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Shred The Lightning
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| "What will we find, and what was left behind...there's no return, get it off your mind..."
Major Attacks in Baghdad Reveal Iraq's Vulnerability
Meanwhile, stateside - it's interesting to contemplate the future of the public healthcare option...But at the moment I'm going to say I'm in agreement with Rachel Maddow and Jon Stewart on this. For those of you more inclined to text, Chez Pazienza and Cenk Uygur also had their say.
UPDATED: Enough doom and gloom...some better news on the above topic.
In more optimistic news...9.58 seconds to run 100 meters? That's 34.25 feet PER SECOND. Usain Bolt is ridiculous...and he hasn't failed a drug test yet.
Ahhh can't focus in lab!!!!!! hahaha.
Cheers.
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| | Current Music: | 'Thought Crime Spree' by Pig Destroyer | | Subject: | into the darkness | | Time: | 01:03 pm |
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| The subject of this post is the title of a five (!) page long article in The Washington Post that focuses primarily on Pig Destroyer (one of my favorite bands), but also provides a glimpse into Maryland Deathfest, America's largest extreme metal festival. The premise of the piece is as follows - the writer talks about connecting with his sons when they were younger through the music of The Beatles, but is becoming worried about a permanent loss of connection through music as their tastes shift towards heavier rock. So he decides to investigate a little bit into the metal subculture, and Pig Destroyer in particular. The dichotomy between the band members and the music they produce (the article is complete with song samples) is extremely interesting, and given that metalheads tend to be misunderstood/get a bad rap from a lot of other people, this piece might help provide a little insight "into the darkness". However, the article is also worth reading for the mention of Hatebeak. A death metal band fronted by a Congo African Grey parrot. Yes. I am not joking. hahahaha. Link is below:
Into The Darkness
Also, the side effect of reading this is that I've been listening to Pig Destroyer pretty much non-stop since yesterday hahaha.
| | comments: 1 comment or Leave a comment |
| This morning I listened to a crapload of metal albums that have been piling up in my "list of things to listen to". I'm sort of bored so I've decided to write about them rather than another post with life updates (save that for a bit later, methinks).
"In The Constellation Of The Black Widow" by Anaal Nathrakh - Probably the most insane album I will hear this year. This "blackened grindcore" (I just made that label up) duo from the UK have produced some of the most twisted, hyperfrenetic music of the last decade or so. On this release they step up the brutality a notch over their last record (the almost accessible "Hell Is Empty And All The Devils Are Here"), but still maintain some of the tunefulness that made that album so enjoyable. The result is pretty crushing. VITRIOL's vocals are all over the place, from absolutely bloodcurling shrieks to clean, melodic singing to lower pitched death growls and screams. There are less "Slayer-style" solos on this record, with tremolo picking and simple melodic lines providing the backbone of the guitar work. The drumming (I'm not sure if they rely entirely on a machine) is pretty much the same as on every record - tons and tons of blastbeats and fills. Not for the faint of heart - but great to see a band releasing consistently decent material.
"Evangelion" by Behemoth - Leaked early, but I will definitely buy this one when it hits stores. Definitely an improvement over their last outing ("The Apostasy"), mainly in the production department but also in terms of brutality/mood. A very unified album, the record flows smoothly from track to track and offers a very cohesive listening experience. Nergal seems to have become more comfortable as a guitarist, as he shows off some more intricate lead work and the riffs sound very natural and progress quite well. Inferno is probably my favorite death metal drummer but I would say his performance on this record isn't quite as outstanding as on "Demigod" (the album before "The Apostasy"). He plays a little more conventionally here, without all the creative fills and little licks that really popped out on previous works. But still, the band sounds tight and pulls off a very menacing sound. I enjoyed this a lot.
"Carving Out The Eyes Of God" by Goatwhore - With a band name and album title that ridiculous you'd think this would be some of the craziest, darkest shit ever, but it's far from it. Supposedly "blackened death metal" but they aren't even as ferocious as a "blackened thrash group" like Skeletonwitch, let alone Behemoth, who are also labeled as blackened death. There are a few good riffs on this album but nothing special. ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) soakrates keeps telling me to check out Wolves In The Throne Room for a truly enjoyable American metal experience, so I will have to get on that...also the new Suffocation. But I wasn't terribly impressed by this.
