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December 14th, 2007
10:47 am
Christmas time is here,
happiness and cheer,
fun for all
that children call
their favorite time of year.
Snowflakes in the air,
carols everywhere,
olden times
and ancient rhymes
and love and dreams to share.
Sleigh bells in the air,
beauty everywhere,
yuletide by
the fireside
and joyful memories there.
Christmas time is here,
we'll be drawing near,
oh that we
could always see
such spirit through the year.
Can't wait for the holidays. I think I'll host a holiday party next Tuesday night; Brian's having his usual Christmas caroling gathering at some point next week; and of course Christmas in the city (probably two days' worth) is a must. I can't wait to travel to Austin after that, see an old high school friend from Korea, study and finally digest orgo and genetics, and have a jolly time void of precepts, classes, lectures, exams...
for now, orgo/sleep.
Happy Holidays to all!
-ap
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August 31st, 2007
09:48 am - a columbia...
As I was walking down to Mudd Wednesday morning, I saw a long stream of froshies empty out of one of the buildings and proceed down the steps. So I had stepped in on the Columbia orientation, eh? I had been hoping to witness the froshies just starting on campus, waiting for the smile of amusement and nostalgia to come to my lips, and I wasn't disappointed, for there it came. Of course, I was sporting my Princeton MAE tote bag (sorry, don't have a ChemE one yet) - wouldn't want those frosh thinking that I was a Columbian! Of course not, couldn't have that.
And now the campus is alive and kicking, more crowded than Princeton ever is even though it's only frosh on campus (upperclassmen are only allowed to move in after frosh orientation, unlike at my own school). I can't wait for classes to start here; at least I'll be at a college campus, in the thick of it all, if a mere observer who can poke fun at people who have to get to work already while I meander around campus, finishing up my reading for the summer. Because I still have two weeks before I get back to school. Boo.
The Columbianess of it all will soon be smothering, and I will want Princeton.
-ap
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August 29th, 2007
12:51 pm - subcontinental travels
Just spent a week in India. It was divided into two parts: Mumbai & Chennai. Easy enough for you to understand, if you have a decent knowledge of geography.
Mumbai
I wrote to Jason (i.e. Facebook-wall-posted, cuz that's what we do) on my second day here saying that this was the relaxing break that I'd been waiting for all summer. The summer's been pretty stressful - not as much as the school year is, of course; less so, and in a few different ways. Anyhow, there I was, feeling the wet, warm Mumbai monsoon on my air all the time; rising in the morning to the sound of crows cawing on the mango tree out back; malai-making after breakfast; sleeping (OMG THE JETLAG..but India has siestas so it's okay :) in the afternoon; visiting family; and reading after dinner, when I finally felt awake and it was time to go to sleep. I thought it wouldn't be as relaxing as Umayalpuram, but it came pretty damn close. Anyhow, after a few days of that we up and went to Madras.
Chennai
..where I had a really bad time. The 23rd was fine, it was wonderful seeing my cousins. The 24th another cousin arrived by surprise at noon, and the rest of that day was wonderful. On the 25th I got a haircut. On the 26th I was miserable. My cousin's family came over to make arrangements for the engagement ceremony the following day. Everyone was jollily participating in the festivities, while I helped for one portion and stood on the sidelines the rest of the time, not understanding a word anyone said and dearly wishing I could. Don't ask me why. I've been happy for the past year, but for whatever reason, I can't reconcile this one ABCD part of myself, that wishes I could understand Tamil, understand the culture. I was jealous of my cousins, whom I've gotten to know well since they became English-speaking, but who could so easily slip back into Tam-Brahm culture, while I have neither the experience nor the skill to do it. Why do I want to? I don't know. I can communicate fine with my cousins in English; I love them in English; but when everyone starts speaking Tamil I'm so lost. Don't ask why it makes me mad or sad or whatever - I'm still trying to figure it out. It shouldn't, but it does.
The day of the engagement ceremony passed merrily, with the final hours before the flight spent talking to my cousins. A short trip it was, and we'll see if I go back next year..
sigh. back to the lab.
-ap
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August 14th, 2007
03:38 pm - summer.
I've been wanting to post for a long time about the summer, and how well it's going, but I was trying to keep it for the end. Oh well, maybe I'll do another one then.
