The Kindness of Strangers

Let’s say you’re on a direct flight coast-to-coast. Should you try to get an aisle seat or a window seat?

Aisle pros: More legroom, can get up to go to the bathroom whenever you want
Window pros: Can look outside (sometimes the views are spectacular) and control the window shade, can rest head on window to sleep, are not woken up when someone else in your row has to go to the bathroom

I’ve been a window guy for a while, but on the way to Boston the diuretic one-two punch of being in an airplane and watching two movies, combined with the two other people in my row executing a perfectly synchronized tag-team of sleeping, nearly did me in.

Dan’s wedding this weekend was the last one I have scheduled, and ended what I’d call the first wave (or mode) of my friends getting married. He was also the first of my high school friends to get married. The weekend was a nearly perfect combination of fun and heartfelt emotion. The groomsmen (except for Dan’s brother) were all my best friends from high school. We got to know Dan’s beautiful new wife April better. We also saw Dan accept her daughter Alyssa as his own in a very touching part of the ceremony. Of course there was also the endless succession of sports and joking around and partying that comes with hanging out with my high school friends.

I’m incredibly happy at how we’ve managed to stay in touch so well for so long. These guys are the perfect friends: good-natured (and never mean-spirited), hilarious, really athletic, personable and courteous, always up for having a good time — or doing something crazy to make a good time — yet 100% dependable when it counts. They’re never late or unprepared for anything important (in fact, we were early to all of the wedding functions)… and yet we’ll play Connect-Four at a restaurant during lunch, blow Will’s trumpet in the parking lot after the rehearsal dinner to congratulate Dan and April, bust out every ridiculous move in the book on the dance floor, or whatever else makes life fun. The fun to stress ratio is practically infinity.

So that was good. I also got to spend a a few days in Boston, perfect bookends to the wedding. Saw a bunch of college and work friends, had some great conversations with Matt, and pigged out at Wing and Jen’s. Here are some pictures — can you pick out the one that wasn’t taken on my camera? By the way, the last picture is from the window of the plane — a pro for window seats!

My friend Sach has finally started his own blog — check it out!

I’ve witnessed two scary airport moments in the last two years. Maybe they’re a result of paranoia, but let me tell you, when you’re in these situations, it’s virtually impossible not to think “bomb” or “terrorist”, no matter how rational you try to make yourself.

1. I’m sitting at some gate in some airport (I forget which one) and I notice a roller bag sitting upright, unattended right in the middle of the big aisle between my gate and the opposite one. Just sitting there, while travellers flow by. I find it interesting, but not yet scary. Two minutes later, an airport employee makes an announcement: if the bag standing between gates X and Y is yours, come to the desk immediately. No one comes to the desk. The bag still sits there. Despite my best rational thoughts, I start to get nervous. If you can imagine a picture of the scene taken with a long exposure — a blur of limbs and luggage, and in the middle sits this one item, rock steady — that’s what it begins to look like.

It’s weird what goes through your head at times like these. At first you think that it’s preposterous, there’s no way there’s a bomb in the bag. Then no one claims it, and doubts start creeping in. You judge the distance between yourself and the bag, and gauge if the support pillars might provide some protection. You weigh possibility of leaving the gate, and decide that it’s too neurotic, slightly embarrassing, and anyway doing so would take you closer to the bag, if only for a few moments.

Soon a number of people in my gate are looking at the bag. The gate attendant calls security. Another few minutes pass. If this were a Stephen King novel, the bag would seem to start pulsating malevolently. I force my nose back into my book. When I look up next, two minutes later, the bag is gone.

2. Last Monday, I fly from Logan to SFO. I want to eat my Dunkin’ Donuts meal before going through security. The airport is packed and the only empty seat I can find is next to another empty seat with a bag and an open book at its foot. Their owner is nowhere in sight. The bag is fashionable, and the book quite literary, and so I dismiss the chance that they might be some terrorist’s. I sit down and start reading the Globe’s coverage of the previous night’s Sox game. Then I begin to think…. well, if someone wanted to plant a bomb, maybe he’d intentionally use a good bag, etc. A minute later a uniformed security guard walks by and asks me, “Is this your bag?” “Nope,” I say, “It was here before I sat down.” “Okay, no problem.” He moves on. I suddenly think, in a very morbid way, that sitting this close to the bomb means that I’d die pretty much instantly, and hey, that’s not so bad. I would just wink out of existence, and being dead, I certainly wouldn’t regret not living anymore. I consider moving, but something makes me stay.

