Undergraduate Admissions

I got a cold for the first time in years this week. It hit me like a truck on Tuesday morning and since then it’s been hanging around like Mike Huckabee. I did feel significantly better on Wednesday though. I got eight hours of sleep the night before. I was supposed to have to work in the morning, and I tried to get someone to cover my shift, but nobody could. At around midnight Tuesday, one of my supervisors emailed me telling me that I don’t have to come in and I should get some rest, even if nobody took my shift. I thought that was really cool, and the extra sleep definitely helped me feel a lot better.

Having a cold has been weird. At times I find it’s the most infuriating thing in the world. Other times, I feel like it’s just a weird experience, some funny way of interpreting an otherwise normal reality. Right now I feel pretty much ok. I just wish I could stop sniffling.

As a complete coincidence, I’ve eaten dinner with chopsticks for the past five nights. Sunday was Chinese food, Monday and Tuesday were leftover Chinese food, Wednesday was ramen (closest thing I had to chicken soup… I was throwing everything I had at my cold in an attempt to get it to go away as quickly as possible) and today I went to Oh Bento, the Japanese restaurant on campus. I’m really not sure what to think about that place. I haven’t eaten too much Japanese food, but it really strikes me as not very Japanese. (the Korean music videos on the TV probably don’t help.) Some of the lighter/more authentic stuff doesn’t seem quite as good as Korean Express, but the fried stuff seems a lot better. I haven’t been to KE since Oh Bento opened… maybe I’ll go back there next time I’m eating dinner on campus.

Tomorrow is International Fiesta, which I’ll probably write about after it happens. There’s some dinner thing that people can partake in before the show. I’m hoping there’s something there that is supposed to be eaten with chopsticks so I can continue my streak!

First of all, I made a little Flash animation at my internship (the network switch on the right). Watch those activity lights blink! That’s totally all me.

Also, I have a new project that I did for Advanced Digital Art. (the file is kinda huge… so definitely right-click and save it to your computer. The file is so huge because the audio quality is essential… when I compressed the audio, all of the excessive bass got cut out and it didn’t sound anywhere near as disorienting.) The theme of the piece was to translate something - an idea, a phrase, a work - into visual media. See if you can figure out what I’m “translating”.

Finally, a picture of me, just because I think that one at the top of the page is horrible:

Most people say it looks like a cell phone ad, unfortunately.
But I’ve never seen a poster that cool in the background of a cell phone ad!

Lately I’ve had some realizations about some family members. For me (maybe for everyone?) it’s easy to perceive family members not as actual people, but just as unchanging monoliths. They are who they are, as they always have been, and seemingly always will be. I see them at the holidays and they act the same way, spit out the same jokes as every year, and in general exist within an extremely narrow paradigm in my mental framework. There is no context or real history to their existence because they exist not as people but as characters, present as far back as I can remember and always existing and functioning within the same pattern.

Perhaps I had to do some growing up of my own, or perhaps situations had to change, before I could understand these people as people and not as caricatures. Anyway, it’s interesting to me to be able to perceive things that were previously invisible. Suddenly pieces start falling into place and things start making a bit more sense than they did before. Personalities, relationships, and lifestyles no longer seem arbitrary.

This post was a little weird. The next one will be full of fun things like pictures and movies, I promise.

I feel like I have basically nothing to write about in here right now. Everything that’s going on lately is stuff I already wrote about, like:

• classes
• work
• internship
• friends coming over and playing Rock Band (and a few other games this time, like Karaoke Revolution, which I was horrible at because I knew one song in the whole game, haha)
• the Democratic primary (an interesting way to kill time reading every day, though I wish it would just resolve itself already)

I just read a somewhat interesting article about sarcasm. I’m not sure if I agree with their assertion that sarcasm is a sort of defense mechanism for those lacking in confidence. More than anything, I think sarcasm is a generational thing. It’d be hard to have grown up in the late 80s and the 90s and not be sarcastic. We were so bombarded with sarcasm at the time; it was thoroughly and repeatedly shown to be the “cool” way to be. (For some prime examples, see Darlene in Roseanne or John Connor in Terminator 2.) I think it’s actually gotten a bit better since then.

I like sarcasm, but just from looking at TV and movies, you can see that it’s consumed much of our culture at this point. If you look at anything from before the late 80s/early 90s and compare it to what came later, it’s so obvious that genuineness has been deprecated quite a bit. Sometimes I think we’d all be better off if (to use another late 80s/early 90s throwback) the ‘tude could be toned down a little bit. It’s gotten a little out of hand.

