incidentally

one of the huge advantages of living in philly is that if need be you can walk everywhere -- 20 minutes from campus and you're downtown. this would not have been the case in madison, wisconsin.

Currently reading:
The Road to Mars - Eric Idle

i have an apartment for the fall, a place that i suspect americans would call 'cute', that being the default euphemism for anything not obviously horrid yet too hard to describe. it's a studio in a quiet neighborhood three blocks west of where the frat houses are (a sufficient buffer, i hope). the first few apartments that we viewed were more suited for undergraduate living -- and those who have been to college in the states will know what i mean. the mother, however, was quite unprepared for the squalor, and quite mortified that human beings could live under such conditions. it's a cultural thing. there's a magic window somewhere in the transition from undergraduate to graduate life where students suddenly discover that possessions don't have to be kept in piles on the floor, and that vacuum cleaners, well, exist. most students, anyway.

discussion

me: so what shall we get [the brother] for his graduation?
mom: how about something that will be useful for him in NS?
me: like...a broken leg?

Philadelphia, PA

1. Baklava ice cream. How did no one think of it before?

2. It is different in the north-east. People are curt. Counter servers don't call you 'hon'. I don't care (yet), but this could take some getting used to.

3. We are staying in the top-floor, 2-bedroom suite of the Cornerstone B&B, a charming renovated brownstone with wine-and-cheese sessions on the patio, complimentary creme de menthe at night, teddy bears on the shelves and a fake elk skin rug on the master bed duvet. It is almost perfect, except that the Drexel chapter of AEPi is a block down the road. Fortunately, we missed Cinco de Mayo by a day.

3.1 Oh, and they don't have HBO, which means I'll miss The Sopranos

4. American budget hotels have free wi-fi now. It's incredible.

5. The mother and I went to see the Liberty Bell -- it's kind of ironic that to get into the building you have to go through metal detectors and be shouted at by the security guys for not taking your belt off. Kind of puts a dent in the whole, you know, freedom thing.

5.1. (Yes, I know the arguments, but I'm not a GP teacher)

requests

three requests for gifts from america: freedom (cp, jy) and a hard rock cafe t-shirt (m___ y___). i'm afraid i can only meet one of those.

back on the 18th.

remember what i said about richard powers' subject matter? now look at this: cognitive neurology!

On the Paten

On the paten with the Host
I offer up my lowly heart
All my life, my deeds, my thoughts
Thine shall be as mine Thou art

In the chalice let me be
A drop of water mingled there
Lost O Jesus in Thy Love
Thy great sacrifice I share

All today and ev'ry day
O Jesus let me live in thee
So that I no longer live
But that thou may'st live through me

itinerary/agenda

may 5th --> singapore to philly.
may 6th-7th --> recover from jet lag.
may 8th-10th --> hunt for housing. fight with landlords. meet with advisor, and probably be given reading list as long as a gibbon's arm.
may 11th --> philly to pittsburgh to WV.
may 12th-13th --> smile and talk to people who voted for bush. twice.
may 14th --> brother graduates. i go 'aw'. probability of vitamin c's pachelbel ripoff being played at least once: 94.7%
may 15th --> wv to singapore.

i will bring back krispy kreme donuts if su-lin has not had her fill.

to the brother

if by "the great singaporean writer" your professor was referring to the most well-known singaporean writer, then by virtue of the fact that everything is, unfortunately, relative, then yes, someone has to win, and that someone would probably be either catherine "i've never seen an '-ism' that i didn't like" lim or hwee hwee "hwee and ran all the way home" tan of mammon inc. [in]fam[e][y]. if he was asking whether there are any singaporean writers of actual merit, i would personally have been stymied and would have had to take the fifth, lest reader-response theorists descended upon me in belligerent droves claiming oppression and demanding their voice.

thursday: seah street deli with kc, m____ and his girlfriend, bertz (tm bertz, previously g____), and the chilipadi, in loving commemoration of the time we went instead to ma maison and had $20 hamburger. my love for ssd waxes and wanes, the waning part because they don't do hash browns, which very much detracts from its verisimilitude. i still miss waffle house.

afterwards: paulaner, where the drinks are diluted and the band sings u2 and cake. there was a lot of tension around the table. science does not grant one immunity from office politics. it doesn't help that our lab is set up so that the two teams within seldom get to mix -- we work out of two different rooms and get lunch at different times. prime for inciting guys to talk behind others' backs. at least the hating is pure, and mostly involves independent pairs of people, none of these chains of colleagues despising each other like in [the place i was working in before this one].

