Catch up day

I've said it before, but I really truly want to write in this every day.  Starting today.  Even if it's a boring day.

Events of this past week:

• Christmas (obviously). Got "Whiskypedia" and some (more) scotch rocks, as well as an awesome National Geographic North America road trip atlas from my sis.
• Watched Les Miserables with my family, which was pretty good.  I had seen it when I was younger but remembered not liking it, perhaps because it's quite historical and I probably wasn't old enough to be able to appreciate it.  Anne Hathaway has an astonishing voice.  Russell Crowe sang like a sock was stuffed down his throat.
• Ate at Madison Sourdough Company (formerly Bakery) twice, that place has phenomenal pastries
• Watched the entire first season of "Girls", undoubtedly a bit girly (as is to be expected) but also a show about 20-somethings that feels as real as any I've ever seen.
• Watched the last 6 episodes of "Burning Love", the spoof Bachelor with Ken Marino from Party Down as well as Michael Ian Black.  Easily the funniest hour I've had in a while, and I love the 10-minute episode format.
• Lovely dinner party at my undergrad advisor's house with many of the old faces.
• Caught up at the Vintage (and Ian's pizza) with a high school friend who I haven't seen in over a year.  Ian's pizza is still delicious
• Dinner last night at Pizza Bruta, which has phenomenal pizza.  We did one prosciutto pie and one cremini mushroom pie, the latter of which was just mind-blowingly good.  Mushrooms are amazing.
• Noodles & company. Yum.
• Bought some more clothes at another ridiculous banana republic sale.
• Worked a lot, as I try to finish up various aspects of my thesis science and move towards writing, as well as working hard on post-doc proposal applications.  It's been tough to stay motivated to work over the Christmas week, but I'd say on the whole I've certainly gotten a ton done.  So much more to do!
• Hangin out and chatting with my parents.
• Bread experimentation: first loaf was not nice and crispy enough on the outside.  second loaf came out much crispier, though still pretty dense on the inside.  Tomorrow night, we'll try white flour only, possibly in a baguette shape.
• 18-year Highland Park -- introducing my dad to mighty fine scotch

That should just about cover it.  So from now on, I write something about each and every day.  There's so much life that happens, and I drink too much scotch to remember anywhere near enough of it.

Christmas!

I arrived back in Madison on Monday afternoon, greeted at the airport by my parents and sister.  Its always nice to come back home for the holidays, even if this year I've got a thesis that will keep me worrying/working throughout the break.

It's also always a nice time to catch up with friends, even if that sometimes tends to add stress to an otherwise relaxing time.  Today I met up with an old high school friend who I haven't seen since we graduated -- nearly 10 years ago.  It was great to catch up, and it brought back all sorts of old memories from high school.  It was also admittedly a bit of a strange experience, as we were actually very close early on in high school, but by the end of high school we no longer were, and so because of it she fell of my radar of people that you might actively try to keep in touch with.  As a result, I effectively haven't thought about her since we parted ways, which also means that I've lost almost all memories of how close we used to be.

Uncovering lost memories and emotions can be fun but also a little terrifying, if for no other reason than that you become aware of how your memory plays tricks with how you remember (or don't remember) your past.

Defense dates, stress, and physical ailment

Whew, what a week.  Following the prodding of my advisor, I went ahead and set my thesis defense date with my Committee for Tuesday, April 30th.  I then proceeded to emotionally freak out about as much as I ever have in my life -- for three nights in a row, I couldn't fall asleep for hours (I usually am asleep within seconds; last night I was texting a friend and fell asleep during the intervening 4 minutes between my sent text and her response, which I only got this morning) and I was physically beleaguered (back and neck pains, weird headaches, loss of appetite, fatigue).

I had originally thought it was just fallout from 5 consecutive days of hard work and nights of partying culminating in the fry party and 5K, but I realized as I laid restlessly in my bed that at least as big of a part of it was that my brain literally couldn't go more than 5 seconds without thinking (stressing) about thesis-related items.  And with it, I was not breathing -- my breaths had become very short, and I realized that it wasn't implausible that all my strange headaches and body pains were literally due to a lack of oxygen.

This was obviously a serious problem, and I needed to find a way to control my brain and fast.  Just recognizing this stress was a huge step though.  It was obvious that this wasn't healthy, and that there was no point in living a life as stressed out as that.  I stopped my brain and began just listening to my own breaths -- meditation -- focusing on taking long, deep inhales and exhales.  I did this over the span of perhaps 10-15 minutes, and gradually I could feel my entire body and brain relaxing, probably for the first time in days.  I stayed positive, imagining all those little oxygen molecules, entering my body through every ultra-deep breath I took, swimming through and restoring my muscles to their normal function.  And finally, I fell asleep, feeling much better the following day.

Continuing this process, I wrote up an outline of my thesis, as recommended by my advisor who would see the distress in my face as we discussed the prospect of a Spring graduation.  That was also a fantastic idea, as it allowed me to organize the ~3 years of work that was jumbled in my brain, never having been placed together in a coherent context.  For the first time, I could see where everything I had done -- which really was quite a bit -- related to one another.  And finally, the many elements of my thesis could be placed neatly on paper, and every subsequent topic/idea/thought that popped into my brain could be quietly added.

