Between 22°C and 22°F

The first time I saw snow, it was Christmas Eve. I was walking around a shopping mall in Paris, and a light dusting of icy flakes started to fall innocuously, lazily drifting around in the breeze before settling onto whatever it reached. I watched them melt between the weavings of my gloves quickly, and marveled at how temporary its existence was. The next morning, the city was blanketed in white.

The power of snowflakes to accumulate over time and become that huge hunk of white at the side of the road in the winter is both amazing and somewhat infuriating. Small differences building up over time.

The irritating crust of salt that stuck to the top of my suede boots in freshman year served as a constant reminder of my unsuitability to the new environment, the chilling winter gusts cutting my face and constantly threatening to blow me out of Cambridge because I simply did not belong there.  A filed Non-Resident Alien Tax Return Form.

A glance at the weather report told me it was 22 degrees outside, but it was simply not the right kind of 22 degrees. Instagrams of picnics during a blizzard.

The mutual exclusivity between summer and winter and the ability of a body of matter to only exist in one place at a time; these are the things that I lamented the last two Christmas Eves when I was sitting at some airport or on some plane, suspended in some nondescript location walking along the line between these two seasons and these two countries. But it’s not just a line we walk along around this time of year. For some, it’s all year round.

Of course, I am not just writing about the weather. I am writing about immigration.  Maybe ‘immigration’ is too strict of a term; at least when I think of it I think of the thousands of migrants moving in waves from Asia, Eastern Europe, Africa with their families to start new lives. However, the world has become connected enough now that I think this definition of ‘immigration’ doesn’t entirely encapsulate certain experiences, for instance moving to another country for study. Can this be considered an immigration of sorts?

“So if you’re from New Zealand, how come you can speak English?”

Like the snow, the differences I perceived upon arriving in America as someone from another first world, democratic, economically stable, English-speaking, westernized country were small. Maybe just a smatter of slang, some odd habits and an overabundance of squirrels, on top of the obvious accent. But it became clear to me over time that background matters. Though on the surface the current states of the countries are similar, their histories are surely different. That history dictates a lot of the psyche of the population, the decisions made in politics, the issues that are on the forefront of media coverage. The differences snowball into two distinct nation identities that those like me, who have stakes in both countries, have to navigate.

I often wonder, considering how similar New Zealand and the US are on the surface details, how other international students must find the experience. I suspect Canadians have an even lesser difference felt, but even they celebrate Canada Day and take pride in Canadian-specific activities. But what about the experiences of a Pakistani student, of a Chinese student, of a Kenyan student? They must have a lot of interesting perspectives.

“What can you bring to the Asian American Association, being an international student?”

At first I thought that perhaps America was unaware of its superiority complex, but I realized soon after living here for a while that it was simply unsure of what it really considered one of its people. There is absolutely no homogeny to the population’s values, which can be both a great thing in terms of multiple perspectives, but also a source of many conflicts. 

Of course, there is the image of the quintessential ‘American’, the blonde hair, blue eyed, draped in red-white-and-blue nuclear family who lives in suburbia, patriotism spilling out of their Statue of Liberty-worthy facial features and Constitutional gun collection in the basement. This image, I believe, is largely no longer regarded as the sole image of Americanism, thanks to larger multicultural populations, growing populations in urban areas and a rise in non-traditional family settings.

However, I would say that a lot of time, the image of an ‘American’ does not include those who have recently immigrated. Of course this makes sense. They just arrived, so how could they possibly understand the culture (wait, what is America’s culture?) and fit in with everyone else (wait, is there really an ‘everyone else’ collective, considering the lack of homogeny?)? How long does someone have to be in America to be considered ‘American’? Enough time to get their permanent residency? Citizenship? What about those who were born with American citizenship but since have moved abroad, but then moved back? Are they American too?

Sure, my experiences growing up will forever be tainted by the distinct smell of sulfur, the feeling of Pohutukawa bristles while playing hide and seek and the tickling of a teacher’s brush on my face as it carefully traced out the shape of a Koru fern. Even until college, my memories of Christmas Eve were often rooted deep in the sand of some New Zealand beach, sun blaring down past a weakened ozone, not a cloud – rain or snow – to be seen.