"Earthsblood" by God Forbid - One of the few metalcore acts I got into (another being Lamb Of God), this is a solid record with barely any filler. They sacrificed some of the catchiness and memorability from "Gone Forever" and even "IV: Constitution Of Treason" (their two latest records), but tried upping the technicality factor to compensate. For the most part it works, but doesn't do anything to catapault them above their contemporaries.
"By The Light Of The Northern Star" by Tyr - Disappointing. Tyr is one of the more unique bands in the folk/pagan metal scene and their last two records ("Eric The Red" and "Ragnarok") are in constant rotation on my iPod. On this record it seemed they adopted a more generic sound, sacrificing some of the pioneering spirit of their earlier compositions. The solos sound at times as if the lead guitarist is trying to decide between being Steve Vai and Yngwie Malmsteen, but they lack the fire and soul of anything on "Ragnarok", or even "Eric The Red". In addition there isn't anything as remotely catchy as the songs on those aforementioned albums. One can only hope things get better on the next release, but I will say it is hard for bands in this genre to continue evolving with each record.
Alright...now to look forward to new records from Immortal, Nile and Wintersun this year!
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| RX-7s.
Ace of Base.
Ping Pong.
These memories still reside - things I hope not to forget.
Rest well Tweez - thinking of you, six years later. | | |
| The other day I was talking with another friend about how I don't necessarily think I am frightened by the thought of dying, but rather, the thought of a painful death. For instance, if I fell asleep tonight and died before I woke up, I assume it would be hard on others but personally I think this is many, many times more preferable to living for another 50, 60 years and then drowning in the sea. Maybe this viewpoint is easier to adopt given the fact that my current accomplishments in life are insignificant, but would my opinion change if I felt I was doing something revolutionary/groundbreaking? Perhaps...but if we take a step back and think about how many children die every day because of malnutrition, lack of clean drinking water, etc., what's one more drop in the ocean of wasted potential? Then again, one could say that this observation could very well provide an impetus for one to make the most of their lives since others are often denied the chance. Which is fine - I'm not saying that I would welcome dying tonight, I'm still going to try my best to work hard tomorrow - but at the same time, I don't want to cling to my existence because I am afraid of losing it or because I think it is worth "more" than someone else's. But as House says, "If you don't think your life is worth more than someone else's, you might as well sign your organ donor card and off yourself". So many interesting perspectives to reconcile from an existential point of view...it seems so daunting! Funnily enough, this weekend I decided to get my hands on three philosophical(ish) texts - Fear and Trembling (Kierkegaard), The Stranger (Camus), and Being and Nothingness (Sartre). I'm probably more interested in the first two (mainly because the Sartre work seems so dense it might create a black hole in my apartment if I open it), but nonetheless, I hope to be able to glean some important points from these works and possibly help direct this train of thought I seem to have boarded.
Speaking of seemingly futile existence (hahah), I just seemed to be drifting around this weekend - to quote the Opeth song, "lost track of time, in a flurry of smoke - waiting anxiety, for a fair judgment deserved". A lot of shisha was smoked, a lot of music was listened to...some guitar playing. Not much else. My lack of focus really came to a head today, when I went to lab at 3 PM with the intention of working on my prospectus and ended up not doing any actual writing (maybe one sentence) for nearly 5 hours. It pains me just to write that number. I can't even recall what I was doing in lab - a combination of YouTube videos, reading about the Manny Pacquiao/Ricky Hatton fight, writing e-mails, checking Goodreads, anyway.
What happened?
Last week was sort of productive but it ended really horribly - I spent most of the day working on our computer server, which has been giving us no end of problems for about a month or so. At some point during the course of my work the main hard drive ended up dying, which contains the majority of our most recent research. We did a backup about a month ago (around the time the problems started becoming really apparent)...but yeah, other people have (hopefully) been making progress since then so I don't know the extent of what was lost. I am 99.9% sure that I did not do anything that would have messed up the hard drive when I was poking around the case, but like a lot of things in life, most of the issue is just being there - the mere fact that I was working on it when it died is bad enough. To make things worse, I was doing this primarily because the current computer administrator thought it would be a good project for me, as I am supposedly the next computer administrator. Theater of the absurd: "My primary accomplishment as computer administrator was to oversee the eradication of our research server". Well, that was enough to throw me into a funk on a Friday evening, a funk which apparently permeated the rest of my weekend. I was debating trying to go back to lab later tonight for a round two attempt at getting some work done, but I think it may be better for me just to go to sleep (very) early and get a (very) early start tomorrow. Funnily enough, I was in this same situation about two weeks ago when pikacello called and ended up convincing me not to go to lab at 11 PM...(and sure enough, the next day I ended up going in at 6 AM and staying until after 10 PM). But this time I think I can make the decision on my own...