My brain was off the hook.  And with it, my stress level dropped, and my excitement level increased, as I'm finally approaching a milestone in my adult life.

Fry party

Epic weekend.

The highlight was our Saturday all-day deep frying party.  My roommate owns a deep fryer, and so we decided to deep fry... everything: potatoes, sweet potatoes, onions, brussel sprouts, parsnips, peppers, pickles, avocadoes, apples, pineapples, bananas, plantains, cheddar cheese, steak tips, oysters, clams, shrimp, snickers, twix, oreos, marshmallows, cookie dough balls, and twinkies.

We also consumed, as a group, 6 lbs of bacon.

The party lasted a solid 7 hours, with a consistent group of approximately 30 people there to fry, eat, repeat.  It was pretty amazing.

Less wonderful was the awful corn oil smell that engulfed our entire kitchen and living room.  But it was well worth it in the end.

Then, on Sunday I proceeded to run the Jingle Bell Run 5K with many friends.  It was fun, and I ran hard (as always, my instinct to run hard and try to win kicks in after the first mile or so) despite having not eaten anything all morning.  We headed to one of the post-run celebration bars, Daddy Jones in Magoun Sq, for beer (I drank only a sip) and snacks.  It turns out that the pita I ate there would be the only thing I'd eat the rest of the day.  I got home, laid down on the couch, and basically didn't move, my body utterly exhausted from the run, the fry party, and the drinking/partying that had consumed the previous 5 days in a row.

This weekend was definitely a little overwhelming.

Whisk(e)y tasting

Last night, a friend hosted the second in what has become a new series of whiskey tastings.  The first was perhaps three months ago, but at the time I still had zero interest in virtually any liquor, and so attended without really paying attention to what we were drinking.

This time around, I'm three or so weeks into my new found love for whiskey.  I supplied the tasting with two fine 15-year scotches: Highland Park and Glenfiddich.  The former was far and away the best whiskey from among the 12-15 different types we had on hand.

Someday, I'll muster the courage to drop $115 for the 18-year Highland Park, which I had a taste of at a cigar bar in DC a couple weeks ago.  It was absolutely phenomenally delicious.  But very, very expensive.

Sick

Lesson learned: no more cold 2am bike rides home.  On Friday night, I left a bar in East Cambridge feeling fine, and when I got home after a miserably cold ride 15 minutes later, I could immediately feel my throat becoming sore.

Now I am sniffling, sneezing, aching, stuffy head, (no fever I dont think)... all those things that Nyquil says it fixes.  I'm hoping it'll get better enough by tomorrow morning that I'll be able to go to work.

Washington DC

On Wednesday I had the pleasure of attending a meeting on the very early stages of a new project that seeks to build a natural hazard Risk model for the United States via a broad public-private partnership.  My advisor sent me in his place, and when I arrived I realized that the meeting was full of quite prominent members of various federal agencies (NOAA, FEMA, DHS, DOT, DOE, etc.), presidents of two major catastrophe modeling companies, NGO leaders, and several scientists and engineers from academia.

The project is still up in the air, and it was fascinating to witness the process of debating and discussing the key proposed ideas, their merits, and the outlook for their implementation.  Following a morning session in which the project was largely introduced and (weakly) motivated, we broke out into smaller groups to address directly three questions regarding the details of the model, its organizational structure, and its governance.  Instead, though, the discussion retreated to the more fundamental questions of the merits of the project as a whole, in particular positing concerns regarding the enormous scope of the project and the lack of a clear defense of the need for this model in the first place.

Indeed, these concerns then emerged more prominently in the afternoon group session, at which point we were supposed to be determining the plan for concrete next steps moving forward.  Instead, several members of the community -- particularly private sector representatives, who demonstrated a much greater capacity to focus the discussion to the most salient points, a trait that I valued greatly -- stood up and asked quite bluntly, "I can't tell you whether I support 'this' until I understand what 'this' is!". Clearly, more work addressing the "business" case for the project is needed.

Overall, the experience gave me significantly greater respect for the private sector.  Earlier in the day, a fellow scientist who does hurricane risk work noted to me a key difference between science and private sector work: "In the private sector, they want an answer, regardless of how scientifically justified it is; meanwhile, in science, it's okay if your answer is 'I don't know'".  In my case, I realized that this mentality may be one reason why I struggle to love science and find myself often pulled strongly towards the private sector world: my own approach is very much one of problem-solving, in that my goal is to get an answer to a stated problem.  I don't like trying something out without knowing that it will give me a definitive answer in the end, and furthermore it always haunts the back of my mind that any answer that I do get will ultimately be proven wrong by additional science.  Even if I know that this is "how science works" -- that this isn't my fault! -- I still hate the thought.

Interesting the ways in which you learn about yourself.

Thanksgiving weekend (late!)

Time flies.  Seriously.

Last weekend was Thanksgiving weekend, and it was a jam-packed one.

Wednesday night, a couple friends and I hit up Green Street Lounge, where a quick drink and bite to eat turned into a full night of cocktails.

Thursday morning I pulled myself out of bed to meet friends for the annual Turkey Trot in Davis Sq. at 845am.  Following a lovely 4-mile run, we headed into the Burren for some 10am beers, then I headed home to relax for a bit and prep bread and popovers to bring to Thanksgiving dinner.  Dinner was hosted at a friend's place, where I an about 10 other friends chowed down, played informal group Family Feud, charades, and euchre, at which point we were all sufficiently intoxicated.