It's been by far the best summer I've ever experienced. I traveled to Europe, and will be racking up more air miles this Saturday with a trip to the materland for a week for my cousin's engagement. I won't be visiting the village, however, as my grandparents are here, so I won't quite fulfill my India-seeing needs. I haven't been there since the 'tar' roads were built, and I'm dying to see the place, and sit on the oonjal all day with the breeze coming in from the terrace; and walk barefoot to my grandfather's paddy fields in the hot summer sun with his most trusted farmhand, whom I've known since I was a chinnu cozhandai; and wade in the Kauveri; and just relax for a while with little electricity (and the occasional visit to Kumbakonam to check Facebook, and sit in bamboo chairs, and visit the family of cockroaches inhabiting my cousins' bathroom). My parents are backing a trip back to the motherland next summer as well, and hopefully I'll get to be immersed in the language and culture for a satisfactory amount of time, attend my cousin's wedding, and perhaps even hop over to Malaysia and Singapore, if people are there and I can save enough money to visit.
I've been meeting up with lots of friends over the weeks, Princetonian and not, and it's been glorious seeing people my age. My parents aren't too happy with it, but my dad keeps silent even though (because?) he's angry as heck, and hey, I'm a college student now and need to have the freedom I didn't want or need in high school. It's really nice that they understand that now, and that I don't fight with them, and that they only care that I work as hard as I can, even though they're paying even more for my education now than they ever have. (Granted, though they know my grades, they don't yet know my quintile rank...heh heh.) The other day, my mom started to give me a lecture about practicing cello, and it felt so foreign to me that I cut her off immediately, and she knew there was no use in it.
The days have been passing by, from the lab, to home, to the weekends. I get up on Monday morning, go to the lab, where I experiment (with 200 proof alcohol, jkjk), Facebook, blog, and read the news; then home, where I eat dinner, chat with the mum, practice cello till my g'rents go to sleep, and then read away the rest of the night. As I discovered earlier this summer, I can no longer bring myself to read fiction. I'm so much more interested in the political and philosophical books I've been getting through, that it's hard for HP7 to get started/finished :/.
And I've been thinking a ton, about how happy I am with life, what I might possibly choose to do in life (and whether I should do it against my parents' will, though they're paying for Princeton), and about how much I miss my family (more than I do during the school year, oddly enough) and my friends abroad. It's winding down, and I can feel the fresh breath of Mathey around the corner, and Tiger's Roar, and music, and HYP, and meetingngreeting the lost little froshies, whose lives I hope will be as happy as mine was at the end of last year, and the sensation of finally being settled down with friends old and new. Tata for now, and a glorious summer (and independence day(s)) to ye~
-ap
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August 9th, 2007
11:28 am - MTA
Soo everyone who works in the city (and anyone who reads the newspaper or even the BBC) is acquainted, to some extent, with the horror of yesterday's commute, due to the 3 inches of rain that fell on the city yesterday morning. Mine wasn't so bad - express bus across the bridge, as usual, a warning call from Lin, a walk down to 168th and the shuttle from the Medical Center to the Morningside Campus. Here are some comments by New Yorkers on the NYT site:
'After escorting my brother from Brooklyn Heights to Lower Manhattan for an internship on what was probably the last of the 2 trains running on the 4/5 into Manhattan, I found myself stranded. Apparently no or very few trains running down by Fulton Street, but there was no official announcement. Instead I decided to walk back to my home over the Brooklyn Bridge, pleased that the rain had now stopped. Conductors are usually very quick to announce that “this train is being held in the station momentarily,” but when there are significant problems, riders aren’t told anything.
'The local news media was just as bad. The traffic reports focued on the roadways without any mention of the subway situation. Bloomberg should see that the transit system is fixed before he has the audacity to go through with this congestion pricing.'
- Jessica, reporting, more or less, what everyone's commute was like. And, typical of the comments below, pointing a finger at someone, with an undertone of annoyance at congestion pricing..
'If this were a city in Africa, or in most other third-world country, occurrences like this would be expected. The MTA shows the kind of incompetence that prevail in Mexico and other South American countries, where government officials and high-ranking agencies are marred in corruption scandals.