First and foremost on the agenda for this coming week: stalk the two remaining members of my committee and try to get a date set for the prospectus. Supposedly we're thinking May 22nd, which would give me less than two weeks to wrap up the writing and get a decent set of Powerpoint slides together. Oh yeah, I should practice the talk too. Actually, that reminds me that we tentatively agreed to have the practice talk on the 15th...in which case, I am sort of fucked if I can't track down my focus, restrain it and make it my bitch very very soon.
Non-school stuff...I had a very good discussion with a friend about "Saving Face" (a movie by Alice Wu), at first glance it comes across as a comedy with a happy ending but this particular friend thought it very tragic and sad. So I picked his brain to see what would make him think that. I won't really get into this because it will probably spoil the movie but for those of you who have seen it perhaps you can let me know what you thought about it. I guess this friend has a tendency to adopt a half-empty viewpoint, but still. I guess if I had watched it with him after the events of Friday I might have adopted a darker tone.
What else...I may be taking a trip to Japan in August (hope so!), and it looks like I'll be recording my 2nd project on the weekend of May 16th-17th. I'm pissed that I'll be missing the LA date of the Opeth/Enslaved tour but eh, priorities. =P Also planning on using my tax refund to buy a new PC (instead of a new guitar - gasp!), and I used up most of my credit card rewards points to get an iPod. One of the old "classic" models - 120GB, no games etc.
Anyways. I think sleeping is best right now. Well, maybe I'll read some more of "The Black Book" by Orhan Pamuk. While not quite an existentialist text, it does provide some food for thought on the concept of identity...it also features what I consider to be his most surreal writing to date, reaching Murakami-like levels.
But I digress. Regards to all.
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| Was going to wait 'til a bit later in the week to clock in, but this morning I happened to stumble across Rachel Maddow interviewing Lars Ulrich on her show - and it was revealed that Rachel is a Metallica fan!!!!! hahaha. While her introduction of Lars as "one of the greatest drummers of all time" was...hahaha, well let's not go there, the interview itself was pretty cool, with Lars talking about his pride in San Francisco. Did I mention Rachel Maddow was totally blown away by Master Of Puppets? hahaha.
Rachel Maddow Interviews Lars Ulrich
On her MSNBC website she also included a Widget that lets you stream the album online.
Same interview, with streaming album!
Bit of an update later this week, or by the weekend. Best to all =)
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| The world is going through quite a turbulent phase right now - abroad we have the continuing violence in Pakistan and Iraq (events like these have become so frequent I'm sure a few people wonder why we even bother taking note), the US military's 600 plus death toll (and counting) in Afghanistan, the recent spate of mass murders in the US, that earthquake in Italy, not to mention the whole economy thing - okay, I'll stop. But still, there is good news. Obama delivered a great address to the Turkish Parliament that touched on the need for a large change in foreign policy with respect to the Muslim world, and very recently pledged that the time for withdrawl from Iraq has come. But I will point out that as great as these pledges and speeches may have been, only time will tell whether suitable actions will be taken to help achieve these goals.
I sincerely hope Obama can succeed in beginning to improve the world that was left behind in the wake of the Bush presidency. Last year,seeing people across the US geniunely excited and inspired by him, who worked hard to enable his historic election, that was a really positive moment for me. But even now as the rebuilding efforts are mounted, it is important that we do not become complacent, that we pay attention to what the administration is doing. Yes, I know that it is still very early into his presidency. Yes, no man is perfect. But there have been some disturbing issues lately that may not have been touched upon by the mainstream media, which I think are worth a read.
