You’d expect to hear controversial topics in uni; it’s probably one of the earliest times people get to really indulge in and expand their worldview.  Every now and then, though, someone says something that makes you seriously consider if controversy is just a cover for some very ill-placed comments.

One older lady was discussing the 9/11 attacks on the WTC with another shuttle passenger.  The first woman was explaining that there was a large sum of gold in the underground bank of the WTC.  Apparently, the vaulted gold had to be opened by 6 representatives of different countries, though simultaneous key turns.  The woman went on to loudly explain that the 9/11 attacks and the following war in Iraq, as well as the almost-paranoid lookout for terrorism from without and within, were coverups for the US government to covertly steal this gold.

This argument seems very…farfetched simply by the scope of the problems it caused compared to the goal of prossessing gold (that probably has less value than what conflicts it ended up causing).  I would usually be able to at least agree that the possibility of this argument might be valid, since the tactics of the US government aren’t particularly ones that I could defend as innocuous.  But the extreme tone and volume of the woman’s voice made me totally disregard the right of the woman’s opinion to exist.  The manner in which the idea was stated did nbot involve the people who died at the WTC; this is probably what bothered me the most about what the woman said.  So many people died needlessly and cruelly but all the woman talked about was how it affected the government and our economy.  There are some aspects to a subject that people should not fail to mention, at least in passing, when talking so passionately on the events.  Failing to do so made the woman who was talkign more of a demagogue than any sort of expert.

Someone call the waaaahh-mbulance!

(Photo Link)

This point of the WTC attacks being a carefully orchestrated plot by the government to take gold was not the main point of this woman’s argument.  It was actually a comparison to a more reasonable discussion about the local (Baltimore) corporate ethics of Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions.  How can a very reasonable argument be supported by a theory based entirely on circumstantial possibility?

In order for Johns Hopkins to expand their already-enormous hold in the Baltimore Metropolitan area, the corporate arm of the institution is buying off residential homes in the area.  The bought properties in East Baltimore are held either by a landlord, commonly the case in the area, or by the residing homeowner.  The owner of the property are supposed to be compensated for the sale.  This is not as much of a problem if the owner is also the resident, but often times the resident sublets the living quarters from the landlord.  In this case, the landlord is paid for sale of the property and the residents usually have 60 days to vacate, without any benefit of compensation for unexpected loss of housing.

The area itself is not economically disadvantaged so the compensation for the local owners may seem proportionate to people in the area.  The woman on the bus estimated the compensation for single properties to be about $160 K.  In terms of the current market in the Baltimore/ Washington DC area , $160K will not buy very much.  The price itself is a very cheap buy for a business venture by a large global corporation made to single individuals.

Where will these people live after moving from their current homes?  Today, gas prices are making long-distance commutes unfavourable.  A lot of displaced people can’t find better or eqal jobs elsewhere or can’t afford the housing where such jobs do exist.

Those people!

(Photo Link)

The expansion of Johns Hopkins, a visible entity in the area, makes a lot of people fear the wiping out of the culture in East Baltimore.  There is a meeting of many heritages and communities there from Greeks to Hispanic and African American populations.  What will happen to these small niches once parking garages and medical management facilities replace the people?

(JHU Newsletter)

If its wasn’t for the fact that I live and work in this city, I would have shrugged off the woman’s reflection of JH business practices as potentially corrupted.  Being liberal is a great thing!  Liberals are seen as more vant garde and therefore more openminded about people and possibilites.  Of course, there is a way for too much of a good thing; to be so openminded that you are easily suggestible to grandiose theories is not good.  Further, having the inability to think logically about issues rather than running on circumstances itself defeats the purpose of liberal thinking as individual intellect.  It’s possible to have a perfectly good (or not) opinion but disengage your audience because of the way you present your ideas.

Almost everyone I know instant messages.  In high school, the IM community really took off — it was the newest thing for everyone to keep talking.  These people and the students I go to university with now mostly have accounts on AIM (America Online Messaging).

