When the dream reflects reality,

you have to remember which one is real.

The instruction manual:

6-10-09

The instruction manual:

Hello! Congratulations on your new car! We are very excited that you have decided to sign the agreement to love and cherish this new part of your life. With that said however, it is important that you test your new vehicle thoroughly before taking any long rides.

There are many ways of testing your new car.  The most effective test is by trying the brakes. The brake test consists of two steps. There is the tapping test and the (brake) pedal to the metal. You must try both before concluding that you are happy with your new car’s performance.

The tapping test: Begin by getting up to about half speed. The vehicle is designed to go 150, so taking it slow may initially cause the car to jerk and fight against your controls. If this is the case, gently bring the car to a standstill before trying again. Repeat until fighting ceases. IT IS VERY IMPORTANT THAT YOU DO NOT PROCEED TO THE NEXT STEP UNTIL THE VEHICLE IS CONTROLABLE. Next, carefully bring the car to full speed. Then tap on the brakes every five seconds for 30 seconds to get an idea of what we term at the plant as the “attitude.” We have listed several attitudes below. Your car is likely to display one or several of the attitudes that we’ve listed here. For the purposes of warranties please only make your final decision to stay with that vehicle if you are 100% COMFORTABLE with your car.

Cautious – Takes it slower than you do and brakes are typically unnecessary.
Nervous- Jitters a lot and often drives at slow or fast speeds with random spurts. After relaxing, usually a fine ride.
Fancy Free – Cares about very little and just enjoys all that it has.
Chipper – not willing to take abuse but happy to go along for the ride.
Obedient – Listens to every demand and obeys without question.
Forgetful – will slow down at tap, but speeds up again before next tap can be administered.
Desperate – Constantly pushes for more than you’re willing to give.
Know it all – Let’s you know that you’re a horrible driver every time you tap the brakes.
Bad batch – Tests you more than you are testing it.

Are you comfortable with your car? Excellent! Now that we have covered the tap test, let’s move on to the full brakes test. Begin again with the tap test, however this time, after 15 seconds of sequential tap tests, push down the brakes with full force. While the tap test is not always going to get a clear response from your vehicle, the full brake test always will. It is with the full brake test that you can accurately judge your car. The drawback to the full brake test is that the test has only been developed for pass/fail scores that vary between customer to customer depending on personal taste. Below are some results that have been displayed in the past.

Deaf and dumb – never listened in the first place so appears to go into shock (often to the point of speechlessness) when the brakes are applied.
Heartfelt apology – Feels dismayed when the brakes are applied but stops immediately as requested.
Unbelieving – When brakes are pressed, car speeds up until car breaks down due to conflicting systems.
Hidden anger – Stops when brakes are applied but personality of the car changes completely.

Obedient – Never disobeyed from the start so takes the stop in stride.
Independent – After brakes are applied, car becomes detached and unwieldy.
Not ready to give up – Even after brakes are applied, car continues to rev but not speed up unless you apply pressure to the gas.

Are you ready to try your newest member of the family! Go! And good luck! We know that you will have a wonderful time getting to know our line of vehicles and eventually will come across the perfect one for you. Please let us know when you are ready to sign the second phase of the agreement to adopt your car. Have a pleasant ride!

 

Flexible as the grasses. Bend and bow but do not lose grip on true self

5-26-09

We wish to be strong

In face of adversity

We want to be right

Ignoring the wrong

The sun will burn through

Turning burnt amber to gold

 

Be agile, yes bend and bow,

yet don’t cut the roots

that hold tomorrow’s music,

For today must watch closely

 

Pulling on stressed strings

Bringing strength to wounded knees

From fading twilight

Old heros step forth

We fight to believe

In happiness the world brings.

Bababoom

5-19-09

Wow, don’t really know where to start as usual. I need to write stuff down more. The past few weeks have been a blur for me, somewhere between finals, a week-long camping trip, people leaving, new roommates, job hunting, and considering just spending the summer trying to catch up with myself, I’m already lost. I guess the good news is that with the job market as awful as it is right now (in addition to the places I’ve already applied, I emailed Subaru about an internship today but to no avail), it looks like I have no choice but to coast through the summer. That’s okay though. My list of things grows at an ever increasing rate.

Right at this instant however, I think I may be going into shock. The P2 EPA design team I was/am on actually got the grant for the first part of our project. The sad part is that I don’t even remember exactly what our project was… I know it had to do with improving the tortilla making process but now I’m going to have to go review everything again. The irony is that I was looking at the papers this morning and came *this* close to throwing them out under the assumption that we hadn’t made it to the next level.

My maymester course is going to be intense. There are three quizzes and an exam every week and homework just about every day. I worked with a guy named Eric today who’s an ME. He seemed a little dubious about the class but I was getting vibes from a good chunk of the class that we lucked out as far as professors go.

It also looks like in addition to dancing and VP of ESC next year, I’m going to be the/a (not sure really) “transportation chair” for Boiler Green Initiative. We get to come up with cool ideas for encouraging public transportation and such. Carmen seems pretty excited about the prospect and I know I am. On top of that, I’ll be working on the EPA design team too! Ohhhhhh goodness.

In other news, I have a bike finally. Several bikes have been left unlocked and unclaimed around campus. It was a simple matter of picking one out. It didn’t seem like a bad idea at first. The grounds people will be going around campus removing the bikes that were left over the next couple of days. The nice bikes will be kept and the others sent to the Purdue salvage where they will sell them to whomever for around $75-$90. With this reasoning, it didn’t seem like a big deal to walk off with the bike. On the other hand, various people have pointed out that there is a slim chance that someone might try to come back for their bike. The fact that it was not locked irritates me primarily because I could see myself accidentally not locking up my own bike. I don’t know. I’m thinking about returning it, or at the very least finding out when the bikes are supposed to be picked up by the grounds people.

There is a city competition for green ideas that needs to be turned in by June 8^th. I’d definitely be interested in taking part, but this means that I have to get a great idea soon and get writing. Top ideas will be given $20000 for implementation of the idea and included in National Geographic magazine which is a pretty cool prospect.

I just heard back from one of the two people I’m going to be doing website design for this summer. She didn’t mention anything about the layout that I have done so far, but it looks like I’ll be getting to that soonish which is good. I’ve been a little antsy to get started on something. Not motivated in the slightest, but antsy. The other website I’m supposed to design this summer is going to be a much larger project and I’ll be completely honest, I’m a little worried. Not only have I not heard from my contact, but she wants an aspect of the website that I’m not sure I’m capable (with my current skills) of creating. I’m going to give it a try though and worst comes to worst, well… I’ll learn something somewhere along the way.

I’m already way behind on my garden. The tomatoes and onions are doing well, and the peppers look like they’re doing okay, but I haven’t planted any of my pumpkins, cucumbers, or strawberries yet not to mention the great pile of flowering bulbs that I bought. I’m hoping to get started this week, preferably tomorrow. Diane is finally supposed to come up to Lafayette to get some of Christine’s stuff. I hope to have the place looking shiny by the time she gets here. I may be suffering from wishful thinking.

Today I decided to take back up running. I went north in the golf course which I’ve never tried before. There was a whole area that I didn’t know existed! At one point I thought I saw a ginormous (being the technical term) bird. It was so big, I concluded that it must be some sort of heron, but the shape was kind of weird for a heron to be honest. Then I walked up to it and in the process of it walking away it somehow turned into a regular Canada goose. The sunset must have caused the illusion.

And all of this while working around missing one of my favorite people. You know who you are. I love you and hope you are taking care.  

Notes:

Three wheeled car- new design – aerodynamically improved?

Indygo grid design

Methods of water conservation with rain barrels

Implementation of recycling bins in city of West Lafayette

Megabus to Chicago from Purdue

Slacker!

4-13-09

So it was a tossup between actually getting some work done and writing this. It’s been such a nuts week that I figured for sanity and sleep’s sake I’d write some things down.

First off, I appear to have lost a pair of pants. It’s kind of weird actually. Like, socks or underwear… sure. A t-shirt even would make some sense… but how do you really lose a pair of pants? I don’t know but I seem to have pulled it off. I also thought I’d lost an entire beach towel yesterday. What, Maya, a beach  towel bothers you? Well, I only have 3 towels in the house, you lose one and it’s noticeable.  I managed to find that after a while though. I also lost my library card. My main one that is, and I’m a bit concerned. Yesterday though I couldn’t find either library card (you know how there’s the main one and the little one that goes on a keychain) and I did locate one of the two. Since I’m pretty sure the one that’s still lost is in my room somewhere I’m trying not to lose too much sleep over it.

Despite my affinity to loosing things, I feel protected at home. Right now, I don’t want to leave. I just want to stay here, skip all my classes and maybe work on homework at my own leisure. It’s raining again which means wet feet and cold temperatures. The thing is, the classes really are mostly just time consuming and pointless. For most of them (FNR and Thermo excluded) I really don’t get anything out of them anymore. In all honesty, I would be getting more out of the classes if I just read the books during the hour that I should be in class. With that said, I think I’m going to skip my Environmental Engineering class this morning. I have only one absence so far and you’re allowed three. The only issue is that showing up actually is worth points that I will definitely need. I’m trying to determine whether I’m brave enough really to give myself a 3 day weekend.

So yesterday I started work on a new website. web.ics.purdue.edu/~mzawadsk/gogreener . I was initially quite proud of it since it’s going to be used by an actual city organization. However, I just realized that it doesn’t resize with the window which kind of stinks. User friendliness… bah. ;-)

I really need to start working on the other website I volunteered to make as well. The other one (for the farmer in Ohio) is going to be significantly more complex because they want a shopping cart and a mailing list associated with the website. Needless to say I’ve never done either operation on a website before. Per William’s recommendation I did go online to see about shopping cart applications. There is one website that seems to imply it’s not all that difficult to implement a shopping cart but while I’ll volunteer to make these first few websites for free to “get my foot in the door” so to speak, I will not spend money to make them. This means that I won’t get to play around with a shopping cart application until I actually get an otherwise completely functional website. This of course, worries me. Should it? Probably, but possibly not. The woman who needs the website is pretty cool but her friend who is somehow intimately involved (no, I don’t know how) has some pretty high demands and a tendency to over-complicate things. She actually wants me to make sure the website is editable in a wysiwyg editor that 1)costs $80 and 2) doesn’t allow you to see the code. While I’m all for the wysiwyg editors, I have some serious doubts that not being able to hardcode a website is a good idea.  

For this summer I applied for an itap computer lab assistant position. I’m kind of counting on it this time. If that doesn’t go through, maybe I can apply to work in a library. Basically, I’d like to make sure that I have the ability to work on the websites and homework in addition to gaining some income since I really need to make money this summer.

Stuff at home isn’t going so well. In fact, stuff at home is going downright badly. It is truly a living nightmare. My only option has been to try and distance myself as much as possible but somehow I still end up with one or the other of my parents trying to get me to take a side. What’s bothering me the most right now is what I’m going to call it the “Hero” syndrome. Half truths to me, are really more like lies. For anyone who reads this, that’s a really good thing to know about me. I’d prefer the god-awful truth even if it kills me. So one of my parents is inclined to exaggerating and the other is inclined to only tell part of the truth. The exaggeration sometimes is easier to deal with because I outright know that it’s wrong. The half truths are not arguable because they are in fact truth. It’s just that there are little details that I know have been left out in the name of “not influencing me.” This concept is really where I was starting at the beginning of this post. The contrast lying in that I don’t feel safe or protected in my parent’s home anymore. I worry about Sasha who is smack dab in the middle of everything.

I wonder if when my parents were in their 20s they were worrying as much about figuring out their parents’ lives as much as they were worrying about getting their own lives figured out. In all honesty, they probably should have spent some more time on their own lives. Mom and Dad are nearly 60 years old. A divorce would be bad enough without having to worry about retirement and finances too.  I wish my parents would get a counselor. I don’t really mind whether or not they stay together but I figure because of my sisters and myself, they really are going to have to continue to work together for the rest of their lives. At the very least they should be able to stand the sight of each other and not try to pit my sisters and me against the other guy.

Well I have officially blogged myself out of any possibility of making it to my first class at any reasonable time. Only two left! So now, I’m going to go back to sleep for a couple hours and after that I’m going to do my formal lab report and some homework due Wednesday. Who knows, maybe I’ll even have time to catch up on some of the reading for the classes that I’m skipping.  