I and a friend then took Black Friday head-on, hitting the stores for a solid 7 hours, beginning at 2pm, downtown to fill out a new set of sweaters.  Most of my sweaters I've had since probably early undergrad, so it was high time to renew that collection.  Though it was quite busy, apart from the 30-minute wait in line at Express (there was a whole set of cash registers that were deliberately closed for some inexplicable reason), I'm not sure I would have known that the day was different from any random Saturday.  And with nearly every store having a big sale, including my favorite store, Banana Republic (40% off everything!), it was a no-brainer for me.

Saturday was full of culture.  I met friends at 11am at the Boston Aquarium, which turned out to be a bit of a disappointment since they are renovating the giant tank at the center and removed the penguins that swim beside it.  The big fur seals outdoors were very cute, and many of the smaller tanks inside had a lot of amazing aquatic life, but for a big-city aquarium it certainly felt a bit lacking.

Afterwards, we grabbed lunch at the Barking Crab and then a couple of us continued on to the ICA to check out their exhibit celebrating the 1980s.  It turns out that the ICA is free for MIT students... its a shame that I haven't taken advantage of this fact more in my time here!  In any case, in the 1.5 hours we spent there, I actually only managed to see the 1980s exhibit but hadn't realized that there was an additional 70% of the museum with many other exhibits that apparently were quite cool.

Finally, on Sunday I relaxed a bit and caught up with life.

On research and confidence (not intervals)

This year my research life has been a bit of a roller-coaster.  A little less than a year ago, my thesis research involved apply a reasonable-sounding methodology to an overarching question -- what sets the size of a hurricane? -- and on my first "try" in its application I basically got a beautiful and simple result.  In very generic and universal terms, all the dots lined up along straight lines, and those straight lines and slopes that made intuitive sense.

In the subsequent 9 months, I proceeded to question various aspects of the details of my research which ranged from the stupid (e.g. finding simulations where I never actually changed the one or two parameters that I thought had been changed), to the scientifically legitimate (e.g. why did I choose to represent this physical process in this way?).  This led me to, not once but twice, rerun all of my simulations.  The first time, I made a couple of simpler changes, but not long afterwards I realized that I had simply been lazy in implementing certain aspects of the simulations which probably don't matter, but it's impossible to know for sure.  Thus, I hunkered down and reran everything again, this time applying a much greater degree of quantitative precision in determining if I was happy with how I was doing things each step of the way.

Thus, by September, I finally, for the first time, felt good about my work: I was confident that the results I was getting were not tainted by small but easily avoidable errors in scientific judgment.  I also realized really for the first time how crucial personal responsibility is to doing good science -- after all, no one, not even your advisor, will ever know the details of how you reach the answers that you do.  Obviously in some fields this enables bad behavior such as scientific fraud. Often, though, such fraud can easily be blanketed over because "that's science".  However, it's plainly evident to me that "that's science" encompasses both legitimate and unavoidable human error as well as pure scientific negligence, and in most cases it is entirely up to the researcher and his/her code of ethics to determine to what extent the former is minimized and the latter is avoided.  Either way, at this stage in my scientific career, it became clear that if I want to do science that I can be proud of, I need to make sure its done right -- to the best that I can define it as so -- because no one else is going to decide that for me.

Nonetheless, since September I've been faced with a new set of scientific questions, namely why, after all of the changes that I made to make my simulations more scientifically valid, I was now getting results that were far messier (read: dots no longer so neatly aligned) than they were at the outset?

Consciously and subconsciously, I worried about this new problem but, because the overall results made sense (now for a variety of reasons), I in any case set about writing up a paper on my work.  I sent it to my advisor, who approved it with very minimal criticism.  Following a couple of additional points to address, I felt it was ready to submit to the top journal in our field.

Even then, my uneasiness continued and I still somehow felt unconvinced by my own results. Then, a couple of weeks ago, I found a systematic bias in my results.  I had no idea why, but this was a bit of a smoking gun that I cannot simply explain away the "noise" as noise.  After a day or so of complete freaking out -- my results are wrong, I shouldn't be a scientist etc. etc. -- I told myself that I was going to figure this out one way or another.  I could look more directly at my simulations and see plainly with my eyes that my fundamental conclusions were not wrong, which at the least restored some basic confidence in myself that I wasn't a complete idiot.

After a couple more days or intense thinking and a willingness finally to open up and complain/talk about this with my friends/colleagues, I realized something difficult but important: I was a victim of my own early success -- I really wanted to see the pretty result I got a year ago -- and what I needed to do was extricate my thought processes about this problem from the methodological approach that I have been using.  In other words, I needed to step back and ask: if I just showed up now, how would I approach the problem?

It turns out that, despite the fears of finding out you've done it wrong all along, a fresh start can do wonders.  I now see why it is that, for example, tech companies and grow and then fail, themselves doomed to never think outside of the very box that they built and that led to their success.

This past weekend, a flurry of insights and understanding came through, and it soon became clear that in fact my original answer was never wrong, but there simply was more going on than I had thought.  Importantly, I would not have realized this without having redone all of my simulations correctly, as it's clear that my initial results from one year ago got what had seemed to be the right answer (i.e. the simple one) likely out of sheer luck.

