Source Management

Friday, July 31, 2009

Being a Ph.D. candidate isn't easy, especially when one is reading tons of papers and writing stuff, particularly that thing called a dissertation.

So one problem that I had to deal with this past week was the problem I have been having with my collection of articles and books that I use as sources for my research. I have an external hard drive where I store all electronic copies of it, categorized by year of publication. I suppose that is the system that works for me. I could easily recall which paper was discussing which topic simply by the publication date and the author. So instead of categorizing my articles in name order (i.e., having a folder for all the papers authored by people whose last name begins with A), I do it by year.

However, that is not enough.

Sometimes, I would recall that there was this one paper I read, and it was about this and that, but I cannot find who wrote it.

Then, in comes my office mate, who speaks of wonders of EndNote. Apparently, this is a software that manages your bibliographic entries. And as a student of the university, I can get it for free, instead of paying for it.

So I downloaded it yesterday, and spent the half day importing my Bibtex entries to the format that EndNote takes. I already have a file listing all the possible relevant articles for my research, but it is in the form of LaTeX, and so I had to convert it first and then import it. That was easily done, and there are other wonders that I am discovering. One of these included discovering that I could actually save the abstracts of the articles into EndNote, so I can have a quick browse of what the article is about, before even digging the actual article. So I can just put up EndNote and browse my collection from there.

I suppose if one has a 12-page long bibliographic entry list (and it is still growing: the field of psycholinguistics is very virile and plenty of people are busy at work publishing articles) then one should have this sooner than later. I am glad that I discovered this early enough that I don't spend a lot of wasted time searching through my unfiled articles in my office.

So, what else can this program do?

(The Jefferson Memorial, from my DC Memorials Series)

Book Review: A Case of Exploding Mangoes by Mohammed Hanif

Thursday, July 30, 2009

Now this is one book that I just sped through and enjoyed very much.

This is a satirical novel based on the life of Pakistani Army General Zia ul-Haq, and his untimely death in August 17, 1988. Fact and fiction blend together in this novel, and the way it was written just captivated me that I was able to finish this book in just four days.

Anyway, so the book seesaws between two protagonists: the General Zia ul-Haq, and Under Officer Ali Shigri. General Zia is a real historical character, while the officer is fiction, for all intents and purposes. Shigri tries to hatch a plan to assassinate General Zia, because he is convinced that the general had something to do with the apparent suicide of his father, Colonel Shigri.

In the meantime, General Zia's eccentricities are also narrated, and how his other generals are trying to make a scheme of overthrowing him from power. Real characters were used, and given the amount of conspiracy theories that surround the death of General Zia, this might be one of them.

Anyway, why do I like this book? Well, it is elegantly crafted satire. It pokes fun at certain historical personalities, but not in a crude way. It was never presented as a parody, but more as a suspense novel, and I kept bracing for what is going to happen next regardless of who the current focus was in. Even in rather action-less scenes, such as the imprisonment scene in the Lahore Fort, where there was a lot of talk between Ali Shigri and the other prisoners, the dialogue was still intense, and the book made me think while being entertained.

What else? I never knew of the historical character of General Zia ul-Haq before, given how much I know of Pakistani history, which is close to nil. This book served plenty of purposes, not just for entertainment. It also provides one possible explanation to the conspiracy, and it also stabs Pakistani government activities by exposing its corrupt past in the guise of political fiction. I definitely recommend this to people wanting to know more about military society in Pakistan.

(Jefferson's Dome, from my DC Memorials Series)

Swan on the Grill

Wednesday, July 29, 2009

I am hot. I feel hot. I feel like I am suffocating with this summer humidity. The thing is, if there were some wind that blows, it would be great. However, that is not the case.

The thing is, the temperature here in Buffalo isn't the highest in the country. We're just at the mid-70s (other places in the country are in the high-80s), so nothing hot, but the humidity is just cranked up. I find it very taxing when I am outside, and my sweat pours down, so I rush to the nearest air-conditioned building.

I should buy a fan. It would make my nights more bearable.

This weather reminds me of one piece in the Carmina Burana cantata. It's the piece about the grilled swan. It is entitled Olim lacus colueram, and below are the lyrics and translation.

Olim lacus colueram,
olim pulcher extiteram,
dum cignus ego fueram.

(Male chorus)
Miser, miser!
modo niger
et ustus fortiter!

(Tenor)
Girat, regirat garcifer;
me rogus urit fortiter;
propinat me nunc dapifer,

(Male Chorus)
Miser, miser!
modo niger
et ustus fortiter!

(Tenor)
Nunc in scutella iaceo,
et volitare nequeo
dentes frendentes video:

(Male Chorus)
Miser, miser!
modo niger
et ustus fortiter!


Once I lived on lakes,
once I looked beautiful
when I was a swan.

(Male chorus)
Misery me!
Now black
and roasting fiercely!

(Tenor)
The servant is turning me on the spit;
I am burning fiercely on the pyre:
the steward now serves me up.

(Male Chorus)
Misery me!
Now black
and roasting fiercely!