 

Repercussions

3-31-09
It’s quite simple really
and sometimes necessary
To sever connections
of all you have ever known.

Of late it has come to my attention, class, that there has been cheating on the exams. I must say that I am truly disappointed in each of you. Not only in the cheaters, as I suspect you are all telling yourselves, but each and every one of you. Humans, like wolves, live by social expectations and regulations. It is in the faults of one lone wolf that the pack can fail. Much in the same way, cheating proves that emphasis in education is on grades and not on knowledge. Few students with unrealistic standards can kill a universe. Furthermore, detrimental social beliefs will bring down the class, and indeed the rest of society with anything more than a breath length hiatus. As our society fails with ideas to return to “god” we must remember that in fact we failed our own goals to reach a higher power of knowledge. It is in this sense, as the giver of knowledge, you have failed me.

The child slept
and while sleeping
was good throughout.

The child woke
and while nevertheless good at heart
was truly capable of crumbling the planet.

With hope and mortification, I continue hoping,
that one day the child will wake
As loving and caring as when asleep.

Bringing in the rain, it rumbled. Green streaks swept before the eyes of the lowly passersby. Little could they know all that befell the little lightning bolt. Nothing more than a spark, yet it wished desperately to start a raging fire elsewhere. Should it fall into the waves? Finish off the casualties before they could put out all hopes? The light didn’t know. Nor did it want to know, for that would mean leaving all things comforting and familiar. Nonetheless, it waited, holding on tightly to the new, seeking escape.

“Hold it right there missy, where’s your paper?”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t finish.”
“What do you mean you didn’t finish? You’ve had months of forewarning to finish.”
“I know. I couldn’t finish because I had to write.”
“That doesn’t make the slightest amount of sense.”
“How would you know? The feelings of loss pour from ones senses until there is nothing left to do but remove them without thought onto paper.”
“That must be why your grades are so low.”
“I don’t care about grades anymore. They are part of the reason I’m like this.”
“Shouldn’t you have asked for help? Or worked out an arrangement with me? I can’t do anything now.”
“Yes, this must be the case. I will bring you the paper tomorrow.”
“I will not be grading the paper tomorrow.”
“It doesn’t matter. Tomorrow, you will have it.”

 

St. Valentine's Vendetta

2-12-09
So, I slept a LOT last night. It’s interesting how things don’t actually seem any better but I’m more okay with things as they are. Anyway the hours slept were not consecutive and while I was awake I was having all sorts of ideas. As some of you know, I keep a large portion of my files on my computer in a folder called “Maya’s Laboratory of Ideas.” While at the moment I don’t have anything particularly interesting in there aside from my journal (which is all put here anyway) I’m thinking about converting my website into a collection of interesting stuff… for the moment I’m inspired to put two things specifically that I came up with last night. One was inspired by Karl. He mentioned to me that he’d like to make a cookbook one day. I agree! But since I’m rapidly gaining new recipes (I tell you what, when I’m frustrated I cook a lot!) that I won’t be able to remember more than tomorrow, I’d really like to put all the recipes that I use on the website. Recently I’ve had daydreams of dropping out of school and becoming a vegetarian chef. I think I could do it. I think I may even have found the perfect ground beef alternative in spaghetti sauce! It’s not what you think by the way, it even surprised me: it’s pineapple! The other thing I want to post is a response to a note that Dave put on his facebook. Needles to say, I was rather offended by some of the stuff in the note but it did point out some of the crap things that men think about women. It’s in part because of men who think those sorts of things that I still haven’t found a guy that perks my interest. The other part is because men who have figured out how to be with women have already found themselves someone. So in honor of backstabbing pain and aggressive anger that runs through the veins of all singles for St. Valentine at this time of year, I’m going to put up a page called the “single males guide to single women.” You may ask, “why, are you qualified to do this Maya?” I’ll tell you, I’m notoriously sexless. I can spend hours within a group of males and I SWEAR not a one notices that I’m female. Sometimes it’s tons of fun not having to worry about the male/female barriers that could exist especially as an engineer. Other times… well let’s just say I’ve only particularly liked the so called “Saint” Valentine one year out of the last 22. I’m not sure why I should, I mean his favorite color must have been pink which I despise anyway, but I digress. Coming soon!

Recipes to post: I would like to include a brief story behind each of these along with the recipe.  Things like the stuffed cabbage I could include the video of Karl and I trying to light the oven in Mexico since people might find it amusing.

Tofu t’faya
Vegetable scramble
Breakfast tortillas
Vegetarian tamales
Stuffed peppers/cabbage
Sherry noodles
Rum cake
Hot Chocolate (The new and improved!)
Pumpkin bread
Stir-Fry
Tofu Bean Burritos
Tacos
Thick crust Pineapple pizza
Mini-pizzas
Apple Dumplings
Guacamole
Humus
Lasagna
Spaghetti and Marinara Sauce
Super-cheezy tostada
Real Mac+Cheese
Minty-Peas
Spaghetti and Eggs
Cheesy Chicks and Noodles
Oma's Potato Salad
Egg biscuits or bagels (yes, simple and you probably already know it, but might as well)
Oma's Green-bean salad
Dad's German Pancakes

Part of the reason I slept so well last night was that the power went out. Presumably the wind took down a power line somewhere and my entire neighborhood has been out for around 12 hours now. That stupid radon pump that sits outside my window and is noisy as a small herd of elephants was off all night. I woke up a couple times and just marveled at the wonderful silence of my room. I really wish the thing had been put on the OTHER side of the house. You know, next to the garage or something; somewhere where people don’t have to sleep. Some people have said that the radon pump is just a way of using up electricity, selling you a thousand dollar pump and that it’s not really necessary.  Unfortunately, other people and most of the websites I’ve gone to (EPA, damn it) say that radon really is a hazard that causes lung cancer. Well, I really don’t want lung cancer but I don’t know if I’m shortening my life span as it is by not sleeping well at night. I’ve considered turning the thing off at night but every time I go to turn it off there are all those warning stickers of skulls (with crossbones!) and “poison!” so I’ve been deterred every time. I wonder how much electricity I would save (just think of the positive energy externalities) if I just ignored the stickers. Our electric bill is around $40 per month too, and I’ll bet that 80% of that bill is because of the pump. I certainly don’t use that much electricity to light the house. Most of the time, I’m in the kitchen or in my room and whichever room I’m in, I have that light on. Everything else is off during the day. After having slept that well, I wonder if I’ll be able to convince myself to actually turn the thing off at night. Where was I going with all of that, oh yeah... as far as the power being out, it makes you really think about the number of purely mechanical devices in the house. There's not much. I'd like to see more mechanical devices and less electronic ones to be honestly. The list is fairly short. Locks, toilets and sinks. I'm not sure if the sinks really count because if you expect hot water, it wouldn't work without electricity either. We are VERY dependent on electricity and it's one of the grids least likely to break down. Even phones today. Everyone uses cell phones right? You need electricity to charge them. At least the landlines still worked without electricity.

Other lists to include:
Inventions to do
Things to plant in the garden this year

Angry Again.

2-11-09
I spend a lot of time angry these days. The moment I think I have things figured out, someone else goes and stabs me in the back, many times without even knowing it. An incomplete dance here, a rain check there, a callback never made, someone deciding that they had someplace better to sit and not telling me, the “I’ll be there,” that was actually me guilting them into doing something and having the nerve to say “I only said might” later on, total ignorance, utter disrespect, an ignored question asked to one’s face, an attempt at justification of my mother’s pathetic and ill tried attempt to return to her 20s. It’s no wonder I’m socially inept, every time I try to do something nice, or at least interactive, it blows up in my face! My sisters are pretty big culprits of this unfortunately. They don’t even notice that their comments of “well, maybe I don’t want to hang out with you for a reason” just makes being lonely 10 times worse. At the moment I’m very irritated with Ari because she spends every waking moment with her boyfriend. Yeah, great spend time with your boyfriend, but then don’t vent to me when your paper isn’t finished or you didn’t “remember” to get money earlier when I went out of my way to REMIND you several hours beforehand to bring money. And definitely don’t tell me about your f-ing roommates who you can’t even seem to find some wherewithal to ask the TA about finding a new place to live.

I was doing okay the other day. I had figured out that I have to be my own friend before others will be my friend. It was working. BOTH my sisters scolded me for my newfound idea but I ignored them for a few precious days. I was being more outgoing and adventurous. I was attempting to ignore the issues the whole fucking world is facing right now and trying to have a normal life. Yeah right. That’s what the world is telling me. Yeah RIGHT. Good luck trying to be one of us, you’re not really wanted here. Get lost. Go work on your equations and leave the having normal lives to us.

Nightmare

2/5/09
Nightmare. This has to be a living nightmare. My Mom is basically out of the family. My Dad’s barely hanging in there. Most of my friends at Cummins have been laid off, some even before they were hired. My resolve to help the environment oscillates with my ability to deal with stress. The number of friends that can really understand the direness of these situations is rapidly plunging (yes, didn’t you know that going from 1 friend to 0 friends who understand what you’re going through is the same as an infinite loss?). Luckily there are a few people who seem to get various aspects. Even at that, college life shelters more than I ever imagined possible. Just looking through the facebook statuses makes me wonder how people do notice what is going on. Heck, half the time I don’t notice everything that is going on. It only seems to be the people who are dropping out of college because they ran out of money and the people who were already in the work world that seem to be carrying the brunt of the current difficulties. My sisters have their lives which is good. They appear to be hanging in there better than anyone. It’s just that there is so much going on that I’m helpless to stop. For that matter I’m basically helpless to help in most of the situations. As I pointed out to a friend earlier, the thing that is keeping me going is that I’m set for tomorrow, the next day and probably the day after that. Next week, I don’t know but I’ll have to deal with that later.  If everyone can keep that much together, then we should be able to make it.

I don’t know what to do anymore besides keep going. I’ve heard a remarkable story about my grandfather recently about him living through a war that a normal person wouldn’t have survived. Perhaps his ability to deal with the worst of times is genetic.

Unhappiness

2/4/09

Well, how to start. This is to Callie.

You appear to be following me. Or maybe it’s just a continuation of you being in the wrong spot at the wrong time (believe me, you’ve been there more than you can imaging over the last few years). I don’t want to like you. I don’t want to see you. I will not talk to you. I don’t want to know that you exist. Every time I see you, my body freakin starts shaking with anger and hate and my brain can’t think anything but “my God (and I’m agnostic!) how I hate her”.

Let me give you one piece of advice. Please STOP being everywhere! Every time I see you I hate you more. I don’t want to hate you. I don’t like hating people. Hating is like dragging a ball and chain with you everywhere. It makes me even more unhappy than I would be after what you’ve done over the last few years. I don’t even hate the two people who probably deserve worse treatment than you. I realize that it’s more than likely not your fault that you’ve been at the root of two of the three worst situations that have happened in my life so far but lo and behold there you are with your fingers in both. See, if it’s the case that you really didn’t intend for anything to happen then you’re just too social (and gossipy to boot), stupid, or you broke a mirror sometime in the last 7 years. If it’s the case that you really did intend for everything that happened to me then you’re the most despicable and deserving of my hate than anyone on this planet. In EITHER case you need to open your eyes to that of which you are indirectly capable. And if there’s the SLIGHTEST possibility that I’ll be somehow involved you need to watch it or accept a new enemy for life.

What am I doing? Why am I angry with you? Why am I not talking to you? Why did I unfriend you on facebook? Why am I going out of my way to avoid you with every ounce of effort of which I am capable? The answer is very simple. I want you to know the pain of someone NOT talking to you because something is wrong. I want you to know the pain of someone NOT liking you.

