. Not very healthy. And I'm still not finished.

So those two classes are killing me. And I know the med students over here will be saying "Well, it gets worse". Well, fuck off. Chemistry is not that difficult conceptually, and if so many kids are struggling that's because there is a problem with the teaching method, ie: I still don't know how to draw mechanisms (this must be remedied immediately). I can handle Physics and Calculus fine, but orgo is murdering my brain cells and possibly my vision as well. Coffee has ceased to work. Must I resort to meth? Is this what it boils down to? "You must consume organic chemistry to excel in it! Literally!". For those who are only taking this course as a challenger this semester, well, lucky you, I hope you die in med school. Really.

Now that the rant is out of my system, I shall be returning to my studies...

While talking about Univ. of Chicago...

JB: I went to the dining hall... Hutchinson, I think it was called... and suddenly I didn't know if I was back at uni as an undergraduate, trying to lie through my teeth that no, the reason my paper is late is NOT because I was getting drunk in London over the weekend while trying to cozen my ex-girlfriend back into my arms but because my uncle had a brain biopsy and I had to be there. I almost could hear Harry yelling that they were going to the Undercroft, thought that I must be at the informal rather than the formal because I wasn't in a jacket. Then I realised that I was in America, not Oxford. And that this is not Christ Church and I don't have to go back and write the paper in my room.

M: That would be because that dining hall is modeled after the dining hall in Christ Church.

JB: Oh my goodness! Christ Church is taking over the world!

M: You wish. I wonder what it would have been like to be a student there.

JB: It's no different from any other university, apart from all the pomp and the fluff they dress you with. Believe me when I say this: you do NOT want to take your end-of-year exams in that ridiculous gown. I nearly fell asleep my final year. You'd have your occasional stars - like Stephen Hawking, for instance - but otherwise half the students are drunk. Or too busy trying to evade the scientific way of creating life out of nothing and going the more orthodox way instead.

M: About Stephen Hawking, I have something interesting to tell you.

JB: This better be good, because I am on tenterhooks.

M: Did you know that Stephen Hawking is quite a ladies' man?

JB: No, I did not! How on earth can he?! He has muscular dystrophy! He can't even speak!

M: JB, darling, there are no muscles where it counts in what he does to be a ladies' man.

JB: Oh good lord...

But seriously... I know it's a s grandiose building and everything, but mimicking it thrice is getting a bit boring.