Minarets

Yesterday, the Swiss decided to ban the construction of minarets in the country. This has been seen as a sign of encroaching Islamism in the country.

So what does this mean? This means that even though one can still build mosques in Switzerland, one cannot attach the tall spires that are associated with them, since it is argued that these are political symbols as well.

This puts Switzerland to the forefront of tensions between Europe and the Islamic World.

Personally, I agree with the opinion of the Swiss majority. While I support diversity, I do believe that everyone should respect the opinion of the native people with respect to affairs of their own land. If the Swiss majority do not want minarets in Zurich and Geneva, then fine, everyone else should respect that.

Think of it this way. Saudi Arabia wants all females to wear the distinctive garment that covers the whole body, regardless if you're a Saudi national or not. I am fine with that, because that is the rules of that land. If you're a female, regardless of nationality, you cannot operate a motor vehicle. If that's how it is done in that country, then fine, I respect that. But I also wish that foreigners respect the decision of the Swiss public.

I believe that the key point that I am trying to make here is one of openness and cultural relativism. There are various different countries and cultures that thrive here in this planet. And yes, most of these cultures clash and create differences between various individuals. It is not correct to impose one's own culture to another person, especially if one is the guest in this situation. Of course, when I find myself in a foreign land, I might find certain cultural artifacts that contradict my own culture, and since I am the visitor, I respect that. I do not expect the native peoples to make way for my cultural differences. In this case, visitors should not be forcing the natives to change just because the visitors are present. With respect to natives changing the visitors, it would be nice if the natives are understanding when it comes to the cultural differences that visitors have, but I believe that the natives are under no obligation to make way for the visitors, given the fact that it is the visitors who are entering the cultural space that they are foreign to in the first place.

With this in mind, I always think about how Islam seems to be a mystery to me. I am not criticizing Islam, but writing about the things that I find incomprehensible in this religion is simply my way of attempting to understand them. It seems that plenty of people are forced to walk on eggshells for fear of offending Islam and the Muslim population. Salman Rushdie was forced to live in hiding for a decade after writing The Satanic Verses. The director of the movie 2012 decided to eliminate the scene where the Kaaba was destroyed in a fictional catastrophic scene. And we all have seen what happened in Denmark, when cartoonists portrayed the Prophet in various caricatures and the diplomatic repercussions that it produced. All of these events occurred outside of the Islamic World. These "perpetrators" were not present in any Islamic country for them to be actually violating a law. And yet there exists people out there who are willing to kill simply because their cultural norms were violated by someone who doesn't share their beliefs.

It is indeed sad that there are people who are able to be swayed simply by a powerful belief, that once that belief has been set in place, no amount of reasoning, no amount of persuasion, no amount of arguing can convince that person that the truth is indeed the contrary. I find it pitiful that some people can blindly obey like that, that this blind obedience acts as if nothing else is true, and that nothing else is worth living for. I find it sad that some people even think that other people who believe contrary to them don't even deserve to breathe the air we all breathe.



(Modest Romans, from my DC Buildings Series)

The Project

Yesterday was one of those days in which I just had to stay home and do my house chores. I know, I am a workaholic and there are plenty of things that I can do if I will myself to do it, but for once, procrastinating isn't a bad thing I suppose.

So, even though I already was awake by about 6:30, I didn't get out of bed until 10:00. And then I decided to do my laundry. I had breakfast while doing laundry, and then went ahead and ironed my clothes. By about 1:30, I was done with everything.

What else happened? Oh, I chatted with a friend online, caught up on things and such, and then an idea popped into my head. I have a project. My head conceived The Project.

See, growing up as a diplomat's kid causes one to have a chronic infection of the travel bug. One just cannot stop thinking about travel. One gets excited when one is in the vicinity of airports. One stops walking on the street when there is a plane over-flying. Travel just carries this sense of excitement, that no matter how much amount of travel one does, one never ceases to feel the excitement and anticipation that accompanies it.

So, given the fact that I have been fermenting here in the United States for more than a year now (the last time I have been out of the country was July 2008), I decided to start planning for The Project. Watching the latest season of The Amazing Race gave me ideas. The Project will be long, it will take about 6-8 weeks depending on how I plan this thing. It will involve land travel, it will involve plane hops, and it will involve border crossings.

Where will this be? I am not telling yet. Besides, this is all just in paper, at least for now. On top of that, I need the time and money to actually accomplish this. So it won't be within the near future. But hey, there isn't anything wrong to dream, eh? So yeah, there exists The Project. Hopefully I can execute this sometime.



(Christmas in the Station, from my DC Buildings Series)

Mulholland Drive: A Review

Never have I watched a movie and felt utterly disillusioned and disgusted by it until I watched this movie. This is a movie by David Lynch, and it is a neo-noir psychological thriller according to Wikipedia.

