blogging activity

I realized that I've stopped blogging as much, and it has a lot to do with the launch of Google+.

I've found that although a blog is still useful for writing up trips, major food outings, and maybe recipes, Google+ is flexible enough that I've started using it to share lots of other things I used to put in my blog: ad-hoc photos, random observations, overheard conversations, things that I did over the weekend, etc. I have yet to decide whether this is a good or a bad thing.

Anyway, feel free to add me on Google+, and if I know you I'll add you to my circles so you can see my content.

enjoying life

On the whole, I quite enjoy my job. Every day, I get to work on interesting products with smart and fun people. When I stay home sick for a couple of days, I feel like I'm missing out; I like knowing what's going on in the tech world (inside and outside the company), I like being involved in developing new features, and I like the social aspect of hanging out with my coworkers at work. I would certainly be bored to death if I had no job and stayed at home every day.

However, I was thinking last weekend (on a plane coming back from Chicago) that if I somehow acquired enough money that I could just fly around and do fun things for the rest of my life, I'd probably be fine with that too. In fact, I think one of the reasons that I like my job is that it pays me enough and is flexible enough that I can do things like fly to Chicago for the weekend. Yup, it was only three days, but I got to spend quality time with my brother and his girlfriend, experienced five hours of delicious interactive dining theatre, had a nice long run along the Chicago lakefront, waited in an hour-long line for gourmet hot dogs with lots of other friendly food-lovers, and fell asleep in the living room while lying on the floor watching movies.

On the agenda for next week: visiting friends in Los Angeles, visiting family in Houston, and a cousin reunion at The Wizarding World of Harry Potter in Orlando. My youngest cousin is finally old enough to do fun trips (she's going to college this year), so I hope this is the first of many exciting cousin adventures.

"house" work

I was reading a blog post this morning by a woman who has a "house manager". This person not only does housework, but takes care of things like researching teachers and extracurricular classes for her kids, buying presents for friends and relatives, etc. Basically, the house manager is like an admin for the home.

Anyway, one of her primary points was that we should decide what things we enjoy doing and what things we don't enjoy doing. Then, for those things that we don't enjoy doing, we should figure out how much it would cost to pay someone to do them, and hire someone, if feasible. That got me to thinking of what "house" related tasks I like and dislike.

Things that I like:
- grocery shopping and cooking
- making travel arrangements
- planning social events
- managing personal finances
- taking and organizing photos
- researching and shopping for presents

Things that I hate:
- laundry
- cleaning bathrooms
- vacuuming, mopping, and dusting
- shopping at crowded places like Target, Costco and especially Babies/Toys-R-Us

Things that I tolerate:
- dishes and cleaning kitchens
- driving to physically pick things up
- researching and hiring vendors (e.g. painter, handyman, gardener)

I guess it's no wonder I hire someone to clean my house.

just like that

I was driving in downtown Mountain View this morning and saw a squirrel get hit by a car, right in front of me. It practically bounced off of the car and then just lay still. I was late for an appointment (polio booster) so I didn't even think of stopping, but then again, what would I have done? I don't think vets handle squirrels (?), and I'm pretty sure it was probably dead/dying anyway.

25 random things

Copying from my Facebook post...

1. I'm weird about personal data security. I refuse to give out my address and phone number when I shop at malls, I create a new "junk" e-mail address every year, I don't save passwords in my browser, and I flush cookies on exit. In fact, writing this list makes me a little uncomfortable.

2. I talk really fast. I also like TV shows where people talk really fast, like in all of Aaron Sorkin's shows (especially The West Wing). One time I gave a presentation at work to a large group and got asked to slow down twice. Afterwards I asked a friend if I had really been talking that fast, and he said no, I'd been talking at my normal speed, but that that was probably still too fast for anyone who wasn't used to talking to me. Unfortunately I can't help it; if I slow down I lose my train of thought.

3. I've never actually lived in Taiwan for longer than 3 months at a time, but I have an obsessive interest in Taiwanese history and politics. In seventh grade I wrote a report on Taiwanese history. It was required to be at least ten pages, but I seem to remember mine was nearly 25 pages long.

4. I was a coffee addict in high school. I would drink a cup of coffee every morning, and usually another cup in the afternoon. One day I had five cups of coffee before lunch, got really jittery and hysterical at a McDonald's, and swore off coffee. Now I only drink coffee at nice restaurants, with dinner.

