Names

"We're constantly creating our world by naming, categorizing, applying value judgments to things." -not quite a quote from Foley Ah Doo, but as close as I can remember.
(I posted this back in 2005. Give yourself 10 bonus points if you know what Foley Ah Doo is. Otherwise, lose your next turn, and then we'll tell you it's a play by Ram.)

This is a phenomenon in cooking. Well, in the world in general, but it's easiest to explain in cooking. What if I told you I made a great dish: it's this thing with beans, peppers, avocados, cheese, rice, tomatoes, onions, in a tortilla? You'd probably think you're eating something that's pretty, and then forget it. What if I told you I made Jim Smith's Original Burrito (from the original Jim Smith recipe, winner of the best burrito in Texas contest)? You'd notice it more while you're eating it, think it's great, and remember it. Maybe even next time you'd say "hey Dan, can you make those Jim Smith Burritos?" Maybe it'd be a thing you remember about my cooking style: "he makes good burritos."

It's the same dish, but I gave it a name! All of a sudden it's memorable. Similarly with the internet: do you think Twitter would have caught on if it were called "Quick short message broadcasting service"? Or like in nature. You could be in a place that's pretty, but then you leave and it was just another place. Or you could be in Yosemite National Park, and all of a sudden it's a thing, and you've been there, and you're raving to your friends about all the amazing trees and mountains. Names make things.

I guess what I'm saying is not really revolutionary. Here's another point I'm trying to get at: you can remember things with names sometimes and not others. I mean, remember this list:
Pink Floyd, a grapefruit, citations at the end of an academic paper, STALAGMITES, gumby!
and then remember this list:
G, P, N, R, Z

Done? Now, say I tell you the second thing in each list is the best, and the fourth is the second-best. You'll probably have an easier time remembering that "a grapefruit" and "STALAGMITES" are good than "P" and "R". The list of "things" is heterogenous, the list of letters is homogenous. It's easier to differentiate among the "things."

(okay, disclaimer: I'm basing this on no actual science at all. I'm really mostly saying this stuff because it's a hypothesis of mine and I'd like to see some data backing it up.)

So this means that if there are restaurants in your neighborhood called "John's", "Barry's", "George's", and "Bill's", your new restaurant would be instantly memorable if you called it "How To Cook A Wolf". Or rather, if you were a restaurant critic, it'd be easier to remember a lot of different things about different places if they were all named way different things than if they were named similar things.

I'd love to find the best structures to represent things in our minds. I wonder if there's a memory trick involving mapping similar things to a very dissimilar space. Like if the restaurants are all called John's, Barry's, etc... what if I tried to remember them as like John's, Buried Alive, George Washington's Restaurant of Liberty, and Duckbills? Memory tricks memory tricks.

I'm too tired to think about this more unifiedly.

Jorbs

Wow, read this. It seems very appropriate.

I mean, not for me. I am thankful that I don't particularly have to doublethink to enjoy my job. I do, a little bit, sometimes. Like "we shouldn't be doing things like this" and also "really all I'm doing is making the company money" but those are both kinda false and I only feel that way when I'm particularly whiny. My work is kind of tangible, for being such an over-the-wire skill. But our economy is going more and more this way. I kind of hope we don't get too detached from doing anything ourselves. The world is getting a little too specialized, and it's like that because it's a little too big.

I postpone the Mr. T's Birthday Letter to this weekend

I had a date with Tom Robbins tonight.

Something else interesting: I organized all the areas in my life that I want to make sure I'm making progress in. Of course it's a work in progress. But here's what it looks like now, no real order, with subgoals preceded by a - and notes about them or how to accomplish them by a ---.

Cooking
- master specific worldly cuisines
--- this will structure my cooking so that I am learning something definite.
--- Japanese or Indonesian first
--- make sure to cook dinner at home sun mon tue?
- make fine food
--- higher quality, smaller quantities?
--- this was spurred by Ram's friend Pat's ability/enthusiasm for the "5 dollar 50 dollar meal". I realized I always make food that would cost $10 in a restaurant. It'd be great to be able to make food that would cost $50.
- always be able to make something good, given any ingredients I happen to have around
--- this will come with structured learning
- develop my own recipes
--- so when someone asks me "what do you like to cook?" I'll have an answer

Food advocacy
- organize my theory of food
--- to do on a project day
- make it available online
--- another project day, future?
- help other people learn to cook
--- this is a long-term goal. this is also what my youtube cooking show idea was about.

Exploring Seattle
- get to know all the neighborhoods (or at least all the interesting ones)
--- along with bike rides?
- be an awesome tour guide
--- this will happen, as long as I make sure to get out often.

Languages
- get as good with Dutch as Spanish
--- 30 minutes, 3 days a week. "Language or meditation."
--- why Dutch? Because I've got the biggest jump on it.
- pick up a new language every few yrs
--- this will happen if I keep up.

Traveling
- go places with a purpose, many times each year.
--- this year (india and japan) has been a pretty good start. it'll be important to keep that up.
--- burningman, and then ...?
- ski at least 4x next year
--- make skiing friends, ask them.

Computing
- get good at making things happen
--- python, then what? make my own web app?
- regularly program for fun
--- I like programming! really, I do!

Enlightenment
- suffer less
- enjoy life more
- develop a meditative habit
- make progress towards enlightenment
--- Wednesday talks will probably help, I should keep going to those

Friends
- keep in touch with everyone I want to
--- this is going well. technology helps a lot.
- make 8-10 great friends in my new life
--- this is the awkwardest goal, because it makes it sound like I'm just making friends to satisfy a goal. I mean, this is really the least arbitrary of most of my goals, because I need these people to really succeed and be happy. but it's not even just "I need friends", I mean, it's just what you do, right? you make friends! that's a thing that you do!
- make cool casual friends too

Creativity
- keep making projects happen
- get in a creative group
--- project day monthly

Biking
- ride the STP
--- biweekly training rides, then weekly

End of list. You may have noticed me mentioning "project days". The idea would be, once a month, we all (who? anyone who wants to!) get together and you bring something you want to work on. We just hang out and each work on our own projects. At the end of the day, you display/demo what you have to show for the day. I also mentioned "languages or meditation". This is a plan I have. Every day except Sunday, work on languages or meditate for 30 minutes. Ideally alternate days.

So that's the plan, anyway, we'll see how it goes.

Mr. T's Birthday is in three days

Which means that if you'd like a detailed recap of the last year of my life, in three days I will be sending out my first annual (shut up) Mr. T's Birthday Letter. Email me and I'll put you on the mailing list.

I figure this email gives me a chance to reconnect with some of you. I tell you everything about my life, then you can say "I didn't know you like to ride bikes now" or something, and we can start up a conversation. Or even "I forgot you existed, but I like you. Hi!" Plus, if you've been kinda skimming but not really reading my blog (understandable... I talk a lot), this will be a nice summary.

Now I will continue to talk a lot.

I've had two very interesting visitors in a couple vivid dreams over the last couple days. First was an unknown girl; we were dancing, and very well. This was notable because I'm not known to dance well. Second was one of my high school theology teachers, Mr. Prokop. He was known for bluntness. I liked him. He was kind of a jerk, and he was very sure the Catholic church was always right, but he did also teach World Religions, maybe the only theology class I took that was worth it. In my dream he said "What's your religion of choice these days?" and I stammered something half-assed about "well I kinda like Buddhism but I'm not like an actual Buddhist but I kinda think they have some good ideas and ..." and he goes, all smugly, "Well, how's that going for you?"