What might have been plausibly termed "human error" was in fact, in the most negative of respects, scientific negligence on my part.  Being lazy may obscure the signal you are looking for or, worse, accidentally lead you to either a signal that's not actually there or, in my case, a mis-interpretation of the answer.  Precision matters.

Ah, graduate school.  I suppose this is the learning experience that grad school is supposed to provide.  It can be harsh.  But it's obvious that such an experience depends a lot more on personal responsibility and self-confidence than I had ever imagined.

Washington DC, James Bond, Dan Deacon

This past weekend I headed down to Washington DC to visit my two best friends from college.  It was a welcome getaway following what was an otherwise rather stressful week.  This is also the first time that I decided to head down to DC not for some work/conference related reason, but instead purely to visit friends and have fun.

In addition to significant amounts of imbibing, reveling, and board games (Forbidden Island, Dixit, Small World), one big highlight was our trip to the National Air and Space Museum annex in Virginia, where we caught the new James Bond movie, "Skyfall", in the museum's imax theatre.  This was exciting for me not only because I had never seen a regular movie in imax (I've only seen Planetarium-type films), but also because I believe I've only ever seen one Bond movie, Tomorrow Never Dies, which has a rather tame Pierce Brosnan as James Bond.  Now Bond is played by the much more convincingly-badass Daniel Craig.  Despite the need to suspend your disbelief in order to ignore many plot loopholes, the movie was incredibly entertaining.

On Tuesday night, a couple of friends and I headed down to the Paradise Rock Club to catch Dan Deacon.  He puts on a terrific show, including creating a human tunnel out the front door and back in a side door, as well as the use of a smart phone app that makes your phone flash certain colors based upon (presumably) certain frequencies that the microphone receives as input.  The result was a song where the audience was lighting up with all sorts of crazy colors as they danced and the band played.  What a fantastic idea.

Life moves on

Today I began letting my close friends know that my girlfriend and I are breaking up.  Of course, now here I am telling the entire internet, but no one is reading this anyways so it's not that big of a deal.

In any case, it's a very clean break-up between us (other than that she lives in the apartment above me), but it is remarkable to think that it's been 3.5 years since we started dating.  To be fair, though, basically all of my time in grad school has absolutely flown by, particularly the last couple of years.  Right now I am a big mix of emotions, but mostly I just feel relief to start being open with others about this and finally getting to move on in a new direction in my life.

Alas, here we are: single and free again, and beginning to get excited about it.  It hasn't really sunk in yet, but having the freedom to pursue your ambitions is exciting and empowering.  It'll just take me a while to adjust -- I've spent the better part of the past couple of years ignoring/questioning these ambitions, so I need to remember what its like to dream big again.

It sounds sad, but I certainly have no regrets about anything.  Life is what it is -- there is no "right" path because whatever you do is what you experience and you learn from it, cherish the good times and change the bad.  Yet to appreciate the former, you need the latter all the same.

Crazy.  I'm ready for something new :)

Election 2012

I've spent too much time already soaking up the victories, statistics, punditry, and other aspects of the culmination of this year's election.  It's remarkable how much time, money, and effort goes into the fight, not only at the presidential level but also at the Congressional level and, surely, the state and local level -- though I don't really know much about such races myself.

After all is said and done, during President Obama's magnificent re-election acceptance speech, he provided this gem of a statement that, to me, should be one for the ages:

"That's why we do this. That's what politics can be. That's why elections matter. It's not small, it's big. It's important. Democracy in a nation of 300 million can be noisy and messy and complicated. We have our own opinions, each of us has deeply held beliefs. And when we go through tough times, when we make big decisions as a country, it necessarily stirs passions, stirs up controversy.

That won't change after tonight -- and it shouldn't. These arguments we have are a mark of our liberty. We can never forget that, as we speak, people in distant nations are risking their lives right now just for a chance to argue about the issues that matter."

Ukulele Meetup

On Thursday evening, I jammed for the first time in my life.

Hosted by the Beacon Tavern in Brookline, I attended my first Ukulele Meetup.  I arrived about 10 minutes late, walked to the back of the pub and through a curtain to unveil a packed group of 30-40 ukulele players all playing together.

I headed for the back of the room, dropped my things and pulled out my uke.  My first instinct was to tune my instrument but realized that would be impossible with my microphone-based tuner on my phone.  But then it dawned on me: it doesn't matter.  And that's the beauty of this group, that one person being a little off, whether its in pitch or note, isn't a big deal.  Mathematically, I suppose it's the central limit theorem at play: with enough players, the mean pitch will probably be pretty close to correct.

We jammed over beers and fish tacos.  My intro ukulele class was well represented with I believe four of our members, which was pretty cool.  All in all, it was an absolutely wonderful environment for any music fan, but particularly for newbies like myself -- no pressure, mostly simple songs, lots of fun, and great people.

As our instructor said to me afterwards: "Ukulele players are just nice people."  I can't wait for next month's meetup.

Sandy: my first real hurricane!

Today Sandy roared ashore along basically the entire Northern half of the Eastern seaboard.  It's actual landfall point was in southern New Jersey, but this historically massive storm system brought with it tropical storm force winds that spanned some 500-800 mi (depending on direction and information source it seems) from the center.

