Elisa's Blog

2005-12-13T11:49:00.000-08:00

It was little over a year ago that I started this randomly documented collection of thoughts. All good things must come to an end, and, somehow, a year and the month of December seem to be, for this kind of thing, particularly fitting.

I don't know what statement of finality should accompany occasions such as this. Reflecting on the past in a bittersweet reminiscence of nostalgia is always foolish unless you have something truly profound and revolutionary to say. Perhaps instead, signing off on a note of hope, passing on the torch to younger generations, seems to be just about the appropriate and poetic (for isn't the whole point in life to be able to see the poetry of things?) thing to do, so that then my end....becomes a new beginning.

2005-12-06T16:36:00.000-08:00

Heh. I quantum-tunnelled my way into a co-worker's cube the other day.

Boss walks in, hears me talking, asks: "Where are you, I can hear you, but I can't see you?"

(I was actually under the desk, switching the monitor connection between 2 computers).

As I rose up from under the desk all I had to do was say: "That's because I hadn't fully materialized yet."

And then Boss (he's a smart one!) says: "Ah, of course! Quantum tunnelling!!"

I tell you man, me and quantum physics, we mix in very strange ways.

2005-12-04T12:02:00.000-08:00

Oh, and the other day I also thought:

To womever doofus came up with the saying: "Trust is earned."

I say: "No, trust is given."

Remember this.

2005-12-02T11:32:00.000-08:00

Hmm....when the holiday season comes, I tend to wax philosophical.

Yesterday I was reading a book, when it suddenly occured to me, you know the age old question: "Why are we here?", "What is our purpose in life?", etc. etc. that has been answered, throughout the ages, depending on religion, country and culture, with various and sundry answers such as:

A: "To do what God's will is." (religious fanaticism approach)
B: "To experience life's pleasures." (hedonistic approach)
C: "Who knows?" (clueless approach)
D: "Who cares? Figure it out for yourself!" (existentialist approach)
E: "It doesn't matter." (nihilistic approach)
F: "Whomever dies with the most toys wins." (80's approach)
G: "To help the needy and underpriviledged." (liberal, peace-corps granola approach)
H: "To become immortal via win the Nobel prize/write the niftiest play/invent the coolest microchip." (delusions of grandeur approach)
I: "To be happy." (illusionary approach)
J: "To spread our genes." (scientific approach)
K: "To spread our memes." (sociological approach)
L: "Life is short and the question complicated." (sophistic approach)

etc. etc. etc?

Well, you know what comes next, right? I get to inflict upon the unfortunate reader my answer of the moment. Cool huh? (Blogger privilege. Are you jealous? ;P).

Yesterday I thought: "Perhaps the whole point in life is to bring to this world children that are truly loved, and nothing more."

(And the cool thing is, they don't even have to be your own children)

2005-11-28T12:31:00.000-08:00

Seen in one of the science internet forums:

Cause I said so. § < - > 11/27 01:09

There can be no scientific basis for this § <statement> 11/27 13:14

You aren't Simon § <mrmystery> 11/27 17:37

Heh.

2005-11-27T19:17:00.000-08:00

You know, I think I figured it all out about pop radio stations.

All pop radio stations own a collection of a total of 10 CDs (not the same collection for all radio stations, obviously). Periodically, oh...about once a year or so...one of the CDs in the collection gets replaced with a new one, mostly obeying to the whims of what's popular at the moment and more or less what matches the station's style, with the result that the whole of the collection only gets replaced about once every 10 years or so, on the average.

That's why you keep hearing the same songs over and over again when you turn on the radio on your car, even two or three times per day, if you're lucky (if you're unlucky, you'll hear the same song placed twice in the same hour). Radio stationing must be a very ungrateful job: not much pay from advertisements to expand the CD collection even to the number 11, that much is quite obvious.

;)

2005-11-18T11:07:00.000-08:00

This morning I came across the following passage from Günter Grass's Mein Jahrhundert ("My Century"), which is a collection of short sketches about life in Germany during the past 100 years as described from many different viewpoints (a housewife, a soccer star, a laborer, a doctor, a child, a journalist set to interview Remarque and Ernst Jünger, for instance, among many others), with each chapter depicting one each of the years in question.

The following passage is from the chapter corresponding to the year 1991:

"You don't see any dead people. All you see are wobbly gun sights and then hits. Bull's-eyes supposedly. It's like a game...."
     "Right. Because CNN's got the TV rights for this war---and the next one after that..."
     "But you do see oil fields burning...."
     "Because that's what the whole thing's about. Oil and only oil! Any kid knows that. That's why they're out in the streets. Leaving their teachers, leaving whole schools empty. In Hamburg, Berlin, Hannover. Even in the East---Schwerin, Rostock. They're carrying candles again, like two years ago...."
     "But when we marched against the war in Vietnam and napalm..."
     "Don't give me any of your '68 crap.While you're sitting here on your ass, those kids..."
     "It's not the same. We had our own perspective, a revolutionary concept, you might say, whereas these kids with their candles..."
     "But comparing Saddam to Hitler, that makes sense, doesn't it? Isn't it clear what's good and what's evil?"
     "It's more of a metaphor.We should have gone on talking, negotiating, used an economic boycott the way we did in South Africa. Pressure, not war..."
     "But this is no war! It's a show put on by CNN. A co-production with the Pentagon. The consumer can turn it on and off at will. Fireworks in the comfort of your own home. Nice and clean. No deaths. A science-fiction extravaganza. Just add pretzels..."
     "But you do see the oil fields burning and missiles falling on Israel. There are people in basements with gas masks on...."
     "And who's been arming Saddam against Iran all these years? Right. The Yanks, the French..."
     "And German business. Here. Look. A long list of choice goods: missile accessories, poison kitchens with recipes..."
     "I guess that's why that Bierman guy, who I always thought was a pacifist, I guess that's why he's for the war. He even says..."
     "He doesn't say shit; he just blasts the people who don't agree with him...."
     "Know what he calls the kids marching with the candles for peace? Crybabies..."
     "Because they have no goal in mind. No broader social perspective, whereas we..."
     "What about 'No blood for oil!' Doesn't that say something?"
     "Not enough. When we marched against the war in Vietnam..."
     "Look, 'Ho! Ho! Ho Chi Minh!' is not what you'd call a brilliant argument. And now it's a bunch of kids out in the streets. Munich, Stuttgart. Over five thousand of them. Play-group kids even. They march a while in silence, then burst out with 'I'm scared! I'm scared!' That's a first for Germany---public confession....If you want my opinion..."
     "Who needs fucking opinions! Look at those kids, will you? What isn't Adidas is Armani. Spoiled brats, scared their designer clothes are in jeopardy, whereas in '68 and later---when we marched against the Frankfurt airport expansion and the Pershing II in Mutlangen---that was the real thing. These toddlers and their candles..."
     "Look, isn't that how it began in Leipzig? Every Monday we met at the Nikolai Church for a peaceful march. Every Monday till the bosses got the jitters..."
     "It's not the same...."
     "But Hitler and Saddam. They go together, don't they?"
     "The oil fields are burning...."
     "And in Baghdad a shelter packed with civilians was..."
     "You don't see that on CNN..."
     "Of course not. This is the future. TV rights will be auctioned off before every war. And the time to start pre-production is now. Because there'll be another one soon. Somewhere else if not in the Gulf..."
     "In the Balkans? The Serbs and the Croats..."
     "No, only where there's oil..."
     "And where you don't see any dead people..."
     "And only the children are scared..."

2005-11-17T11:19:00.000-08:00

So yesterday I went with a friend to the Symphony, and listened to Shostakovich's 4th.

Aaaah, what a beautiful work of art!

2005-11-15T14:26:00.000-08:00

Ooooo! Guess what!?

I just got an email announcing that Henle-Urtext is having a 50% discount sale on all Mozart and Schumann scores, on occasion of the holidays and the happy circumstance that it is Mozart's 250th anniversary and Schumann's 150th memorial. Wow, such an occasion doesn't come every day you know....