This is what my ex-best friend did last year prior to my leaving for Mexico. How she came up with the idea that she could just cut me out of her life, I don’t know. We’d been friends for 5 years. She was my first best friend that I’d had for years and the only best friend that I’ve had throughout my high school career. She and I were basically inseparable for 5+ years. Yes, she and I had our differences and our issues with one another but it wasn’t until you showed up that she stopped talking to me and never even told me what the hell was wrong. Do you have any idea what it’s like to live with someone that won’t even say hello when greeted upon walking in the door after school? It’s a living hell. Last year I was as close as possible to severe depression as I’ve ever been and you had perhaps unintentional input into that. I had to move back home for the last few weeks of school last year because I couldn’t live with someone that hated me but wouldn’t tell me what was wrong. Remarkably, from my perspective the only reason she could avoid my repeated questions of what was wrong was because she suddenly had a new best friend. I wonder if you can guess who that happened to be. I am next to incapable of making friends because I’m too reliant on folks for attention and love. My personality is a lot like my father’s and right now he’s having the same problem as I am. Believe me, the fact that his situation right now is VERY similar to mine is uncanny and gives me a good grounding to understanding his perspective. To this day I have not been able to make a friend as close as my best friend last year once was. It was so bad, that she took one of my favorite hobbies, cooking, and wrote me a nasty email accusing me of trying to use a knife as symbolism to threaten her life WHILE I WAS IN MEXICO.  Where she ever came up with such a pile of shit, I would venture to say the source was probably not you. Only she could come up with such far cries from reality that they were distinctly her. On the other hand, I suspect she spoke with you about it seeing as she found out about William and my breakup through you around the same time. When she and I were friends, I usually at least attempted to point out the logical reality with her when she told me ridiculous ideas about people being bacteria, Lord Voldemorts, uncalled for crushes on her, out-of-line ex boyfriends, or that bugs always came to her because she was afraid of them. You don’t appear to even have attempted to dissuade her from the fact that I’m not a knife murderer that, granted she should have known after 5 years, was completely outlandish. Five years of my life were trashed when you showed up in the situation.

So that was major strike one against you. Major strike two: my ex-boyfriend. Excuse my French but, WHAT THE FUCK??? You caused William to stop talking to me, lie to me, get angry with me for being rude to you, and eventually break up with me. Not once, but twice! I can’t get over the fact that I introduced you two. Again, I know that this was probably not your fault. But again, you didn’t even try to stop it. You were flirtatious, led him on, even ignored what must have been ridiculously obvious feelings (considering how obvious they still are today) for you making you all that much more appealing. I even wrote jokingly-threatening messages on your facebook wall telling you to back off. So much for that! Do you know how many people scolded me for overreacting to your “you’re on” comment? I talked to 10s of people about it looking to have people talk me out of the nagging notion that you might be trying to steal my boyfriend so to speak. I even reassured myself that after all of your complaining last year in the dorms about having “never had a boyfriend” there’s no way you’d be trying to make a move on my boyfriend. It makes me sick just to think about it. I consider honesty the most important factor in a relationship and I was really open about this fact with William throughout the two years that we were dating. YOU were enough to cause him to lie to me. I don’t even know what’s so fucking appealing about you. There is no reason he should have liked you. I know, I know, there I go using logic again. Someone actually told me earlier this week that I use logic too much. The world doesn’t always work by logic. Oh well. Here you are at the center of the logical circle. Then by the world’s screwed up logic, I guess it’s obvious why I logically despise you.

The other thing is you’re way too chatty. Last year there’s no reason that Arisa should have known my situation with William. That was between him and me. Point of fact, YOU shouldn’t have known about the situation. Remarkably, I still want William to be happy and love him more than I like to admit. When he asked you out, I had to basically threaten to ask you out for him so that he would just do the damned thing. I went through the humiliation of “giving him my blessing” (or perhaps it was more along the lines of “forcing my blessing” so he’d get off my case about how absolutely amazing you are) to date you. Then, what did you do, you turned him down? WHAT????????????? WHAT IS YOUR PROBLEM? William is an amazing, intelligent, AND sexy bastard who dances. He wasn’t good enough for you? Did you bother to look beyond his slightly unshaven features or slightly socially incompetent personality? He’d still fall over in a little goosh-pile at your every whim if you suddenly changed your mind about dating him. It may come as a cynical surprise that knowing this fact is f-ing killing me inside. I want nothing else but for him to realize that I’m ten times better than you and come back to me with no Callie strings attached. For two years of my life, he just dropped me because there was something about you that “drove his pistons.”

You want to know the little cherry on top? He thinks I should hate him instead of you because you “don’t deserve to be hated.” He thinks I should stop talking to him instead of you. No matter how many times I tell him that I’d hate you regardless of whether he was involved because of the situation with my ex-best friend last year he doesn’t believe me. I wasn’t even that close friends with you before so that I would feel particularly bad about not continuing to talk to you. He keeps talking about how I should stop blaming you. It’s not going to happen. You’re not my friend. I don’t owe you anything.

Right now, I’m looking at one of the worst times of my life. My parents are probably going to be getting a divorce over the next few years. If I wasn’t clung to and sheltered before, now the neediness of my Dad is going to make the likelihood of my getting a life even smaller. Right now, I NEED a best friend. At this point, William is it. He knows everything about me. He and I know where our differences lie and we steer clear of them. I don’t make friends easily (which you appear to do QUITE easily) so I have to keep the ones I have as best as I can. William is still my BEST FRIEND. I can’t lose my best friend right now and you are a continuing threat to that relationship.

As of late, your likelihood of showing up in insignificant but hurtful (to me) situations as well has only increased. The other day I was seriously concerned about one of my friends. He didn’t call me even after I asked him to several times. It wasn’t until the next day after I sent him a rather angry text message that he even responded. You know where he was? He was with you. Ouch. Damn it. Ouch. I only barely knew that he knew you. You showed up and started talking to someone who I found rather attractive the other day while I was there. You know everyone. Isn’t there anyone you DON’T know? And you need to mind your own business. If a relationship does not involve you, it’s not your place to be telling ANYONE about what’s going on within that relationship.

It occurs to me that you must have broken a mirror. Yet, you somehow managed to fob off all 7 years of bad luck onto me. Well guess what? You owe me a new best friend, a new boyfriend, a couple good friends and a few people who dislike you so much that they refuse to talk to you for an undetermined amount of time. Since I only have control over one of those things I am afraid you cannot expect anything but a chilly glare from me when you pass me in the hallway. These feelings have to go somewhere and I’d just as soon pin it on you who I’m not particularly attached to you. Don’t try to change it. It’s my ball and chain but you can only make it worse by making me feel like you might not deserve this treatment.

Stream of Consciousness
1-10-2009

Too many thoughts. Too much stuff.  Since I can’t seem to get a word in edgewise into my brain's stream of consciousness, I’m just going to go for a list of words today. If you want me to expound on anything specific, let me know.

Situation 1:
Anger, betrayal, disbelief, resistant understanding, dependence, independence, obsessions with fixing, interpreters, being used, self-centered, justification, lies, avoidance, fault, high school, drama queens, mamma mia, pushing daisies, balls and chains, concern, f’d up mess, inability to fight, danger, cages, tigers, leashes, authority.

Situation 2:
Depression, friendship, ballet, psychologists, ignorance of a problem, sleep, waking up, out-of-my-league, being trapped, cars, US, buses, Indiana, position for best friend open, picking up pieces, one more thing requiring time to take care of, pet peeve of "stupidity".

Situation 3: (Actually more like 2-3 different situations)
Friendship, ex’s, confusion, ignorance, Mexico, mountains, skewed memory, shoulders to cry on, unwanted independence, phone calls from Chiapas to home, “get-over-it”, new situations, few people to talk to, being nervous, addresses, cooking, new girlfriends/boyfriends, being rude, normal, benefits, hate, love, differences, not talking, results, analysis, not all that worried about this situation in the long run anyway.

Situation 4: World, economy, Obama, Mexico, political beliefs being different when people are involved, general irritation with people, environmental problems, true sustainability, worry for Cummins employees in Mexico, university sheltered life, inability to keep up, oil dependent economy, green, greenwashing, blue, walmart, efforts necessary for economy sake even if not environmentally feasible, separation of real world and text book world applicable to wall-street, political situations, engineering, personal lives, etc.

Situation 5:
Ice skating, veg, humor, farming, music, intelligence, questions, interest, height, streaks, fire, elements, smiling.

Situation 6:
Performance, product, work, fun, play, mud cakes, sand boxes, chemicals, over-qualifications of engineers for technical jobs, environment, consulting, hands-on, lab work/pilot plants.

Situation 7:
Bambam from the Flintstones! Fred Flintstone, I GET it now!

Situation 8:
House, rooms, strangers, roommates, money, unknown, lonely amongst people, Columbus, gardens, lack of time, landlords.

Situation 9:
Udall, Too Funny to be President, speeches, writing, essays, procrastination, politics, finally some successful reading!

Situation 10:
Semester starting, books, not ready, hitting the ground running when already tired.

Situation 11: I love cooking!
Frustration venting, vegetables don’t care if you cut them up, people to cook for, people to cook with, new things to try, meatless meats, tofu, resolve.

Situation 12: and eating…
Triathlons, working out, not gaining too much weight again, healing, walking, klutz, vegetarian, 79.5, pain, ice skating, Sasha and possible track, I HAVE TO GO BACK TO DANCING, without mentioning swing please somebody (ANYBODY) make me go back to dancing.

Situation 13: I need some new music. Suggestions welcome. I’ve all but worn out the following:
The wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, Mamma Mia, Wall-E, Karl’s country songs, Indian (I have to learn Hindi first), Stan Rogers, Salsa and Hispanic dance music, Spirit, Shrek, Kamelot, Transsiberian orchestra.

Situation 14: There is a cheesecake in my fridge that needs to be eaten before it gets old. Anyone want some?

Situation 15:
My leg is cramping, time to actually go get some stuff done.

Optimism
12-27-2008

Yesterday, I began reading a book called “Too Funny to be President.” It is an autobiography of democratic presidential nominee, Morris K. Udall, who reminds me of Obama in many ways. However, Udall lost the nomination most likely because of his good humor and optimism.  Even within the first chapter it’s plain to see the wisdom of the man who knows how to be optimistic in face of the worst situations no matter the scale: international, national, local or self. He faced the question of whether humanity was worth saving and came to the conclusion that regardless of humanity, life should be saved and preserved. He did this through his passions, the environment and Native American policy.

Everyone who ever was anyone was a true optimist.

This means that in the face of my problems here at home and at Purdue I must learn to put my centroid above a base and furthermore, that base must be made up of my own self. My problem with coming back to my parents’ home is that things are so emotionally unstable here, that I end up changing myself to deal with it. My family thinks that I’m the person that I am at home only I know they are wrong.  I’ve traveled across a foreign country by taxi, bus, colectivo and plane alone. I’ve faced the humiliation and triumph of being unable to complete a career that I swore I would finish. I’ve lived with an enemy and come out with a new friend. I’ve missed the bus and seen that there are alternatives. I’ve seen that the world is a harsher yet friendlier place than most believe. I’ve answered the question of “honesty, loyalty or love” for myself and known the truth of my answer. Now, I’m looking the world in the eye and wondering by what miracle it is that we’re still here. I’m being asked if humanity worth saving and I’m realizing a blind optimist would answer yes and I still do not know my answer. It is a question that drives me because I know that I feel that most life deserves to be saved but I don’t know about humanity itself. It makes me wonder if humanity is the root of all evil and yet still the root of all that is humane. I once asked a friend’s father if he thought environmental destruction was going to be mankind’s downfall. He answered that it didn’t really matter to him. The planet will indefinitely continue with or without us.

Note that I did not say that humanity is the root of good. Good can stem both from knowledge and innocence. Humaneness stems directly from human knowledge. Because of this subtle difference in definition, being “good” becomes associated with being “humane” further implying that “humanity” is “good.” Evermore the play on words, a simple scribble or typo can change “good” to “god.” Even the word humane perhaps is not the best antonym of evil because humane just means pertaining to the actions of humans which are neither implicitly good nor evil. Good is not the true antonym of evil. Humanity should not imply good. Perhaps it is correctly associated with God however because God is neither good nor evil. One could argue that good is the best antonym of evil because evil implies knowledge and good implies innocence. Obviously my own conclusions on the subject are not to be drawn here.

In typing this now, I’m reminded of a trip through Chiapas with my friends Jamie and Mandi. While on the plane Jamie and I disagreed on where we wanted to go. Knowing that I would have to the trip into my own hands to assure that the trip was worth my while we agreed to split up. I felt bad for Mandi as she was certainly the one in the middle of the whole argument. I knew that I was making the right decision when I found on the back of the seat a sticker that explained the crux of my situation. It showed a little alien holding up a peace sign and stated: “Bold, contigo o sin ti” – or “Bold, with or without you.” I gave it to Mandi who apparently still has it today.