(Tenor)
Now I lie on a plate,
and cannot fly anymore,
I see bared teeth:

(Male Chorus)
Misery me!
Now black
and roasting fiercely!





(Metal Man, from my DC Memorials Series)

If Someone Paid for Me to Dance...

Monday, July 27, 2009

...I would totally do it, with one condition, that it would be done around the world.

See, I usually hate dancing. I do not understand how people bend their joints and limbs like that. I do not get pleasure from it. But, here's one video that a friend of mine showed me in YouTube, and if dancing just involved that, I would totally do it.

I would love to be this guy. He just shakes his arms and elbows like that, and he does it in various places in the world! That is so cool! And guess what? He didn't just do it once, he did it twice!



There are some spectacular locales featured on both videos. Like dancing in Antarctica, dancing with the elephants, dancing with the tortoises in the Galapagos, even dancing in the demilitarized zone in Korea.

See what procrastination does to you? It is educational and inspiring at the same time!



(Waterfalls and Boulders, from my DC Memorials Series)

Book Review: The Invention of Everything Else by Samantha Hunt

Sunday, July 26, 2009

It's been a while since I had published a book review. In fact, it was 17 days since I published the last book review I had. And there is a reason for that.

The thing is, I am one of those people in which I cannot leave a book half-read. Even if I disliked the book, I would try to read it all the way to the end, with the hope that somewhere in the middle, the book would change a bit, and I would come to like it. Most of the times, the books would turn out that way, you know, those books that just have a slow start, and then somewhere in the middle, I would come to like it. However, some books start bad and end bad.

Like this one. This is supposedly a novel about inventions and time travel. There are plenty of characters that have complex storylines of their own. There's Nikola Tesla, the Serbian inventor who immigrated to the United States; there's Louisa, the chambermaid of the Hotel New Yorker where Tesla stays; there's Walter, Louisa's father; there's Azor, Walter's friend; and there's Arthur, Louisa's boyfriend. Each of the characters were somehow developed, and in Tesla alone, there were multiple narratives, including his childhood, his first days in the United States, his hallucinations, and the present time. Only the present intersects with Louisa.

From what I described above, the novel should be pretty thick. And yet, it was only about 250 pages long. Not enough to develop all the characters. In fact, I think all the characters were half-baked, since the author tried to develop all of them, putting all these details for each character, but somehow done haphazardly. I was left wondering what the bigger piece of the puzzle was.

And there's also this issue of rise and fall. When I was little, and I learned how to write a paper, I was told that it should be like a sandwich. There's a top bread, a filling, and a bottom bread. Or it must be like climbing a mountain. There's the ascent, there's the peak, and the descent. Or even like sex. There's arousal, plateau, climax, and recovery. But this book is nothing like that. It was flat. It never aroused my attention. I always found myself checking the page numbers (Oh, I'm already 50 pages into the novel, and yet it's still slow?).

And as typical of me, I just stuck it to the end, hoping that the book would change, but it didn't.

If there's one good thing that I would mention about this book, it's that it provided me further knowledge and piqued my interest in the real historical character of Nikola Tesla. The events that the book mentioned, the War of Currents, the 1915 Nobel Prize fiasco, I never knew about those until I read this book. I knew that Nikola Tesla existed, only through encountering his name in Prague, and also because I know that the airport in Belgrade is named after him. But aside from that, nothing. So I suppose this book still educated me, somewhat. But it's not my favorite books, and I would hesitate to recommend this to others.

(Metal Dog, from my DC Memorials Series)

I Need to Connect to the Linguists

Thursday, July 23, 2009

So today was a very fruitful day so far. I had a meeting with my adviser, who read my dissertation proposal's second draft over the weekend. And I was happy with the result.

So, Draft 2 was a significant departure from Draft 1. It increased for about 8 pages, and it had more meat in it than the previous one. It pitted various theories and models of the phenomenon I am interested in, using theories ranging from cognitive psychology to linguistics to artificial intelligence.

Anyway, the main interesting comment that I got from my adviser was that I needed to connect to the linguists. To explain, that meant that I need to relate what I am working on to the main interests of most linguists. Apparently, what I had written was very much grounded in cognitive experimental psychology. It was a proposal that for all intents and purposes, looked like a proposal coming from the department from the next building than the building I am registered in. That is fine, after all, my research is very inter-disciplinary in nature (and my committee is coming from two departments as well). But, for purposes of marketing myself, my adviser told me that it would be advisable to package myself and my research so that it would sell both to the psychologists, the psycholinguists, and the linguists of the world. In that case, I would have more hiring options when I finally enter the job market in full force.

So later on, after the meeting, I found myself contemplating that thought, that I need to connect to the linguists. Funny I find that, because, I started my academic career as a linguist. I did my undergrad in linguistics, and came to do graduate school with no inkling whatsoever to do brain-related stuff. I remember being interviewed in Manila by a professor once, since I was about to be inducted to an honor society, and they wanted to know more about me. I remember telling her that I was thinking of doing fieldwork in southern Africa, studying Bantu languages that are about to disappear.