Two minutes later, a uniformed woman comes by, verifies that the bag is not mine, and tells me to get up and move away. “You never want to sit next to an unattended bag.” She radios for more security. I gather up my half-eaten meal and bags and shamble off. As I’m walking away, a young man comes out of a book store and claims the bags. The woman says, “Well, they’ve been unattended for a long time, and you’re in trouble,” and makes him sit two seats over while security comes. I drift out of earshot.

Last weekend I went backpacking around the Hetch Hetchy Reservoir (which you will most likely remember as the Hetchy Hetch Reservoir) with my friends Kate, Meg, and Naveen. Hetch Hetchy provides potable water for San Francisco, and it is a picturesque yet relatively uncrowded area of Yosemite, so it seemed like a cool place to go.

It was. We spent three days hiking 30+ miles up and down some big hills and through some beautiful scenery. We had a backcountry permit, so we were free to camp anywhere we liked — one of my favorite things to do. Here are some pictures of our trip.

The reservoir itself is an intentional artifact of a dam built in the early 1900s, which caused the river to fill up much of the surrounding valley. It now holds 88 billion gallons of water, and marked the beginning of our trip. Our packs were at their heaviest (carrying all of our food for the weekend, plus bear canisters; I think mine weighed in at 33 pounds, blargh), so it was a pretty tough climb, up 1500 feet in 1.8 miles, to get out of the valley. After several more pleasant miles we arrived at Miguel Meadows, our first camping spot. This first part of our hike was the most isolated. At times the trail was hardly discernible, and we didn’t see anyone else until noon on the second day.

One of the more surprising aspects of the trip was the sheer amount of post-fire growth we encountered. Nearly every area through which we hiked had been gutted by a fire in the last 20 years (or so we estimated, based on the undergrowth and sapling size). The growth varied dramatically from location to location, so there seemed to have been many different fires. I knew forest fires were common, and generally helpful for forest growth, but I had no idea they were so pervasive.

Another recurring theme was water-crossing. The spring snow melt was in full force, so small creeks had become full-on torrents. While this was great for replenishing our water supply, these creeks were surprisingly deep (waist-level), wide, cold, and fast, which the pictures don’t do a great job of illustrating. In one of these pictures you can see me ferrying our packs across a creek. It was pretty painful — I couldn’t get the packs wet, despite the current’s best efforts to knock me over. The rocks at the bottom of the creek were alternately treacherously slippery or sharp, and they diced up my bare feet pretty well, since I couldn’t use my hands to balance. A lot of teeth-gritting moments there!

At the end of the second day, we reached what I think was the best part of the hike: an enormous granite valley. Everything was stone. It was awesome. Little rock piles were our only indication that we were still on the trail. At the east end of the valley was Lake Vernon, which had some of the most frigidly pure water I have ever stepped in. (I don’t have a picture of it here, but you can see it in the background of the first picture in the next series.) Crossing a twenty foot wide stream left my feet numb for a minute afterward. The lake’s main outlet was this absolutely insane raging current that pretty much spelled instant death if you happened to slip in. Luckily there was a bridge over this one!

After reaching Lake Vernon, we climbed up the steep eastern cliff, feeling the effects of the 7000+ ft altitude and our burdensome packs. We camped at the top of the cliff in one of the most beautiful spots I’ve ever seen, and watched the sun set while devouring some mac and cheese.

The last day was our longest, nearly 14 miles. Luckily we had gone nearly as high as we were going to go, and so most of the morning was spent in a steep decline. Check out the fire damage.

In that last picture you can see the reservoir behind the trail. For the last five miles, we hiked back around the reservoir, past two spectacular waterfalls (and of course through some small streams as well) to the dam and back to our car. What a relief to be off of our feet!

Speaking of feet, I have to say that that’s one of the best sock lines I’ve ever had. It’s only about 40% tan — the rest is dirt!