Gaaah. Men.
12-8-08

Do you ever sit and wonder how the hell the world works? Today I’m kind of walking through this hazy unfortunate cloud of moods that while irritating are the one thing that actually cheers me up. Sadly this only occurs after a hard nap. By hard nap I mean I hit the pillow with my eyes closed and didn’t wake up until both alarm clocks were screaming at full tilt. Hard naps don’t happen very often and they always leave me feeling more tired than when I went to bed. Too bad it’s Monday.

The problem with these moody days is that I really don’t have any desire whatsoever to examine these feelings of uncomfort, but on the other hand, if I don’t I’ll be stuck with not haven taken the opportunity to learn something about myself. Hence, here I am, further avoiding my homework that I am actually ahead on for once. Funny, I’m really not sure how I pulled that off… probably by not sleeping.

Anyway, back to the story. I’m sitting in a computer lab. It’s a regular old computer lab. Looking around, there are some folks I know and some who I’ve never seen before in my life. Men and women both in a buzzing technology center barely noticing that there are members of the opposite gender all around them. Our lives are no longer directly driven by reproduction and survival. Or are they? What’s finally occurring to me is our society is very good at hiding the underlying problems that exist for the “successful” woman.

What brings this about? Well, I’ll tell you if you are okay with my inconsistent ranting. In my Spanish class today we were discussing women of the middle ages in comparison to today. One guy spoke out quite bluntly that women and men today are equal in the work force. It’s funny. I want to believe him. I generally agree with him. I would prefer a hundred fold that women were treated exactly the way men are. But they’re not and it’s not just in the work force. In fact, I would argue that the majority of the problem is no longer in the work force but instead in the image of what is considered a “good woman.” It’s the lack of importance placed on a “good man.” This definition still applies to the working woman whether she is successful or not. Human beings are interestingly one of the few species on the planet where it is the woman that must make herself beautiful to attract members of the opposite sex. Don’t believe me? Just ask to the peacocks. Peahens can tell you, that the male must be damn sexy to even consider getting any of her grey features in a mate.

The teacher then asked said guy how many women are in politics today. After the brief silence that almost always follows in my Spanish class (it’s rather annoying actually) I spoke up trying to make light of the situation with a joke that I’d heard before that tries to justify why women are still not “equal” in society. “The reason that women aren’t in politics is because it shows that they are more intelligent than men because they don’t want to be in a political situation.” The teacher found this funny and while I found that it tickled me the first time I heard it, nobody else in the class really responded. There is some question as to whether this was because very few of them actually know any Spanish, if they were shocked to hear such a thing, or if they were just generally embarrassed that I was speaking up again and making a fool of myself. The one person that actually responded to me was the guy who said that women today are on the same footing as men.  He said that it was not true that women were not in politics because women are more intelligent than the men in politics. I wonder which he believes: Are men and women equal? Or are women generally smarter to stay away from politics? What do you think? Is there another possibility? If women are more intelligent it explains why they’re not in politics because only a fool would go into politics. If men and women are equal then why aren’t there more women politicians?

Here’s where I have my money: He thinks of himself highly. Not in a bad way perhaps, but with the pride of someone that is in school, doing okay, reasonably intelligent to have gotten as far as he has. There’s nothing wrong with this pride. He believes (as do most men and women that I’ve met) that women are no longer at a disadvantage. He has never had any problems with the expectations that are laid on him by society outside of where you are only a number and a grade and has lived in the bubble of a man-based society. However underneath it all, this guy thinks that he’s smarter than most, smarter than both the average man and woman. He believes he can get anywhere he wants in life with the same effort that it would take anyone. Politics or housewifery included. He thinks because so far in his life that he is above average, that this university life and comfortable upbringing is normal in the world. He along with most men that I’ve met, believe that this is the case and avoid sticky questions like why women are not in politics. This is what I find the most offensive.
In general it makes me sad. Society’s definition of a good woman today is one that is smart and beautiful. Brains and brawn. How can you tell her success? How much does she change when she puts her clothes? Can she attract attention simply by walking across the room? Does her appearance influence whether she gets noticed? She can spend 10 minutes on makeup and come out of the bathroom after a night of no sleep looking like she just came from her beauty-rest. Can she simultaneously be both an amazing working woman as well as a gorgeous albeit hard-to-get doll? Not only do women’s standards have to be the same as men’s or at least be on par in the work force but they also have to better. Not smarter anymore necessarily but more attractive, more wily, and they must have flawless logic.

And I say, what the hell?

Why should I be any less successful because I dress comfortably? Why should I have to put on makeup to assure that the people around me are flattered by my presence? Men are not all (or even always) socially acceptable. They do not bend over backwards to make sure they are inoffensive and pleasing to both men and women around them. If one thinks that they might be let’s take the stereotypical example of door holding. It is generally considered polite to hold a door for a woman. Yes, it would seem to me that holding the door for someone would make sense whether it be a woman, a senior, a man or a child. It is not, as many of my closest friends believe, that I have a problem with people holding doors for anyone. It’s the concept that I can be holding the door for someone and they will try to take the door away from me and have me go first, as if I were to be put on a pedestal and considered too delicate to hold the door. From that point on I am either considered the girl that won’t let anyone hold doors for her or just generally rather rude for insisting that I hold the door.

It’s not that I don’t want folks (men or women) to hold the door for me, but when I try to show the grace of holding the door for a man that he does not undermine my courtesy by trying to take the door away and insisting that I go first.

I'll admit, that even I am prey to my own issues with society. I too find myself looking in the mirror wondering how I could improve myself by wearing nicer clothes or perhaps putting on makeup. I usually end up turning away slightly the more irritated and in the self-confidence pit, but firm in my resolution that getting to know someone before getting to know their "beauty" is more important. Once you know someone, then you can show your stuff. But keep it in order. If someone's not okay with me the way I am, why would they be any better with the me that is dressed up? Beyond typical hygiene there's not much appeal to me to dress up or be wear makeup because I feel fake. False self confidence that in turn arises from false social acceptance is dishonest in my mind. It's not me. How will it help anyone get to know me if I'm basically showing off my beautiful features? They won't. This of course is completely sarcastic because so few people really do go off of intelligence anyway.

As for having clear logic in this little rant of mine, well… that may be another story. My logic is my logic. As has been said by many a woman before, “you don’t like my logic? Well then, I hope you like the outside of my front door because I may not be holding it open.”

Enjoying the moment.

August 19th, 2008
Ever have those times when everything is going your way? Well, that's what's going on right now for me. Things are going so well that I had to take a step back and reflect for a moment. After all if I don't make an effort to remember this moment of perfection, what will I ever use to combat anxiety and depression in a not-so-perfect moment? "Well, tell us!" you might say, "tell us what is going right." Or maybe you wouldn't, but you know what? I don't care!!!

Yesterday, I made my way back from SLP without any problems whatsoever with only the minor exception of realizing that there are some people in the US who need a change in the way they think. That set aside the flights were smooth and I snacked on pumpkin seeds still attempting to figure out how to eat them Mexican style (opening them up with one's teeth before eating only the seed inside). Out of the entire package I only succeeded once but it wouldn't have mattered anyway because I eat the casing after taking out the seed anyway. Delicious things those pumpkin seeds.

Airport arrival was uneventful. Ari and Dad found me around 2:30 and jokingly asked what kind of rocks I packed as we walked out to the car. While driving back Dad asked who was hungry. For anyone who doesn't know about my plan to be vegetarian, I AM planning on being a vegetarian starting...

well we'll see.

Anyway, I have been worried for some time about telling Dad this plan because I really didn't want him to think I was saying I didn't love his food for all these years that he's been cooking. I have ABSOLUTELY loved his cooking. Vegetarianism set aside, my Dad is without question the BEST cook in the world. I didn't want to hurt his feelings.

So Dad asks, "who's hungry." After having demolished a package of pumpkin seeds, the true answer was, "not especially but I could stand to eat something." The rest of the conversation went like this:

Me (while trying to think of marginally vegetarian food that one can eat at McDonalds in the worst case scenario): Where would we be going?
Dad: Well, we're kind of limited to fast food options. I don't really like the fast food idea, but we're stuck with it.
Me: Does that include Subway? (Evan came to mind almost immediately)
Dad: I suppose.
Me: (To Dad) Okay, I'd be up for that! (To myself) whew, that was close.
Dad: So what's this I hear about you planning on becoming a vegetarian?

We never did end up stopping for food on the way home. Dad asked what sort of stuff I would be eating "mushrooms? (which I notoriously don't care for) because in a lot of foods fungus replaces meat." I also brought up lentils and beans which started Dad started meandering around the topics of curries. Sometime last year Dad started learning how to make various curry dishes from some of his recipe books. Needless to say he expanded into some pretty spectacular dishes even before I left for Mexico. He has since bought a HUGE book on curries of every type. The conversation of course wandered around some more and touched on various topics of Mexico, the state of the world with it's necessary improvements, plans for next semester, and what Dad was cooking for dinner (grilled chicken and vegetables). When we got home Dad and I ate tomato sandwiches which were RIGHT out of the garden (yeah, we have a tomato sandwich plant-didn't you know tomato sandwiches grown on plants?). The sandwich reminded Dad about the previous conversation we'd been having and he pulled out his curry book for me to look through. Even if I hadn't been eating the best tomato sandwich I've ever had, my mouth would still have been watering. So finally I just straight up asked him if he was ok with my deciding to be a vegetarian. He was! Threw me for one of the biggest loops I've ever been on, but he was fine! Dad said, "Maya, it's been a long time since I've had any choice in what you decide to eat." This morning Mom actually said the same thing and also told me that it was a good choice to make.

Later on I was talking to my sisters. Ari was the one who told Mom and Dad about my plans to be a vegetarian. Apparently this is what she said:

"Mom, Dad... Maya's really worried about telling you this and I figure it will be better if you know before you make a big meal and Maya has to tell you that she can't eat it. She wants to be a vegetarian."

Simple and brilliant. My sisters are AMAZING.

So conclusions: Bharath, Harini, I'm in. Janet, we need to talk about triathlon training and being a vegetarian among other things. You convinced me and you've done this before so I'll be picking your mind this semester.

After the tomato sandwiches, Sasha dragged me outside and told me I had to try the blackberries. She was right, they were delicious. Then she took me the grape vine handed me a bunch of them and started telling me about the pears and applebutter jams that her friend was going to be making with the pears and apples that were falling off the trees. Best quote ever from Sasha:

"I just kind of walk around eating all the time here. Then at dinner Mom and Dad ask why I haven't eaten much and I tell them I just ate (while holding stomach and making a full face)."

Being home has been a bit of a magical experience. No, I don't really care for most of Indiana, but I tell you what, my home is a zone all it's own. It's like walking into a blanket that says, "I'm sorry I give you allergies... I still love you!" Summers are not so fun, and winters can be fun depending on how much free time there is, but Spring and Fall call me home. The weather right now is early Fall. It is beautiful. Last night the frogs were singing, I was surrounded by cats, I had to have smelled dinner but somehow I slept through it. This morning I woke up to Taffy chewing on some unknown substance on my desk and shortly after Mom walked in the room saying "Hi!!! You're awake! I missed you! It's really good to have you home." Then I got up and started cleaning up my room if that's at all possible. There is so much stuff in here that it's difficult to imagine that it could ever look clean because there's just no place to put anything. I was looking at the clothing in my closet even to see what I could give away. In the process I got distracted by a pleated skirt that was given to my by my Scottish Country Dance teacher (and friend) sometime sophomore year. She told me that I could have it and use it when I learned the rest of the highland fling. Even then it didn't fit me although it was close. I told myself, it'll fit as soon as I start losing some weight. Well, then the rest of sophomore year hit as well as last summer. Needless to say right before I left for Mexico, the skirt barely fit around my knees. This morning, it not only fits, but it fits well. Now, I just have to learn the rest of the highland fling. Perhaps I can use the skirt this year at the Feast of the Hunters Moon! Upon further looking around my room I've realized that I have more books than bookshelf space available. One of the books that I've been waiting for for since before I left for Mexico was sitting on my desk. It's called "Respect for Nature" by Taylor. I only had time to read the first chapter or so last year but it was a darn good chapter.

