the usual retrospective nonsense

while 2006 was the year i actually left to do my phd, 2007 marked the beginning of what things are going to be like until i graduate. the plan for my research coalesced. i foolishly took multivariate statistics, and went to new york a bunch of times, and reaffirmed again and again the fact that graduate school is hard as hell and that, unlike the sometimes posturing as an undergrad, work on a phd may actually crush you if you let it. i got a my master's degree after being given a very silly committee who variously knew too much or nothing at all. the advisor was good, is good, and for that i'm grateful, because there were and are living examples of people in the department for whom that is not true.

i got to spend a summer living in the united states, as opposed to simply residing there, exploring the farmers' markets and cafes and sampling america without the structure of a semester or classes, without time being marked by the due dates of papers and final exams. it was exceedingly hot. the mother came, and there were rats , and furious quarrels with the contractor, and it was stressful.

through grace alone i found the housemate and the other housemate and persuaded them that i was trustworthy enough to be given $x a month in exchange for a roof over their heads. i moved into our new place. clinic duties began, and teaching, and the next 3 months passed by in a blizzard of caffeine and sleepless nights and never-ending reports and pushing daisies and reading club, and i tell myself again and again that next semester will be easier, but that's not true.

it was an important year, i suppose, in that things moved along, but i can't say that i'm too displeased to be done with it. i guess that's kind of critical though -- if you can't have a fun year, or a meaningful year, at least let it be important, and move you further along the track towards wherever it is you think you're going.

so, to one and all: happy new year, and may it bring you forward, and peace.

although it will never quite be the same for me, merry christmas to everyone, and may your day be as perfect as it gets.

sg

after 3 days of rather intense catching-up, i realize that i'm not as young as i used to be, and it comforts me little to know that every time i come back from now till i graduate will be more and more exhausting. this as the little police state gets increasingly crowded, and not just in the malls, but everywhere, and everyone so young and blithe. i can deal, but not as a young person; i feel now more than ever that i have to go around in long sleeves and tie and hang in snooty bars and coffee houses where they charge $9.50 for a latte, regardless of whether or not my stipend can support that, because of, you know, no longer seeing through a glass darkly. there is something i've missed by not being here consistently since '01, some transition that people in nus law and medicine make that i just completely bypassed, where you learn to vanish into secret places in roads only accessible by car and sip dark wines and make quiet conversation. i need to have more money. i need to stop getting caught in liminal spaces.

I admit it: there were a lot of bloggable things that went unblogged, but the impetus is lost now, and the semester just about over. I'm leaving on Wednesday morning, and working virtually up till when I have to go -- final exams from my undergrads come in Monday, and I have a client to see on Tuesday morn. Right now, the only thing I have on my mind to pack is the DVD I've burned of QI Season 5, so I shall try not be surprised when I get back home and have Stephen Fry to watch and no underwear or toothbrush. Priorities.

committee

we're supposed to meet once a semester starting from this one so that all involved know that i'm on the right track and not spending my time learning llama herding or getting fluent in pirahã. to clarify, the committee i have now is different than the one with which i defended my masters' thesis. most notably, i got to choose the people on it, and so no longer have the gorgon lady but three reasonably nice and very intelligent people. aside from my advisor, who doth bestride the narrow world like a colossus, i have someone who's more a psychology type, and someone who's more a neuroscience type, thus balance to the force etc. we had a very civil meeting, where i got to speak without interruption for a good long while before getting comments on how my stats were wrong (my stats are mostly wrong). still, i was let down gently, which was appreciated, and scary remarks were made to the effect that i could try and graduate in 4 years, to which my reply was 'are you $%#^ing out of your mind?' you get lucky with one set of results. expectations must be moderated; this semester was like a punch to the kidneys, not an experience worth repeating if at all possible, and i know i say this all the time, but it's time to slow things up.

after playing for many years with quantities of sugar/butter/etc., i think i've finally come up with a brownie recipe that i really like. important quantities -- 8 oz chocolate: 225g sugar: 375g butter + cinnamon + cayenne pepper + other mysterious secret things. i know that su-lin already disapproves of the cinnamon + cayenne pepper + other mysterious secret things, but i don't care, because IMHO they are outrageously good.

ethnic potluck

-- was a great success, one that i would have written about earlier except that my schoolwork consumed every waking moment of last week. anyhow, it's now too distant for me to feel inspired to talk about it except to say that there is a shocking amount of culinary talent in our department. in brief:

1. chlebièky: potato salad and cold cuts on sliced baguette
2. latkes
3. polish red cabbage soup
4. cheddar cheese and beer soup (oh yeah)
5. moussaka
6. chicken adobo
7. vegetable tikka masala
8. soy meat curry with coconut sambol
9. thai chili shrimp
10. whoopie pies
11. red velvet cake
12. pumpkin pie

autism

From Wheels Of Fortune in The New Yorker, Nov 26, 2007

When you live in China as a foreigner, there are two critical moments of recognition. The first occurs immediately upon arrival, when you are confronted with your own ignorance. Language, customs, history -- all of it has to be relearned, and the task seems insurmountable. Then, just as you begin to catch on, you realize that everybody else feels pretty much the same way. The place changes too fast; nobody in China has the luxury of being confident in his knowledge. Who shows a peasant how to find a factory job? How does a former Maoist learn to start a business? Who has the slightest clue how to run a car-rental agency? Everything is figured out on the fly; the people are masters of improvisation. The second moment of recognition is even more frightening that the first. Awareness of your own ignorance is a lonely feeling, but there's little consolation in sharing it with 1.3 billion neighbors.

psychopathology imagined is very distant from how illnesses present in real people. the reason for this, i think, is that when we think of a depressed person, we think only about how they're depressed, and not at all about how they're a person, and after sitting and actually talking to someone with depression for 3 hours, you habituate to the sadness and the pain, and what emerges is just a core like anyone else would have. diagnosis is hard -- not just because of the therapist's humanity, but also because people contradict themselves, or misrepresent themselves, or just flat out lie

and of course there are the very human traps of wanting to diagnose people with the cool thing rather than the obvious thing (too much house!), or asking leading questions, or asking the wrong questions, and put that all together -- i guess what i'm trying to say is that what i'm doing now is hard, and hard in a different way from the academic work, because it's to do with people, who are messy, and because i often feel like i don't really know what i'm doing, and because we don't get any answers once our patients get sent away back to their primary therapists. so what you have instead is that those with high self-esteem pat themselves on the backs, and the ones with low self-esteem keep second-guessing themselves even after the report has been turned in and the patient gone forever.

i think i'm somewhere in the middle, reared on ten-year series where you get to go to the back of the book for the answers, far enough along in the process to realize the blatant stupidity of that. unlearning the lessons of childhood is a long journey; fortunately, it's one i've been given the chance to make.

the mcroyale-with-cheese effect

you see, after watching movies about food, i always get this compulsion to go and buy or make the dish in question, which meant that after watching ratatouille on dvd yesterday i just had to have a stab at putting together the E-P-O-N-Y-M-O-U-S meal. handily enough, googling "ratatouille recipe" turns up the real-life inspiration for the stew, so there was no need for improvisation.

it was a very educational process. first of all, it's kind of amazing that ego ever got his food, considering that the dish takes about 4 hours to make from start to finish. second, vegetable slicers are rad. third, chervil is related to, but is not actually parsley (i was thinking cilantro-coriander, but no.)

first layer:


fully assembled:


after baking:


plated:


it was nearly impossible to get the vegetables to stand on the plate in two tiers like remy did because they were a little bit too soggy, but let's not dwell on marred perfection. the dish looked -- and tasted -- wonderful, and this from someone who isn't the world's biggest fan of squash. my biggest worry was the amount of tomato in it (8 roma tomatoes!) -- i always add more sugar to pasta sauce than i really should to cut the sharpness of tomato -- but the other vegetables were more than sweet enough to do that job.

next week: ethnic potluck!

the leaves fell last night, all at once, accumulating in ankle-deep piles in my backyard and the streets. this coincided nicely with the end of a week in which i felt that my research, grad school, and pretty much everything is a bloody waste of time, and that any life philosophy beyond hedonism is not even worth considering. what would fall be without a little seasonal angst?