The result: my first ever official Hurricane Day!

A friend of mine enticed me to join her and two of her friends to ride out to the shore to check out Sandy's winds.  After throwing on what amounted to my skiing outfit -- helmet included -- we pulled off down in Southie, hopped out, and proceeded to jump around in the wind and whipping rain.  Though "only" 50 mph, it really is quite a sensation to have a constant 40-50 mph wind --with occasionally higher gusts -- slamming your body.  Away from any potential debris missiles, we leapt for joy in amazement of the awesome power of the wind, raising our arms up to allow our pants and jackets to flutter and flap loudly.

We then hopped back into the car and drove over near the ICA.  There, perhaps with the wind-funneling assistance of a large building, we parked at a street where the sustained winds were up around 60-70 mph, a level at which you can hear nothing but the blasting wind in your ears, and it is nearly impossible to propel yourself forward at anything faster than a slow walk.  It was pretty awesome.

And now, after spending most of the past 6 hours looking at photos/stories/tweets about Sandy, I really, really need to go to bed.

Club tennis tournament

Whoa, its been way too long since I've written here!

I am currently as sore as I've been in a while, possibly more sore than I was following the Boston Half Marathon last fall.

Yesterday and Today, our nascent MIT Club Tennis team participated in the Northeast Regional College Club Tennis tournament at the Harvard tennis courts.  There were 16 teams participating from around the region, most of which have been playing for at least a year or so.  We didn't find out until after we arrived, but it turns out that this tournament is the biggest of the year in the region, as the top 4 teams move on to Nationals. The format was four 4-team divisions, and within each division the teams play one another round-robin style.  Each match between two teams consists of 1 men's doubles, 1 women's doubles, 1 men's singles, 1 women's singles, and finally 1 mixed doubles, each of which plays a single set with various rules modified to move things along faster.

We also wouldn't find out until much later, but we were placed in the toughest division of all.  Besides WPI, we were matched with Harvard and Dartmouth, the latter many felt was the most talented team and the former having won the tournament last year. Indeed, both ultimately made the final four and thus are headed to nationals.  In the end, we lost to them both (and to WPI), though in mixed doubles I and my teammate went to a tiebreak with Dartmouth, where we technically won had my partner called "out" with a little more volume and confidence on match point; instead we lost that point and the subsequent two points to lose the set unfortunately.

Finishing in the bottom two teams within our division put us in the "Silver" (consolation) bracket for today, where we first lost a close match to Maine, then defeated Clark rather easily before falling in another close match to WPI.  We thus finished 14th overall.  Though not an amazing showing, this was our first ever tournament, and I think we all certainly improved in our match play as the matches went on.

Nonetheless, standing up and sitting down requires a lot of effort.  Even a bath (!) didn't help too much.  Time to hop into bed...

Graduate school and the seasons

Another busy week: research trucking along despite the abnormally long wait times (~3-7 days) for my simulations on the DoE computers and our broken department cluster, as well as prepping to lead our final discussion on Ozone and the Montreal Protocol.

Yesterday a close friend of mine defended his PhD.  After having missed another friend's defense a month ago, this officially marks the first close friend to defend.  It's been 4+ years now, yet this really feels like the first serious moment in graduate school for me or anyone around me, which I find strange.  At the same time, in the past two and a half years, I still haven't had any friends leave town -- one left grad school but still works at MIT, and my two recently-graduating friends are both sticking around at least for a few months to do post-docs.

All of this means a continuation of the feeling of stagnancy that pervades the long slog of getting a PhD.  By that I mean that in the real world in your 20s and 30s, most people like me (i.e. without children) are changing jobs, traveling, moving, etc. etc., as are their friends around them.  Yet in my case, the opposite is true.  While one might think this should be cause for celebration to have such stability, but for myself, I've always liked change in the same way that I've always loved the seasons -- because without change, you lose the ability to appreciate how great things are.

In retrospect I feel that it's for this reason that the past couple of years have been good but not great. Without specific events to look forward to, and in particular without the motivating sense that your time window is closing -- whether it be to accomplish a research goal, to see the sights of a city, to party with a friend or group of friends, etc. -- too often people, knowing that there's always next weekend, are content not to take on new challenges and opportunities.

So tonight, I head out to my newly-graduated friend's place for a whiskey tasting -- the first time a friend is hosting a creative party in quite a while.  Here's a toast to what I can only hope is a celebration of Spring.

Parents visiting Boston

This weekend, my parents came to town to visit before my dad attends a conference on Monday morning.  As I dive into my fifth and possibly final year here at MIT, I'm quickly reaching that point that everyone reaches after spending several years living in a city -- the realization that you haven't actually seen almost any of the major sites in your own town.

Thus, I took the opportunity (as most do) to take my parents to those sites that I've most wanted to see.  Yesterday, after eating some uber-fresh oysters at Haymarket, we headed over to the Isabella Stewart Gardener Museum.  Though undoubtedly a lovely and impressive collection of art and artifacts assembled neatly into a funky small space, the majority of it was Renaissance art, which I find utterly boring.  Bonus points, though, for the beautiful and enormous John Singer Sargent painting of flamenco dancers and musicians in Barcelona, "El Jaleo".