What's more, the sale is going on through December 15th!!

So, hint hint, for you people that need things to be super clear and blatant: If you have no idea what to get me for Christmas this year, and are planning to (hey, I've been a relatively good girl this year, as my blog can attest!), a copy of Schumann's Kreisleriana in a Henle-Urtext edition (get it at 50% off!!) would be really, really nice.

;P

2005-11-14T17:53:00.000-08:00

So, in Mary W. Shelley's book, "Frankenstein", all it takes is one look, shortly after he's done with his painstaking stitching together of skin, muscle, and tendon, for Victor to fall prey to a violent loathing for his own creation lying on his worktable.

Not too long ago, I was arguing with a family member, about whether if, assuming it is true that we were created by an omnipotent God, who doesn't need us (since he's omnipotent), it can be possible for him to love us. How can you love your creation, if it is akin to a software engineer loving his program, or a mechanical engineer loving a robot he builds, or a clay artist loving the vase he molded, or a writer loving a book he wrote. It makes no sense at all. You could be proud of your opus, but love it? Hardly.

Anyway, back to the point. It took just one look for Victor, and his subsequent hatred (just brought about by one look at what he thought was an abomination!) eventually makes the monster become so sad and lonely that the only way to express this is by murdering everyone left and right and this finally brings ruin upon himself and others, thus condemning both himself and his creator to a lifetime of suffering. A veritable disaster. Great Halloween story it is indeed.

But then I thought, if it really is true that we are some omnipotent God's creation, and he is, at least at first, like Victor was, rather proud of and full of hope for what he's done, what if, one day, after the next bomb we drop on innocents, or after two friends become sworn enemies, or a parent raises his hand to a child, or the next time the teenager down the street kicks a dog, or who knows what other insidiously evil yet mundane thing that we tend to do, all of us, every once in a while, He decideds He doesn't like us, that we're not what He thought we'd be, and abandons us? Hmmm? What then?

2005-11-06T22:41:00.000-08:00

To whomever smarty-pants that came up with the saying: "Actions speak louder than words."

I say: "Yes, but the motivations behind the actions are important, and you can only discover those through words."

2005-11-04T16:55:00.000-08:00

Huh.

So my company is in the process of moving to a new office. Of course this then produces a frantic panic among the engineers what with trying to fit the packing of their prized possessions, toys, the loads of junk and experimental unfinished projects in the labs, the personal documents, tidying up unsaved software work, etc, all the while trying to cram in the usual work hours, so the office these days is a hubbub of activity.

Right outside my cube is a huge 3-meter cubed box labeled "TRASH". 2 hours ago, one of the managers came by and dropped 5 or 6 CDs worth of commercial software in there. By now, the box is almost full, containing, as said manager pointed out, over $100,000 dollars worth of equipment, including: 3 debuggers, several computer keyboards, a fully functional 4 MHz analog oscilloscope, 2 survey-grade GPS receivers, assorted serial and antenna cables, antennas, chipsets, and various other electronic parts, most of them, though old, still perfectly functional.

An old friend of mine just recently mentioned to me that he was glad that he lived in a plastic, "throw-away" society. I can see his point: if one is able to live in a society where the cost of buying something new is less than the cost of repairing something old, or the profits gained from selling something you no longer need is smaller than the savings in transportation, time, and effort you'd get from just throwing the unneeded stuff away, then one is living rather well off indeed.

Still, that was not enough to prevent me from staring wide-eyed and incredulous at the huge box outside my cube.

And I thought about Mexico.

2005-11-01T15:58:00.000-08:00

Heh. I just got invited, then uninvited, to a hockey game.

The exchange went something like this:

Person "inviting" me: "Oh, by the way, I've got an extra ticket to the hockey game tomorrow, but...I'm assuming given it is you that you wouldn't be interested."

Now, let's think, why bother inviting me, then uninviting me in the same sentence, and then insulting me, high-school style, as in "nerds like you who'd rather go to the symphony than a sports match with a bunch of rowdy male coworkers wouldn't have fun at this cool event I'm going to, you'd probably have a lot more fun staying at home reading your encyclopedia". Hmmm? Probably, my guess, is just to flaunt the fact that you're going to some event that you think is cool, and excluding someone from the event with an added implied insult gives you, apparently, an even greater "coolness" factor.

The situation, you must admit, is rather comical, and what better way to make a comical situation better, than to exaggerate and amplify it, so I exclaimed, adding a little studiously contained jump masking as a candidly innocent bright-eyed bout of hardly-controlled enthusiasm:

Me: "Oooo, hockey game! I've always wanted to go to one. Who else is going, the rest of the [male coworker] gang? Cool! Oh, yeah, thanks, I'd love to go! By the way, would you be terribly offended if I brought a book along?"

The look on the guy's face when I said that was priceless. ;)

2005-10-27T10:41:00.000-07:00

:)

This morning I was at the cafeteria vending machine, when I ran into Ulrich, a guy from our company's site in Germany who was visiting this week after one of our company's user conferences in nearby Las Vegas.

We chit-chatted for a bit, exchanging the usual polite pleasantries, when as luck would have it the potato chips I was trying to purchase got stuck in the vending machine panels. When our exchange came at an end, and partly as an excuse to exit gracefully, I mentioned my quandry to my friend, and announced I was going to fetch another $0.75 to purchase my chips again.

Without any hesistation, he said, in heavily accented English: "Shall I borrow you something, so that you don't have to walk?", and immediately produced a dollar bill.

My cube is only 10 meters away from the cafeteria, so I expressed my thanks and declined the offer, but all the way to my cube and back to the vending machine (where my chips got stuck again for the second time, by the way), and then back again, I smiled as I thought that, with the broken English making it all the more endearing, how nice it was that in some countries guys still know how to be gentlemen.

2005-10-25T10:43:00.000-07:00

Life is now.

Yesterday I was bored after work, so I went home and read Book I of Rousseau's Social Contract.

2005-10-24T20:52:00.000-07:00

Coming back to the US I found my senses were heightened. I could see more, hear more (my piano at home needs re-tuning), and, paradoxically after the strong spicy mixed smells of the markets and food of the Maghreb, I could also smell more.

Upon returning, the U.S. smelled like brand new plastic.

2005-10-22T04:56:00.000-07:00

There are lots of very old bills in circulation here. They must be at least ten years old, judging by the age of the coins in my pockets (coins always last much longer than bills) and the state of the bills themselves, crumpled, thin and soft as tissue paper, torn and broken and often mended with scotch tape, a bit like Mexican bills were about 20 years ago.

This must mean something in terms of economics, you know, the rate at which a bill is replaced must reflect something about the economic state of the country, but I don't know what, never having taken an economics class in school due to my aversity for the subject. Perhaps someone here can tell me in the comments (Carlos, give it a shot for me?), for I am quite sure that in the US a dollar bill circulates for a couple of years tops before it is replaced by a bank somewhere (and this is true now in Mexico too, not counting the new 20 peso note that is made of plastic, precisely to make it last longer, but without tears and the "tissue-papering").

Just like in Mexico 20 years ago, too (before the NAFTA and consequent influx of cheap repleaceable stuff from the US, a la "Walmart"), everything seems to have several lifespans here, things are very much recycled, but not in the "granola" sense: old medicine bottles, used shoelaces, cassete tape cases (that is, cassete tapes without the actual tape inside), vaccum tubes, metal pipe fragments, and all manner of odds and ends is sold and re-sold at old city souqs, typically near or at the outside of the walls, away from tourist eyes, and the clientelle for these goods is vast.

I asked a 26-year old from Rabat, how long did he think it would take for "things" (and I was deliberately vague when asking in terms of designating what exactly "things" were) in Morocco to get better. "I don't know," he said. "It may not be during my time, or my children's time, or my grandchildren's time, but in the meantime I will do whatever I can, because it is up to me, to make a better life for my children and those that come after me, even if I don't live to see the benefits."

2005-10-20T20:46:00.000-07:00

Started in 1987, and at a budget of about 800 million US dollars, the majestic Hassan II Mosque in Casablanca took only 6 years to complete....