Argh! I said something weak, again, like "it's okay, I guess", but I should have said "It's fine. What did you want to hear, that I was lost because I didn't have a crucified Jesus Christ on a rosary around my neck? Listen, I'm doing pretty well, and having issues too, but that's because that's the way the world works. I'm not sure of anything because the world isn't so black and white, and the more you see things in black and white, the more goddamn destructive you become. And no, the truth isn't objective. Or, it is, but it sure doesn't include a Jesus rising from the dead and ascending into the sky. I've trivially got more reason to believe against resurrection than you have to believe in it. But you don't hear me smugging at you about it, do you? No, because I realize that everyone's climbing the same hill, and all their routes will get them there exactly as fast as yours."

So! That's how my dreams have been going. Speaking of things in black and white, I think my environmental footprint in the last couple years has doubled, and here's why: I read "State of Fear" by Michael Crichton. It's a book about how we shouldn't believe all that the media tells us because they just try to fill us with fear all the time. (hello, swine flu!) However, it uses as an example global warming, and the story is about how global warming isn't actually happening.

I questioned this for a while, and then came back to the side of believing in global warming. First of all, it's not like the experts are split 50/50... it's like 90/10. (source: I don't know. Go ahead, prove me wrong.) Second, even if global warming isn't happening, we are screwing up the environment in a lot of other ways, so we should do whatever we can to stop it. Third, I read another book by a global warming denier who took the position of "yeah, it's happening, but it won't really be so bad", which was not encouraging. Fourth, "State of Fear" is a novel. Fifth... argh! Pascal's wager! Believing in it, acting, and being wrong is much better than not acting and being wrong. (That's weak, I know. I'll just take the first 4 arguments then.)

Anyway, so I mentioned this book in passing to my dad a couple years ago. Since then, he's taken up the global-warming-denier banner, slagged environmentalism any chance he gets, made fun of everyone who happens to admit he/she might not hate Al Gore, and started listening to books like this. (side note: oh my gourd.) Dad, if you're reading this, the point I liked in "State of Fear" was that the media/government/etc has become a fear machine, not that global warming doesn't exist!

So! As a pro-environmentalist dude, my total track record for positive environmentalism in this world is -1. Le sigh.

Nap, a jlan, a canal: Japan

First of all, pictures are up!

Holy cow they took our temperatures with a camera. That was my first impression of japan, and it happened before we even got off the plane. Okay, swine flu blah blah, they have to take our temperatures before we get off, so I'm picturing little disposable thermometers. Nope. They came around with this thing that was for sure a camera, pointed it at us, and moved along. Ladies and G, the future.

My second impression, after a vending machine experience: this green tea tastes like tea. You can't find sweetened Liptonesque junk if you try. I was stoked! The next day I discovered that you can also buy said green tea hot in a bottle. Fantastic.

Food in Japan: is great. I can't figure out how it all comes together- I mean, sushi is a thing, and so are soba, udon, and ramen, and so is this izakaya tapas-like thing, and so is just eating a big eel, and then there's okonomiyaki and monjayaki, and etc. I guess it's just that I'm actually getting the full breadth of it. I mean, I used to think Indian food was just curry and naan, but then, there's really a lot of diverse kinds of dishes there too. Japanese food is a huge category!

I think I like it more than most, though. First, it's healthy (hey, longest life expectancy in the world; can't be too far wrong...). Lots of seaweed, seafood, miso, and other things that we generally think are healthy. The flavors are pretty unique- not as distinctive as India, say, but it just kinda tastes clean. And finally and maybe most importantly, they seem to care a lot about it. I mean, you can see that in sushi; it's food-as-art, or art-as-food, or something. Quantities are sometimes small, but quality is usually high. I'm all about that.

Notable things I ate:
- inari (those tofu skin things around a ball of rice)
- udon with lots of funny looking things that were probably all fish cakes in one form or another
- a terrible drink that this bar we went to just made up. They called it the "DOS", which was short for something that translates to basically "drink for assholes." It featured frozen pickled plums and gin. Actually, the first one was really good. The second one was a very bad idea.
- awesome sushi! and mostly nigiri; it seemed the thing to get, moreso than rolls. great squid, eel (of both kinds), a giant clam I think?, some things I don't know what they are, and the famous otoro, which really wasn't as transcendent to me as to some people, which is good because it's not great, generally, on the Monterey Bay Aquarium Sustainable Seafood list.
- monjayaki, a do-it-yourself grilled pancakey thing that I'm sure we messed up, but it was tasty anyway. Note to self: miso is great. start using it a lot.
- takoyaki, octopus balls!
- tayaki, an unrelated pancake-in-a-fish-shape that has a sweet red bean paste filling
- steamed buns in Yokohama Chinatown
- yuba, which is translated terribly unappetizingly as "soy milk skin" or "bean curd skin". ('s good though!)
- four kinds of ice cream from Ice Cream City. This includes sesame gelato, turkish tea ice cream (both of which were forgettable), edamame ice cream, and cheese ice cream (both of which were not). But really, any time I'm eating ice cream, I'm pretty happy.

If you're still reading, you're into long posts, so you might like this slapdash list of things I did that I'm really putting in here for my own sake so I don't forget them:
Saturday- izakaya in yokohama, bar in aobadai
Sunday- kamakura, government building, golden gai, karaoke, albert Nietzsche, tsukiji, sushi.

Wait a minute, hold up. This day was epic and requires further explanation. So we go to the Golden Gai, a district in Shinjuku (which is a part of Tokyo) that is full of tiny bars. It was mostly closed up, but we went into one that had about 8 seats and Ram struck up a conversation with the folks. Later, some other foreigners were looking in, and we waved them in too. A few silly conversations later ("you're from seattle? do you like rock music? do you like Fleet Foxes?"), and we all decide to go karaoke. At this point it's about midnight, and the trains in Japan stop running at midnight, and start again at 5. So if you're going out, you're out till 12 or till 5. So we were going big. (I couldn't possibly go home!)

Then at about 12:30 our newfound Australian friends bugged out. I do not know why. Lame. So we hang out with this Japanese guy whom we later named "Albert Nietzsche" because we couldn't remember his actual name, he looked like an Albert, and he liked Nietzsche. We are tired. We go to his house and take a nap. We wake up at 5 and go to the Tsukiji fish market. This was neat.

Back to the listing of things:
Monday/tuesday- staying out late and karaoking again (this time with people we actually knew), visiting some Shibuya staples like Tokyu Hands.
Tuesday- Yokohama Chinatown, trick art museum, Ram's friend's shop with a dysfunctional Tarot deck, and the very unique aquarium
Wednesday- Asakusa, Kappabashi-Dori (the cooking supplies street! I bought a knife!), conveyor sushi, the music supplies district and the bookstore district whose names I forget, and then Shimo-Kitazawa, a hip cool neighborhood that Ram and I like a lot.
Thursday- Hokane and Ice Cream City. A lot of trains this day.
Friday- Viking!

And finally, some funny things:

At one point before I got there, a guy came up to Ram and his friend Pat and greeted them by brandishing his fist and shouting (of course) "FIST!"

Ram taught me a drinking chant that you can say when someone's taking a shot. It translates kind of like this:
What have you got?
You've got it because you're not drinking.
(sound that's supposed to represent masturbating)
(sound that's supposed to represent masturbating)
(different sound that's supposed to represent masturbating)
Tea-bag-gu! (and then on the "gu" you drink the shot.)

My coworker Tyler has a t-shirt that has some funny pictures and says "Spartan Mother." I met a guy in Japan wearing the same t-shirt.

A step had a warning sign that said "be careful of a level difference." I found that particularly amusing. If I were playing Dungeons and Dragons, I'd put that as a warning on a dungeon.

After noticing a sign for "Bar April Fool", Ram and I were joking about what such a trick bar could be. He suggested "it's not a bar, it's a barber!" where you come in for a drink and leave with a haircut. Then we saw a sign for a place that said exactly that: "Bar-ber."

What an anticlimactic way to end this post. So it goes.

God, this is going to be embarrassing if swine flu DOES become a big deal

Still, it's not.