5. I really enjoy travelling, as it takes me out of my normal routine and forces me to think and make choices and see things differently. I am not a fan of tours and avoid them when at all possible. I find that when I plan a trip I get a lot more out of the actual experience, so I spend a lot of time researching and deciding where to go and what to see and do. As of 2008, I have been to (I think) 35 countries in my lifetime.

6. My grandfather taught me how to ski in Tahoe (at Boreal Ridge) when I was ten. He was over 70 then, but still hitting the blue slopes. He was a good teacher, too.

7. In college, toilet paper was free, so we used it for everything. For every floor birthday, we would bake a cake, cut it up, and serve it on TP. I once set a piece of TP on fire trying to extract a burnt Pop-Tart from a toaster oven. We also liked to throw soaked wads of TP at windows on the other side of the courtyard. (Maintenance was generally unhappy with our floor, especially after we knocked down a wall and a bathroom stall during a birthday "showering".)

8. I spend a lot of time researching credit cards, hunting down online coupons, tracking plane ticket fares, comparison shopping, and doing other things that help me save teeny bits of money.

9. I was born in San Francisco (Kaiser, 4th floor, c-section, 30 days late) and raised in Marin County. I like fog. I even like the chilly Bay Area summers, and I love the beautiful autumn weather. I hate spring, mostly because of horrible pollen allergies.

10. I love sushi, and have pretty much loved it all my life. When I was four years old, I once horrified a local sushi chef by eating eight pieces of ikura (salmon roe) after a swimming lesson.

11. I am a big fan of red meat. I like many kinds of beef, including prime rib, ribeye, Korean BBQ, Vietnamese 7-course beef dinners, smoked tri-tip, beef carpaccio, and steak tartare. I also like venison, lamb, wild boar, buffalo, elk, and goat. I do not like raw horse, at least not as prepared by sushi restaurants in Taiwan. My sister and I, along with our two girl cousins, would regularly out-eat my brother and our three guy cousins at Korean BBQ, even though they cumulatively had 12 years and probably a couple hundred pounds on us.

12. Continuing the food theme: I like good food in general and eat most things (except cooked fish...why spoil good fish??). I feel like eating mediocre food is a waste of calories. My definition of good food includes cheap eats like ramen, pho, and BBQ, as well as expensive tasting menus and kaiseki sets. I used to think I could eat Japanese food every day forever, but I've become spoiled since returning to the Bay Area after college. Now I will randomly decide that I just must have Greek/Korean/Moroccan/Hawaiian/Afghan/Peruvian/Jamaican/whatever for dinner, and drive 30 minutes to get it.

13. In high school, I could not figure out how to light a bunsen burner with the scrape-y metal thing. I managed to get through regular chemistry without having to do so, but one day in AP Chem my teacher made me stay for 30 minutes trying to light my bunsen burner. I finally got my friend to light it for me with his lighter, when the teacher wasn't paying attention. Ironically I'm kind of a pyro, but I use matches. For instance, I used to like putting out matches with my fingers.

14. I used to go to bed in the clothes that I expected to wear the next day (usually jeans and a t-shirt). I developed this habit in high school because I commuted from Marin to San Francisco. By sleeping in my clothes I could get up at 6:30am and be out the door at 6:50am. I continued to do this through freshman year at MIT, until I realized I could probably wear pajamas to class anyway.

15. When I got to college I had never done dishes or laundry before. After about a month I took a big bag down to the laundry room and asked a random guy what to do. He was surprisingly helpful, although eventually I learned to ignore his directions regarding "'darks" and "lights", since nearly all my clothes (including socks) were black. I still hate housework, especially laundry. It just never ends.

16. I have bad vision (-7.0+ in both eyes). I started wearing glasses when I was eight, and contacts when I was eleven. I started to show symptoms of corneal oxygen deprivation, and have had to wear RGP contacts since college. I really really hate the glaucoma test they always do at the optometrist's where they blow a little pouf of air into your eye. It always takes me like five tries because somehow I can hear when the machine's about to shoot the air out, and I close my eyes just before it does.

17. I used to be obsessed with driving and cars, probably because I used to race my fellow commuters from Marin to San Francisco every day while driving to high school. Later on I realized that fast cars are expensive. I still enjoy driving my '98 Subaru Impreza.