For those of you not familiar with Glenn Greenwald, he is a former consitutional litigator who now blogs and has authored several books. What I really admire about him, besides his extremely well researched and cited blog posts, is his willingness to investigate unsavory findings and his utmost effort to identify the perpetrators. What do I mean? Well, when Bush was making a mockery of the constitution and right-wing stay-at-home "warriors" were demanding more sacrifice from already exhausted US troops, and even as there were calls to address the grave issue of an aggressive, dangerous Iran (while the US was pounding Iraq), and the FBI and other federal agencies were actively breaking the law to gather information on the civilian population, Mr. Greenwald was on them like white on rice (no offense to Asians and other rice lovers). However, he has been equally critical and insightful, if not more so, about issues such as the enabling of Bush policies by Democratic senators such as California's very own Dianne Feinstein, the pitiful defense of Joe Lieberman offered up by the likes of Harry Reid, and the terrible approval ratings of the Democrat-controlled congress.
These last few months Glenn has been bringing up some very disturbing issues concering the Obama administration's continuation of Bush-era policies. These are long but I encourage you to at least skim through.
New and worse secrecy claims by the Obama Department of Justice.
Obama's "enemy combatant" policy: following a familiar pattern
America's human rights lectures to other countries
Obama fails his first test on civil liberties and accountability
The effects of Obama's refusal to investigate Bush's war crimes
Before you think I've gone off the deep end - I do not intend for you to take these as final judgments. Like I said, it is still very early and there is a lot of time to see what develops. But at the same time - I encourage you all to be at least aware of these issues. I feel that our predominant media coverage of things like Michelle Obama and Carla Bruni-Sarkozy's fashion choices (not that I have anything against the two beautiful first ladies), or whether Obama should have given the Queen something besides an iPod tend to distract us from issues with a bit more substance. We need to be critical - show tough love, if you will - towards this fledgling administration. Part of the large scorn that I noticed my left-leaning friends heap on right-wingers was their seemingly blatant disregard for widely available facts, and their sort of blind adoration of George W. Bush (at least for the first half of his Presidency). I hope that the left's admiration of Obama does not reach similar realms of worship, and that they can know when to praise, and when to call out the administration on less than stellar policies like the ones outlined above.
President Obama ran on a campaign of change, and it was a sentiment that resonated strongly with America. Now that he has been elected, those who were really passionate about change cannot become complacent and just "trust that he'll take care of it". In the Bush years the presidency gained an incredible amount of power - reaching the Nixon-esque realms of "if the president does it, it's not a crime". (I paraphrased that but I'm pretty sure it's close to the mark). Realistically speaking, one is free to believe that Obama has the best intentions and is coming into this with a pure heart. But just ask yourselves, is it okay to let the president keep outrageous powers that threaten to override the "checks and balances" system, given the assurance from others that "he won't use the power in the same way as Bush did"? Or is it better to have him completely renounce and dismantle those powers? Well, I think there's a correct answer to that question. But we'll see. We'll all do what we can, and hope for the best.
Okay I need to sleep....Writing this post was exhausting. Keep on keepin' on!
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| Performance by Yo-Yo Ma and Ithzak Perlman at the Inauguration was prerecorded
"The revelation that millions of people who saw the inauguration of President Barack Obama were actually listening to recorded music instead of the actual performance of the Yo-Yo Ma and Itzhak Perlman-led quartet has led to comparisons of lip-synching (though, in this case, might the correct term be hand-synching?) and drawn comparisons to other infamous cases, including Ashlee Simpson's "Saturday Night Live" debacle and perhaps music's most famous pantomimes, Milli Vanilli."
Are people SERIOUSLY comparing these lords of the strings to Ashlee Simpson and Milli Vanilli???!!!!!! If you read further on, the article does a good job of explaining why it is ludicrous to have expected the musicians to perform live (tuning issues created by extreme cold, potential risk of damage to instruments worth millions of dollars), but more importantly - can anyone deny that Ma and Perlman are indeed masters of their craft? Or are they saying that Ashlee Simpson and Milli Vanilli are virtuoso vocalists who just preferred to have their craft prerecorded because the standards they set for themselves were too high?
Well, at least nobody mentioned Dragonforce. =P
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| The subject should read "The Final Countdown"...haha.
