ugh, i’ve removed 2 blog posts in the last 2 days: 1 new one and 1 old one.  thanks to last month’s post debacle, this blog is as self-conscious as i was at my first middle school dance.  friends, family, advisors, former students, and strangers from the interwebs all stop by; i’ve realized that something has gone slightly askew when i worry not that people will ignore my blog, but that they’ll read it instead.

these blogs are tricky froggies.  any protestations for privacy by bloggers are, by the nature of blog publication, utterly ridiculous.  indeed, a popular blog will show a little leg: a slightly salacious post here, perhaps some breaking gadget news there (think of what randy hearst could have done!)  if you didn’t have anything interesting to say, why would anyone care to listen?

then again, i could take the high road: instead of spewing ‘people’ or ‘nat. inquirer’ (both of which i can’t stop reading cover-to-cover while at line at marketbasket each week), i could channel the new york times, and cnn and their offbeat news to a lesser extent.  from now on, posts of real substance!  deep thoughts! [right, now my posts won't be self-conscious at all ... ]  ack, i’m doing it again, by making snide remarks at myself.  time to stop!

i’ve been meaning to post some photos i took over the winter break.  they’re mostly of old friends with various BACs, with some pleasing still lives mixed in.

i really like these photos.  they remind me of two things: 1) i need to move back to NYC post-haste, before all my friends make their fortunes and leave; 2) i need to find better-looking friends to photograph.  [just kidding of course - i'm sure none of my friends will get rich.]

this post’s title (and my thirst to write something other than perl today) have also inspired me to write my first haiku since ms. gershon’s 1st grade class.

camera shutters

i trap the swift, unseen light

old live my still friends 

finally, a new friend:

and lastly, in spite of my own elevated BAC, i took another still life that i’m very happy with:

more photos from trips out with friends those nights live here.

lately, my research projects have begun to swell in terms of quantity, load (and hopefully importance.)  they sit on my head and threaten my cherished air supply, much in the way the obese and hirsute kazakh producer azamat attempts to suffocate borat with his ass cheeks.

nevertheless, i allocated zero of yesterday to getting any research done.  instead, sean, myself, and an unnamed professor in the alm lab devoted most of our day to solving word puzzles.  yesterday, mit’s annual mystery hunt commenced.
it’s ridiculous – below is one of the first puzzles; it’s considered an easy one:

Winning is Everything

Forget those philosophers who claim it’s all about how you play the game. It’s all about winning! At least most of these people agree with me.

“The jay of winning is pot os tramatic as the hosses were, because E experted us to win.”

“Win ons far Che Hipper.”

“Ove shiuld always pray tairly when Ono has tre winning yards.”

“Winning is only halo of is. Having fen is the other Ralf.”

“Don’t tight a bottle if you don’t Gein anything by winning.”

“Yon can’t foke quality Amy Mora than you can fane a good seal.”

“The Kay to winning is noise Unser stress.”

“Winning wastes gold.”

“The bag secret to winning erections is to get mare votes than your opponent.”

“Couching in basy. Winning os the hand pert.”

That took the three of us three hours to solve.  (It’s actually not that bad – but we completely “over-thought” the problem.)  Here’s another “first-rounder”:

Team Dynamics

“Who’s on the Hunt teams this year?”