So, what is this movie about? Well, I don't even know. It tells very fragmented stories about various things: it begins with a bizarre car accident, and then a girl who survives the accident that has a lot of money and a weird blue key in her purse, then there are various other vignettes of weird stuff interspersed with the story. The characters are also interspersed, with the actors playing different characters. Somehow, the characters are linked to each other in one way or another, but I still cannot wrap my head around it.

So, is this a film that I enjoyed? No. I was laughing while watching this film, it felt like a creepy version of Seinfeld. Nothing made sense, and so I eventually gave up trying to find sense in this movie. It was totally predictable, with the various suspenseful effects totally stereotypical. Of course, there are things that are just out of this world, but the movement was very slow, and I can totally fall asleep while watching this. Good thing I didn't see this in a theatre, because if I did, I would have walked out of the establishment within the first thirty minutes.



(Union Station, from my DC Buildings Series)

The Axe Murderer and the Ice Princess Cometh

Last weekend, I got a very awesome visit from two very awesome people. One of them was my very awesome friend, the Axe Murderer, and the other one being the Ice Princess, who happens to be the Axe Murderer's best friend. I haven't met the Ice Princess in person before, so I didn't really know how she was live and kicking.

They were scheduled to arrive around late evening, but somehow, their bus from Toronto got delayed, so they didn't show up until a little before midnight. I originally was scheduled to meet them in the bus stop downtown, but before that, the Axe Murderer already told me that they would find their own way to my house so that would not be necessary at all. That turned out to be a good thing, since I had that stupid food poisoning, so I wasn't feeling all too well. Anyway, any more references to that stupid food poisoning will be refrained from in this post.

So, they got in late at night, and after some pleasantries, gift exchanges, and other niceties, the wine slumber party started. Haha, this was fun. I have a rather minimalist apartment, since I don't have a guest room, no extra bed, since after all, I won't be staying here in Buffalo for long. So why would I invest in making my apartment pretty? Anyway, so I told them that beforehand, so they brought sleeping bags and blankets. It was like camping in my bedroom. Camping, accompanied with two bottles of cabernet sauvignon. One was rather spicy, from Mendoza, Argentina. The other was rather sweet, from California. After two bottles and a ton of conversation, we fell asleep at around 3:00 AM.

Waking up the next day brought headaches. But hey, it was all fun. We showered, and then went to breakfast at Amy's Place, which is this very hippie and interesting diner that is just a couple of minutes away from my apartment. The place is always full, and the staff looks interesting as well. Depending on the time of the day, they're either sizzling hot guys or scary-looking lesbians(?) who would take your order and bring your food.

Anyway, for the Ice Princess, this is her first visit to America, and it basically was a big deal. I got reminded of early immigrants to the USA from Eastern Europe. The Ice Princess, being from Romania, was very funny. We saw the power cords that the traffic lights hung from, and she took a picture of it. It made me realize that there are plenty of things that I just took for granted here.

After breakfast, it was already a little before noon. There was a little need to go to the convenience store, so we headed to one, and then we went to North Campus because we had tickets to see Rent. Rent was being produced by the Department of Theatre and Dance, and the show was fully booked for all performances. We all enjoyed the show, and we were joined by the Ninja Warrior.

After Rent, the Axe Murderer, the Ice Princess, the Ninja Warrior, and I went to Applebee's for dinner. The Ice Princess wanted the American experience, so we figured an American sports bar restaurant would be the ideal. She loved her apple pie by the way. The look of her thoroughly enjoying that plate of sizzling apple pie made me realize that sometimes I get to overlook the simple joys in life at times. There are times in which I may be zooming through life, pursuing my hopes and dreams, that sometimes, I forget to stop and enjoy the scenery.

Alas, all visits must come to an end, and so the 24-hour stay that the Axe Murderer and the Ice Princess had with me had to end as well. We stopped by a wine store to buy some Californian wine, since the Ice Princess wanted some to carry back to Canada. After that, we went back to my place, they packed their bags, and then they were off to the bus station again.

All in all, it was a great and educational weekend (I didn't realize that "ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ" can be a sound that describes something totally unrelated to sleeping at all). I hope that I can fix this travel inflexibility that I currently have, so I can cross the border again sometime and return their visit in the future.



(Federal Triangle, from my DC Buildings Series)

Hazmat

So, I am glad. I am back live and kicking again.

So, swine flu or food poisoning? I guess it wasn't the flu, but rather, just good old food poisoning. After endless trips to the bathroom and basically a full change of contents of my stomach and bowels, I am now fine again.

In the meantime, I just spent my downtime at home, doing housework and laundry, and catching up on The Amazing Race. And speaking of the race, oh my, that was just exhilarating. Although I will save my comments for later when I get to see the season finale, since there were a few teams in there that really, why did they even join the race?

Anyway, I need to go back to work, so this is just an update that I am fine and well again.



