A TWELVE HOUR LAYOVER

If I'd known this was how it would have turned out, I would have taken the later flight out of Boston and taken the $300 travel credit. This sucks. My 730 flight was delayed til midnight and thus a 8 hour layover (which is already the longest I've ever had) turns into a 12 hour layover :(

Luckily I managed to nab myself a table at the gate so I can bum around here and hog it for the next 4 hours.

Now I guess I will just write about random things.

First thing's first -- here is a picture of the Harvard turkey/one of the Harvard turkeys (I have yet to confirm how many there actually are running around, since I only ever see one at once). isn't he cute?! Actually I have no idea if it's a he or a she. Actually it's probably a she isn't it? Since there's no crown... do turkeys have crowns? :/

------------------------

Here's something I thought of during the summer:
    Isn't it cute how pedestrian lights beep at one another for the blind? Their calls are staggered, such that the one on my side starts the call and the one across the road responds instantaneously; a conversation breaks out between the two sides as I cross the road, all the cars at the intersection stopped as if to listen to the exchange. It almost seems as if they are not only guiding us across safely, but also catching up with each other, telling the stories of what they've observed throughout the day from their vantage points on opposing corners. It's even more amusing when there is a 4 way intersection that all lights green at the same time -- oh, the commotion, the energetic blabbering of a full mahjong table awakening on the intersection! All this while a patient rectangle of cars sits still, waiting for the conversation to cease and the business of the day to continue.

I wonder if anyone else has ever thought of it that way, or if I'm just a weirdo. George certainly thought so when I brought it up while crossing and listening to the chirpy back-and-forth.

------------------------

My finals are over and I think my final class grades come out tomorrow. My compilers final turned out to be 25 true/false questions which I thought was rather trollish of the professor, and also caused me to do pretty horribly (I got a 68. That's a 17/25 -- I probably would have done better on a real exam =_=). However the final grade for the class that the TF provided was a 91, so hopefully not everyone in the class got a 95 or something, and then I should be fine... Math was okay, I'm not really sure how I did, I got a similar feeling from the midterms which means I probably scored around an 85% which is not horrible but not really as high as I was hoping for. Well, we'll see I guess. Systems was horrible for everyone, so I actually have no idea what to think lol.

This semester was pretty challenging I think, my longest pset took almost 30 hours no contest, the average time spent with Lukas on compilers was 20 hours a week, I was 1.5 weeks late (past the allowed late days post-deadline) for a certain systems pset, my VES animation looks like a derp's work, and I discovered that not doing math for a year makes one super rusty on math related things. So, yay! But, I learned a lot and had fun.

Oh! I am also serving as AAA's publicity chair for the coming year. So I get to make posters and publicize events and stuff, which should be fun :)

And next semester, I'm going to be a TF for CS51! Watch me be terrible at OCaml and not know what is going on haha. Actually when one of the lecturers called me to tell me that I got the job, I was in Chinatown and we'd just lost half the people we were with so I thought it was one of them calling me, so before I got who it was on the other line I yelled HEY WE'RE OVER HERE and waved really extravagantly in real life. The guy was like "huh...??? This is Jesse from CS51..." I was like OHH OMG IM SORRY herp. #embarrassment i am just a special flower ok

I also bought a 3DS over thanksgiving JUST for the new Phoenix Wright game and have been very diligently finishing it up. I'm on the DLC case now which I'm almost done with. It was very fun. Now I can give it away lol.

-------------------------

The day after finals finished, I went out for dimsum in chinatown with Alex, Tony and Patrick as Tony's last meal before he went home. Then, Alex and I decided to walk around for a bit and take photos. We kind of went wandering because we didn't know where to go and we found this really weird tube thing:

It just sounded like if you put your ear next to a shell. You could kind of hear the ocean. Maybe it was supposed to be cool if a boat went by or something, but it was weirdly underwhelming for such a large device. Anyway look you can also see all the snow. I did not enjoy the snow as much as I did last year. I guess it gets old really fast. It's too cold, and turning into slush is disgusting. At least I have waterproof shoes this year. Last winter was kind of nasty with wet feet :(

-------------------------------

Here's a concept design for my personal website I threw together this afternoon at the airport in photoshop. I have no idea how I'm going to code it at all because I don't code websites. It might be a fun learning experience or I might get frustrated and give up and it might never come to fruition. So here's the beginning concept anyway lol.

-------------------------------

Okay I passed an hour. Most of the time spent was waiting for the images to be uploaded lol. Ummmm.... maybe I will finish Phoenix Wright now? Or I could keep reading Orange is the new Black (I just bought it at the airport book store! I actually wanted to read the Joy Luck Club but they didn't have it in stock). OR maybe I should actually take advantage of the desk I have and start trying to code this thing up? 

... nahhhhhh #lazy

A Guest Post: lol quora

Quora is the biggest pseudo-intellectual circlejerk ever. While there are many posts that are informative, I'm not sure if the community really can sustain itself. It's a platform for people to feel important about themselves, rather than a place for real experts to answer questions.

You can say that the necessity to login with a real identity and the culture of writing long articles to respond to questions means a higher quality experience, but fundamentally people stick to the groupthink that they know will get voted higher on the page. Because most of the time it's not always facts that are being used to answers on Quora. They're just opinions being cleverly disguised as facts. That's not a good way to answer a question. -____- And if the question was really about asking for an opinion in the first place, Quora is not at all the best platform to get an optimal answer for it. There's absolutely no room to debate. 

Quora generally has two types of answers, the answers to factual questions, and feel good stories/positivity. Then there are the gems about once in a lifetime experiences that probably should be shared. These are good.  While the answers to the factual questions may be helpful, they are really just establishing a relationship between questions and facts that could be pulled from Wikipedia. I don't think feel good stories contribute much to Quora's goal of increasing the world's knowledge. In fact, they just feed into the whole groupthink mentality.  

There's also stuff like this: http://www.quora.com/Harvard-University/How-can-I-come-to-terms-with-the-fact-that-so-many-people-I-know-got-into-Harvard-when-Ive-worked-nonstop-for-my-entire-life-to-get-there-and-didnt-make-it

Bitch, get off Quora and take your butthurt tears to College Confidential. Quora users shouldn't even answer these questions. But they do because of the allure of upvotes. 

I know this will get a lot criticism, but it's the same problem that every site that has upvotes has. Quora is just particularly bad because a real name is associated with it. So people try their best to maintain approval of others. I'm predicting that in the future, just like Reddit, Quora will be used as a marketing tool. At that point it won't be any better than BuzzFeed. 

Here's a potential solution for Quora. Implement an anonymous upvote system that doesn't contribute directly the first answer to a question. Instead, it should influence a machine learning algorithm that actually picks the best posts. I'm sure the engineers there are already working on the machine learning - they just need to cut the stupid public upvotes. Give everyone on Quora a "tenure" of sorts and let them speak their mind without fear of getting downvoted to oblivion. 

UH. LAST DAY OF THE MONTH.