However, as someone who looks to be of Asian descent living in America, my experiences suddenly and inexplicably merged with those who have called themselves ‘Asian-American’ since birth. Because despite my New Zealand upbringing, I still entered the country with a Chinese passport many years ago. I grew up with weekly family dimsum outings, having to memorize traditional Chinese poetry, bringing chopsticks with me to every meal before being taught how to use a knife and fork at age 15. Of course, these experiences are synonymous with many Chinese-Americans as well as Chinese-Kiwis. Being from New Zealand is not stapled over my face, and even after I speak most people do not pick up on my slight accent anymore. Likewise, my childhood in New Zealand does not shield my clearly Asian appearance from the same discrimination that any other Asian might face in America.

“At what point am I a resident of Massachusetts?”

Looking up driver laws for immigrants in America is likely to make you more confused than you already were. There are certain laws that pertain to those who hold foreign licenses who are not residents of the state, and different ones for the people who are. A lot of times, it is also dependent on how long you have been in the country. But does that mean since the first time I came to the country, disregarding trips back home? Or does it literally mean the length of stay since I last landed at an American airport? Also what does it even mean to be a resident of Massachusetts if I’m staying in a college dorm with a temporary address?

Roll forward two years from the first time I came home drenched in sleet, cotton socks wet from slush, teeth chattering as I scrambled for the heater dial? I still don’t much enjoy the snow, but at least I can survive in it.  A pair of trusty Bean boots to blend me into the New England crowd, gloves peeping out of pockets, scarves lining my wardrobe, cashmere lining my drawers, wool lining my far-too-warm-for-Auckland coat.

I guess after all this time of facing the weird differences between my now two home countries, you kind of learn to live and adapt to both. The result? Now I’m just a semi-foreigner in both countries. My kiwi friends love to make fun of my semi-American accent nowadays =_= When at school, I miss New Zealand and sometimes just want to come back to hear the bleating of the sheep across the road and relax with no worries for days on end. After I get back, of course I would miss the busy-body movement in the packed cities and late night adventures in America. Being stuck in the middle is part of the job description I guess, but we have to try to live in the present as much as we can since every place has so much to offer.

Again this Christmas Eve I am sitting in a summer bach up north of Auckland with a killer view of a lagoon. This year, it is overcast and the clouds threaten to spill over with rain. But the temperature is 22 degrees high, and right now at least, I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Happy Holidays everyone! I guess the next time I write will probably be after new years.

Something about photography: Part I maybe

Hi kids

So I guess this month's post is going to be about photography. Last weekend was AAA's spring photoshoot over Weeks' bridge and I realized a lot of people have misconceptions about how photos come out the way they do. So I thought I'd do a post about it.

Basically, there's something to be said about the difference between the effect of the camera body, lens and post-processing on a photo. A lot of people who don't know much about photography kind of lump the body and lens together as the 'camera' unit, and don't really think about post-processing. I used to be like this before I started taking photos. 

There were two cameras that we used primarily to shoot with. One was mine, a Sony NEX7 and Alex's, an Olympus EPL1. As you can tell from the images, the type of camera used doesn't matter as much as the lens or the post processing. Unless you're doing professional photos, a good kit lens will do you pretty well. A step up from that would be a fast lens for bokehgons in the background. (A fast lens is a lens with a big maximum aperture, or low f-stop number. This means it can let more light into the camera at once, and there is a shallower depth of field for subject focus (see physics textbook). For instance, the image below was shot with a lens at f2.0 which is relatively low. My lens ranges from f1.7 to f22.)

^bokehgons (bokeh = blurry background, bokehgonz = our slang for hexagon-shaped blurries)

There is also the difference between the types of photos your camera can produce. RAW and jpeg photos both can come out of your camera. Fancy cameras can even let you shoot both of these at the same time. RAW files are not really images at all, but they are a set of numbers that tell the information for each pixel. So, they are completely uncompressed and literally are the numbers that your sensor reads from the light entering the camera. If you have a 24 megapixel camera, each RAW file is 24 MB big. If you have a 10MP camera, your RAW files will be 10MB big and so on. Think of RAW as an intermediate step between taking the photo and making a JPG. More often then not, people will let the camera process the RAW into a JPG, but sometimes it's more helpful to immediately save the RAW and process it later on the computer. 