18. One of my favorite authors of all time is Madeleine L'Engle, even though she has some pretty strong Christian/spiritual themes and I'm neither Christian nor spiritual. I've read every one of her non-religious books, and I spent 15 years tracking down a copy of "Ilsa", her 1946 novel which was never reprinted. After six years of eBay alerts, I finally secured a copy last year for the low low price of $188.28. Crazy, I know.

19. I read really fast in general. In fifth grade we had a reading challenge, and I read over 250,000 pages during the school year. My teacher accused me of cheating, and proceeded to quiz me, but since I'd actually read all the books, she got really frustrated trying to trip me up. I was not fond of that teacher. I compulsively read anything that's put in front of me, including Nutrition Facts on cereal boxes and trashy magazines at doctor's offices.

20. I have a tendency to spend lots of money on things that I then keep forever. For instance, I bought a top-of-the-line Pentium Pro 200 my freshman year, which I proceeded to use for the next 8.5 years. My Latitude C600 laptop which I bought in 2000 is still in service. I used two cell phones until they physically stopped working (granted I accidentally ran one of them through the washer).

21. My first boyfriend died of a drug overdose. We broke up when we both headed off to college, and this was during his Ph.D program (biophysics), so we hadn't been close for a long time, but we were still friends, and I was pretty creeped out when I heard the news. That was over four years ago.

22. I was the oldest of a group of eight cousins who all grew up in the Bay Area, and so I ended up "being in charge" a lot. I often got blamed when the other kids were "bad" or broke things, for not watching them closely enough. One time when I was 12, my 8-year-old sister and I babysat for my 2-year-old cousin and her 10-month old brother. My 6-year-old brother was there too, but he pretty much took care of himself. In retrospect, I am amazed that nothing too bad ever happened, probably because I was horribly strict and not above spanking. I also made up a lot of projects and games to keep everyone entertained.

23. I have been a huge 49ers fan since before I can remember. This was a lot easier in the '80s when they were really, really good. I still have semi-wearable sweatshirts and t-shirts from their last Super Bowl win in 1994, because after they won my mom and I ran out to the nearest gas station and bought a whole carful of "49ers Super Bowl Champions" paraphernalia.

24. I'm not good at sports but I enjoy playing them. In high school I played softball and in college I played ice hockey, both very badly. Now I play basketball, also badly. I actually managed to be okay at tennis for a few years in high school but I lost it entirely when I went to college.

25. I like stuffed animals and am always running out of places to put them. When I was a kid my parents would take us to Reno and while my dad gambled, my mom would take my brother and sister and me to the midway. We got really, really good. My sister was the expert at the bowling ball roll, while my brother mastered the horse racing game and the quarter toss, I played the rubber ball shooting games, and my mom cleaned up at the metal claw machines. My sister could also play Skee-ball without rolling the balls (she would toss them directly into the holes). We often got banned from games but would come back after shift changes.

good things about the holidays

(For this post, I will refrain from extended ranting about crazy shopping crowds, screaming out-of-control children, even-worse-than-usual air travel, fanatically and scarily cheery people, horrible cheesy music, commercialism aka holiday creep, and more. Observe.)

I'm not a big fan of tradition generally, but as I was sitting here this morning digesting the rest of Christmas dinner and reading more holiday email, I realized I do like some things about the holidays.

I like that people send out holiday cards, emails, newsletters, and other greetings, and I get to catch up on what everyone's been up to recently. Every year, I rediscover that my friends and family are fascinating people with wide-ranging and diverse interests. Sometimes I'm a teeny bit jealous of all the adventures that people are having, but that's also good, as it reminds me to re-examine and figure out how to execute on my own plans.

I like (most) holiday gatherings, or at least those with good food and good company. I like being in one place (geographically) with lots of family, and staying up at night being silly with my cousins. I love Christmas cookies and other holiday desserts, and the process of making them, with lots of people together creating chaos in the kitchen.

I guess I just like that people make an extra effort for the holidays, and that it shows.

paranoia

I've realized that I am paranoid in different ways than other people.

My parents constantly warn me about walking around in cities after dark. I figure if there are people around, it's safe enough. I used to ride subways in New York City at all hours of the night, which horrified my dad.

I dislike giving out personal information of any kind: name, address, phone number, email address, whatever. I hate when I go to a store and buy something and they ask me for my address or phone number. I hate hate hate telemarketers and junk mail.

My friends are careful about germs, and use paper towels to touch bathroom doors. Some of them refuse to eat food from street vendors or raw/rare meat. I figure the worst that can happen is that I'll get sick and develop new antibodies.