Rush update for those who for some reason still think my boring daily goings-on are relevant to their lives
 
Things that have been happening in my life since October:

1) CS61 problem set coinciding with illness = homework incomplete and more than 1 week late. It does not help that the faucet brand KOHLER yells at me every time I wash my hands this thanksgiving, reminding me of work that needs to be done once I get back on campus. (Background: The professor for this class is called Prof Kohler. He is an ass. professor. See his twitter it's hilarious no regrets)
 

2) Outtakes from my 3D animation class!

 

Is a platypus controlling guitars inside a guitar. I know, VES is kind of weird. (actually is just me)

 Actually I've been frying my CPU rendering frames for this entire week, I still have 1 scene left but I think I might have to do some more because there are some timing issues that I'm not sure how to deal with (maybe post process them away?). The image above was rendered in 1080p but I decided not to do this since I have something like ~1500 frames and 1080p = 2.2mb frames each so that = death for my computer / not being able to finish rendering in time, so I'm doing them at 720p instead (still huge, but not as time consuming and hopefully I'll be able to have something to hand in on time)

3) Food! Yay thanksgiving :) 

 

Dat 20lb turkey. 

I came to New York to stay with Alex for Thanksgiving this year, not so much for the same reasons as last year (because I wanted to explore the city) as just really wanting to get off campus because I've been stuck there since the beginning of semester and a break was just needed. I didn't really explore much this time which was fine, it was supposed to be a relaxing break from the hecticness of college which I think it has been, even though this break is pretty short. Anyway I got to hang out with his family and high school friends, which was pretty fun. I miss my friends back home too now :(

4) Black friday shopping! Things I bought include sweaters, sweaters, sweaters, cardigan, sweaters, a new scarf and winter hat (since I left my white scarf in CS61 a couple of weeks ago because I was too dazed/destroyed after the midterm to remember to take it with me, I felt justified in getting another white scarf), another red dress (I like red dresses), and one of those super ultra light down jackets from uniqlo because I'm a wagon-jumper. Also ordered and waiting for Nintendo 3DS to arrive so I can play the new phoenix wright game and then give it away to my brother over Christmas haha. And sweaters.

5) The big Harvard-Yale game was this last weekend, we went down together and I had a lot of fun :) I went to the ViSA/Phillipine forum mixer and met a Tony Sun clone, their campus is sooo pretttyyyy and their parties a lot more fun (more money being thrown at undergrads #notatharvard). I felt almost bad that we wont 34-7. It was like we came into a better village and robbed and pillaged it after enjoying drinks at the pub the night before. I stayed with a friend of a friend who turned out to be from Christchurch, which was cool. He jokingly snobbed the Hershey's Cadbury chocolate we brought to say thanks for letting us stay lols (I don't blame him. I can't wait to come home and get some legit Cadbury either)

 

Yale Library, the non-gothic architecture on campus.  Sorry not sorry for being artsy.

Also because I haven't actually unloaded my memory card yet because no chance to because my computer is being used for rendering. Also because I don't think I actually look any good photos that entire weekend anyway sigh. I think my filter is dusty actually, I always get weird blobs when I take pictures of the sky with the kit lens. Ews :/ Cleaning to do when I get home

6) Arthur turned 21! We went and stunk up my clothes with korean bbq and called it a night. Jk but I really like kalbi though and am sad that my scarf still smells like korean bbq oils. But kalbi tastes so gooodddd. Other recent (?) food expeditions include Yamato and Bibim with HVA. Is good. Oh also I finally got to see Jesse's white Maserati in person. It's a very nice shiny car that's not too over-the-top other than the brand logo. I like it tho (y)

7) Looking forward to coming home for the holidays! My poor feets and hands are struggling to keep themselves toasty in this weather. I bought winter socks and still have gloves but I would really just prefer to be in summer right now. Especially since my news feed is popping up pictures of beaches and people out of school right now in NZ and I still have to sit finals qq. SOON! Also my family decided to go to Fiji this summer so I will get fried in the sun even though I just lost my summer tan. Sunscreen levels must rise.

Thoughts that come to mind because I haven't updated in 2 months and feel guilty

1) I haven't had much free time at all since college started. Classes were kind of crazy a while back. It's lightened up a little bit in terms of workload but I still have back to back assignments every week which is kind of a bummer. Anyway I'm taking 4 classes this semester: Systems, Compilers, 3D Animation and Linear Algebra/DiffEqs. It's a lot of work but I'm surviving maybe.

2) I think I'm getting kind of sick. Almost lost my voice tonight at office hours

3) I did office hours for ~4.5 hours tonight pretty sure. Also it was encouraging because I was able to help people with a problem set I struggled with last year, so I felt like I grew in that sense.

4) I noticed the other day that it's less frequent that we use "brb" in texting/messaging these days, because before people would sit down at their computer and say brb when they went away from the keyboard, but now with the rise of mobile technology it's less and less needed because people will always just have their phones with them on the go anyway. Will we see the death of "brb" and especially "afk" soon??? (I think afk only exists in gaming now)

5) I bought heart of the swarm and haven't played with it. #thingstododuringwinterbreak

6) I need to rewrite my resume

7) I need to redo my website. My portfolio domain is going to expire soon #thingstododuringwinterbreak

8) A group of us went to MIT to hackathon a couple of weeks ago and we won Galaxy S4s! They haven't arrived yet.

9) I miss home

10) I think I have lost 2 water bottles this semester already and I am sad.

11) I am going to meet with the Concentration adviser tomorrow to sort out my concentration declaration! :D I feel like a real college student now. I will have an official major.

12) I have recently been into doodling platypuses in class.

13) I have too many belongings here and I don't know how to get rid of them. I think I could live out of my backpack and my underwear/tshirt drawer for a week if I needed to. And the only reason I wouldn't last more than that is because I need to change jeans. Oh, I guess I need to shower every day too though, so I also need a towel.

14) My laptop trackpad got screwed up at hackMIT because I installed some weird trackpad driver and it hasn't been the same since T_T Also my laptop randomly shuts down when it's asleep and I have no idea why :/

15) OSX Mavericks sounds like it's got a lot of sick features. It should be really nice to use after all the bugs have been straightened out

16) Am I invisible and only exist when people need stuff from me?

Here is a platypus jump kick

I do not know how to construct a "good" sandwich

Google images because I can

inb4brokenlink in 2 months time

"Bacon, lettuce, tomato and pepperjack cheese", he said excitedly, biting into his self-made sandwich. I'd always been somewhat impressed with his sandwich-making abilities, but it wasn't until he said that that I started questioning what exactly makes a "good" sandwich? Did it make a difference that he'd chosen pepperjack cheese instead of some other kind? If not, why would he have specified what kind of cheese it was? I'd made sandwiches for him in the past, though I can't quite remember exactly what his feedback was at this moment, but he'd always think I was weird for putting certain combinations of things together between slices of bread. I grew this expectation of a "proper" framework for sandwich-making, which I suppose is kind of true -- for instance, bacon, lettuce and tomato do seem to go together quite well, but in my opinion the turkey-lettuce combo that the dining halls here offer can be majorly improved with a slice of cheese and a fried egg. A lot of people give me alien looks when I say I like to put eggs in my sandwiches.