Tomorrow I have a final for a class I don't care about it. One part open note, one part closed notes...I just want it to be done with but I feel I'll have a better understanding of the material if I study. Unfortunately it's the night before the test and I have like...5 chapters each with about 70 Powerpoint slides to study.
Thanks to me booking a Christmas vacation from December 16th to January 3rd, my advisor is really trying to push my limits before I leave. Been working really hard over the last few days, actually getting stuff done...but at the expense of this class. Sighs.
Other worries: Haven't heard back from the International Center about my I-20 (form needed to re-enter the US). Gonna call them tomorrow...
mmm......Nothing much else I guess. Well, more, but I should be studying. Write me and ask me if you're interested lol.
All the best,
N. | | comments: Leave a comment |
| Seems like other people are crawling out of the woodwork so I thought I'd just put up a little post.
I'm flying out to Boston on Wednesday night, going to MIT with my advisor and the other first year in my lab to inherit some equipment from her old advisor. This should be...an interesting 3 days. It's going to be a lot of work disassembling UHV (ultra high-vacuum) systems - I might see JP (my advisor) at her full work potential. I dunno if we're going to eat meals together too, maybe she'll pick up the tab...haha. Or not.
Life has been so-so. More on the rough/lonely/depressing side, but I've been getting by with a little help from my friends. =) Thank you so much for being there in my time of need.
To make this slightly more interesting I'll list my current guilty pleasures:
Music:
Can't Smile Without You by Barry Manilow (after seeing Hellboy 2 I had to get this song, still my favorite scene from any movie this year, and I've seen quite a few of this year's films...)
Foodstuffs:
IBC Black Cherry Soda (there goes my health), Jack Links Original Beef Jerky (beef jerky is just...too good. This particular brand is very lean and the strips are cut very thin, which adds to the dryness factor. Sometimes Oberto gets too thick and it's too moist. I like the sensation of tearing into a very dry strip of flesh).
Film/Television:
Hamlet 2 (Tropic Thunder was hilarious but this movie was just brilliant at times), Fawlty Towers (The Germans and Communication Problems are just two classic episodes. DON'T MENTION THE WAR!)
The weather's getting cooler. Makes it nice to walk to work in the morning without feeling gross.
I dunno if you guys are getting worried about the presidential election yet...The sheer inanity of what is being discussed (Lipstick-gate, etc) is bad enough, and despite all the stories pouring in about Palin and McCain, it's still very close...I'm actually kind of frightened as to what will happen if Obama loses...not only the future of the US and its role in the world, but also the psychological effects on supporters of the Democratic Party after the last two elections...
Anyways, miss all of you guys, please take of yourselves! | | comments: 2 comments or Leave a comment |
| Well, it's been a while, hasn't it?
Right now the summary is basically: lab sucks, and outside of lab sucks slightly less. Haha. Maybe not so bleak, but I was in a pretty bad state of mind last week. My system may have a major leak, and every day that we are unable to pump it down means less productivity for me. I'm actually slightly looking forward to doing the troubleshooting with my advisor on Monday, at least it's something to do besides watching a pressure gauge stay consistently at "atmosphere" for hours and hours...Also got called out for sleeping in lab at group meeting...d'oh! =\
Didn't end up going to Comic Con this year. Maybe next year...when I will be sure to make a New Year's resolution to buy plane tickets WELL IN ADVANCE hahah.
Well, enough of what hasn't been done...I have been trying to put together a seven song "EP" of sorts. Right now 6 of the 7 tracks are available in rough "demo" format on YouTube, which hopefully appear below (from top to bottom in chronological order - Snowfall, Appearance Of The Enemy, Pursuit and Evasion, Confrontation, The Burden of Anxiety, Crossing Of Blades):
It actually looks like I might end up recording these tracks in mid-August, with the help of an old friend from the Stanford band scene. I think that was the motivation I needed to finally finish some of these songs that have been sitting around on my hard drive since junior year at Stanford...Just going to record guitars, but will hopefully be able to make the backing tracks sound at least pseudo-decent with the help of some software. I was actually debating whether to try to play bass on this as well but I think that might be a little too ambitious. We'll see. I'm excited for this, I just have to write bass lines for two songs and then finish up all the instruments for the final track...but of course the real problem lies in practicing enough to have the guitars down really tight...and also so the recording doesn't drag on and on into a sea of frustration and endless takes. Will keep you guys posted later.