I choose very long passwords (10+ characters). I have my browser configured to flush cookies on exit and not save any form data. I worry about my new RFID-enabled passport, and contemplate wrapping it in aluminum foil (yes, really).

My parents worry about burglars and have a complicated alarm system that includes infrared and pressure sensors. At my house, there is no security system. I have a safe, but in my mind it is primarily to guard against water or fire damage, rather than theft. I'd hate to lose all my digital photos and such things.

I think it comes down to me being much more anxious about data security than physical security. I wonder why?

Maybe this is the exception that proves the rule: When I go camping (or vacationing in tropical climates) I am constantly applying sunscreen and insect repellent. That's just good sense, though...isn't it?

always a cynic

Yesterday I went to get a haircut. I decided to try out a new place off of Castro that was well-reviewed and not too expensive.

Initially I stopped by before work, but they were full, so after waiting for a good five minutes for the hairstylist to get off what appeared to be a social phone call, I made a "2:30pm" appointment, but was told to come by ten minutes early. When I came back, the hairstylist was working on coloring another customer's hair, so I had to wait the ten minutes plus an extra five minutes for her to finish. I was starting to feel a teensy bit annoyed, but figured I'd reserve judgment.

As she was cutting my hair, a guy came by from the Thai restaurant next door and dropped off a Thai iced tea and a box of chicken, for the hairstylist. He hung around chatting with her for a few minutes, and all of a sudden he asked us (me and the woman having her hair colored) if we wanted some chicken. I said yes, figuring he'd share a piece or two, but he came back fifteen minutes later with two full styrofoam takeout boxes, each containing four or five pieces, with rice and sauce. I thought maybe I'd misunderstood so I offered to pay him, but he told us not to be silly.

It's really hard to feel anything but good about a haircut where you get fed free Thai food, but I do think the haircut turned out pretty well, anyway.

On the drive back to work, I started to wonder if he was just nice, or whether the free chicken distribution was a calculated PR move...and then I scolded myself for being so cynical. These days I find I am always surprised by acts of kindness, which I think is a bad sign. I should really work on giving people the benefit of the doubt more often.

sticky situation

Excerpt from a pretty heavy chat I had with a friend a couple of days ago (transcribing from memory, so exact wording is probably off):

him:	[SO] and I are expecting
me:	for real? holy crap
me:	um
him:	yes?
me:	am i supposed to console or congratulate you?
me:	need a hint here :)
him:	haha
him:	congratulate
him:	few months ago i would have said console
me:	congrats! super exciting!
him:	it was very unexpected
me:	i'm glad you're cool w/ it
him:	yeah i wasn't at first

After some discussion about why various attempts to explore termination options never panned out...

him:	i mean, i'm a big believer in the right to choose and all, but...
me:	well, believing that you shouldn't tell other people what to do is not the same thing as thinking that you should do something yourself

...which made me wonder what I would have done, myself.

I'm vaguely horrified by the idea of having a child, but am also kind of squeamish about the idea of actually terminating a pregnancy. I mean, I'm not afraid of doctors, and I'm perfectly fine being stuck full of needles, but it seems a much more invasive procedure than that.

On the other hand, I've heard some pretty bad things about being pregnant and about childbirth. No sushi and no alcohol aside, there's the possibility of debilitating morning sickness (worst I heard was someone who puked 2-3 times a day for 5 months), gestational diabetes (sometimes resulting in permanent diabetes), maybe having to be on bedrest for months, labor itself (my aunt was in labor for over 48 hours!), the possibility of a c-section, postpartum depression, other postnatal complications (surgical and otherwise)...you get the picture.

Disregarding pregnancy itself, there's the whole 18 or 21 or whatever number of years of taking care of the kid. I mean, is it acceptable to leave your child for a week because "Mommy wants to go to the Zurich office to work with the Swiss engineers for awhile"? What if my kid falls asleep in school and tells her teacher that she couldn't sleep because her parents were having a Starcraft LAN party last night? Am I guilty of neglect? Being a bad parent? What if I want to take a week-long trip to hike Machu Picchu? Learn to scuba dive in Belize? Ski the Alps again?

I think to be happy about having a child, I'd need to be convinced that his/her existence wouldn't significantly degrade my quality of life. When I send out an invite for a fabulous weekend bachelorette party in New Orleans, and someone responds, "Sorry, have to stay home with the baby", it makes me not want kids. I want to see more examples of parents who still do lots of interesting and exciting things.