"thanksgiving" dinner with the housemate and christian from canada was hoegaarden and cheap turkey in a dive bar and the frank admission that life is pretty much hell for everyone, which made me feel better. and now, a good book, i think, and bed.

char kway teow (ii)

1) too much fishcake
2) not enough dark sauce

also by steven weinberg

“The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless.”

char kway teow (i)

su-lin tells me that i will fail miserably because i don't have a gigantic fire to imbue wok hei, and perhaps she knows best since she has apparently attempted it. nevertheless, i absolutely must have something ethnic for the ethnic potluck in a couple of weeks, and everything else i could think of was even more adventurous. i spent 2 hours in chinatown yesterday vacillating over which sambal was appropriate, but being unable to taste any of them, it was still a shot in the dark. anyhow, today is the experiment, and i have 2 weeks to rectify whatever goes wrong before the real thing.

the heat in our house is really weird; it seems to come on for 10 minutes at a time, blast hot air like dragonfire through the vents, and then turn itself off. also: unless someone is playing tricks on me, the thermostat seems to adjust itself, bouncing down to 62 in the middle of the night and making us wake up to freezing cold. i suspect there's something about the system i just don't understand, but at the same time, i'm silently thankful that we haven't all died of carbon monoxide poisoning, or been incinerated by the entire device blowing up completely.

(touch wood)

to tell someone you think they have alzheimer's disease, to be the one to pass down the sentence -- this, i think, is the hardest thing, the one part of the job that nothing will every adequately prepare you for except doing it.

sfn (v)

18. tuesday is uninteresting.

19.1. on wednesday, just before my flight home, i'm scheduled to give my poster.
19.2. it's my first time, and i really don't expect anyone to be very interested.
19.3. the instant i unfurl the poster and pin it up, i spot a typo: this despite spending literally 3 days making it.
19.4. interested person #1: random grad student from ohio state(?) who asks pointedly dumb questions and stands on one foot a lot.
19.5. interested person #2: assistant prof. at _____ university who throws technical jargon at me at a furious pace, most of which i suspect does not actually make sense. by the way, he concludes, you should read all my papers, the references of which are on this convenient list. right.
19.6. interested persons #3 + #4: two plump, ditzy girls complete with whispering and giggling and "no, we didn't have any questions"
19.7. et al.
19.8. i suspect everyone just wants to steal our imaging sequence, which our lawyers have fortunately surrounded with an impenetrable firewall of IP protection.
19.9. mercifully, it only lasts an hour.

and...that was neuroscience '07. not really as fun as previous years (less free food and drink for one), but a good conference nevertheless. i'm considering hbm next year, but that's in australia, so goodness knows where i'll get funding for that. throw some eccentric millionaires my way if you come across any.

sfn (iv) -- neuroethics

reading over my neuroethics post from a little while ago, i realize that failed to make the important distinction between determinism and free will. neuroscience is pointing increasingly to determinism in our behavior -- this makes it unlikely that free will exists in the form that most people think it does (the little man behind the curtain form). listening to dan dennett speak on tuesday reminded me that his little contingent of philosophers does not subscribe to that belief -- they believe instead in a weak form of free will (freedom to make decisions rather than freedom from causality). i disagree with that*: as i said before, i think the responsible way to live is to be fully cognizant that we have no free will in any proper sense of the word, but that we have to live as if we do. dennett does come to a sort of similar conclusion though, borrowing from the old is-ought problem: ethics as distinct and independent from scientific finding. he suggests that law-making should remain political, and that responsibility be a line agreed on by people and not machines, all of which i completely agree with. for the "right" reasons, but also because: people are never going to grasp the ramifications of neuroscientific findings, and "education of the public" is always going to be a pipe dream. this way, we avoid a dictatorship of the intellegentsia, and also, conveniently, satisfy the need to walk the morally correct path. who could ask for anything more?

* conceptually, i think of biological operation and the illusion of free will this way: the brain performs an unconscious computation, and the translation through motor/cognitive pathways that are conscious only comes later, giving us the sense that we performed the action volitionally when really the initiation was just not in our consciousness.

sfn (iii)

13. on monday morning, i locate ex-lab people and we breakfast at richard walker's pancake house. it has mixed reviews online, but i really like it. my german pancake -- lemon, powdered sugar and syrup -- is very well done, and the coffee is the best i've had in a while. then again, pancakes please me very easily, so perhaps i'm biased.

14.1. research. there is a group at michigan doing work very similar to ours. i go up to one of the grad students standing at the poster and start babbling and babbling in what i can only assume is an attempt to prove that i'm smarter than her. after about 10 minutes, i realize that the words coming out of my mouth are barely even in english any more, and i stop, and sheepishly walk away.
14.2. their PI is someone who i respect a lot, and want to collaborate with some day. he's hanging around as well, so i go up to him, manage to be sort of coherent, and get utterly snubbed. that's the last time i try something like that.

15. hengyi gives our talk just after noon. it goes as well as can be expected. i have absolutely no sense of how important our data are; judging impact in science can be one of the hardest things.

16. the ex-lab-boss is there, and we have a long chat, and start to solidify plans for next summer. i am going back to the ex-lab to collect a dataset -- this is so i can graduate in fewer than 87 years: the pace of collecting mri data here is completely unreasonable. i promise him that i will have a proposal before the year is out, a promise that i have since regretted making. coming up with ideas for research is the worst. the happy medium between "that's an idiotically trivial idea" and "what is the meaning of life" is one i have yet to find.

17.1. hengyi wants chinese food, so we end up in red pearl for dinner. it seems entirely unpromising, but shockingly, the dim sum appetiser is quite superb (honest-to-god xia1 jiao3!), as are the two dishes we order (duck thai-style curry and a sweet potato concoction).
17.2. i have started speaking chinese with hengyi some of the time. it's sharing the pain, i guess; speaking english seems to be physical agony for him sometimes. what results are these super-weird conversations where both of us furiously engage in pre-forming sentences that melt like sugar pills on our tongues as the other person is speaking.
17.3. but still: we talk about visiting china, and bilingualism, and philosophy of the mind (not kidding).

(cont'd)

sfn 2007(ii)

6. i spent a little time at the conference in the morning, but no one wants to hear about that.

Tijuana, Mexico

7.1. i wanted to cross the border for a couple of reasons: to see what a real taco is like, to see what illicit substances there were to be bought, and to add to the slowly-growing list of “countries visited in my lifetime”. admittedly, it’s a little bit of a cheat when all you have to do is take a trolley ride and then walk through a turnstile, but hey, it still counts.
7.2. mexico makes me think of: being drunk at ten in the morning, unwashed ponchos, logan echolls, getting your kneecaps shot off in the street.
7.3. number of items encountered/experienced from the list above: 0.
7.4. blame globalization. almost everywhere you can think of visiting nowadays has become a caricature of itself, think 10 million taco stalls with waiters wearing sombreros outside pushing menus into your face as you walk past. as if there’s some global panic that if it’s not big and loud and glowing, people won’t get it, that cultural experience is somehow not legitimate unless it’s magnified to the billionth degree.

8.1. but i get ahead of myself slightly. as i said, to get into mexico, you find your way to the san ysidro terminal (where the last thing you see before leaving the USA is a gigantic mickey d’s), and walk through a pair of very innocent-looking revolving turnstiles. innocent-looking because there’s no security checkpoint or warning that you’re actually leaving the united states, which is not very considerate at all.
8.2. i figured that tijuana would be crowded, especially since it was a sunday, but the streets and courtyards were pretty empty, and many of the vendors were only just setting up shop. what was open were the pharmacies – dozens of them, selling SSRIs, Viagra, and other such wonderments.
8.2.1. i’m not going to lie to you: i was really tempted to get a box of modafinil and a one of adderall, but I didn’t, and i think i regret it.
8.2.2. (mmm…speed…)
8.2.3. i swear to you, i really didn’t.
8.3. the avenue revolucion is about a 20-minute walk away from the border. once you get downtown, the touts really start coming at you: grizzled men selling hideous silver chains, hawkers with churros and menudo and huge hunks of meat slow-roasting on spits. in contrast with cambodia, though, the people here don’t really seem to mean it. they pester and chase you up the street, but you can sense their weariness as well. they know you know the rules of the game, you know they know the rules of the game, and so on, and they’re probably not starving – turistas flock here in droves, i hear, curious californians, rich college kids with money to burn on booze and knick-knacks. the effort is kind of vestigial, like they’re putting on a show because you expect them to be pushy. in retrospect (and i'm writing this last bit from home now), it was all very self-conscious, as if the entire culture was on parade, on edge and aware that it's being watched.

9. some pictures of the avenue revolucion:






ethnic dance:



10.1. for lunch, i’m tempted by this really sketchy place with just enough room to sit about eight people shoulder-to-shoulder. it’s all locals in there, and the most wonderful smell of what i think is a very greasy roasting pig. like a coward, though, i chicken out and head for somewhere with a menu in english. yes, I am suitably ashamed.
10.2. the fish tacos and draft beer are good, not excellent, and the salsa is not a patch on the stuff daniel's wife makes*.