I went to Toronto with my friends last weekend to see some electronic music DJs. It was entirely insane and thoroughly awesome. I always think going to Canada is amusing, because as soon as I hear people talking I notice their accent, and seconds later I realize that they probably think I sound pretty funny, since it’s their country and everything.

There was this Asian grocery store about a block away from the venue (The Sound Academy, formerly known as The Docks) that we went to to grab something to eat before we went in. It was really insane. There are plenty of small Asian grocery stores around here, but this was like a Tops that was just (almost) all Asian food (they also had potato chips and Oreos and stuff). Me and a friend split these things that were like ball-shaped shortbread cookies covered in sesame seeds. Like you would think from that description, they were pretty good!

I drove to Toronto this time, which was a first for me. I figured I might as well do it sometime, and since I’ve gotten a little experience driving on highways since I started my internship, I wasn’t particularly worried. It was so easy! All you do is cross a bridge and drive straight for a while on a big road with relatively few cars on it. (I’ve been informed that the QEW is quite crowded at other times of day/of the year, but driving in around 8-9pm and coming back around 5am, it was pretty empty.)

There are a few things I’ve noticed about my drive to my internship after driving to Toronto and back:

• The drive seems quite short
• I feel like I’m not going fast at all even though I’m doing around 65

I guess those things both make sense.

Oh, and the need for birth certificates at the border? Totally overstated. The guy at the border on the way back into the US asked us if we had them - and then stopped us before we handed them to him, because he didn’t even want to see them. If we hadn’t had them I suspect we would have gotten some sort of lecture about how they are required and then been sent on our way. The guy was really nice though, so I guess I shouldn’t be complaining. I just think the requirement of birth certificates at the border is ridiculous in the first place.

Oh — I checked what kind of gas mileage I got — 30.5 mpg for this tank of gas! Awesome.

Lately, I’ve been watching The Daily Show and The Colbert Report almost every day. Part of it is definitely election mania, which most certainly has me in its grasp, but I also think that I actually enjoy the shows more while the writers are on strike. There’s less planned, written segments, and things seem more personal and random. Also, on The Daily Show, there are almost never any correspondents at all–it’s mostly just Jon Stewart talking about the news. (The segments with the correspondents were always my least favorite part of The Daily Show.) The whole incident with Conan O’Brien was pretty funny, too. (It should be easy to find video clips on the internet if you have no idea what I’m talking about.) I have to admit though, I definitely do miss “The Word”.

I’ve had a few randomly canceled classes this semester. Not a lot by any means, but a few. This is more than I’ve ever had before, I think. In the past few years, I felt like somehow I always signed up for classes where the teacher never misses a single class. I do like the classes I’m taking, but once in a while finding out randomly that you have some extra free time is always nice. It’s like a snow day without the bad weather.

I feel like the busier I am, the less I have to write. Isn’t that weird? It makes sense though, in that I’m busy with things about which I don’t really have anything to say.

So, the Giants won last night! That was pretty awesome. It was the best Super Bowl I’ve seen in a long time, maybe ever, and I’m not just saying that because the Giants won. It was a really exciting game overall.

Tomorrow is the so-called “Super Tuesday” Presidential Primary. I’m definitely going to vote, and I suggest that everyone out there reading this do the same if you’re in a state where you can vote tomorrow. Everybody should vote, even if it’s for a candidate that has no chance of winning. I hate hearing people say that they don’t like the way politics are, so they aren’t going to vote. Even if you know you can’t change anything, you might as well do what you can by voting for what you believe in. Maybe all those dissatisfied votes would add up to make a difference. We’ll never know unless we try.

If anyone is curious about my opinion, I’m hoping for a big win for Barack Obama. He’s one of the only politicians in my adult lifetime that’s wanted to change the combative, bratty tone that politics have taken on in recent years–and definitely the only one that seems like he might be able to make some progress towards that goal. All of the other remaining candidates on both sides (except Ron Paul, I suppose) just seem like more of the same old Washington suits, playing the same old recurring characters that I’ve seen enough of already. I’d love to have a President who could say things that interest and inspire people instead of instilling fear or saying whatever the polls tell him/her to.

Obviously, this is just my opinion. Even if you disagree, I hope you vote tomorrow!

This is the time in which is it crucial that we all set aside our differences, our affiliations, and our divisive histories in order to look towards a better future. We must all unite behind a common cause and hope for change in the way things are going. We have a chance to end the tyranny that has run rampant in recent years, and to show the world that an organization of liars and cheaters is not going to be allowed to dominate.

It is with this spirit in mind that I say…

GO GIANTS!
(as a Bills fan, it’s very hard for me to say this.)