Next, we headed on to the JFK Museum out by UMass-Boston.  This is one of my favorite museums I've ever been to.  I realized I knew very little about JFK himself, and the massive collection of objects, notes, memorabilia, and particularly audio and video of his famous speeches were arranged impeccably.    I am now thoroughly inspired to read his book, "Profiles in Courage".

We then ended the night with dinner at Russell House Tavern followed by dessert at Finale.  Yum.

Today, we begain with coffee and pastries at Dwelltime (Yum), before driving out to Salem to spend the day learning about the history of the witch hysteria.  The town and historical activities felt a bit touristy -- there are three privately run Salem witch historical museums, not clear which is the "best" one and the National Parks Service folks were forbidden from sharing their opinions -- but overall it was a fun experience, helped out quite a bit by the perfect 72F and sunny weather.  At midday, we grabbed lobsters at the Lobster Shanty (yum) before heading over to the gorgeous harbor for an hour or so.

Finally, after returning home to check out the backyard garden, Laura joined us for dinner way out in East Boston at the Belle Isle Seafood shack.  And a wonderful shack it was, next to the road on the water, stuck in the middle of some crappy construction.  We each ordered a lobster roll, which must have contained around 4 lobsters' worth of meat. Our lobster rolls were supplemented nicely with a shared "lobster pie", which is simply a big pile of baked lobster meat, butter, and bread crumbs.  (Yum yum yum yum).

After this feast, I dropped off my parents at their hotel and headed back.  Seafood satisfaction.

Beasts of the Southern Wild

Over the weekend, Laura and I went to Kendall theatre to check out an independent film, "Beasts of the Southern Wild".  The trailer portrayed the film as a seemingly pseudo-fantasy world in which a very young girl learns to survive on her own away from her father, but set in the backdrop of a world where large ancient beasts emerge from the melting polar ice caps and roam the land, causing havoc and destruction.

Ultimately the movie focused much more closely on the relationship between the father and daughter, but the environmental and societal undertones were quite remarkable.  As noted above, these beasts emerged from the melting ice -- a clear nod to global warming.  However, more intriguing was the society and geography surrounding the father and daughter: they were members of an outcast population, primarily minority, living in squalor on the swamps of a South-facing delta lying just beyond massive levees protecting the rest of society, and feasting regularly on a bounty of crawfish and other sea goodies.  Clearly, this was Katrina writ large.  As an added bonus, this outcast society took great pride in their land and their culture of love, joy, and connection with one another and with nature, in stark contrast to the robotic and monotonous lives of the people behind the levees, who are content to "plug themselves into the wall" to stay alive rather than let nature take its course.

All in all, it was a fascinating film replete with symbolism and adventure.  I came in expecting the whimsical journey of "Hugo" but instead was treated to a topsy-turvy ride with wild beasts grounded very firmly in modern reality.

A busy, busy week

My transition to earlier work days could not be better timed, as this past week was almost overwhelmingly exhausting, though massively productive as well.  Between listening to two basic statistics courses -- I want to learn this stuff well, and curiously these two courses, one undergrad and one grad, cover the same topics yet appear to be quite nicely complementary in terms of theory, application, and perspective --, TAing one (light) course, all the seminars (most of which I skipped), and my current frantic research pace, I was pretty mentally beaten down by the time Friday arrived.

Fortunately, the weekend has brought mild, sunny, gorgeous weather: the perfect environment in which to spend several hours replying to the 100+ emails that have piled up over the past 5 days :)

The joys of an earlier work day

As a graduate student, you have tremendous freedom to set your own work schedule.  This can be good and bad.

This summer, I decided that for the purposes of doing good research, it was beneficial for me to let myself get a normal amount of sleep -- i.e. don't wake up to an alarm.  This worked well (I think) for a while at least, as I came into work refreshed and ready to work.

However, the summer came and went much quicker than anticipated, and now looking back I realize that too often my work day wouldn't start until 11a or even noon, yet I wouldn't properly compensate for this by working additional hours at the end of the day.  There are simply too many evening activities that can come up (e.g. dinner, girlfriends) that interfere with the evening, along with the slow onset of depression that accompanies the natural seasonal cycle -- as July and August passed, the sun sets earlier and earlier.

Thus, to take control of this I decided last week to make a significant adjustment to my daily life schedule.  It's the start of the Fall semester, which means that in addition to research, I am also now TAing a class and sitting in on a couple of others.  So every day I woke up at 6am (with the added convenience that my girlfriend, a teacher, also begins her day at that time) and got myself to work by 730am.

It's only been one week, but needless to say it's feels like a huge improvement.  One thing that I value tremendously is that, when you start your day at 730am, by 5 or 6pm, you know that you've put in a long, hard day of work, which means you have no guilt about packing up, going home, and forgetting about work for the rest of the evening.  Knowing that you have a solid 3-4 hours where you can eat and enjoy life before bed is a wonderful feeling.

Perhaps more importantly, this shift restores a personal sense of adulthood and responsibility. Though it's fun to feel lucky that you don't have a real "job", the ambiguity of the bounds of the "grad school experience" can often leave one lacking a sense of professional identity.

And today, a Saturday, I feel for the first time like I actually earned a weekend of relaxation.  And a long one at that: after 4 consecutive days waking up at 6am, it turns out sleeping past 830a is quite difficult, even after going to bed at 2am. :)

Birthday pARTy

For my birthday on Saturday night, Laura and I hosted what was officially the most ambitious party idea I've ever had... by a mile.