Now, I don't really care about fieldwork that much. And perhaps by virtue of my fascination with empiricism, with the scientific method, and also because of the dissection of the human brain that I did about a year ago, I decided that I am more fascinated about how the human brain works when it comes to language processing than anything else. And with that comes a dissertation proposal that is heavily experimental and grounded in cognitive psychology, and possibly alienating to the linguists in the world.

There are psycholinguists that don't have many linguist bones in them, to quote my other adviser. There are also linguists who could care less about psychological reality in their linguistic theorizing. I am aiming for the perfect mix: a linguist who knows how the brain works, who cares about psychological reality, and a psycholinguist who is well-versed with linguistic theory. We'll see how successful I am with that in a couple of years.

(Roosevelt, from my DC Memorials Series)

Toilet Mummies

Wednesday, July 22, 2009

Do people take a dump in public? Most people do. Believe me, I also do it from time to time. People have their own defecation rhythms, and even though it may always involve doing the act before one leaves the house, chances are there have been times in the past when one is out of their homes and the urge to defecate comes along. I used to have the aversion to taking a public dump, since I am not too comfortable with using a public toilet (you never know how clean a Philippine public restroom is), but here, at least in the university, chances are that the restrooms are clean.

So, why is it that earlier today, when I entered the third floor men's restroom in Park Hall, that there was this one toilet bowl, fully mummified with toilet paper, just so that a person can sit on it?

See, the thing that irks me is that there are people who are so fearful of germs (mysophobia anyone?), that they use hand tissues to open doors and other objects that many random people touch, and they pile layer after layer of toilet paper on the toilet seat if they ever need to use it. I don't have an objection to those acts, since, after all, we all have our quirks and idiosyncrasies, and if one has the phobia of dirt and germs, then I can't really do anything about it.

However, the annoying thing is when people do not clean up their mess after they are done. How ironic is that? You pile up layer after layer of toilet paper on the toilet seat so that your pretty little pink ass doesn't come into contact with random germs from random people, and yet when you are done, and everything is flushed, including the dirtier substance such as your own poop, then you just leave the mummified toilet seat for everyone in the universe to see? I bet that the toilet seat just became messier than when it wasn't mummified for the sitting convenience of one person. It is so ironic that one person who is obsessed with cleanliness actually does something to make it unclean.

(Roosevelt and Dog, from my DC Memorials Series)

A Typology of Academic Papers

Tuesday, July 21, 2009

Writing a dissertation is tough. One needs to read a bunch of different papers regarding a topic. Of course, one doesn't write a dissertation whose topic has never been written about before. The Renaissance is long gone: lots of people have studied pretty much everything there is in this planet to be studied.

Anyway, so I have this bibliography list of things that I have read already, regarding my dissertation topic. It is currently 11 pages long. It contains entries of articles, books, proceedings, and many more. Now, I have observed that there are different articles out there, depending on what their style is and how they present their material. And depending on what type of article I am reading, I have different concentration levels. Now, let me limit my coverage on articles in psycholinguistics, linguistics, and psychology, since these are only the ones that I am touching so far.

First, there is the hypothesis-and-experiment paper. These are fun papers, due to the fact that they have a small hypothesis, and they pit at least two theories against each other, both of them predicting different results for the experiment that they will do. Then, they describe how they do the experiment, and then show the results. Finally, in the end, they interpret their results and then tell the world that their data supports one theory but refutes the other.

This can in fact be a chain of things. Of course, there should be a little literature review in the beginning, and so most people present similar studies, and show how flawed they are. They point out that their methodology and experiment design is better than the previous one, saying that the previous one may have confounding factors which led to results that the current authors disagree with. In fact, this is the pathway of research that I and another collaborator are pursuing with our work on relative clause processing.

Anyway, I digressed. Let's get back to the topic at hand. Another type of article is the survey review article. There are quite a few of these around. My guess is that these articles surface after being a chapter in someone's dissertation: of course, none other than the literature review chapter. They center around a common topic, and review what has been done about the topic so far. These are long papers, and are rather quite boring.

The third type of article, and the one that taxes my cognitive resources the most, are the theory articles. These articles are published at major kick-ass journals, since they are very important due to the fact that they delineate a current theory that the authors are pursuing. Unlike the experimental or the survey articles, these are mostly theoretical in nature, and cite tons of other articles as their support. So they push forward a certain aspect of the theory, and they cite previous research by the same or different people, taking these as evidence for the current theoretical stance that they are taking. These are the most meaty papers that everyone has to read sometime in their career.

So yeah, these are the three major article types. They cover a lot of information, but they aren't your usual bedtime reading material.

(Roosevelt Boulders, from my DC Memorials Series)

Chutney-Flavored Cake

Saturday, July 18, 2009

Yesterday, we went to the theater to see a movie. After evaluating all of the movies showing (there was Bruno, which I don't really appreciate the comedy of it; there was Harry Potter, which from my perspective is hard to follow since I haven't seen all of the previous movies; there was Transformers, which I haven't seen the first one so I don't know the links; there was also Ice Age, but we were not in the mood for animated weird animals), we decided on seeing The Proposal.