Finally - haven't smoked shisha this week...and haven't really felt too either! Gonna see how long I can keep it up, "let the music be your drug" and all that bullshit. =P
Take care! | | comments: Leave a comment |
| I hope you guys had a good Memorial Day weekend. I know I sure as hell did. Of course, no school work got done, blah blah blah - why the hell did I even bother lugging books up to Marin? - but yeah, excellent weekend.
Primarily because of food. My "uncle" Doug - technically he's a cousin-in-law but given our relative ages I think of him more as an uncle - is a ridiculous cook. I don't know if I've mentioned this before, but yes, he is ridiculous. He should be on Top Chef. The first night I was there we had prime rib with roasted broccoli and mashed potatoes, shit, I'm getting hungry just thinking about that. For those of you not in the loop with regard to my religious views I'm pretty much an agnostic at the moment but when I tasted that prime rib I lapsed back into Roman Catholic mode and thanked God for giving me the sense of taste. Other meals of the weekend included some barbecued/teriyaki salmon and carnitas. Anyways, I don't think I can seriously label what I cook at home "food" anymore.
As per the usual tradition the weekend was also host to "Extreme Makeover: Nathan Edition". Besides the usual additions to my wardrobe I got new glasses (!) and an eye exam for the first time in 4 years. I was expecting the doctor to tell me "you are now legally blind" but miraculously the prescription didn't change that much...there I go again with the religious bit...I'm lapsing! Also picked up a book for summer - The Inheritance Of Loss by Kiran Desai.
My cousin Sean is getting really good at acoustic guitar - check out his cover of "Drifting" by Andy McKee on YouTube - search Sean Wilkinson Drifting Cover. Makes me proud.
Saw Iron Man and Indiana Jones back to back. Iron Man was a lot of fun..Indiana Jones, not so much. Where was the movie?? All I saw were a bunch of incredulous action scenes strung together...I also finally saw "The Lives of Others" which is a fantastic movie, and "The Wind That Blows The Barley" which was also quite good.
Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh...It's Tuesday. WTF. Can't wait for this quarter to be frigging over.
Take care! | | comments: Leave a comment |
| OOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
In this one bedroom tomb
I'm sitting all alone
With amplifier static
and refrigerator drone
I'm waiting for those pretty eyes
that seem to wrap around me
six or seven times
hoping to cross paths again
I could sear my lungs
to pass the time
haven't felt
anything in days
a pair of grad students
dance on my ceiling
they might as well
be dancing on my grave
| | comments: Leave a comment |
| Nearly the end of February already. That's kind of scary.
So...what's happening? Graduate school is proceeding at a fairly slow pace actually...but that's mainly a result of my own laziness. Hopefully it doesn't come back to bite me later on...I'm sure they'll be plenty of times to be enslaved in lab, so I might as well try to get away with some slackness while I can.
So the department didn't pay my fees from Fall Quarter and for the longest while everytime I logged into the UCLA Student System I had this message saying "You are prohibited from enrolling in classes, requesting grades, transcripts, etc, etc." and my Student Account showed that I owed the university ~$20,000 dollars. But that got sorted out today so it should be smooth sailing from here on out...provided they pay my Spring Fees lol. Actually one of our personnel told me today that INS called asking about why I haven't been maintaining full time student status...Which is scary, come to think of it. But hey, my internet at home still works and no men in charcoal suits and sunglasses have paid me a visit thus far. Hopefully it stays that way!
The weather was acting really weird for the last few weeks - alternating between sunny and abysmal. But it seems like things are warming up nicely this week, which is good.
I've been working on music again (bad timing considering this week is so hectic), but when you feel the creative juices flowing, you just gotta do it. Been "collaborating" with a friend of mine from Stanford, bouncing ideas back and forth, etc. It's quite exciting considering I haven't composed since last summer, and it's been great working with this guy, I've been really inspired by his use of time signatures and feel for the "shifts" that add character to a song. Good stuff. I hope to have all the material for a seven song "EP" written and fleshed out by this summer...whether or not I'll be able to actually record it remains to be seen but one thing at a time.