"That's not what you're supposed to do," they say. But the more sandwiches I have made, the more I started to realize that though certain things are 'supposed' to universally go together, there's definitely no real rules to sandwich construction -- just because most people I've come across think I'm strange for putting eggs in my sandwiches doesn't mean I'm going to stop doing it anytime soon. Though, disclaimer here, I still don't have much of an idea of what to put in a sandwich given the ample choices of the ingredients bar here, and oftentimes I experiment with salad dressings on my salads and I'm pretty sure certain vinaigrettes that I use are not meant to be used with the things I put in my salads. However, this whole dining hall debacle has made me realize something bigger about the world, which is that nobody really knows what they're doing.

There are lots of 'accepted' rules about how we should do certain things, but there are just as many, if not more, ways to experiment with our own ways of doing things. Since I've always been a pretty logical person and tried to define everything in terms of rules and exceptions to those rules, it was a weird thing to realize growing up that not everything fits into boxes all the time.

The first time I bought something and it didn't work, I didn't know what to do with myself. It just seemed ridiculous that something professionally made could ever be imperfect. What's more, it started happening so often that I thought there was something wrong with the way I was doing things. I am still weirdly frustrated when things don't work because I don't know how to respond to the event. I am never quite sure whether I am doing something wrong or whether the thing I am using is actually just broken. For example, I am pretty sure that the fender that came with my bike over the summer actually just doesn't fit in the wheel, but I was also equally convinced that the rack didn't fit on either, but at the end of the summer I was able to work out how to attach the rack, so to this day I still have no idea whether the fender's inability to attach was my fault or the manufacturer's.

What complicates this whole ordeal is the fact that it's often positive to be creative and come up with better ways to solve problems that might be unconventional. However, I always second guess myself because I figure that if it were really a better way, surely someone else would have thought of it already, so the way that I thought of must be inefficient in some way since it's not widely accepted. I always get excited when I think of something and start doing things in a certain way, and then find someone else who does it in the same way, even though it's not conventional. I guess it's just confirmation that I'm not totally on the wrong track if someone else prefers it my way too.

I wish I had some moral here like people shouldn't be afraid to make up their own ways of doing things, because the world is not always going to provide a defined way for you, but I'm not really sure if that's the answer.

Being in college and growing up is kind of a weird time in my life. Though my ego likes to think I know all the answers, that's really not the case.

Read this only if you want to know useless things about my life

I want to make a blog post but I can't think of anything to say. I guess I feel like all the important things I've already shared with one person or another, and I can pull it up anytime I want, and I don't want to write anything super article-like because I just don't have the brainpower for that right now, and also I just don't want to type all that much since I've been typing all day.

Also the wifi here is terrible, and I am sore and broken from getting destroyed this weekend at Yosemite and then wrecking my knee while tripping up an escalator at the airport. #clumsywinnie

I'm 20 now, I guess that's cool. I couldn't take the red couch cake pic this year tho since I'm not home. My parents were around a few days before so we had a nice dinner, and then my friends here did a little surprise birthday dinner that was really nice and I was super slow to realize haha, even after we were seated at the table (Jessica told me we were having dinner for 3 and then the waitress led us to a table with ~10 people and I thought we were just sharing a table until I realized they were people I knew hahaha). Alex also visited the week before and got me a little TV lens to play with which I have been having a lot of fun with.

Photo of birthday cake taken with birthday present hehe

It's weird to think that it's been almost a year since I flew here to the US with no idea what to expect and no idea what was in store for me out here.  I think I've definitely matured a lot since then, and learned a lot about the world and life and myself and it's kind of incredible. I'm glad I decided to come out. I'm not entirely sure what day is my official anniversary for leaving NZ, but it's probably near the end of my internship. It's kind of nice that Chen is around to remind me of how life used to be.

I also went to Chicago for a tech thing but ended up just meeting some cool people and having fun lol. I went to my first music festival! :D I saw Imagine Dragons try to compensate for a broken sound system, got crushed at Lana del Ray (I'm sad I missed the Killers after that rib crushing experience),  had fun jumping around at the nicely sized crowd at St Lucia, had exclusive pit access to Reignwolf for a song, and saw Ellie Goulding from a kind of acceptable distance. It was all in all a fun experience, but I wish I could have stayed for Sunday too to see Vampire Weekend and Phoenix.

I've also seen a bunch of movies this summer; since college got out, I've watched:
The Great Gatsby
Fast and Furious 6
The Hangover 3
Star Trek 2
Monsters University
Despicable Me 2
The Internship
Pacific Rim
Now You See Me
The Wolverine
... that's 10. Not bad for a summer. Doesn't feel like all that many though. I think my standards are still biased from watching too many movies in high school though.


Oh yeah, and I "tried" Google Glass. Note I say "tried" because although I am visibly wearing them in the photo below I couldn't actually see anything because my eyesight is bad and the screen on Glass is the equivalent of standing about 8 feet away, so I couldn't actually see anything on the screen clearly. Also it's more transparent and less intrusive than I imagined, which was already pretty transparent and pretty non-intrusive, which is pretty impressive.

 

Why Facebook Matters (my experience from the inside)

 

NOTE: If you work for Facebook, you really don't have to read this. My intended audience is my friends from college or New Zealand who frequently use Facebook but have never considered it as anything other than a way to procrastinate, all of what I say below will be probably extremely redundant and obvious to anyone who works here.

So, as those of you who have known me for a few years and/or have followed my blog before will know, I have always been pretty pro-facebook. I have made posts before about how I think it's an advantage for everyone around me to get Facebook as a way to stay connected and remain "in the loop" about the current affairs of those who they care about. I made that post 3 years ago, at a time where 500 million people were on Facebook. Today, that number has more than doubled. There are 1.2 billion users on Facebook today, and 700 million of them are active daily. I spoke at that time because speculation was starting about whether the website would last, whether they would fade into the background as something new came to take its place, as many of its predecessors did. I watched in the last few years as Facebook became more and more invasive, and that little blue "Login with Facebook" bar seemed to pop up more often on other websites I visited. I thought to myself as I watched this that Facebook is probably something different, with far greater potential than the other social networks that people kept comparing it to.

My belief that Facebook was special began to be reaffirmed by my experience here this summer. I started my summer internship on July 1, and in less than 4 weeks Facebook has proved itself to me as an employee that what it's doing in the world matters -- and now I'm writing this because I want to share that experience with my friends who are not of the tech world, as a response against those who see it only as a distraction from exam studying, who are annoyed by the ads and the constant changes, who see social networking as a sad replacement for real life interaction.

Facebook aims to provide not only a service, but a great one. There is no way 10 years ago you would have been able to reach a billion people on Earth, even with the internet. No forum was that huge. Facebook is not meant to be a closed circle between you and your closest friends only; it serves as a complement to real life interaction between you and your best friends, not a substitute. Many complain that their Facebook 'friends' are not really their friends at all, but the power of the social graph is undeniable -- 70% of jobs today are found through networking and personal connections. Obviously you will be close to your closest friends regardless of whether or not they are on Facebook. You will always find time and ways to reach those who you love the most. But what about those connections that you would like to keep around but maybe don't always have the time for? Friendships are not an all-or-nothing kind of deal, and this is where Facebook excels.