Here is a test shot I did with my camera, one that was RAW and which I converted into jpeg after loading onto my computer, and one that was converted by the camera into JPEG (neither have been post-processed except for the raw to jpeg conversion):

^RAW

^JPEG

(Both these taken with Sony Nex-7 with kit lens)

EDIT: The nex-7 seems to have a really subtle difference between RAW/JPEG that people can't quite spot so here's a starker example from another camera I found online (source):

The differences are pretty subtle, but basically the colors on the RAW without other tweaks are usually flatter/duller (In the bike photo, you can kind of see this in the sky, the contrast between the water and sky in the jpeg is greater with the sky being lighter, whereas in the RAW they are more similar). This is because the processor in the camera puts emphasis on certain things to make the picture look better, while an untweaked RAW is exactly what the camera sensor saw. Some of you might ask, "Why shoot RAW at all then?"

So the reason I'm even talking about this is that because RAW files leave behind all the extra numbers, they're much nicer to post-process or edit since there is a lot of information retained that may have been lost if it had been thrown out in a jpeg compression. For instance, if you had been shooting into the sun and your subject's face is dark, you could easily pull out their features if you have the RAW file even if in the photo it looks completely black. This would be nearly impossible to do with a jpeg.

For the AAA photoshoot, I post-processed pretty heavily, since it was cloudy that day I wanted to add more of a warm atmosphere and brighten things up since it was supposed to be a spring photoshoot derp (it was actually slightly drizzling while we were taking photos). Here you can see some before/after comparisons for reference (I use Photoshop CS6 to edit my photos, you can also use Appeture or Lightroom for this task):

Taken with Sony Nex-7, Pentax 50mm f1.7 lens

Since I use photoshop, I'm able to save the edits I make on one RAW file (in the end, it comes down to transformation functions on numbers in the RAW file) and apply them to other photos. I did about the same thing for every photo, for consistency's sake. Of course, what comes out of the transformation depends on the input of the RAW file. Since we were actually shooting RAWs with two cameras that day, you might be able to spot some differences between photos' coloring since I used the same filter transform for photos from both cameras since I was too lazy to make 2 separate filters to make them absolutely consistent derp. For each photo though, I had to fiddle with the sliders a bit for optimal brightness and contrast. 

So, to illustrate what I mean by post processing vs camera/lens:

this photo was taken with Olympus EPL1 &  Panasonic Lumix 20mm f1.7 lens.  

You can kind of tell that the Olympus RAW picture is a bit brighter than the one from the Sony. But with slapping on a filter and twiddling some sliders, we can make them more or less consistent with each other. 

Okay so now that we've got that out of the way, you might be wondering what post-processing can and cannot accomplish. Basically you can change pretty much anything with post-processing EXCEPT:

- Blurriness/motion blur:

unsalvageable. usually due to long shutter exposure

- Out of focus:

unsalvagable (the background is in focus, the subjects out of focus. click to zoom if you're unconvinced, this is a more subtle example). happens due to bad focusing, either autofocus focused on the wrong thing or manually

- Noise, to some extent:

^original test shot. usually due to high ISO

^50% noise reduce (You can do this in Adobe camera raw. This is already super high, I usually don't like to go above 20 or 25). you can still see the noise

^100% noise reduce

Note it is sometimes desireable to have some noise in your photos. Makes it look more film-like or nostalgic, and especially works well with black and white photos. That being said,  you can add it afterward.  Digital noise looks really bad compared to to real film grain though. 

This is a noisy ass photo and I kind of like it that way

Mostly, I just use post-processing for color correction/lighting adjustments or to remove skin blemishes for portraits. I have also been known to cut together two shots to get what I need out of them lolol: 

^ before and after of a headswap (I took another photo of Eric on the left and Jesika on the right was blinking, but it was easier to swap in Eric's head from that pic than Jesika's)

You will see the advertising industry use the liquify tool in post-processing to make models skinnier/shape things as they see fit (and garnering media criticism in its wake). I only use liquify for fun such as to give my male friends boobs or bigger biceps hehe.

This is getting long so I guess I'll wrap this up for now, hopefully that gives you a taste of what post-processing can achieve. If people like this maybe I'll do more about cameras/lenses/more about editing/let me know :3

On nationalism, travel and culture

^ by Garry Gay. 

So I was sitting in my Math class a couple of weeks ago, mentally reading out the equation I was supposed to be solving. "x + y + z" ... "ex plus why plus zee" --

Hold up. ZEE? Had I really just thought that in my head? As someone who learned the alphabet ended in Zed, this was a mindblow moment for me. Had I spent enough time here in the USA to become, God forbid, one of them? Had all the teasing of my slightly curled 'r's over the summer really been a reflection of a changed national identity? Should I try to turn back? Should I just plow forward and become full blown 'MURICAAANNN?