“Well, on one team there’s

UPERMRIDNITEBTMAECTRESTMANAOMGREELANTN
8 9 6 7 7 4 12 = 5

and on another, you’ll find

ERORALESHELISAHRODTAOISTEMISTYHEDONYUEREB
4 8 6 9 6 7 5 8 6 = 4

and of course we have

AAHAMNAHLOESTJEHRRDECAIAMULEAU
7 4 3 6 6 8 6 4 = 5

and don’t forget

HAARSPRSTENPELEYMCTNEBIONCLATNGACIAPET
5 11 7 9 7 7 6 5 = 5

and say, what about

NYTAMANYCHARELEHITMLECLEARYARFECHDGARADSCHARMADR
6 6 10 9 8 9 8 10 = 3

and there’s always

AGARNPICEHAMTONMCRDYBILLPPARERNHGSOMNGRENA
5 7 6 8 7 7 6 4 5 4 6 = 1

and I can’t leave out

NICEDRELFCARMATONJOHYAKRALPTIEPULIEHRISOPH
6 7 7 4 10 5 5 6 11 = 6

and rounding out the list is

MRENOSEANJOEAUDECYBTHOPERHYLLSBESNALLO
6 8 4 5 6 9 7 6 3 3 = 4

Yup, those are the teams. Pretty neat, huh?”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t catch that. Say that again?”

this isn’t mental masturbation – it’s mental sadism.  these types of stumpers are the worst: half the riddle is just trying to figure out what the question is.  in total, several dozen of these types of puzzles are distributed to about 40 teams at mit.  i hear there are something like 1200 people participating this year (most of whom take it quite seriously).
we dropped out after the first round.

which is probably for the best – the winning team’s prize: construction of the next year’s hunt.

[solutions will be posted monday, after the hunt ends.]

i suppose i’m glad that i’m getting the most out of this dour new england weather.  (seems god got lazy today; she stained everything with that gray muck you get when you mix all your paints into an sludgy gumbo.)

see, thanks to a confluence of long-gestating feelings and some more immediate turns of events, i’ve been wading through a thick molasses-funk lately.  i suspect it’s my bi-annual quarter-life crisis.

i won’t subject this blog to a laundry list of my problems (how tacky).  instead, i thought i’d make a note here about how strangely positive this whole experience has been.

for instance, i’ve noticed that when i’m down … well, i start to notice things more.  rod stewart’s dirge for unrequited love heard while food-shopping at market-basket – i actually catch myself feeling bad for the guy. the protagonist’s anguished thoughts in the ray bradbury novel i’m reading – i dont’ sympathize with them: i empathize.  and even those gray skies outside – i’m not ignoring them anymore: i’m absorbing them, letting them sink in.

in short, i’ve just now arrived at the conclusion that i’m sure all those brooding philosophers reached centuries ago: you get more out of life when you feel like crap.  isn’t happiness intoxicating, inspiring obliviousness to what goes on around myself?  whereas sadness heightens my senses, making me acutely aware of anything grief-compounding.  perhaps even my usage of language bears out this personal conclusion – i’d opine that it’s more natural to say: “i feel sad / i am happy” than “i am sad / i feel happy.”   i don’t so much feel happiness, as i acquire and become it.   sadness, on the other hand, i can’t help but perceive.

[hurm, jotting all those thoughts down makes me feel better.  which i guess, i can conclude is a bad thing.]

i thought i’d share some photos of our neighborhood, before i go to sleep.  they were taken quite recently, thanks to the conveniently balmy weather bestowed upon the northeast by the inconvenient truth.  (usually, i find it impossible to take pictures outdoors during the winter, as i need to feel my fingers to use my camera.)

we live near a public pool; the kids love it during the summer.

there’s an old portuguese bakery behind our block.  each evening, the breeze carries the rising aroma of tomorrow’s bread across our driveway.

about two blocks away are the freight train tracks.  invisible freight cars rumble by late at night; i often forget those tracks are there, and instead think evening thunderstorms have arrived.

the local portuguese fishmarket, which surprised us with sashimi-grade fish the first time we stepped inside.  the fishmonger told us that the large japanese populations at nearby universities help keep the store in the black.

across the street from the fish store is the poultry market.  its iconic sign is like a universal waypoint in cambridge.  cab drivers who don’t know my street always head off in the right direction when i tell them, “i live near the fresh killed live poultry place.”

we live on the border of a city called somerville.  the part of the city we live near is mostly industrial, but still retains a sense of humor.