My thoughts on why Facebook has not fallen the way Myspace, Friendster, Bebo did -- they bring together not only people who already know each other, but potentially great future friendships and connections. Furthermore, their monetization strategy is reverse-motivated -- there is a poster around headquarters which essentially reads "We do not make things to earn money, we earn money to make things". Zuckerberg as a CEO truly cares about the positive social impact that Facebook has on the world. These are positive externalities far beyond the reach of a dollar symbol -- today, he addressed the entire company at headquarters in person (similar to the way he does every week, by the way, and answers any questions anyone in the company may have, including interns -- not something you would see at most other companies) and told us this story, as well as showed us a video that the men made to thank Facebook for making changing an entire village worth of lives possible. You'll have to take my word for it, but it was very compelling. This is a software company which monetizes on the people that use its service, yet keeps in mind that these people have real lives and real connections that transcend the statistics they sell to advertisers, and prides itself on bettering those lives with its service.

 

^ A poster design I see around campus a lot

On that point, ads -- people who complain about ads have really just never experienced real ads. Real ads are great content. It is the role of an advertisement to be entertaining, because that's how you engage your audience. Real ads are things that people actually do want to watch, which is why there is always so much talk about the ads which show during the Superbowl (and we all go and watch them on youtube even tho we supposedly hate ads). Facebook aims to deliver the same quality. Ads are a way for entrepreneurs to let you know about their product -- which, for a lot of companies, is an awesome product that you might actually have a use for (shock horror), which you would otherwise not know about. Think about your friends linking cool Kickstarter projects on Facebook. Proper, quality targeted ads are the exact same thing, and Facebook aims to be able to direct you to that really good niche Italian restaurant a block away when you're wandering around Melbourne at 7pm looking for something to eat. After all, Facebook should know you better than anyone -- creepy as it may be, once you get over the irrational fear of letting the service know more about you, you realize that you're just helping it help you better (more on privacy in a later post, perhaps).

So you can imagine, with such lofty goals and only having reached 1/7 of the world's population, why Facebook needs to be constantly changing. It cannot afford to become stale and settle and fade away like so many others have. It knows its potential and aims to keep going to better its service to you as the user. Cut Facebook a little slack, nobody's ever done this before and of course mistakes are made. They are cautious though and test extensively to make sure the changes they make are good ones, which may be why you feel they are fickle sometimes. Working here has made me realize just how hard these people work to bring the world such an awesome service -- and they're all super awesome people too! They try to move really really fast to bring the future to you ASAP, but sometimes Facebook is a little derpy and leaves things undone which may or may not cause that iOS app to crash unexpectedly; but honestly, what piece of software is perfect? Not that they're satisfied with this, even -- they are constantly aiming to bring you a more polished product and bugs are fixed live around the clock.

I really don't believe that Facebook is a waste of time in any sense, unless you make it so yourself. It's a great service that has managed to connect the world in ways people never expected, and is hungry for even more growth and improvement. Fortunately I think people are now starting to see, after the most recent quarter's financial report (and subsequent 20% rise in stock), that Facebook is not "just another social networking website". It truly has the power to change the way people connect in the world, and make us better off for it. The knowledge economy is non-rival, absolutely sustainable and is just beginning to be grown.

I was actually also going to talk about the Facebook paradox of privacy/making the world more open and connected as well as more about my own experience, but that can wait til another day, I don't want to make this post any more monster haha.

Last piece of food for thought: would you have known about any of this if not for Facebook bringing you to this page in the first place?

How an awkward person makes love to a stranger

It is baffling at times, to realize how one has fallen in love with a stranger. Strange as it may be: it began on a sweeping fall afternoon, underneath the flaming maple tree as a gust of wind blew embers into the sky and your package out of your arms. The box took a small tumble, maybe bouncing once or twice down those steps before spilling foam nuggets across the lawn. I watched as you hurriedly packed everything back in and skittle off, nude pink stilettos stabbing into the asphalt.

I would not have thought anything of it, if not for walking by a few seconds later and finding a piece of paper stuck to the ground. Clearly you had dropped it during the incident, but when I picked it up and turned around, intending to yell out and return it, you had already disappeared long ago. I do not even really remember your face, or even the exact colour of your hair, which was only revealed as slight wisps underneath a red (or was it black? grey?) woven beanie -- was it a dark brunette or a light chestnut, straight or wavy, long or short?

It was perhaps wrong of me to tuck that letter into the inner pocket of my coat then, just as perhaps I am being punished for reading it now. I am not entirely sure why I did it, but in the moment it made sense. Maybe I thought I would run into you again.

I fell in love with the writer of that letter. The awkward but gentle curve of your letter "i", something I had always mechanically drawn as a perfect vertical, the way you connected the letters in "life"; these showed me a way of seeing the world I hadn't seen before. You wrote of beautiful places and ideas, to an anonymous recipient that I placed myself into the role of, introducing him to the beautiful person that is you.

I at least hoped the letter would give me an excuse to approach you if I ever did meet you again, in the off chance that I recognized you.

***
"I'm so sorry!"

These were the words you spoke to the bus driver that spring morning, scuffling through your handbag for your absent transport card and empty wallet. I looked up and saw the sun hit your apologetic eyelashes, and did a double take. Something impossibly familiar about you drew me to stand up automatically, ready to offer you my spare change.

"I've got it, don't worry."

The man behind you steps in and puts an extra ride's worth of coins into the driver's hands. I feel embarrassed and awkward, having stood up for no reason. The guy sitting next to me has already gotten off his seat, anticipating my need to exit to the aisle. I move into the path he paves for me, stepping off the bus as you turn to the change-offerer and thank him profusely, and by the time you have sat down together and have begun to exchange names, I had still yet to process what exactly had happened.

The bus drives away and leaves me at my premature stop; I arrive home 2 hours later.

***

I'm not sure how we ended up on the same path that winter afternoon, but the familiar tick-tacking of your nude high heels interrupted the music coming through my earphones and I knew it was you before I looked up. An orange umbrella obscured my view of your head, but the combination of that handbag and those shoes gave you away.

I thought the orange umbrella suited you perfectly, and smiled to myself silently. Orange was so outgoing and bright, and happy -- things you represented that I wished I had for myself. Yet it was also what kept me from you at that moment, keeping you hidden from my line of sight. I had been secretly wondering when I'd run into you again, partially convinced we were fated to skim our lives against one another's until we met officially, partially hopeless that the city was too large for it to happen more than twice.

I started to contemplate how I should introduce myself. I supposed I should just be direct, but there seemed to be something strange about a stranger approaching a girl in the middle of a deserted road professing his love for her. Then again, maybe girls were into that. I hadn't done this before.

A light cough blew a cloud from under your umbrella, and I watched you stop in your tracks next to the bus stop. You opened your handbag and took out a bottle of cough syrup, poured yourself a dose and put it to your mouth as I walked by.

I didn't have time for an introduction; I walked by without saying anything as I watched in slow motion the pink syrup disappear behind your lips.