11. this was a market i popped into:

candy skulls for the dia de los muertos

biggest pile of chillies ever

this was kind of a weird juxtaposition, bamboo and other chinese ornaments right beneath statues of the grim reaper. covering all your bases?:



12.1. i did get a bottle of mezcal, which i’ve been wanting for a while. the shopkeeper let me sample a few kinds before i decided, and i liked this one the most: smooth, mescado, and with the little agave worm floating around in it. also, a shot glass.
12.2. i swear on my ancestors' graves that i did not get the adderall.

(cont'd)

* again in retrospect, i should not have done a sit-down meal. alas. i guess there'll be a next time.

sfn 2007

San Diego, CA

0.1. the splendid thing about being the only neuroscientist in a lab full of psychologists is that i get to come to sfn unsupervised. in atlanta, that's not such a big thing, but when you’re talking SoCal, that’s when the heart starts singing. of course that meant I had to make a poster, but no one cares about posters anyway, even ones with sexy mri pictures on them. conferences are for professors to catch up and drink a lot, and students to feel important. and dude, san diego, unsupervised. academia can wait.
0.2. if you’re my advisor and you’re reading this, i didn’t just say that.

1.1. the first thing that happens to me is that i miss my connecting flight, which means i get to charge around the dallas/fort worth airport hunting for another one. good times. i'm also forced to eat lunch there. i select a barbeque place on the basis of being in texas, and it's horrible beyond all imagining.
1.2. incid. -- try not to travel across time zones on the day before daylight savings time ends, it's really very confusing.

2.1. san diego is shrouded in smoke and haze, not quite the biblical plague of darkness one of my friends described, but a rather awful reminder nevertheless of all that's going on.
2.2. it's about 20 degrees warmer than philly here, but you can hardly see the sun. add in palm trees and sailboats on the bay, and you have yourself some real cognitive dissonance.
2.3. also: there doesn't seem to be anyone out on the streets, and it's a weekend.
2.4. it's not san francisco, and it's not miami. i'm not really sure i like it. ask me again in a few days.

3. i was planning to get to the convention center and register for the conference, but the flight snafus put me in my hotel just before dinner time, and i figured that there wasn't too much point. besides, that would be the industrious and responsible thing to do (see 0.2).

4.1. hob-nob hill is the closest decent place to my hotel that google maps spits out, so i head there for food.
4.2. notwithstanding the sentiment in my previous post, i think there's much pleasure to be had in eating alone as well. for one thing, you get to pay full attention to the food, and since reading michael pollan, that's something i've endeavored to do a little more.
4.3. it's not important, but in case you're wondering: raisin bread, caesar salad, braised lamb shank with mashed potatoes, corn-on-the-cob and mint jardiniere sauce.

(cont'd)

From The Omnivore's Dilemma, Michael Pollan:

... Brillat-Savarin draws a sharp distinction between the pleasures of eating - "the actual and direct sensation of a need being satisfied," a sensation we share with the animals - and the uniquely human "pleasures of the table." These consist of "considered sensations born of the various circumstances of fact, things, and persons accompanying the meal," - and comprise for him one of the brightest fruits of civilization. Every meal we share at a table recapitulates this evolution from nature to culture, as we pass from satisfying our animal appetites in semsilence to the lofting of conversational balloons. The pleasures of the table begin with eating (and specifically with eating meat, in Brillat-Savarin's view, since it was the need to cook and apportion meat that first brought us together to eat), but they can end up anywhere human talk cares to go. In the same way that the raw becomes cooked, eating becomes dining.

merely players

oftentimes, when i'm done seeing a client, and i walk them to the front door to say goodbye, i get a fleeting feeling that they're suddenly going to break out of whatever role they were playing, smile broadly, start giving me comments on how i did or what i could have said that might have been better. but of course they don't. they walk out the door, and back into their lives, the same ones they've been telling me about, lives that are real, full of misery and pain and hopelessness. and once they've left the clinic and gone out that door, the hope that all i've learned is just a heartbreaking story, a tragedy conjured from air, vanishes along with them.

the philosophy of law is running up hard against the stark findings of neuroscience and psychology, and is reacting mostly by misunderstanding or willfully ignoring them. the heart of the problem has to do with mens rea, in particular the troubling underlying concepts of criminal intent and culpability. in the highly simplified way i understand it, a crime is intentional if in the perpetrator's mind there is foresight and desire -- the 'i' that is the criminal 'wants' the outcome of his committed crime.

brain studies have come along and rocked the boat. in our seminar today, the guest speaker spoke of his research on psychopaths, and the various difference in brain structure (callosal, ventricular) and function (frontal hypoactivation) that his group has found in those diagnosed with antisocial personality disorder. there have, in fact, been several court cases to date where such evidence has been brought to bear. of those cases, there have been a few where criminals have been saved from the death penalty because of it.

on first brush, this idea seems intuitively correct. if a bit in someone's brain has gone wrong, if he is in some way "broken", it can't be right to punish him, because it's not his fault. in the words of the criminal at his defense: if 'i' don't have a say in the matter, 'i' can't possibly be evil. slightly closer scrutiny will reveal, however, that we've already arrived at a problem: is the 'i' in this paragraph the same as the 'i' in the first? does the psychopath have only one 'i' that is dysfunctional, or an underlying 'i', a center of volition that is simply overwhelmed by its powerful but damaged companion?

lawyers and judges are still at the stage of shrugging their shoulders over these 'interesting' philosophical conundrums, but in my opinion, the worst is yet to come, because the same logic that applies to psychopathy applies to pretty much everything. although people fight mightily against it, the fact of the matter is that all behavior comes from the brain -- the environment changes the brain which changes its environment and so forth. if you take a spear and stick it through someone's frontal lobe (without killing him), chances are that after recovering he's going to become a permanent fixture at the craps table, or a serial killer. and from that extreme example on down, everything works that way -- forces large and minute build and destroy synapses -- those connections and networks determine how we behave, and so forth. thus, all crime from shoplifting to genocide is biologically determined, and the justice system has a problem.

the accumulating body of evidence from neuroscience is all pointing to one thing -- we don't have volition as we currently understand it. it's still conceivable that some weak form of free will exists, but it's looking ever more doubtful. in all probability, there's no little man behind the curtain watching the movie, and there's no 'i' to take the blame for anything.

one big disappointment i have is that at least half of our psychology faculty don't buy this argument -- one very famous professor who will remained unnamed is still holding out strongly for the idea that evil exists. it can be somewhat distasteful to accept the thought that we don't have volition, and i know i certainly took long enough to come round to it, but if you really stare hard at the facts i'm not sure i see any other logical conclusion. i'm moderately confident that there will be a day (assuming we don't vaporize ourselves with an atomic weapon or get poisoned to death by high-fructose corn syrup) when we'll look back on our textbooks and think: how quaint, we used to talk about the choices people make, much the same way as we look back on 16th century texts that discuss humors and vapors and whatnot. (if i'm right, hopefully the interweb will survive long enough for this to be proof of my prescience. and if i'm wrong, well, i'll be dead anyway.)

where that leaves us with regard to the law is a little bit trickier, but i think the finesse here lies in the fact that because of the illusion of morality that we've evolved, we're obliged to act according to that moral code. which means, essentially, that we're right back to where we started, that even if we don't have free will, we have to punish and correct the deviants among us as if we did. this is an utterly delightful thought, and was my very purpose in writing this post. truly delicious ironies like that don't come along very often.

run #6

ended today with one dropout, my first. it's hard not to take these things personally, but this has also been a semester far more difficult than i was told it would be, and i don't have time to drop by the hospital twice a day to make sure that everyone's needs are being pandered to. n=9; 21 to go. 31 if you go by my advisor's count (excessively conservative) and 15 if you go by mine (way too hopeful).

i think my difficulty with teaching is seeing it as the actual 'job' part of my work, as opposed to the research and clinic hours that i supposedly want to do. (supposedly). when kids don't show up, even after promises of handouts and candy and exam hints, i take it as a personal affront, even though i know it's that undergraduates just haven't gotten out of bed at 9 in the morning.

but the real transaction is this: the department paid me x amount of money last year, and i have to give them 2 semesters of good service in return. nowhere does it come into the equation that students have to avail themselves of this service. it's the kind of logic you have to beat into your head with a stick, especially when you have the disposition to take things all too personally, but the head-beating, nevertheless, has to occur.