I think my sister first asked me this question, and I think it’s a great one:

Would you rather be able to teleport [1] or transmogrify [2]?

[1] You can appear anywhere on earth that you can visualize in your mind (say, from having been there or having seen a picture), with up 25 pounds of what you’re wearing or carrying. It will appear as if you’ve travelled there at the speed of light.

[2] You can change shape into any living creature (nothing mechanical), of reasonable size, say as small as an ant to as big as a bear, and assume its abilities. You can be anything plausible, e.g. a human with wings. You can change your appearance to anything you can imagine, including but not limited to what other people look like.

What would you choose? The question is surprisingly difficult, I think. In an informal polling, I’ve found the answer to be sharply divided across gender lines (but I won’t say which way).

Music…
I was telling my friend Jonathan the other day about why I sometimes think music is frustrating. Of course, if you know me, you know that I also think it’s totally awesome. But in certain situations…

Okay, think about three mainstream forms of art: movies/TV, books, and music. The first time you watch a movie or read a book, you’re probably going appreciate most of its total impact on you. When you’re done watching or reading, you can say with pretty good confidence, “Hey that was good.” (Or bad.) Subsequent viewings/readings can heighten your appreciation as you discover nuances, etc., but only by a little bit, and anyway just as often you don’t even enjoy the item as much as you did the first time around.

Music, of course, is totally different. It’s nearly impossible to gauge how good an album is on first listen. With some exceptions (I can think of, recently, Bachelor No. 2, Thirteen Tales From Urban Bohemia, Sea Change…) great albums require you to listen to them repeatedly to fully appreciate them, or even come close.

And this is why music is sometimes frustrating. You’re going to enjoy a concert a lot more if you know all the music beforehand. The friend’s carefully concocted road trip mix won’t be anywhere nearly as exciting for you as it will be for him the first time he slips it into your car stereo. On a more personal note: the song that you’ve just recorded — that’s been running through your head for weeks — will probably be cut off by a new listener after a minute of play time.

Sure, there’s something awesome about a piece of art that grows stronger the more it is experienced, about sounds that defeat the test of time and novelty. Maybe it has something to do with what I mentioned here, that movies and books are immersive, whereas music molds itself to your own experience, so it has a better shot of growing with you. In fact, it’s pretty amazing that listening to a CD for the nth time actually can be a) a rewarding experience and b) even better than the previous time. There are few other things in my life for which this is the case.

Even so. I’d love to be able to put an album in my CD player for the first time and appreciate it for its full worth, or close to it. I don’t think that’d make me like it any less. Sure, I wouldn’t have the memory of the experiences I had while listening to it (the album I have on now, Achtung Baby, well I’ve listened to so many times past the point of familiarity that it’s like an old friend to me, for instance), but those would come anyway as I listened to the album more and more. Which I would — hmm, but maybe not as much. Some of my favorite albums I can just hold in my hand and almost experience what it’s like to listen to them that way.

But for the vast majority of albums that are just good to great but that still require that large initial investment, well, it’s frustrating.

Just finished re-watching the second season of The Office (UK). Just as brilliant and hilarious now as it was back in the fall of 2002, when a bunch of us sat in Alex’s room and watched the series through. Some of the most sublime television ever filmed. (And quite depressing, too.)

In other news, I think I am going to start keeping a (personal) journal again. I am not sure why I’m writing this, because it only means one thing…

Okay, here is a song I recorded today. I’ve been going at it for about 12 hours now so I’m pretty pooped.

The song is called, for the moment, Terminal. The music is actually the first song I ever wrote on guitar, back when I had just moved to Somerville with the boys (I think Wing came into my room and asked me if I was writing a song, and I rudely replied “no!”, totally embarrassed. That was the first and last time I ever lied to Wing…). I finally wrote some lyrics for it and fleshed it out this spring.

Terminal | lyrics

Some notes:

• I play the normal instruments on it: acoustic, electric, bass, a bit of keyboard, and of course the vocals. I still haven’t recorded my mandolin! This isn’t a mandolin song, though. The next one I have planned should be…
• I had a lot of fun playing some crazy bass parts. They’re mostly during the chorus, so they’re pretty hard to hear, unless you’re wearing headphones. That’s probably good — I think the bass line is almost too busy.
• No harmonies! Normally I love ’em (see, for instance, this song), but this time… didn’t happen. But ooh I love harmonies…

This must be my most frequently-updated LJ week of all time. Back to work for me… maybe no new entries for a while.