***

Indeed it is baffling, to realize how one has fallen in love with a stranger. I wonder if I will ever see you again; I swear if I did, I would not waste what should be the last opportunity to meet you. If you're reading this, I swear I will keep our lives from continually blowing away from each other like curtains covering an open window in the night breeze.

But tonight all I can do is lay here in front of that window, letting those curtains brush over my face and swear I can almost taste your cough syrup on my lips, the ghostly mirage of a kiss that never happened.

Back in the Americas

Shots of San Francisco

Arrived in SF last Thursday around midday, and Tony came to pick me up with his mom (so nice!), and so began our adventures exploring the city. That day, we went out for lunch and had Pho close to his house, then we walked to his old middle school and were gonna walk a bit further but then a screw popped out of his glasses so the lens fell out, so we went home. Hahahaha pretty much. Then we went out to dinner with some of his family friends. I felt kind of bad like a random add-on but everyone was really nice.

The next day, I almost overslept because the room I'm staying in has no windows and I rely on the sun to wake up. I met a few of Tony's high school friends, we walked around a bit in the Sunset District, had lunch at a Thai place and went to Golden Gate Park where we just chilled in the sun for 2 hours, since the weather was so nice. Then, we went out to the coast and I saw the Pacific Ocean from the other side! And we went on a hike around the coast for the next 3 hours or so. There were far too many stars for my liking, but the view of the ocean was really impressive. We had Japanese for dinner, though the Japanese restaurant was actually run by Chinese people haha. There are a lot of Cantonese people in SF. After dinner, we went up Twin Peaks and got a really, really beautiful view of the city at night. So many pretty lights. I need a tripod. Still got 1 or 2 decent shots thought.

Saturday, it was sunny again so we planned to go for a hike up San Bruno after having Yumcha, which is the tallest hill in the area so it's where all the radio spires are. The road was less vertical than I imagined it, which actually made for a nice walk, other than being pricked in the leg every so often by overgrown blackberry thorns. You could see the whole city from up there, it was kind of breathtaking. We had dinner at a Hawaiian place which was really just a Chinese-American place. I had the most epic food coma I've had since post-lunch Year 13 Physics. Almost dozed off in the restaurant right there. We then had frozen yoghurt to counterbalance it (good logic I know). I really needed to go to the bathroom but some kids were causing trouble in the bathroom (clogging up the sink and overflowing it because they thought it was funny, til their Dad came in and yelled at them. Derp kids...).

Then, on Sunday, we'd planned to go to a concert in Golden Gate Park (Alice's Summerthing! Actually so many people were there) after having burritos in Mission, but then we heard that it was raining and decided to go downtown to watch a movie instead. We initially planned on watching Monsters' University, but it wasn't showing when we got there so we watched Fast & Furious 6 instead. I'm glad I got to watch it after all, and I'm kinda sad Justin Lin isn't going to be returning for 7. It'll be interesting to see what Mr Wan does to it though, hopefully not turn it into a shitty horror franchise plz. Anyway while waiting for the movie we walked around to Union Square and got our live band performance anyway, by a band singing swing dancing songs, got free samples from Ghirardelli's chocolates, and helped an injured bee back into the hedges after seeing it struggling for 20 minutes and almost getting stepped on countless times. After the movie, we met up with Dimiter for dinner, walked down to the pier where there was a pretty sight of the Bay Bridge over the water, stayed for a while and then went home.

Which leads us to today, I guess. I was pretty tired from the last few days of epic walking and the forecast said it would rain, so we decided to take it a bit easier. Tony and I went to the Academy of Sciences and just explored the whole thing for pretty much the whole day. I really enjoyed the rainforest exhibit actually, so many cool animals :) A plethora of frogs, for sure. And the penguins were super cute. I actually learned quite a bit (European settlers had a ~32000 year head start on the Native Americans in terms of settlement, it's kind of no wonder they were so much more technologically advanced), and also I wasn't aware that there used to be so many land bridges that people could just... walk over lol. And, idk why but my mind is always blown whenever I go to observatories or do astronomy-related stuff. It just seems that we are so small on the grand scale of things, but the only thing we can do to preoccupy ourselves is create problems for ourselves on our little planet and then spend our lives solving them. This was kind of amplified by the thought that we all came from one place anyway, so it's like we're just picking fights with ourselves when we should really just all get along. It's kind of interesting from a sociological perspective? Oh also I learned that starfish don't have a brain, heart or nervous system, but they eat by wrapping their stomach around things after they amble around and find something to eat, and excrete from a hole in their center and it looks gas-like. They're pretty cute I guess. O and jellyfish are kind of adorable. There are also such things as upside-down jellyfish, which I thought was a troll at first but I guess they actually exist???? Anyway after that we went to Crepevine and I consumed diabetes on a plate, and had a sugar hangover for the rest of the day (I swear I'm not the only one to get headaches after eating a lot of sugar).

Kiwi @ Science Museum! :D 

Tomorrow, we've planned to go see Monsters' University in the morning and haven't planned the rest of the day. It's supposed to be raining tomorrow as well. I still have to go down to Fisherman's Wharf, have some clam chowder and have some Ghirardelli's ice cream, and meet up with Zelin hopefully, before I go down to Palo Alto on Friday. I also wanted to go visit Alcatraz, but nobody told us that you had to book tickets in advance since they sell out so quickly =.= so too late.

Oh also! Exciting news, I applied for this thing a while ago, forgot about it, but I was accepted! So I'll be spending 4 days in Chicago in the beginning of August :) I'm actually pretty excited haha.

Another banal post about my slice of winter

I feel like self motivation is so difficult lately. Even though I'm doing all the things I need to, I often feel unwilling to do things/just not in the mood to move. An example of this is in the mornings, where I'll wake up at a random time between 7 and 11am (there is no pattern at all, regardless of when I sleep) and I just don't want to get up and face the day. My heart beats noticeably irregularly quickly (compared to when i woke up before I came back, and it feels like something heavy is sitting on top of me and it's somewhat uncomfortable). I open the blinds to pump myself up for the day, and I'm even about to get up, but then my mom sees the light from under my door and comes in to tell me to get up, and I feel like shrinking back under my covers again. I'm not really sure why this is. I'm also seemingly continually thirsty. Maybe I'm not getting enough Vitamin D.

It's not like I've done nothing these last few weeks though. I've been here for 2 weeks and a bit already, getting ready to fly out on Thursday, but it feels like it's gone so slowly.


1) Went back to my movie watching rampages. Saw star trek, the great gatsby, the internship and will watch hangover 3 tomorrow. I really wanted to see fast and furious 6 but the first time I planned to do it I was too tired and then the second time I was already late to a 21st birthday party and I didn't want to leave early because it would be rude.

2) Actually I'm pretty glad I stayed for that 21st, though I didn't know many people there I feel like I got to know the birthday girl better from the speeches and I finally got to watch Kozo Komatsubara perform, and I met a few new people. I also learned some pretty nice thing about faith and friendship.
3) Working on a painting for the house of the sunset. still not done, not sure if will get done, I'm starting to doubt myself. From a while ago tho:

I've done a bit more than this now

4) Unpacked my boxes and went through my old stuff, I have too much stuff gathered from over the years... I threw a lot of it out.