So this is a romantic comedy, starring Sandra Bullock, who at 44, still looks smoking hot; and Ryan Reynolds. If you want to know what the movie is about, just look it up in Wikipedia or something; this isn't a movie review post.

Anyway, let's go to why this entry is titled this way. The thing is, after the movie, my friend asked me how I liked that movie. I said, Well, it's a romantic comedy, and based on my expectations of what a romantic comedy should be, I liked it. I was comedified romantically. Now, my friend asked me, on a scale of one to five, how many stars would I give this movie? I told her that I would give it a five, and she was surprised.

Backstory: the thing is, we watched Definitely, Maybe quite a while ago, which was another romantic comedy starring, yet again, Ryan Reynolds. And I liked that romantic comedy especially, since even though it was a romantic comedy, it had an air of mystery, and it got the audience involved due to the guessing game between the daughter and the father.

So, apparently, my friend was surprised on my evaluating process. Now, this is something I explained yesterday night, that I do not have a universal set of constraints when evaluating whether I like a movie or not. My constraint set is not flat, instead, it is hierarchically structured. I do not evaluate movies in the same way as to whether I like it or not. Yes, I liked Definitely, Maybe because of the ingenious way of presenting the story, but also because it satisfied all the expectations I have of the romantic comedy genre. The thing is, I evaluate movies by what genre they are in. If I know I am seeing a horror movie, I have a set of constraints that do not apply if I am seeing a romantic comedy. I have expectations for what a horror movie is, that is different from my expectations for what a romantic comedy is. And since The Proposal satisfied all my expectations regarding what a romantic comedy should be like, I decided that I liked the movie.

I suppose my thinking pattern is just like how I decide what I like about food. I like my chutney spicy and sweet. I like my cake sweet, but not spicy, and without a lot of icing. Just because they're both food doesn't mean I use the same constraint set for both items. I definitely do not want spicy mango and coriander cake, nor devil's food chutney. I have different expectations for both, and I evaluate both items as to whether I like it or not using different constraint sets.

So, after explaining that, I was asked, given how I think, how is it that I am a human, and not a robot. Well, I explained back, I think, therefore I am. Robots simply follow what they are programmed to do. I just happen to have a very elegantly structured way of thinking.

(Artistic Wall and Pillars, from my DC Memorials Series)

In Pursuit of Science

Friday, July 17, 2009

So I turned in my second draft of my dissertation proposal the other day. I was happy. It was inducing a certain high in my system, the fact that I went to the printers in the library and heard the sound of the humming engines, rolling out with my work. Dorky indeed it is, but at the same time, it gives one a sense of achievement that even supposedly mundane things get one high.

So yeah, the ball is not in my court anymore. Now I need to have my adviser read it, so when we meet next week, he has comments on it and I can refine my ideas.

Sometimes, people can make one think that pursuing a PhD degree is a Sisyphean task, with all the reading, writing, revising, and repeating that goes on, and one sometimes thinks that there is no end. But hey, there are things that never end, such as the pursuit of science. There are plenty of things that humans don't know yet, and I find it immensely self-fulfilling to be part of the whole process.

Ah, speaking of the scientific process, I suppose I never wrote it here that I would be part of a conference in Barcelona. Yup. A presentation that I co-authored got accepted, so my name would show up somewhere in Barcelona this coming September. I am the second author, so I don't plan on going, but it's another line in my CV, so that's good. Basically, the research is the idea of the first author, but I devised the experimental side of it. I was told that if he gets a question on the experimental design and the statistics, he would pretend that he is just the second author and deflect the question. Anyway, joking aside, I am pretty sure we would be talking about it before he leaves for Spain.

I suppose related to this would be what I would do for the next step. After graduation, which is a few years from now, what would be next? I don't want a cubicle job. I want to be part of something on the forefront of science. I never chose a major back in undergraduate because it would be earning me big money. I chose what I studied because I was really interested in it.

Regarding employment, I have been looking into applying for various positions all over the world. Due to the fact that my university funding expires at the end of the year, I need a substitute. I've been looking at various positions in different countries and states. And with that, I took several immigration tests. Apparently, I am eligible to immigrate to Canada and Australia, based on my skills and educational level. Now if only there are job offerings that would like what I can do.

Somehow, being in the job market can be stressing. I suppose I decided to postpone this by going to graduate school. But sooner or later, I also need to face it. Life indeed can be complicated at times. But hey, that's what makes life interesting, isn't it?

(Artistic Pillars, from my DC Memorials Series)

Linguistic Factoid No. 10: Syntactic Arguments

Tuesday, July 14, 2009

Four years ago, I once thought that I would be a syntactician. But hey, things happened, and then semantics just crept up on me, and now, I do psycholinguistics. I still like syntax, but I find other things that are more interesting than it.

Anyway, let's talk about syntax. Syntax is the subfield in linguistics that deals with how words are combined to make phrases and sentences. Various topics are covered here, and so let us try to tackle the basics with this post.