House restores $100 million to public broadcasting

I guess all that petition-signing worked.

Sesame Street, Electric Company, Square One, Carmen SanDiego… yes! Also, coincidentally, I just recently read Malcolm Gladwell’s Tipping Point, which is a pretty mediocre book, but does mention that every single study done on Sesame Street has shown that it improves kids’ reading comprehension and problem solving. And it’s so fun to watch! Even to this day I can sing the “1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12” song.

In other news, I’m trying to find a good balance between work and play. Things were going well this week (read: I got lots of work done) but then today I started recording another song. Uh oh. Play is fun, though: I’m running again and it feels good, and I’m in three soccer leagues plus ultimate and tennis! Goodness. At least I’ll be physically in shape, if not mentally :).

Last weekend I saw my friend Ben play with his crazy Tom Waits Accordion Orchestra in a bar in the city. It was a sight to see: ten accordions and a crazy old German lady belting out Tom Waits songs. So awesome! This weekend hopefully I’m going to see a production of Othello with my brother and his girlfriend.

If you’ve read one of my previous rants, you may recall my thoughts on what I think are pervasive “-ism”s and prejudices in America. (If you haven’t, and you’re bored, you might want to check it out now, since I’m going to be discussing some of the same ideas below.)

So, yeah, like most people, I think isms (e.g. racism, sexism, orientationism, etc.) are bad. The problem is, I never really bothered to define what, exactly, an ism is. What constitutes X-ist behavior? I thought about it for a while, and I was surprised at how difficult it is to pin down. For instance,

• If you are meeting a new client for lunch, one whom you’ve never seen before, and his name is (say) Yao Ming, is it racist if you expect him to look Chinese?
• If you see a man and a woman in a footrace, is it sexist if you think the man is going to win?
• If you’re getting in line at the grocery store, is it “looks-ist” if you choose to stand in the checkout line with the more attractive employee?
• What if you’re a bank employee and several potential clients are waiting for service, and you pick a more attractive one?

A preliminary definition
The crux of the matter is as follows: humans are really good at making generalizations. It’s a very useful skill. Imagine having to decide where to eat if you couldn’t generalize about the quality of a restaurant’s food. Or trying to marry someone without being able to generalize about his or her long-term behavior. (Maybe people do this already :). Or trying to budget your time between different activities without being able to generalize about your past experiences with them, and which ones you liked and didn’t like.

One problem, though, is that people are so good at generalization and inference that sometimes we infer too far. The result is superstition. Many superstitions are harmless, but some clearly aren’t, and when you start acting on one, you’re exhibiting prejudice: you have a preconceived expectation that isn’t based in fact.

So here is a baseline definition for isms: You are X-ist if you exhibit behavior in accordance with a belief about X that is not corroborated by empirical evidence.

For instance, a KKK member denying the Holocaust is exhibiting anti-Semitism. (Exactly why is an exercise for the reader.)

But it’s not that simple…
However, isms are far more devious than that. Often a belief is grounded in statistical fact. (Consider the example scenarios I gave above.) In what situations is it still okay to act upon such a belief?

Consider one more hypothetical situation: you’re in charge of hiring new employees at a company. You have a considerable amount of information about each candidate: college attended, GPA, SAT score, recommendations, economic background, race, etc. On what should you base your decision? Each bit of information may have some predictive power as to the candidate’s eventual success at the company (say, college GPA) or not (say, whether or not he likes Cinnamon Toast Crunch). Clearly some bits are more predictive than others. This leads us to a more comprehensive definition:

If you have a decision to make, and a number of predictive factors exist, you are X-ist if you base your decision on X even though a more predictive factor either a) is at your disposal or b) can be obtained with effort commensurate with its increase in predictive power.

Haha, this sounds pretty opaque! What I mean is this: If you’re hiring someone, and you make the decision based on race, chances are you’re being racist, since you have more predictive factors at your disposal, like college, GPA, and recommendations.