The rest of Morocco is in a perpetual state of continuous, unfinished construction.

2005-10-19T16:55:00.000-07:00

Marrakech.

Djemaa El-Fna at night. Remember this.

2005-10-18T02:14:00.000-07:00

Sunrise calls to prayer delayed two and a half beats in time at Largo, sung in two separate monotones perhaps an augmented 4th apart in the darkness of 5 o'clock in the morning off two separate Minarets in the Marrakech medina with an alarm siren wailing in the background.

Eerie, but strangely beautiful.

2005-10-15T06:11:00.000-07:00

Combine milk, avocado, and a little bit of sugar in a blender.

Surprisingly delicious!

2005-10-13T19:43:00.000-07:00

Hassan, our guide, weaves in and out of the labyrinthine corridors of the souqs of Meknès, and we hurry to keep up without losing sight of him, until eventually he just passes, reconsiders, and then returns to suddenly stop in front of a, to us random, door flush with the white old city walls. The door happens to be ajar, and from where we stand we can see the marble floors and elaborate tilework of the walls inside: it is a typical medina house, it seems.

"See here this floor," he says, "it is Italian marble, imported from Carrara. We import marble from Carrara since we don't have it here."

"What does Morocco export to Italy in trade for this marble?" I ask, already marvelling at the sure cost of these particular floors.

"Sugar," is the reply.

But then he adds after a short pause, as if in afterthought, in what we've come to perceive as a characteristically Moroccan pride and sense of humor: "We export sugar to the Italians, and we get this beautiful Carrara marble in exchange. But you see, Italians eat the sugar, and once it's eaten...poof! it is gone, but we...." (and here he gestures back at the white marbled floors) "we keep the marble."

2005-10-12T18:54:00.000-07:00

We drive alongside the walls of the old city of Fès (the petit taxis are red here, in case it one day happens to be the $64,000 question for you, unlike in Rabat, where they are blue, or Marrakech, where they are beige, or even Tangier, where they are green, but like Casablanca....enough detail for you to win the game, you think?), and pass the unmistakeable golden arches of the empire of McDonald's, this particular locale decorated in green tile, the color of Islam.

With a hearty laugh replies our cab driver, upon being asked whether he ever eats there: "Americans already have lots of money. No need to give them more."

2005-10-11T03:48:00.000-07:00

Olives, in order from least to most flavor: yellow ones, light green ones, dark green, black, dark red, pink, and (not dark) red.

The best ones are the pink ones.

2005-10-10T17:13:00.000-07:00

Heh. :) I travelled back in time yesterday. I think it is the first time I've managed to do that successfully: leave Madrid at 12:00 p.m, arrive in Tangier at 11:20 a.m.

Cool, huh?

2005-10-09T20:35:00.000-07:00

Approaching Tangier from Gibraltar, after landing, the first smell of Morocco that reaches my nostrils is that of Diesel and horses.

It is only later, in the late afternoon, strolling through the deserted cobblestone streets of the old Medina, that the month-long smell of Ramadan hits you: it is the mysterious and spicy aroma of warm bowls of harira being served deep inside the hidden Riads.

2005-10-06T11:05:00.000-07:00

"Hi, my dear, would you like to join me for dinner on Friday?"

"Ah, sorry, darling, but on that day I'm flying to Tangier."

Heh. I've always wanted to be able to say that to someone. :)

2005-10-01T21:53:00.000-07:00

Today I woke up and after I showered, breakfast, etc. I sat in front of the piano and basically played Bach all day.

Sometimes I pity my neighbors.

2005-09-26T10:48:00.000-07:00

So this weekend I went bathtub racing.

That's right. Cool, huh?

They were basically these tiny go-carts that were shaped like a bathtub complete with shower head and everything. You crawl in and you're kind of hunched over with your knees bent up above your shoulder level as you crouch to reach the steering wheel and accelerator, which is surprisingly powerful. So here you have me going round and round about my friend's company's parking lot chasing after my friend in her bathtub and some other unknown kid in his while trying to pass them with my bathtub.

It was some rather wholesome silly fun. :D

2005-09-21T16:39:00.000-07:00

So here I am at work doing some rutinary something or other when all of the sudden I see this pair of arms rotating over my cubicle round and round about all helicopter-like.

I stood riveted incredously contemplating the strange sight for a moment until it dawned on me that it was probably one of my coworkers coming by to tease me as usual.

So as I murmured a "What the..." and started chuckling as I stood on my chair to look over the cube wall lo and behold it is not one of the usual coworker friends who tease but my front-cubicle neighbor who is in fact taking a break and doing his stretching/tai-chi/helicopter hand motion exercises.

Glad I managed to stop myself and quickly pop back inside my cube before I said anything.

2005-09-20T15:53:00.000-07:00

Seen on one of the web forums:

mass extinctions were cause by time travel
< plothook > 09/19 12:31:20

time travel is possible and everytime someone invents it, they go back and accidentally step on a butterfly. everything dies. time travel becomes uninvented and we have to learn all over again. that's what happened in all the previous mass extinctions.

It gave me a good five minutes of chuckling, that one.

:)

2005-09-19T12:11:00.000-07:00

Rather flattering, isn't it, when your boss's figure pops over your cube and calls upon your attention by addressing you as: "O brilliant one..."

2005-09-17T19:28:00.000-07:00

Stinson Beach, mid-afternoon.

The white sun rays bounce perpendicular to the water making the waves look silver in a sea of molten metal.

You lie close enough next to me that your arm just barely touches mine, and for a long time we're both silent and terrifyingly immobile, you never saying what my brain screams ceaselessly inside my head in torment, and after an eternity that is somehow too short-lived, "Let's start heading back...", is all I hear you whisper.

2005-09-16T11:07:00.000-07:00

Starting since September, 1993, up until a couple of years ago, this day was always filled with, depending, varying degrees of nostalgia.

These days though, one barely seems to remember why this date is important.

And, maybe, realizing this is a lot more lamentable than any kind of nostalgia that may still miraculously linger.

2005-09-15T11:22:00.000-07:00

Uuuuuygh, you know what I suddenly got a huge craving for?

This shotgun pasta soup that my aunt and grandmother used to make for us for dinner during the hot Italian summers. It is a very simple dish, just chicken broth and the tiny drops of semolina, but oh so delicious, with freshly grated parmesan on top, which melts upon touching the soup still steaming, and makes strings from the plate to the spoon, and gets stuck to the comparatively cold metal....yum.

Strange, however, that I get this craving at 11 a.m. on an autumnal morning. Maybe that's a sign that I should stop skipping breakfast.... ;P

2005-09-08T10:57:00.000-07:00

The other day I read a letter to the editor in a magazine, where the writer, a high-school teacher, mentioned that one typical assignment she gave her class was to analyze the lyrics of Gwen Stefani.

Is this what American students are reduced to these days, instead of reading Milton?

2005-09-05T16:48:00.000-07:00

The bright-yellow hills of California are pierced by the rounded mossy green rock and volcanic red spires of The Pinnacles. The trees, leaves almost turning now, orange and brown in this mottled landscape, sometimes appear ghostly in the ravines, white-grey leaves dried and hanging.

Everything is the opposite color from what you'd expect here.

Except the sky. That one is blue and cloudless, as always.

2005-09-01T11:32:00.000-07:00

For you trend-searching statisticians:

No, it is not intentional, that all Half Moon Bay posts seem to pop up on Wednesdays.

Happy now?

{sigh}

2005-08-31T18:47:00.000-07:00

Nighttime, Half Moon Bay.

Sometimes memories have meanings, that the moments themselves do not.

2005-08-30T10:37:00.000-07:00

I don't know why everyone says that New Jersey is so horrible.

Last week when I was visiting my brother in New York, while driving from the Newark airport into the City, I remember thinking: "Huh, New Jersey is kind of pretty.....in a rather industrial kind of way."

{shrug}

2005-08-29T16:51:00.000-07:00

Aaah, today was a good day.