Yeah, it's comical. Here I was questioning everything I had ever known about the alphabet in a multivariable calculus class in my fourth semester of college. To be fair, this experience, coupled with a few other things I've been thinking about for a while led me to wonder what my thoughts were on changing culture as a result of travel, and how this all fit in with nationalism. So I guess here's my exploration of my thoughts in writing.

To start -- Let's be real, nationalism is huge in the US. From awkward Annenberg dinners where people would stand up and sing Stars and Stripes, or Primal Scream where dozens of naked bodies chanted "U-S-A!" with a large American flag while they ran through the Yard, American patriotism is kind of inescapable here, and it's led to the 11% of us who are international students to be left confused and awkward in our seats waiting for the national anthem to end and for our friends to sit back down to continue our dinner conversations.

I've never really been a fan of nationalism, since I think it leads to a lot of unnecessary competition and unhealthy antagonism purely out of "my country is better than yours". Sure, I like to wave around New Zealand's history of social progressiveness and recent ranking of #1 in the world in terms of freedom and social mobility, but that's really out of a response to the rampant patriotism here than anything else. Given the possibility, I'd love for all countries to have such good records of freedom and social welfare, as well as all the things that New Zealand is perhaps not so good at.

Furthermore, as an international student who is not only from New Zealand but who was also born in China, I'm not really sure what to make of my national identity. I feel like a lot of my experience gained from all these places I've lived has impacted me and the way I think about things now. So, why categorize myself under only one nationality? Like a magpie, I could just collect customs that I like from places that I visit. If this means I prefer and use the pronunciation of the letter 'z' to be Zee rather than Zed, so be it. Someone did bring up a particularly convincing argument that it makes the alphabet song rhyme.

There are many things I've picked up in the states, which I'm not going to be ashamed for on accounts of "becoming one of them", thanks friends at home who will nonetheless tease me about it. Likewise, there are plenty of things I've grown up with and probably would never change about myself brought over from New Zealand and as part of my family's Chinese background, even if it means being a perpetual foreigner and being seen as "Un-American" (to be honest, the Americans have enough of a problem accepting their own citizens as part of their nationality, so I'm not even going to try to qualify).

Another thing that makes me go "Hmmm" is the recent-ish (okay, like one or two months ago) controversy surrounding a Harvard Grad's opinion on Auckland University's policy for international student, which Alice Wang has an excellent piece in the Herald about. What makes me go Hmmm is all the comments saying that the university exists to serve its national students and its national students only. Also talk about immigrants ruining the country. I don't really understand it, possibly because I live in Auckland and have no concept of the rest of the country's perception of multiculturalism. Regardless,  I feel like this inner-country centric thinking is somehow doomed to fail. The world is more open than it ever was and you get weird people like me who don't really know where they belong floating around everywhere, and that's kind of a great thing.

Maybe because I've been an international student here, and it can be kind of isolating when you're constantly reminded that you are second-class (what are the words the government uses? Oh yes, NON-RESIDENT ALIEN) compared to regular citizens.

In my ideal world, one would be able to travel around until they find a place where they feel like they really fit in and enjoy the culture of the place and just be able to live there like anyone else. And if or when they get bored of it -- go somewhere else for a few years, why not? This of course would only be truly ideal after we fix all the problems in most of the world right now, but let's at least try to work toward that goal instead of turning inwards and shutting off our borders to everyone outside out of what -- xenophobia? fear of culture dilution? economic failure? 

In whatever case, my passport has a silver fern on it but I'd like to be considered a citizen of the world if I could. All I want is to be able to ride an American sheep while eating escargot with foie gras and have Gelato for dessert with chopsticks. On top of a kangaroo. (And those those are just the places I've seen so far :p!,) 

Requested: FBU Essay 2013

Disclaimer: This is my essay from FBU's application last year. I don't know how they chose the group of freshmen, so it could very well be that this essay is not actually a good essay (nor do I claim that it is a good essay in any way haha). But, since I was asked for it, I just put it here so anyone who wants it can have it so it's fair.

---

Prompt: In one page, please describe how you think mobile technology can help the world become more open & connected?


