Cycles

Another school year, another round of trying to juggle research, teaching and having a life.

I think I'm getting better at this time management thing. And that focus and concentration thing.

It's only been two weeks so far, but compared to the lazy summer it feels like it's been forever... I have nightmares twice a week that I've overslept and am late for my 9 am discussion section, which result in me waking up realizing it's only 6:30 am... Mondays through Thursdays are section and office hours and meetings and trying to squeeze in research in between all that. After yoga class or swing dance or tango practice in the evenings I drag myself back to the office and try to squeeze in another hour or two of work. After 4 days of such a routine, by Friday I'm usually too tired to think, and waste my day doing this and that (such as prepping for lab, or grading, or some type of housekeeping)...then 4:30 pm rolls along, and I go sing! And then after choir practice there's some fun activity in the evening. Last week it was weeding the garden with Amanda, then going to Wegmans and Greenstar to get ingredients for our pumpkin beef stew (which turned out completely amazing!). This week it was a beer tasting party, and then having dessert and gabbing at Madeline's with girlfriends. Then the weekend is a lazy combination of hiking and work(?) and swing dance class and socializing and thinking about possibly cleaning my room...

My life is filled to the brim. Yet I still want more. I want to have time to sit still and think deep thoughts and read all those books on my reading list and write better planned blog posts.

While in this week-to-week cycle, time goes both quickly and slowly. It seems slow while I'm trying to grade homeworks and debug code... yet it all seems so quick when I realize that three years have passed and there's a good possibility I'll be graduating in two years.

Seeing my senior lab mates looking for jobs is scary. This is what I'm supposed to be doing next year?! I do not feel ready for that, and feel very inadequate as a scientist- there's so much I don't know, there's so much I need to learn how to approach, how to think as a scientist, how to ask questions... and I'm getting quite used to this cycle of being busy, with school, with life, with friends...

But I will make the most of my final few cycles at Cornell. And look forward to whatever is next. Whatever exciting possibilities await.

Song

I am looking forward to this Friday afternoon! Because it will be my first Choral practice in years. I auditioned last week, and am joining a mixed voice chorus this semester!!

During the three times I went to bible study this summer, the part I enjoyed most was the singing in between reading psalms. I loved the mixture of different textures of voices around me. And the way when somebody with an especially nice voice sat behind me, I would tingle with pleasure while their voice filled my ears.

So I realized how much I miss singing in a choir.

I sang with the largest choral group at my university during undergrad, and I loved every moment of song during our practices. Twice a week, Tuesdays and Fridays. I never minded giving up Friday evenings to spend three hours singing. And even though before performing we had to go through an excruciating process of tests and extra practice time, I loved standing on stage under a spotlight, knowing that my voice was carried out with a hundred others towards the audience and maybe one song or two would resonate with them. Classical, new-age, local, international, all songs, I loved them all (well, most of them).

I never had a great voice, nor was any good at sight-reading. But it didn't matter, because singing with a chorus is a collective effort, and I like to think that over the years I slightly improved in recognizing a harmony (not so good at that either yet, but I try).

The audition process last Tuesday left me in a high. Mostly because I was flattered when the instructor asked me if I have perfect pitch after hearing me sing a few notes. But also because I was reminded of how much I enjoy the challenge of listening and singing. There was this test where you had to pick out the top middle or bottom notes from a variety of chords. For some reason, I always got the middle right, but had lots of trouble with bottom (all my years as an alto...).

Anyways, I'm looking forward to this Friday! Meanwhile, there's this piece I came across by the younger generation of my former chorus, which is simple but quite nice:

Eat Pray Love

Yesterday I went and saw the movie "Eat, Pray, Love" with one of my good friends. She was the reason I read the book, and so it was extremely appropriate that I should see the movie with her. (Although I had many many hesitations about seeing this movie, since they cast Julia Roberts as Liz Gilbert...)

I remember it was a few months ago, just before my trip to Italy, that my friend and I were having dessert at Madeline's, and she told me I should buy this book and read it. I had been moping around for about half a year, and this friend was one of the only friends I would listen to when she gave me advice, partly because we had similar experiences. (All my other friends' efforts and kindness were often wasted on me. I dismiss whatever they said, because how could they understand what I was going through.)

So a few days later I bought the book, and it was one of the things I looked forward to in my day. Every day before bed I would share with Liz her experiences, and thoughts, and grief, and guilt, and healing. And I cried and laughed and laughed and cried, and wished I had Ms. Gilbert's gift of writing so honestly and with humor.