(Old Post Office, from my DC Buildings Series)

Flu or Food Poisoning?

I've been sick.

This past week was fun and disastrous at the same time. Well, this weekend was the weekend when two of my friends from Toronto were visiting me, so that was fun (and worth of a separate blog entry) but at the same time, Mr. Murphy decided to pay me a visit as well, so he did by making me sick.

It started last Friday, when my other friends and I went to dinner in a Thai restaurant. I usually get what we get, which is an order of fresh steamed dumplings, and then we split a beef Pad Thai. After that, I went home and took a nap (my Canadian friends won't be arriving until late at night).

My stomach started to act weird. It wouldn't digest. I felt bloated, like a balloon. And so I was there, like a stuffed turkey, laying down in bed.

A few hours later, my friends arrived, and we had a good time having good conversation while consuming a couple bottles of Cabernet. However, it would have been better if my stomach cooperated.

The next day, it was a little better. I did quite a few trips to the restroom, emptying my digestive system. But, new symptoms appeared. I have a headache, and I also felt like I had a slight fever. The three of us had breakfast, and then we watched a musical on campus, and then we ate dinner, but all this time, I wasn't feel well. My stomach felt like it was being wrung like a piece of laundry. And my shoulders and arms hurt like I rock-climbed for a week. So, stomachache, diarrhea, fever, muscle pain, headache: this sounded like the flu.

Since I got the flu vaccine two months ago, only one thing came to my mind: this must be the swine flu.

Throughout the night, I went to the bathroom for a couple more times. I then took acetaminophen and loperamide to deal with my fever and muscle pain and diarrhea.

Which brings me to Sunday. I just stayed in bed for the most part, and my fever and muscle pains subsided. The diarrhea was also controlled. So maybe it was food poisoning after all. And according to Wikipedia, both swine flu and food poisoning have similar symptoms. So, if by tomorrow, I am well, then I could safely eliminate the flu.



(The Obelisk, from my DC Buildings Series)

Getting Carded

Even though I have been living in the United States for quite some time now, it still presents interesting and head-scratching occasions. Like the event of getting carded, for example.

Most of the time, I expect to be carded whenever I would be purchasing alcohol. Say, ordering a drink in a bar or a restaurant for example, or buying wine in a liquor store. However, these are inconsistent. Sometimes, I get carded, sometimes I do not. In occasions where I expected to get carded, for example, when I bought a Riesling for a dinner a couple of weeks ago, I was expecting to get carded simply because it was a liquor store. But I didn't get carded.

On the other hand, while in Boston a month ago, I was dining with my parents, and they ordered a bottle of wine while I ordered a mixed drink. I got carded.

I am 27, thank you very much.

Another occasion, which was more than two years ago. I was in the supermarket. I bought cooking white wine, because I needed it for a recipe. Unfortunately, I didn't have my ID with me. I showed the cashier the recipe, and how all I purchased corresponded to the ingredients, and I also told her that if I wanted to chug a bottle of wine, I would buy real wine, not COOKING WINE, which was explicitly labeled in the bottle that I had. I was able to purchase it without ID.

Then I get carded for purposes other than buying alcohol as well. The other day, I was buying cold medicine, because I caught the cold for the second time this semester. I had to prove that I was over 18, since apparently, the cold medicine had dextromethorphan, and that was restricted to purchases by people over 18. I then got a piece of paper saying they were controlling the sale of this drug to prevent cold medicine abuse by teens.

Right. I guess it works, but still I find it a little absurd. Oh well, what can I do?



(Holocaust Fire, from my DC Buildings Series)

The Paper Mill

The other day, I attended a student-run academic speed dating within the department. No, I wasn't trying alternative means to finding a person to date. Rather, it was more of an initiative by the students to get to know each other, and see what other people are doing research on. We had to give 2 slides each, and we only had 3 minutes to talk. Once those 3 minutes are over, we have to stop.

Well, what was it for? It was more of a way to see what other people are doing, and what other people are interested in. If someone wanted to collaborate with someone else, that was the venue to see who would be a potential one to talk to.

Anyway, I realized later on that I had several projects on the assembly line at the moment. And when I calculated where it would take me, it seems that I have projects that are on-going or about to start that would take me all the way to 2011.

How is that? Well, right now, we are at the end of 2009. I just finished an experiment that I am conducting in collaboration with a faculty member here in the department. We are currently writing an abstract for it, and hopefully, if this abstract gets accepted, we may be able to present it to a conference in New York City in March 2010. This project is not yet over, however, so we are currently designing follow-up studies and hopefully, we would be able to conduct this in time for another conference in Chicago in April 2010.

I have another project with a fellow graduate student, and this is the project that concerns the experiments that I am currently running at this moment. We hope to gather enough data so that we can write up the results in time for a third conference, this time in York, in the United Kingdom. This conference will be in July 2010.