(time to get arrested)

i think it says something about mindef that they cannot create an eight word slogan without (a) misplacing a comma, (b) commiting gross catachresis, and (c) being completely incomprehensible. seriously, every time i see that advertisement on the NEL i want to set something on fire.

New Yorker article on Ivy League college admissions. And if you have no time to read the entire thing, you should at least see this quote from Jerome Karabel's book describing Yale admissions in the 50s:

The admissions committee viewed evidence of “manliness” with particular enthusiasm. One boy gained admission despite an academic prediction of 70 because “there was apparently something manly and distinctive about him that had won over both his alumni and staff interviewers.” Another candidate, admitted despite his schoolwork being “mediocre in comparison with many others,” was accepted over an applicant with a much better record and higher exam scores because, as Howe put it, “we just thought he was more of a guy.” So preoccupied was Yale with the appearance of its students that the form used by alumni interviewers actually had a physical characteristics checklist through 1965. Each year, Yale carefully measured the height of entering freshmen, noting with pride the proportion of the class at six feet or more.

and later in the article:

And the most important category? That mysterious index of “personal” qualities. According to Harvard’s own analysis, the personal rating was a better predictor of admission than the academic rating. Those with a rank of 4 or worse on the personal scale had, in the nineteen-sixties, a rejection rate of ninety-eight per cent. Those with a personal rating of 1 had a rejection rate of 2.5 per cent. When the Office of Civil Rights at the federal education department investigated Harvard in the nineteen-eighties, they found handwritten notes scribbled in the margins of various candidates’ files. “This young woman could be one of the brightest applicants in the pool but there are several references to shyness,” read one. Another comment reads, “Seems a tad frothy.” One application—and at this point you can almost hear it going to the bottom of the pile—was notated, “Short with big ears.”

Here am I yet, another twelvemonth spent,
One-third departed of the mortal span,
Carrying on the child into the man,
Nothing into reality. Sails rent,
And rudder broken,--reason impotent,--
Affections all unfixed; so forth I fare
On the mid seas unheedingly, so dare
To do and to be done by, well content.
So was it from the first, so is it yet;
Yea, the first kiss that by these lips was set
On any human lips, methinks was sin--
Sin, cowardice, and falsehood; for the will
Into a deed e'en then advanced, wherein
God, unidentified, was thought-of still.

                                          Arthur Hugh Clough

mirrormask

i wish that neil gaiman would either (a) start another series of graphic novels (no more stand-alones, please), or (b) concentrate on writing children's books, because he is, at present, wasting his considerable talent. coraline was encouraging -- didn't it make you think of margaret mahy/joan aiken? all the movie proved to me was that the man should stop futzing around with themes like "the tragedy of modern existence" and go back to actually telling stories.

book club - seriously

i think graham greene is a good compromise for everyone. jy: at least he's dead.

book club

ooh...can the first rule of book club be that you do not talk about book club? then we could read milton in somebody's basement with candles.

actually, could the second rule of book club be that we don't read milton?

duke party (ii)

What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why,
I have forgotten, and what arms have lain
Under my head till morning; but the rain
Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh
Upon the glass and listen for reply,
And in my heart there stirs a quiet pain
For unremembered lads that not again
Will turn to me at midnight with a cry.

Thus in winter stands the lonely tree,
Nor knows what birds have vanished one by one,
Yet knows its boughs more silent than before:
I cannot say what loves have come and gone,
I only know that summer sang in me
A little while, that in me sings no more.

                                       Edna St. Vincent Millay

duke party (i)

duke admissions held a welcoming party for incoming freshman yesterday. this was something the class of '04-'05 didn't have when it was on its way out, and while it's nice for p-frosh that such events have started happening, it's also one of the signs that our school is on its way to having a cornell-sized singaporean population. well, as my mom always says, at least i beat the crowds.

at least you only die once

got a very rude shock today when minz revealed the amount of income tax she has to pay to the u.s. government. i have always had the impression that deductions and being almost on the poverty line brought ones taxable income as a grad student down to a negligible amount, but apparently i was wrong. (either that or minz is the victim of a major swindle and needs to kill her tax advisor, like, now). how? already i've discovered that housing is going to cost me substantially more than i thought, and nowthis. go tax the billionaires more and leave us alone!

T.D.O.H.:

People returning from a journey carry the distances they have traveled with them like outspread wings - until they put the key in their front door. Then the wings fold up, and they are home again, as though in the center of an impassable steel ring on the horizon. The moment they close the door behind them, they can no longer imagine they have ever been away.