A study by Netguide NZ this past week showed that 84% of smartphone owners say they use their device daily, and 45% of say they use their device more often than in the last year. Similarly, 44% of laptop owners say they use their laptop more often, but PC owners predominantly reported using their PCs less (26%) or the same amount (53%). I am currently sitting on a bus from Boston to New York City, and in my very limited field of vision I can spot 3 laptops and 4 smartphones out and being used, all while the vehicle is in motion. Mobile technology is clearly everywhere, its ubiquity waiting to be taken advantage of.

By its very definition, mobile technology is designed to be carried around – it follows every one of us in our daily lives and if it were a person, would probably know more about us than our closest friends or family members. Through a combination of this fluid mobility and communication technology, it becomes possible to reach anyone, anywhere and at any time as long as they are carrying a mobile device. Personal information transfer in particular becomes almost instant; I can ask a favor of a friend in New Zealand for my roommate in Massachusetts, put them in touch with a high school classmate in Paris -- all while sitting on this bus – and boom, three people who would otherwise never have met are in contact with each other.

Mobile communication gives people a reason to connect with each other. It may seem strange for many to speak up to a stranger in real life, but because mobile communication and especially social networking sites like Facebook make it much easier for someone to show who they are at a glance online, it becomes easy to filter those who we would like to get to know better – I find out that she likes the same bands that I do so I know we have at least one point of common interest to talk about. Though this increased transparency of society is a double-edged sword in terms of privacy issues, as this balance is fine-tuned it is clear that the potential to make the world a more open forum for any discussion at all is rooted in this technology. The free internet is by definition open: an open space for anyone to express themselves, to share their experiences.

Furthermore, these waterholes of open experiences are for anyone to drink from. The way mobile communication keeps the world connected is obvious, but the full extent to which it does may be underestimated. The internet itself is unequivocally a gold mine of experiences to learn from: websites like Reddit or Quora allow people to learn about things they may never come across in their own lives, an opportunity to live the life of someone else for a short paragraph or thread. However, when this potential for knowledge growth is coupled with mobility, its effects are multiplied. In a world where people are more active, doing more things outside of their homes, moving around not only within their own cities but between them as well as abroad, mobile technology becomes indispensable in the sharing of experience.

As an international student, I can’t imagine losing contact with my friends back home, as I learn from their experiences just as I tell them about mine. We live different lives, but for a few seconds with the use of a messenger app on my iPhone, maybe on the short walk to class, we connect and our experiences collude. Mobile technology has the ability to exponentially grow human knowledge and experience and make everyone richer for it, with minimal effort and no strings attached (literally. Thank God for cordless phones!).

The social impacts of mobile technology are enormous. For the first time in history, it is possible to ask a stranger online how to prepare for a technical interview on Quora while sitting in the waiting room, to learn the ins and outs of the safe industry on Reddit in a matter of minutes and to find out more about someone than you would be able to in the timespan of a first meeting simply by seeing their Facebook profile. While whether this is positive or negative is widely debated, one thing is clear: the impact is there and it is acting every day. If we can harness its effects, mobile technology could very well be change the ways in which humans communicate with and learn from each other.

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?

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.

There is no place like 127.0.0.1

3 years in China
16 years in New Zealand
4 months in America
29 days in New Zealand

Home changes all the time. The longer you've been somewhere, the harder it gets to leave; the human tendency to 'settle' and colonize a certain area and call it 'home' is inescapable. It's so easy to get used to routine and often we're disturbed when we have to move. Of course there are prolonged travels, there are nomads and gypsies -- but in the end, we all come from somewhere and in the end we end up somewhere.

A certain kind of emotion is stirring in me again, not nearly as potent as it was when I first left this place but definitely the pain of severance rears itself against my nerves these few days. I will be gone for a longer time than I was before. Lots of things happen in a year, people can change a lot in a year. Maybe it will be interesting in the end.

So, where is home for me now? Maybe it is exciting to always be moving around at this age. Never really belonging anywhere, always darting between this place and the next and making new discoveries? Or perhaps... Home is where the heart is; home is 127.0.0.1.