i bought 3 pots of roses last week, not hybrid teas, but not, i think the sort that match minzhi's apotheosis of a rose either (apotheroses?). two lots have now perished, one from careless placement beside an open window, and one that started wilting almost immediately upon being sat on the sill, but i am holding out hope for the pot with pink flowers which is flourishing nicely and seems quite cheerful despite the diminishing hours of sunlight. it's unseasonably warm for october too, but i have no idea if that makes any difference to the species. to be honest, my horticultural experience on the whole is horribly limited -- i think i was responsible for a couple of small cacti when i was growing up -- and so maybe i'm just doing something completely and disastrously wrong, overwatering or underwatering or goodness knows what. i think i need a seymour-like plant that can say things like FEED ME or THE PH LEVEL OF MY SOIL IS TOO HIGH and send me scurrying off to rectify the situation post haste.

everyone bailed on reading club last night except laura and thomas and the housemate and i, so we sat around instead watching monty python sketches and telling extremely offensive racist jokes (how do you fit a hundred jews in a volkswagon? put them in the ashtray). also, parsing sentences such as "Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo". (can you do it for "Fish fish fish fish fish fish fish"? and do you know any others because i'd like to hear them.)

pissed

i was all ready to watch for the bible tells me so with t. tonight, only to find that it had ended its limited run yesterday. of course, when presented with the choice of watching that or eastern promises last tuesday, i chose the latter. dammit.

speaking of which, it exasperates me no idea that so much of humanity's effort is spent quarreling about the "morality" of being gay* -- i mean, it's just such an absolute no-brainer compared to the real ethical questions we're going to be facing in the next 10-20 years: what happens when we develop a reliable genetic test for psychopathy? is it really morally acceptable to continue farming animals the way we do? what happens when we're able to quantify consciousness? it's so frustrating that the task of convincing people of the obvious -- all men are equal, might is not right, and the arbiter of morality is certainly not you -- is such a sisyphean one that we're forced to spend our time piddling in the shallows, while great and truly worrying problems loom large on the horizon.

* i leave no further comment on this. click at your own risk, because i felt infuriated for the entire afternoon.

i was reading an article in science about WiTricity the other day, and discovered the rather cool fact that marin soljacic is actually yidong's advisor in mit. i admit to only a hazy understanding of both the science and the practical ramifications of the technology, but it sounds suspiciously to me like the kid is somehow on his way to making several billion dollars from this venture. i'm incredibly jealous. as i've said before when i talked about the rasch experiment, i really need to get on something lucrative, stat.

Baby Kermit, in The Muppet Show, 1x10:

Halfway down the stairs is a stair where I sit
There isn't any other stair quite like it
I'm not at the bottom; I'm not at the top
So this is the stair where I always stop.

Halfway up the stairs isn't up and isn't down
It isn't in the nursery; it isn't in the town
And all sorts of funny thoughts run round my head
It isn't really anywhere, it's somewhere else instead.

Halfway down the stairs is a stair where I sit
There isn't any other stair quite like it
I'm not at the bottom; I'm not at the top
So this is the stair where I always stop.

The legend lives on from the Chippewa on down
Of the big lake they call Gitche Gumee
The lake, it is said, never gives up her dead
When the skies of November turn gloomy.

With a load of iron ore - 26,000 tons more
Than the Edmund Fitzgerald weighed empty
That good ship and true was a bone to be chewed
When the gales of November came early

The ship was the pride of the American side
Coming back from some mill in Wisconson
As the big freighters go it was bigger than most
With a crew and the Captain well seasoned.

Concluding some terms with a couple of steel firms
When they left fully loaded for Cleveland
And later that night when the ships bell rang
Could it be the North Wind they'd been feeling.

The wind in the wires made a tattletale sound
And a wave broke over the railing
And every man knew, as the Captain did, too,
T'was the witch of November come stealing.

The dawn came late and the breakfast had to wait
When the gales of November came slashing
When afternoon came it was freezing rain
In the face of a hurricane West Wind

When supper time came the old cook came on deck
Saying fellows it's too rough to feed ya
At 7PM a main hatchway caved in
He said fellas it's been good to know ya.

The Captain wired in he had water coming in
And the good ship and crew was in peril
And later that night when his lights went out of sight
Came the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.

Does anyone know where the love of God goes
When the words turn the minutes to hours
The searchers all say they'd have made Whitefish Bay
If they'd fifteen more miles behind her.

They might have split up or they might have capsized
They may have broke deep and took water
And all that remains is the faces and the names
Of the wives and the sons and the daughters.

Lake Huron rolls, Superior sings
In the ruins of her ice water mansion
Old Michigan steams like a young man's dreams,
The islands and bays are for sportsmen.

And farther below Lake Ontario
Takes in what Lake Erie can send her
And the iron boats go as the mariners all know
With the gales of November remembered.

In a musty old hall in Detroit they prayed
In the Maritime Sailors' Cathedral
The church bell chimed, 'til it rang 29 times
For each man on the Edmund Fitzgerald.

The legend lives on from the Chippewa on down
Of the big lake they call Gitche Gumee
Superior, they say, never gives up her dead
When the gales of November come early.


               The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, Gordon Lightfoot

depressive realism

-- is the theory that depressed people get into the state they are in because they somehow see the world with greater clarity, and thus more accurately. you don't have to be a genius to tell that this was something i held true since i was very young. through the lens of adolescent angst, it seemed so correct, so perfect, a real paragon of cynicism. of course that's why i'm unhappy. it's because i'm smarter.

so now that we're grown, and can look back on those times with a mixture of amusement and disgust, we can ask ourselves: what's a more mature formulation of that theory? well, the model is not exactly true -- it doesn't predict depression. people get depressed for a whole load of reasons, but just as many dumb people get it as insightful ones. however, if you only study people who do not meet diagnostic criteria for the illness, the pattern re-emerges: the happier a person is, the more deluded* he tends to be (it's not a trivial correlation either).

so here's a rare case of intuition being borne out by statistics, and the cynical viewpoint actually being sort of correct. life sucks, and you get happy by believing that it doesn't.

there's a big problem with this, though. thought experiment: you invent a brand of therapy where people actively learn how to be ignorant. not CBT, you understand, not monitoring cognition, or filtering thought processes, but actively pursuing ignorance. my guess: not too many people lining up at the door**. which means this: unhappiness has a price, and it's possible to derive utility from elsewhere, at the cost of negative happiness.

there are other examples of this, which i've discussed with some of you in the recent past: martyrdom, or (irrational) sacrifices made in order to claim the moral high ground. it just goes to show -- even our newer ideas of utility are outmoded, and there are much higher abstractions of value that i don't think have yet been fully considered.

* psychologists don't like to call it "delusion", because of the specific connotations of the word, but it obviously best gets across what i mean.

** i would, incidentally.

i wasn't sure whether or not admit that i hosted minz for 2 days last week, but now that she's blogged about it i guess it's not the world's biggest secret any more. i had to be in the lab a lot, but we still got to eat greasy food on park benches, and do nodding head, which i'm growing increasingly fond of, and capogiro, which had rosemary honey goat milk as a new flavor (good). and learn about zeugmas, and syllepsis in particular, as in "our respective disciplines involve mind- and storybook-reading".

thomas' quintet had a gig at the rotunda on saturday, and after promising to go for his last two performances and bailing, i decided that the decent thing to do was actually show up for one. the quintet was perfectly lovely -- all the other acts that preceded it, however, were excruciatingly weird -- a scantily-dressed woman stomping barefoot on broken glass, a buxom tit-twirler mixing martinis in shakers strapped over her breasts, sylvia plath put to music with black-and-white videos in the background of a jet-propelled turtle soaring over the sea. i abandoned fs halfway through the performance to join the other shaun and admit that my wtf quotient had reached capacity. so had his, but there was no escaping until thomas went on, and so we waited as the parade of strangeness went on and on for approximately forever.

the evening was sort of rescued by supper, although it was kind of awkward having two recently-broken-up couples at the table, and no alcoholic beverages. then jared and adam and stephen and i repaired up to marbar ($1 long island teas), and discovered firsthand why undergrad bars suck.

judging from the results of the first 2 quizzes and the exam, i seem to have ended up with a rather lousy bunch of students. and no, i'm not blaming myself, because it's so beyond the days where i would do that, and i know all about how there is after all an element of selection (the 9 a.m. section fills up last, thus the people who are most disorganized tend to end up in it.)