So, I'm surrounded by home (family, cats, books, trees, ponds, food), I have beautiful memories of Mexico (as well as plenty of things here to remind me of it), and I have plans galore for this next semester (dancing, friends, triathlons, vegetarianism, environmental club action, new apartment).

I know and will always remember that right now I AM the luckiest one of all.

 

I am not myself for any one person. Instead, the combined person that I am for everyone is me.

May 3rd, 2008
That said, it is impossible to know someone completely. Even, one might say impossible to know oneself at any one point in time. I find this particularly interesting because it's like the Uncertainty Principle but applied to people. Just like you can not track the exact speed and the exact location of a particle simultaneously, you cannot know yourself if you are not with every other person. At the same time, you cannot know yourself without looking at yourself without everyone else. How then would it be possible to know oneself completely? I think this is why people generally do not know who they are or what they think. It is very difficult to believe that there are things that even when you know them, you cannot accept them.

Another thing that is extraordinarily difficult to accept that we are all just passing through life. The most difficult part for me recently is that people, ALL people, with varying degrees of longevity, will melt in and melt out of one's life. Looking at just the last decade it's amazing that there are people that just showed up one day, and then disappeared again. When one is lucky the best ones melt in, melt out, and melt in again later on. The saddest part is that this does not just apply to the "friendships" that we have in life. It's everyone. Our life-partner, our parents, our siblings, the neighbor next door... the people one just kind of assumes will always be there. We go through life not realizing just how quickly they could melt away tomorrow, and not even know that they are gone. I think this is hitting me now because there will be so many wonderful people melting out of my life in the next few weeks. Some of whom I will never see again.

This odd mood may also be the research that I've been doing on the writings of Borges. I was reading something yesterday that gave me this idea... "Borges and I" has a little bit of this sense to it, but I'm pretty sure I was reading something else. It's weird because I can't remember for the life of me even what it was about just that it was similar to what I just said.

In happy news, I ran a mile without stopping today with Mandi. Yes, I know for all you athletes out there that isn't too terribly impressive but I was pleased. Next stop 4 miles! Look out triathlons of Purdue, I'm working up to it! 

OOOOOOOhhhh that's what it was. Here's the poem I read yesterday that I think inspired this post. Enjoy!

Limits

streets that blur in to the sunset,
There must be one (which, I am not sure)
That I by now have walked for the last time
Without guessing it, the pawn of that Someone

Who fixes in advance omnipotent laws,
Sets up a secret and unwavering scale
for all the shadows, dreams, and forms
Woven into the texture of this life.

If there is a limit to all things and a measure
And a last time and nothing more and forgetfulness,
Who will tell us to whom in this house
We without knowing it have said farewell?

Through the dawning window night withdraws
And among the stacked books which throw
Irregular shadows on the dim table,
There must be one which I will never read.

There is in the South more than one worn gate,
With its cement urns and planted cactus,
Which is already forbidden to my entry,
Inaccessible, as in a lithograph.

There is a door you have closed forever
And some mirror is expecting you in vain;
To you the crossroads seem wide open,
Yet watching you, four-faced, is a Janus.

There is among all your memories one
Which has now been lost beyond recall.
You will not be seen going down to that fountain
Neither by white sun nor by yellow moon.

You will never recapture what the Persian
Said in his language woven with birds and roses,
When, in the sunset, before the light disperses,
You wish to give words to unforgettable things.

And the steadily flowing Rhone and the lake,
All that vast yesterday over which today I bend?
They will be as lost as Carthage,
Scourged by the Romans with fire and salt.

At dawn I seem to hear the turbulent
Murmur of crowds milling and fading away;
They are all I have been loved by, forgotten by;
Space, time, and Borges now are leaving me.

Jorge Luis Borges

On Religion (Continued), Earth Day, and San Luis Potosi!

April 22nd, 2008 HAPPY EARTH DAY!!!

Continuing on the subject of religion, it's interesting to me the parallels that can be found between science and "God" in the view of an agnostic. Even according to the majority of religions, we as human beings are supposed to be humble before God and respectful in every way. How is it then, that religions of humanity are sufficiently proud to believe that they "know God" enough to say that their version of the rules are the right ones? Does this not go against the first point of being humble and respectful of "God"? Who are we to believe that we know "God" so well?

Interestingly, I have the same issues with "science." There are some things that humanity should not know in my opinion. How can one make a time machine? What makes a soul a soul? What changes when something dies? How do you make Artificial Intelligence more and more similar to humans until they are human? Why does your chest physically hurt when you know that your heart isn't actually breaking? How do you duplicate humanity and give out life with or without knowing what the heck  is going on? Are we the only "intelligent life" out there? (I'm pretty sure humanity isn't all that intelligent so this question seems kind of silly to me anyway, but it still applies to the discussion) Is bigfoot real? Why are we here anyway? The list goes on. Unfortunately, this is where even I get lost on my own trail to self-understanding. While I respect and encourage the pursuit of the answers to these questions, I hope that humanity never finds the answers. Once humanity starts playing the role of God, then we've all gone too far. Who are we to assume that we have the power, intelligence or the right to know the answers to these questions? At what point have we crossed the line of respect and humility and begun to play king of the hill with science of the universe?

I look at the world around me, and know from science (perhaps) that evolution is not only a very real phenomenon, but that it is amazing and, in a fashion, magical. I respect science from the deepest part of me for being able to show me and teach me about evolution. I may look for more lessons that I can gain from looking at the world. Experimentation may be fun and educational. However, I do not feel it necessary to learn about evolution so that in the end I can genetically modify human beings to live forever. 

Who would really want to live forever? Without regrets and pressure for time, life would lose it's color and interest. If I had unlimited time in Mexico for example, I may not appreciate the people that I met at the last minute because I'd of course have another chance to see them later. The same could be said of life. How can you live life to the fullest if you're guaranteed to have life?

I want to reiterate, that although I am using the Christian religion as an example here, I don't want to pick on people that follow the Christian religion. I have the same issues with almost all religions that are out there trying to push that their religion is the right one. Here, I'm only trying to explain where I stand for those who are at all interested in knowing. Since I'm fairly sure not too many people read this blog anyway, it's probably not a big deal. :-D

I'll finish this today with a conversation that I had with Janet regarding Heaven and Hell. One of my "quirks" is that the concept of Heaven and Hell actually existing scares me more than either Heaven or Hell itself! To be perfectly honest, while I don't want to go to Hell of course, I also have no intension of going to Heaven thank you very much. Janet, I think, has similar thoughts. So the conversation went as follows (more or less) after some time about talking about religion:

Janet: Heaven for non-Christians would not have any Christians in it.
Me: Well, it would, the Christians just wouldn't be devoutly interested in converting the non-Christians. For that matter, who'd want to go to heaven anyway? Have you ever seen the pictures of it?
Janet: Which ones?
Me: The ones with the fluffy white clouds where everyone plays horns and harps all day while wearing night gowns.
Janet: That'd be more like Hell.
Me: It'd be incredibly boring just floating around all day on fluffy clouds playing those silly horns.
Janet: Christians go to their Heaven, and, according to Christians, non-Christians go to Hell. A non-Christian Hell just so happens to be the Christian's Heaven. The way I see it, we're all going to the same place when we die anyway.

Well, whether anyone else appreciates the humor of the conversation, I found it highly amusing. I was laughing most of the way home in fact. Some time after the conversation I also realized the irony that I like using the phrase "no way in hell" considering that I don't actually believe Hell exists.

Hold on folks, we're changing subject and bit quickly...

HAPPY EARTH DAY! Go plant a tree! Recycle! Reduce! Reuse! Walk to work or school! Turn off the AC!

Despite being in Mexico I decided to run for President of the Environmental Science Club at Purdue. I've been extremely frustrated with the Environmental Science Club for the last few years watching it sit around and do almost nothing despite my repeated attempts to get them to try something daring and committed to the environment. Improvements have been slow but there have been some in the last year or so. Anyway, at least this year I am one of the officers. I made Secretary. I was a little disappointed about this at first, but then realized that it was still a great opportunity to get the club in gear. The current president also correctly pointed out to me that the officers this year are going to be spectacular because they are all (I hope) super involved and committed to the environment. Here's hoping!

Regarding this past weekend's SLP trip, I have good news, bad news, and news that I'll conclude good or bad later.

Good news: We found a beautiful apartment that is huge and a little pricy but it includes everything we could possibly need furniture and utility wise (electricity, water, gas, local phone, internet, cable, beds, couches, pans, microwave, fridge, toaster, daily cleaning service... you name it, we got it).

Bad news: SLP's mountains are small and far away from the city. Even after one day I found myself missing Cerro La Silla and the other Monterrey Mountains. I will need to find myself a really good place to work out after I won't be able to see Cerro La Silla while running. Silly mountains. So INSPIRING! Going back to Indiana at the end of this summer is going to be rough. Pancake flat Indiana. Maybe I can import a mountain...

Unconcluded news: I'll be sharing an apartment with Karl. We were not given any choice in the matter as apparently not only are we the only two interns working in Mexico, but there are no "single" apartments available because of school. I believe I might be certifiably crazy having agreed with this. It's a distinct possibility that I will either end up killing him or killing myself depending. Nonetheless, I'm kind of excited about it. All of my previous roommates having been female with varying degrees of failure/success. I've become much more willing to speak my mind over the last few months and have already found a few things that irritate him such as calling him "Roomie." Aaaahh, revenge can be sweet.  We have fairly similar taste as far as food goes, cleanliness levels are comparable and he's willing to share the responsibility of cooking. Otherwise, he's well on his way to being like a crazy brother! Hey, when there are siblings to bother, I'm a happy duck. This could be a fun summer!

The trip itself was enjoyable. I was very happy that Mandi was able to go with us. She did a great job reminding me keep an open mind about the apartment situation. Mandi also introduced me to San Luis Potosi's sweets. SLP could be dangerous. I must remember my goal to keep losing weight! Luckily, we won't be living to close to the colonial downtown so actually getting ahold of the sweets won't be that easy. We spent a good chunk of time in the workout club behind our hotel. I've concluded that running on a machine is much easier that running outside and it also gives access to pools and bicycle machines. Considering my goal to be in a small triathlon or two next semester, I may decide to join a sports club this summer. We will be living pretty close to a park though as well, so I have to check out what's in there before I decide on a sport's club. 

I believe that's enough for today. For the moment I'm going to attempt to get some sleep or do some homework. I'll torture all of you with more posts later.

On Religion

April 17th, 2008

So the other day several interesting things occurred to me on the subject of religion. It was so interesting to me in fact that I spent an entire morning thinking about the full-length thesis I was going to write on the subject. Unfortunately, I had classes all morning as well so not too much happened as far as writing the thing. I'll try to cover the highlights here, but this is not nearly the extent of the ideas that I had pounding through my head at a billion miles an hour the other morning.

That said, if you are easily offended by non-religious (more specifically non-Christian) thoughts, please skip this entry. I invite you to read the one after instead. This is just my reflection on religion and I'm not looking to pick a fight or debate with anyone regarding the subject. Also, please don't try to convert me because it will not be appreciated. It's been tried before. The results were painful, unnecessary, and convinced me more than ever that I do not agree with any sector of the Christian religion. I will appear to pick on the Christian religion here as well because my knowledge of other religions is limited to a grand total of approximately zero.

On the other hand, by the time I actually get to the subject I may be entirely written out and you won't have to worry anyway!

Religion is a slippery thing; a lack of or undefined religion even more so. It has gained me more enemies than friends over the years and to this day I wonder why that is. Upon further reflection it becomes apparent (yes, if you stare at it long enough, it does become clear unlike in mathematics) that religion was created for several very specific purposes in this order as I see it:

1) Religion was a way to explain death which is to this day is the world's most potent unsolved mystery and the thing that scares humanity the most.

2) It was a method of control at all turning points in history thus far.

3) It explains where the f' we all came from and gives people a reason to live in a "if all else fails" reaction.

The next thing that I find interesting is the creation of the concept of heaven and hell. Who in the world came up with this? Why did death become something bad? It is interesting to me that this also probably falls into the category of fear of death and societal control. What better way to threaten someone than with something that one is unsure of and just making it completely bad? The only thing I can think is that someone was feeling really guilty and decided that there had to be a way to get away from having the same things done back to him. For longer than religion has been a reality, the concept of revenge has always existed probably since before our cave roots. It would not surprise me if the phrase "what goes around comes around" was the precursor to "Do unto others as you would have done unto you." 