Last summer I came up with the idea to host a party where all the guests are left free to make art.  This vision connects to everyone's childhood sense of unbridled creativity that is often squashed as you grow older, but at the same time also seeks to be classier and very much more Adult than your standard party where the top order is simply to drink.

With Laura moved into the upstairs apartment, we finally decided to put this idea into action, with the added bonus of a live fake-money auction for all of the art that everyone creates so that all the guests can go home with at least one piece of art of their own.

After two weeks of acquiring supplies from the Dollar Tree, Target, a girl on Craigslist, and the local high school, we spent all of Saturday setting up: workstations (tables, chairs, benches, an easel, etc.) both in our living room and kitchen as well as on our back porch (for painting), materials and media (paint, pencil, crayon, marker, charcoal, clay, collage, craft), and lighting (an array of household standing lamps, christmas lights, and clamped desk lamps from the CL girl).

Finally, from 7-11p, a group of ~15 people's imaginations went wild.  At 11pm, we gave out $100 in fake money (shrunken copies of real USD with the President's face replaced by my portrait) to each person and began the auction.  There had to have been at 15-20 items that at least a few folks were legitimately fighting for -- art pieces that people truly would like to see hung up on their walls.

I had high hopes that this would go well, but realistically the event exceeded all of my expectations. It was incredible to see the amount of truly unique and creative art that my friends -- all but one non-artists -- made in only 4 hours, a few of which could legitimately be found in a real art gallery.  Not to mention the simpler fact that, for most of us, this was the first time as artists since grade school 10+ years ago.

We will definitely be doing this again soon.  And this time, we have an incredible collection of art supplies ready to go.

Busy travels

What a whirlwind last 4 days.

Started off still in L.A., where I said goodbye to my parents and sister, who headed back to their respective homes, and to my Grandma and Grandpa.

I then headed over to a good friend's place in Pasadena, where I was greeted with a hug and a whisper, "I'm in the process of breaking up with ****".  Thus began 24 hours of wild, sometimes comical and often depressing drama, including all manner of yelling, insults, and inconveniently locked/blocked doors to my things.

A red-eye flight then whisked me to NYC at 6am yesterday, where, after a much needed nap, I and a couple of friends got into the taping of the Colbert Report.  It was as hilarious and fun as expected, including an "out-of-character" Q&A that you're treated to prior to the show. It turns out one of the reasons Colbert is so good at what he does is likely because the ridiculous character that he plays (though perhaps not the literal statements that he makes) seems actually quite representative of the humor and personality of the real-world Colbert.  That said, his final comments to the audience, in response to a single post-show question, noted that when he participates in public events out of character, he does not allow any media to join so as not to confuse the true feelings and beliefs of real world Colbert with those of his satirical pundit self.

Last night ended with some food and drinks with another overworked friend of mine now living in NYC.  This morning, we headed out on the 7 train to Flushing to catch the US Open for the third year in a row, which was, as always, a ton of fun.  The highlight came from the Grandstands towards the end of the day, where a front-row fan behind the court caught a laser serve with his hat, then after a standing bow was forced to give the ball back to a young blond lineswoman, leading the audience to boo and the man to gently drop the hat onto the lineswoman's head.  He might have been kicked out had he not executed the maneuver with such expert precision and endearing innocence.

Back to work, tired yet rejuvinated.  Except for the traffic that the Bolt Bus is currently sitting in.

Visiting Grandparents

Yesterday and today we visited my Grandma and Grandpa (step-, but seeing as I never knew my real grandfathers, there's no real need to make the distinction) and Auntie Diana.  We mostly spent the time eating -- Max's fried chicken, Goldilocks filipino bakery, the Boiling Crab, Dim Sum.

I hadn't seen my Grandma in 5 years, and honestly it probably was the first time I personally made an effort to think about Family.  Growing up, we were never close to our grandparents, which after age 12 was really just my Grandma here in L.A.  My parents have permanently moved far from where they grew up, so connecting with extended family was not something that was emphasized growing up.

And so its only been recently since I've been in Boston that I've come to appreciate much more the time spent with my immediate family; while living in Madison, though I was not distant in any way with my parents, I also was very independent-minded, presumably taking a page out of my own parents' life stories.

In seeing my Grandma again, who is now 87 years old, it made me realize something else that is lost in a household detached from your elders -- an intimate, natural connection to death.  I do not in any way mean this in a morbid sense, but more in the sense perhaps of what children get when they have pets (which I did not have) that pass away: you learn important lessons about the ephemeral nature of life.  These experiences are at first very negative -- losing a loved one can surely be very difficult -- but ultimately positive as you learn to come to terms with events that all people will have to deal with.

In my case, though, after 27 years of living I've really still never had to cope with the loss of a close loved one.  In the case of my Grandma, though she is still doing generally well, she is still quite old and has recently been diagnosed with dementia.  I haven't been close with her through my life, but I have known her throughout it, and I can't help but feel an innate sense of Family when around her that I have never really bothered to acknowledge until now.  All of this makes her passage through old age seem not sad but natural to me, in a way that I would never have even thought about 5 or 10 years ago.