But staying in contact with people outside of school usually requires MSN.  It’s pretty predictable since a lot of people who aren’t in school with me are or were recently international.  I can’t really complain much about AIM: the service doesn’t cut off/ dump me from the server and there are a lot of options on visibility.  The worst thing has got to be the AIM 6 (IM client), which is slow to load and generally annoys me with a ton of bright colours and obstruction of other running programs.  Maybe my computer is just slow but it reacts much better to the MSN client, which is easier on the eyes.  However, MSN is less customizable in terms of usability and frequently breaks connection.

To compromise, I run other IM platforms to handle all my IMs at once — I usually run MSN anyways since it’s not as much of a hassle.  Meebo is an especially useful web IM that allows me to access all my accounts.  It’s nice when the only computer that’s available at work or school doesn’t have IM installed in it!

Somewhere between texting, IMing, blogging, and forum-participating, there’s time to talk to people with my voice…

As a student, I eat out a lot more than I’ve had to before.  Being Asian, that pretty much means eating out used to be a rare and puzzling event, much like going to the beach in the middle of the winter.  I knew other people did it, but me?  Eat food prepared by people who aren’t related to me?  Woah….

So it’s only natural that when I finally got the chance, I am eager to sample any kind of food I see: italian, chinese, brazilian, spanish, west african, and a bunch of other food that I’m pretty sure commercial business has americanised.  Case in point: chinese fortune cookies; they were invented in San Francisco.  It’s one of those things about food in America: it comes in great variety and great quantity.  But you’ll be damned before the food you order is true to it’s culture of origin.  Generally, I’ll eat most things that are no longer alive (sushi = dead animals + rice + vegetables) and most people wouldn’t have as pets (dogs, frogs, etc.)

It’s the normal food I have trouble with.  I mean, it’s normal to struggle with calamari (Japan) or hot pepper tapas (Spain).  However, it’s not okay to mess up eating a sub or pizza.  It’s the worst because when we go to these American food restaurants, no one is particularly paying attention to the food.  They want to talk to you.  I’m never quite that graceful when people are watching…

It’s always that way though.  First of all, my mouth is on the small side so a bite for me is probably a half a bite for the average sized person.  Places where the food is huge like Chipotle really test my sanity.  So either, I eat really really fast and end up choking a little somewhere in the middle or I take half an hour to eat.

Tempting Torture Device

Secondly, people insist on talking while we’re eating.  While I’m concentrating on not choking and not eating too fast and not too slow, I have to entertain people.  Wonderful!  Because I love my friends so much, I abandon my quest for graceful eating habits to talk to them.  This makes whever I’m eating start to crumble in my hands.  First it’s a little piece of lettuce.  Then another.  Ten a tomato, then a hunk of meat.  And finally, chunk of bread are just falling out.  The end result is a holey food piece that’s whole somewhere between my hands and the table.

And then I have to try to eat that!  If I don’t the person very well, any attempt to not look like a fool will end right —> here.  Can they tell I’m not really listening?  That I’m more concerned about the corner of cheese that is falling –oh god! — on my lap and the tomato juice that’s leaking on the table?  Do they see through the delicateness with which I’m dabbing my lips?  Is there something on my mouth?

And then there are the people who tell me I’m eating too slow.  Usually these are the same people I don’t get nervous about eating around.  I almost want to tell them that it’s not that “I’m slow”.  I’m eating slow because they’re not special.  Yeah, that’s right; you just got served.

And not just another order of artery clogging cheese fries.

/*  It’s really hard to mess up with cheese fries.  Believe me, I was even amazed.  Alas, I am not a fan of their chemical affects to my body.  I will settle for Checkers regular fries. Yum.*/

I envy people who nonchalantly eat the goo left on their hands and somehow get the junk off the table that was only there a second ago.  It’s magic, I swear.

Dear Roissy,

Google was helpful in finally taking the veil off your mysterious appearance, specifically BigHead DC.  Generally, I’m skeptical of any self-proclaimed “gossip site” but this is a photo you’d posted before — with your face cropped out.  I’d say you’re not bad looking so there was no need to hide yourself away.  The only reason it’s not a particularly great picture is because you’re not smiling (I’ve been there…).

The comments seem to be a lot of irate women.  There don’t seem to be that many angry female commenters on your blog, though, so it’s likely these people are either (a) all one person pretending to be many or (b) too lazy/ineffective to comment.  You shouldn’t take lazy or ineffective people very seriously (but then, you don’t take ANY woman seriously).