I feel it is important to mention that although I do not follow any particular religion, I do:

1) Have morals... very strict ones in fact

2) believe that there are things that humanity is just not meant to know which includes such things as miracles, magic, and the unexplainable

However, this is to an extent. When people ask me what religion I have, I always feel tempted to say that Science is my religion. I believe that science can explain most things. There was a famous saying that I found in one of my fractal books that truly explained it however. Let me find it...

"The scientist does not study nature because it is useful; he studies it because he delights in it, and he delights in it because it is beautiful. If nature were not beautiful, it would not be worth knowing, and if nature were not worth knowing, life would not be worth living. Of course I do not here speak of that beauty that strikes the senses, the beauty of qualities and appearances; not that I undervalue such beauty, far from it, but it has nothing to do with science; I mean that profounder beauty which comes from the harmonious order of the parts, and which a pure intelligence can grasp." ~Henri Poincare

Interesting, I've never actually seen the whole quote before, just the first part of it was in one of my Chaos books and caught my eye several years ago. This site also has some pretty good quotes that you should check out: http://www.best-quotes-poems.com/science-quotes.html
:-D

So here I am at an impasse... after that quote, I don't feel like I need to continue explaining! Haha, more later though if I have the chance.

Apartments, glasses and cats..

April 15th, 2008

I'm very much looking forward to having my other glasses back. I've been using my old ones (yes, the ones that take up about half of my face) since I arrived in Mexico. My blue ones are much cooler and don't fall of nearly as much as these do. Especially since the foot pad broke on these. The reason I don't have my blue ones is all because I didn't bother to check if the lenses were done on the new ones the night when I was at Wal-Mart. Looking back I realize just how silly that was of me. The next day of course the lenses were not the right size for the frames so I had to wait one more day. Unfortunately, I didn't have one more day. Consequences. Who needs 'em?

This weekend I'll be visiting San Luis Potosi to find an apartment for the summer. I'm really nervous for some reason and haven't been sleeping too well for it. Last night I was up until 2:00am working on a paper and STILL woke up at 5:00am. For some reason I was combining just about every fear, argument, and nerve wracking thing that I have dealt with from the last few weeks into the same bloody dream. It wasn't at all a restful night. It wasn't just last night either. It has been for a couple weeks now that sleeping just hasn't worked all that well. Because of this, I've been trying to take naps during the day to attempt to catch up on my sleep debt. It works sometimes, unless I dream. Today's was especially difficult. I don't really like dogs, and I miss my cats like crazy. Maybe I should have studied abroad in Egypt or somewhere that likes cats. What is it with Mexico anyway and their dislike of cats???

So in the dream I had today, I was in a new apartment trying to figure out if I wanted to rent it (of course). There wasn't any thing wrong with it, it just made me nervous. There were two cats in the room with me which was the only reason I was even considering the place. It appeared at first to just be a one room apartment which would have been fine but I later figured out that it was more of a mansion than an apartment. Only problem was that I had already said that I would rent the apartment. As in, by the end of the summer, I'd be broke and I still needed to buy a car! I was trying to talk to the cats to explain why I was unhappy, but they did what most cats in Mexico do... they ran away. Why? At least in the US, my cats just ignore me. It's not that they don't like me, they just don't feel like being patted at that particular moment. When they want attention they come find me. Unlike here where cats are seriously seriously in need of some TLC so they're nicer.

Conclusion: I miss Taffy!!!

Random info: My (good) dreamcar is a black or blue Pontiac Sunfire

What, I have a blog?

April 13th, 2008

Not only did I never finish the last post regarding Zacatecas, but I also failed miserable to contribute anything further in the slightest. The event calendar is about the only way I'm going to be able to ever fill in all the details because I'm horrible at writing things down. The highlights (and lowlights) were as follows:

Quidam was spectacular! I am so happy that I went to see it. It was even worth the expensive ticket. For my entire life I've wanted to see a Cirque du Soleil performance live and I totally ROCKED that opportunity. Afterwards, I bought the soundtrack and a DVD of Verakai.

Around this time my computer was having some significant issues with life. It was interesting the different opinions and suggestions I got on how to fix it. I even went to the computer repair place down the street to see what they thought. Eventually I gave up on that idea because they told me they would have to reinstall windows and all my programs would be lost. I told myself "eh, if I have to start over anyway, I might as well try to mess up my computer in attempting to fix it by myself." With my Uncle's initial suggestion I reinstalled Windows over the old version, didn't lose any programs (except maybe NERO), and haven't had any significant problems since. Yay for messing up and fixing up without any help!

On the Cola de Caballo trip one of the guides that I knew from the Zacatecas trip informed me that in order to be able to go on the Cerro la Silla trip you needed to be in really really good shape. This was a few weeks beforehand so I started running with Mandi and Janet and going to Zumba classes. I am pretty sure that these two things kept me going through the next few weeks. 

The Friday before Cerro La Silla (first attempt) I determined that one sided long distance relationships really just don't work. At least that's what I told myself so that I could accept the situation at the time. In order to get over it, I said that I would make it up Cerro the next day. Well, it turned out the next day I didn't make it. I had a really bad cold at the time and so everything was a hundred times harder than normal anyway. I had to give up around 3/4ths of the way up. Needless to say I was angry. I was also fed up with doing things with the Tec. They are always in a hurry and have some sort of schedule to keep that I don't understand. Disappointed, angry, depressed and every form of sick I resolved to keep running and dancing until I was in good enough shape to climb that mountain the next time.

Speaking of which, I'm going to take a break here and go Zumba my heart out with any luck at all.  

Hmmm, No joke--

February 4th, 2008

Well, it's been a long three days although it's been completely out of the line of the other things that we've been doing  around the tec, so if feels completely different than a weekend spent at "home." Summing up the weekend would be difficult unfortunately, and I haven't the slightest idea of where to start. First things first I guess. On the bright side, I've "relearned" that I usually prefer to spend time alone than with lots of people. Silly of me to forget really. It's not so bad but I think it might offend people (that is, on the not so bright side).

The trip was six hours long approximately. I spent a bunch of time talking with Giulio about various points of Spanish/English grammar. It was quite entertaining to come up with things that I hadn't even thought about since pre-high school when I used to try to do Mom and Dad's composition books" for at least a few pages until I couldn't stand them anymore. I also spent some time talking to Nelly about various history subjects of Mexico and some catch phrases. There were some group discussions too and all and all, everyone was pretty comfortable with everybody else by the time we arrived.

The first day we arrived and climbed some pretty impressive ruins. I loved it, but everyone was in such a hurry. While I understood that we didn't have all the time in the world, I felt very rushed and would have preferred to climb the ruins at my own pace, even if that meant I would do it alone. What I ended up doing was more of hanging out with Raul the camera guy. That in itself is interesting, I'm not sure where he went. He must have gone home early because I haven't seen him since last night when he said bye to Alex.

Zacatecas, here we come! Are my ears popping yet?

February 1st, 2008

And we're off! I'm currently sitting on the bus during the first hour of traveling. The mountains are absolutely spectacular! There are six hours total, so I should probably not use up my entire laptop battery at once. Oh well, I read homework like material for a little while. When I next get on the computer I'm going to spend the time studying for my ecology and Environmental Engineering test on Monday.

Yesterday was a combined lousy and good day. After talking to William for a while, Mandi came by. I was very happy to ee her, and everything else I thought I was going to do got put on hold. That was the good part. I wish I could get over this homesickness. It's really hard to enjoy the moment when your heart is somewhere else. It's easier when Mandi is around because she makes it feel a little more like home. I finished up my conversation with William (skype being a total pain in the butt the majority of the time) and Mandi and I went to the MicroPlaza together as well as a bookstore called Gandhi. Of course putting me in a book store was probably not the best idea, because I id go all out buying books, but I felt much much MUCH better afterwards. I bought two textbooks on environmental engineering/sustainable development, a couple cds and a blank journal with cats on it. I have het to decide if I should actually use it, or if I should give it to one of my sisters. It's beginning to occur to me that the majority of people on the planet don't have all that many books. Perhaps that is why people can move and do move around a lot in the US. Afterwards we went to grab something to eat and look around a bunch of different stores.

The original intension was to go to Gandi and get tickets for the Cirque du Soliel show, but that failed to happen because the website explained (I read it with Mandi's help) that you need toorder the tickets at least 24 hours before you go to pick them up. I'll probably order the tickets on Tuesday as early as I can and pick them up on Wednesday. Jenifa really wans to go to the microplaza so I invited her to come with me.

Well, ofr the moment, I'm ready to fal asleep, so I'm going to saw adios for the moment and talk to you again soon. I still have to talk about Renea(spelling?) and packing.

Cirque du Soleil, bookstores and indigenous ruins.

February 1st, 2008

My but how months just sneak up on you like that. The last few days I have spent several hours in the language lab trying to have the required 26% finished before the end of the month. I'm hoping the teacher isn't going to be too picky. The lab wasn't even working until this past Monday so I suspect that not too many people in the class have finished completely. I'm up to 22% and I'm not sure whether the last little bit that I need to do is worth my time this afternoon. There are a lot of things that I need to do and even more that I have to get ready to leave tomorrow. It all needs to be finished today in other words. The other thing I'm not sure about is if I should take my laptop to the "LapZone" down the street to be repaired.

This weekend, I am going to Zacatecas, which I have yet to determine if that means the state or the capital of the state Zapatecas. Either way, I've been told there are some indigenous ruins to see as well as lots and lots of cathedrals.  We leave bright and early tomorrow morning by bus. The trip is supposed to take 6 hours so I'm pretty excited. The only problem with this is that there are a bunch of exams on Tuesday when we come back to school. I feel like I should bring my computer and study on the bus, but I don't want the computer to be stolen while I'm there. I probably worry too much (just look at the great number of Mexicans breaking into my room and stealing things!) but I've been told that bringing the laptop is probably a bad idea. The alternative is, unfortunately, printing everything off, which costs money and trees for the paper. I just don't feel right doing it because there is a lot of stuff I need to study. 

In typing just now, I wondered what it would be like if suddenly your brain switched sides. How would typing work? Would you need to relearn how to type or would your hands figure out what they needed to do on their own? Probably one would need to relearn how to type the same way as a right handed person would have to learn how to write and eat with their left hand if they weren't ambidextrous in the first place. On the other hand (haha) would mirror imaging the keyboard have the same effect?

The news that I'm most excited about is also the news that I've already told most people. Cirque du Soliel is in town! Yes, one of the things that I thought I would never be able to see, because it never even came close to Lafayette... Cirque du Soleil! The one they're showing is Quidam which is the one with the guy that dances with a hat stand. OOooooooh, I love it. The only one I like significantly more is Verakai! Alegria is excellent too, but I've never seen that one all the way through. 

All of you who have been waiting for post cards, hang in there. I'm working on them now and it's really a matter of finding time to write all of them and then locate a post office and send them. Sounds simple doesn't it... :-) oh, the lovely hidden complexity of verbosity.

In my Spanish class we watched some of a very intriguing move about Sor Juana de la Cruz. She's about the Mexican equivalent of Joan of Arc except that Sor Juana de la Cruz existed. She was a poet and otherwise a very intelligent woman who was supposed to be married off to a good man in her time. She didn't want to get married so she ended up becoming a nun instead. It's not a documentary and it's old, but it's very well done in portraying an opinion on what this woman's life was like. While I don't know how the movie ends, I highly suspect that she will end up being killed. I could look it up, but I don't want to ruin the end of the story for myself. The movie is called I, The Worst of All. Later on, I'm going to go to the library and check it out so I can see the ending.

As far as GEARE related items go, I haven't received any information regarding my internship/project which I'm supposed to work on with a company called CEMEX. I'd really like to start because there are other things that I'm interested in doing here but I need to know what my schedule looks like. I emailed the professor the other day, but heard nothing back from him. Probably I need to check my gmail. I don't remember if I told him that I would use that one instead. I sure hope not. I would much rather that he send information to my Purdue account so long as I can receive the information. *Sigh* Crazy Purdue account. It's probably not even doing anything wrong. It's just that nobody can get my email right.