(btw, does anyone know why pictures of the internet visualized are always blue? what's up with that)

Whoever I need to call, whenever I miss them -- these days we can be connected through the internet. This is the home that has never changed through the years for me. I was first exposed to the internet at the age of 6 or 7 by my dad, who gave me a personal computer in my room at the time. I set up my first email address at 9 and started using MSN. This was the beginning of a beautiful 10 year relationship that put me in contact with more people than you could ever imagine. Then facebook came along, naturally, and nowadays it seems anyone I want to keep in touch with is only a few clicks away. Whether in the northern or southern hemisphere, regardless of the miles that separate us, the simple act of logging in is enough to teleport our hearts closer together. I think there's something very homely in that, as if there is some virtual country where we can just appear and disappear from whenever and we feel close to the ones we love.

It's like a town right? You can go to the pub and catch up with friends (Facebook), hang out in a variety of places (MMOs, dota/sc2/lol), go to the library (Wikipedia), or to school (edX, TED), go to the movies (YouTube), go shopping (asos, amazon, ebay), do dodgy back alley drug deals (craigslist)...the list goes on. Honestly it's almost like an idyllic society where the only thing you don't do is eat. It's a utopia where people escape from their daily lives, but it's just as real as any other environment -- and because of that, we should aim to keep it accessible for everyone. It's almost more equal than the physical world in this way, since on the internet everyone starts off equal and everyone has an equal opportunity to resources regardless of where they are from.

Therefore, the death of Aaron Swartz is of course a tragedy -- one of the leading activists promoting open-source and free knowledge and information, purportedly driven to suicide by an arbitrary lawsuit. The upcoming and already-existing cyber warfare is probably only going to grow in the next few years, with governments repeatedly trying to instill more control and censorship, in an effort to create some kind of hierarchical system within the web. But let's think about this -- what we currently experience is perhaps the true democracy; the internet is truly run by the people. Anyone can become revered, and tossed aside again in a matter of seconds, depending on what the majority want or say, regardless of who they are in real life or what kind of background they come from. It's fast paced, instant, and absolutely addictive. And yet, the internet seems to be running generally smoother than the real world right now. Maybe we should let it be and see where it ends up, if only as a simulation model in a study of interest?

Obviously more complications come by in the physical world, but there's no need to instill the same level of control we have there into the virtual because of that, right? For some, it is the only remaining voice they have to voice opinion, and the access to free knowledge grows a better educated population not only within countries that can afford it but for the entire world -- we learn so much about people in places we have never even heard of, all within the time it takes to read a single forum post. For many, it is but an invaluable tool, and that is enough. But for me, it is one of the places I can truly consider home, the home I have grown up in and have relied on to be the baseline support that never changes. I'd like to keep living in this home with all my friends please, so let's try to keep it that way.


3 years in China
16 years in New Zealand
4 months in America
29 days in New Zealand
For everything else, there's Mastercard the Internet. :)

Keep in touch guys, I'll miss you kiwis in the next year eh.

AU vs Harvard and stuff in between

1. I didn't notice before, but my last post was my 300th milestone. :O I've been at this for quite a while it appears. So, in any case, welcome to the 301st post on this blog hahaha

2. I am waiting for about 10am to have breakfast today because the mail room doesn't open til then and I have a package. Hence the blogging. Actually I have two midterm exams tomorrow and my time may be slightly better served studying for those, but I thought I'd update since someone asked me to blog about this topic (maybe as regular decision deadline for college is in 1.5 months, early decision's just passed and people wanna reconsider their options). So, without further adieu, I'll try to answer the prompt as best as I can, though keep in mind that these judgements and experiences are purely my own based on my year thus far, and everyone's college experience is different :)

Academics

Okay, so first off when comparing tertiary education, we probably want to look at academics. Note that I've chosen to major in Computer Science here where the ranking is supposedly lower. Also I was in Engineering for a semester and a half at AU. This is because it's stupid to choose to study something just because the school you're going to is good at it, if it doesn't line up with your interests. But wait, you say, why not go to a college where the CS program is stronger? Because Liberal Arts education. Something that really attracted me to study in the US was a lack of knowledge of what I wanted to do with the rest of my life (and quite honestly I'm still lost now). I was interested in a lot of things during high school -- in my senior year I took classes in English, Math, Chemistry, Physics, Art History, French and Painting. So yes I kind of liked a lot of things haha. At liberal arts college, you get 4 years of a much broader education: for instance, here, my requirements for majoring in CS only involves 12-14 classes (note a standard schedule of 4 classes per semester x 4 years = 32 classes total, so you still have 20-18 classes left after finishing major requirements). Even if I were to minor in something, that's 4-6 classes, leaving me with 12-16. Of course, there are more inflexible paths: a BS engineering track will probably land you with 20 classes requirement, but that's still 12 left for gen ed requirements (we have 8, in varying genres of fields) and electives. Btw the degree I am doing is a Bachelor of Arts, and I'm unsure right now if I want to continue study after graduating and go get a graduate degree. It really depends what opportunities crop up in the next 4 years.