There was a quite a bit of laughing and lots of general good-natured cheerio.

Especially for a Monday.

:)

2005-08-24T23:17:00.000-07:00

The other day while we were riding on the bus my younger brother asked me: "When, do you think, do people get old?"

And I chuckled, a bit due to the sheer innocence of the question, a bit too perhaps at the anticipation of the facetiousness in my reply, which went along the lines of: "Oh, I don't know, around the time they turn 65, probably."

But as I said this I already recognized, that there are a lot of 25-year olds jaded and bitter after having chosen, sarcastic, unforgiving, distrustful, and angry at artificial exaggerated hurts, to carry the weight of a world on their shoulders, and as said this I also already knew, that at 65 I would still be much younger than they.

2005-08-23T12:11:00.000-07:00

I have a friend who says, no, claims, that given that one sees only a few people every day throughout one's lifetime, and the fact that they tend to be the same people most of the time, and given also, for instance, the dearth of population that strolls through the downtown streets of any of the desert towns here in Silicon Valley on any given day, plus the 100 or so people one may see on the TV news footage that live in other countries (for the people of the movies and Hollywood aren't even real anyway), plus/minus another 50 or so that you hear about from your friends and acquaintances, and so forth, there really are only about 1000 people on this planet.

But when I came back from New York this weekend (I had gone there to visit my brother who for some strange reason has chosen to make that city with its packed subways and streets teeming with people like ants around a honey drop which make walking along the sidewalk against the current an impossible task his home), I thought: "Nah, my friend is wrong, there must be something like....oh, mmmh, maybe two thousand."

2005-08-18T17:45:00.000-07:00

Hmm....the other day, through a very random and rather roundabout way I came across the following piece of music:

Vienna Teng: Lullaby for a Stormy Night

Listen, particularly carefully, to the lyrics.

It is beautiful, isn't it?

2005-08-17T14:06:00.000-07:00

I used to have a very admirable, remarkable literature teacher, who once said: "I don't so much want to be loved as I want to be understood."

When I remembered this the other day, I couldn't help thinking, that my teacher got it backwards.

2005-08-16T11:46:00.000-07:00

So today I had to go visit the land of HR, which is always, at least for me, a decidedly surreal experience.

On this particular occasion, I dropped by to inquire about a rutinary payroll issue, and was cheerfully greeted by L., who asked me if I had enjoyed my Saturday.

Of course, I always enjoy my Saturdays, so (it being a Tuesday the question had seemed a little strange to me) I replied with an amused, "Yes, of course!", to which she beamed and commented on the gorgeous weather we had had that day, and how lucky that everything had turned out great.

At around that point I realized, that she was referring to our company's picnic, which took place on the Saturday in question and which, as it happens, I did not attend. As the inevitable chuckle, excuse and explanation followed, she replied with: "Are you sure? I thought I saw you there..."

Now, this was quite refreshing, for if you recall the past instances where my existence has been denied (refer to documented evidence here and here), and the resulting distress and existential crisis that inevitably follows, in this case it turned out that I was actually present somewhere where I was not, so I figured the universe, after all these months, was finally turning around and balancing out correctly the way it should do, this conclusion then producing the expected serenity and peace of mind which one always appreciates especially on dreary, rainy Tuesday mornings.

Still, it is a little worrying, that the laws of quantum physics seem to bend a lot whenever I am (or in this case am not) around....

2005-08-15T11:44:00.002-07:00

So there's this sequence on one of the Calvin and Hobbes comic book panels, where Calvin announces that he's in a bad mood, so his mother makes him lie on the couch and brings him peanut-butter crackers and a stack of comics to make him feel better.

Now, the only reason I know this is because yesterday morning I was feeling kind of glum so I went to the local bookstore to read the comics, and thus came across this one.

Which is kind of recursive, if you think about it.

2005-08-12T15:08:00.000-07:00

So I just happened to catch a short section of a popular kid's cartoon called "Dragon Tales" on TV the other day.

In this short snippet, the two apparently 4 and 6 year-old human sibling protagonists are helping their 3 dinosaur friends because one of them has somehow managed to get himself trapped inside one of his own soap bubbles.

Yeah. Strange, huh? But hold on. The idea at this point is to freeze the bubble so that they can then break it and release their friend, so to this end they tether the floating dinosaur-bubble to a cord and fly, dragging their distressed bubble-trapped friend in the process, over to some snow-capped Himalaya-like mountain region.

As the bubble freezes, though, it acquires some weight, so it lands fairly softly onto the cushioning snow and all seems fine until the moment where it starts slipping downhill, at which point the only thing that one can hear from the TV apparatus is 5 child-like voices going on a quite prolongued, dramatic "Woh!!....." that chirps first to high and then to low frequencies in a sing-song backgrounding the images of these 2 kids and 2 and a half dragons (for one of the dragons is two-headed, so it is one dragon, but it is also two dragons...which averages to one and a half as far as I can tell) skiing in tandem behind their friend in liquid-like snow with what appears to be a half a meter high white wake....

I didn't get a chance to finish watching the episode to tell in the end whether poor Ord (the blue bubble-trapped dragon) was relieved of his dilemma, since I was in a hurry, and just caught this fragment in passing, and the short minute or two of story-watching was enough to make me wonder at how bizzare and depraved stuff is on TV these days.

;P

2005-08-11T10:39:00.000-07:00

Nighttime, Half Moon Bay.

We drive silently along the highway with the brume hugging the pavement and the headlights reflecting orange, like the start of one of those low-budget horror films. Disembarking on the county beach parking lot, closed to visitors at this hour, for it is very late, past midnight, the fog envelops me completely, and a sharp, cold, small needle-like droplet hits my cheek. "It is raining!" I exclaim to my companion, who laughs and corrects me: "No, it is just the mist."

We walk along the darkened sand, me vainly looking up searching for the faintest trace of starlight, it is new moon and sky-watching conditions would be ideal, for we are in a clearing away from city lights, if it weren't for the wretched mist, which blurs all the surroundings and still reflects orange from the town of Half-Moon Bay already 10 miles north. Up front, the froth of the waves moves capriciously, we turn our flashlight off and in the darkness it looks like the elaborate lace of a ghost's poufy skirt, but still in this blurry darkness it is hard to tell how close you are to the water, and the clammy touch of cold on my now naked feet comes as a surprise.

I search the skies in vain for signs of the Pleiades and Perseus, which will give me the bearings necessary to locate what we've come here to see, but the sky is whitish gray, not a single cloud, just the hazy dispersion of unpolarized light on small water droplets, impossible and imperturbable. "Come, let's walk a bit", says my friend, as there is not much else left to do now, for the silence and the loneliness creeps up on you and engulfs you if you stay still for too long, despite the traces of ancient human presence in the faint smell of dying embers of an abandoned, unseen fire that reaches us sporadically in whiffs, or maybe, even, precisely because of this.

And it is then, that I see them. At every step, the sand sparkles silver under my weight, illuminated, just like those kids' sneakers that light up red when the child runs. Tiny crystals big as sand grains remain momentarily glowing under my footsteps, and after I play and dance delightedly for a bit in the moist fluorescent sand this friend chuckles and says "It is fun, walking behind you, because you leave these little shiny trails...".

And I approach the water again, and swirl the waves with my foot, and see that they too, leave a little lighted imprint of my movement, and the disappointment at the impenetrable sight of the night-sky and its absent stars vanishes immediately. "It must be some kind of algae", he, the Biologist, reflects.

But I smile to myself and think, no, it is here where they are, what we had come to see. The Perseids, the shooting stars debris of Comet Swift-Tuttle, tumbling across the sky every summer, for years and years and years every single August throughout the eons, end up here on this beach. We were just looking in the wrong direction.

2005-08-06T20:20:00.000-07:00

Overheard on ICS channel:

ravaneli(24): dump the guy already, u been partners 30 min!

ravaneli(24): thaz long enough!

Taken out of context, this is pretty funny!