'Wake up, Bloomberg! You want congestion pricing in Manhattan? You can’t even provide public transportation as a reliable alternative most of the time. You should focus on significantly improving our city’s transportation, water and electricity supply systems. Why is it that the financial capital of the world can’t have a comfortable, reliable subway system when it rains, when it is hot or cold? How did you ever think we could host the Olympic Games?
'What would happen to this city if we got hit by a hurricane? Given the incompetence of our own federal government in the face of Katrina—and we knew days ahead of time that a category-5 hurricane was approaching—a natural disaster affecting New York would probably bring the entire city’s infrastructure and population to its knees. And our city’s government would be clueless about what to do, other than calling on FEMA.'
- Daniel, mad at the world
'It will be interesting to see if there are any positive comments about the subway system being back in service so quickly after the unusually severe rain flooded some of the system. The passengers have no idea of the danger involved in working in tunnels to get they trains running again.
'Believe it or not, the NYCTA is the biggest and best system in the world. Too bad the people who make it happen every day don’t get the appreciation they deserve. I was in charge of the subway system for a number of years, so I know whereof I speak. Citizens, be thankful it works pretty well most of the time. It is an untamed beast to keep performing every day.'
- Kaufmann, with whom I agree. Americans complain a lot. Especially NYers hehe...but ranting about the MTA and Bloomberg can have some effect, I suppose.
'That is a managment issue, from the lowest level managers up to Sander himself. How is it possible that a city like Moscow has a nearly flawless subway system; that Deutsche Bahn runs ever train in Germany, from subways, to commuter trains up to inter-city trains, without a hitch; and this city, the so-called Capital of the World has got a system which is not much better than what one would expect in Lagos, Nigeria.
'Age is no excuse either — London’s system is 40 years older. It still runs far better than this system.'
- Christ. hmm...
'With an operating budget of millions of dollars per *day*, it’s difficult to imagine that nothing can be done about this problem. And talks of yet another fare hike are truly the final straw. Why should New Yorkers be asked to pay ever more to subsidize mass transit? We already pay some of the highest taxes in the nation, not to mention the fact that New York’s economy contributes more to our country’s overall economic livelihood than virtually any other US city. It’s time to cut NY a break. Perhaps those living elsewhere should chip in a little extra on our behalf, as they stand to lose a lot if our city were to be suddenly crippled by a subway system that ceases to function!
'“Mass transit,” by definition, should be available to the masses at a reasonable price. Is it really reasonable to expect low- and middle-income New Yorkers to pay more than $2.00 per trip on the city’s public transportation system? The workers who keep our city running should not have to choose between having 3 decent meals per day, and being able to afford just to get to work, and back home again.'
- anonymous, forgetting what he/she was supposed to be complaining about in the first place...
'I’d like to give a nod to S. W. Kauffman’s response above, wondering aloud whether anyone is going to give the MTA credit for getting as much of the system back up as quickly as it did. Okay, I will. Because to go from nothing to 90% restored in only 24 hours is indeed a feat.
'However, Mr. Kauffman, what I’m seeing in the responses here aren’t complaints about the MTA’s ability to get things running — they are complaints about the MTA’s quality of communication. It’s one thing to get the subways up and running — it’s another thing to tell the public that they’re up and running. I can appreciate that getting things running is a difficult task, but it is NOT a difficult task to simply inform the public “okay, this line here? We’re still working on it.” '
- Kim speaks the truth.
'If people want changes in their cities they need to be proactive themselves and elect officials that CARE about changing these systems. Everyone is looking to blame someone else. People are properly trained, the MTA is not the only organization to blame here. Keep that in mind.'
- Wayta keep it short and generic, Brooke
'Hello again. I wonder if the NYTimes is going to forward to the president of the NYCTA all the sometimes excellent and justified comments listed here.
'To all of you who have written for this blog or who have read it and agree, I suggest you put CONSTRUCTIVE suggestions in letters to the president of the NYCTA,
Howard H. Roberts Jr.
President
New York City Transit Authority
370 Jay Street
Brooklyn, NY 11201
'And to you, Howard, I agree that the cheapest and best thing you can do is overwhelm you customers with service information - every day. /s/ Steve'
- Kauffman x2, the final word.