5) Read 191 chapters of Bloody Monday because I was wikipedia surfing and ended up going from American History to Anthrax and felt like reading about politics and biological terrorism. I was disappointed because the rest of the scans aren't up and I couldn't finish it in the end. During these 3 days, I had dreams about Russian spies. It was pretty exciting.

6) Played some starcraft and tried to get better with not much avail, but I'm familiarising myself a bit more with gameplay. Felt like it after watching WCS finals. Having nothing to do at home will tend to do that to you huh.

7) Went back to school and gave a mini talk on US university applications, caught up with some friends and saw old teachers. Some were really nice to see, others barely remembered me it appears, I guess I know who to go back and see in the future.

8) Applied to two other mini programs, not sure if I'll have much of a chance but I guess no harm in trying. Actually I'm pretty proud of myself that I made myself get off my ass and actually finish those applications. I avoided them for many days.

9) Went into uni and saw some friends and attended some lectures in their last week. It was good to see everyone, the place seems the same though. It appears to be a pretty static place despite everyone moving up and out into the greater world. Especially glad to catch up with some friends I didn't actually spend much 1 on 1 time before I left, so I got to know them a bit better.

10) Going to sit my full licence test tomorrow. Not sure how it will go. Hopefully I pass. I'm kind of nervous though, I don't really know what to expect and not sure if I'm good enough since I haven't really driven much over the past year.

11) Baked cakes! It was fun. I guess if you follow recipes things tend to come out fine. Cheesecake was pretty simple and also noms. I'd like to make it again sometime.

12) Went swimming with my mom a few times, I haven't actually stepped in a pool since the beginning of 2011, where it was a 50m swim test for dragon boating, and before that I hadn't swam since the beginning of 2009. So it's pretty crazy. I'm an absolute snail. My muscles really aren't suited to being in the water.

At least the fall foliage is kind of pretty. On that 1 tree among the other 99 evergreens in Cornwall Park. And on days where the sky is blue (an astounding total of 3 over the time I've been here)

I can't think of anything else huge right now. Actually I was planning to blog for a while but couldn't find the motivation for the past week. That's how bad it is. I can't help feeling that it will get better when I get back to summer though. I'm 90% sure that I have some form of Seasonal Affectedness Disease. I always tend to feel like this during the winter. Every single June period in NZ for the last ~6 years at least. 

Welp, it's not like I'm not doing stuff, which is good. I've had a lot of fun with people lately as well, and I've enjoyed spending time with people I haven't seen in a while. It's just some part of me feels not quite completely satisfied right now, that's all. I'm greedy I know haha.

how to pass the summertime

Here I am again, on a bus from Boston to New York. The third time this year. By the time I return to school, I'll have seen it in the 4 seasons. Isn't that kind of sentimentally nice? I suppose so, even if the result of negligence on my part.

So the summer began; with a hard last week of packing everything I own into boxes and helping friends move out, empty rooms were all that were left of our freshman year. It was tinted with a little sadness and shock over how quickly the year went, though I suppose if you calculated, we were only really in school for 7 months.

Other highlights from the last few days include playing Starcraft with Jason and Luke in the enforced quiet area in the basement Lamont Library lololol. Things we do for fun. Also our grades came out. I'm so glad I managed to pull an A- in Expos lol. Though CS51 really shouldn't have released how they calculated the grades because I realized that if I'd gotten 2 more points in the final I could have gotten an A in the entire course =_= why do these things happen. I'm happy with an A- but geez it was just so close.

On the last night, Tony took us up to the observatory above the science center and we watched the stars and looked down on campus for a while. It was a nice peaceful way to end a somewhat hectic year and semester. The next morning was full of frantic last minute moving for friends (ofc I'm organized and had it all sorted by Tuesday the previous week #onlytwofinals). Then we had our goodbyes and hugs and set off on our separate ways.

Alex and I grabbed iced bubble tea from TeaLuxe and then went to Yamato for lunch, where we consumed 76 pieces of sushi, a handroll and a seaweed salad between us over the period of 2 hours. It was a great meal. We is fat.

The first order of many

Over the last week and a half at my cousin's place then, I suppose not that much has transpired though I've tried to keep myself entertained. Although, the second day I was there my mom called and we ended up reorganizing the head end of my summer, and a totally unexpected 2 week trip home is now underway. Unfortunately the weather is horrible and everyone is about to sit exams, but eh these things happen. It gives me a good chance to sit my full licence test, and catch up with some friends if only for a short while.

We went to Costco and I stumbled upon Dan Brown's new book, which I gladly bought and finished the next day. It's kind of crazy how his formula works so well in keeping you hooked. I really enjoyed this one compared to The Lost Symbol. It was also kind of surprising that I didn't even know he had been writing one until I saw it in stores lol, turns out it only came out 5 days prior.

Also I've been playing with my cousin's two month old baby, who is super duper adorbs :)

The last three days were spent walking around and taking photos of things, since I decided to get a better camera (not that my Leica was lacking, it just didn't have a lot of the features I wanted, although its crazy zoom will definitely be missed). I ended up getting this bad boy:

[taken at MIT's architecture school]

And we have had much fun together ever since. Check out our adventures on Flickr :)

Other things I have been up to: trying to get back into digital art (lasted a morning, haven't touched it since. Go figure), doing some coding, doing some web design, playing plastic league sc at 1am with Jason's Canada friends, playing with photo filters.

Oh also this was my lunch yesterday. It was amazeballs and we got complimentary macaroons afterwards. Probably the most expensive meal I've ever consumed, maybe when/if I  ever have money falling out of my ears I'll go again:

It's okay to be jealous, really.

summah mutha f****s

As of Saturday, I am finished with freshman year. It's pretty scary how fast it all went, not to mention the thought of the long summer and then sophomore year -- I wonder how much will have happened by the time I come back to campus. I'm currently in my semi emptied room, having finished packing away all my things into boxes, with only my suitcases and stuff I'm leaving at my cousin's place left to store away.

The American year is kind of weird. I'm used to the end of year feeling extremely conclusive, which is what you get if it aligns with the end of the actual calendar year. The year is complete, you go home and have Christmas and celebrate New Years and new beginnings, and start again after the rollover. No such thing here. It's randomly May and it doesn't really feel like the end of anything at all. It's like everything is some kind of continuous spiral that keeps going, with winter breaks being our traditional end of calendar year, so it doesn't feel like it's super new when we go back to school since it's still the continuation of the school year. I'm not really sure which way I prefer. I guess this way there's less of the refreshing feeling I get from a complete restart, but it's also easier to build momentum and continue with whatever I was doing before as well. Then again this kind of thing shouldn't ideally affect me since time is continuous in either case anyway.

I met so many awesome people in the last 8-9 months! It's so weird to think that before then I didn't know anyone here. Also everyone is leaving and it's sad. I don't know why I am so affected by stuff like this haha.

Plans for the summer? I want to get back into digital art, since it's hard to do big traditional stuff while travelling (Actually it's a huge pain in the ass, especially when packing up my stuff, I can't take anything with me at all =.= I have to destroy the big stuff I did this year because there's no sense in trying to store it. Ugh this is why people have basements).