There’s a degree of mystery you can keep before eliciting attention you don’t want from readers.  This is probably why the released photo became more like an expose that ran as fodder for a bitter mob, rather than a response echoing “Oh, he looks normal and non-evil…eh…”

Hoping this doesn’t break the bad behaviour requirement,

Paperdreamer

I ride the university shuttle on most days but today I saw something a little strange.  A woman with three small children climbed on board.  This in itself is abnormal since most people using the shuttle are students or hospital employees, going to and from school and work.  Two of the children were maybe 2 or 3 years old, running on tiny little feet around the woman.  The third child an infant in a baby “backpack” on the woman’s back.  I’ve seen these backpacks before on hot days when parents just can’t carry/control their squirmy babies.  A loty of these times, the baby is carried so his/her body rests on the parent’s stomache, though.

Whenever I see these backpacks, I feel a little squeamish.  There’s just so many things that could go wrong!  There is a reason they tell people to watch their back!

Anyways, this lady gets on the bus with the two toddlers, baby still strapped to her back.  Then the woman sits down with the baby strapped to her back for the whole ride!  You remember the days when you used to ride the cheesewagon to grade school?  And you’d take your backpack off before sitting down or you’d get squished in between the seat in front of you and your backpack?

/* I was the kid who sat with it still on my back.  It was so effing heavy, I was afraid I’d increase my chances of hip displacement the more times I had to shift its weight on me.  I’m not that tall either so I had significantly less trouble fitting myself comfortably.  It sort of pissed off the people who sat with me though. */

Don’t lean back…

This woman was probably a kid like me who NEVER took the freaking backpack off.  Which would explain why the poor infant had her head turned sideways during the 20 minute shuttle, her limbs spread out in the plane of the seat back.  The whole time, I was praying that the bus would not make sudden stops and that the woman wouldn’t accidentally squish the baby.  And I kept staring at the lady!  But then I started worrying that I might be jinxing it.  Then I told myself to stop obsessing and closed my eyes for a little bit.  But then I felt bad and started feeling all screamy in my head because my thoughts always sabotage me like this.  AHHHHHHHHHH!

I felt better than I do after a hard exam when the woman left.  I respond to panic this way sometimes.  Another reason why I cannot join the Army.  Can you imagine me with a huge gun?  It defies logic, like going up the down escalator.  Obviously I do not support the NRA.

The NRA as ingrained in my mind.

(Photo Link)

Facebook is maligned by almost everyone who opens their mouth to say something about it.  In some ways, I’d have to agree with them: it’s closed a lot of human contact that used to create our social relations.  But in some ways, I can’t quite be as intense as others in the denouncement of Facebook.  It gets groups of people together, at least virtually, who are already part of a community — schools, workplaces, and global locations.  It’s very big at my own university, where students don’t get out that much!  We need a little push sometimes.

I registered for Facebook in July 2005, the summer before entering undergrad. A high school friend told me about the site, which was still just a way for uni students to network then. No old people or high schoolers until later in 2005! I wasn’t sure exactly what to do with Facebook, other than to use it as a substitute for texting high school friends who didn’t follow me to university (I didn’t have texting on my phone plan then). I wasn’t even that into computers or the internet before uni. I bought my first computer from the school in July. So before that, I had been subsisting on family desktops and dial-up speeds as high as 56 kbits/sec!

When I joined Facebook, I joined a crapload of groups that “expressed” me. What I didn’t understand was that each of these groups also “expressed” around 75% of the other 2,000 or so other schoolmates also on Facebook. To this day, I am unable to stop being in a lot of groups because “Oh, it isn’t like it’s not true. I do like spicy foods like all most other people who aren’t into bland edible-rock-coloured-globs with the consistency of pea soup.” I’ve been in the group Sudoku Addicts for just under 3 years now. I never check the group page.

It’s the same thing with friending people. And since when is “friending” a word? It’s like a bastardised version of the correct grammar, Zuckerberg style. When I used to only meet people in person, I would say I “befriended” them. And now I have all these friends I never talk to and never really met. More than that, I am now friends with a bunch of people I cannot stand in real life for more than a few minutes at a time. I am friended for being friends with someone else or part of a group I only identify with on an irregular basis. I friend people when I meet them a few times and never converse with them ever again. I am friended by people who don’t go to my school and have otherwise never had contact with.