Languages usually have one privileged syntactic argument per sentence. In plain terms, there should always be a subject. So, in the English sentence John likes Mary and Bob, the subject of that sentence is John.

How do we know this? Because there are certain tests that we can do, one involving agreement. The form of the verb is dependent on a certain entity, and it is the subject, at least in English. If the sentence were John and Mary like Bob then the verb is different because the subject is not singular any more.

There are languages that allow sentences to have no subjects. English is not one of them, so in the sentence It is raining, the subject it is a dummy subject. It does not do anything semantically, it simply is inserted there to fulfill the English requirement that there should be a subject in every sentence. But other languages allow absence of a subject, such as Spanish and Italian, and various Austronesian languages.

Another syntactic argument is the object, which typically is the entity in which the action is done to. So, in the sentence John slapped Mary, the entity that the action was performed on is Mary, which is the object of the sentence.

There is a high occurrence of the subject being the entity that does the action, but it is not always the case. Consider Mary was slapped by John. The subject is Mary but she is not the entity that did the action. So syntactic arguments such as subject and object are not the same as semantic roles of agent and patient (but that is for another post).

There is also the third argument, which goes by various names. Some call it the indirect object, dative, recipient, what have you. So, in the sentence John sent Mary some chocolate, Mary is the third argument. This is used whenever there is a verb that takes three arguments.

The nice thing about these arguments is that you can invert them and make new sentences out of it. Such as Mary was sent some chocolate by John or Some chocolate was sent Mary by John (is that grammatical?)

How about This dissertation is driving me nuts? Can we say I am being driven nuts by this dissertation? Or how about Nuts are being driven me by this dissertation?

Let's talk about syntactic operations in a future post, shall we?

(Behind the Metal Queue, from my DC Memorials Series)

Picturesque Behavior

Sunday, July 12, 2009

So I was at school earlier today. And given it is a Sunday, not a lot of people were on campus. I was busy plonking at my keyboard, growing my second draft of the dissertation proposal. Somehow, it grew exponentially. The first draft that I turned in a month ago was 24 pages long. Now, I am at 38 and I am still working on it.

Anyway, enough of the dissertation for the moment. I wanted to talk about something else, and that is, about people's behavior whenever they take pictures.

See, there was this two ladies on campus, and they were taking pictures around campus like crazy. They were in the middle of the street, they were in front of the buildings, they were everywhere. They flash their fingers in a V-sign, they smile, they frolic.

Somehow, I do not understand that.

See, I realized that there are various behaviors when one takes photos. There is the person who takes pictures only with people in them. I have some friends whose photo albums in Facebook all involve them in front of some building in some locale, often when in vacation. I do not have a problem with that, but I wonder why for every picture, they have someone in it?

Perhaps it is because they want to prove to the people they know that they have been there. Perhaps it is a way of memorializing the fact that for some time in the past, they have been there. That they have walked the pavement in the Trafalgar Square, that they have stood at the foot of the Eiffel Tower, that they have climbed Machu Picchu.

Then, there is the behavior that I exhibit. I rarely take pictures with myself in it. Perhaps, because I usually travel alone, so nobody is there to take my picture, but even when my friend and I go on roadtrips together, I rarely take pictures of my own. Perhaps, it is because the purpose of my taking photos is to document the beauty of the place that I saw, so that when I browse my photos after the trip, I can reminisce on the wonders of the things that I witnessed. I do not need to have myself in the photograph, perhaps because I do not feel the need to show to other people that I have been in places that they haven't been to yet.

Now, there's the third behavior, that I really do not understand. There are people who take photos of themselves, say, standing in front of a Ferrari. Is that really noteworthy? Everyone knows that the Ferrari you are posing in front of is not yours. So why take a picture of it? That is one behavior that I cannot find an explanation for.

I suppose this is just another one of those human behaviors that exhibit the different value systems different people have. For some people, it is important for them to document the fact that they once stood in front of the dressed-up guard at the Buckingham Palace. For some people, it is important to capture the serene beauty of the Andes. And for some people, it is important to document the fact that they saw what a Ferrari looked like.

(Wall Etch, from my DC Memorials Series)

A 300-Year-Old Affair

Friday, July 10, 2009

So, I found this article on the meeting of Benedict XVI and President Barack Obama. And what I found interesting was that what occurred between the two men was rather bizarre.

There was Benedict XVI, pushing forward his agenda, and two of those came up grabbing people's attention: stem-cell research and abortion.

And somehow, I find it hard to process: I find it cognitively dissonant, that this topic would be brought up, if President Obama was simply dealing with the head of the state of another sovereign country, that of the Vatican City. Could you imagine Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, telling the other country's president, "Oh Mr. President, we wish that you stop funding scientific research of stem-cells in your country. Can you also stop terminating embryos and foetuses as well and just let all babies live?" That would be absurd.

But no, it hit me a few nanoseconds later. President Obama was not dealing with just another head of state. He is dealing with the head of the Roman Catholic Church. And that has a wider audience, given the fact that the Roman Catholic Church is the largest Christian church in the world. So, it's more of a religious meeting than a diplomatic one.