Things that make me happy:
This essay about how transit-oriented development is not just liberal wackiness. (augh, I said no politics, I know... maybe this can slip by because it's about uniting behind a cause that will help everyone and not just "left is right and right is wrong"?)
"Undeclared" by the Dodos. This album ("Visiter") is RIYL Death Cab meets Animal Collective, and this song is fully on the Ben Gibbard side of the spectrum, and if you don't like it you probably have no feelings. (a song I like without electricity! shocking!)
Biking biking biking!
Ignite Seattle. This was the coolest thing. First, there's a contest for how to build the tallest tower out of five sheets of paper, plus tape, in like a half hour. Recalling my 8th grade science class failure, I shied away at first, but eventually decided to try it anyway. (with Sarah, Daniel, and this other guy named Adam who needed a team). Our result: 37 inches. It looked like a sad giraffe.
But then like 20 people gave 5-minute talks on pretty much just "something that is cool. (and nerdy.)" Everything from "how mitochondria work" to "how we'll manufacture things on small scales in the future" to "people geek out about legos a lot" to "stick maps of the Marshall Islands". Super great stuff. They say they're having this quarterly, and I'm going to the next ones for sure.
Japan tomorrow! (well, I will arrive on Saturday. But I'm leaving tomorrow.)

Dear The National Fearmongers, ahem, The Media

You have made someone I care about very worried about swine flu.

Getting swine flu is like getting the regular flu.

Under 2000 people have caught the 2009 swine flu and under 100 have died. We're still talking a death rate comparable to being struck by lightning. (756 deaths / 13 years = 58 deaths per year.)

In the best case scenario, you're actually very concerned about this, which just means you're all gullible or you don't understand statistics or there are other psychological things going on inside your heads. In the likely scenario, it's a slow news week and you need to sell papers. In the conspiracy-theory scenario, you're all in cahoots trying to keep us afraid so that we channel all our energy into fighting Eastasia or something else sinister.

Whatever. Just shut the hell up.

Hunger challenge: recap

In case you missed it, I was doing the Hunger Challenge last week. Dramatic as that sounds, all it amounts to is feeding myself using only $7/day (which is the maximum food stamp benefit). No food from other people or anything either. (That means no Google food. I did drink their coffee and tea, though. Call it necessary medication for the office lifestyle. If you really want to split hairs, next time I'll buy a bunch of cheap tea for a dollar.)

I went to QFC, to prove that any of you can do this too at your local grocery store. I could probably do better at Trader's Joe, maybe I could do better at the Pike Place Market, and I could definitely do better at an International District Asian grocery store (a small one, not Uwajimaya). I only charged things that I actually ate, and if I used something that I already had in the house, I approximated how much it would cost.

Here's how my expenses turned out:
A honeydew melon: 2.23 (on super sale, 40c/lb)
1/2 dozen eggs: 2.89/2 = 1.45 (not the cheap eggs, these were somewhat "free range" or something- whatever, if you're at QFC you're not going to get humane eggs anyway. you can pay more, but all you get is "organic" or "omega-3".)
1 1/2 lb onions (about half a 3-lb bag): 1.99/2 = 1.00
Tofu: 2.69 (why is tofu so expensive at QFC?)
1 green pepper: 1.50
2 apples: 1.01
1/2 bulb garlic: 0.72/2=0.36
about 5 carrots: 0.88 (fact: actual big carrots usually cost about half of the "baby-cut" kind)
2 broccolis: 0.89 (on sale)
1 c. brown rice (1/50 of a huge $20 bag): 0.40
2 c. groats, barley, quinoa, and millet: about 2.00
3 c. whole wheat flour: 0.70
1/2 bunch spinach that we already had: 1.00
1/2 cabbage that we already had: about 1.50
1/2 stick butter: about 0.50
about 1/2 c. peanut butter throughout the week: maybe 1.00? I didn't track the peanut butter so well...
1 tsp caraway, 2 bay leaves, some marjoram, thyme, and an occasional glug of soy sauce: about 1.00
1 package whole wheat orzo: 4.00
2 more apples: 1.30
maybe 1/4 c. tahini? 0.50?
3 beers (rolling rock/henry weinhard): 3.30
1 beer at a bar (rainier): 2.00 + 1.00 = 3.00
= 32.34.
We'll call it even at $35, to allow for error in the spices and stuff.

Things I made out of all this include a loaf of bread, orzo and broccoli soup, a tofu scramble, cabbage and spinach with eggs (which was great), and a big thing of mixed grains (like oatmeal but better). I did pretty well for 4.5 days.

Friday, work was rough. (To be fair, Thursday, Wednesday, and Tuesday were also rough. To be even more fair, it was I who made them rough. But still, no fun.) So by Friday, they announced at work that they were bringing in ice cream because we (previously) donated the most to a food bank, and goddamn if I'm not going to eat ice cream. So I had that. And then I drank more beer that night too which was not in the budget. So I guess I didn't quite make it.

But the point is, you can make it. You can eat cheaply and not eat crap. You will probably eat more cheaply if you don't eat crap. Also, it doesn't really take that much time: I cooked on Monday for a few hours, and then made the tofu on I think Wednesday. AND, I'm not a super chef blogger. This goes out to all you "starving" college students. (not to actual poor people. I mean, I hope they can eat well and cheaply too, but if they don't, I'm not going to say it's their own fault. being poor is not easy.)

And the further point is just that! Being poor is not easy! $7 per day doesn't sound so bad, but then it's $2.33 per meal. No other food. (maybe your grocery budget is less than that, but what about restaurants and takeout?) And when you're looking at that, even a teaspoon of a spice can become a significant fraction of the meal. I did eat a little grainier than I would have liked, and not so vegetableful. And a couple times, I was actually hungry (imagine that). I guess 4 beers/week fits in with this budget, or maybe like a thing of ice cream instead or whatever, but there is not much room for luxury.

That's all! Enjoy your food, and maybe pause for a moment and be like "it is nice to have this."

If you were 1000 years old, what would you do with all those years?

First, let me just do one thing:


Hey? Hey? You can see the rest on jluxenberg's photostream.

Topic switch.

I had a funny dream last night. I was hanging around with Luke Skywalker, and we were going to fight some big villain, like a big showdown thing, and we both knew it was a big showdown, and we were walking into the villain's lair, but the villain and his henchmen thought that we didn't know, so they disguised the whole place as an airport. We were like going down underground and it was all "okay, here's the concourse, here's the gate, we'll check your bags". At one point we stopped by some lockers and picked up our lightsabers. Uhh, you know. Eventually we got to the room where the big showdown was supposed to happen, and it was a big stadium, like a basketball arena, but we couldn't fight yet, because a girls' college basketball game was taking place. We could hear the announcer saying "she's going up for a slam dunk, and... holy shit!" as the girl herself ended up in the basket somehow. But I was bummed because I knew I wasn't going to be asleep still when the fight happened, and I wanted to beat Darth Vader. Or whomever.

The interesting thing is, though, I had a real sense that time went all wonky. I knew that I was going to wake up before the fight happened, even before I woke up. It's like at the very instant I woke up, a huge flurry of brainwave activity happened, and I only later "remembered" it as a sequential story. Maybe that's what people mean when they say time is just an illusion, or that it's as bendy as the other three dimensions, or that the afterlife is outside time, or something.

Topic shift.

I got hit with a blast of rampant existentialism on my bike on the way home. I was feeling particularly like "what's the point of existing?" (oh my god disclaimer don't get me wrong i'm not all depressed and jumping off a bridge or something oh my god) I mean, I used to say "my life exists to make things better for other people," but now I'm not so sure. I was all about "making life better" but in a pretty impersonal way, like if I could develop better routing algorithms to get food to starving people or something. All this "I want to do great things," it's all kind of just so I can feel better than thou, or at least as good as thou. Not that I don't want to do great things; just... it seems like the whole mountain climber thing, like I'd have to keep climbing higher and higher mountains and I'd never be satisfied, so why bother climbing any mountains at all?