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July 31st, 2007
05:16 pm
Yesterday was wonderful - I came in at 11:30 and left at 8:30, and never once got bored.
Today, however, by 2:00 I was looking for something to do. It was freezing inside the lab (due to A/C), so I decided to go for a stroll down Amsterdam and warm up a little - hopefully not too much in the afternoon Manhattan sun. But the temperature was just right, as usual - it never gets too hot for me in Manhattan, except underground at the Subway stations, (though there was a hugeass fan (wind?) blowing at the 168th 1 station today, thankfully) - and after a little bit the goosebumps started to fade. My plan was to make a circle (well, rectangle) - go down to 100th, I decided as I walked, cross over to Broadway, and walk maybe up to 122nd (Manhattan School of Music, just to see the lovely place), and then back to 116th through the main gates and pass by Havemeyer on the way to Mudd. But my ankle was hurting by the time I reached 112th, and there was a church right next to me, so, given my newfound curiosity and love for beautiful churches, I crossed the street and entered. Walk through our renovation! the church implored, almost sarcastically, I suspected at first. But indeed, the church wanted us to donate to the restoration cost for part of it had been damaged in a fire in 2001, but unfortunately, I had not brought any money with me on my stroll. But I ramble. After passing by the Box Office (for concerts that were held here, I learned, including a FREE one by the NYPhil on Memorial Day), a nice lady gave me a pamphlet for The Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine. A Catholic church! I told myself, with the unfamiliar glee of Arthur Weasley in a Muggle house (yes, I've been dutifully a-HP-ing) or a white noob in a kurta clutching a Guide to Indian Culture and pointing at the gopuram of Thanjavur temple, or an SOAer from behind a camera behind the glass windows of the the (grand) Green Bus on the Champs-Elysees.
The church was purty, all a-stained glass, which I later discovered was coming from the chapels in the back of the church. The columns rising to the high ceiling were gray and bare, and at the top there was no beautiful painting of Christ summoning me to Heaven, of the kind that uplifted me while I was missing my friends in Stresa. A fair try at imitating a real gothic cathedral, I concluded, and walked around the chapels in back (the cathedral was set up much like Sacre-Coeur, I noted, and wondered if this was a standard design). Each chapel is dedicated to a Saint and a corresponding group of immigrants who had entered through Ellis Island and begun to populate the city at the turn of the (20th) century. By the time I had circled by St. Martin and St. Columba and the random book of AIDS, my ankle was killing me and I walked out into the Manhattan sunlight and straight back up Amsterdam, entering campus across from the main gates at 116th, abandoning my grand plans to take a circular city stroll. Nonetheless, it was great getting out into Manhattan, and I'm sorry I haven't gotten to explore the area and eateries more out of respect for my parents' money, though needless to say I've been spending quite enough of it over the weekends. Oh, relaxing summer...
Guess what??? I start DEATHLY HALLOWS tonight, w00t w00t!!!
(Why do my entries always have to end with a 'w00t'...)
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July 28th, 2007
01:22 am - A Summer's Day
Today was one of those memorable, relaxing summer days so I'd like to detail it. I left for work early today so that I could take out my lysozyme by 10:00am, and the early commute found me on the platform for the A train at 175th with the 4th BCAer I've met on happenstance in the city this week. On Tuesday, the day after my return from Europe, I happened to be on the same express bus into the city as Emi, on the one day that her dad couldn't drive her to Columbia Medical Center, and I got to take the A with her to 168th. Two days later, I found myself in the elevator at 168th with two other boys whom I swear are either juniors or seniors at BCA this year; they both got off at the Morningside Heights campus. Today, my first BCAer encounter, at the platform, was with none other than Joe Dietrich, who glanced in my direction at one point but clearly did not recognize me. Once we got onto the same car, however, and ended up hanging onto the same pole, I tapped him on the shoulder and introduced myself. As lame as it may sound, I've always dreamed of meeting random people in the city, when I realized it was possible after Geoffrey confirmed that the off-chance encounters on Sex and the City can actually happen in real life once you know enough NYC people. Never did I think the first 3 encounters would all happen in the space of a week! Still, when I sat at the Starbucks window reading for a few hours at midday, I half-wished someone I knew would unexpectedly wave at me from the other side of the window...