Well, I've talked to pretty much everyone who I think reads this rather recently so I know that you are all getting by/doing well/not in the tragic depths of despair. Keep it up =) | | comments: Leave a comment |
| "It's that time of year, when the world falls in love,
Every song you hear, seems to say,
Merry Christmas, may your New Year's dreams come true,
And this song of mine, in three quarter time,
Wishes you and yours the same thing too..." | | |
| Just wishing everyone a Happy Thanksgiving! It's a good time to sit down and reflect on all the wonderful things in our lives...whether it be the little ephemeral moments that get us through the days, or the larger, more established stuff.
Time to pack. =) | | comments: Leave a comment |
| It's really been a while, hasn't it?
To summarize: I took a trip to Toronto from the 8th to the 20th of September. The main purpose of that trip was to clear my head - I had been working in the Chang Lab at UCLA for the last 9 weeks or so, with only a two week respite after my graduation to serve as a buffer. Additionally, I wasn't in the best state of mind after parting ways with Zarina. Toss in some mild cabin fever and, well, let's just say I needed a break.
The trip was mainly successful. I say 'mainly' because 12 days was way too short a time to recover effectively. However, it was still extremely helpful. During those 12 days I managed to almost completely avoid the internet (I don't know if I'll be able to elaborate on this later or not but just take my word that it was a very good thing). I wrote a vast number of letters and postcards that all seem to have made it to their intended destinations. I read a magnificent book called "Shantaram" which I recommend highly to all of you. Somewhat significantly, I also started writing in a paper journal, something which I intend to devote more of my time to from here on out.
Am I trying to go backwards in time - writing letters, keeping a paper journal? I don't know.
Internet based discourse has its obvious advantages. It's paperless and instantaneous. Online social networks and communities such as Facebook and LiveJournal are also great in so many ways. You can reach out to so many people who you otherwise wouldn't know or wouldn't see at all. As a case in point: I received a Facebook friend request about a month ago from an internationally published author who I met at Stanford during my junior year. In addition to being a huge fan of her work, I really enjoyed our conversation when we met, so I was really grateful that we were able to touch base after all this time via such an improbable method (those of you familiar with the number of fake personalities populating Facebook will have some idea of what I'm talking about). This was especially meaningful to me because after our first meeting, I had been sporadically writing e-mails to her over the last two years, the fact that I had no idea whether she was receiving them or not notwithstanding. And then lo and behold, she confirmed that my previous e-mails had been read - and I have even able to enjoy some brief communication with her over the last month.
However, in the aftermath of my joy I gleaned a somewhat more serious meaning from this event. E-mails, IM, blogging, and social networks have severely warped my concept of patience and self-importance (among other things). In writing letters, I found myself embracing the uncertainty that goes along with that territory - you can only hope that your letter gets to the right place, there's no concrete way of knowing when it will arrive, the delay between communication is often so long that by the time you are penning a reply, you've forgotten what you wrote in the first place, you sometimes need to decipher handwriting, you can't tack on brief addenda after sending, etc., etc. With e-mail or blogging these issues are basically non-existent. But despite this fact, I've often found myself worrying over whether someone got an e-mail, or I find myself rushing to chip in my two cents whenever I can on public blogs/Facebook etc. In the same vein, I often pounce on the chance to reply to e-mails, and I like it when people choose to comment on things I have written about or posted in the public domain (for all intents and purposes my definition of public here is anything that you choose to show to people, even if it's just a few people).
But after some self-reflection in the city of my birth, I would like to exercise more caution with regard to those practices, for they do not factor prominently into the concept of "me" that I have been revising and deconvoluting lately.
In closing (this took me a reallllly long time to write), let me just thank everyone again for their comments and advice over the last few years of LJ posting. From now on though, I believe my private writings on paper will supplant my public writings on this forum, so don't expect too many posts from here on out. It's know it's sort of weird, after a fairly long period of not posting anything to come back and announce that, well, I won't be posting anything for a fairly long period hahaha. It's late, I'm tired. Rest assured though, that when I find myself longing for advice or conversation, you will find me reaching out. I will be more proactive about contacting you, I've already begun trying. Granted, the methods of "reaching out" I'm leaning towards may not facilitate quick replies or even seem to encourage replies...but I don't mind, in fact, I'm trying to encourage it. It may seem self defeating, but so far it has been very rewarding (to me, at least, sorry for being selfish =P) Thanks in advance for bearing with me.