I guess I can come up with a couple off the top of my head...

When I was in Vietnam last week, I met a girl my age who is a middle-school teacher in a suburb of Chicago. She was in Vietnam interviewing to teach at the American school, and was seriously considering the possibility of relocating to Vietnam. She is not of Vietnamese ethnicity, she doesn't speak Vietnamese; she just thinks it would be a great experience to teach for awhile in a foreign country with a totally different culture. And, she's single, with a five-year-old daughter.

One of my basketball teammates is an M.D./Ph.D. (I think in hematology or oncology?) who used to work at Stanford and recently joined a startup. She makes it to nearly every one of our basketball games and practices; she's our resident 3-point specialist. She also has two small children under five, and manages to get home to make them dinner every night. Awesome.

Unfortunately, two examples are not enough. Show me more, people!

Back to the question. What would I have done? I honestly have no idea.

(People like me are probably why most developed countries have declining birthrates.)

location, location, location

I love the Bay Area climate. I love the chilly San Francisco summers, the thick blankets of fog, the crazy block-level micro-climates, and the fact that it doesn't rain from April until November.

But, last weekend in Seattle, I found myself marveling at the way the lakes and bays integrate into the rolling hills, and the lush greenness of everything. If only it weren't so completely dreary in the winter...

Maybe I can live in the Pacific Northwest from June to September, come back to the Bay Area for the fall, head to Taipei from December through March, and then find some kind of non-allergy-inducing climate for the spring. That might be just a teeny bit expensive, though.

good day

It was rather an unproductive week for me at work, mostly due to me switching onto a new subproject and having to spend a lot of time ramping up. And, being unproductive always makes me feel a little icky, like I'm losing whatever programming skills I ever had, and/or wasting the company's time (and money).

Consequently, it was especially nice to have a really good day today, during which I thought about work not at all.

I slept in pretty late, got up in time to eat a quick brunch, and then spent a couple hours on the EA basketball courts working on my shot, which has been off pretty much since I got back from Hawaii. I now have a really sore right arm, but I think I have some of my form back.

After that, I spent most of the afternoon working on various things that I'd been putting off, including the menu for a birthday party I'm planning, and a detailed task list for a baby shower that I'm also planning.

Dinner was at Delfina, in the Mission, right next to Tartine. I was actually able to find parking only three blocks away, which is always a great way to start off a night in the city. The restaurant was pretty crowded even when we got there at 6pm, and was totally packed when we left after 8pm, with good reason. We ate family style, and there were several dishes that I enjoyed very much, including the Ribollita (kind of a pan-fried stuffing with veggies), the Papperdelle and duck sugo, and the Berkshire pork spareribs.

We were supposed to go to a party at Bubble Lounge around 9pm, so the timing worked out pretty well, what with the drive from the Mission to the Financial District, and then another round of parking bingo. This time we were even luckier, finding a parking spot only a block and a half away. We closed out the evening snacking on Hamachi tartare, grilled mushroom and fontina panini, and strawberry and chocolate fondue, while drinking champagne (of course), scotch, and assorted cocktails generously mixed with Belvedere vodka.

massive cultural gap

I was talking to a friend the other day about why I get along better with my grandfather than my grandmother.

The average conversation between me and my grandfather goes something like this (in Taiwanese, of course):

me:	Hi Grandpa, I'm glad to hear that your hip is better.
gf:	Yes, but my eyes are still not very good. How about you, how's work? Are you very busy this month?
me:	No, it's not bad right now, I just had a deadline last week.
gf:	What are you doing for exercise these days?
me:	I've been playing in a basketball league once a week, and my team practices once a week, also.
gf:	Do you have any fun upcoming plans?
me:	Yes, I'm going to Hawaii with my friends, and we are going to hike and kayak and maybe go windsurfing.
gf:	Maybe it's best if you don't go windsurfing; it's dangerous.

The average conversation between me and my grandmother goes something like this (again, in Taiwanese):

me:	Hi Grandma, how is everything?
gm:	Good. Are you getting married soon?

Okay, I exaggerate. But it's not far off, I swear.

My friend was saying that she has a similar problem with her older female relatives as well; they tend to be concerned primarily with whether we have boyfriends, when we're going to be married, and whether we're planning to have children soon. In contrast, our older male relatives are interested in our careers, our hobbies, and our daily lives.