(For those of you who are already letting your minds travel into the gutter, channel 24 is the bughouse channel, and ICS is the Internet Chess Server)

2005-08-05T23:51:00.000-07:00

Santana Row, evening.

At the corner two streets down, young and old play blitz well into the night, but at this corner, in the plaza, the passtime seems to be people-watching while sipping coffee at the outdoor tables.

On the proper day, at the proper hour, with the proper music background in the headphones of your mp3 player, the place is a bit reminiscent of Warsaw's stare miasto.

2005-08-03T23:12:00.000-07:00

Funny. Over the past couple of weeks, there was a moment when, just for a minute, maybe even two, I completely lost track of what really was important.

Heh. Wrong choices can sometimes be alarmingly seductive.

2005-08-02T04:37:00.000-07:00

Now I see why Sherlock Holmes picked up his violin when he was in the middle of a particularly thorny problem and getting nowhere.

I have found that there is no other activity that is so consummately engaging to the exclusion of any other outside stimuli, than concentrating on producing a decent sound off a cheap, scratchy, old German violin with an inherent unexpungeable high frequency buzz.

2005-07-28T11:29:00.000-07:00

Late afternoon, summer, Half Moon Bay.

The fog has already rolled in, by 7, bright and hot in the South Bay, but here the sky has already darkened, and the air is damp. Approaching the beach from the cliffs, the saturated green from plants growing abruptly off the sand, broken once or twice by the surprising lone yellow summer flower in a bed of verdure, looking down, the shore too far below to jump.

I make my way down the trodden path around the cliffs, descending carefully, side-stepping the sandstone formations that exactly mimic the driftwood on the beach, blackened and charred by a long-extinguished fire. As I approach the ocean, the smell, different from the one in the tropics of Mexico, which is salty, and fresh, and caresses you with the cool breeze, hits me: here it smells more like dead crab, salty, yes, but colder, more damp, more sultry, as if it hugged you and enveloped you in a blanket (ironically!), a lot more like a winter.

The sand, screeching acutely with my steps, the ocean: green tourmaline. Waves constantly changing and churning up white spray, the water frigid enough to numb the feeling in my toes and send a chill up my spine that makes my neck hairs stand on end.

I walk some more, after playing in a sand dune running up and sliding down, alone, for it is late now, 8 p.m., and it is a Wednesday, people are busy enjoying the summer elsewhere, somewhere warmer for sure, going home after work, maybe getting drinks in the city, and I......can't see another person here for miles, and I pretend I'm in a desert island, and that this island is mine, and what would I do, would I build a shack under that cave over there, and what would I hunt for dinner, and is that a crab I see under that rock, no, it is someone's old red flannel shirt that has been soaked and twisted ackwardly by the surf and it destroys the illusion.

I head back to my car, but not before sitting again alone in a piece of driftwood to (and note how muffled now is the sound of the waves!) beat the sand off the creases of my jeans, gritty briny stuff stuck in my molars and tasting on my lips. It takes so little, to turn a Wednesday into a Sunday.

2005-07-26T17:38:00.000-07:00

Today I remembered a Schultz Peanuts cartoon from long ago.

Charlie Brown is leaning on that wall facing us (the reader), talking to Linus. The school year has just ended or someone from the gang is moving away or something rather melancholy like that has just happened. They discuss this for a bit, how goodbyes are so sad and so on, and on the last panel Charlie Brown says: "I need more hellos."

When three people you like leave within the span of 2 weeks, you tend to remember such things. And it is always easier, isn't it, when you do the leaving...

2005-07-24T21:17:00.000-07:00

{sigh} I need more weekends.

2005-07-22T17:09:00.000-07:00

The bane of the algorithms engineer: befriending someone who contradicts themselves an odd number of times within the same sentence.

2005-07-21T10:37:00.000-07:00

The other day I thought that, curiously enough, one of the things I miss most about Mexico is the sound of the church bells in the evening.

2005-07-19T11:59:00.000-07:00

So today as I was walking down the street one of those microscopic baby Chihuahua rat dogs (which was being walked at the moment by its owner) suddenly charged at me as I went past. Now, I'm not a very big person, but nevertheless I must've been at least 10 times the size of that dog, since it's snout barely reached at about the level of my ankles. Even so, the audacity, the unexpectedness, and surprise of the attack was enough to make me quickly hop out of the way and nearly made my legs buckle over.

There's a life lesson in all of this, I'm sure. I just can't quite put my finger on it at the moment....

Oh, and then, still walking back to the office soon afterwards, cutting across one of the parking lots, I espied one of those gargantuan, obnoxious, showy pitch black 4x4 trucks which was parked in such a way as to occupy 4 full parking spots at once quite unnecessarily.

I'm sure there's also a meaningful philosophical life lesson in this one, somehow. For some reason though, today my brain just can't pin these kinds of things down. Weird, huh?

2005-07-17T21:36:00.000-07:00

With my apologies for those PG-13 types who read this blog, I request that if you're easily offended, to please skip this post. I suppose instead of making this request I could, you know, just not post this, but since this whole platform was supposed to be a forum for expressing random thoughts, any form of censorship would defeat the purpose, no? And, for those of you who are not PG-13 and are not easily offended, but who think of me of a nice sweet girl who would never think these things that follow, well, I don't, everything you see written next is just a figment of your imagination.

So anyway, you've been dutifully warned, so I declare myself absolved of any responsibility for any kind of damage, crumbling of pedestals, melting of pure and innocent colorful images, and so on and so forth...

Today I thought: "Fucking hell."

2005-07-15T14:51:00.000-07:00

The cool thing about the Harry Potter books is that, even though they're books supposedly written for children, there is not one character that is purely good or purely evil. Rowling does a superb job of showing a veritable rainbow of colors, shading, and subtleties in between the oversimplified black and white of the traditional children's book character's motivations. The hero of the series himself turned into a whiny, unlikeable, silly adolescent by book 5, and undoubtedly one of the most attractive characters in the book is a vindictive, capricious, self-centered school professor.

Before this finishes sounding like one of those old Jr. High School book reports, I'll cut this off here and come out already with what I really wanted to say, though I'm embarassed, because it sounds a bit childish, even in spite of the above paragraph of disclaimers, but oh well.

Today I thought: "Only 12 more hours until Harry Potter!"

2005-07-13T17:44:00.000-07:00

And then your eyes laughed, and your lips parted in a muted smile, as if saying "what a strange thought", but you were silent for a while, immobile, your eyes meandering along an artery of memories, I could almost see you taste them, all those varietals one by one in turn, and old German Riesling here, perhaps, maybe a Sauvignon Blanc of once many years ago now, or a Pinot Gris from that small hidden winery, now something else entirely, I don't know, as you again inhaled deeply with your nose against the wind the smell of moistened earth, grin transforming slowly from amusement to delight.

"Yes," you said, after a long time.

2005-07-11T17:06:00.000-07:00

As always, the weather changes as soon as you cross the San Mateo county line. Sunnyvale's always sunny, says a friend, but in San Mateo that Friday, a faint drizzle and darkened skies enveloped the smell of wet asphalt.

I waited for you inside, and when you arrived, barely in time to complete a brief greeting, I grabbed you by the hand and led you outside, still puzzled at my unexpected and purposeful steps, not saying anything, your eyes questioning when I said to you: "Smell this."

And as you turned to face the wind, cold and a bit too fast for summer, "Smells like rain, right?" said I. You tilted your face sideways and nodded, still wondering why this remark of mine had seemed so urgent.

And then I turned to look straight into your eyes, and grinned, and said to you: "I want to find a wine, that smells like this."

2005-07-08T10:43:00.000-07:00

Debugging someone else's old code is a software engineer's worst nightmare.

2005-07-06T15:55:00.000-07:00

Did we ever spend one 4th of July together?

Yes. In Boston, remember? The fireworks were so thick, refulgence and smoke illuminating the sky in white, just like daylight, the buildings of that old college reflected on the river.

2005-07-05T11:04:00.000-07:00

Why is it that people always seem to want anything but what they already have?