It’s important, though, that even if the factor is not immediately at your disposal, it is your obligation to try to obtain it, if doing so can be done with a reasonable amount of effort, say proportional to how predictive it is and perhaps other factors relative to your situation. No doubt this is a foggy notion, one that could probably be debated endlessly. (But hey, already many laws in this country are foggy, and we leave it to the courts to decide.) Here is a clear example:

To the dismay of gay-rights activists, the Food and Drug Administration is about to implement new rules recommending that any man who has engaged in homosexual sex in the previous five years be barred from serving as an anonymous sperm donor.

The FDA has rejected calls to scrap the provision, insisting that gay men collectively pose a higher-than-average risk of carrying the AIDS virus. Critics accuse the FDA of stigmatizing all gay men rather than adopting a screening process that focuses on high-risk sexual behavior by any would-be donor, gay or straight.

“Under these rules, a heterosexual man who had unprotected sex with HIV-positive prostitutes would be OK as a donor one year later, but a gay man in a monogamous, safe-sex relationship is not OK unless he’s been celibate for five years,” said Leland Traiman, director of a clinic in Alameda, California, that seeks gay sperm donors.

In this case, the more predictive information (high-risk behavior, actually has HIV) is not immediately available, but can be obtained via interviews or tests — and yet the FDA is going by a much poorer predictor, sexual preference. So this is, in my book, an ism.

On the other hand, if your new client is named Yao Ming, you could try to find a picture of him, since that would be a better predictor… but not much better, since the vast majority of people named Yao Ming look Chinese. So unless the picture is very easy to obtain, I think it would be all right to go ahead and expect the client to look Chinese.

Real life
Unfortunately, real life is very complicated, so applying this rule is not always easy in practice. In particular, it is possible for a generalization to be right (accurate) for the wrong reasons, namely: a) due to past wrongs or b) due to the fact that the generalization is widespread and self-fulfilling.

For instance, if there is a widespread belief that members of a certain demographic are not good workers, then companies will be less willing to hire them, thus riddling their resumes with periods of unemployment — and so future employers may feel that, based on their resumes, they have less job experience than their white counterparts and so are not as good workers…. and then not hire them as a result.

This is nefarious and pervasive. Of course, you’d like to nip this stuff in the bud (the original round of companies not hiring would be racist), but you can’t always, especially when there are historical factors in play (past wrongs) that can set up all kinds of crazy scenarios. So some generalizations should be fought, even if they are currently true. I guess I could talk about this more, but this entry is far too long as it is…

The scenarios
As for the the scenarios I listed at the beginning of this entry, well, I think some of them are isms and some are not. I’ll let you draw your own conclusions.

My recent spate of travelling has finally come to an end. I was supposed to go camping this weekend in Desolation Wilderness, but it’s raining there all weekend, so we decided to postpone. In our defense, it’s still covered in 10 feet of snow right now, but we were willing to use snowshoes. However, there’s not much worse than hiking and camping when it’s rainy and miserable. I have to admit that I’m not too disappointed to be sleeping in my own bed this weekend.

Remember that nagging soccer injury I whined about earlier? Well, I reaggravated it by not stretching at all when I was at home, and then walking 12 miles a day in DC and playing Ultimate as soon as I got back to Berkeley. So now I’m back to stretching, etc., but my plan to run the SF half marathon with Joel and Matt is in jeopardy, as they’ve been training all the time I’ve been gone, and I’m a bit hesitant to run until I’m sure my hip is better. Also, my natural laziness is kicking in. I need some motivation!

Okay, this is the last picture-laden update for a while. Here’s where I’ve been.

Down the Coast
William and Jeff came to visit early last week, and we drove down the coast on Highway 1, mimicking the route that I took two years earlier with James, Grant, and Alex. It’s such an awesome drive, though, that it was just as good the second time around. And this time we went bowling in Pismo Beach, too. Yeah!

I had a field day with my camera, of course. This time around I paid a little more attention not just to the natural beauty, but also to how the man-made creations (bridges, roads, buildings, people) fit in.

On the way back up, we stopped at Hearst Castle.