So what is religion doing in politics? Is this a repeat of 1633? It is bizarre that the Church are so worried of their follower's faith, that they try to impose an outright ban on deviating ideas, such as heliocentrism in Galileo's age, and stem-cell research in the modern age. Does the Church think that when people are exposed to these ideas, they would renounce their faith? If religious faith really is true, integral, important, and essential for one's existence, then it will stand to the test. Let the people choose for themselves, and let them think for themselves. I find it extremely arrogant that some religious entities can go ahead and prescribe what they think is the common good. I find it disappointing that the Catholic Church took more than 300 hundred years to admit that their decision with the Galileo Affair was wrong. And I find it disturbing that some elements of religion are still trying to repeat something that was clearly a mistake.

(Face the Metal Couple, from my DC Memorials Series)

Book Review: 26A by Diana Evans

Thursday, July 09, 2009

I do not know how to process this novel. Perhaps, I could summarize my feeling about this as blah. Yeah, just like that.

So the story is about this family. The mother is Nigerian, and the father is English. They had four daughters, Isabel, Bessi, Georgia, and Kemy. Bessi and Georgia are twins, and the story narrates their lives from toddler years to when they turn 25.

Sure, life can be funny at times. You laugh at the weird sense of logic that little children look at their surroundings, and this book has presented it so well that I catch myself laughing at times too. And then the twins grow up, they experience boys for the first time, and then they start living apart. One heads to the Caribbean for six months, and another pursues a different interest from the other.

In short, this is a story of a set of twins doing things together at first, and then forming their own identity in the end.

The thing I don't understand is why the author killed one of them in the end. It was weird, killing one of the twins, and then having the spirit of that dead twin inhabit the body of the living for one full year. Was it just all within the head of the living twin, or was it really true, at least in the world of the novel? It didn't really make it clear, nor was it necessary in my opinion.

I suppose this is one novel in which stereotypical female readers would swoon about and like it. In fact, I can totally see my sister liking this one, but I simply cannot like it, not that I deliberately refrain from liking it, but I just do not see myself enjoying it. I give it 3 out of 5.

(Metal Couple, from my DC Memorials Series)

Itchy Feet Version 4.0

Wednesday, July 08, 2009

Welcome to my Itchy Feet post for the summer of 2009! For the previous three years, I have posted an entry in the summer of places that I wanted to go to in the future. These perhaps are the product of procrastination, when I let my mind wander away from my computer screen and think of the places around the world that I would dream of seeing.

So, back in 2006, I wrote this entry, and who knew? I actually visited Quito a year after that, and Machu Picchu in 2008.

In 2007, I wrote this entry, and I happen to have visited Mammoth Caves in Kentucky this past Spring Break. Woohoo!

And last year, I wrote about six overland trips that I would want to do in the future in this entry. So far, I haven't fulfilled any of those yet.

So, it is 2009, where would I take my readers to dream about?

Trekking the Annapurna Circuit

This is one trek that I would want to do sometime. The Annapurna Circuit is actually a well-marked mountain trail, skirting around the Annapurna Peaks in the Nepali Himalayas. The trek takes about 17-19 days, and one simply walks, stopping in tea houses along the way for the night. The lodges might be simple, but the views are breath-taking, literally. One can fly to Kathmandu, take the numerous modes of interesting transportation to Pokhara where one can set base for acclimatization and stack up on things, and then start the trek. This is a circular path so one ends in Pokhara, where one can head back to Kathmandu and sight-see, or better yet, see the other holy sites scattered all over Nepal going back. One month is an ideal time frame for this trip. Here's a picture found in the web describing the immensely breath-taking scenery.



Traipsing the Bolivian Highlands

This is another trip that involves high altitudes (yes, I wonder myself why I prefer the high altitudes to the beaches). One can land in La Paz and explore the city, then head over to Lake Titicaca and visit the floating reed islands. Other places to visit include the cities of Cochabamba, Sucre, and Santa Cruz, and of course, one should not leave without seeing the salt flats in Uyuni, which is shown by the following photo. The idea is to fully see the Bolivian countryside in a full circle, and then head back to either La Paz or Santa Cruz for the flight home. Or better yet, cross into the Chilean desert and bus it all the way south to Santiago.



Moroccan Meander

This also involves overland travel, but not so much of the high altitudes. What is common here though is the desert and ancient Roman ruins. The idea is to fly to Marrakesh first, which is the westernmost ancient city in Morocco. Spend a few nights here, touring the place, then one moves heading east. Stop in Casablanca to visit the largest mosque in the planet. Then head over to Rabat to see another imperial city. Fez should be next, visiting the tannery (shown below) and the medina. The final stop can be Tangier, with a day trip to Tetouan in order to see the ancient Roman ruins. Air connections can be done via Spain or France: Iberia flies to both Marrakesh and Tangier regularly. Or one can take the ferry across to the European mainland as well.