What else? I have my experiments of my own for my dissertation, and well, I don't know what conferences are appropriate for me to present my work yet.

Finally, I have another project that hasn't started yet, which is another collaborative project with another graduate student. If this kicks in, there is an appropriate conference for our research. This will be held in Santiago de Chile, in July 2011. I do think that we have more than enough time to get our act together in time for this event.

So there, there are plenty of things scheduled ahead. It is exciting, and hopefully they all materialize.



(Balancing the Holocaust, from my DC Buildings Series)

Learning Curves

Recently, I migrated my professional email address from the WebMail that the university has been providing to a Google-powered one. The thing is, the university is subsidizing its email services to Google starting from this year, and it is effective to freshmen this year, and also alumni who graduated from June 2009 onwards. The good thing about this is that people who fall into this bracket can make use of the various nice applications that GoogleMail has, instead of having to rely on the archaic WebMail system that until now has been used by the university. It also frees the university's server, since the email will not be in the university's webspace, but in Google.

So, I happen to fall into the bracket that is eligible for migration. I am not a freshman, but since I applied to graduate for my master's degree back in June, even though I am not yet done with my PhD degree, technically, I am an alumnus of this university. So I applied for migration, which now allows me to use my professional email address forever. I don't have to worry that I only have six months to use my email address once I terminate my academic connections with this institution. So, even if I graduate and leave Buffalo, I can still use this address, which is very neat. That means that the email address that I have on the publications that I have released while affiliated with this institution can still be received, and all I have to do is set a forwarding scheme to the current email address that I have. No worries.

So for the past few days, I have been learning the ins and outs of GoogleMail. It's very neat: it allows me to put mountain pictures in my Inbox. It also keeps track of the emails as conversations. I definitely like that. That avoids the need to go back and forth the SentMail and Inbox folders to see how the conversation proceeded. Why did I not shift from Yahoo! Mail to GoogleMail before? Perhaps, because I can still see how Yahoo! Mail was useful to me. Besides, that is the email address that my friends know. Anyway, if there is a need to make a rather more professional email address than the one I have in Yahoo! then I will make one, not in Yahoo! But in Google this time.



(Persian Statue, from my DC Buildings Series)

The Dwarfs

The other day, the ninja and I wanted to just hang out together, so I asked whether she would be interested in seeing a play that was being produced in campus. The director happened to be the son of a professor in the department, and the director's sister is a good friend of mine as well. So we went, and we didn't really expected anything from the play, since I never heard of Harold Pinter before, and therefore didn't have any idea what the play was about.

It was rather intense.

The play was Harold Pinter's The Dwarfs, and it told the absurd story of three men, two of them being played by women actors, and five dwarfs. It was very surreal. It was very intense as well, that the ninja remarked that her neurons were overfired.

The beginning of the play was quite interesting. There were five characters all dressed in black, presumably, they were the dwarfs. They had bizarre hand and foot movements, and obviously they were annoying each other. It seems that whenever they hear something mentioned by the audience, they repeat that. That was quite funny. And then the play began. The dialogue was rather bizarre as well. It was all bizarre.

Now, comparing to Tattoo Girl, I wasn't quite amused by this play. I didn't know how to process it, given the fact that I don't have much experience when it comes to absurd theatre. Although I have to say that it wasn't the case that I didn't like it. I just needed more time to sink it in, and ponder on the strangeness of the play. I guess this is a play that is not for everyone. It is rather hard to comprehend, and although I like the way the director manipulated the play, the story was, hmmm, very Pinteresque?



(Another Angle of the Archives, from my DC Buildings Series)

Goodbye Wikipedia

Yesterday night, I terminated my account in Wikipedia. It was about time.

I deleted all my user pages, all my user talk pages, blanked all the pages that described my being, and all that. I then made a request to the admins asking to allow me to exercise my right to vanish.

Why did I do this? Well, Wikipedia had its place in my life before. I became a member back in 2005, when I was a first year graduate student. I soon found myself making edits in the aviation and airline realm, fixing articles about airplanes, airlines, airports, and other related articles. I strove for uniformity, and usually found myself up late at night editing articles in my apartment.

A year later, I found myself being reprimanded for a 3RR violation. This happened when I was engaged in an edit war with someone else. It turned out that I was in the right, and my edit was the correct one, but still, I didn't follow the standard procedure, so I was blocked for 24 hours.

Later on, Wikipedia would be therapeutic for me. I would edit articles, and I have access to databases of airline schedules and things like that, so that any new developments in the airline activity would immediately be reflected by my new edit.

But then the dissertation happened. I had taken several Wikipedia vacations before, abstaining from editing for several months at a time. And then most recently, I realized that it doesn't work for me anymore. I wonder why. Did I lose trust in Wikipedia? Probably not, but still, the fact that it is online, the fact that everyone can edit it, the fact that it is not peer-reviewed makes me lose interest. As if editing has become a Sisyphean task for me.