The problem of privacy got more urgent when the creators decided to open Facebook to the public.  Then, not was it possible to be suggestively messaged by people my own age, it became possible to be virtually leered at by 40 year old people and jailbait still in high school.  The jailbait didn’t even flatter me, since none of them were hot anyways.  Otherwise, it would’ve at least been a confidence booster!

I’m a little concerned about my own privacy in Facebook, although this blog will reveal my online presence to anyone who knows me personally.  They have measures to protect your privacy but everyone in groups and pages can see you exist (there)!  Sometimes I only want some people to know my online whereabouts and Facebook has yet to perfect such an invisibility system.  In addition to googling people in question, I have even turned to facebooking them — it’s not stalking if you’re checking their legitimacy.  Even if I can only confirm their network and name, it’s a good search option.  In fact, I facebooked Roissy and found a bunch of people from his blog!

/*Yes, that is an IOI*/

He seems pretty paranoid about revealing his identity but with this lax security around his account and friends list, I would think he is only being a very sly PUA –> the way a piece of string interests a cat who cannot reach it.  It’s too bad; I wanted to “friend” him…

I love demotivators! I made my own downer parody of the popular Motivation posters:

You can make your own at Despair.com

No doubt there are at least a few fans of Tommy V2 reading this blog. He definitely railed against facebook in one of his articles, “Facebook is the End of Humanity“. But Facebook is just too addictive not to be a part of, no matter how much we all realize it to be an opposer of normal social interaction (you know…between people in the real world). For those people who feel conflicted emotions between agreeing with the comedic intellect of Tommy V2 –like a blind lemming before its untimely death from casual acceptance of suicidal acts — and love of Facebook, there is the Facebook page for fans of Tommy V2. You have to be registered on Facebook to join. Be an unapologetic hypocrite like Tom today!

I love my computer.  This is a known fact to most people who have seen my already hugemongous backpack during the school year; I can’t help packing an extra 6 pounds of laptop and 3 pounds of power adapter in there!  It’s to the point where I consider it weight lifting.

Well, ot is probably more accurate to say I love the internet, not the computer.  But non-web computer softwares are okay too.  I mean, I could survive without my connection to the rest of the world.  I could just go other stuff like sit in the sun.  But then, I could go live as a hermit on a mountain.  On days when I don’t have the internet, that’s what I feel like!

On Sunday, I my computer was attacked by a backdoor Trojan.  This would normally not be a non-issue.  I’m used to slow computers (although now it annoys me to no end) so I have more patience than would normally be practical.  The problem is that this attack was sabotaging my attempts to enter WordPress and search on Google.  This is unacceptable!  I was forced to take it to IT services at school on Monday, where they’re supposed to fix this nonsense for me.  I was preparing myself for the 3 day fast from my laptop — it takes 3 days max (maximum times in business means they will take that long, don’t be such a freaking pansy) to do all the stuff.  They actually returned my laptop to me yesterday, after just 33 hours of examination.  I seriously had withdrawal during that time frame!  I kept wanting to check email and write something…oh, it got bad.

So I get my laptop back, expecting it to be all better.  But then WTF!  There are apparently 10 viruses, not 1.  Therefore, the tech could not fix the problem.  He told me that I need to reimage my laptop!  So I need to back up all my files first (7.52 GB of needed files) before complying with his suggestion.  This has happened 5 times already; I was planning on it not happening again.  And saving that much information is really complicated as I don’t have an external hard drive or a lot of USB flash drives.  So I figure I need 11 or 12 CD-R’s to back up all this stuff (again).  For some reason, the CD’s I made to backup data in the past is not running properly anymore.  CD’s are funny like that.  Haha….crap.

At this rate, I would say I could only be reliably online or on my laptop around this weekend.  I wonder if I;ll make it without the Vicodin on this one…

Why would someone create this plague?  How much of a misanthrope do you have to be to make something that attacks random people for no reason?  Maybe whoever made it hates life.  If so, don’t take it out on me!  Maybe they hate someone (eg “girlfriend” who went on a pity date with them) and are dumping anger on the world.  What an effing loser.