And I cried especially hard when I read her conversation with Richard from Texas in Chapter 48:

"... You're like a dog at the dump, baby- you're just lickin' at an empty tin can, trying to get more nutrition out of it. And if you're not careful, that can's gonna get stuck on your snout forever and make your life miserable. So drop it."

"But I love him."

"So love him."

"But I miss him."

"So miss him. Send him some love and light every time you think about him, and then drop it."

I am no longer the dog licking the empty tin can, but the movie used that last line 2 or 3 times, and each time I heard the lines delivered I felt tears well up in my eyes. But they were not sad tears, nor happy tears, but the huge emotion of remembering how I was moved by the wisdom of that statement, and marveling at how true it was.

And Julia Roberts was not half bad, although I can imagine if they cast somebody else, they might've bought a different angle to this movie. And the movie was not half bad either, although it only managed to capture a fraction of what was magical about the book, but that was all compensated by the appearance of Javier Bardem. (Or at least according to my friend.)

I enjoyed the scenes in Italy and Bali. Italy because every scene and street looked familiar like I had personally walked it. And Bali for all it's beauty, for it reminded me that there are still so many undiscovered corners of the Earth I'd like to see and visit.

On its own, the movie was not so great, I glanced at my watch more than a few times. But seeing the movie with my friend was meaningful to me because it reminded me of the book, and the book as a marker in my life. After the movie, I fondly thought of a certain someone, now 4000 miles away, now no longer a part of my life. And I smile when I miss him, and I send some love and light his way, and then I drop it.

I want my Mommy

This morning I was talking to my mommy. I still feel like a little girl in my mother's eyes, and I wonder if this will ever change. I am 26, almost 27, and still there are times when I feel oh so very small and want my mommy and daddy (and I still call them that too).

I remember a few days ago on my way to the garden Taylor Swift's "The Best Day" happened to start playing. http://listen.grooveshark.com/#/s/The+Best+Day/2wVL3e

And I couldn't help but park my car on the side of the road, and sit there and start crying like a crazy person.

Because I miss you. And sometimes I don't know how to balance what I want in life with how much I miss you. Sometimes I want to explore the world and roam around and do great things. And then some days I'd like to give up on the stupid physics stuff and jump on a plane and go back home and chill with my parents- watch TV with my dad, listen to my mom talk and talk, and get annoyed at them, and just be around.

Carbon Offsets

My vegan (save the Earth, save the animals) friend Stephen and I were just chatting about carbon offsets, and how he buys one for flights he takes. I am in principle in favor of the idea... and would like to buy some for those international flights I take home each year... my excuse for not doing this before is I just feel like I need to understand what my money for the "offsets" are going to. (Yes yes I am the lazy hypocrite...)

In the process I found this link, which has a nice summary of the companies/organizations offering :

http://www.ecobusinesslinks.com/carbon_offset_wind_credits_carbon_reduction.htm

well, this makes my life easier. and removes my excuse for laziness.

carbonfund.org claims it only costs $17 to offset me driving my Corolla around for a year. $28 to offset my roundtrip flight from new york to taipei (but $76 if I include radiative forcing... oh stupid dirt and ozone... hmmm if we could find a way to get rid of that from the jet emissions... )

Anyways, does not seem all that expensive.

I believe in God, just not yours

Since I was very young I wanted to have faith, or a religion to belong to. I was a precocious child with a sharp sense of mortality. Every night before bed I would think about death, how one would cease to exist afterwards, and how in the vast universe, my self, my consciousness would be lost, a "being unrecoverable". This emptiness scared me, and therefore I envied those around me that had faith, that believed in afterlife or reincarnation.

My parents, like most typical Taiwanese, did not have a particular religion, but since we were in Wisconsin they would send me to Sunday school just for the social activities. I enjoyed making puppets of lambs, getting pretty little bookmarks with psalms, and hearing about the stories of Christianity. And I even started praying secretly every night, my own personal conversation with God, and I would always end my prayer with "Please bless Mommy, Daddy, and my sister Jesse, and help me be a better person. Amen."

The problem with this was that even though my conversations with God were powerful for me as a child (imagine talking to the universe!), the basic assumptions and requirements of Christianity did not agree with me. I did not like the exclusiveness of Heaven to be those who believed in God through Jesus. Actually, Jesus, this towering figure who always looked so sad on his cross scared me as a child. The fact that he was crucified was only terrifying and not at all touching to me, because my eight year old mind did not see how logically it was possible that through sacrificing himself God would forgive the rest of us for our sins. And ultimately, try as I might, my critical scientific mind could not believe in Heaven or an afterlife. I wanted to so very badly. It's just that the same part of me which knew with conviction there was no tooth fairy and no Santa Claus, knew with the same intuition that people must have made up this Heaven stuff just to make ourselves feel better.