Best regards always,
Nathan. | | |
| Friday, beautiful Friday... One more week in Westwood before jetting off to Toronto for a scenery change, or rather a country change. I'm looking forward to seeing my grandmother, uncles and aunts, cousins, and maybe even one or two friends. Toronto is a great city, and I'm sure it'll be good for my head to just be there, taking in the sights, enjoying the cool weather (the mugginess of summer should have supplanted by crisp fall air). Last night, or rather this morning at around 1:30 AM I ended up cooking stew and rice so that I would have lunch and dinner all set up for today. Cooking at that hour is just weird. On the 27th I wrote that I spent $28.30 on groceries (I actually bought all that stuff on the 26th)...and I wanted to see if I could stretch those foodstuffs out over a week. A 30 dollar a week food budget seems decent - in any case, some of the stuff I bought, like rice, will last longer than a few weeks. I really want some fruit/orange juice though.
I'm nearly out of mango shisha - it's a pleasant flavour but a bit too sweet. I have come to the conclusion that I do enjoy fruit flavours more than non-fruit ones (although to be perfectly honest rose is the only non-fruit flavour I have) - I think this has largely to do with the fact that nothing compares to a well packed bowl of Sunkiss tobacco with orange juice in the vase - however, I will try to include coffee or caramel or vanilla or some other non-fruit flavour in my next order.
Oh well, just got to keep it together for a few more hours...well, 5 or 6 more hours. | | |
| Mid-week reporting:
Caught some of the eclipse on early Tuesday morning. It was pretty cool, despite scientific knowledge making these sort of phenomenon a lot less exciting than they used to be. Met two med school students, nice people.
Went to a Dodgers game yesterday with the lab. It was fun! They just opened an "all you can eat" section this year apparently, so that's where we were, stocking up on the infamous foot long "Dodger Dogs", nachos, soda, bottled water, peanuts, etc. etc. The hometown crowd was also really raucous (or maybe it was just our section), so that made the atmosphere quite enjoyable. And to top things off, the Dodgers won, with closing pitcher Takashi Saito sealing the deal. There's something great about watching bright blue animated kanji spinning around on the display board while George Thorogood's "Bad To The Bone" plays in the background.
This morning I totally overslept and didn't end up coming into lab until about noon. Ordinarily, not so bad...except I had a meeting with the professor lol. It wasn't scheduled for any particular time, instead, I was supposed to contact her as soon as I got in...and I doubt she thinks that coming in to work after lunch is acceptable =P
I am looking forward to Serj Tankian's solo album (see subject of this post), as well as the new Nightwish and Tarja Turunen's solo album.
I was recently thinking about why I had a string of "comments disabled" posts last week, the short answer is "I just felt like it". I was trying to deconvolute the reasoning behind it with the help of a friend but I realized it shouldn't really matter - rest assured, the intent is not malicious - I just don't really feel like there's anything to be said concerning some of these posts. Of course, one could extrapolate further and reach the conclusion that there's really nothing that NEEDS to be said about the vast majority of blog posts circulating on the internet, but obviously people like discussing things and sharing their views. And there's absolutely nothing wrong with that - one can only postulate how much worse things would be if people didn't discuss ideas lol. However, at the moment I don't really feel like using my own ramblings as platforms for further conversation (but I will probably continue posting comments on other people's writings, so please forgive me =P). And with that, comments for this post have been disabled =) | | |
| 4.3 lbs of chicken
1 lb of ground beef
2 lbs pasta
2 lbs pasta sauce (honestly I don't think they include the weight of the glass jar)
1 large onion weighing 0.73 lbs
0.5 gallons of milk ~ 4.3 lbs
5 lbs of rice
1 lb of carrots
Grand total = 20.33 lbs
Cost = $28.30
Distance walked with load above = 0.6 miles
No wonder I went to sleep at like midnight. Then again, it might have that huge plate of spicy fried rice that I ate around 9:40 PM...Thanks Jon and Vicki =P
Total lunar eclipse tonight, partial starts at 1:51 AM, total starts around 2:52 AM, Pacific Daylight Time. Visible throughout California. -N. | | comments: Leave a comment |
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Shred The Lightning
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should have eaten breakfast