That kind of flexibility isn't something I would have had at AU. Engineering is pretty much a set track (though I was conjoining with BA), as far as I know most people have space for the 2 gen eds required and that's pretty much it unless they want to do summer school or add a 5th course each semester. Note that on the BA/BE track I was doing I would have graduated in 5 years instead of 4, and I was taking 5 courses both semesters while I was there. Also note that the AU degree is intended to be vocational -- I would have been able to start working in the engineering industry right after graduation with a BE (and in fact not many choose to stay to do a graduate degree).

'

Note 21 contact hours at AU vs 12.5 per week, yet I still have more work here

In terms of workload -- it's definitely heftier here. With only 4 classes this semester I am still doing more work than I have ever done before in my life (excluding art in high school), and I have a relatively light workload compared to most other people (actually this may be a testament to how lazy I have been in the rest of my life, but let's not get into that right now). Problem sets are weekly, with one being due on the same day the next one comes out (generalization, definitely varies between classes but just my exp), some classes have 2 or 3 problem sets due per week. When I was at AU there were some days where I went home and didn't do any work for the rest of the day, and as far as I remember there was no regular homework due ever, to the point where even if it was irregular I was unlikely to do it due to lack of routine, plus it would be something like a static equilibrium question to do overnight or a set of tutorial questions that we'd be going over again in class anyway. That just doesn't happen here, because homework contributes toward final grades and if you slack off for a day you fall behind -- a day is worth A LOT here. There are some days where at night I have thought back to the that morning and realized how much I've accomplished, and the morning feels soooo long ago. It's a good feeling :) (except when you don't get it and you realize you slacked off too much that day aad ACTUALLY did nothing ahahahahaha Saturday 3rd November 2012 ._.)

Lifestyle

Yay, now that the boring stuff is out of the way, something to consider is definitely the difference in college life here compared to in NZ.

Canaday. This is where I live, also known as the ugliest freshman dorm on campus (it's really not that bad)

1. We live in dorms, on campus. This really make a difference in the way you interact with people as well as what you accomplish during the day -- because transportation wastes less time, and everything is super close to get to. This also means extracurriculars run a lot later here -- Archery goes from 7pm to 9pm, and I don't mind it. Before, Badminton went until about 10pm at AU and I found that a massive nuisance (but I went anyway), just because I didn't want to go home that late from town. Something I have also done here is watched the GSL finals in the Science Center from 2am to 5am in the morning. Yes that's an extracurricular activity -- but dw it's in the weekend so it's ok, can sleep the whole day after that haha. Also, one of the reasons I never went partying in Auckland was just because getting to town and back was such a massive chore (plus parking is so hard to find) that I just didn't think it was worth the effort. Here it's a lot easier to get around, there's always people to go back to the dorms with at 1am in the morning and so I've gone to a lot more social events because of that. Definitely not every weekend though, but there are people who do. I have also still not been to a frat party or final club yet. I never went to any steins earlier this year because of the cbf-degree associated with going into town. I went clubbing ONCE in Auckland earlier this year.

2. Community and involvement. Something that comes with living on campus is the feeling of being part of a larger group. Whether it's bouncing around the 29304823 emails about club events and choosing which to go to (I attend at least 1 or 2 a week), or preparing for The Game (Harvard-Yale football this weekend what), there is just always so much going on within the bubble here. I think that sense of community is definitely lacking in the AU student body. I voted for UC here and I didn't vote for AUSA or any of those elections while i was at AU (granted, at that point I was no longer enrolled and thought it would be against morals for me to vote for something I wouldn't be part of soon). I've also joined a lot more clubs than I did before, but that may be due to quantity demanded related to price (since it costs money to join clubs at AU)... but even though I paid for KAC and stuff I never went to any events, which was a bit sad. Actually I think I should have done that, gone to a lot more student club events while I was in Auckland. I don't know if I was shy or anything like that, maybe I just thought that since I already knew people there was no real reason to go and talk awkwardly with strangers, but that's something I'd really recommend for people at AU: GET INVOLVED IN STUFF. I actually look up to the 2nd-4th years in KAC like Victor and Seb and stuff and am a bit jealous that they are so close to everyone in their organization and are so involved. I think those clubs are really essential to the college experience where ever you are. Also it's great for networking. Actually I'm not a huge fan of networking myself but there's definitely a lot of that going on here all the time.