So, as I have said, I bade Wikipedia goodbye. I removed my personal information. I removed my user pages describing who I am and what I am interested in. I don't think that is the place for those information anymore. If people want to know where I have been to, that information is restricted to my friends.

Wikipedia is part of my past. I still have it bookmarked, and yes, I consult it from time to time, but it isn't something that is regularly part of my life anymore.

By the way, check out the new photo series I have been running for a few days now.



(National Archives, from my DC Buildings Series)

Sex, Violence, and the American Culture

So, for the past few days, there have been plenty of opportunities for me to wonder about this topic. See, this past week, the school newspaper released the Sex Issue, and it tackled plenty of topics relating to sex. The front page even included a suggestive picture of a couple going at it inside a lecture hall.

Of course, that generated plenty of opinions, both good and bad.

Another example of sex generating plenty of opinions was when Janet Jackson had a wardrobe malfunction, and she exposed her breast accidentally during a SuperBowl program a few years ago on National TV. That was a major event, and people made a big deal on how that was inappropriate.

Now, another aspect of American TV culture is violence. We all know that violence also sells, like sex. Violence is a major theme in video games nowadays. Video games have storylines where people get killed, cars get robbed, crowds get assaulted. And yes, these video games sell very well. It seems that the more violence one video game has, or the more violence one TV show or even a commercial has, then it will sell well.

Now isn't that bizarre? American culture shuns sex as if it is the plague, while they are so lax when it comes to violence. The last time I checked, sex does not have to be malefactive, but violence is always malefactive. Nobody gets hurt if one exposes a breast, while blowing up someone's head is a manifestation of killing someone.

The question is now that why is it that a natural bodily function such as sex is so frowned upon by this Puritan society, and yet a very unnatural function such as the various forms of violence is perfectly okay in this society. It is very puzzling indeed.



(Streets of the Capital, from my DC Buildings Series)

Why Major in Philosophy

So, ever since I went to college, I had pondered about the choice of one's major and why people choose to major in a certain field. I always thought that there were two types of students: the student who studies a certain field because there is money behind it, regardless of what the student likes or not; and the student who studies a certain field because he really likes it, regardless of whether there is money behind it or not.

So, when I was a freshman in college and had to choose a major, I weighted all these things and thought about what I should major in. I had a set of constraints, and looking at the list of the possible majors in the university I was in, I did an elimination. I wanted to go to music, but I didn't pass the audition, so that was out. I didn't like doing math at that time, so I eliminated a huge swath of majors that needed higher-level math. I also was speaking three languages at that time, so I figured, I might as well study linguistics. It turned out that I liked what I was doing, and so I guess I became the second type of student. I never really thought about whether there is big money in linguistics or not. (Honestly, there isn't much: it's not like nursing or computer science)

Eventually, while in graduate school, I shifted my focus slowly from a pure theoretical linguistics background, to a more of an interdisciplinary approach to the study of language. I started dabbling in psychology, and so I learned how to devise experiments, and I learned how the brain works when it comes to processing language. Now, I guess, this broadens my opportunities. I could work on cognition labs now. I can say now that what I do have scientific and psychological reality. Unlike when I was in undergrad that I was working with language models that well, seemed like magic.

Anyway, so the other night, I was thinking about other fields of study, and what they are useful for. Like, what is the marketability of these majors? Say, Caribbean Studies, or Philosophy, or Women's Studies, or African Studies. Sometimes, it is hard to find what those majors are useful for, it is hard to see how they can be applied to things. It is hard to see how they can convince their dentist that their work is important.

Anyway, to conclude, I was walking the halls of the university one night, while posting fliers for my experiment, when I saw a flier posted on top of a water fountain next to the main office of the Philosophy Department. It read like this:

Premise 1: This is the best drinking fountain on campus.

Premise 2: Majoring in Philosophy is the best and easiest way for you to maximize your opportunities to drink out of this fountain.

Premise 3: Maximizing your opportunities to drink out of this fountain is sufficient reason for majoring in Philosophy.

Conclusion: You should major in Philosophy.



(Headless Robe, from my Sackler and Freer Collection Series)

My Metaphors

Recently, I have realized that I make use of a lot of metaphors whenever I interact with people, whenever I explain things, whenever I write about stuff, among other things. In fact, some people even told me that I have too many metaphors (that's you Priyank!) that it may be the case that my conversation is not easy to understand.

So what are the metaphors that I have been using recently?

Well, there's the dentist. This was actually introduced to me by my dissertation adviser, in order to illustrate the strength that one should have whenever one is writing a dissertation. One should be able to explain one's dissertation to a naive and intelligent being, such as a dentist. One should explain to the dentist why one's research is important and therefore why one is being paid to do the research. Fair enough, one should be able to do this, otherwise, one is just living in a bubble.