I suppose the point is that familial lines can do more than connect individuals to one another, it can also at a much deeper level serve to connect birth and death.  This is new for me.

Los Angeles Pt 1: The Getty, UCLA

Family vacation begins with a trip to the Getty Museum, with its white square-draped architectural wonder and a set of small but impressive art exhibits.  This includes impressionism -- with one of my favorite pieces of all time, Monet's "Sunrise", which I swear is done using no more than 11 brushstrokes -- and a temporary exhibit on Gustav Klimt, who does a range of great yet simple drawings, primarily of women in erotic positions, that are created using a small number of bold long lines.

I'm a big fan of technically-simple, yet immensely deep art.

Afterwards we headed over to Westwood near UCLA for dinner, where it seemed that literally every other storefront was vacant.  Very, very strange, the Boston area is a bit of a bubble from the reality that the economy is still down in many other parts of the country.

Big Kids Night at Boston Children's Museum

Tonight was the first ever installment of Adult Night at the Boston Children's Museum.  Some 700 people sol the event out almost two weeks in advance, and I'm proud to say that at least 15 of those were directly through me and I'm sure more beyond that.

Overall it was a very fun night, climbing the three-story CLIMB, making giant bubbles, fingerpainting etc.  Some of the museum is bit too academic (not surprising so near to Cambridge), with a lot of emphasis on culture, teaching life lessons (e.g. eating healthy, which to me isn't a particularly interesting feature of a museum), and other components that just didn't demand much in the way of creativity from the child/adult.  The Madison children's museum seemed to do a much better job of this, including multiple different giant erector-type sets, than BCM.  The other aspect that I think works to BCM's disadvantage is its enormous space, which means strangers simply don't bump into each other nearly as frequently.

That said, the event was still a blast and everyone I talked to said they had so much fun.  It turns out that beer + basic fun childhood activities can easily entertain adults for 3 hours.  I'm hoping they'll do it again in a few months and perhaps try to add some more twists (live music, perhaps) to keep me coming back into the future.

Dollar stores

Yesterday I went to meet Laura at 6pm at the Dollar Store to check out art supply options in prep for our upcoming birthday pARTy.  I walked in, didn't see her around and so started gathering supplies.  At 6:15 she calls saying which aisle she's in and that she's going to come find me.  At 6:20, another call...

"Which Dollar Store are you at?"

Family Dollar vs. Dollar Tree. It turns out both can be referred to as the "dollar store".

I hopped on my bike and headed 10 minutes down the road to the Dollar Tree, where every single item is actually $1.

Festival of Santa Maria

Sunday night a group of us met up at Meg's place in the North End and then ventured into the mess -- food and drink and trinket stands lining the streets -- that was the Santa Maria festival.

Laura and I got rice balls with marinara sauce, which is apparently actually an Italian thing (verified by Roberta) much to our surprise.  Mike got his face painted like a cross between KISS and a dog (it was supposed to be just a dog).  And we watched the spectacle of the young yelling Italian girls on balconies, singing the praises of Santa Maria as strings of dollar bills were wrapped around her shrine being carried through the streets.  This all culminated with the harnessed girl floating across the street suspended 40 feet in the air, chanting more praise for Santa Maria and she was repelled down to near-street level to kiss the statue and then back up to the balcony.

If only Americans had more random festivals of this sort, it was pretty hilarious.

Six flags

Yesterday I joined Mike, his older brother, Breon (interesting Irish names), and his fiancee Jill for a day at Six Flags New England, which also includes the medium-sized Hurricane Harbor water park.  I love fast, tall roller coasters, and the purple Bizarro ride fit the bill quite well.  In the morning we tried out each of the four main roller coasters -- Bizarro, G[???] towers (new this year), Batman, and MindEraser (a painful, small hard-corkscrewing stell coasteR).

After Breon began to feel quite ill, we headed over to the water park and hopped around on various water rides, all of which exist in bigger and better form at Noah's Ark, but nonetheless were generally pretty fun.  Mike and I then split for the final two hours and had two front-row rides on Bizarro, which were just awesome.  Nothing beats sliding slowly over the pinnacle of the first drop right at the start, watching as the track shifts quickly to what seems to be a pure vertical drop.

The rest of the park, though, has a distinctly depressing feel to it -- a contrived fantasy world absent any real character or charisma, along with any water fountains (water bottles $3.50, what a crime) or sensible food.  Though I am well aware that such places will charge a big premium for food and I am okay with that, a single slice of pizza should never cost $9.  Ever.  During the course of the day, my meals consisted of fries, more fries, and an almond Snickers bar.

Web Log, take 2

It turns out that, until I opened up Blogger this morning seeking a place to start keeping a blog in its original form, I actually had no recollection whatsoever that I had already started this very blog back in Summer 2010.

It was fun to read through all the old posts just now. As was noted by the leader of the Software Carpentry Bootcamp I attended a few weeks ago, the human brain appears to have unlimited long-term memory, but accessing it requires the proper cue.  When you read old, forgotten journal entries, this fact becomes abundantly clear: literally every single detail of every event that I described I could recall, but without the journal many of them would have had zero hope of ever resurfacing.  Pretty cool, and also obvious motivation to really, truly keep a consistent but simple blog going.  My old roommate Ben does it, and I love reading it even though I may go years without seeing him in person.

Here's to making these memories last :)