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.

Michelangelo

TRIGGER WARNING don't read this if you are squeamish
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Moonlight reflected off his pale skin as I ran my hands along his collarbone, pausing slightly before shyly tucking my fingers below the neckline of his cotton shirt.

His glassy, surprised and innocent eyes pierced into mine. I was excited now, hungry. I let my other hand drift under his shirt from below, feeling the cold hardness of his chest; the refreshing coolness of his skin against the fervor of mine felt sharp as a knife, and just as icy.

How I needed to strip him of everything, to dig my fingers under his skin and release pure red ecstasy into the night. I quickly took off his shirt and threw it aside, marveling at the sight before me. He was the pinnacle of purity trapped in a human body, such a pity. I desperately needed to tarnish the perfect whiteness of his outer shell; only corruption could save his soul now and release the ethereal being inside.

I closed my eyes and breathed in, shakily. I was too far in to be calm now, so close to setting him free.

I got to work.

The first was barely a scratch, a light abrasion that turned his white flesh pink.
The second was deeper.
The third released a stream that slowly crawled down his chest and stomach.

From this point, I have no recollection anymore of what happened. I became lost in the sight of that sudden flash of red against the darkness, entranced by the vibrance of his free flowing blood.

When I came to, I was already walking away with that brilliant red over my hands and knife, stepping over his entrails and leaving behind his mangled, stripped body. The single eye left in its socket watched me walk away, still glassy and surprised.

I smiled to myself.

I had done it. I had finally helped him transcend humanity.

I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.

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Creative writing prompt inspired by a Michelangelo quote.

Now everyone thinks I'm disturbed lololol

Narratives of our lives

Story sheep

(Context for people who don't know who this is: This is SHREK, a merino sheep from New Zealand who avoided capture and being shorn for 6 years between 1998 and 2004 by hiding in caves. He took 20 minutes to shear and he produced 27kg (60lb) of high quality merino wool, enough to make 20 large men's suits.)

(Context on context ie. why I am including this story: because I always include a themed picture of a sheep on my blog posts these days, and he is kind of the sheep with the most impressive story.)

Over this summer, I started to get into a weird habit of asking people to tell me a story. I'm not really sure how it started, but I think one day I was sitting on the edge of a comfortable silence, ready to fall into awkwardness, when the words kind of rolled out of my mouth.

"Tell me a story."

Not like a polite request or an aggressive order, more like a curious command. The other person looked a little surprised, but obliged. Fascinated by the power of this simple phrase, I ended up using it over and over and again and again until my new friend was all out of stories over the next few weeks. I felt like I gotten to know a stranger and I had gained a new friend. And so I was satisfied.

I think a lot of people fall into the trap of thinking they are boring people, or that not much happens in their lives compared to others. I'd like to contest that; I think most if not everyone has such interesting things to say if only they would pay attention and try to present it in book form. I'd bet that a lot of people would pay attention and be interested in what they have to say. In the end, I wouldn't say the stories I was told by others this summer were super extraordinary of anything, but they carry with them a sentiment of the familiar, of nostalgia that I too had once put away in a box in the back of my mind.

These are the narratives of our everyday lives, the stupidly ordinary tales we tell of silly things we used to do and think and eat and play with. Not only that, but they comprise an ever-changing narrative -- as we grow and learn and change, our narration reiterates into a more cynical, or dismissive, or hopeful lens through which we look upon the past.

Story-telling is a social habit with startling longevity. It's how we propagated our history before records existed, it's how we accumulated experience through generations and, of course, it's how we make friends and get to know people today.

I decided that stories are probably my favourite way of getting to know the inner workings of people's minds. You can learn so much about someone by their choice of language and their perspective on their experiences. In the purest form of translation, intangible thoughts and feelings are translated into something that can propagate to and blossom in others. And for each of us that tells a story, many more also gain something to retell through their own lens, leading to richer and richer experiences.

Can these still be considered truth, given that they've been pulled and stretched and warped beyond what the original storyteller ever intended? I'm sure different people would say different things, but my opinion is that it's irrelevant; the experience of sharing a story is like retweeting a tweet through a chain, where eventually you run out of characters because there are so many @tags of people's usernames -- though maybe the original tweet is lost, you now have a net of friends tied together with 140 characters. Storytelling is like the glue that dries transparently on relationships, so barely noticeable that you probably would never even attribute your friendships to it.

Maybe I'm just too metaphorical of a thoughtster, but I really enjoy the idea that such subtlety in language can reveal the beauty of an undiscovered mind.