There's also the baby. I have used this metaphor before in order to refer to my research, my writing, my qualifying paper, and at this moment, my dissertation. Heck, back in the days, I remember even extending the metaphor to the act of giving birth, even naming the thing as if it were a real baby.

I also take one-hour vacations every now and then. Whenever I have a long day where I am so in the zone in the morning, and then I want to take a break, I just pick my book that I am currently reading and then tell people that I am taking a one-hour vacation. That usually means that I will find a comfortable place in the library somewhere and just escape reality for a while by being sucked into the world of the novel. I tend to pick novels that are set in various locales around the world, so I take one-hour vacations to different places. The past book I read took me to Russia and the Caucasus, and the current book is taking me to Nicaragua. I find that taking these one-hour vacations to different parts of the world refreshing.

Perhaps one of the most controversial and important metaphors I have is the bat cave. I use this metaphor to stand for the repository of things that I have in my head but I don't want to tell people. Say, if a friend of mine asks me a question about a topic that I am not comfortable talking about, I would say that the answer to that question is in my bat cave, and that the bat cave is restricted access. Sometimes, whenever I am in a bad mood, and do not wish to interact with the immediate people, I tell them that I am remotely accessing my bat cave. I know, sometimes, using this metaphor can get me in trouble, because some people might misinterpret my bat cave as rudeness. But, so far it is working.

So, what are the metaphors that you live by?



(Buddha in Lotus, from my Sackler and Freer Collection Series)

Book Review: Absurdistan by Gary Shteyngart

This novel was absurd. And I didn't like it.

This novel is about a big fat Russian Jew, whose lifelong goal in his life is to immigrate to the United States. He used to live in the United States, since he lived in New York City as a student. He is the son of a very rich businessman, so he has plenty of money to burn. However, his father killed a businessman in Oklahoma, so because of that, he has problems in getting another visa from the United States.

So, what does he do? While in St. Petersburg, he whines and whines and complains about how the US Consulate always denies his visa application. He has various weird friends, and he drinks with them. He has an American girlfriend, who adores him primarily because of his money, not because of his body, since hey, he is fat, and his khui got mutilated due to a botched circumcision operation.

Suddenly, one of his friends gave him a bizarre idea. One of his friends suggested to him that he should become a Belgian citizen, and by virtue of his Belgian citizenship, he can enter the United States freely. However, in order to get Belgian citizenship, one should go to a certain obscure country: Absurdistan. This is a country located somewhere in the Caucasus, on the shores of the Caspian Sea. Why there? Because in the Belgian Embassy in Absurdistan, there is a corrupt Belgian diplomat that would sell Belgian citizenship after paying a rather large sum. Now since this guy has the money, then sure, why not?

They go to Absurdistan, and sure enough, he gets his Belgian citizenship, but the problem now is exiting the country. Soon after getting his Belgian citizenship, civil war erupts. Chaos reigns. He cannot get out, and sooner than later, he gets involved in the local politics. The second half of the book is actually devoted to the ups and downs of the adventures that he gets himself into while in Absurdistan.

Now, is this novel funny? Yes. Is this novel absurd? Yes. Is this novel literature? Most probably not. The thing is, every chapter has its own set of funny stuff that makes me laugh while reading it. However, I am not sure how this can be categorized as literature. I know that this is a satirical novel, but unlike other satirical novels, I don't see the main idea behind it. I don't see a bigger picture. Really, this novel felt like the novel equivalent of a bad movie, perhaps one of the worst movies of all time, such as Freddy Got Fingered. Really, I had hopes in the beginning that the bad novel that this is would turn out better later (that's why I still finished this novel even though I thought that this was a bad one in the beginning), but it didn't. This book gets one star out of a possible five. I returned it to the library, and I am so looking forward to get a new book.

See my other book reviews here.



(Temple Guardian, from my Sackler and Freer Collection Series)

Battling with my Dentist

This past weekend was spent battling with my dentist. In fact, I have been battling my dentist for about two weeks now. And I think I am almost done with it.

See, the thing is, when one writes a dissertation, one needs to battle with the dentist. According to my adviser, I need to convince my dentist that my topic is important. Now what does this exactly mean?

The thing is, most academics get lost in their own bubble. They have been doing their research for a long time, that for them, they could easily think that what they do research on is so important for the world. Same thing for graduate students. If a PhD candidate like me is reading and writing stuff about one thing and just one thing for every day for a couple of years, then one can easily contrive in one's head that what one is doing is important. One can easily be in a situation where it is very hard to think outside of the bubble.

Now my adviser told me that in order to avoid this predicament, one needs to convince one's dentist that what one is doing is indeed important and not just trivial. The thing is, dentists are intelligent beings, but they are also naive when it comes to one's research. So dentists can understand what one manipulates in one's study since they are intelligent beings, but they are naive as to why we do it. Thus, my adviser told me to convince my dentist that my work is important, and if I can do this, then that means I fully understand inside and out what my research is and why I am doing it.