You know "It's a Wonderful Life"? Where, if this guy never lived, his town would be Pottersville, taken over by the rich evil tycoon, and his brother would be dead, or whatever? If he never lived, things would be worse. If I never lived, well, things would be different. My spot at CMU, say, would have been taken by another kid. So my friends there would have met another person instead of me; maybe they would have gotten along better, maybe worse, whatever. Some people might be sadder because they had one less fun guy to goof around with; some people might be happier because they got one of my roles in a play or they weren't shunned by me so hard. Google Analytics might not be so pretty. Or maybe it would have; Google's not hurting for applicants, they could have just hired someone else.

Nevermind, it's the whole voting argument. "You have to vote, it really does make things better!" Similarly, "it's good that I exist, I really do make things better!" I've convinced myself of both of these at one point, and I've convinced myself unimpeachably, like "if you ever think these things are false, you're wrong", or at least "you better really rewire your head really friggin hard if you're going to try to convince me that those are false, and to do so, you'll probably be moving in a direction that you don't like, so you probably shouldn't."

Pity party pity party! Maybe it is. Maybe I should accept more sympathy, and give out more sympathy too. My party line has been, if you're feeling like this, "shape the fuck up, Charlie Brown" (inside joke with, err, one friend from high school) but maybe that's not a good way to live.

To take one more mental leap which makes perfect sense to me but might just be so many words on my blog, this line of thought leads me to something I've wondered for a while. How do you be loving to everyone but still maintain the ability to pick and choose your friends? If I read the stuff on this blog post, and I didn't know who wrote it, I would say that's fine for that person, I'm sorry he feels that way, and all the same I don't want to be this person's friend because he sounds whiny. But if one of my friends wrote it, I mean, I would feel supportive to my friend. It's not like I'd want to end our friendship. But if he/she was always like this, maybe I would. So I don't love that friend unconditionally. But if I did love everyone unconditionally, like you're supposed to, how could I make time for the people I like the most? How could I even like anyone the most?

Topic shift.

I might sign up for Twitter.

Blogging: way down; a lot of great food; and the Hunger Challenge.

Things have been quiet around here. First I decided to cut out politics, because it wasn't doing me much good. (for the record, I feel a lot better politics-free.) Then I decided to cut out even food-politics, because that'll all go in another site I make someday. (I'm making slow but sure progress.) Then I slowed way down on that because I realized I don't have to save the world immediately. I'm working on the whole happiness thing, but when I say that, it sounds like I'm just moving right along like I have been the rest of my life. It's different; I feel like I'm doing better than before. A few key points, and I'll try to make it not sound sappy, because it doesn't feel sappy to me, but it might come across that way: (if you want, jump down for info about Portland or the Hunger Challenge.)

- I am a great person. Self-worth is intrinsic. It doesn't depend on what you think of me, or what dumb things I do.
- To believe that, I have to believe that YOU are a great person too, whoever you are, and that's a little harder for me to believe, but I'm getting there. One hangup is "if everyone is so great, how can you decide not to hang out with someone?" I don't mean the people who are mean to you (it's easy to avoid them; just say "I like you but you don't like me, that's your problem"), but what about the people who are kind of annoying? The people who might want to like you, and you can like them back as a person, but you don't want to be around them for whatever reason? This seems like a minor problem. It's just a "social graces" sort of thing.
- So I'm already great, so I don't have to save the world in order to be worth other people's affection, so there's less pressure. Even if all I do is go to work to earn some money, then spend it on housing and food, and you know, love people n'at, that's enough.
- Given that there's less pressure, it's not so bad to just take time out sometimes and say "I am having fun now!" or "that tree is pretty" or "boy it feels nice outside." (formerly I would sometimes think "man, I hate how it feels nice outside, because it makes me feel guilty to be inside"... that is ridiculous.)
- Oh, speaking of how I'm great, I have feelings and stuff. Yeah, really, even though I joke about being a robot because I dig the logics a lot, I am an all-around human being. 's true. So I can use those sometimes. That's okay.
- Plus Buddhism! I got in a traffic jam today. There was nothing wrong with that. I was in no big hurry to get home. I was with Sarah and Daniel. So I tried mostly successfully not to attach suffering to it, and that worked pretty well.
- and by the way, I can be happy. All this idealism isn't just another failed bid that will end in disillusionment. My life is pretty good.

So day-to-day life is more or less the same as it ever was, but I'm shifting my focus bit by bit. I'll keep you posted. When I reach enlightenment and attain complete control over mind and body, I'll post "omg totes levitating right now" or something.

Speaking of life, went to Portland this weekend! Stayed with Daniel's friend Henry and his roommates. Cool folks! Cool city! Cool comic convention! (does it make me a super dork if I went to two comic conventions in the same month?) But this was less nerdstock and more "I draw a comic online." I liked the comics here more. Also, unrelatedly, cool Saturday Market!

And cool food. Man. We ate at four places there, all of them stellar for 22-year-oldsmen. First night: Hopworks Urban Brewery, with a great Belgian-style Dubbel for $3.50. (also a "pint of pretzels", which means three meter-long freshly-baked pretzels in a beer stein.) Second day: Pine State Biscuits, which will clog your arteries for sure, but man biscuits are maybe my favorite white bread. Plus, a lot of interesting-sounding topics for said biscuits. (big sandwich plus coffee: like $9) Second evening: Saburo's sushi. The biggest and tastiest nigiri I've ever seen, and rolls the size of small burritos. Had a great squid nigiri (2 pcs, $3.50) and an eel roll. (thing I've unfortunately found out since: you shouldn't eat unagi (freshwater eel). another site agrees. anago is a "maybe". if you just order "eel" and you don't know which one you're getting, it's probably unagi.) Third day: brunch at Gravy. Literally enough food for two generous meals. Three would be reasonable. Including super good french toast and a scramble with tofu.

In short, thanks Henry for the choices, thanks Portland for being cool, I'll have to visit again. (but nope, not moving there, I heart Seattle, which is nice)

Finally, it's time for the Hunger Challenge! The plan: to eat for $7/day. To see what it's like to only get $7 food stamps and have to feed yourself with it. My viewpoint: whatever! That's easy! One rule I've made in addition to the other rules: I can use existing food that I own, if I count out how much it would cost. I'll let you know how it goes. (and hey, join me if you want!)

(for the record, I think it's ridiculous that having $7/day for food is the "hunger challenge." sheesh. how about a handful of rice per day? that's hungry and challenging.)

Finally finally, in the category of things that make me happy and corporations not always being evil, shouts out to Cigna, for covering me for one doctor's appt I made without realizing it would not be covered (b/c it was in cleveland, derf) and to Zipcar, for not hitting us with a late charge when we drove back late and another person had rented the same car.

I'm sorry. I'm so sorry.

That I haven't posted photos yet from last weekend or even elaborated much besides "I bought a coat and then last weekend was cool."

So Seattle has conventions, you know, like big cities do, right. Last weekend was the Emerald City Comic Con. Sarah and Daniel suggested that we go, because they've read a couple of the webcomic authors who will be there. (I have since too, and I like them too)

So it'll be like nerdfest, right? (I mean, I say this in a self-mocking way, not like "I'm going to go hang out with all the nerrrrddss"... even going to a comic con makes you lose all rights to make fun of people for nerding. Besides, who am I trying to kid? Thank god there are no pictures online of when I went to see the Matrix Reloaded dressed as Agent Smith. On second thought, that was hella fun, and I don't care what you say.) Now, when you're going to a nerdfest, you can act all hip and above-it-all and like "oh, I'm just cultural slumming" (or "I'm going LARPing to write a story about it"), or you can geek the hell out. And Sarah and I, we go big or go home.