I want to read some books. I have to at least get through The Great Gatsby. Otherwise I'll feel like an illiterate uncultured loser who can't even get through a book in 3 months.

I want to try some photography (buy a hipster camera???) -- again more to develop aesthetics in a compact way.

Do some random programming stuff on the side probably, to learn more and practice. Trying to dl mySQL right now, I want to test some wordpress layouts but I actually have no clue what I am doing lulz.

I'm enjoying having the freedom and time to do whatever I want right now though. I'm not exactly sure how long this will last before I get bored tho haha. I kinda had some feeling that I wanted to go home for a month at the last minute, so much so that I even looked up flights, it would only have been about $1650 return! But I wonder what I would have done back there. Also the weather. Also 24+ hours flying. Also new immigration policy. Ew so much disincentives to flying home (lol I'm so lazy).

In any case.

CAN'T WAIT TO LIVE WITH THESE BEAUTIFUL GIRLIES NEXT YEAR C: thx for photo pong

Some stuff I did last month

Yeah so... I didn't blog in April. I kept meaning to but then the days crawled past until I realized it had disappeared, last night -- and then I was planning to blog last night but when I got back to my room it was already after midnight and I didn't the opportunity. So, I'm making up for it now I guess. Actually it's a weird thing, to think I didn't skip a month between 2007 all the way until now -- almost like something died or maybe I've changed? It's not a habit I would usually break.

Anyway I guess I'll update on things that happened in the last month, or at least stuff that stood out to me /I can remember at this moment...

Andre Agassi came to give a talk with the Leadership Institute, which was pretty cool. I'm not an extremely avid follower of the tennis world, but from watching Prince of Tennis during middle school I knew who he was and how amazing he was. But I didn't really know his story, and his talk was eye-opening both in terms of finding out more about him and also concerning inspiration for life in general. He's an incredibly modest and down to earth man and I think he's learned a lot through his life and gave a lot of good advice, especially concerning perfectionism -- "not every shot has to be a perfect one, just good enough -- you don't have to be the best to win, just better than the other guy."

Matt Damon also came in the same week -- I was really lucky to get a ticket for this, actually I went at 2.30pm on the day the tickets came into office but they were already sold out @_@ (office opens at 12pm, so you can imagine how crazy that was), but Lucy was kind enough to give me her spare since Jenn couldn't make it :))) thank you Lucy! His story was so interesting, I didn't realize that he wrote Good Will Hunting while in a class here, that actually makes me like it a lot more haha. He's such a nice guy as well :D Anyway there was a showing on the Plaza that night as well which he introduced, but I stayed in to do work so I didn't go see it. 

So this project we've been working on is our final project for CS51, our group decided to implement machine learning in a neural network to recognize authors based on their writing style -- so we feed it blocks of books to train it and then when we give it a block it hasn't seen before from one of the authors, it should be able to guess which author wrote it. I learned a lot, though it was kind of stressful to begin with since we had zero concept of what a neural network even was, and trying to wrap our heads around it while trying to write it was horrible @_@ but we finally got it working!!

Look! :D 91.1% accuracy right now after 200 epochs of learning! It's terrible at recognizing Agathie Christie for some reason though, so we have to do some fine tuning before hand in on Sunday.

Last Friday was also the final exhibition for FACES -- we were a bunch of freshmen who decided to get together and do an art exhibition to showcase visual arts in terms of the freshman experience for Arts First weekend, we ended up doing a showcase inspired by natural disasters, since we had a lot of them this year lolol. I made a paper sculpture inspired by Snowstorm Nemo:

Arthur trying to look like he's a part of this (also being vain as usual)

close up :)

The team! :D minus Sarah who was sick + Dean Dingman

In other news ... I'll be the technology chair on the archery team board for next year, which will be fun. I actually hadn't been to practice all semester because of FACES being on Mondays and Wednesdays at the same time, but this Saturday the admissions' office decided to come film for a while, so I went in to take part haha. They got all the more experienced archers to aim at a target for filming and this is what happened:

I was surprised that they let me aim at this target actually lolol I'm not experienced at all, but at least that random stray arrow on the left wasn't mine :P

What's some other random stuff I've done...? Hmmm... there was SEA night, which I helped out with as part of HVA. Last night I went to my first Hack Harvard talk, initially only about 3D printers from formlabs but actually ended up really enjoying the local company, so I'll probably go back next year. I'm kind of gutted that I didn't go earlier, but I'm really glad I did before the semester wrapped up. 

Finals are coming up -- tomorrow's my last day of classes! And then I have to finish my Expos paper, and final project is due on Sunday, and my final art project will be due on Tuesday as well. And then vacation I guess haha. I will be in Menlo Park (Silicon Valley) this summer working at Facebook from July to August, I'm sticking around Boston at my cousin's place til about mid-June since my aunt and grandma are coming over from Chicago, and then for the last bit of June I haven't really figured out yet, but I might go down to New York to hang out with Ling :)

Also, it's springtime!! 

I'm so happy the weather is getting warmer. 

UPDATE ME ON YO LIVES. Snapchat me or something, or chuck me a facebook message. I might reply slow because of timezones and general busy-ness, but it's always nice to hear from people. 

I have something to say about rape

So I've noticed in the news lately that there have been a lot of articles about rape and sexual harassment cases, whether it be rapists being acquitted easily or victims being blamed or important people trivializing rape. My aim in writing the below is to make people on polarized ends of the opinion scale when it comes to rape realize the complexity of the relationship between the law and society's opinions, both of which are legitimate in their own right. I'd like for people to consider both sides of these cases and try to reconcile them so that we are not over-virginizing or condemning victims in these situations, incite more discussion and create a potentially fairer (or at least less contested) way for such cases to be handled in the future.

I'm not talking about stranger-rape or assault-rape or roofie-ing which is generally agreed upon to be outright disgusting and wrong and power-motivated, but rather the fuzzy-lined acquaintance type rape which seems to be coming up in the media more frequently lately. I'm also not going to talk about stupid politicians saying brainless things because that's not worth my time and I'm pretty sure most educated people know when their politicians are being idiots.

There are some things I'd like for people to realize about the justice system:

1) Rape is not necessarily sex without 'consent' in the regular sense. If a drunk girl throws herself at you, it is obvious that she "wants the D" (as one twitter user so eloquently put it), but it is considered rape in the eyes of the law if you then have sex with her, because she is in no state to give proper consent. If she sobers up and is fine with what she did, then okay. But if she regrets her actions and feels you took advantage of her drunken state (which you did), then from a courtroom's perspective you are a rapist. Plain and simple.