I suppose I will limit my trip ideas for this year to just three, since, there are still lots of other places that I have mentioned in the past years that I still haven't visited, and I would not want to repeat myself (I am actually repeating myself with the Moroccan idea). So yeah, my feet still are itchy, and especially when one has a dissertation to work on, things can get bad. Oh well, here's to another year of virtual traveling!

(Metal Queue from the Side, from my DC Memorials Series)

Aphilia

Tuesday, July 07, 2009

I have a hard time dealing with friends and the concept of friendship in general. That I am willing to admit. Perhaps, it is because of the way I grew up, and so I have a hard time dealing with people around me.

See, the thing is, friendships are a type of investment. One invests ones time and effort in getting to know other people. One opens up a certain part of oneself and exposes oneself to the elements, hoping that there is something one can get in return. I tend to believe that friendships start as selfish acts: one identifies another person as someone who one can get along well with, and that this other person has traits and characteristics that one can benefit from. Over time, however, the selfishness goes away, and there are things that people do for their friends that are altruistic in nature. But, overall, this can still be construed as a selfish act, because people do seemingly altruistic things to friends because they themselves do not want to lose an asset, namely, the friend.

Friendship is a two-way street. It cannot be like the relationship of a barnacle and a shark. Friends are not parasites. Friends are not there simply because they need something from you. Friends do not disappear when everything is good, and reappear when they are in distress and they need something from you.

Now let me introduce the factor of change. Even though I tend to think of myself as a pragmatic person, and that change is normal in the cosmos, I have a hard time accepting that. I hate moving before, since that accompanies farewells and the fact that some people I am friends with may not be able to see me again. Ever. So, the most practical solution to the problem is that one should just not have friends at all. Easier goodbyes.

But I have to admit, that is a bad solution. One inevitably makes friends across time. So I suppose I took a new strategy: to be proactive in friendship, and to try to preserve the friendship even though people move on and away.

But, change is still in the picture, and sometimes, people change even though you are still here. You start to wonder, whether this person is still the person that became your friend a couple of years ago. And sometimes, one gets surprised at the difference. One wonders whether this is the thing that one signed up for back in the days.

See, the thing is, it makes me wonder whether I am still a friend, if I am treated like I was unwanted for three months. Then, three months later, I am wanted again. Hooray! I am sure there was a logical explanation for that, but then, I find myself tip-toeing over eggshells and broken glass in the process. I would want to think that other people consider me as a friend because of who I am. So if I need to alter my behavior just to please a "friend", then that would seem ridiculous. I am not a towel, Vicks Vaporub, or any other soothing medication of any kind. Friendships can be a support group, but primarily, it is a partnership of two free-standing, independent people. Yes, it is okay to support each other in times of distress, but it is not the case that one person only makes use of the other whenever one needs the other person. Heck, that is not friendship at all.

In short, I am annoyed, I am irritated, I am hurt. It sucks that of the few times that I open myself up for others to see, then this is the time when someone sticks an emotional knife in my chest and twists it. And I do not know how to process it aside from ranting about it.

(Close-Up of Metal Queue, from my DC Memorials Series)

I Don't Read Minds

Saturday, July 04, 2009

Sometimes, humans are weird. They expect superhuman abilities from other humans.

One such superhuman ability is the ability to read minds. I don't do that, and yet, sometimes, I find myself being accused of being an alien. When in fact, I proudly admit that I do not do things that some humans expect of other humans, like say, not being able to read a fellow human's mind.

Like this one incident for example. Yesterday, I bumped into someone, and we talked about our respective plans for the weekend. I was invited to a cookout by another friend, so I relayed this information. We were to have a cookout, by grilling meat and vegetables, and afterward probably heading out to watch electronically and musically choreographed fireworks. I asked this person what her plan was, and she voiced the fact that she wanted to see the fireworks as well, and she was going alone to watch it.

Now we left it at that, or at least I thought we left it at that. But no, I got an email from this person saying that I should have invited her to the fireworks, because I should have read into that encounter that she was heading alone and wanted company. I emailed back saying that first of all, it is not my gig: I am not the host, and we are not sure whether we were going to see fireworks or not.

The thing is, I do not understand why some people expect other people to know what they want. I have nothing against this person, I am not mad at all, but I am perplexed at how other people cannot bring themselves up to say it out in the open what they want. Instead, it's as if there is this script, this invisible script that only the other person knows, and that if you disobey the lines in the script, you get written off.

Sometimes, I really wish that there were LED moving message boards on top of people's heads, so that you can just read what they are thinking and then everything would be fine. But no, sometimes, human interactions are turned into this eternal guessing game, and there are consequences, since if you guess it wrong, then people would be sour.

Humans are an enigmatic bunch.

(Metal Queue, from my DC Memorials Series)

Becoming Wiser with Indian Names

Friday, July 03, 2009

For the past few days, I have been learning a lot about Indian surnames. Why? Well, one reason is because I have two Indian roommates. And another is because I have an Indian surname guru on speed dial that I can easily consult things with.