I like that last picture because it’s actually upside down! Here’s the original. The second picture has some nostalgic value, too. I was trying to recreate from memory a similar picture that I took maybe 10 years ago the last time I was there, which I subsequently used in the Image Inpainting project Wing and I did. To tell you the truth, other than that, I don’t like it too much.

Prog Week
Last week I went to a couple of shows at the Fillmore. Both were, as it turns out, what you’d call “progressive rock”: interesting melodies, time signatures, and song arrangements. First was Porcupine Tree, who sport a pretty potent blend of heavy prog and pop. Their show was terrific… one of the ones where when you’re leaving the venue you can’t wait to go back home and put on some of their CDs. Here’s a sample song: Blackest Eyes. If you give it a listen, make sure to listen at least a few minutes in to hear the contrasting styles.

Then the next day I saw Pinback, who are more “acoustic” and fall a little more loosely under the term “prog”. They’re an awesome band, but the show wasn’t quite as fun as the first time I saw them. Some of the songs were great, but others were totally uninspired. Oh well. I can still listen to their CDs :). Here’s a sample song: X I Y.

The Secret Spot
Last Saturday we went to Stinson Beach for Meg’s birthday. On the way back, the people in my car decided to stop at one of my favorite places ever, a pretty isolated rock outcropping about 200 yards off of Route 1, south of the beach. I first happened upon it a couple of years ago, and since then I’ve found it endlessly calming and beautiful, so I keep dragging people there :). This is actually the first time I had my camera along, though, so I took a couple of pictures.

See that little black sand beach under the cliff in the middle of the second picture? (You can only just see a tip of it in the picture.) It’s my dream to go there one day…

Chicago
I went to Chicago for PLDI. I met up with an old friend, had deep dish pizza, went on another architectural boat tour, and oh yeah, attended some talks too :).

The last picture is my favorite.

So I’m back in Berkeley. The weather here is gorgeous, as usual. I have yet to grow tired of it, three years on.

Home was really fun. Meera graduated, and started and ended her job search (congrats!). I got to see my dad give a public lecture, which was a lot of fun. I gave Maya a new installment of music to listen to, and she already agrees with me about Dido’s excellent new album :). And my mom very graciously taught me how to cook a couple more Indian dishes. My arsenal slowly grows… I saw a couple of old friends too, which was great.

Also, one day my mom noticed a huge, beautiful wild turkey strutting through our back yard. It was awesome. You think of turkeys as ugly, but this guy was a beaut. After a moment, I thought to run down and grab my camera to take a picture of it. By the time I got outside, however, it had disappeared into the woods. I ran in after where I thought it had gone, but I succeeded only in covering my shoes in mud. It had disappeared… I was very impressed. I guess if you’re that big and bulky and can’t really fly, you must have evolved some survival techniques. And now I can say I’ve actually been on a wild turkey chase. Wild geese are next…

On my way back to Berkeley, I stopped in Washington, D.C. for a couple of days. vchou graciously provided me a place to crash as I explored the city. I saw pretty much everything: the White House, the National Aquarium, the Library of Congress, the Supreme Court, the Capitol, the National Zoo, a host of memorials and monuments, the Botanical Gardens, and a bunch of Smithsonian museums: American History, Natural History, Air and Space, even the Postal Museum. By the end of the third day, my feet were about to fall off. DC is a great city, though. The best part is that just about everything’s free. I think I spent a grand total of $5 on entrance fees. Some highlights:

Dude at the White House
I was at the White House for about ten minutes, but in that time a guy jumped the fence! I had just taken a picture of the lawn a moment before, and of course I didn’t see any security personnel, but they sprung out of the bushes in an instant when he jumped. He made it maybe 10 yards before he was tackled and surrounded by Secret Service agents with guard dogs and assault rifles. It was awesome. Unfortunately, they had to secure the entire area, which meant clearing the rest of us (gawking) tourists out as well, so I didn’t get to document it too well, but here are two pictures I managed to take:

“Californication” at the Museum of American History
There was a room devoted to the history of L.A., and the background music they chose was RHCP’s “Californication” — one of their best songs, I think, and also one that really captures the essence of L.A., warts (especially warts) and all. I was pretty impressed that the museum curators chose it.