Am I still a kid for making people tell me stories as if they were my grandparents? Yea I'd say probably. Still going to enjoy them though :) 21 and hungry for tales of adventure! Message me if you know a good one :D

heres me and the cheesecake my friends bought me for my birthday :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!,) 

One of the 1%

I wonder if they know how it feels, those knife-eyes on the street, the picket-sign waves of the 99%, outside my office. I wonder if they have lived my rather yacht-less, mediocre 1-bedroom apartment life. My suit tailored with bleeding, pricked hands in the middle of the night in my kitchen, next to the drip-dripping of a faucet that our landlord has promised us to be fixed but still isn't, smashed dishes strewn across the ground from a fight that left me here alone with our son, barely asleep in the next room.

I wonder if they see through me, entering the workplace in the morning in my grandfather's old jacket and changing, ashamed, in the bathroom before I begin my day on the floor. I wonder if any of the wandering subway-sitters notice me and think anything of this seemingly scruffy man getting on at the Wall Street station.

The beggars on the train plead with tears in their eyes that I spilled on the floor of the hospital, hands shakily taking the scan from the light box of my son's small body.

Leukemia, they told us it was.

Since that day, my life began to be defined by sterile white walls and the sickly smell of too-clean fluids. A new page wiped clean of joy with rubbing alcohol which only stung our eyes and hearts. The insurance company wouldn't give us anything after they learned about the condition, and then of course She left in grief.

So I look at these picketers and bitter folk, and question What was I to do? 

I bluffed my way to the trading floor with only medical fees in mind, yet they continue to make me feel guilty for the riches I have apparently stolen from them, for the weekends I do not spend holidaying away from my son's bed, for the checks I hand off solemnly and dutifully to the white-coats; they continue to spit at my ugly faux-leather shoes and scream injustice as if my life were better than theirs.

I wonder if they know what it's like, seeing their angry faces and feeling shame and embarrassment for my profession, the only thing that will put food on the table and keep my son alive. I wonder if they would trade places with me if they did.

On days where I feel soulless, I am probably twice as bitter as any of them -- and it is not because of greed.

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.

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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.

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? :/

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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.

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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.

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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 :(

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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.

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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

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.

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.

Colours of Fall

(Fall Foliage, Harvard Yard, Massachusetts, 2009)

These are the colours of Fall: Yellow, Orange, Red, Brown -- with a hint of green on a changing blue sky.

YELLOW
The transition. Summer is happiness, the sun is yellow, the lemony freshness of a slight fall breeze deceives us all before the change. It is a slight colour, maybe off-white or cream, the aging pages of a summer diary that's been left out near the salt water for too long. The green fades to yellow first -- a change so small we almost don't see it coming. Like meeting a stranger, like first introductions, like superficial small talk. All laying the base-coat foundations for a new life.

ORANGE
The beautiful. The turn of fall, before it gets too cold: the heat of summer remains, but the beauty of fall creeps in. Like a tree catching alight. Citrus sweetness flows around the yard and maybe in a strong breeze some will fall and swirl around you, dancing fire fairies enchanting and blessing the turn of a new harvest season. A warm hug, a pat on the back, a brush of the hand.

RED
It is passionate. Full of extremity and urgent as needing to jump into the deep end of a pool. Fall comes quickly out of Summer -- one day you are roasting in a singlet and the next you need to take out a jacket and cover up your legs with jeans: like red-hot urgency in a freezer. Clinging to a heater, kneading your face into the crevice of your best friend's neck, a not-so-subtle hard gripping onto fingers. It is fragile, highly transient and so, so intense. Red leaves are the hardest to keep, red dye the quickest to wash away with water.

BROWN
The Settling. It is not death, or the end of something. It is the start of comfort, acceptance and understanding. It is not the unpleasant colour that everyone makes it out to be: not diarrhea, or rot, or slushy mud. It is rather the familiar smell of hot cocoa after a day out in the wind, a robust trunk that you know would never fall under your weight. The swirling melted pot of chocolate in some people's eyes. Brown makes you feel fuzzy.

(Eliot Porter, Pool in a Brook, New Hampshire 1953)*

Like washing paint down a drain: let's observe these colours transition into and through each other and change into something entirely different. Winter is coming and with it a palette of blues and whites, the stark bathroom tiles will be all that is left after your paints have run down your bathtub pipes.

*Just heard about this guy and his photographs this morning in History of Photography, I likeeee his stufffff so I wanted to include it in a blogpost. SUE ME

a letter to nobody

Through grey-tinted windows I survey the landscape beyond my touch
Rushing by so quickly, yet the road continues for miles;
Each moment so temporary, yet feeling the same as the one before.

The brown-black Othello board of cows and horses shivers beneath adipose clouds
Shrouding the flatlands, making them seem more barren than they already were...

I am the tumbleweed moving through a landscape of nothingness.
Without purpose, without direction -- taken where ever the wind blows.

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I will miss you, you know. I think a lot of us are so caught up in our own lives sometimes, and we look around and we see that everyone is struggling along the same path, keeping to themselves. We yearn companionship actually, with those around us, but we think they do not feel the same way.