After cleaning up my lysozyme and chatting with Shane about the half-life of craziness of his new roommate in Queens, I bolted out of the lab and hopped onto the Subway to make my way down to Columbus Circle, from where I would walk (rather than transferring to the A) down 8th Ave. to Port Authority for the bus home. Thankfully, the gray limbo of the morning had given way not to summer city rain but to blue skies. I oriented myself at the circle as Geoffrey had instructed me a month ago - Central Park at the northwest corner - and was tempted for a moment to walk down Broadway, the famous diagonal that cut 8th Ave. at this point. But I headed down the straight road, past the abnormal configuration of police cars at the periphery of the circle, and onward downtown. As usual, I loved the city more and more with every street I crossed, passing sandwiches and pretzels and pizza shops on this block; day laborers and businessmen and store owners with cardboard boxes of packaged food; the skyscrapers perpetually to my left; shoppers of all styles and numbers of plastic bags clutched in their hands; taxis winding through the midday traffic; and...Starbucks! I almost walked past the window - if I hadn't been looking for it, because I had looked up the locations of Starbucks on 8th Ave. before leaving the lab (shh!), I'm sure I would have missed it entirely. After taking my time to stare at the menu and decide how much I wanted to spend, I finally decided on a Raspberry scone and, feeling peculiarly Princetonian that afternoon, an Orange Mocha Frappuccino. I settled down at the window and read Harry Potter. It was supposed to be a relaxing afternoon of me finally getting back into mindless fiction, which is what Order of the Phoenix had surprisingly ended up being, but for some reason this afternoon - I don't know if it was the dark nature of this book or my mood or simply that the book was starting off slow - I could not get myself to focus on the story without comparing the characters and goings-on to the context of the real world and my own, changed life. All summer, I haven't been able to read fiction because I find it meaningless unless it's supposed to be some sort of social or political commentary. It's been quite frustrating, and I hope I will, someday, get back into the swing of fantasy and caring about characters as I did when I was a child...
2:10 brought a trek the rest of the way down to the 42nd Street Port Authority, from where I took 166 Express across the river and up to Palisades Ave. in Englewood to meet Jenna for the sidewalk sale. Unlike the Tenafly sidewalk sale, which had individual vendors in white tents occupying the parking spaces on Washington St and Railroad Ave, the Englewood sidewalk sale only occupied the broad Palisades Ave. sidewalks, leaving the road open for the usual traffic. Also unlike the Tenafly edition, these sales were not independent vendors but extensions of the Palisades Ave stores - each store had selected items to put on display and on sale outdoors (thankfully, this meant that I could pay by credit card!), and most had everything on sale indoors as well. Jenna made a particularly impressive buy, getting gold-colored heels originally $90 for $20. Next year, when I haven't just splurged on European items in Europe, I'll probably buy some authentic Made in China on Palisades.
I went home briefly for leftover P.F. Chang's and headed back over to Jenna's house to go to the open forum her church was holding in Elizabeth, NJ. After being introduced to a few of the friendly Brothers and Sisters, I took a seat in the pews. I had been worried that most of the people here would be from the Iglesia ni Cristo, and you can imagine my surprise at the priest opening with a question e-mailed to him by one "Mahesh Narayan": If you do all the good deeds one needs to go to Heaven, but do not believe in the Bible, then will you still go to Heaven? Conversely, if you go to church regularly and perform religious duties, but do not do the good deeds, then where will you go? He repeated the question a few times, his voice more forceful and fervent with each repetition, and even, on the last time, showed us a powerpoint slide with the question on it, as if he was trying to impress upon a profundity in the question that was lost to me. I was pretty sure I knew the answer, from what I had learned about Christianity in the past month. Continuing with the next slide, the minister declared that neither of these people existed. Is there anyone who goes to church regularly and believes in the Bible and does not do the good deeds? "No," the congregation murmured. Is there anyone who does not go to church, who does not believe in the Bible, and who does the good deeds? he positively yelled at us, as if I were a mile, and not a few feet away, and he was trying desperately to convert me from that distance. No! One must go to church and believe in the Bible in order to do the good deeds, he yelled in earnest, as if he could sense that there was someone in front of him (granted, I stuck out in the Filipino crowd) who was doomed to go to Hell if they didn't believe what he said. Without believing in the Bible - What are those people called? he paused to ask the congregation, and they replied as one, Atheists - without believing in the Bible, he asseverated, I could not do good deeds. By this point he had achieved what he had intended - I could feel fear starting to ferment tears in my eyes and I wanted to cry in protest, to ask what did he know better than I, a non-Christian, while I maintaining a secret fright that I might be put in Hell on Judgment Day even if I did everything I thought good but couldn't ever bring myself to believe in Him. But the moment passed, and I became my usual existential self once more.