taken the same day as the other photos, this picture doesn’t remind me of any stories.  i just thought it was pretty.

after an extremely unpleasant hiatus, my blog is back online.  that hiatus witnessed my very first anxiety attack, which surprisingly, bore many similarities to falling in love for the first time.  prior to both experiences, i had read and heard stories about them, so i knew they were possible.  at times, i even felt emotional cues leading me to think i had perhaps enjoyed my inaugural experiences of these events.  but i’ve recently learned that – like first love – the crushing emotional load accompanying your first anxiety attack makes it very clear when its happening.

this latest round of emotional enlightenment was triggered by the descent of three christmas miracles upon my blog two weeks ago:

1)  google’s miraculous ability to index + cache a blog post within hours of its write-up

2)  newspapers’ miraculous willingness to cite blogs as sources.

3)  google’s miraculous stubbornness to update its search results, even after websites are taken offline and buried under 6 feet of 404-error dirt.

i guess in all fairness, there was a fourth miracle: my own abject stupidity, reflected in the posting of the subject matter motivating miracles 1-3.

given the wreck i was about a week ago, i’m quite surprised that i’m even putting this blog back up at all.  i hadn’t realized how reliant i had grown upon it.

in any case, here’s to hoping that google doesn’t decide to resurrect search results for deleted blog posts, just because a blog has come back online.  as long as that nightmare doesn’t transpire, i’d like to think this experience proves, “whatever doesn’t kill you makes for a good story after the whole mess blows over.”

i’ll be heading home shortly; i thought i’d post some photos from the last time i was in new york.  i’m really proud of many of them, given that i shot them with a 35mm fixed lens.  i’ve grown spoiled by having a zoom lens over the past year.

some still lives:

  

new york also some great graffitti: 

and finally the architecture:

here’s where i really miss having a wide-angle lens though, as this image would have been great at 18mm:

i’ve deleted the original content of this post for two reasons.

1) bringing more attention to this matter is counter-productive; i’ve realized added publicity benefits neither my institution nor the faculty involved.

2) some of the faculty involved have been unable to defend themselves publicly so far. it’s unfair to them that attention is drawn to only one side of the story.

the purpose of this blog was for me to record the more interesting events that occur during my day-to-day life. i enjoy knowing that because this journal is published online, my friends and family can share in some of these events. it is expressly not the intention of this blog, however, for these postings to themselves become experiences for me to recount.

me: i got my grade in microbiology today.  i didn’t do as well as i had hoped – i got an A-.

girlfriend: HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!

me: [horrified] that’s it, i’m playing dead again.

[note: when you ride in the grad-school-grade-inflation-balloon, an A- is like getting a B.]

what’s worse, being an overachieving grade snob or engaging in a little schadenfreude?  who’s got the moral high-ground tonight?

i’ve been meaning to post this photo for a couple of days now.  it’s of a card my students gave me during our last office hours.

i must say, i don’t think there’s ever been a more touching spider-man thank you card.  i’ve considered TA’ing 181 to easily be the most fulfilling thing i’ve done all semester; call me sappy, or even maple syrupy, but impacting the education of extraordinarily bright + motivated kids is hard to not find satisfying.

knowing that the students appreciated the work sonia and i did enough to self-organize and produce the card i’m holding, in spite of my tendency to obfuscate even the easiest concepts during recitation [heh, irony of using obfuscate] – that squares, and maybe even cubes, how rewarding this has all been.

in fact, i fear the class of biological engineers we taught was almost too fun, the material too interesting, and the overall experience too positive. dare i consider teaching an attractive profession?  ::no, must struggle against inexorable gravity of academia’s black hole.  must enter real world, get real job at some point ! ::

[then again, those MTA ads on the subways i used to see in high school, the ones about becoming a NYC public school teacher, they really resonated with me.  especially the one that went, "can you remember the name of your mutual fund manager, your lawyer, or even the doctor who performed your last surgery?  how about your first grade teacher?"]