[apologies for assuming rapist is male and victim is female, this was in response to a particular case I read, obviously also applies for all combinations of genders]


2) Similarly for underage partners, the issue of one person taking advantage of another is the one that the law punishes, not the actual act of sex itself. A 13 year old cannot be held accountable for their deluded idea of what they want because they aren't old or mature enough to rationalize those decisions yet (note this is the same line of logic which allows underage offenders to have lighter sentences and have their own juvenile prisons, so if you believe minors should have sexual freedom then you are also saying you want all minors to be tried as adults in court). Statutory rape is not rape in the sense of having sex with someone against their will but the act of taking advantage of someone who cannot make legal decisions for themselves (and as an older person one should take responsibility of the situation). A lot of people are irked by the idea that if they turn 18/16 half a year before their significant other they are somehow in violation of the law if they are having sex, but it honestly can't be helped if you think about it since it's the law's job to put concrete boundaries on things and there has to be a line somewhere (if you think it's creepy for a 65 year old man to have sex with a 15 year old then you have proven that point to yourself already).

3) If a girl is wearing provocative clothing, you can't just say she wasn't raped. Someone likened this to walking around the street waving hundred dollar bills around and expecting not to get robbed. Yes, obviously there is risk, but in that case as well, is the thief innocent? There is only risk because we live in a society where people do things like cheat and steal. In an ideal world (which is what the law aims to propel), people should be able to walk around with hundred dollar bills hanging off them without the fear of being mugged. That's just a baseline of trust. In the rape scenario, the act of wearing short skirts is not a green light for rapists. You should ask a dude if you can borrow a hundred bucks from him just like you should always make sure your partner is willing, even if they happen to be wearing provocative clothing.

4) Perhaps the most important point in that it's the counterpoint: The justice system is not perfect, and it certainly does not dish out all the judgment. Society itself judges: this is why rape cases are so complex and have had so much coverage lately, because of the polarized opinions surrounding each case. In response to the points above:

4-1) In terms of victim blaming: a lot of people believe that nobody should get drunk enough to lose control of their senses like this , so since they gave up that control when they decided to drink those 12 consecutive shots, they should be responsible for their actions. Being drunk is not an excuse -- when it comes to cheating on your significant other, when it comes to accidentally killing someone, and of course when creating disorder on the streets at 3am in the middle of the night, so why is it okay to let rape victims off the hook if they were drunk? People should be responsible for their own drinking and know their own limits.That's also a common perspective.

4-3) As clearly demonstrated, people are more likely to blame victims if they were wearing provocative clothing, and though the law protects the ideal world, it's obvious that we don't live in one. So, if you do choose to wear such short dresses, you are basically accepting the risk of backlash from the community if you do get raped, though you are protected by the law. Just like you risk getting robbed if you flash your money, though it doesn't mean the thief is innocent, and you will probably not be punished for it by a judge, people are still going to talk about your stupidity in throwing your money around even if that's not what you intended by it. After all, what are you trying to achieve by wearing such clothing? Obviously to be more attractive to potential mates, says society (however I'd like to reiterate the point that attracting potential mates does not mean attracting every mate -- obviously she should still have freedom of choice in who she decides to sleep with, right?).

Society has an amazing capacity to criticize people who get by the law but they whom see as at least partially accountable. This really needs to be taken into account when people decide to do the things they do and expect only to be judged by the law. After all, why do you think there are so many memes about rape and girls "asking for it" online? People want to stop rape culture and rape humor but the fact is it exists and we should probably question why rather than trying to just block it off without reviewing where it came from.

I honestly think that in a lot of rape cases, it is not a cut-and-dry and only the rapist is accountable. A series of events unfolded prior to the act where there was possibly miscommunication of some sort, or alcohol involved, or any variety of things -- the reason that people blame the victim is not because they are horrible people, but because it is true that victim could have decreased their chances of being taken advantage of in some cases.

Though it is never okay for someone to have sex with someone without their outright consent, the amount of rape and trauma could be decreased if both parties watched their actions and understood what was at risk before doing anything. People often blame society for teaching "don't get raped" instead of "don't rape", but it doesn't make much sense to simply flip it and only teach "don't rape" either --honestly if we taught both wouldn't the number of cases of rape decrease even more? People should watch their own safety and watch out for potentially bad situations as well as make sure they don't hurt anyone. We shouldn't have to live in fear, but it's unrealistic to believe naively that we can walk outside and there is no danger anywhere and we can do whatever we want without risk. Everyone has to pull their weight for a better world.

thoughts about photography

So I was sniffing around my old photobucket account earlier tonight and came across some of the photos I took during china camp in 2006-2007. It's funny because I can remember all the little things that happened in and around those times, just by looking at those pictures. And it made me rethink something --

Last semester, I took a class CB30: History of Photography (taught be Robin Kelsey, he's a boss and it's a super interesting class and if you're at Harvard and interested in art history you should totally take it), and before that I never really considered how much of an impact photography had on the world. Well, first and foremost the class changed that notion for me at least haha. Photography was pretty much the only visual arts subfield I'd never dabbled in properly at all (I didn't count tourist shots, or "bellybutton photography" as we call it in CB30, as real photography). I also developed a notion sometime during my childhood that I didn't like being in photos because they were usually fake and posed, and I didn't like taking photos because for me it took away from the experience of actually being there in the moment and doing the action, since you had to be either focused on the camera or on the real sight in front of you. Also, there are certain scenes that cameras just can't capture -- I've always found that shots of sunsets for eg in particular, though beautiful, lose some of the essence of being there watching one in person.

And yet, here I was looking at photos which were 5 or 6 years old and reliving those moments, memories triggered only by images. I'm pretty sure I wouldn't give past experience a second thought if not for the reminder of photos. The capturing of "the decisive moment" encapsulates a moment in time, forever frozen though real life moves on and forgets. But when we take a look at the film again, it's almost as if that moment is brought back to life in our memory. In fact our memory is flawed, but the evidence on paper (or pixels as it may be these days) is difficult to deny -- these are how we validate our experiences and know they happened for real. That explains why so many celebratory events are shot, because people like to know that there was a time where they achieved something, and they want hard evidence for that past just their unreliable memories.

Man I'm not even sure if I can find myself in this picture but yay swords

How awkward can I be? Oh let me count the ways ... derp hi

Before coming to college, one of my uncles brought me a camera as a gift. I had no clue how to use it (and to be honest am still quite fumblesome with it), but wanted to use it as much as I could so it wouldn't be wasted too much. Actually when I first got it my thought was "ah... but I don't take photos of anything". Last summer though, I put it to use (though I'm sure a lot of my friends were irked by a constant lens in their face) and took a total of 1300+ photos in the span of 5 days (I used it less outside of road trip, but I'd say my extensive use during this period more than made up for it). It's been kind of nice having more photos of events to remember in the future. I guess the fact that I'm no longer an awkward 13 year old blob with too-thick and unshaped eyebrows also helps somewhat.

I guess I've come to appreciate photography more as an important technology in human history as well as a valuable part of chronicling my own life as well. Yeah I'll finally admit it, I used to be a snob that thought people who take photos weren't fully appreciating the moment they were living in then, but now I kind of understand its importance since you can look back at them and relive those moments. They might not be as clear or all-encompassing as actually being there, but sometimes a nostalgic reminder is nice.

"Take a photo, it lasts longer."

Of course, none of this is to say that I would condone taking 50 pictures of the sunset while watching it through your viewfinder over taking 2 or 3 and then putting your camera away to really watch the sun go down and feel the sky change above you either.