Now what's nerdy that we like? Hint: it's British, the villains have plungers for arms, and the spaceship is a police box.

Yes, we were Doctor Who and Rose Tyler. Sadly, Jared has most of the good pictures. In the meantime, here's this:


EDIT: hi-res here. you know, because you'll probably want a poster of this for your wall.

A coat story, in which I posit 10 as the next funny number after 3

On Saturday Sarah and I set out to find a coat. A trench coat, really. Any long brown coat would do. A suit would be nice but not necessary, cheap Converse All-stars would be nice too but we knew where to find those so no problem, but the trench coat was the tricky one. I had done some investigation beforehand and found maybe like 12 long coats at the Value Village, but they were all way too big and not the right style, so I didn't buy any. I figured I'd spend about $20 at a thrift store somewhere.

So we started at the Crossroads Trendy Resale Shop near my house. No long coats. Up to the U District (where soulja boy and electric six hang out) to the Buffalo Exchange Trendy Resale Shop. Again, no long coats, but some pants that looked promising. Over to the Red Light Vintage and Resale Shop; some kinda neat suits but they were priced at like $100-150 and had rips and stuff. Goodwill had a similar lack of long coats. Argh! Despair starts to worm its dirty little fingers into our minds. Express bus downtown to the Ross Discount Clothes store; no winter coats. Out of season. Duh. H&M Trendy New Clothes: again, out of season.

At this point, we are standing outside Nordstrom. Well hey, a department store, right? They'll have some coats, anyway, even if they're out of my price range. We waltz in, past the pianoman (because you see it is classy), down to the men's department, and I stride confidently up to a salesman and proclaim "I would like a trench coat!" He points me over to the wall a little bit like the Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come. Aha! Look at those coats! Perfect! And now, mind you, my price range had crept up steadily with each failure, from $20 to $40, to $60, and was at this point pushing $80.

I pick a coat and look at the price tag. Eight hundred ninety five dollars! Harh! I am off by an entire order of magnitude! This is funny! Because, you see, had the price been $100, I would have bought it; $200, I would have wishy-washed a lot; $500, 'fraid not. But being off by a factor of 10: that's funny.

The thrilling conclusion: we leave, wander around and look for some more thrift stores that aren't there because they're not the best at making sure their Google Maps listings are up-to-date, we almost fight, Sarah suggests we go to Macy's, I say no way they won't have anything we want for sure, she says let's try anyway, I agree to take a quick look, I ask a man while she looks around, the man says they have no coats but Sarah finds some anyway, there are exactly three styles left on a clearance rack and exactly one coat that fits a man as small-chested as I, and that coat is the brilliant shining paragon of coat-that-I-wanted for 75% off and I walk home $100 poorer but 1000% more awesome the next day.

What happened the next day? Stay tuned, dear reader...

Umm... other good things?

Spurred on by encouraging friends, here are some more things that are good:

Truckasaurus. (warning: myspace burns your eyes and is loud) If you can deal with the occasional Gameboy, you might like this. Try "Ain't No Danbo Copy Remix".

Owls. (warning: this is the creepiest thing on the internet.) But I actually find it kind of cute. And creepy.

Biking? Sorry to be a broken record here. Sometimes I don't enjoy biking and it's just transportation and a trip to the gym like everyone else grumbles and does, but sometimes it's quite nice. Today was the latter.

Seaweed and fancy mushrooms and brown rice. Cooking for people who don't mind if you take a long time.

Oh! I know. My job. It's great! Even when you spend all day fixing a bug that's not really a bug because it works on every browser except yours. It's just "make a cool thing" for a living.

Why God Won't Go Away. Have I talked about this book yet? It's super good. I don't want to get all into it now, but the thing I got out of it is: nirvana/ecstasy/moksha/whatever is actually an observable mental state, and people can get there.

This is all sort of working. I can kind of deal with the fact that life is pretty good. That's an improvement. And I can deal with the fact that I'm already good enough for anything or anyone, and that I don't have to do anything else amazing to prove myself.

And, speaking of good things, I'm coming to Pittsburgh the week of May 11-17. If you are reading this, I probably really want to see you. Will you be around?

Other things that made me happy over the last couple days

Don't worry, this won't become a habit. The last thing I'd want to be is cloying. But shut up, I have liked the following things:

Dinner last night at Quinn's. I mean, a fancy restaurant, right? (but still in the "very good beer" category, not the "wine" category, and naturally pretty hip- welcome to capitol hill.) It was great. And I kept going "hey, I am actually enjoying this." That was easy.

Shopping at the Pike Place Market today. This is consistently a thing that makes me happy. As such, I have built it into my routine.

Exploring the U district today. Wandering into a shop that sold gargoyles.

Fixing my bike fender with duct tape (because it's absolutely a job for duct tape, and that is the high point of my mechanical skills)

Going to St. Mark's Cathedral to listen to their men's choir. It was sort of chantey and sort of hymney, and filled with young people! How interesting.

Deciding to buy a gray pinstripe (or plain blue) suit, a brown overcoat, and converse all-stars; the nerdier among you may know why, and the rest of you don't get to learn exactly how nerdy I am.

My bed! Now taking up a lot less room. It's like I gained a bunch of square feet! PS. don't tell my mom and dad I have a mattress on the floor now. they think that I would do such a thing to save money and that I shouldn't because it's depressing. but the truth is, it's not to save money; I had a bed frame and it just took up a lot of space, and I really like the way it is now.

Worrying still (for example, I didn't cook at all this weekend! oh noes! my mad sauteing skills are atrophying as we speak!), but a little less. Hey, it's a process.

The next life lesson

I remember hearing some theory in some psych class about how there are stages of life, and they're something like ages 0-1, 1-2, 3-5, 5-13, 13-21, 21-30, 30-50, 50-70, and 70-whatever. Or something like that. And in each stage there's a thing you have to learn. Like in the 0-1 stage, you have to learn trust. If your parents abandon you, and you don't ever trust them, you'll be kinda developmentally stunted. And like in 5-13, it's that you have to learn to play well with others. Whatever. Anyone know what this theory is called?

Anyway, I can buy it, except I don't think I agree with those age divisions, and I'm not sure how they know what the lesson is in each stage. Maybe it's different for every person. For example, in my 18-22 stage, those college years, the most important thing I learned was "if you're in a group of people and you're worried that you're not as cool as they, you're incorrect." and its sidekick, "if you're in a group of nerdy people and you're afraid that you're a nerd like they, you're also incorrect."

I think the lesson I learned in the 14-17 block was "you should be outgoing." (Note that these lessons are not necessarily the same for everyone.) You only learn these things after the fact.

Now I'm in the next block, the one that starts at age 22 and continues until... I don't know. Maybe you only learn when the group ends after it's over. And you only learn the lesson then too. But I have a sneaky suspicion that the lesson is going to be "it's okay if you don't save the world." Or maybe "become a complete person, not just an intellect." I've worked out the following things:

- You know, sex drugs rock and roll, the ol' dumb-hedonism is textbook not-worth-it
- I will not be remembered long after I die, even if I'm awesome (you know, Ozymandias n'at), so trying to be famous is not worth it
- I am a pretty good person, so trying to be like a superman because it will make women want me and men fear me is not worth it (this I believe probably 90%; sometimes I still want to be a superman but I'm mostly over it)
- Living "the good life" is not such a bad thing- I can easily go on to a pretty fulfilling job, a comfortable living place, hopefully a good family; these are not easy, but definitely doable if I work at them

So, you know, this is okay. The one niggling doubt is: what about all the other people? Living the good life is fine if everyone else had the opportunity to live the good life too. But they don't! Shouldn't I be helping them?

Anyway, besides that, I'm mostly doing okay. But I think the answer to that is sort of Beej's question to me a few months ago, which goes sort of like this: I want to be happy. How do I think I will be happy? By helping other people to be happy. But if I'm not happy, how will I show other people how to be happy?