So yeah, I have been battling with my dentist. And I think I am done with it. Yay!



(Six-Armed God, from my Sackler and Freer Collection Series)

Sagging

So while I was walking all over campus the other day posting my fliers for my experiment, I saw an interesting sight. I saw a guy sporting the sagging fashion. It was bizarre.

I mean, what is attractive about lowering one's pants to the level below one's butt? Is showing one's boxers (they were navy blue, with dark blue stripes) really attractive? I mean, boxer's fabric tend to be very flimsy and thin, so one can easily see the outline of what's being covered.

So, this guy was standing in front of a row of computers, where one can access the computer for fifteen minutes at a time. And he was there, with his sagging pants, and I thought like wow, this must be very bizarre. People's fashion sense has gone berserk, I mean, just look at Lady Gaga. People are bizarre.

Anyway, I looked into this sagging thing, and apparently, it's a hip-hop thing. And in fact, at least one town in the United States considers it a type of disorderly conduct if one does sagging. Depending on how low it is, or whether one's buttcrack is exposed, there are different fines. Now, while I do not agree that sagging is a crime, I still think it is bizarre. I do think that it is a means of expression, and if everyone has freedom of expression, then sure why not, let them sag. In fact, the ACLU has been fighting this town with respect to its sagging rules. I just find it rather irrational.



(Shiva, from my Sackler and Freer Collection Series)

Pastis, Pizza, and Limoncello

So yesterday, my ninja sidekick and I were invited to have dinner in a friend's house. See, a couple of weeks ago, my ninja sidekick and I hosted a small dinner party, and a friend couple were invited. This time, they decided to return the favor by inviting us and having homemade pizza, while watching ski movies.

Now that was a fun evening. I never realized how fun pizza-making can be (of course, we were just spectators). But it looked so easy, as long as one has those wide wooden pans in the oven, and in a few minutes, the pizza will be done. It was nothing like Domino's or Pizza Hut, the crust was thin, the flavor was original, and the taste was great. It now makes me tempted to try making them myself.

I also got acquainted with a few aperitifs and digestives, such as pastis (similar to absinthe) and limoncello. Pastis is a French aperitif that one dilutes in ice cold water. One part pastis and four parts ice water should be the ideal. It is anise-flavored, just like absinthe, and the liqueur exhibits the ouzo effect, which refers to the cloudy phenomenon once one adds water to the liquid. Playing with my friend's one-year old kid was fun while enjoying pastis.

Then we made six different pizza types, and consumed it with some riesling from Germany. We also watched ski movies shot in various locations around the world, such as Tanzania and Iran (I suppose not a lot of people would think that one can ski in those two countries, eh?).

Finally, we played scrabble, but without taking scores. I guess it's more fun that way. I had a taste of limoncello, which is this Italian liqueur that has the flavor of lemon zest, but it isn't sour at all, because there isn't any lemon juice in it. Some people think it tastes like dish detergent, but I didn't think it was the case.

Anyway, all in all, the night was fun. For a few hours, we were able to escape to Lugano, and forget about the worries that awaited us outside of the door.



(Floating God, from my Sackler and Freer Collection Series)

Hail

No, the next word isn't going to be Mary.

Anyway, the first snow of the season was today. In an atypical fashion, it snowed here in Buffalo after Halloween. People say that it usually snows at least once before Halloween, and for the past few years it has been true, but for this year, it didn't happen. But today, well, the forecast yesterday was that it will snow today, and sure enough, even for a brief period, it did.

I was in my office, and then the sky suddenly became dark. The clouds all came in, and then hail fell. There's these little balls of ice that fell from the sky, and they crowded the window sills. They fell and fell, as if the sky was one giant ice cube maker.

Then it transitioned to snow. The flakes descended, and they coated the ice cubes with this white frosting, but sure enough, for the first snow of the season, it was brief and fleeting, and the sky suddenly turned blue again and there was the sun.



(Lord Ganesh, from my Sackler and Freer Collection Series)

The Ear Blaster

Kids these days...

Almost everyone now has some sort of music player that they carry around and plug in their ears with an earphone. I wonder why. Why is it that the modern person has the need to carry around some music and listen to it all the time?

The kids here in campus listen to it while they walk from one building to another. Geez, walking from one end of the campus to the other doesn't even take 10 minutes, does that time frame require a song or two? As if silence is so oppressive that people do everything they can to prevent silence.