At least, I hope it is like that. Because I am one of these people, and sometimes I feel so alone. These blank shadows around me, who really cares about me? Who really understands me? An unspoken kind of understanding, which needs no affirmations. A silent friendship that roots itself halfway across the earth and still draws water continents away.

In your case, I wish to let you know how much you actually do mean to me. We have known each other a long time, and life will be very different without you. I can placate myself by reminding myself that I will not be gone for long, but I am still leaving behind this life and trying to start something different. Life is changing. I want you to stay in it.

This section is not about what you think it is about.

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

Seven black umbrellas, bobbing up and down as their owners stride past.
Beads of rain roll along their woven yet impenetrable surfaces, drip-drip-dripping onto the sidewalk below
Swallowed by the sewer rats retreating into their homes

Will my tears end up as lacquered raindrops on this umbrella of distance, unable to reach you?

If it were you condensing in this cold weather, I would be the first to lower my umbrella and become cleansed. I would raise my coloured parasol when you return, offer it to you, walk along the flat and seemingly endless road of time with you and keep the sun off your smile.

College. + My common essay

Sup readers. It's been a while since I last updated haha, and since then, well, as you probably know, my life has pretty much flipped upside down. And, since the university midsemester break is finally here, I finally have time to blog.

Where to start? The last two weeks has transformed from nailbiting anticipation to apathy to happiness to discomfort to calmness to anxiety to patience to curiosity to absolute disbelieving elation to shock to ambivalence to being lost to stress to a higher state of peace now (I hope...). So I've had a pretty colourful two weeks hahaha.

Firstly, I guess I have to say I am somewhat relieved that the process of college applications is now officially over. During the last three months of waiting for offers, I have had many an admissions related dream, depressed days where I don't feel like doing anything because I felt like I had no chance anywhere, days where I felt motivated cos I was like YEAH I'M THE MAN I'LL GET IN, but not a single day where I did not think about flying over to a question marked destination in the US. Now... I have another 5 months of knowing that such a thing is happening. It is so exciting!! But at the same time, so sad that I will be leaving most of my friends behind ):

I owe people who helped me out in the process and listened to my whining and excitement and worries hahahah.... especially those who helped me proofread and edit my essays, teachers and counsellor who wrote my references and did the colossal task of filling out all those forms, the admissions officers themselves who read my application and chose to let me through, or those who took the time to read them anyway and put them in the rejection pile, I am still thankful :) I am grateful for all my supportive friends who have since congratulated me on my acceptances as well, and all the strangers who took the time to congratulate me as well hahaha made me feel pretty special :) An especially big thank you goes out to my amazing boyfriend who has been so supportive of me during the whole process even though it will be really hard for us when we are separated, and for staying strong even though I know it kills him inside to think about me leaving ): but that's another story for another day and I don't want to be sad for something that has not yet happened @_@ And of course to my parents, the ones who brought me up to want to aim for something that seemed so impossible from the beginning, for planting the passion to reach my potential and giving me all the resources I could have ever dreamed of, no less bending over backwards to give me the best life that they could. T_T I am so lucky to have all of these amazing people in my life. I honestly feel like I am the luckiest person in the world all the time.

Nawww I am getting emotional. I think I will wrap it up here, I have no intention of writing an official leaving statement yet :P It is still early days yet!!! Well just for you guys I include my Common Application essay (sent out to all 8 universities I applied for). I know a lot of the people who proofread will rage at me at the fact that I didn't take out the metaphor diarrhoea I am so prone to but I CAN'T HELP IT I JUST LIKE IMAGERYYYY )))): Enjoy I guess...

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Soft Wooden Heart

The backbone of my life is my writing desk. I like to describe its surface as an organized mess (despite my parents’ overdramatized description of a bombsite), a state of positive entropy and minimum energy. Math exercises overlap an organizer, set next to almost-empty tubes of paint and overdue library books. A constantly filled bottle of water sits behind a glasses case full of guitar picks and carved into a mountain of paper, right in the middle, is a space reserved for my laptop – on days when I am slouching, The Complete Works of William Shakespeare needs to be slid under it. An eclectic desk shows an eclectic personality; mine has had the honor of being the training grounds prior to the Great (final) Battle (exam) of Chemistry, the peaceful meadow of relaxed reading afternoons and all in all the pristine-turned-colorful canvas of an inquisitive mind.

I remember buying it with my mother five years ago, when my bruised knees protested against the tiny white-paint-gone-yellow one I had used since childhood. My new desk was made of native Rimu heartwood – solid, resilient, dependable – a perfect role model for me to grow into. Over the years, its material became representative of my New Zealand identity, its surface slowly coated in quirky personality, and its compartments filled with treasured memories; the heartwood desk echoed my heart.