Or the monks' response to the people's question "how are you helping others by just meditating all the time?" They're purifying themselves. How do you get rid of anger, clinging, attachment in the world if you're full of these things yourself? It is not so easy!

So anyway, point is, I'd still like to save the world, but becoming happy myself is also a worthwhile goal, and one that will be more fulfilling to me in the long run. If I'm anxious because I haven't saved the world, there are two ways out of that: save the world, or stop being anxious. The trick is, if I then save the world, I might still be anxious, because people who keep striving for more keep wanting more. Stop being anxious, stop wanting, stop craving, etc.

Enjoy the little things in life! Enjoy enjoyment! Don't be all like "well this is nice but I have to go do laundry."

I might start posting things that make me happy, either incidentally or on purpose. Studies show that makes you happier. Burmese people keep photo albums of good deeds that they have done, like if they're going to do a charity thing, they hire a photographer and save the photos so they can look back later and be all like "yeah I did a good thing."

So. Some things that made me happy today. Warning: you might find these very tiny and not worth reading and you might think I am dumb. If this frustrates you, the problem is with you, not me.
Trees have blossoms on them now.
When I rode my bike home I got in a good pace behind someone.
I had some mushrooms, onions, eggplant, and spinach. I put the onions in butter and let them fry until they were a little burnt, quite accidentally. They turned out tastier because of it. I think I "deglazed" them.
Sarah does not think I'm a basket case, even though my mind was going in circles and I was lost in thought a lot this evening.
I like these pants that I am wearing.

I am so f***ing lost right now! India: the confusing list.

EDIT: censored the title. I'm okay with irritating my parents, but I remembered my grandma reads this too, and I think being a rebellious foul-mouthed young blogger is only funny about one generation up. Not that I think my grandma would shake her head in disapproval or anything. I guess it's just, the more you think about swear words, the more it's like a big deal to use them, and thanks to my parents, I think about them a lot now. It's like watching a Bruce Willis movie or something, and then after he shoots a dude, stopping the movie and sobbing because oh my god he's dead and his wife and kids will have to go on without him. My position on the issue of "swear words" (they're silly) still stands, but if people I care about are going to stop reading and wag their fingers at me, I mean, it's not worth fighting over.

ANYWAY, the sentence in question comes from a (super american) kid we saw in an alley in Varanasi. We had been wandering around a bit, vaguely trying to find our hotel, and apparently he had too. We made eye contact and it's like the whole charade just dropped, like he finally found someone who would understand not only his language but also his predicament, and the exasperation came tumbling out. Hope we pointed him in the right direction.

India was super confusing! Mostly in a fun way. Occasionally intriguing, or just plain old noteworthy. Here's a sampling:

- Addresses. You might think a hotel would have an address that you could tell a cab driver, who would then take you directly to that address. Wrongo! My hotel was at A27/1 Road No.1, Mahipalpur Extn, New Delhi. "Road No. 1"? It took us about five tries.
- Taximen let you share a taxi. Like it's Rs900 for the two of us to get from Guwahati to Shillong with one other passenger, but only Rs600 if there are two other passengers. (and even then, Indianmen sure don't pay the same price as whitemen.)
- All around Shillong, you can buy tickets for the daily sweepstakes. Here's how it works: twice a day, a whole bunch of guys shoot a whole bunch of arrows at a target. You bet on the last two digits of the number of arrows that stick in the target. Sadly, never saw this happen.
- At one point it got all muddy when we were walking on the road where some kids were working. So they built a rock bridge for us. Really, we can walk through the mud, it's okay! But, um, thanks anyway!
- Handwriting is held in higher esteem in India. And by that broad generalization, I mean I saw one guy with really great handwriting.
- We got white-person gawked a lot! Kids would say stuff to us. My conversations were decidedly one-sided; I'd just sorta go "khublei!" (which means hello, goodbye, have a good one, peace be with you, uh, a penny saved is a penny earned, red sky at morning sailors take warning, etc.) a lot.
- At the orphanage, we played games with the kids. I ended up playing pick-up sticks a lot. You can imagine it's difficult to agree on the rules when most of the players don't speak your language. And by that I mean they all speak Kid.
- If you have three pots, what would they be? Would one of them be a pressure cooker? In India, yes.
- Milk comes in a little pouch. That just kinda sits out. I mean, no fridge. So you boil it. Then it has a skin.
- In Kolkata, we went to the Kali temple. I explained how cool this was. But we were trying to put our shoes in the shoesplace (in every temple there is a shoesplace so you don't wear your shoes in the temple) and we got bamboozled by a fake shoeman. He asked us to put our shoes under a little corner of a store, so we did, and then he proceeded to take us for a tour. Hey, there's a Shiva lingam. Hey, there's a tree that's good for your family or whatever. Here's a flower, throw it at Kali. Here's a string that I'll tie around your wrist, more good luck. Now come over here and make a donation. Of course I "didn't have any money," so after some badgering, I was sent to set on a step and "meditate." But first I was asked to write my name, country, and the number 2100 in a book. Whatever, I'm not giving you money, I'll write whatever number you want. I soon found out they tried to use this "fact" to persuade Catie to "donate" because "look, Dan donated 2100 rupees." (of course she is too shrewd for this nonsense.)
- EDIT: As if our evening wasn't bewildering enough, we proceeded to wander around the darkened grounds of the Victoria Memorial, ignoring a groundskeeper who tried to tell us it was closed. We had heard tales of a "sound and light show", you see, and if there's anything better than viewing an old vainglorious British colonial-era monument in the middle of India, it's viewing the same* with bright lights and music. I guess. Er, we were bored? Anyway, we found our way in, sat in the rs20 "front" section (about 10 feet in front of the rs10 "back" section) among a bunch of oldmen, and were immediately blown away by a rollicking Caribbean-inspired tune called "I am Calcutta". Not only were the pictures of the accompanying slideshow taken in approximately 1970, the lyrics were inane. I mean, "I am the memory of years/ I am the laughter and tears/ I am Calcutta!" sort of inane. Then we snoozed through 45 minutes of a terribly Anglocentric history of Calcutta (with some bright lights) and got bitten by mosquitoes. All in all, well worth the price of admission.
* Like my use of "the same" there? We saw that all over India.
- Taking a domestic flight from Kolkata to Gaya, we had to fill out a "declaration of goods" form where we said we weren't carrying certain things. You know, money, guns, etc. And also cameras and "zipper pulls".
- Being white (and therefore, apparently just puking money all over the place) is weird. We wanted to take an autorickshaw somewhere in Bodh Gaya, I think it was. We saw one filling up with people and we figured we could share the ride, you know, because we could save 40 cents or something, but the point is, it'd be fun or authentic or something. So everyone started talking in Hindi and then the other passengers started to get out. Apparently he was going to boot them out and take us. We hastily explained, no, it's okay, please continue, you know, taking these people who were already in the car. Sheesh.
- And then in Varanasi, the aforementioned white dude who was soooo lost. He had started out looking for an internet cafe. We tried to point him to a shop owned by this guy who had an excellent marketing pitch: he stood outside, and as we passed, called out "Yes, madam, we do have internet here!"
- At one point we hit a dead end. Kids laughed at us.
- At a few other points, our way was blocked by a bull. I think the bull was laughing at us.
- Did I mention the kids playing Holi? So Holi is this holiday where you throw color at each other. It was on Wednesday. Starting about the Friday before, there were kids with colored water balloons out on the streets. I mean, these were super stainful- we each lost a pair of pants. Could be worse- we saw one dude just get pasted with a big green splotch on his back. Some had plain water balloons (and in fact Catie got walloped with one in a rickshaw), but still. For about four days, we were pretty frightened of kids.
- Train ride to Agra was fun. At one point, this friendly Muslim student joked that we couldn't speak English. "You're in India, you have to speak Hindi." We could not even say that we could not even say anything.
- Also, we got booted from our seats a couple times. We thought we were in the right place, but these Muslim students had our bunks, so we just took theirs (or so we thought), but then someone else arrived to claim them, and blah. Around 2AM a couple guys asked us some questions and then everyone started getting involved and duking it out in Hindi (this is a common occurrence)*. Eventually they got it figured out.
* At this point, Catie noticed the station we were in. "We're in Lucknow", she said. "Yeah," I said, "these guys seem like they can help us." SUPER PUN!
- When I got to Hemant and Gaurav's house, I went to take a shower. I had been out of shampoo for a while, but I thought, no problem, they'll have some. They did; it was called "Black Shine" and looked smooth, silky, and pitch black. I debated whether to use it, read up on how it would make your hair so beautifully black, and decided against it. Le sigh.
- According to everyone we talked to, there are two kinds of Holi colors: dry colors (in a powder) and "water colors", which are universally evil. Okay.
- Also, sometimes they call shorts "half-pants"!
- Things that are okay in India, or at least okay with Hemant and Gaurav, part 1: commenting on people's bodies. They've outright called Catie fat (ludicrous) and she was pretty excited to see if they would do the same to me. Nope: instead they told me I needed to work on my figure. You know, buff up a little bit. I'm too skinny. (to be fair, I'm pretty skinny. However, I absolutely don't mind.)
- Things that are okay in India, or at least okay with Hemant and Gaurav, part 2: the word "chink". As in, "the people up in the Northeast are kind of, what would you say, chinky, right? They look a little bit Chinese?" Even better: Saturday nights at the "disc" (disco) are "Chinky Night."
- Even better sales pitch than the Internet guy: "Hello. Beard?" (from a sidewalk beard salesman.)
- Finally, on our last day in Delhi, everywhere we end up it's all fancy and posh. We just wanted some food! Eventually we asked a guy where was good to eat and he sent us to Pandara Rd. At Pandara Rd. there are about 4 buildings, each of which has a restaurant. We see some Indian guys going into one, so we follow them. It turns out it's called "Havemore restaurant", it's super fancy (like white tablecloths), it's super expensive (like $5 each!), and the stereo features a Celine Dion soundalike singing "Run" by Snow Patrol.
- Have I mentioned what a mess Indian pop music is? I mean, the Indian pop music that is actually Indian is cool. But the American pop they get is abysmal. It's like the post-grunge of 5 years ago (hello, Nickelback and Three Doors Down) with the occasional odd bootleg mashup (like that mix of "Wonderwall" and "Boulevard of Broken Dreams", or "In the end" by Linkin Park plus some crummy Garage-Band drum beat).
- Going to a coffeeshop in the fully middle-class Defense Colony Market: I order an Americano. The response is "With Irish flavoring?" as if that is the most natural thing in the world. "Of course!"
- And then, some 30 muddled hours later, I board a bus from Sea-tac airport to my home, only to hear some lady talking loudly on the phone, dropping not only an "I'm gonna whoop your ass", but also a "You're gonna get a Whopper shoved up your butt." It's great to be home.