So as I grew up, I prayed less and less. I slowly adopted a more pagan method of faith, I would sometimes have conversations with the trees and the skies when I felt lonely and in need of strength. And then as I grew up more, those conversations also ceased.

In high school and college I sometimes felt a longing for those days when I did believe in God or magical trees. But I knew that I did not have the capacity beyond my logical mind to accept the doctrine of most religions, and so I gave up on looking.

My trip to Italy sparked an interest in reading the Bible. So much of western culture and art and history is intertwined with this book and its stories that I felt I should read it properly at least once. But knowing how lazy I am, I started going to a bible study in a Christian fellowship. The bible was interesting, and as a grown up, I could try to understand the discussion more from different points of view, I no longer felt compelled to parse everything down with logic.

This is where I discovered that I do have faith, just not a faith that is compatible with theirs. Or any other mainstream religion.

The God I believe in is like abstract art, there are different interpretations and different manifestations, depending on the observer. For me God lies in the power of the natural universe (why are there physical laws? and why these ones?), this pull to search for something divine that tugs at most of the human race, and the existence of a universal moral code. I believe that beyond science and atoms and quarks, there is something greater that ties us all together. Different methods of worship are just different pathways towards divinity, and all contain wisdom about this search accumulated by the generations of humanity before us. Religion is a beautiful product of humanity. Many religions believe in a single God, some, like Buddhism believe divinity is within each and every one of us and can be reached by our own work, and then some believe in multiple Gods. Yet I do not believe that any single vehicle can be 100% correct, but that every one must find their own way for themselves. And I believe that those who find it necessary to oppress other views actually are in spirit further away from that concept of the divine. When I believe in my God and not yours, it should not make yours any less valid. I should not have to destroy you or object to your ideas to prove that I am right.s

I am a person of faith, just not of any religion. And I believe in God, just not yours.

The Awesome Island

I have a tendency to blabber, mostly about things I don’t know but which have happened to catch my attention. I’ve been reading this book/memoir written by a death penalty lawyer, called “The Autobiography of an Execution”. And so the death penalty ended up as conversation after dinner with friends one evening, and I blabbered on and on about how I am shocked and appalled by the injustices in this system, that I had never really realized it was so bad, that the death penalty is racist, classist and the difference between being executed or not is most of the time luck and legal technicalities which are stupid et cetera et cetera.

From this sorry state of affairs in capital punishment, my friends and I went on to count how many things are wrong with this society, such as corn subsidies, gender inequality, global warming…

Two of my friends, Stephen and Nora, sighed and said how they have this fantasy about buying an Island, and only have awesome people who “get it” live on it. They would have sustainable farming (and in Stephen’s island no using animal labor!), and justice for all, and gay marriage, and do things properly, responsibility, democratically. They would try to screen people for this awesomeness, and require a willingness to participate in cultivating such a positive and environmentally responsible community.

I joked how this would make a horrible reality show, where people would be kicked off the island. “You’re not awesome enough.” Stephen would say in a deep overly dramatic voice, then there would be sad sappy slow instrumental music and shots of people loading their bags onto solar-powered boats.

Other than my tendency to blabber, I also have the tendency to challenge other people’s ideas even if I think they are cool. Especially if they are cool. I bought up many technical reasons why this island would not work, and why it was not as awesome as they thought. If you are unsatisfied with the way the world is, why go hide in an island? Why not change the world?

“It’s impossible.” Nora and Stephen argued, empathetically. “We’ll make our island a success first, and use it as an example for how people should do things”

Is the world really beyond repair?

I know that feeling that Nora and Stephen were expressing: we look at the state of the world, and just feel helpless. Like we are the lone sensible people in the world. But I object to the concept of an island, because the world needs us sensible people to be part of it. It needs us who are so blessed and have so much-- we have the luxury of sitting around after dinner fuming about the injustices of the world, and the luxury of blabbering in a blog. We should use our vast resources and try to make the world more like what we would like it to be.

How can we not commend those that try to push against the forces that sustain injustice and poverty and inequality? Even if for these individuals or groups some of their efforts are futile? Wouldn’t we be worse off if they did not exist? To all those activists who dedicate their lives to making the world better, I salute you. To all those ordinary people who take the time or money to put a few drops of “just” in the ocean of injustice, I salute you.

And to myself, the intellectual who sits around and complains about how the world is not perfect, maybe it’s time I get off this awesome island where I sit and complain and jump into the sea of trying to make a difference.