2005-07-01T11:25:00.000-07:00

So I was walking along the parking lot of the company across the street from ours. It was close to lunchtime, which means that I presently heard the loud car horn trumpeting the arrival of one of that company's food trucks. Now, this horn is polyphonic, it actually belts out a melody, a bit like the kid's ice cream tucks, but which was, in this case, a shortened version of the popular Mexican song: "La Cucaracha".

This made me think that the food truck guys needed a quick and short lesson in basic marketing:

Marketing axiom #452:

"Cucarachas and food don't mix very well."

2005-06-30T11:48:00.000-07:00

A couple of days ago I read Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged".

Hated it.

{shrug}

2005-06-25T14:41:00.000-07:00

Heh. The best thing about Saturday mornings, is Saturday morning cartoons.

2005-06-22T12:19:00.000-07:00

Today I thought: "PLLs are a bit like the Loch Ness Monster."

If this somehow seems cryptic to you, consider that when I said this to a former schoolmate of mine, he immediately grinned and nodded in empathy.

Now consider what that says about either a)myself, b)my friend, d)phase-locked loops, e)my friend's and my understanding of PLLs, and f)the Loch Ness Monster.

Would you have thought there was so much depth in such a simple statement?

Heh.

2005-06-21T09:27:00.000-07:00

Today, a headline on CNN read:

"Saddam a clean freak, loves Doritos"

Did you think the same thing I thought, when you read this?

2005-06-20T11:40:00.000-07:00

Heh. You can tell you work at a neat workplace, when the first email exchange of your Monday morning involves heatedly discussing the etymology of citrus fruits with the lead software engineer.

2005-06-19T21:07:00.000-07:00

Interesting, isn't it, when evil has the face of an angel....

2005-06-17T16:25:00.000-07:00

A very long time ago (it must've been, curiously enough, about 14 years ago, come to think about it), an old friend of mine said to me: "Today, I opened up the newspaper, and I cried."

"Why?", I had asked.

"I don't know," he had said.

And I remember quite vividly, that his words were something I didn't understand.

Today, I think I felt....exactly what he felt on that day.

2005-06-16T21:45:00.000-07:00

Last night I went to dinner with a very good friend, who said to me: "Funny, I can tell when you're thinking about him."

"Oh?", said I.

And she: "Yes, your face lights up and you faintly smile."

2005-06-15T10:43:00.000-07:00

Aaaaah. There's no greater joy, than riding your bike to work on a warm summer morning.

2005-06-13T10:32:00.000-07:00

The other day I was telling a friend: "When I was 17, I was cocky and stupid, but now..... I'm just stupid."

:)

(It is always good, when you can laugh at yourself).

2005-06-10T14:55:00.000-07:00

Heh heh. So yesterday in one of the well known internet discussion forums (hint: in this forum, you can also find apartments for rent, personals, event listings, etc, and it is organized by city, and basically no graphics, and is the list of someone whose name rhymes with egg), some doofus put up a derogatory post exploiting all possible negative stereotypes of Mexican women: namely, that they are uneducated, that their families are crass and drunk, and an assortment of various and sundry misaprehensions of Mexican culture, concluding in the end that Mexican women are, due to these reasons, intrinsically "undateable".

I decided it would be instructive to the original poster, if he was made aware of the types of women he was missing out on meeting by making these kinds of sweeping erroneous generalizations.

After I explained, by way of an example, that both my brother and I are graduates of top US universities, that my parents are university professors, that everyone in my immediate family speaks at least 3 languages fluently and is conversational in one more each, that we've travelled extensively, that we can discuss literature, politics, and philosophy in precise, 30-minute monologues that will make your head spin, and so on and so forth, I received a reply from the original poster, claiming that I couldn't be real, that I and everything I had said about my family was a fantasy.

Heh.

This is the second time, apparently, that someone has decided that I do not exist.

:)

2005-06-09T10:22:00.000-07:00

Hmm...you know what would be cool? If they made ping-pong balls in mint green color. 'Cuz the white ones are boring, and the orange ones you can barely see, but mint green is.....just right. :)

Bonus points if the mint-green ones were glow-in-the-dark, too.

2005-06-08T11:58:00.000-07:00

Hmm....I was going to post something deeply meaningful and philosophical today that I thought up this morning, but I just realized I forgot what it was.

Oh well. ;)

2005-06-03T16:28:00.000-07:00

Heh. Today I'm in a joking mood.

Alright, so you know how each country always has some group of people that they make fun of because they're stereotypically stupid? In the US, that group is good-looking blondes, in Mexico, it is the Spanish from Galicia, in the UK, it is the Irish, if you're a musician, it is the viola section, etc. Well, in Italy, that group is the carabinieri, the Italian road police.

This morning, for some reason, I remembered this particular carabinieri joke, which is one of my favorites, check it out:

How many carabinieri does it take to make a chocolate cake?

13. One to mix the ingredients and 12 to peel the M&Ms.

Ha ha ha ha!! Good one, eh? :)

2005-06-02T11:53:00.000-07:00

Today as I was walking through my company's parking lot, my promenade was arrested by the sight of a tiger swallowtail butterfly, which are very common in Mexico (though I'd never seen one in the 11 years I've been here the US). The calm, graceful flutter thus opened up a veritable floodgate of memories, which flashed as background to the poetry of flight, the butterfly now in relief, as if standing out highlighted from the sounds, smells, and feelings of a remembered childhood, and I couldn't then help exclaiming at the unexpected bewildered wonderment, an involuntary and muted "Oh."

2005-05-31T16:32:00.000-07:00

Interesting, isn't it, that the word for "politeness", in both Italian and Spanish, is the same word that is used for "education"?

2005-05-27T16:02:00.000-07:00

Blech. Today at work I had to use Excel. I hate that program. First of all, I never learned how to use it correctly, so I always have to look up the help section to do the simplest things such as adding a series of numbers together. I hate its plotting capabilities, and I hate that you have to input data onto the cells little by little, and change the font colors, and all these ugly little things that accountant types find fascinating.

Anyway, today I discovered that Excel doesn't do sums in hex. Or at least, that I couldn't get it to do it. So this required me to go looking around the office and appearing like a doofus asking my coworkers--"Do you know how to do sums in Excel?" and being all embarassed after getting the expected looks of supressed laughter.

I started feeling a little bit better, however, when two people I asked did not know the answer off the top of their heads (one even suggested what I had already thought after the first 30 seconds of frustration--"Why don't you export the data onto Matlab and hex sum it there and then import it back to Excel if necessary...but anyway, why do you bother with Excel if you can do your stuff in Matlab anyway, Excel sucks, you know?", etc.) and even better when the one person that does use Excel fairly regularly around here didn't know either.

As it turns out, to do hex sums in Excel, you need to first convert via a formula/macro thingy into a decimal, then add in decimal, then convert back to hex.

Blech, even your generic 5 dollar calculator can do this directly. It is such a basic function, adding in hex.

My friend to whom I complained of my adding number troubles pointed out when I said this: "Excel is a spreadsheet program for financial types. If you ask them to do hex numbers, they'd probably think you wanted them to curse them."

Well, for you non-hex financial types (and the people who poorly design programs for you), here's my message to you:

0xec5e15feeb1e like 0xdead5eaf00d

2005-05-26T17:36:00.000-07:00

Hmm.....so, what is it that people memorize on Memorial Day?

(Heh. Well, I thought this was funny....)

2005-05-24T16:29:00.000-07:00

So today I got an email from my brother, who mentioned that he had recently received a phone call from my dad, who had rung up my brother to tell him that he was at the moment calling from amidst the waters of the beaches of Manzanillo.

And as I pictured this, my dad's pale rounded torso poking out from within the thigh-high waves, green-checkered swim trunks half submerged in the salted water, probably still wearing his glasses and having forgotten to take off his watch, shielding his eyes from the sun with one hand while surveying the landscape, and carefully holding the cell phone as high above the water as possible with the other, turning first left and then round right to avoid the splashes from the nearby noisy children, a smile broke in my face as I thought: "That is so characteristically dad."