Happy Journey! or, India: The Awesome List

"Happy Journey" is a thing they say a lot in India. (Well, as much as we say "Bon Voyage", I guess.)

And so it was! A whirlwind tour through 8 cities in 13 days, in 3 parts. First, I met up with Catie in Guwahati and took a taxi to Shillong, where I hung out with her host family in Shillong, their parents in the nearby village of Kharang, and the orphanage she's working at (also in Kharang). Next, Catie and I set off for a quick trip through Kolkata, Bodh Gaya, Varanasi, Sarnath, and Agra, tourist-style. Finally, we ended up in the outskirts of Gurgaon, just south of Delhi, where we spent a few days with her friends there and a couple days in Delhi itself.

India is awesome, gross, enlightening, and confusing. We decided that we'd both be happy if the "awesome" or "confusing" list won, and indeed, the latter did. So I'll share with you the awesome list now, interspersed with the gross and enlightening lists as appropriate. And I'll split it into three parts, so it's a little shorter for you to read, but so I don't have to lose out on completeness.

AWESOME LIST (aka a quick summary of our trip), which I will split into three parts:

PART THE FIRST: Northeast India

• flying to India. It was nice, even! I had two flights, with a 3 hour layover; total travel time maybe 24 hours? In the first one, they had the little seat-back movie screens, and those make a heck of a lot of difference. You almost want the flight to take longer so you can watch more movies. I watched "Finding Nemo" and "Speed", two movies I had really missed out on. Plus, first flight I've ever had free beer!
  
• more interesting travel: taxiing through hilly Assam and Meghalaya (with a stop for tea, of course)
• staying with the wonderfully kind and hospitable family of Barri and Nangroi, although Nangroi wasn't there; it was sort of the family of Barri, Dari, Khlur, Banjop, and many others who would be there sometimes or not. They were super nice! Apparently I was too tall for their spare bed, so they made me a bed on the floor. I was kinda the tallest person in the entire state.
• the markets of Shillong. Well, the markets of anywhere, you know? Sprawling webs of narrow alleys, unusual things for sale, uh, fake American goods. Whatever. Markets are neat and Shillong's were no exception.
• taking a sumo to Kharang. A sumo is a big van-truck that seats about 12, which means it seats about 24. It leaves at 1:00, except it usually doesn't actually leave until 2:00, but once in a while it leaves at 12:00. We got there at 1 and it left at 2. Which gave us time to sample...
• Indian sweets. It's a thing. Sweet shops are abundant, but instead of stocking prewrapped candy, they sell freshly-made really interesting stuff. And, you know, for like Rs5 each. ($1 = Rs50) We had some ladoo and barfi there, but neither was as good as the soan papdi we had a couple other places. I'm a fan.
• the countryside around Kharang. It's some really ideal combination of rocks, hills, trees, rivers (or riverbeds), and crops. And the occasional mysterious prehistoric monolithic stone. No lies.
  
• the family in Kharang that we stayed with. Mei and Pa, we called them; Nangroi's parents. (or Barri's? I don't know) Again, super nice. Made us food and tea all the time. I felt like a lazy guest in these places, but they insisted they didn't need help with anything.
• Cell phone internet. Do you have an iphone or something? Can you "tether" it to your computer? (connect your computer to the internet through your phone when your phone gets 'net but your computer doesn't) No, I can't either. But people in rural India can! American phone companies, get on that.
• Bucket baths. Try it sometime, get a bucket of hot water, a bucket of cool water, and a little dipper cup, and take a bath. It's not hard, and it probably saves water.
• Tea and biscuits. Or at least tea. We drank tea often, as a thing to do when not doing anything else. It's nice. Relaxing. Downside: the tea was always full of milk and sugar. (or maybe that's an upside, your call.) Upside: tea was always accompanied by "biscuits"... they're sold like cookies, but they're not as sweet; they walk a line between cookie and cracker, and there are tons of varieties. Downside: I mean, these things are just white flour, sugar, and hydrogenated vegetable oils. But you only eat a little bit. This is cognitive dissonance: I hate unhealthy packaged things, but I like things with lots of varieties. Well, tea's good, anyway!

PART THE SECOND: Tourist blatz from Shillong to Delhi

• Flights from Catie's magic travel agent from Guwahati to Kolkata, then Kolkata to Gaya. He got us to Gaya relatively quickly. Gaya has a tiny airport. How did we fly there? I'm telling you, magic travel agent. (he wears a turban and makes you feel very much at ease. I liked this guy.)
• I mean, Kolkata (Calcutta) was cool too. It wasn't on our original itinerary, so we didn't know what to do really, but we spent a good day there.
• Gross +1: Kolkata was super hot and sticky. Way a lot.
• Gross +1 more: saw a roach in our hotel room. I note this because it was the only one we saw the whole time we were in India. Even when you're staying pretty cheap, the rooms are generally bug-free. This is nice!
  