At first, it did not fit with the décor of the rest of my room, which even now appears boxy and stark next to my grandiosely elegant writing desk, but its quiet strength is unafraid of individuality, just as I have learned to become. It has watched as I grew stronger branches, a straighter trunk, firmer roots; whereas I had once been but a shy young seedling, I sprouted leaves and with them the ability and yearning to provide shade for others. I have certainly physically grown into it, but although I would like to think that I have become completely independent, I remain human; in inevitable times of need, it is still my steadfast, sturdy desk that offers its support.

I sit here and, well, I write: joyfully, desolately, irately, wistfully – at times paralyzed by excitement, at others crippled by fear. I scrawl notes in my organizer (which is, naturally, not in the least organized), words overflow my blog, over-emotional oranges and blues plague my illustrations; shallow scratch marks indent the wood from where I have pressed too passionately into paper. It may be solid, but it is elastic enough to be shaped, resilient enough to adapt: this is my soft wooden heart.

It can take it. My desk remains constant despite scars of experience – unassuming, stoic, ever-watchful. Even when I dismembered dying cell phones, their frail keytones pleading for mercy, the desk stood there, nonchalant. Regardless of what fervor goes on from time to time, it knows there will eventually be a constant calm; my lively nest of rebuilt mobiles still calls this place home. Sometimes, I rest my uncertain head on its reassuring solid surface and the wood presses back into my heartbeat, communicating in Morse... “Don’t worry. Some things will never change.”

And, like a mother, it always turns out to be right. Beneath my seemingly chaotic coat of papers and objects, beneath the superfluous, temporary things that define my present life, my desk and my heart remain still – solid, stable and evergreen, ready to be written onto and scratched into by experience.

"Between living and dreaming there is a third thing. Guess it."

This is an essay question from my college apps as part of the UChicago supplement that I thought would be a fit addition to my blog considering all the random floaty stuff I blog about lol. So, enjoy? Hahahaha

...omg just read over this. did I really call myself a SCIENTIFIC-ENTHUSIAST? WTF DOES THAT EVEN MAKE SENSE

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Essay Option 3: Spanish poet Antonio Machado wrote, 'Between living and dreaming there is a third thing. Guess it.' Give us your guess.

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Rumour has it that it takes the average human being about 7 minutes to fall asleep every night. In those 420 seconds, our brainwaves slow, our thoughts drift and eventually our consciousness lifts from our bodies and flies away to some alternate dimension where physics is malleable and the unimaginable becomes reality. This is the ephemeral moment between living and dreaming that each of us experiences every night, and one that very few understand; it is not a rare occurrence, but the veil of unconsciousness slides over our minds before we can stop and think to observe. And, of course, if we wait for it eagerly in an attempt to study it, sleep never comes – like the light that drives away shadows we wish to inspect. Between living and dreaming there is a third thing – mystery.

As Albert Einstein once said, “the most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious—the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science.” As an artist and scientific-enthusiast myself, I can relate to this sentiment; mystery provokes curiosity, which induces scientific advancement and artistic vision. The bridge between a dream and making it a living reality is the urge to understand a certain aspect of the world we cannot envision – the effect of mystery. There are then those who are quite happy with the concept of the mysterious, the belief wherein that which cannot be understood should be left as is – the dreams in our minds are pure imagination whereas our physical living world is tangible, but any blur in between should remain smudged.. To sharpen it would, as romantic poet John Keats described, be to “conquer all mysteries by rule and line… unweave a rainbow”.

Indeed, the beauty of mystery is one we all know too well. The strange feeling of déjà vu where we cannot distinguish reality from imagination flows over us as a tinglingly uncomfortable, yet elucidating, sensation. How boring would the world be if we knew everything as truth? No more wonder, no more knowledge-pursuing motivation, no more curiosity to explore? Mystery is the limitless shades of grey between the ends of the scale, between the stark white of wake and reality and the black unconscious world of sleep and fantasy. I want to form theories that can both neither be de-bunked nor proven, the liberty to invent, the freedom to imagine!

I do wonder, though, where we go during our dreams. It seems a whole new imaginative world is created, but how are we transported there? The journey surely takes place in the question-marked blank between wake and sleep. I like to imagine that perhaps it is the spirit of a train, pale blue and shimmering, masked behind galaxies of stars, reaping the minds of the asleep without their knowledge and dropping them off some place over the horizon in another dimension we cannot usually see. Or, perhaps each of us have a smaller being inside our brains that we become when we fall asleep, miniature selves exploring the labyrinths of our own memories. We can only theorize – and that is the beauty of the mysterious.

Yes, mystery represents inquisition, beauty, imagination and unknown expedition; it allows us the ability to bridge the gap between our minds and the world, between reality and fantasy, between living...


…and dreaming.

Then again, perhaps it is not altogether as inexplicable as I think: I am sure that my friends who roll around restlessly for hours past the allotted 7 minutes would tell me that the only thing between living and dreaming is insomnia.