So, one of the things that I have learned is that one can tell where the person comes from, just by hearing what the surname is. And upon looking it up in the Internet, sure enough, there are even people who charted all the names and the associated geographical area within India. Wow, I am impressed. I suppose this isn't the norm in the Philippines: when I hear a surname, I cannot place it within the map. Unless, of course, we are talking about very Tagalog names, like Dimaculangan (one who will always have plenty) or Macatangay (one that will stray others away), in which I have a very good hunch that it comes from the province of Batangas.

Anyway, aside from place of origin, apparently, one can tell what caste the person comes from. Not only that, one can tell what profession the family traditionally has. All of this information makes a good trivial pursuit when one is getting sick of looking at the dissertation proposal.

However, I find it a little disturbing that a lot of these information can be gleaned just by hearing one's name. With one name comes plenty of stereotypes, and all the images that these stereotypes carry just pop into another person's head just by hearing what one's surname is. In a way, I find that somehow disturbing. I'd rather be known by what I do and who I am, instead of what my name means traditionally.

But hey, I suppose that is simply human nature, to know where one is from. After all, that's one of the first questions people ask whenever they encounter someone who comes from the same country as one is. I bumped into a Filipino in Lima's Jorge Chavez International Airport last year, as I was heading back from my backpacking trip. One of the first questions he asked was where I was from in the Philippines. It is just a strong desire, to know where one is from, that we ask that to compatriots we meet overseas. However, the Filipino naming system isn't as predictable as the Indian naming system, given the fact that back in time, the Spaniards changed all the names of the Filipinos. They had a book, entitled Catálogo alfabético de apellidos, which listed possible surnames in the country, and people had to pick one. This was done for census and tax purposes.

Anyway, so yeah. I am wiser now with respect to Indian names. Yay!

(Man and Radio, from my DC Memorials Series)

You Have One Minute to Solve this Puzzle...

Thursday, July 02, 2009

...otherwise you're dead.

The other day, I saw one rather interesting movie. It was entitled La habitacion de Fermat, and yes, it was in Spanish. It is a thriller (some sources say it is a horror flick, but I never saw any gory sequences) where in a small room, four mathematicians get trapped and they had to solve various mathematical puzzles within one minute, otherwise, the room gets smaller and so they would get crushed.

So, I enjoyed watching the movie, and the character development was good too. I suppose I like these psychological thrillers once in a while, since in this flick, all the action occurs within the emotional and mental dynamics of the various characters, since the film reveals various connections between the players, something that one does not expect right at the outset of the film.

So, here are some puzzles to solve.

1. If you have two hourglasses, one that is 4 minutes long and the other being 7 minutes long, how can you precisely measure a temporal length of 9 minutes?

2. Suppose there is a room that has a lightbulb inside, and three switches outside. One cannot turn the switches on or off without shutting the door. How can one determine which switch activates the lightbulb without entering the room more than once?

3. Suppose there are three boxes of sweets. One box contains mint, one box contains caramel, and the third box contains a mixture. They are all labeled, but they are all labeled incorrectly. What is the minimum number of tastes that one should do in order to determine the correct contents of the three boxes?

(Roosevelt Wall, from my DC Memorials Series)

Year 5

Wednesday, July 01, 2009

You may have noticed that the title changed. Yes, this blog has been here for four straight years, and is now entering its fifth year of continual publishing.

Yay!

Plenty of things have happened for the past four years. This blog started just as a repository of thoughts of mine, especially when I was about to embark on another page in life, such as entering graduate school. You know, the excitement of being by myself for the first time, for real this time, instead of just pretend, and the fact that I am actually doing things of my own accord now instead of just because it was the expected move for my part.

The past four years have been very interesting. In fact, calling it interesting is an understatement. The past four years have been a series of firsts. The past four years saw the first time I actually traveled on my own, the first time I had to deal with certain growing pains, the first time I saw places I never thought I would reach. The past four years saw me getting lost in the middle of a continent I haven't been to before. It also saw me finding who I really am, and finally able to think as I am, instead of just following a prescribed script.

So, what is in store for the fifth year? I honestly do not know. In the past, the future has always been settled. When one finishes first grade, there is second grade, then third grade, then so on. After elementary school is middle school, then high school. And after high school, there's college. After college, there's graduate school. It seemed that everything until now has been planned, or at least, there is a selected course. A stereotypical next step.

But not anymore.

The future is open, I suppose. There isn't any other logical next step after graduate school. Yes, there's employment, but that is still a huge swath of the unknown. After I get my degree (which I envision in the next two years), I could either go and hunt for a job in academia and get employed in a university. Or I can get employed in the industry (say a research institute). Or I can totally do something different instead, like travel the world and write for Lonely Planet or National Geographic. The possibilities are endless. And because of that, sometimes I feel scared, since there isn't a logical next step.

But heck, that I suppose is also the beauty of it. People simply want to be certain of the future, in fact, plenty of people consult fortune tellers and psychics just in order to have a fake glimpse of the future. But hey, being undefined and unpredictable is definitional for the future.

So yeah. Welcome to the fifth year. Sit back and read what happens next.

(Other Side, from my DC Memorials Series)