friend shaun is in town, and surprised at the fact that the ghetto that is philadelphia actually has semi-decent food if you know where to look. i've been in school/lab most of the day since he's arrived, but my guilt at being a somewhat inattentive host is alleviated slightly by the fact that this was exactly what happened to me in berkeley three years ago. what goes around, etc.

we have many interesting neighbors who i am just beginning to meet -- i am particularly fond of the retired english professor (19th century american lit: twain, dickinson, james) who is funny, warm, self-deprecating, ferociously smart, and everything else that a good academic should be. i love my advisor to death, but you know, [evans]he's a scientist[/evans], and there's just something about english professors that gives me the warm fuzzies. this one came complete with walking stick, culinary prowess, and a happily-partnered lesbian daughter (with kids), so you can already imagine my unabashed delight. he told us about how he left berkeley mid-phd to join the navy for wickham-esque reasons, how the vietnam war was, like for so many in his generation, his life's great eclaircissement. upon returning to berkeley, he discovered that he did not want to be a medieval lit scholar after all, and made a career out of (i think) deconstructing poe. i informed him that i mostly hang out with people who have the cp philosophy that anything written in the last 300 years is not literature, and probably not even worth reading, and he admitted that when he was still in short trousers he often thought the same thing, but that people come round. "i teach a class on the main line," he said "just so i don't get rusty, and sometimes we even read books by authors who are still alive." i confessed that it was no great taboo for me, and we shared a moment of conspirational solidarity.

it would be nice to have him and his wife over for dinner some time (or have him for reading club? he might die!), but i don't know if it's incredibly weird for someone in his twenties to invite a retired couple over. maybe he'll ask us? i realize increasingly that i have no concept of social convention whatsoever; i feel like i've been shielded from having to think about it all my life, and now i have no idea of what to do with myself. therefore: i'm treating this as the official adolescence of my social development, where i get to metaphorically break vases and spill soda on the carpet and do other awkward things. better late than never, after all.

speaking of reading club, we had, last week, ted chiang's understand, which is worth a read if you have some time to kill.

housewarming

i was on campus in the afternoon when one of the singaporean undergrads (BONDED) who i hadn't talked to in over a year came up to me and invited me for a belated zhong qiu dessert thingummy in one of the freshmen dorms. it clashed with my housewarming party, so i had to say no, but he wouldn't let me get a word in edgewise for about five minutes, and went on and on about the various sweets they were preparing and how i absolutely had to be there because it was going to be so so awesome. it kind of surprised me that i would still be wanted there (and so badly) -- surely a solid year of determinedly not attending SSA activities should have inured them to my absence -- but apparently the mentality is 'once singaporean, always singaporean', or something to that effect, so perhaps the invites will continue in perpetuity. i might even have gone too, if i had been available, and there had been or nee.

---

i worried a lot that there wouldn't be enough to drink, but people were good and brought beer and wine and that concern was laid to rest early in the evening. i worried also that we wouldn't have enough space, but a magical thing always seems to happen at parties where folks diffuse into unexpected places in gatsby-esque fashion. almost all the first and second-years showed up, and jared and syl and kinjal and co., and the other housemate's lab people, and a couple of random people who i'd never seen before. i was actually rather gratified that the random people showed up -- the sign of a successful do, to me, is when the host doesn't know everyone. it seemed that a lot of them were named emily.

everyone got the tour, and i went upstairs and downstairs 20 times, but it wasn't tiresome and everyone was most impressed. it was good seeing the place with fresh eyes, reminding myself that the house is nice, a notion that has kind of gotten lost over the last few months. and not just that, but to hear, articulated by other people, that this was a tremendous undertaking that could have ended very badly at numerous points along the way, was something i badly needed.

---

at half-past midnight, i found myself out front with kinjal and pavel nursing a screwdriver and reciting the walrus and the carpenter, and comparing bulgaria and singapore and how far each has fallen.

---

i was going to end this entry with something kind of personal and honest, but i've changed my mind because i sense it's something i might regret. here's a photo of two drunk people instead.

"dessert in the courtyard"

was, in actuality, an elderly couple with a packet of oreos, waiting for the harvest moon to rise. they had lived in west philadelphia during the truly bad times, the days of crack babies and drive-by shootings, moved to israel for a year, then center city during the 90s, and then back into UC after they retired. she audits a class at temple (greek and roman mythology), he likes fine dining, they both go for art house cinema and shakespeare in the park. it seems so odd that they would have chosen to retire on our block on spruce street, but perhaps i'm being altogether too cynical -- perhaps this is gentrification reified; maybe we truly are in the winter of university city's discontent. elderly people in the city always seem especially friable, and sitting with them in the gathering dark, i did find myself thinking that they should not really be out so late, that they should be indoors watching the history channel and sipping herbal tea. but no, i reimagined context, and suddenly it was the most natural thing in the world -- a cross-generational, cross-cultural encounter in the heart of a neighborhood in flux, our own small contribution to the re-imagination of a gentler university city, our prayer that the violence and misery, once so prevalent, will very soon be a thing of the past.

before i let go of the subject, i'd like to make one general observation on what we've suffered through over the past few months: that bullshit comes in grades, and your response to it has to be calibrated accordingly. in my life to this point, what has been fed me -- by teachers, the singapore government -- has been bullshit with insight, purposive if you will, crafted. for example: a country, any country, is worth defending. "to build a democratic society, based on justice and equality". if you do well in school, your happiness is secure. and i'm not saying that you should react in any particular way to this -- i guess most of it is benign -- but getting angry would probably be a legitimate response, thus suffragettes, we shall not be moved. if the bullshit is exploitative, and if you rise to the level where you can see it for what it is, then indignation and outrage are surely the way to go.

but then you have your low-grade bullshit, the kind that follows not logic nor direction, unpremeditated, bare-faced and desultory, spouted by fools trying to be wise. and much as you want to become angry when you get hurt by it, the trick is to see this: that it's beyond your control, that there's no mens rea -- you accomplish just as little as getting angry with a tree for falling on your car. there's no sense railing against what cannot be changed. and -- let's face it -- there are crooks out there, but for every one crook there are a hundred stupid people, a hundred people who don't even realize what they're doing when they stab you, who will blithely wreck your life and not even be aware. and there's no point getting angry, because then they've won.

your options? (1) get very rich. (2) take sweet, dispassionate revenge.

and that's the last i have to say about that.

i find myself very sleepy; it is my body responding, i think, to coming down from months of chronic stress. i slept 9 hours last night, and 2 more in the afternoon, and i'm still looking forward very much to going to bed.

the work finished today, and the relief is enormous. the housemate and i went to the mall, and i felt encouraged enough to buy things i had been holding out on -- a cookie pan, and a welcome mat (GO AWAY).

we started this project almost a year ago, and despite everything, i feel -- notwithstanding anything that may happen in the near or distant future -- i feel today that it was all worth it. not just because having high ceilings and a brand-new kitchen and nice housemates is wonderful, but also because just by itself self-efficacy is worth its weight, and since winter last year i've been reaping it, day by day, in not insignificant amounts.

first client

it's a tragedy that a person can go so awfully misdiagnosed for so many years -- can see numerous doctors in multiple hospital departments and still not find out what's wrong with him. you know, people laugh at psychologists -- i laugh at those in our profession a lot -- but when something so glaringly obvious -- even to my inexperienced eye -- gets lost in the shuffle, i may have to upgrade the value of what we're doing. 40 years of waste because no one could spend two hours with the patient and spot the pattern, connect the dots. and this was someone smart, and likable, someone who would have made a success of himself if he had just gone to someone who could sit him down and say: look, you have such-and-such a condition, and you need meds. it's slightly heartbreaking, and this is just the beginning.

self-doubt

I concede: standing in front of a class for an hour-and-a-half and being in charge is difficult. The stress equation I had in mind was:

Anxiety [teaching] = Anxiety [giving a presentation] - [undergrads are not really that smart] - [I'm the one grading your test papers].

No. The stress of standing in front of a classroom is qualitatively different from the stress of giving a talk, and I've pinned down why -- it's because I'm desperate for the kids to like me, and the difference between that and simply wanting respect because I have a handle on the material is enormous. The feeling must be gotten rid of! If there ever were a time for high ideals, surely this is it, passing the torch on to the next generation, the teacher represents the institution not herself etc. Or is that misguided? Is it that being liked is integral to the classroom dynamic -- not liked by each individual necessary, but by the vox populi?

And science classes are tough to TA -- when you ask a question there's little room for discussion, you get it right or wrong, and no one wants to be wrong. On top of that, I'm not always sure I'm right -- it's been a long time since I considered neuroscience at the level of neurons and systems -- and so whenever anyone raises their hand to ask a question I go all tingly in case it's the one I should know how to answer but don't. All in all, it's more stress than I bargained for, and I already have to set exam questions which is going to take me all bloody night.

so yes, you've been DYING to see this fantasia that i've purportedly moved into, and now you will get ONE photo, of my room, and the rest in good time. i live down the stairs from the front door; there's an adjoining bathroom to the left, and the curtains you see on the right are in front of a pair of french doors that opens out to a small yard (in which, hopefully, i'll be able to coax flowers to grow in the spring).

Re: routine -- how splendid that the fall TV season is once again upon us.

i can't believe it's been a week since i've blogged, and an eventful week at that. i *think* i'm almost back in business. having to wear three new hats -- teacher, therapist and superintendent -- all at once has proven almost overwhelming -- and this isn't even taking into consideration the nightmare voyage our contractor has put us through, but i think i'm beginning to see, for the first time in many months, a glimmer of hope that the chaos is coming to an end, that the anaesthetic of routine will soon begin to kick in.

---

the mother has come and gone without seeing the job complete. we have gone over the deadline by a week now, but all the major work is done, and the rest is touching up and making the place livable. well, almost all of it -- upsetting things include a non-flushing toilet (mine), a door that won't close and needs planing (mine), and a shower stall that is being assembled at a snail's pace. i am hoping that the final screw will be turned on wednesday, but we shall see. i absolutely promise that there will be pictures once it's all over.

---

the housemates have been most stoic through all of this. medals all around.

---

on the therapy front: i have my first client, and will be seeing him next wednesday. the dread that i felt all last semester has been eclipsed by my other current worries, so for better or worse i'm going to go into this session having not ruminated about all the possible ways in which i could fail. i'm not very sure how much i can eventually say on this blog without committing any ethical violations, but i'll see what i can manage.

the mother is in town till next friday, and i'm exhausted (not related), too exhuasted to give you a blow-by-blow. i will say this -- i've been eating well, which counts for something, and so far have sustained only minor physical injuries.

Baskerville and Rowlf, in The Muppet Show 1x06:

[???]* corner
Foggy night
Passing crowd
Electric light

German chef
Can of ten
Sausages are
Boiled within

Yeller dog
Nearby prowls,
Smells a sausage
Softly growls

Clumsy man
Wooden leg
Upsets the boiler
With his peg

Spills the sausage
Scatters wurst
Yeller dog
He gets there first

Grabs the sausage
Splits the fog
It's another case of
Dog eat dog

* I couldn't find these lyrics online anywhere, and can't make head or tail of what Baskerville sings here. Really, it's the performance that makes this brilliant, and I'm mostly posting this to remind myself what episode it's in.

BUT -- we're moved in, which is big, and i'm not sleeping on the floor any more. once i get my act together a bit more, there will be pictures.

we got back into the house on monday, labor day, and starting the process of trying to haul furniture up- and downstairs without putting huge holes through the new drywall. a lot of stuff had to go over the bannisters, which was kind of like repeated shoulder presses now that i'm not in exquisite pain and can think about it.

not done:
bathrooms
back yard fence
roof

saturday -- yesterday -- started promisingly enough. the hardwood floor fellows -- three indistinguishable vietnamese guys in their late 20s -- appeared on my doorstep at 8 in the morning and kicked me out of the house so they could start sanding the floors and be done by noon. i moseyed down to bucks and grabbed a coffee and a rather cold and unappetizing croissant, and then went to meet grace and kinjal and the housemate who were headed down to ikea for a furniture run. (incid: they don't have ikea in hawaii, or target, which i find incredibly bizarre. those renegades! i bet dubya doesn't realize hawaii is part of america.) the mall was packed with rich penn undergrads throwing wads of cash in the air and watching the bills float to earth like confetti on the fourth of july, and fussing parents with enveloping archangel's wings. welcome to one small handcrafted section of my own personal hell.

ihop, then back to the house where i was hoping we could sit down for a while, but the floor guys had decided to be all gung-ho and start the refinishing ahead of schedule, which meant the place was a poison gas chamber and no one could go inside. at almost exactly the same time it dawned on me that the housemate and i were out on the streets for the night, the other housemate showed up with his parents and a trailer full of barang in tow. we had a little monty python moment out on the sidewalk where grace and kinjal and the housemate and the other housemate and the other housemate's parents and i all introduced ourselves to each another while trying not to choke on the acetone smell that had now started permeating the entire compound because of the industrial-sized fans the vienamese guys had turned on to ventilate the house, and then we decided that at the very least we should try and get the other housemate's furniture into my room (downstairs) so that they wouldn't have to drive the trailer all across town again. this meant Being Busy, always a good thing in times of awkwardness, and i put on my very best "I'M IN CONTROL AND KNOW EXACTLY WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON" demeanor, and yelled at the floor guys, and called the contractor and yelled at him for no real good reason, and bristled like a boar, and carried very heavy boxes up and down stairs, and nearly threw out my back. this was a rather impressive display, even for me, and everyone left happy, even the other housemate who had to squat illegally at his old apartment last night without a bed.

this only left the problem of not having anywhere to live for the night. fortunately, kinjal was nice enough to offer up her futon bed (god bless her soul), and her place doesn't become truly crazy until today, when three more people descend on her looking for sanctuary. the floor guys finish today, and hopefully the air in the place will be breathable by tonight, or else i may have to get kicked out to jared's or something. i console myself with the fact that this is very close to where the madness ends (although it's also very close to where school and eight billion responsibilities begin, but that's another worry for another day).

TA training

I still think teachers are born, not made. You can learn how to speak clearly, and organize your thoughts more effectively, but that makes you a better presenter, not a better teacher. You can learn how to handle conflict and control dicussions, but that makes you a better mediator. You can learn how to be a better administrator, a fairer grader, and you can spend more effort and time getting to know your subject matter so that you don't look like an idiot. But teaching is something else, something almost spiritual, the ability to read your student and connect in just the right way in a multitude of different situations, and either you can do that, or you can't. i don't know whether all the actual teachers i know agree, but that's where i am right now.

(I'm the only other second-year student who actually has a recitation to lead and teach this semester.)

i submitted the review paper. it's good in certain bits, and (i think) very deficient in others. i don't have a good enough grasp of neurochemistry to say anything beyond x accumulates and does this to y; i don't have a conceptual understanding of what's going on, so those sections tend to be laundry lists of results with a dithering statement or two tying them together.

wednesday

no ceiling

no carpets

on tuesday i left the house at 6 and worked on my paper for 10 straight hours.

the housemate had arrived in philly the night before, and we had arranged to get dinner and see the place. i spent the entire walk up spruce st. preparing him psychologically for the wreckage, but like the other housemate, he seemed completely unruffled by the state of affairs,* and was in fact rather pleased with the size of his room. there’s definitely something strange happening; i’ve gone down the rabbit hole to a place where everyone defers to me and thinks that i’ve somehow got everything under control, when in actual fact i’m mere moments away from doing an ophelia and running through campus with petunias in my hair**.

i walked back with the housemate to the hangout house to say hi to kinjal, who was in the middle of one of those 45-minute showers that women take. we hung out downstairs waiting for her and discussed rice cookers and flat-screen tvs and wii sports, and then kinjal appeared sans dinner and we went with her to get fried chicken. grace had invited some of the new grad students to her place to watch high fidelity (used to be one of my favorite movies while i was at duke; have gotten over it a little), so we clattered along and disturbed her advisor and her advisor’s dogs***, and watched john cusack being awesome, and i forgot for a little while that i was going half-mad and pretended that i was a college freshman again on the grotty blackwell sofas with han and kwonie and all the rest, thinking: ”now is the time. now is the time i get to figure things out”


* still no ceiling, no carpets, no fully functioning bathroom, unfinished floors, incomplete electrical fixtures, etc.

** the housemate, incidentally, is from oahu. he’s lived there all his life, including his four years in college, and this is his first time away from home and family. this tacitly, automatically and unquestionably makes me the big brother (again). to make matters worse, the other housemate has moved to the mean streets of west philadelphia from nowheresville, ohio, and although I haven’t had a chance to speak with him much yet, i do know that he’s fresh out of college and potentially very blur. i have a bad feeling that this entire enterprise is a house of cards built upon a chocolate teapot, but for now i’m going to shut up and pray that providence will guide our ship through stormy seas.

*** i’m not sure i’ve said this before, but grace lives on the top floor of her advisor’s house. her married advisor, and their 6-month-old son. go calculate your own weirdness quotient on that.

lucid dreaming

i got a chance to have a chat with the advisor about this while we were waiting for my protocol to be reviewed. he thinks that all dreams are lucid dreams, that steve laberge is rubbish and should not be taken seriously, and that people should do real science rather than try and make the headlines with sexy, unfalsifiable nonsense. i asked him to clarify what he meant by "all dreams are lucid dreams", and he said that beyond a certain developmental stage, we are always able, at the point of self-reflection, to distinguish dreams from reality, and that moreover there's always a "meta-awareness" within a dream that is making the distinction (which is why when we "die" in a dream, we don't really die). this seemed to me to be finessing the definition more than anything else, but the advisor was unmoved, and i had no particular interest in trying to disabuse him. i am very curious now though to get other experts' opinions on the matter, because i had been given to believe that laberge was at the very least not doing psuedoscience. that shall be my mission for the neuroscience conference this year. i hope tononi doesn't think i'm an idiot.

on monday, i woke up at 6, freezing. the contractors are leaving the AC on 24/7 so that the paint can dry (fs points out that this is going to cost me an arm and a leg), and all the cold air in the house sinks down to my room -- this is fine in the evenings when it's 80-something outside, but by the early morning it's hyperborean, and my duvet is stashed somewhere completely out of reach.

i went back to the old apartment, and took a shower, and cleared out the last of my stuff, a process which involved a tearful parting with half a tub of breyer's peppermint chocolate-chip ice cream that i never got round to finishing. there was also 7/8 of a bottle of tonic water, and 2 bottles of sam adams, which i pressed onto a random and rather bemused stranger in the hallway.

---

i had mixed feelings returning the keys to that apartment. on the one hand, i was really growing to hate it towards the end, what with the rodents and trash outside my window; on the other, it represented freedom from responsibility, the ticket that meant that, in one aspect of my life at least, i could just say "screw it". renting fosters apathy. renting hardens you to certain things, but it also makes you soft. at least, i think so. the keys are gone now, and i'm on the wire, and i suppose i'm soon going to find out.

i moved out of my old apartment on sunday. moving house is a completely different kettle of fish when you have furniture, all calluses and crushed fingers and imprecations. thomas gave me a hand with the heavy lifting, and i got a u-haul and wondered how i ended up with so much junk (how is it that i own so much tupperware?). the new place was far from ready. all my crap went in the garage, and we did 2 trips, and i learned that driving a van on the right side of the road is nothing like driving a car on the left, and that parallel parking, difficult for me at the best of times, is a monstrous bitch when you can't see anything that's behind you.

the renovations are horribly behind schedule. on sunday, there was no hot water, only one functioning toilet, and no ceiling or lights in my bedroom. also, my room was freezing despite the central air being off, and i was tempted for a while to set up a bivouac on the lawn until reason prevailed and i remembered that i was in west philadelphia. darkness fell. i read the new yorker by torchlight on an inflatable bed amid plaster and plywood, and thought about the new espresso maker i wanted to buy, and said a little prayer that everything would be all right.

the contractor got me up at the crack of dawn to go pick out a fridge. he's italian and fits all the stereotypes from the mile-a-minute mouth to the meatball and sausage gravy simmering at home ("that's-a spicy meatball!"). we got onto the i-95 with the rolling stones on the airwaves and the contractor talking nineteen-to-the-dozen about wayward family members, the philly mafia, and the fallen state of humankind. it was hazy over the schuylkill; that and the jet lag and the conversation combined to make everything seem extremely surreal. made a stop at the dump in north philly along the way. "welcome to the badlands", said the contractor, and proceeded to recount the time when a gang of thugs beat him half to death for his truck 15 years ago. ah, real life. "people here have no work ethic," the contractor explained. "they get up at 11, collect their welfare, down a handle, then go out and shoot each other up. fucking animals." i nodded in agreement, while trying to look as inconspicuous as possible in the passenger seat.

we were in and out of the dump in 10 minutes, then did a wawa stop for coffee, where the contractor proceeded to flirt with (i think) an old friend -- a busty woman resembling faye dunaway wearing cut-off everythings. i was starting to warm up to the situation by this point -- you may not be aware of my chameleonic nature -- and back on the highway it surprised me not at all to learn that the contractor

a) got someone pregnant when he was 16, and had to drop out of high school to get his GED because of it
b) dated governor rendell's sister and spent a month in nassau and a week in the best suite in the plaza hotel in manhattan
c) was in the navy for four years, and
d) shot a man in reno just to watch him die

well, not the last thing, but maybe. i countered with several made-up stories about myself (and some not-so-made up NS stories). we really do get along splendidly.

at the appliance shop, the contractor nearly got into a fistfight with a burly fellow who must have weighed at least 250 lbs, and who wanted him to "slow the fuck down" while coming down the driveway. the contractor counterargued that we were doing "fucking 5 miles per hour", which was not at all true, and things kind of took their course from there. i was totally in the game by now, and waltzed into the shop completely unconcerned while various insults were hurled back and forth, and had almost picked out the fridge by the time the dust had settled (stainless steel: 68.5" x 33" x 32").

it was almost noon. we got to ikea, and i broke myself in two hauling furniture around, after which i went to the other green line and found minz on msn and spent spent 5 hours revising my stupid paper .

the day ended with a very warm cocktail party at grace's (no central air) (minz: no parties! do more work! you can only leave for 1 hour!), where i was very, very good and did not have any irish car bombs, just a rather weird tasting whiskey sour mixed by kinjal, and talked to peter about lucid dreaming and met a few of the new incoming students, one of whom asked me if i had "any advice for first-years" (OMG). and then i went home, and clocked in with minz (2 hours 24 minutes), and stared at my tiff files wondering why in blazes i had made them in color when the instructions had explicitly told me not to.

in the morning, i wrapped glasses in newspaper, one by one, and picked up all the dead flies from my windowsill, and stubbed my toe several times. i replied to a lot of e-mail (i don't know why, but everyone seems to want you when you're on a plane and completely unreachable). i discovered to my disgust that TA training (29th - 31st) is not strictly compulsory, but that the professor of the class i'm teaching insists we go anyway.

i went to see the new house. it was madness inside -- a confusion of debris and tools and soda bottles and spackle, and our contractor screaming and screaming, and it's a week (less!) till everyone moves in. i'm given to understand that renovations are like that, sort of in the style of cp's cooking, where everything looks like it's going to explode until about three minutes before dinner, at which point perfect duck a l'orange appears out of seeming nowhere, and so i shall be encouraging and gently goading and generally hopeful. the other housemate came by to take some measurements for his room, and he seemed completely unperturbed by the chaos, which is either affirming or means he trusts me too much.

otherwise: it's very hot, and i'm terribly jet-lagged and putting caffeine into my system in unhealthy amounts. sleep is not for the weak, but this is one time i can't give in; tomorrow is furniture and a billion phone calls, and i have to finish making all the figures for my paper before monday or face the advisor's fiery wrath. it's going to be rough.

year 2

first and foremost, they haven't kicked me out yet, so that's blessing number one.

the main excitement for now is settling into this new house, turning it into a home, and making sure the housemate and the other housemate (there are two now) don't run amok. i have a feeling that this is going to be a very tall order, but we'll see. the whole new drama probably falls under the unfortunate category of "interesting", as in "may you live in interesting times", and can probably also be filed under the heading "growing up (at last)". that drawer has been untouched for a while.

(incid: msn conversation with su-lin last night --
me: (10:28:07 AM) i'm not sure i can look after a house
me: (10:28:27 AM) i'm not grown up yet
su-lin: (10:29:20 AM) i'm starting to realise that growing up is what you do while trying to figure things out
su-lin: (10:29:38 AM) rather like yen and her nus grads and the manuals and the course
su-lin: (10:29:54 AM) you don't grow up first and then do things
su-lin: (10:29:59 AM) does that help?
su-lin: (10:30:00 AM) (:
me: (10:30:08 AM) not if the house burns down
me: (10:30:10 AM) but sort of
su-lin: (10:30:40 AM) think of all the years you would save in the growing up
su-lin: (10:30:47 AM) if it does)

and besides tenants, i have kids this year, and sick people to look after, and an independent study student who had better not be needy. it's funny to think of so many different groups of folks depending on me in one way or another, because i don't think i feel the weight of that responsibility. you always think: if i disappear, the enterprise doesn't fall apart, and it doesn't in the sense that you're more or less replaceable, but it does in the sense that you're here in the present doing things. many people can teach a batch of kids, but i'm just about the only person who can, in penn psychology in fall 2007, teach this batch of kids. and this isn't self-aggrandizing in any way -- i'm very consciously trying to avoid that -- but maybe it's like the de-motivator i gave cp several years ago -- "just because you're necessary doesn't mean you're important" -- but flipped: "just because you're not important doesn't mean you're not necessary"?