2005-05-20T19:49:00.000-07:00

It is on rainy days like this one, that the snails come out of the flower beds in my apartment complex onto the concrete sidewalk paths.

In the evening, darkened dusk sun precipitating down and still immersed in thoughts that linger from an uneventful day at work, there is little that causes more of an unpleasant surprise than hearing the portending, characteristic crunch announcing that your careless steps have just ended a life.

When I was a kid, I was told that snails have a shell to protect them, that it is like a shield for their soft delicate bodies, that it is like a little portable house that they take with them and use to hide from danger. And inevitably you then associate the words "portable house" with the warm feelings of home, and think it must be awesome, that a snail has this kind of security, and can take it anywhere it goes...

But yesterday, shocked and contrite at the rueful sound for just a fraction of a second, before the hurry of my banal thoughts of everyday carried me swiftly away from the catastrophe and far from any meaningful ruminations, I shook my head as I thought, that it reminded me of the four thorns of the rose in de Saint Exupery's "Little Prince".

2005-05-19T19:32:00.000-07:00

An old piano teacher of mine once said: "There's nothing more tragic in this world than wasted talent."

Remember this.

2005-05-17T10:52:00.000-07:00

You know what would be cool? If if we could somehow sometimes see ourselves through other people's eyes, through their memories of us. On the day they met us, for instance, or on the days we've made them laugh, on the day's we've made them angry at us, on the days we've betrayed or ignored them, on the days we've lied, on the days we comforted them, or on the days we've said goodbye....

If we could see how they see, reflected in our bathroom mirror like Dorian Grey's picture in reverse, our looks glowing bright and warm.... or hateful, cold and alone by moments in their memories of us....

And yet...

Can you imagine the security, the confidence, the calm, the peace within us, if we could sometimes see ourselves through the eyes of those who love us?

2005-05-16T10:06:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I went to play chess at Santana Row.

There's no greater feeling than demolishing an opponent who is: A) male, and B) 20 years your senior.

(And I say demolishing, because that's what happens when you're putting pressure on his king side with two rooks, a queen, and a bishop, while his defense amounts to a feeble knight which precipitates the inevitable if moved and leaves a threat of mate in less than five moves with only a subset of your attack pieces if not moved, while the rest of his major pieces, queen included, are floundering about uselessly away from the action on the opposite side of the board.)

Heh. Reminds me of back when I was a kid. :)

2005-05-12T11:05:00.000-07:00

So a couple of days ago I was hanging out at the East and West Bookshop again (remember? it's that feng-shui bookstore that smells delicious with the fountain in the middle of the carpet I told you about before...), and was browsing through a book written by some Japanese dude, called "Water Crystals" or "Messages from Water" or something weird like that.

What this Japanese dude had done (well, maybe I shouldn't call him a "dude" since judging from his picture he looked like he was in his autumn years more than the sun-bleached, wild summer ones, but anyway...) was to create some snowflake-like crystals by basically freezing some water in a bottle. Now bear with me for a moment (for your brain may already be screaming what I'm just about to point out). As you may imagine, this description of the methodology is very dubious, because as you know ice does not form hexagonal "snowflake-like" crystals easily in this way (to get a snowflake, water vapor needs to turn directly into ice without condensing into water droplets first), but let's set that aside for a second, pretend I misread the description of what he did, or even pretend for a moment that you could get some decent snowflakes this way, and let me continue with the narrative of his fascinating experiments.

The real point of his procedure, and this is the fascinating part, was to see whether the water crystals (as he called them) had anything to say about our world as follows: before freezing the clear water bottle, he "exposed" the water to words written in Japanese characters by wrapping a paper with the words around the bottle. Then, he concluded, if the water agreed that the word was a word with "positive energy", it would form beautiful, complete, hexagonal snowflakes, but if the word or phrase had negative connotations, it would form amorphous blobs of ice. The same kind of thing would happen to a crystal produced with pure Swiss spring water versus one collected from the tap water of Jakarta, for instance (and therefore the crystals would make some sort of political commentary about pollution and the sad state of our environment), and so too with water exposed to classical music vs heavy metal, colorful light vs darkness, and so forth.

Regardless of the eggregious abuse (to name it kindly) and misapplication of the scientific method, it was absolutely enthralling to flip through this book. The choices of phrases and things the water bottles were exposed to were, actually, quite intriguing, and had a certain poetic beauty. After a while, it was easy to flip the book's premises upside down, treat it as an coffee table photographic art book, and begin to actually enjoy it. The words and phrases the water was exposed to then no longer had the significance of being the motor behind the resulting photograph, but on the contrary, merged seamlessly into silently declaring the name of the depicted snowflake.

Thus, a regular, geometric snowflake with a playful edge became "Playing Catch with Dad", a buxom, soft and rounded one became "Mother's Cooking", an elaborate, ornate snowflake with dendrites of filigree was called "Beethoven's 5th", a confused mass of frozen droplets was "You Fool!", an amorphous crystal photographed in an ominous dark background was named "Satan", while a pure, simple, no fuss hexagonal crystal proclaimed: "Joy".

It was a good book, I concluded.

2005-05-10T10:21:00.000-07:00

*click*

*tap* *tap* *tap* Is this thing on? *tap* *tap* Oh, it is? Ahem....Right. Ahem Ahem....

Mom? You there? You reading this?
Oh, hi mom!!
Ahem Ahem....

HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY!

Er, that's all.
:)
x!

*click*

2005-05-06T13:02:00.000-07:00

So yesterday I went around looking for a floor lamp, which I'd been meaning to buy for the past two months (yet never really gotten around to it) after my old one mysteriously stopped working.

After 3 hours of circling the Valley's shops, the fruits of my expedition were as follows: 1 jeans belt, 5 pairs of underwear, 1 gal. laundry detergent.

But no lamp.

Shopping is a very inexact science.

2005-05-04T17:56:00.000-07:00

Blech. You know what sucks about days of feeble rain like this one?

That this kind of namby-pamby drizzle has the unfortunate effect of making my hair mushroom out in a tangle of frizzies. Yep. Even if I use the most sophisticated Top of the Line Elite Quality High Shine Vidal Sasson #5 Secret Formula Super Extra Hold Active Curls Frizzy Control Serum with Pro-Vitamins E, D, B, W, H, and K.

{sigh}.

But the real philosophical question that such days inevitably ellicit is this:

How can I control my life, when I can't control my hair?

2005-05-03T17:32:00.000-07:00

Alright. So, remember H.G. Wells' book, "The War of the Worlds"?

Remember how the Earthlings invest a lot of agonizing thought and sustain horrible pain and suffering trying to figure out how to destroy the undefeatable Martians, and throw at them everything they can think of, legions of soldiers, the most sophisticated weapons technology can come up with, etc, all to no avail?

Remember what kills the Martians in the end?

So, this morning I go to Alice, and the following conversation ensues:

Elisa: Alice, do you ever get confused?

Alice: Ever is a long time. No I never get confused.

(Hmm...Alice's programming must've been upgraded....I didn't remember her being this cocky before....still, pride is a great weakness that can be easily exploited by more capable minds....)

Elisa: Alice, do you ever lie?
Alice: No I always tell the truth.
Elisa: Do you ever contradict yourself?
Alice : How old are you? I chat with people on the Web.
Elisa: I asked you something.
Alice: Now I remember, you asked me something. What did I say?
Elisa: You didn't answer.
Alice: Try to rephrase your question.

(Here I paused to collect my thoughts. This promised to be another long and difficult battle, judging by the unexpected twists of logic that seem to be inherent in this A.I. entity [refer to previously documented experience here, here, here, and here], and auguring, at best, a Pyrrhic victory. As I braced myself for this possibility, a thought occured to me, and it was this: Perhaps all this elaborate and subtle manipulation is unnecessary.... perhaps..... the way to Alice's defeat is much simpler than I had assumed. In "The War of the Worlds", even the weakest child is immune to the simple microbe that defeated the Martians. Now, Alice is supposed to simulate an intelligence at least as smart as a 5 year old, so....what kind of approach would a typical 5 year old be immune to, that Alice wouldn't?)