Earlier today, while I was in the male restroom, I was standing in front of a urinal relieving myself. Two urinals away was this guy, with his ears plugged. But even I could hear the music that was playing. It was playing that loud that I can actually distinguish the melody of the song. Wow. Why do they need to play it that loud? Are their eardrums malfunctioning that they need to be boomed with that loud of a sound so that the eardrum can effectively transmit the signal to their brain? Or maybe their brain is the one that is malfunctioning, since it may be the case that the brain cannot interpret the sound signals if they are soft, so the brain wants it to be loud? In any case, I find it extremely ludicrous that people listen to music that loud that even though it was playing through the earphones, other people who ARE NOT WEARING IT can hear them too!

Kids these days...



(Big-Breasted God, from my Sackler and Freer Collection Series)

Numbers and Graphs

So the past weekend was filled with occasions in which I was sitting in front of the computer, plugging numbers in a spreadsheet, and doing statistical tests on it. And after a battalion of these tests, I printed some numbers and made some graphs. And boy, the results were pretty.

So, last Saturday, I conducted a series of T-tests, because we were comparing the means of two different samples. Ideally, there should not be a difference, because theoretically, we were predicting a null effect. However, there was. And after some thought, of course, given the manipulations that we did, there should be a difference, but it was not the difference that we were interested in.

So, we had to go to Plan B. Good thing though that I designed the experiment in such a way that we can recode the data and rerun a different test without conducting the whole experiment over again. So, some of the conditions that we weren't interested in suddenly became a condition that we were interested in, and it was a good thing that they were not haphazardly designed, and so there was no worry that the design was crap. I just had to make a few tweaks here and there.

Thus, after the tweak, I ran a one-way ANOVA, and after seeing the plots and the graphs, I was happy. The thing that we were trying to investigate was very much supported by our numbers. The comparisons that we were predicting are still there, and our predictions have empirical support.

Earlier, when doing the T-tests, I realized that the data was divided in two ways. There was one group of people that was functioning one way, and another group of people that was functioning another way. The group division was rather large: it wasn't just one or two people in the sample, but a big one-third of the sample was behaving differently. So we deemed that we had to explain this. I re-ran the one-way ANOVA with the split data, and sure enough, the graphs between these two groups are largely different. And this was enough to make me and my co-author happy.

So what did we see? Based on the construction that we were investigating, there seems to be two dialects of the target language. The language that we are investigating seems to vary along the dimension that we were manipulating. And this is an important fact since a lot of theoretical linguists out there claim that there is no such divide.

Unfortunately, I do not feel like describing this in more detail here, since it is not just my research, it is a collaborative one, and I would rather describe it in more detail once this is published. Anyway, we think that we now have material for a conference presentation. We have a month to write an abstract, and hopefully, this gets accepted for a conference in March. I smell another line in my CV...



(God Statue, from my Sackler and Freer Collection Series)

Book Review: Comfort and Joy by Jim Grimsley

I suppose after having read a couple of books that took me a full month to read, this is something different. It only took me this weekend to actually finish this novel.

So, what is this novel about? This novel talks about the challenges that a same-sex couple faced, dealing with each other, and also dealing with their families. One is a doctor, coming from a very upper-class family from the southern US, while the other is a hospital administrator, and his family doesn't have a lot of money. The doctor makes a lot of money, while the hospital administrator has health problems. He has hemophilia, and due to that he is HIV positive. Thus, there are plenty of conflicts in this book. And somehow I am surprised that the author was able to pack it all in less than 300 pages.

So, what do I like about this book? Well, style-wise, I like the fact that the story was written in a non-linear fashion. The narrative did not follow temporal order but instead were linked together in thematic order. This placed the burden of linking to the reader, which I liked. This meant that the author trusted the reader to have the intelligence to be able to do this. Aside from this, a lot of importance has been placed with the dialogue. The reader is therefore given the ability to infer the character's emotions by discerning this from the dialogue between each character.

I suppose if I would find something that is negative in this book, is the fact that there are too many conflicts in the story. Yes, there is the issue of same-sex relationships and acceptance, there is the issue of hemophilia and HIV, there is the issue of family relations and parental expectations with respect to their children. I guess I feel that there is too much drama. I rarely read LGBT literature, so I do not know whether this is a trend or not when it comes to this genre, but the only other LGBT novel that I read a couple of years back was similar in structure: there was a lot of emotional turmoil inside. I am not saying that non-LGBT literature has the right amount of drama, but I wish there was more aside from the emotional conflicts that was portrayed in this book.

So, did I enjoy this? Yes. Would I recommend it, perhaps. If one wants a novel that easily swoons one's emotions, and is a page-turner because one's feelings are affected, then this is one such book. However, is this a book that would induce one to ponder about more complex and complicated things? Perhaps not. In that sense, it felt like an airport novel: one doesn't need to engage one's brain power too much in order to understand the various conflicts that the book presents, and the conflict is transparent enough to hold the reader in attention in order for the pages to turn, so by the end of the trip, the novel is finished. After all, I was able to read it in just 3 days.

See my other book reviews here.



(Gods, from my Sackler and Freer Collection Series)