Class photo :) See if you can spot me (hint I'm in the front row)

3. People are strangers. Something I'm sure Aucklanders experience going to AU is the fact that you go to high school with your friends and then you go to uni with your friends. Of course you meet new people, but I met more people in my first week here than I met in my whole half year at AU. Most people are strangers coming into college, because people come here from all over the US and all over the world. Something you ask when making acquaintances is "Where are you from?" whereas in Auckland it's generally assumed you're from the area, or at best Dunedin or Christchurch. That's not to say that you don't meet amazing people in AU though. Though I only met some of my Engineering friends in March this year, and we only had 4 months together before I left, we still skype and chat fairly regularly and I'd say they are actually closer to me than many of my friends I've known longer. Likewise, when you are forced to live with strangers, you grow very close very quickly -- the amount of time you spend with those around you here is continuous since there is no such thing as "going home" and avoiding all contact. It's so interesting in the first few weeks when you see a social structure forming from nothing -- friendship groups form, people move around, meet new people and hang out with them, and become really close friends overnight (literally). Something I'll call the Kun phenomenon (named after a friend who invited me over to a pizza night the day after I met him at Karaoke) is exceeedddingly common in the first few days of college here.

Hyperbolic time chamber

4. A new life. Because everyone is a stranger here, because you are entering a new environment where you will live, as if being locked into a hyperbolic time chamber for a period of time, It's as if you are starting a new life. There are no preconceptions -- nobody knows who you are. I remember in high school I wanted to leave and move at one point because I just wanted a fresh start. It's been so nice here. Also, there is no weird hierarchy that I've experienced. Those of you who know me know that I get somewhat uncomfortable when people look up to me too much or put me on some kind of pedestal because there are just so many false expectations that come out of that. It kind of got weird after I found out I got in and people in Auckland seemed to know about it even if I didn't know them personally (it was also kind of ego-inflating to know that I was kind of famous but I feel bad about that haha. At least I'm admitting that I'm self-absorbed?).  But here, everyone's an equal. It's a really nice, humbling experience. It's as if you can create yourself again from the ground up, without the pressure of expectations to change the way you grow. Like the natural recrystallization and grain growth of metal after annealing something that had been cold worked (yeah I went there chemmat 121 reference hi5 engineers).

Ayyyyy dat zebra ass (unrelated diagram of pearlite)

Actually I didn't realize until now, but this is the first time I've really felt free, for a really long time if not ever. I was an emotional wreck before I came out here (and for a long while after I got here as well). There was a time where I questioned my decision to leave at all and whether or not it was worth it to leave everything behind. I actually contemplated staying in Auckland, but I'm glad I made a leap of faith to a new experience.

5. Growth. I've definitely grown as a person (and as a metal grain, apparently) since coming here, in confidence and in ideas. Because there are so many different opinions and mindsets around me, from all different walks of life (the American population, as you should all have noticed, is greatly varied in terms of ideals as evidenced by the close election last week. Compared to the largely homogeneous liberal views of the NZ masses, there is a lot more variety here in terms of how people think the world should be etc), I've had the opportunity of hearing about issues from all different perspectives. Also people here are generally more well read and knowledgeable than me, so I've experienced a nice diffusion of knowledge from high to low concentration. Ie. I've learned a lot, it's been great. Also I'm starting to get less intimidated by authority figures; during FIP my leaders told me about how she emailed professors to ask if she could take a class -- at the time I thought it was crazy but then I did it and got into my phil class (which I was originally not placed into), so from that experience I learned the true power of the question "Is it possible?"... you should always try :)

...
Well it's now 12pm and I haven't done nearly enough work for tomorrow's midterm, I just skyped with Billy since it's his birthday today (Happy birthday Billy :D 21st!), so now I'll actually do some work ._. Hopefully this was helpful to some people, and if there are any other questions please feel free to facebook or email me and I'll do my best to reply, also if you want another blog detailing anything more I'd be happy to do that (I want to keep up my at least once a month updates, so any ideas of blogs would be helpful to me :P)