We concluded that the cultural gap between American 21st century women and Taiwanese early 20th century women is much, much larger than the typical gap between grandparents and their grandchildren. Having that realization made me a little sad, but it doesn't stop me from feeling irritated when talking to my grandmother.

mortality

Early this morning, I got a call from the registrar at my old high school. I went to a private high school, with an Asian population of less than 10% (at the time), and she used to serve as kind of an unofficial mentor for a lot of the Asian kids there. We called her the "Asian fairy godmother".

She told me that my high school ex had been found dead late last week, at UC Davis, where he was a graduate student in biophysics. There was no obvious cause of death, and an autopsy didn't result in any additional findings.

I hadn't really had contact with him for a couple of years, and I hadn't seen him in person in over six years, but it was still something of a shock. We were good friends for about a year and a half, dated for about three or four months, and parted amicably when we both went off to college. He was always a bit manic, but according to a mutual friend, he seemed happy and healthy as of a few months ago.

Anyway, I sent flowers to his family, which was a little surreal as well. I never thought I'd be buying a sympathy bouquet for the parents of a 26-year-old.

earth shudders

An 8.9 magnitude earthquake centered near Indonesia was reported earlier today. Wow. I didn't know they came that big. It sounds like over 6,000 people have been reported killed so far, either by the earthquake or its resulting tsunamis. Most of the casualties were in Indonesia, Sri Lanka, and India.

Thoughts:
- The largest earthquake I remember hearing about (ever) was the 8.3 magnitude event centered in Hokkaido last year. Then again, I don't have a great memory for these things; it's not really the kind of event you like to remember.
- The last earthquake of personal significance to me was the "9-21" Taiwan quake; magnitude 7.6. I remember cursing the jammed phone lines.
- The largest earthquake I personally experienced was the 7.0 Loma Prieta quake. I was 80 miles away from the epicenter, and it was quite enough excitement already.
- I was curious, so I looked up the devastating 1906 San Francisco quake. Its magnitude was estimated at 7.8. However, much of the damage was caused by fire.

A couple of months ago we had a 5.0 (or so) tremor in the Bay Area. I made fun of a friend who was excited about his "first earthquake", and told him that if he had to ask other people if they felt it, it wasn't a real earthquake. In retrospect, given my affinity for earthquake-prone regions, I should shut my mouth, not to mention knocking on wood, throwing some salt over my left shoulder, and crossing all my fingers and toes...

women in computing

I recently went to a talk by the authors of Unlocking the Clubhouse: Women in Computing.

Some of the data presented was interesting. For example, they showed that women and men tend to enter college with different levels of computer experience, which negatively affects women who are considering the computer science field. They also found that women were more affected than men by bad teaching, poorly formulated curricula, and non-constructive criticism.

I definitely agree with the first point, and my suggestion is that all high schools have a mandatory computer class requirement, where real computer science is taught, instead of the usual touch typing, word processing, and spreadsheet skills. I am curious as to the reason behind the second observation; I'm not satisfied with the hypothesis that women are intrinsically less confident, whether for natural or environmental reasons.

On the other hand, there was quite a bit of material presented (mostly by Jane Margolis and not Allan Fisher) that I found irritating. I think it just pisses me off when people think and act like they have me all figured out, and try to tell me things about myself that aren't even true. Immature, huh?

I was trying to pinpoint the source of my irritation, and I think it boils down to this: Those of us who are women and have been successful in pursuing a career in computer science aren't really the women that these studies are about. We are "double outsiders" (a term I heard during the subsequent Q&A session) since we are neither men, nor do we conform to the "normal" woman stereotype.

We are told that as women, we needed extra help in order to succeed in computer science classes. Except we didn't. We are told that we didn't grow up with PCs and video games in our bedrooms, and that we didn't seek out computer experience in junior high and high school. Except we did. And, we are told that we don't code in our spare time, and that we don't enjoy talking about computers with our friends outside of work. Except we do.

This is the reason, I think, that I find most analyses of women in computing irritating, and sometimes insulting.

9/11

I wrote this on Saturday, but wasn't sure if I wanted to post it, since it's not entirely coherent. I've decided one can't be expected to have coherent thoughts on such a world-changing event.