• Coolest thing in Kolkata: the Kali temple. It was super kinda nightmarish. We got there at night, there were bells ringing, and the center of the temple was surrounded by walls except for one place you could see this sorta evil-looking face. Unfortunately, we were ushered through by a temple scammer, but more on that later.
• Enlightenment +1: it was a Hindu temple. Only 28943 other religions to go!
• The Mahabodhi temple. With a descendent of The Actual Bodhi Tree! Where the Buddha reached nirvana! +1 enlightenment for sure!
• Giant 80-foot statue of Buddha. Partially hollow. Filled with 20000 more Buddha statues. +20000 enlightenment, although I'll settle for +1.
• Varanasi: home of the Ganges. Enlightenment +1 more.
• Did I mention how alleys and markets are cool? Varanasi sure has them.
• At one point we wandered into an ashram. The people welcomed us in, showed us around, gave us some food (a really tasty turmeric rice thing) and a book about yoga. We kept waiting for them to badger us for a donation. They never did! They weren't like everyone else who showed us sudden and surprising kindness! How nice!
• There's a temple there too that has the Hindi translation of the Ramayana on the walls. That's cool.
• Night train to Agra. We met a few very friendly Muslim students. They gave us food and we all laughed at our inability to communicate. Good fun for all. An overnight trip on a train: $5 per person.
• And then okay the Taj Mahal. Yes it is really that big, and yes you should see it. I mean, no religious experience or anything, but it was pretty cool.
• We spent our day in Agra with a Swedishman named Alexander. I love befriending solo travelers. It makes things more interesting for you and much better for the traveler. I suppose I have a little empathy. (but not like this guy: he was spending a month and a half in India by himself! I don't have that kind of guts...)
• Und zo... we took the "chair car" on the train to Delhi. (the cheap seats were full.) Apparently "chair car" means you get a comfy chair and they feed you a meal, even on a 2 hour trip.

PART THE THIRD: Delhi and suburbs

• We spent two and a half days near Gurgaon. It is the new India. Huge fancy swanky new apartment buildings tossed into the desert like big rocks. And then, huge fancy swanky new office buildings. But if you have a place to live and a place to work, where do you hang out? Answer: at the huge fancy swanky new malls. (and I'm serious about these. They're like something from the Jetsons.) Ugh.
• Catie's friends Hemant and Gaurav, and their mother (whose name I never caught, we just called her "Ama"), lived a bit outside this swank, in an old "colony" built by Maruti-Suzuki for their workers. They were really cool! 20 and 22 years old, they work in call centers. Talking about work was a lot of fun. We're all techies, just on other ends of the globe! Well, maybe not techies: Hemant is sort of an HR manager at a Capital One call center. But Gaurav is a call center guy at Dell and he wants to learn more about server management. That's neat.
• Holi! Where you put colored powder on people's faces and throw colored water at them! We celebrated in their village, it was really fun. Lots of dancing and ceremony too.
• In general, a couple days relaxing was well-needed after the long trip.
• I'm running out of steam here; this is a long post.
• The Jama Masjid is the biggest mosque in Asia.
• The Chandni Chowk is a market in Delhi. Again, markets, cool, wish I had spent more time here.
• The Lotus Temple is a Baha'i temple. And it's pretty like a lotus.
• Then we went to the ISKCON temple... more about that later.
• Last on the monuments list: Humayun's Tomb, which was a little like the Taj Mahal, except smaller and brown.
• Took a cooking class with an Indian lady.
• Finally, whittled away our last few hours before I had to catch a flight at the Defense Colony Market, which is just like the US.
• Why did I just list things that I did here? I'm just going to do it again in the photo album I will post... er... later.
  

T minus 4 days

I'm going to India. This is very cool. Most of my free time has gone towards preparing for that; not so much for blogging. Other cool things I have done include get a haircut and go to the Pike Place Market. But that's not so interesting; you're here to read about India.

Here's the proposed itinerary:
Saturday 2/28-Sunday 3/1: fly Seattle-Amsterdam-Delhi
Monday 3/1: fly Delhi-Guwahati, meet Catie, take a taxi-jeep to Shillong, go to the orphanage up in the Khasi Hills, hang out there and in Shillong for a couple days
3/4 or thereabouts: get back to Guwahati, fly to Kolkata, meet Catie's friend there, then the next day fly to Gaya, then get to Bodh Gaya (where the Buddha sat under a tree and got enlightened).
The next few days: go to Varanasi (it's The Holiest!) and Sarnath (it's like the third holiest!), sleeper train to Agra (it's the Taj Mahaliest!), then go on to Delhi
Tuesday 3/10- Friday 3/13- hang out in Delhi, meet up with Catie's other friends. Holi will be happening. Throw colors at people.
Saturday 3/14- head home via Amsterdam, meet up with Daniel and Michael in the Netherlands on the way.

This is neat! I am excited!

Positive definition

I feel like this turned up somewhere in my computer science education. Maybe it was one of those classes I took off to the side. Some logicky philosophical thing which is like super important because it proves that computers can't solve the halting problem or whatever, but which is like not important because it doesn't tell me how to like run a server, but which is like super important because I'm a Computer Scientist (oooh!) and not a server runner.

Positive vs. negative definitions. Where you have some object that you're trying to define, and a positive definition is where you say what it is, and a negative definition is where you say what it isn't. Like "what kind of car do you want to buy?" "A yellow camaro, because it's so fast and pretty and Brian Bell of Weezer wrote a song about it once." That's a positive definition. A negative one is "Well, not a truck or minivan or other big thing, because I don't like driving big cars, and not a sports car because I don't want a gas guzzler, and not an American car because they suck, and nothing too unsafe or flashy or expensive."

They can both be useful, but positive definitions are almost always more fun, Weezer or no. How many times have you been around people and said "what do you want to do today?" and they say "well, not go to a movie, and not go to a park, and not go here, and not there" and you end up sitting inside and rereading Reuters's "Oddly Enough" because it's all that comes up on the little bar across the top of your gmail. That is so frustrating! Maybe there are psychological reasons that people do this (they don't want to be responsible for bad decisions, etc., but I'm not going into that here because I don't know.

I do know that defining yourself and your life positively is a good way to go. I negatively-defined myself into a career (no humanities because I don't like to write, no sciences because I hate decimal points, not business because I don't like suits, no math or finance because I hate decimal points and integrals and derivatives, not arts because I don't like to draw... CS it is). That's turning out well so far. I mean, plus I really like programming, so there's that. But now I have to define the rest of who I am and what I like to do, and it's difficult to do it positively. But here are two more pieces of information:

- I saw Coraline the other day and it was so good. I mean, the story was weak (and it would have been so much better with no dialogue), but it was so goddamn sonically and aurally pretty. The garden scene alone is up there with the opening sequence of Paprika and the fight with a bunch of Agent Smiths in the Matrix Reloaded (shut up) as "entirely worth the price of admission alone." (and then the other father's playing the piano and oh shit this guy is John Linnell!)
Self-definition point here: I freakin' love dark kids' beautifully-animated wonderland-adventure stories, or anything that blurs the stylistic line between movie and video game. If it were possible, I would have already bought a ticket to 9. And not just because The Knife opens the trailer.

- Self-definition point #2: I love food and markets. I wandered around at the Pike Place market for like 3 hours today. Found dinner. I love putting things together. It's a big algorithmic puzzle that can't be solved trivially. And every piece you get to buy a thing. Buying things is fun, talking to market-shop-owners is fun, looking around and gawking at all the colorful things is fun. Exclamation point!

My morning, in not so many words

I was going to give you some explanation of what happened today, and it'd be kind of clumsy because it involved a streetcar rut in the road, you know, like where the streetcars go, and I ... oh, nevermind. Here's what happened: