while most of the food that delifrance sells is pretty uniformly shit, i do confess an unnatural liking for their cheese pastries, which i've been addicted to since, like, the beginning of time. now that i'm back in the ex-lab i seem to eat them with unconscionable frequency on the excuse that i'm only going to be here a little while. this is not good at all; i am past the age where i can eat calorie-laden buttery things all the livelong day. as minzhi suggested to me earlier in the year, i need a jar of nibbly hamster pellet-like things that are composed of fiber and sawdust and can be grabbed by the handful; that, or dwarf bread.

speakee english

at the 'opera in the park' performance in the botanic gardens on saturday, the emcee proudly announced about 17 times that they were soon going to be putting up turandot, final 't' vocalized and aspirated. at first it was just kind of weird and funny, but by the end of the show none of us were convinced any more that the 't' actually was silent, and had to go and look up just to make sure. solomon asch's findings in action!

also:

the brother: so what does quanto e bella translate to? "when is the girl?"
me: that's a bit metaphysical.
the other brother: "how much is the girl?"

because computers do all the heavy lifting, data analysis always seems somewhat miraculous to me. you throw a whole lot of numbers into a program, there is mysterious rumbling, and then, deep thought like, an answer gets spit out. particularly compelling with imaging data is the fact that you get colorful blobs, but really that just makes me mistrust the invisible process even more. 4-dimensional matrix calculations by hand, anyone?

inflation

ice coffee is now $1.10...have i been gone that long?

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

due to a gag order, i'm forbidden to provide specific details of what i was doing across the causeway; i will, however, post the requisite picture of me in front of the petronas towers, and say that it is much more impressive in real life than in the movies.

also, there were root beer floats, and random people speaking pig latin.

started work in the ex-lab (no, for the last time, i'm not back on vacation). things weren't as weird as i thought they might be -- i was a bit afraid that it would be like overstaying my welcome, or like one too many trips to the buffet table -- but almost everyone's new and it's refreshing to know that the obligation to work is entirely my own. the scanner is new and shiny, and i have a bigger desk than before, and have to make huge important decisions that will change the landscape of science itself (not really).

met minz for lunch. two lunches actually: i was ravenous and her tiny fish burger left a lot to be desired, so we went scampering off to satisfy prata cravings immediately afterward. i am warned that once we become almost-colleagues this may be a regular occurrence (first-lunch, not second), and that i have to be socialized so as to treat her in a proper gentlemanly way (snerk). on the one hand, the tenor of our relationship has long been established, and it would be a shame to change that. on the other, she did present me with a set of coasters with quotations about coffee on them, one of them being:

Many people claim coffee inspires them, but, as everybody knows, coffee only makes boring people even more boring. ~~Balzac

which is awesome, and earns maybe 2.5 days of gentlemanliness. i shall keep a running tally.

sg

fs tells me i'm not to remind him that this place exists, but it's going to be hard pretending i'm in nicaragua.

i'm back. i managed to get on one of the northwest planes without the small individual video screens, and the sound stopped working on the common screen halfway through the bucket list. does morgan freeman die in the end?

will be in malaysia over the weekend.

i'll be out of here shortly, but first, a song that makes me think of airline terminals and jet lag, and the melancholy of international air travel. have a great summer if i'm not where you are!

If you hate the taste of wine
Why do you drink it until you’re blind?
And if you swear that there’s no truth and who cares
How come you say it like you’re right?
Why are you scared to dream of God
When it’s salvation that you want?
You see stars that clear have been dead for years
But the idea just lives on

In our wheels that roll around
As we move over the ground
And all day it seems
we’ve been in between the past and future town

We are nowhere, and it’s now
We are nowhere, and it’s now

You took a ten-minute dream in the passenger seat
While the world it was flying by
I haven’t been gone very long
But it feels like a lifetime

I’ve been sleeping so strange at night
Side effects they don’t advertise
I’ve been sleeping so strange
With a head full of pesticide

I got no plans and too much time
I feel too restless to unwind
I’m always lost in thought
As I walk a block to my favorite neon sign
Where the waitress looks concerned
But she never says a word
Just turns the jukebox on
And we hum along
And I smile back at her

And my friend comes after work
When the features start to blur
She says these bars are filled with things that kill
And you probably should have learned

Did you forget that yellow bird?
How could you forget that yellow bird?

She took a small silver wreath and pinned it onto me
She said this one will bring you love
I don’t know if it’s true but I keep it for good luck

(bright eyes: we are nowhere and it's now)