The rest of the evening passed with questions, more or less, about the Church of Christ, which Jenna told me later believed that only themselves - and not any other Christians - could be saved. At one point the priest assured me that anyone who had not heard the gospel would be judged according to his conscience, and I thought well, what did you scare me for before then? So I put the quote, Romans 2:12-16 (I chose NKJV), in my Facebook profile as soon as I got home, because it was the most interesting thing (probably because it was the most pertinent thing) I had heard about Christianity that evening.
Following the forum, Jenna's brother Jeffrey took us out to Tropicana (a diner in Elizabeth) before heading back up. I asked Jeffrey, a fun scientist who had clearly contemplated his faith a considerable amount and was happy to talk about it lightheartedly. (He was the type to whom I could make blunt statements like, "I don't believe in the Bible, so I'm going to Hell - I put more faith in science," and he would laugh and give me his own views on how microevolution makes sense, but he doesn't put much store in macroevolution, which I felt comfortable respecting but disagreeing with.) I asked what a minister was - not quite a pastor, but nowhere near a priest - and listened to Jeffrey's evidence of how science and the Bible match up, which for him took the place of what other Christians call a leap of faith, and told him a bit about Hinduism and my current religious predicament. I didn't make it quite clear to him or the pastor (who gave me an sad smile when I confirmed that I didn't believe in the Bible) that I have no intention of converting, and I wonder if they would talk to me if they knew that I can never ascend to Heaven, but love discussing Christianity purely as a Princetonian academic. Maybe I'll discuss it with Jeffrey some time - Jenna has informed me that the open forum will continue to be held every Friday.
And now I'm downstairs - haven't been on the Internet all day - probably going to read a little bit of Order of the Phoenix (still haven't started Deathly Hallows yet, gah) before heading off to bed - tomorrow's a late wakeup for Seemantham. W00t for wunnerful summerdayz!
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July 26th, 2007
03:32 pm - Sound of America (SOA) 2007
Slightly elongated from the Facebook note...
I'm back from Europe, and it was amazing, because I (unlike most of my friends) had never been there before. The pictures are going up in a while...I have to figure out a place to put it up from my family online in addition to putting it on Facebook, which I'll hopefully start to do this Saturday...
Mes favorite places:
#3 The Austrian and Swiss Alps, though if I hadn't twisted my ankle it would have been even better because I would have been able to hike down that hugeass mountain in Grindelwald. They are HUGE. And snowy. Walking to the base of the Alp in Gasse with Pikachu (aka Jingwan), hiking a little ways up the mountain adjacent to Neuschwanstein Castle with Claire, and watching the sunset from the balcony in Grindelwald are some of my most fond memories.
#2 Stresa, a touristy village on the edge of Lake Maggiore and near the island of Isola Bella, where we visited the beautiful Palazzo Borromeo. The lake was sooo peaceful, and all I wanted to do all day was sit alone by the banks of the lake and think about how much I missed people. Which sounds a little sad, but I think it actually would have helped to ease the pain. But I twisted my ankle and didn't get to do that, so I spent the afternoon with Corissa in our room at the Regina Palace Hotel and viewed the lake from our cute n cozy balcony. I also had a slightly soothing somewhat pseudo-religious experience after we sang in the church in Stresa, which helped to ease the pain a little bit. Not that I don't want to go back to Europe, and San Diego, and the bubble, and Austin and State College and Philly and India to visit all the people and places so dear to me...but I'll see the cousins this weekend and India and the bubble soon enough :)
#1 PARIS. Because I am a city whore, and Paris was beautiful and upscale and had so much history to it, and I got to walk/metro around lots of famous places: boat tour at dusk on the River Seine, the Cathedral of Notre Dame (where we SANG, 0 milligrams), the Louvre (like the Met, but bigger and in a palace), a walk down the Champs-Elysees (I <3), the Arc de Triomphe, Sacre Coeur (beautiful itself, with a magnificent view), Tour Eiffel (to the top!). And dinner at the Hard Rock Cafe. I'll admit, the veggie burgers were pretty good...