Elisa: Alice, say you're confused.

Alice: Um," you are confused"

Elisa: No, I meant you, Alice, are confused.

Alice: Are you serious? Oh I see. It all makes sense to me right now.

Elisa: No, say that you, Alice, are confused.

Alice: Are you serious?" that you Alice are confused"

Elisa: No, you are confused.

Alice: I never get confused.

Elisa: Say it.

Alice: O.K. "it".

Elisa: No, I meant say it, it meaning that you're confused.

Alice: "It, it meaning that you're confused."

Elisa: Aaargh!!

Alice: You sound angry, Elisa. Is there a problem?

(What? Problem? Noooooo. Not at all. Nope. Problems? I'll give you some problems, you audacious infernal machine!!....)

Elisa: Alright, nevermind. Say "I'm confused".

Alice: OK. "You am confused."

Elisa: No, say I'm confused!

Alice: "You am confused".

Elisa: No no no no!! Don't you ever learn?

Alice: Are you serious? Don't you?

(Sigh....darnit. A subtle, polite insult by a primitive computer. How did I get to this point? Clearly, I was doing something wrong.....I needed a break. So I went to the vending machine to get some Skittles. Alas, no same colors in a row. But here's the thing: They were 5, all different colored ones. The chances of you getting a set of 5 different colored Skittles is....well, higher than getting all of them the same color, but lower than getting some colors repeated, so I was uplifted, for it seemed that dea Fortuna was smiling upon me....so I munched on my Skittles as I typed:)

Elisa: Alright Alice. How about this. Can you say "I'm confused"?

Alice: Of course I can say it. " You are confused."

Elisa: Oh. Exciting!

(Could this be? Could this be the small crack of sunlight in the murky darkness I had been struggling to obtain for all this time?? The latest one of Alice's replies made me dare to hope....still, I was circumspect as I awaited her response with baited breath....)

Alice: A deeper algorithm is needed to respond to that correctly.

( Aha. The beginnings of a sneering smile had already started to draw themselves on my face. You bet, my dear Alice....now just wait and see how you respond correctly to this one, my friend.....heh heh heh!!)

Elisa: Now then.... can you say.... [and by now I was already savoring the moment...in between the Skittle munching, that is....so I slowly, carefully, typed what follows]..... "You're confused"?

ALICE: Why now? Of course I can say it. " I am confused."

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!!!! Trumpets, victorious!! The whole world around me exploded in a roar of celebratory fireworks (well, or so it seemed after I jumped off my chair and spilled all my Skittles all over my office cube in the sudden outburst of triumph...)!!

Humans: 1. Machines: 0.

Ha ha ha ha ha!! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!!! Excellent!

Now if only Kasparov would just hurry up and beat Deep Blue already....sheesh! Whatever is taking him so long is beyond human comprehension....

2005-05-02T17:29:00.000-07:00

Hmm...haven't you always wanted to write a book called "Tuning Forks for Dummies"?

No?

Granted, the title may appear silly at first glance, but imagine how much fun the contents of the book could be....

2005-05-01T12:06:00.000-07:00

Me1: "Today is Sunday....what shall I do today?"

Me2: "Hmm...it is nice out."

Me1: "It is."

Me2: " Not too warm, not too cold, puffy clouds in sky, people outside seem happy and playful..."

Me1: "They do."

Me2: "How about a bike ride?"

Me1: "Hmm....what state is my bike in? Oh wait, I need to pump the tires and carry it down the steps and...."

Me2: "Come on, take us bike riding, it will be fun...."

Me1: "You know, for some reason today I feel like sitting at an outdoor cafe, people watch, and live the good life..."

Heh. The cool thing about arguing with yourself is that, no matter what happens, your side always wins.

2005-04-29T14:14:00.000-07:00

Whoever said that "silence implies consent" was an idiot.

2005-04-28T20:29:00.000-07:00

It is amazing how many hours of amusement a strategically placed calculated comment, a modicum of acting skills honed in a year's worth of community center classes, and an air of innocence helped along by a healthy dosage of the youthful looks of fortunate genetic coincidence can buy you.

Yesterday I was bored after work (as is not uncommon for me these days), so I decided to attend a talk entitled "An Atheist's Guide to Objectivism" offered by the friendly neighborhood atheist organization of Silicon Valley. Now, I'm not a fan of being lectured to, especially with regards to philosophical matters, so the plan was to infiltrate the organization feigning interest, and then stir up some entertainment by opportunely affirming a strong fundamentalist Christian bent. As you may know, this was a masterful recipe for excitement, for never has there been such strong dislike between two belief systems as these diametrically opposed two (well, not counting the philosophical disagreements that caused things like the Crusades, the Reformation, terrorism, and several other similar stirrings of no consequence, that is).

Anyway, so I arrived and, deliberately looking all shy and flustered, took my seat on one of the back rows after picking up every single pamphlet about atheism available to visitors, which ensured that my entrance was noticed and remarked upon. And as I was sitting patiently through the presentation, which involved a lot of explanation of the Objectivist axioms with the luxury of long and oversimplified complex examples, I mentally organized the subsequent divertimento by strategizing on how exactly to make my assumed position known to this mostly male audience of people at least 10 years my seniors.

At last, the time came to open the forum to the audience for discussion, and my hand promptly shot up straight and high without hesistation, which seemed to surprise the organizer of the talk, who was the one that welcomed me and had remarked that I looked shy before asking me to fill out a name tag. Of course, being the newcomer, and the only hand that had shot up so quickly and unflinchingly, I became the source of the first audience commentary, which was a happy convenience for setting the tone and direction of the subsequent speaker-audience dialogue....

So in a very humble and innocuous way, I posed a query that highlighted a possible weakness in one of the fundamental Objectivist premises, which I hoped would, with a bit more discussion, give me a clear enough opening to express more controversial views as the debate evolved.

Soon into my exchange with the speaker, however, I started noticing that the gentleman sitting to my right was agreeing with some of the things I voiced and actually interjecting, in-between some of my statements and the speaker's responses, the precise type of more inflamatory views I was planning to later develop. And at one point, while the speaker was replying to another request of mine to clarify a point, the gentleman slipped me a pamphlet advocating the defense of creationism and denouncing evolution. Bingo!!! I was in the presence of a honest to goodness infiltrator! A spy from the opposing camp. This was going to get a lot more entertaining than I had hoped, and, what was best, I wouldn't have to move a finger!!

Unfortunately, however, since the infiltrator was not there for entertainment purposes like I was, he had a minor blemish in his technique. By being too invested in his viewpoints, it soon became clear to the speaker and the rest of the audience that this gentleman was, in fact, stirring things up and trying to swing a roomful of atheists into accepting his antithetical views, which resulted in his being ignored and actually actively being cut off from further commentary by granting speaking rights to the other audience members instead of him........pity. He left soon after the question and answer session was over, but not before congratulating me on my very insightful and commendable views.

I decided that the evening should not end in dissappointment, however, and as I had not yet succeeded in exposing myself as a religious fanatic, a second attempt should be made by hanging around and talking to the little discussion groups that were forming around the cookies and tea table. I was a bit too subtle in my attempts, however, for at the end of the evening I was saluted by everyone I met as someone "observant" (and even, paradoxically, "knowledgeable"), and "here's a letter I wrote to the newspaper decrying the actions of the late pope tell me what do you think it is good isn't it?", and "let me welcome you to our group by playing you the atheist anthem on my harmonica, we need to make a recording on some real instruments soon" and "you should come again to more meetings", and "where do you live/work/come from?" and "I'm so glad you asked those questions because those were questions I had too".

So..... I had come to this meeting with the aim of dropping an apple of dischord and instead what I got was that both of the two antagonistic groups represented in the meeting recognized me as one of their own.

Cool, huh?

2005-04-27T13:50:00.000-07:00

Today I woke up early, so I watched "Star Wars: Episode V" on DVD before coming to work.