---

year 2 is supposed to be the easy year -- no major project due at the end of spring, no terribly important clinical responsibilities. it's the year for making sure you know what the hell you're doing in the way of research methodology (do i?), and generating ideas, and making certain you're capable of coherent original thought. progress without milestones. the scariest kind.

---

i was thinking of this song on the plane, as i thought of year 2:

Take the last train to Clarksville
I'll be waiting at the station
We'll have time for coffee-flavored kisses
And a bit of conversation

i'm not very sure why.

Portland, OR

blogger swallowed my post last night, and so i say a belated goodbye from pdx. coming and going so often gives you perspective on goodbyes, anyway. perhaps there's only one that really matters.

the world is undulating gently -- i've had about 3 hours of sleep in the last 36, and only starbucks is holding me upright.

prata at holland v with wc and m_____, both of whom have left the ex-lab and moved on to far more lucrative things. wc, in particular, is making pots of money for doing practically no work, and spends his time practising the saxophone by the seaside in the hopes of one day bringing jazz to the singaporean masses. it comforts me somewhat to know that these things do occasionally happen to the good guys. i think we're all far too scared off by the generalization that smart people never make pots of money by taking chances, that thinking too hard dooms you somehow to making cash the slow and painful way, and it is good keeping in touch with wc to remind me, in principle at least, that such an actuality need not necessarily come to pass.

a final word on this snippet, after hearing the opinions of people who think the sentiment is bunk: it seems to me that there is a philosophical gap between believers and non-believers that just can't be bridged by argument -- it comes down perhaps to whether you think we're of the earth or of the angels (to put it poetically). and if you can't see your way to my side, then you'll just have to believe that my endeavors are purely onanistic, in which case i hope you're very jealous, because i get to pursue them, and you don't.

to dorcas:

it's a rare thing for me to see friends truly happy, happy in a way that's unadulterated and real, not the cynical half-happiness of intellectual triumph, or pecuniary gain, or moral oneupmanship. i almost hesitate to say anything about it, because any opinion or sentiment surely cheapens the emotion; the penumbra surrounding anything so good must needs be talk of its transience rather than the celebration of its preciousness. so, no, rather than empty wishes of the impossible, i want to wish you this: that the memory of your delight will be as clear today as always, and that you know this happiness truly and deeply, whatever you may feel in the rest of this hope-filled life.

congratulations, and all the best for now and always!

have been trying to make up a lease agreement for the housemate and housemates-to-be by lifting wholesale from the document i signed for my present apartment. this is not as great as it appears. everything sounds cold and litigous, what with threatened evictions and confisactions of property and similar draconian punishment. there's a fine line to be walked -- obviously i don't want to run the place like a penintentiary, but ones interests have to be protected. specific problems: do we charge for washer and dryer use? presumably not. put in a clause about loud noise? i would like to think that this is something that can be sorted out amicably, but perhaps that's too optimistic? the crux of the matter is this: in the utopia i construct in my mind, living together in a house is entirely different from living in separate apartments. specifically, common space breeds common responsibility, and social reciprocity and threatened tit-for-tat in a repeated game is enough to enforce a basic level of cooperation among players. also, to the best of my ability, i'm going to try not to get people off the street (or craigslist) and stick to folks who are minimally friends of friends (of friends). is that totally naive? i don't want to evict anyone! there was a notice taped to the door of my apartment complex when the mother and i returned home from dinner one evening a couple of weeks ago -- someone in the block had defaulted on their rent for 2 months -- and it was just the most humiliating thing, worse than a pig's head, i think, all official and stamped and signed. it's like this: i'm cynical about humanity, but i don't put the people i know into that category. is that an awful failing? and -- even more frightening -- isn't the alternative -- not fully trusting anyone, never thawing the final layer of frost -- isn't that alternative far, far worse?

it's the old sheryl crow thing.

you know

if it makes you happy,
it can't be that bad.
if it makes you happy,
then why the hell are you so sad?

Walter Moers' new book is out...I like the premise, and if it is less desultory than Bluebear I think I'll enjoy it.

big news writ small

the rest of the anxiety, for those who still don't know, came from the denuouement of the long and exhausting tale known as "the mother and i buy a house in west philadelphia". chapters: all the good ones sell like hotcakes, doing this across 12 time zones is not a good idea, and the seller is a bankrupt with no scruples.

i was going to spin the whole (extra-long) yarn for you on here, but frankly i've been too exhausted to write, or do much else during the day besides surf blankly through the web. the upshot, really, is that i'm moving into a new place, with all attendant perks and responsibilities, and will have at least one housemate (known heretofore as The Housemate). drop in if you're in the neighborhood, and i'll mix you a mojito.

for the record

Singapore

back, and internal clock almost reset. it was a shock having to adjust to a different apartment on top of everything else. i've been relegated to a sofa bed in the living room, and go to bed at night with the sound of traffic roaring past on the ECP. the light switches are in odd, unfamiliar places. the sunlight comes into the flat strangely, as if filtered through thick gauze.

summary thoughts, year 1

(I)

From A Whistling Woman, A.S. Byatt

"So how would you educate the young?”

“I wouldn’t. I’d give them their freedom . To find out what they want, when they want. You only learn what you desire to learn.”

“And things like science? That need technical knowledge –“

“Listen, darling, science is a Bad Thing. The planet is going to kill itself dead with science. Probably they’ll blow us up with nuclear mushrooms, and if they don’t, they’ll burn away the earth’s crust with napalm and extinguish the fowls of the air and the fish in the sea with pesticides. Oh yeah. Science is for two things, human greed and human blinkered arrogance. Don’t teach little kids science. Teach them human things, making love, painting pictures, writing poems, singing songs, meditation. I wrote a poem against science. Do you want to hear it?”

“OK, if it isn’t too long.”

The metal men in coats of white
In shuttered rooms with shuttered eyes
Make metal death with metal claws
Block out the sunshine from the skies.

The children dance in forests free
They smell the sunshine and the rain,
They dance and sing the roots and flowers
Weave magic circles whole again.

The metal men are full of hate
They bind the children with a chain
They clang the institution’s gate
And box the children up in pain.

The children’s eyes are red with rage
They burst the prison-gates and chain
They burn the spectacles and coats
The men go naked in the rain.

The children teach the men to play
They teach the body’s ancient truth
The naked men kneel down and pray.
Rainwashed to innocence, and youth.

“So you think the young may be able to save the world from scientists?”

“Listen, I know. They are saving it. It’s happening. They’re saving it by natural spontaneity. They are putting the blast of the orgasm against the radioactive spout of the bomb. They can do this by just not giving in. By changing our consciousness completely. We will make everything new.”

---

(II)

From The Varieties of Scientific Experience, Carl Sagan

Does trying to understand the universe at all betray a lack of humility? I believe it is true that humility is the only just response in a confrontation with the universe, but not a humility that prevents us from seeking the nature of the universe we are admiring. If we seek that nature, then love can be informed by truth instead of being based on ignorance or self-deception. If a Creator God exists, would He or She or It or whatever the appropriate pronoun is, prefer a kind of sodden blockhead who worships while understanding nothing? Or would He prefer His votaries to admire the real universe in all its intricacy? I would suggest that science is, at least in part, informed worship. My deeply held belief is that if a god of anything like the traditional sort exists, then our curiosity and intelligence are provided by such a god. We would be unappreciative of those gifts if we suppressed our passion to explore the universe and ourselves. On the other hand, if such a traditional god does not exist, then our curiosity and intelligence are the essential tools for managing our survival in an extremely dangerous time. In either case, the enterprise of knowledge is consistent surely with science; it should be with religion, and it is essential for the welfare of the human species.

because i kind of don't believe it

i'm actually going back to singapore. the anticipation of that -- and i'm sure there would have been a good measure of it -- has been lost among the rest of the madness.

but you know, i've accomplished stuff this academic year. not enormous strides in absolute terms, but considering i had classes to worry about, and settling in, and other miscellaneous aggravation, it's not been too bad. perhaps forward momentum is lacking, but the direction has been set, the course plotted. which is something? maybe?

(incid: despite everything, i have a draft of the book chapter. it is, i think, a reasonable first attempt, and i'll pick at it some more when i have time.)