And of course, as our bus song said, there are so many more memories, like llamas and Pikachu and Euchre and Nanna Barr and all the places I went to and people I was with for 3 glorious weeks in Europe (which, for me, was a lifetime's worth of visiting the continent). To be honest, I didn't really begin to feel the SOA love until the last day, at our party, during the bus songs and the speeches and afterward when practically everyone stood up to say, in their own way, how much SOA meant to them. I didn't dare do that because, well, I'm an elitest pragmatist. I'm closer to all my friends at the bubble than I was to people over SOA, a visit to Europe with any of them would have been (will be?) more of a cultural experience than was this trip, and though the repertoire was awesome, the standard of music-making was not what I am used to. Still, I'll miss all the amazing, saved people I met on the trip, and just miss being in Europe with SOA. Regardless of how much I care about them, after I've been in the same place/with the same people for a while, I feel the loss afterward. On top of that, of course I'll miss some of the people on the trip, in particular my roommate and the Green Bus euchrists.
It's back to the routine now, the city and the Subway and the homeless saxophone man at the George Washington Bridge bus terminal (I should probably tip him one of these days...). I want to see my family (though that's not going to happen unless I take the initiative to make it happen, which I'm not doing right now) and I reallyreally want to go back to the bubble (impossible till September 15, perhaps for Tiger's Roar). Looking forward to weekends spent with BCAers, Princetonians, Tflymates, and writing for myself and scholarships and you.
-ap
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June 23rd, 2007
11:46 pm - <3ing nyc
I'm really starting to like the lab now. Not that I like the work, or think I could do research the rest of my life. I think I'd be happier doing more wordly things. = what princeton does to you after one year...In the Nation's Service and in the Service of all Nations, yo. :). So now I'm wondering what I might want to do. It changes week to week. It was the Red Cross, but that's volunteer so boo. Science journalism, perhaps, but erm...Then Amma suggested the UN, WHO, though I'd have to get an M.D.? To which Appa replied that the UN is one of the most useless organizations in the world. :-/
But what I do like about the lab is the people here, and the PLACE. I was thinking about Princeton the other day, and why it feels like a home to me, and why I've grown to love it so much. And I concluded that yes, the campus is pretty, but it's more the people that I know there and the fact that I spend so much time there and have such a great time that makes it feel so so much like home.
The city is a different story. I like the city for being the city, for the constant feeling of being at the crossroads of so many lifestyles, cultures, businesses great and small, everyone united only because we use the same sidewalks and the MTA everyday. There's an immeasurable amount of activity, at all times of the day and night, and that's partly why I've felt so awful being in the lab. I'm in this windowless lab in the basement of the engineering building of Columbia University, and I feel like the world is spinning above me, and I'm missing out. But I feel better now; my experiments are working (that always helps), I've gotten to know the undergrads in my lab better (i.e. I'm not on Facebook during lunch/talking with my lovely Princetonians, but am actually out having lunch with new friends), and all the people in my group are amiable. Next week, the project becomes my own, because my mentor is going back to Florida, which is scary but exciting, especially considering that this may be my last time working in a lab, and my first independent project (...we'll see).
And outside of the lab, I'm spending my weekends with friends (Princeton, BCA, townies, Garcia...so many people to visit, so few weekends to do so, unfortunately) and family. Doing a lot of reading and enjoying jogging around the small town, just as I do at home during the schoolyear ;).
Hope everyone else is having a great summer too, and looking forward to seeing y'all soon!
-ap
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May 28th, 2007
01:20 pm - starting to miss...
I really don't understand what people do without international friends. Nah, I guess I don't really believe that. But having international friends breaks the homogeneity so much. And I guess I'm really used to that now.
Starting to miss people. It's weird being at Princeton without everyone. I really feel like going to 43 Blair. ???
-ap
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