Huge cable from the George Washington Bridge
Check out the first picture:

This is a cable used to support the George Washington Bridge in 1929. It’s actually composed of over 26,000 individual steel wires, each of which can support 7,000 pounds. Steel is strong. And heavy: this ten-foot segment of the cable weighs 33,000 pounds. Our sofa weighs like 100 pounds. Our 64″ HDTV weighs 300 pounds. And this ten-foot cable weighs 33,000 pounds. Just giving you an idea here :). For further comparison, the gigantic Pershing-II nuclear ballistic missile on the right in the second picture weighs 14,000 pounds.

The Botanical Gardens
Here’s my very amateur attempt at taking some nice plant photos.

Memorials
I went to a bunch of memorials. Here are my (unrepresentative) favorite pictures.

Jumbo Slices
I was ravenous on my walk to the Zoo on the last day, so I stopped at a pizza place that advertised “Jumbo Slices”. Now I’m a pretty mean pizza eater, and I’ve had some pretty big slices in my day, so I ordered two, figuring they were the standard large slice you get in pizza emporia everywhere. Also they were $3.00 each, which seemed appropriate for that size slice.

My eyes must have bugged out, however, when the guy brought out the two largest slices of pizza I have ever seen. They were about 18 inches long — by my estimation, each roughly the size of four normal “large” slices.

Unfortunately, the perspective on this picture is horrible (I admit, I felt a bit weird about pulling out my camera in the pizzeria :) so you can’t really appreciate the slice’s size; there are actually two adjacent plates supporting it.

Anyway, to make matters worse, I was one of only two clients in the eatery, and I had ordered the slices “for here”, so the guy knew that I intended to eat them myself, and he definitely planned on enjoying the spectacle. So I sat down and started chomping away. The first slice went down pretty easily, but just as I started on the second, I hit a wall. A smug smile crept across the face of the pizza guy. My brain finally caught up with my stomach, and I had to abandon ship with about half of the slice still left to go. It was a valiant effort, but I couldn’t hide the dull shroud of defeat in my eye as I slinked out of the pizzeria, under the triumphant gaze of the register guy.

The Zoo
Here are some of my favorite pictures and movies from the zoo.

Snoop Dogg
I flew Jet Blue back to Oakland. On the flight I watched one of those celebrity blackjack shows, where the winner gets some money donated to his charity of choice. On it were Snoop Dogg, Shannon Elizabeth, Jason Alexander, some woman, and Kevin Nealon. I was interested, not because two of the players had four (4) first names between them, but because I’ve loved Snoop ever since “Deep Cover”. (Actually, I didn’t think he was that great in Starsky and Hutch, even though most people did. But his rhymes… quite bootylicious [in the positive sense]) Of course, there’s a danger in observing someone you admire, since you’re bound to be disappointed… especially in a game like blackjack, where a dumb mistake is obviously a dumb mistake. But Snoop played pretty well (save for a few betting errors) and ended up getting second place.

Haha. Jason Alexander was quite funny too (luckily, as I’m a huge Seinfeld fan), funnier by far than the other players, including Kevin Nealon, who sucked.

If everyone in the world earned wages comparable to those in the U.S., how much would stuff cost? Is this a price people are willing to pay? (And if not, why not?)

As you know, I like estimating, but answering this first question (which popped in my head whilst I was reading this article [shameless NewsDog plug]) was just way beyond me. It’s not just your shirts, cellphones, etc. that are made abroad. It may also be the machines that McDonalds uses to heat up its hamburgers. Or the instruments employed to measure your gas usage. Whatever. Europe might be a good place to look, since I think many of its countries employ protectionist tariffs that simulate higher wages (but of course the money really flows to the importing country’s government, and not to the workers producing the goods).

Another random world thought, inspired by recent drives through Connecticut, which seems remarkably sparse given that it is the second most densely population state in the U.S.: The earth is huge. You could fit the entire population of the world into Texas, and each person would still get 1150 sq ft to call his own. Texas! Compare this to Manhattan, in which each person gets about 400 sq ft (and this includes office buildings, etc.).