One thing I'm interested in doing is maybe doing a sign language class on Saturdays. The problem with this is that all of the adventures take place on Saturdays and I don't want to have to skip the adventures because I'm attempting to learn sign language which I can do at home. In fact, with that in mind, if I'm really all that interested, what I'll do is find myself a sign language book here in the library and teach myself. It shouldn't be a big deal. It seems like sign language should be more or less universal as well, so perhaps "American Sign Language" is approximately the same as "Latin Language of Signs."  So, for everyone back home, remind me that I am going to learn sign language... eventually!

Interesting thing to note, people here have equivalents back home. It's been rather interesting the people I've run into or at least look, and walk like people at home.

Last little bit of food for thought: if you're ever lacking in a de-stinker for your shoes, baking soda based deodorant on your feet and socks makes a very good substitute. Hasta pronto!

A Sense of Humor

January 30th, 2008

Mexico is not lacking a certain sense of humor. It is beginning to dawn on me that a friend of mine's comment that I'm "a little out there," might in fact true. While I always knew this in theory, the fact that I was in the US made me think that I wasn't all that out there. I just enjoyed things a little differently. Here it's been slightly more obvious that I stick out. It strikes me as rather funny that it doesn't matter where in the world I go, or how many people I'm in a room with, I may always stick out. The question is should I plan accordingly? I'm thinking no, but here's my reasons for wondering.

When I think about it, it doesn't make any sense. It's similar to examining the perspectives other countries hold for your own country. When you come right down to it, you just don't know. Why does one remember one person's name and not another's? Why amongst a room of 30+ people are some people singled out? Picked on? Given special attention? While it makes me laugh that I appear to be noticed, and it's quite a compliment, I am not quite sure what to do with the idea. I'm certainly not the most attractive in a room, nor the smartest. Aaaaaaaaaah, but I know the real reason... Maybe it's because I'm usually the tallest.

Back to being serious: take today for example. In Spanish class there was a shortage of the handouts so we were told to share amongst each other. I was sitting in the middle of two other students who had the handout and a student from across the room asked me to join them since they were a group without handouts. I was more than happy to join them, however, the student called me over by name and I felt really bad because I had no CLUE what his name was. Of the 2 students I joined, I only remembered one or their names because the teacher had had trouble with his nickname a few weeks ago. I suppose 50% is not all that bad; plus, I got lucky and the teacher called on the first student later on in the class so I more or less got his name down too. It was some version of Matthew, but I'm not sure if it was Matteas, Mateo, Matteos or just Matthew that had been Spandeutched (he is from Germany). It was quite pleasant working with them and I hope to work with them again. What does this amount to? Well, I'm glad they knew who I was even though I didn't know who they were at the time!

A similar thing happened in my ecology class with my group. We were just meeting one another for the first time and everyone in the group knew who I was BEFORE we introduced everyone to everyone else. I felt really silly having to ask who everyone was before continuing. While I've come to realize that individuality is what much of the US culture strives for, I hadn't yet realized that I had actually attained it.

Then of course there is the flip side of it. One of my teachers that I would have expected to remember who I was, didn't. He still has to look around the room to find me and ask several people "are you Maya" despite the fact that he has a picture in front of him before he can find me.

Through the last several weeks in fact there have been several occasions of people coming up to me and saying "hi Maya," and I don't even remember where I know them from much less what their names are. Sometimes, if I'm lucky I'll remember the face from somewhere which is at least something. I would prefer though, to remember a name.

Don't get me wrong, this does not in any way bother me. I can think of several reasons that he wouldn't remember me (he's as bad with names as I am, he doesn't want other students to think that he's singling me out, he just doesn't realize that my name is the same as the Indigenous people of Mexico *surprisingly few people do notice*, he hasn't actually looked at the info we've given him, he's crazy busy, etc).  It's nice to be slightly anonymous in at least one of my classes because I don't think it will be the case in most of my other classes.

The other observation that I've been seeing is that people at home have "equivalents" here at Tec. I can't even count the number of times, I'll be randomly looking at someone and think to myself, "oh, there goes Ari" or "Hey! I should go say hi to _______" or "oooooh, it's William, I should sneak up on him!" before I realize a split second later that there's no way that it's any of the above. I've even been "seeing" people from high school! I will grant you that I'm not entirely convinced that the girl I thought was from my high school is not the girl from my high school, but I don't remember her name in any event so I haven't yet asked her. I also haven't seen her since the first day I was here, so I'll just have to wonder about that one for a while. ;-)  

Well, that's enough for now. I have to download and start reading a bunch of lectures for various classes and then I'm going to head home for lunch. With any luck at all there will even be time for a siesta and homework before I have to come back to campus for class.

Advice from a dream.

January 27th, 2008

You may or may not be wondering why I have changed my site motto from "This is where I am, and this is where I'm going" to "When the dream reflects reality, you have to remember which one is real." The second day I was here, I had a dream where I told myself that phrase while I was trying to get out of a house of mirrors. It was told to me when I had to choose the correct panel of a three panel door to climb through based solely on what the panel looked like. If I opened any others, the vampires would be able to follow me from the dream world to reality. I woke up in the middle of the night and actually had the wherewithal to write it down the advice which may have been the smartest thing I've done since I've arrived. It has been surprisingly good advice. Recently, I've been having bad dreams at night. Or maybe "bad" dreams is pushing it a little. I've been having disappointing and sometimes terrifying in the way that reality can be terrifying. The dreams are very mixed up between my life at home and my life here. Last night there was even an element of Sweeny Todd (severed hand -- don't worry, it wasn't all that gross, I just didn't know what to do with it). I've been reflecting a lot of the problems that I have with people here (in reality) onto dreams about my family and William. It makes me very sad in the morning until I realize that it wasn't in fact supposed to be Ari or Sasha that didn't answer me when I spoke to them, and it wasn't William that didn't email me despite my repeated attempts to tell him my email and it wasn't my parents that missed all of the important meetings. It still is the cats that ignore me completely however; that dream actually is like reality. :-)

On Neanderthals and Taxi Drivers

January 26th, 2008

Here I am, with another week behind me and I still haven't finished an entry as completely as I would have liked. Every day, thoughts occur to me, usually more quickly than I can deal with and I end up forgetting all of the deep and interesting ideas that I had of for the day. Today I made a point of remembering at least two of them however, so I will talk a little about them here.

1) Were the Neanderthals more intelligent than homosapien sapien?

While I know that we generally do not think of them as such because they died out, it occurs to me that we don't actually know. I wonder if it was the ability of homosapien sapien to run and act by instinct that helped it survive. I was watching the series "A brief history of the world" by the Teaching Company today and the discussion was over the pre-classical period of history (basically the beginnings of human kind). The Neanderthals, as was fairly recently discovered, probably did not die out as completely as everyone thinks and probably bred with Homosapien Sapien before disappearing from the timeline of "known" history. The interesting thing that was pointed out in the discussion was the different position of women in the nomad societies as apposed to the agrarian societies. Because the women were the gathers in the hunter-gatherer deal, they brought more caloric value to the dinner table so to speak, than the males did. The women and men were supposedly, at least more or less on the same level of authority and women were often in positions of power. Agrarian societies on the other hand, required that the men stay home and do work on the farm, so taking away their ability to boast about the game that they had brought home. This was, by this account of the story, the decision that made the women inferior traditionally. The Neanderthals were hunter-gathers while Homosapien Sapiens were eventually farmers. The Neanderthals may have known more however. They could not catch small game very well, but were able to slowly but steadily take down large game because they had endurance. What if Neanderthals were in fact more intelligent. It often seems to me that "physical beauty" does not always walk hand in hand with intelligence. By every documentary I've seen about Neanderthals, they were not particularly "beautiful" by our standards today or any that I know of for the last several centuries. The comment that sticks out in my mind from the lecture was this one: "Maybe you have more Neanderthal blood in you than you think." It was good food for thought and I very much enjoyed the lecture.

Number 2 was more of an observation than a deep thought. I went out with some friends today and after spending a lot of the day wandering around a mall (not my favorite thing in the world - but it was more or less okay because I was spending time with friends) and watching a movie my friends and I decided to get a taxi on the way home. I felt a little bad because one of the girls wasn't feeling well and the other I had been frustrated with earlier due to indecision on EVERYBODYS' parts, not only hers. I shouldn't have taken it out on her, I know it now. At the time however I was feeling trapped into making a decision that I honestly had no reason to be taking part in. Later, after the movie, we went to Soriana and they stuck with me while I went around getting the ingredients that I wanted to make peppersteak for my host family. Anyway, back to the taxi. After some indecision, we all climbed into a taxi. I was uncomfortable with the fact that I was put in the front of the taxi, but it wasn't at all a big deal. Earlier, the two girls weren't planning on taking a taxi at all so I was minorly surprised. They had told me that I need to make sure to ask the driver to turn on his taxi-meter. I have thus far not had any problems with the taxi drivers and on the whole I have found them pleasant to talk to, and almost always helpful. They are remarkably patient with people who don't know where they're going and even with other drivers on the road. Earlier in the week, an impatient driver behind the taxi I was riding in bumped into the back of the taxi because the driver wasn't turning on a red light. Between my not knowing exactly where we were and the fact that he didn't know where we wanted to go he had ended up in the wrong lane and so tried to correct the matter. He ended up getting out of the car to see if any damage had been done to his car and managed to freak me and my friends out a little bit worrying if there was going to be a fight or something. It turned out there wasn't and he didn't even charge us extra at the end of the ride. Anyway, back to today's story, one of the girls was telling the driver over and over to turn on his taxi-meter. They taxi driver ignored the question, most likely due to the fact that he did not have a taxi meter in the car. The driver told us there was a 20 peso ($2) minimum no matter where we were going. After I had assured her that I would pay for it, the girl was talking to somebody in English (it wasn't clear if it was supposed to be me) about how all the taxi-drivers will rip you off because it should only be 10 pesos from the store to her house. At the time I basically kept my mouth shut and only told her not to worry about it because I was fine with paying the $2 minimum which is what it always costs to go from the Tec to my house at night anyway. When she left she gave me 10 pesos to cover the cost that it would have cost from the store to the house. I do appreciate her worrying about spending wisely and making sure that people are fair, however there are some things important enough to mess with. Furthermore, when you start to think about things a little more, it is quite easy to put into perspective just how silly we humans can be. 

While in my slightly frustrated and embarrassed sate, it didn't occur to me how I should reply or react to the situation. It was only after the taxi driver had taken me home (to my unclear directions) and only charged me the 20 peso minimum (nothing additional as is sometimes the case for large distances) that the reason for my frustration became clear. During the course of the day, the girl had bought 2 drinks neither of which she finished completely. Between these two drinks she most likely spent at least if not more than 20 pesos and yet barely hesitated to throw them away when she decided that she did not like them. That in itself is not a terribly huge deal. While I would have rather she finish all of her drinks and put the bottles in a recycling bin, it wouldn't have bothered me more than a few seconds before I forgot the drinks had even existed. It was the fact that we then turned around and she made a big deal out of paying 20 pesos to a taxi driver so we could arrived safely at home. This is this man's job. His livelihood is driving people around whether they are a daily taxi client, a lost princes, a rude American or an axe-murder. They don't know who the hell they drive around town and yet they risk running into everyone in order to make enough money to live on. When it comes right down to it, what a taxi driver makes in a day probably isn't even enough money to pay for the gasoline that it takes to drive around town. Why is $1 extra a big deal? The driver wasn't dishonest about it. He told us when we climbed in the car that there was a $2 minimum. If there was a problem with that we could have walked! We weren't ripped off, and certainly he was polite considering how rude we in the car were to him. I'm just glad that he most likely couldn't understand English well enough to understand what was being said.

After all of that, I'm not going to worry anymore about it. What's done is done, and taxi-drivers, friends, and I will all live most likely to a ripe old age that will hopefully bring more wisdom to all of us regarding what's important in life, and what isn't important at all. So, to the important things! I have a lot more to tell of course, but it's after midnight (and therefore no longer the 26th) so I will be going to bed. It's been a long day despite my best efforts to sleep the entire morning! Good night; with any luck I'll continue to update tomorrow. If I do not, then perhaps I will just fail to worry about it, because in the long run, it's not so terribly important. 

