Randomness Unplugged

2010-09-06

There Are No Answers

People say I watch too much TV. TV shows allow you to watch the more exciting side of life from a scripted point of view. Crimes are solved in an hour (actually 43 minutes) in this kind of world. But you know what, despite the shallow story-lines, the clichéd, hackneyed character roles, and the more than over-done plays on class, race and gender in the crime-thriller genre I enjoy so much, there is some wisdom.

My new favorite show is “Life” (check it out here : http://www.hulu.com/search?query=Life&st=1). And one quote from today’s episode stuck out for me:

There are no answers in life, only questions.

We don’t have answers for most of the things in the world. Society has developed such that our everyday interactions are populated by conversations that promote the sharing of the answers that we do know.

I’ve been feeling very overwhelmed for the last week. For the Larkin staff reading this, yes I couldn’t put a name on the emotion yesterday, but now I can. Part of that feeling is because of not having answers to some of the more pertinent big-picture questions I’m faced with now.
“Will the frosh like me?”

“Will I be a good RA?”

“Can I balance friends,class and Larkin?”

Sometime questions like this only come up because there’s a part of me that thinks it isn’t possible. But a much (much much) bigger part of me knows that the existence of this doubt will only make me work harder, run faster, jump higher…and that comforts me.

Kudos to Matt Rubin:

For better or for worse, I’m taking things one week at a time.

So I’m going to keep things in the short term. Less uncertainty, more small-picture focus. Once I get comfy I can extend my outlook to longer periods of time and work from there.

I Love Larkin. I Love North Side. I Love West Side. I Love Larkin.

2010-08-21

Resurrection + New Beginnings

I had forgotten about this blog. Google Chrome reminded me. You know how when you type the first letter of a website and Chrome reminds of you something you bookmarked? Well I meant to type tenniswarehouse.com (NEW FALL COLLECTION WHAT WHAT?) but I hit the ‘r’ key instead and Chrome excitedly gave me the link of my long forgotten blog. Sitting around on a Saturday with nothing to do but watch bad tv, I thought I might as well re-start this thing, and this time, keep it rolling.

New beginnings. I’m writing a lot about them these days. Yesterday the Bridge Book finally arrived. It’s a log for what Bridge staff think about during their shifts. I inaugurated it yesterday with a nice 4 page post. And most of what I wrote about were new beginnings.

New beginnings are interesting to think about. If you focus hard enough, everything before now can easily be wiped away. A new year, new classes, new friends, new residents, new hobbies…everything I’ve done for the last 2 years can easily be forgotten. Or at least that’s the idea. In reality, new beginnings without the presence of a catalyst (your family forcing you to move across the world, for instance) is an incredibly different thing. I’ve been struggling with starting a fresh this summer - not because of anything going wrong, but because inherently, I think I need a change.

RA-ing at Larkin will be the biggest change. And it’s one for the better. One thing I’ve learned working at the Bridge is that you learn a lot from people with problems.When I hear them talk, I think of things in my own life that need improvement. I become more perceptive, more sure of who I am, and then it’s easy(ier) to make changes to myself. Or at least that (again) is the idea.

I started contacting a bunch of people recently who I haven’t talked to in a while. I met a lot of them during freshman year when meeting people is commonplace and friends come easily. We had lost touch - and some were doing better, some were not. Regardless,I was surprised by the sheer number of them who were excited to re-connect. I think I have re-made a LOT of friends this summer. That in itself is a new beginning because of the changes it will make to my social interaction next year.

One thing I do know is that however much new beginnings scare me, I am excited. Things will be different. And the hope is that they will get better and better. Here’s to new beginnings.

Again, thanks to Google, I found a picture to represent my new journey.

2010-05-11

my friend is gullible and i'm obnoxious

Him: hey have you had any experience with assays? fml
Me: of course, the analysis and testing of the properties of a biochemical substance!
Him: lol :D how do you feel about running them?
Me: i've mostly done mettalurgical assays which is the analyis of metals. well , considering that it is a basic procedure in molecular biology, i am pretty comfortable
Him: hmm
Me: i particularly like to measure antigen capture and virology using a proprietary, high performance capillary electrophoresis system to determine baculovirus titer
Him: :P how would you feel if someone said this is your summer project:
<he posted the description here, but I shouldn't share that>
Me: NICE. DNase is the enzyme that catalyzes the hydrolytic cleavage of the phosphodiester linkages in the DNA backbone
Him: does it sound hard? =/ lol
Me: it seems fairly basic ...are you working with metazoans? Hey dude.... guess what?
Him: whatt
Me: all that snazzy terminology i just typed......wikipedia
: D
: D
: D
: D
: D
sorry, i couldn't resist
Him: >.< tears lol
Me: lol you beleived : " particularly like to measure antigen capture and virology using a proprietary, high performance capillary electrophoresis system to determine baculovirus titer
"
REALLY?
REALLY?
do i talk like that
>??

→

finally here

So I did it. Took the proverbial plunge. The leap. Of Faith. And all that. But as I sit here and think of why I started a blog, I am struggling to find a reason. Probably the strongest reason is my facebook status a while ago: “…wants to start a blog!”.

Maybe I just wanted to take charge of my life in some way…

The last good book that I read was “Thief of Time” by Terry Pratchett, about the fictional planet of Discworld. Commander Vimes is a police officer who is forced to go back in time to teach his rookie self how to be a good person. Together they try to save the world from the evil clutches of Grand Duke Veniteri. And thinking back, the reason I wanted to start this blog is because of something I thought about way back when I read “Thief of Time”.

You know how they say “take charge” ?

It doesn’t really make much sense, huh? Perhaps one of the hardest life lessons I’ve learned is that the people in charge are never in charge, that
governments are not entirely made up of people who have a grip on
things and that plans were often made by people who made plans instead
of thinking things out.

And then there are the people who actually are in charge of something,
but the years and the effort takes its toll and they end up becoming
Duke Vetineri’s instead of Commander Vimes. They write long memos
instead of short Capitalized Words. They encourage short cuts and easy ways of doing things, but then again, they are not the ones being catapulted back in time like Commander Vimes, to a time when Unmentionables and Particulars ruled the streets, when the Night Watch was a corrupt police force and when The Old Monks From Down the Lane were known as sweepers. They aren’t the ones being mistaken for someone else in a dark alleyway and mugged for their armor. They aren’t the ones who don’t understand a large paragraph of Terry Pratchett references!

So, when life asks you to Take Charge, it’s not a yes/no question, it’s more of a Vimes/Veniteri decision. Do you wanna be Vimes, and go back to the past and teach young Vimes the ropes, make him a non-corrupt, Correctly Capitalizing Copper, fluent in alliteration, or do you want a corrupt, memo writing Veniteri, Grand Duke to rule your existence?

I chose to be a Vimes. Your turn.

Choose wisely, Padawan. Choose Wisely . Or just read this book ^^. It’s awesome.