————-

So I’m back in Connecticut for my little sister Meera’s college graduation. Getting here was an airline-induced nightmare: 18 hours of delay- and mishap-filled travel. Two memorable moments:

1. Waiting in SFO, I glance at our luggage tags and realize that United has switched one of them with another passenger’s. That means that one of our bags is going to Dulles, and one of his is going to end up at Bradley “International” Airport in Hartford. My brother and I go up to the counter. The agent quickly understands our problem, and calls ahead to Dulles to have them watch out for our bag. We then think we’ll try to do the other poor sap in this affair, a “Thomas Schwarz”, a favor:
us: [Agent], you should probably also call ahead to Bradley, since this other guy’s bag is going there.
agent: I don’t understand.
us: You clearly switched our tags. You agree that his tag got put on our luggage. This probably means that our tag got put on his luggage.
agent: We don’t know if this other guy you mention checked any bags.
us: He obviously did. We’re holding his luggage tag right here.
agent: I don’t understand.
[ several more minutes of futile conversation, during which nothing gets resolved ]

In the end, the agent didn’t do anything, and of course during our three hour layover in Philly, I get a call from a United agent in Dulles who’s with a Mr. Thomas Schwarz — who’s wondering where his bag is. Gotta love United.

2. The three-hour layover in Philly didn’t include the additional forty minute delay in getting onto the plane that would take us to Hartford. I say “getting onto the plane” only because we didn’t take off for another two hours. Yeah, we sat on the runway for two hours. During this time, a number of very dark thoughts flitted through my brain. (This was, mind you, already after 14 hours of travel.) Then, after about 90 minutes, a ray of light:

Wait — I can write about this in my LJ! It’ll be so cathartic to vent there. It’ll feel so good.
(One minute later.)
Cool, I can even mention in the LJ how thinking about writing it made me happy when I was sitting in the plane! How meta. Sweet.
(Five minutes later.)
Hmm. It’s actually probably going to be really boring to write (and read). Nothing like having high expectations and then woefully failing them. This sucks.
(One minute later.)
Now I’m also going to have to write in my LJ about how I thought that. Shoot. This is getting complicated.
(Five minutes later.)
You know, it’s probably going to be pretty decent to write. So I’m just going to be happy about it. Hmph.

In the end, obviously, I circumvented the whole issue by just writing the meta part. Score.

————-

The weather here has been miserable and rainy, but graduation still turned out to be quite memorable.

In addition to Meera’s graduation, it also turns out that my dad won the Byrnes/Sewall Prize, which is basically for the best teacher at Yale. (Thus adding credence and an additional degree of embarrassment to my sleeping story from a couple of entries ago.) He had managed to keep this a secret from us until the day of, so we were all really excited. Yes, I’m very proud! (… Proud enough to brag about it in my LJ, apparently. Sorry.)

Another cool moment: they handed out awards for the undergraduates in various areas (Humanities, Social Sciences, etc.) with the highest GPAs. For the humanities, two people had tied, each with 35 credits (which roughly equate to classes) and 34 straight As. For the social sciences, the winner had 35 credits and 33 As. Ho-hum. For the natural sciences, the winner was this little Asian dude (uber nerdy-looking) who got his bachelors and masters in four years, doubled majored in Computer Science and Economics/Mathematics, and took 40.5 credits, of which 40 were As. The entire crowd went nuts at this, which was awesome. Represent!

This reminds me of the best graduation-related moment I’ve experienced. This was during my college graduation. I don’t remember all the details; perhaps someone else can fill them in. Anyway, the award was for public service. The presenter listed off the most ridiculous laundry-list of activies and projects that the winner had done, any of of which alone I’d consider a major accomplishment, and ended by saying that most of the winner’s friends had no idea he had even done this stuff.

Then the guy walked up from the crowd to get the award. Normally, when someone wins a big award like this, no matter how modest he is, he’s happy and proud: his parents are present, all his peers are there to recognize him, and hey, it’s just a really big deal. We all love a little external validation now and then.

But not this kid. He had to walk from the very back, the entire length of the seating area. His shoulders were hunched, and he looked at the ground the whole way, obviously embarrassed by the whole scene. It was clear that not only did he not want any recognition, he didn’t even feel that he deserved any. It was the most profound display of true humility that I’ve ever witnessed.