Random thoughts:

- I saw today that flags were at half-mast, but honestly it took me a second to realize why. Should I feel guilty about that? I wasn't affected very personally by the attacks, so perhaps it's a little snarky for me to say this, but I don't feel that we should wallow in grief. We should remember, but we should move on.

- I was reading an article about how teachers are choosing to address the cultural and political impact of 9/11 rather than the emotional aspect, now that we are several years removed. Not sure what I think about that. I hope the teachers aren't using the event to promote their own political agendas.

- I guess my second cousin must have been married almost three years ago. Her wedding, originally scheduled for mid-September, was postponed after her maid of honor went down on Flight 11, on her way to the wedding. That was my closest connection to a 9/11 victim. I remember that even at the time, it felt like there was a significant gulf between the East and West Coasts, in terms of personal loss and overall emotional impact. My sister was a freshman at Columbia that September, and for a while pretty much all she wanted was to go home.

- I was in New York last year, and it was strange seeing the subtle changes to the subway maps. Makes me feel like we're living in an alternate universe. I used to take the PATH train from Hoboken to the WTC...it sounds pretty callous, but one of the things that really makes me sad is that the big Borders bookstore, that I used to hang out in after work, is gone.

- I think "on September 11th" will be the "when Kennedy was shot" moment for our generation. On September 11th, I was still sleeping when my housemate ran into my bedroom and told me that the one of the WTC buildings had just fallen down. I did go to work that day, but I came home early, and my housemates and I watched CNN until we were sick to our stomaches, and switched to Tivo-ed episodes of Friends. One can only take so much.

- In Taiwan, significant events are often referred to by date, such as the 2-28 massacre, or the 9-21 earthquake. In this country, we tend to name events, such as the Loma Prieta earthquake or the Boston Tea Party. Why do we refer to 9-11 by date?

- Has this country become more united or more divided since 9/11? I myself have become increasingly disgusted with politicians who play the 9/11 card to try and gain votes. I am also saddened by the increased prejudice towards Arab-Americans, and even those who resemble Arab-Americans. I'm thinking specifically of a Sikh friend who, due to religious beliefs, has a beard and wears a turban. He's the most friendly, easy-going personality I've ever met, but he was removed from an airplane on the way from Boston to San Francisco because some people were uncomfortable with his presence.

- Has the world become safer or more dangerous since 9/11? As an American citizen who travels several times a year, I lean towards the latter. In particular, anti-American sentiment is at all all-time high, which was glaringly obvious watching the crowd boo the American Olympians, at the Athens Games.

- A high school friend came to visit me this weekend. He's still in college, having spent a year in Japan, a year in Paris, and a summer in Ireland. He is of Chinese ethnicity, was born and raised in California, and currently lives in DC, but is determined to move to Europe after graduation. I almost envy him. This country has too much baggage, and I have little faith in our leadership and our populace. I wish every American citizen were required to spend three months living in a foreign country (yes, even Canada), before being allowed to vote. We've gone from being dumb and happy to being dumb and angry, and as we've seen in the last few years, that's a potentially explosive situation.

trust

How do you measure trust? If you trust someone with your life, does that mean you trust him/her to drive your car?...with you in it? Maybe I have that question backwards.

Personally, there are plenty of people that I trust on issues of responsibility or money, that I wouldn't let drive my car. Don't I owe it to my car to make sure the people that get in the driver's seat know what they're doing?

bleah again

This has been somewhat of a Bad Day (tm).

I can think of plenty of things on which I can blame the badness, but I think it's just one of those days. I'm hoping my afternoon yoga class will fix me.

old and ignorant, and creaky too

I've been having some issues with my right hip during yoga. It doesn't hurt when I'm just walking around, or even during basketball, but whenever I do a hard stretch like a right side split I'll notice. I was afraid I had a stress fracture or something, because the last time I had persistent pain it turned out I had a stress fracture in my left foot (although that healed by itself). Anyway, my doctor thinks I have early arthritis in my hip. Ugh. She thinks all that gymnastics as a kid might have contributed, because gym inflicts a lot of trauma on your joints (well duh). Now they tell me. I guess the 4-year-old me wouldn't have known what arthritis was anyway.

duh...what?

Every once in awhile I'm reminded of how some things are just way over my head.

I was doing an interview the other day, and asked the candidate to describe her current project. The first couple sentences out of her mouth involved something about "P4 structures" and "perfect graphs." I must have sounded sufficiently confused, because she spent a good five minutes explaining (pretty well, considering my ignorance) what she was talking about.