2 Weeks, 3 languages, lots of stuff...

January 20th, 2008

This afternoon I watched the movie Stardust again, and it occurs to me that as wonderful a fantasy storyline that it makes, why would anyone really every want to be a king? Furthermore, IF you want to be king, is there really all that much you could do to develop either an evil villain? Why are there so few stories about potential kings that just want to be a good king? Is it that the concept never existed? I suppose after thinking about this that it brings to mind the most famous king of all, King Arthur, who supposedly wanted to be a good king at least as the stories go. Even he however, didn't want to be king from the get-go. What is all this blathering about? Beats me... it was just something that occurred to me while I was watching a movie. Maybe it will actually develop later. It seemed like a good thing to write down at the time, so it's been placed here as a sort of temporary storage. 

This week has been an interesting one as I'm sure all of them will be. It's had its low points and high points. Going back to the beginning of the week, it's even a little difficult to know where to start. My birthday being this week, made things infinitely more interesting as well because everyone who knew about it made a relatively bigger deal out of it than I'm used to in any shape or form. Unfortunately, there's not a good amount of time that can be spent updating this website as much as I'd like to do it every day. I'll do a recap at the very least now however. I suppose the best part to start with would be classes as they were the majority of my week.

On Monday, classes began bright and early at 8:00am. This fact didn't bother me too much as my first class was German and I was really looking forward to seeing what my classes were going to be like. German went fairly smoothly and I enjoyed the teacher immensely. The most daunting part of the German class is how when it's not in German, it's in Spanish. While it's certainly challenging for the moment, I'm hoping that this will improve my overall my comprehension and ability to use both German and Spanish. There is a laboratory that goes with the class as well, which worries me a little because I need to be 26% of the way through it by the end of the month. This also means that I have to figure out how to "reserve" a spot in the lab. I made the mistake of not writing down the website where one makes reservations however, so I need to figure that out as soon as I can. On Thursday, my teacher, Rosa Nelly Nava brought me a calendar and a cake! I was fairly blown away by this because no teacher has ever brought a cake to class for my birthday. Even in high school usually the cake-bringing was up to a student. I intend on writing a thank you note for her later this evening so I can give it to her tomorrow morning. I am not sure if I can find any thank you cards or not. I thought I brought some with me, but I haven't yet been able to find them. The German class is a fairly small class and so it was in danger of being dropped because not enough people were signed up for it. Luckily, they decided that even though we were a couple people short of a full sized class, they weren't going to drop it. It was quite a relief!

My Spanish class is 3 days a week directly after my German class. The first day I didn't enjoy very much because I was working with a group that I seriously disliked. Actually, I was working with one girl that was very critical of me and I received the serious impression that she hated me for no good reason. By the end of the class we were supposed to have formed groups that we would be with until the end of the semester. Last minute I changed groups because I figured an entire semester with the girl would not be fun in the slightest. The two others that I found to work with seem nice enough although I still haven't had the chance to work with them at all. I was pleasantly surprised on Wednesday, that the "groups" we formed were solely for the purpose of getting homework should a day be missed and for main presentations. I worked with several other people and found the class to be much more enjoyable. The teacher, Alma Edith is wonderful. The worst part about her was that she told the entirety of the class that one of my favorite words isn't what we all think it is. ;-) The word is "Necesitar" which means "to need" but it means "to need in order to live" or on the same level of necessity as "living" not just "to need" as in to need to do something. Since she told us that, I've been fighting the instinct to use it every other sentence. The real phrase in Spanish is "tener que..." which means to have to do something. Oh well, it's been a great opportunity to learn something new. I haven't had anyone tell me the little details since I was in high school Spanish. Truth be told, I suspect that my Spanish skills as far as grammar goes was better back in high school than it is now. This will soon be remedied.

My Latin American history class is taught by a crazy-cool guy who has better English vocabulary than the majority of English speakers.

Ouch!

January 12th, 2008

So as many of you already know, I twisted my ankle the second day I was here. That in itself was pretty stupid of me. I knew the sidewalks were bad, I should have been looking where I was going. Well, then I did the really really stupid thing yesterday and twisted my OTHER ankle. The bad part was that I was in fact looking where I was going. I looked at the crack that I fell on, before I fell on it! It's been a little bit rough getting around today. In general I try not to hold still to long. I've found that the longer I sit, the more swollen my ankles get. If I'm moving around, it's not bad and both ankles loosen up the more I use them.

Have no fear! This ankle problem happens to work out perfectly. The average height around here is about 4 feet tall. I'm two feet shorter now! (groans and applause please :-D)

Looking on the bright side, with my ankles out of commission I've had a lot of quality time to talk to the taxi drivers these last couple days. They all are really helpful! They love talking to you about this and that and what's nice to see in town. On my way home today I had a chance to talk with one who recommended a whole slew of things to do in town... parks to visit, mountains to see, trails to try. Here's a short list:

1) Parke Chipinque
2) Auhuasteca
3) Santiago Nuevo Leon
4) Quintas
5) Cola de Caballo
 

Estoy emocionante (I'm excited)! There were more, but I wrote them on my hand and some of them have faded already. I really need to start taking paper with me! This particular taxi ride was after my excursions with Mandi, Jenifa and a bunch of other folks. (See below regarding Parque Fundedora) Hmmm, I'm a little behind I suppose, I need to explain who Jenifa is!

Jenifa is my roommate. I didn't know I was going to have a roommate until the evening that I arrived but so far it has worked out well. She is from Hong Kong, China. As of the day she got here, she didn't know any Spanish, but she is learning very quickly now. I've been doing some translating for the last couple days, but as of yesterday, I decided that I needed to stop translating so much because it was difficult to get into the swing of speaking Spanish while I was constantly switching back and forth. Anyway, she's putting together sentences and common phrases now, so I think it will be fun once she starts getting the hang of it. Talk about a fast learner! Speaking of which, some of the pictures on the picture page are hers. My camera has some issues with lighting so I'm borrowing pictures for late night events.

Today, I went with a group of people to the Parque Fundedora del Rio Santa Lucia. The people in the group were Laura, Janet, Stephano, Mandi, Jenifa, Jamie, Fred, Jesse, Jordan, and a girl from France who's name I can barely pronounce much less remember with any clarity. We all had a blast. I started to wear out after a while. Most of the time I felt like people were rushing through the park. I really need to work on maybe doing some of these activities alone, or just with Mandi or Janet because otherwise as a group, people are always insisting on moving very fast! Anyway the park was gorgeous! There are new pictures on the pictures page of some of the ones that I have. There was some agreement that pictures will be shared, so there are of course more to come that I don't have yet. It had a large man made river through a park. There were all sorts of waterfalls and a display of "2,501 migrantes." The artist believed it "to remind us that knowledge between humans allows us to live with dignity each day." It was quite an amazing display. While I did not examine every statue there, it was said that every one of the statues were different.

While we were in the park it occurred to me where all the American stereotypes come from. The group was told to not touch, don't get too close, don't walk on the thing that is obviously not for walking on... you would think that we would get the picture. I didn't quite know what to do with all of this. At the time, I thought, this is terrible. Look what we as Americans give ourselves leeway to do. Someone made a beautiful peace of art and we think we can get closer than anyone else. Even if we don't touch the art like the sign says, we still have to be close enough that one wrong step could be a disaster. Or perhaps we have to balance on the only stretch of concrete over open water when there is a perfectly good sidewalk. Upon reflection, I think it's this ability to break rules - or at least stretch rules - that makes Americans so likely to succeed. Americans don't like rules. Although we make them, we are so likely to try to find the boundaries of our own limitations that there is no choice but for those boundaries to stretch and change. It is one of the things that gives me some hope about the United States. I think we are able to change. Not only that, I think we can be the role model we once were, if we ever return to focusing on improving ourselves instead of getting our fingers in every other country's business.

So it's not even the second week and here I am already having thoughts about politics and the like. This reminds me, I have been trying to get around to working on the ESC Website. So far I've only looked at it once this week, and I don't think I've yet updated it on the web. Perhaps that is something I can work on tomorrow.

As part of the plan tomorrow I will be attending church with my host family. I specifically asked to attend with them so that I can see what the experience was like. Who knows, I may be catholic when I get back home! Somehow I doubt it, but the experience is worth at least one try. I think I will have to follow a good friend of mine's advice on Churches however: When everyone stands, stand; when everyone sits, sit; when everyone eats or drinks, eat or drink; when everyone sings, move your lips so it looks like you're singing.

With that, I believe I will call it an evening. It's been quite a week so far and only more excitement is expected in the coming months ahead! 

 

Welcome to Mexico!

January 8th, 2008

Well, where to start... there's been so much happening, so many observations that came to mind and quickly disappeared again. Some of them I remember however and will share with you here.

On the first air plane I spent most of the ride in a complete daze. Somewhere in my mind I did not believe that I was actually going to Mexico. However, I did have the opportunity to relax on the flight that way. I remember looking at the clouds out the window; they covered everything completely. From the airplane after going though the cloud-cover, it looked like they were solid enough to walk on. A completely different land, that nobody could see but was perfectly capable of sustaining life! I thought a lot about the physics of airplanes and how it was remarkable that mankind actually figured out how to do one of the most recurrent dreams in history. I was sitting in the middle of a bunch of variously aged businessmen who were on their way to Dallas for a training session. It was a strikingly comfortable situation for me because they had some interesting senses of humor which resembled engineering humor. At least the older ones did... the youngest of the bunch (lives in Carmel, isn't especially fond of traveling constantly for business or otherwise, late 20's, married, 3 kids - youngest age 2, used to have a mowing company and knew exactly what Dad goes through with his employee frustrations) was really quite for the entire flight. Seriously (as in that wasn't sarcasm). The plane touched down in Dallas and the gate that we were supposed to get off of, was occupied for a good half an hour after landing. At that point, he asked me if he could use a pencil to work on the sudokus in the complimentary "AmericanWay" magazine which we had both thoroughly examined at different times during the 2 and 1/2 hour flight. We ended up talking instead about our various situations. He said that in retrospect he would have done some study abroad when he was in college while he had still had time. It was a nice conversation and took up the time while everyone was waiting nervously for the plane to go where it needed to. He talked about the lawn mowing business that he had while he was a teenager and his current family. He didn't look too pleased. I don't know if this displeasure was was due to the fact that he was traveling again or perhaps due to the fact that he is slightly claustrophobic or because he didn't like where he ended up career-wise. Whatever it was, it made me realize that this really is the best time in my life for this experience. I have as much support as I may ever have between my family and friends. Thank you everybody for making sure I went through with this trip. No matter how it turns out (so far it has been some combination of exiting and emotional) I know I will learn a lot!

After catching my next flight, the lack of sleep from the previous night caught up with me. I concked out for the rest of the United States. I woke up just before the Rio Grande showed up. From the air, Mexico doesn't look any different. I attempted to get a picture of it, but there was some haze that prevented me from taking any decent pictures of it. When I get to the picture posting on this website I'll post it too. What really surprised me was how there were no mountains immediately. When they did show up it was spectacular. One minute there was a pancake-like plain. The next there were mountains that did a wonderful job of imitating the clouds around it! 

Well, I need to head to sleep, so I will update again as soon as I can. I love  you guys. Talk to you soon!

Merry Christmas!

December 25th, 2007

Merry Christmas everyone! As you probably know, in my family the holidays are a fairly informal occasion where sometimes we get gifts for one another but more often we get our own presents and put someone else's name on it as the person giving the present. For example, this website I could say is my present from William. It's computer related and a fun, so therefore reflects on his interests as well as being something I needed or wanted.

This home page will have a journal that others can read at their leisure. Other pages for upcoming events, information about Mexico, information for GEARE and pictures will be linked on the left navigation bar. I may ask questions or take surveys for the international design project in which I'll be taking part. If I have any of these questions they will appear on the right hand side with my email address. Other news or questions will also be on the right side of this page so please, I'd love to hear from you, email me and let me know what you think! If I can figure out how to use PHP in the next few days

---

First things first, I'd like to make a list of things that I'm planning on doing while I'm in Mexico. One of the first things that I'm going to do make a list of things that I'd like to do while I'm there.

    1) Visit butterfly caves

    2) Mayan ruins! Lots and lots of ruins!

    3) (Re)Learn salsa

    4) Go to some festivals!

This is all that I have for the moment. I'm debating whether I should take a rock climbing class with Janet and then be able to go hang out with her on her great adventures through the mountains. Only problem with that is I'm not particularly athletic so that's most likely not going to happen. I'll just go hiking and skip the rock climbing.

 

 

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