Upgo.info, a Parody

Upgo is a project I did with some friends while in California last week. It was a Christmas present for a friend of ours who founded a startup, is an impressive Go player, and has an affinity for all things Japanese. The premise basically arose from someone's attempt to give me the quick-and-dirty description of this friend's startup -- I thought it sounded like The Hunger Games for software engineers. Ergo, we decided to film a parody startup video:


http://youtu.be/v_1Cj0jQ9IQ

We did it over the course of one night in Lucas's living room. The jokes are from all three of us, the video editing was Brett and Lucas, the bones of the script (and the Hunger Games references) was mostly me, the logo and font were Brett, and the website was Lucas.

We even made fake business cards as the physical souvenir (note: the friend for whom we were making the website/video is also named Lucas):

Definitely one of the most fun projects I've done in a while!

A Turkey-less Asian Thanksgiving

I read in the news that the President pardoned a pair of turkeys who would otherwise have landed on the White House dinner table tonight. Well, in an Asian household, we don't really eat turkey to begin with (my mom doesn't like the taste, and neither do all the other Chinese moms). Instead, this is what our Thanksgiving feast looked like:

Hotpot! It was delicious. Here's a picture of the pot itself:

The things floating in the soup are fishballs (the white ones), meatballs (the brown ones) and tofu cubes. The submerged orange things are pumpkin cubes.

I never quite appreciated being home for the holidays until I found myself eating dining hall turkey in college over Thanksgiving. It wasn't too bad, especially since I had friends whose folks lived too far away for them to celebrate Thanksgiving at home, but there's nothing quite like being home with the family. And having tasty hotpot.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

Cover-a-Week #32: "Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, Pt. 1" by The Flaming Lips

Because it was recently Ada Lovelace Day:


http://youtu.be/K0Y8pf009yo

I have a lot of friends from college who were female computer scientists and engineers. I'm very proud of them -- of what they do, what they represent, and the hard work and extraordinary talent I know it took (I was there, after all). They might not be fighting pink robots, but they are, every day, combating the societal forces that created this unequal world. They're "destroying the status quo, because the status is not quo" -- and I love them for it. This one's for you, ladies.

New York in Pictures

The past two weekends, I had two of my friends from college stay with me for a few days each. We explored the city, of course. It's always refreshing to experience one's hometown from a non-New Yorker's perspective. Much like how one gains a different understanding of one's native tongue in teaching it to a student of the language, there are certain aspects of place that are easily overlooked if one is immersed in it every day, that

Julie and I went for a bit of a hike in Central Park. We happened upon this interestingly-shaped copse of trees, and I couldn't resist a photograph:

Naturally (no pun intended), I was reminded of one of my favorite Robert Frost poems, "The Road Not Taken." (A pity it's not autumn; it would have been a beautiful picture with the thicket melting red and yellow around her.)

I also took her to see Alice, one of my favourite statues in the Park:

One of these days, I will sit by (on?) the Alice statue and reread Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. (It's somewhat fitting, methinks, that there's a little girl (wearing purple, Julie's favorite color) climbing on the sculpture in the background.)

There were a few highlights that I ended up visiting twice in as many weeks, but they were absolutely worth seeing more than once. The High Line is, for instance, one of my favorite places in New York. This is probably the cleverest billboard along the path:

And yes, it's situated above one of the few street-level car parks in Manhattan (which appears surprisingly empty).

Lucas and I also spotted this intriguing bit of text writ large on a dark wall across from the High Line:

It's ironically (or perhaps intentionally) located next to a tavern/restaurant called The Half King (its sign is partially visible in the lower left).

I also went to the Met twice in as many weeks, because if you have out-of-town visitors, they absolutely must see the Met. We ended up in the musical instruments section twice as well, and Lucas and I had the same thought about this sculpture:

Air guitar! Given the style of the statue and the position of the hands, there was probably a lyre or a harp at some point. A disappointment for all of the Guitar Hero players out there, I'm sure.

We spotted this on the subway, and my first thought was naturally, "it's a policy tub!" (A debate thing. I did LD, PF, and college parli, mind you -- not CX.):

Julie had a bit of a laugh at my expense. I don't mind at all. :-)

I love having friends in from out of town. Come visit me more often!

Faulkner on Literature, Humanity, and Immortality

On Sunday, I had dinner with my friend Brett after an afternoon visit to the Met. I was telling him about an amazing, inspiring book talk I'd recently attended: it was a conversation between Adam Johnson, a Stanford English professor and this year's Pulitzer winner in fiction, and Fredrik Logevall, a Cornell history professor and the Pulitzer winner in nonfiction, moderated by their editor, David Ebershoff, of Random House.

Brett was reminded of (and sent me) this particular speech delivered by William Faulkner on the acceptance of his Nobel Prize in Literature in 1949:
http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1949/faulkner-speech.html

It's brilliant and quite worth reading (and not very long) -- so do actually read it! Faulkner's claim is, essentially, that literature -- the written word, storytelling, art -- is humanity's way of achieving some semblance of immortality. He writes not of the genetic "immortality" perpetuated by our biology, of course; I think one of the prerequisites of sentience is a consciousness of meaning greater than base instinct. Rather, Faulkner speaks to our legacy as a species -- the ideas, the intellectual and creative achievements by which humanity might define itself.

Literature is one such vehicle. I would hesitate to call it a record -- that term falls too much in the realm of historiography (which is itself an ambitious and meaningful endeavour, of course) -- but perhaps one might consider literature the pared-down essence of what it means to be human. In books, in art, we see reflected not only the best (and the worst) -- but also the deepest, truest, and most beautiful aspects of ourselves. In literature, we are immortal -- not only the writer, and sometimes not the writer at all (Homer is the example that comes to mind) -- but we, as a sentient species, are captured, burnished, chased in silver -- forever.

Shakespeare expressed a similar sentiment centuries earlier:

So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
(Sonnet 18, lines 13-14)

Cover-a-Week #19: "Hotel California" by the Eagles

In honor of my friends who graduated today from various undergrad and graduate programs at Stanford:


http://youtu.be/cz5XiZooSMc

I miss you guys dearly, and can't wait to see those of you who are coming to New York this summer!

Today

was wonderful and quintessentially New York -- the sort of day that makes me enormously thankful to live in such a vibrant, diverse city full of old friends and affable strangers. I don't mean to turn this blog into a series of diary entries -- that would seem rather self-indulgent -- but today was full of sights and sounds and people that I want to remember.

It began with brunch with a dear friend who is returning to the city after college, a relocation for which I'm grateful because I've missed her these few years. We go back a long time; we played together as children, went to the same elementary school and Chinese school, and have seen each other through our best and worst moments ever after.

We ate at a Greek place in our neighborhood in Queens; we've been coming here once or twice a year since high school. I had an excellent crêpe and we caught up on each other's lives -- we talked about work and friends and our grand ambitions in life. She's one of the few people with whom I discuss the latter topic; despite pursuing radically different fields, we have similarly coherent and somewhat lofty visions of the future. Kindred spirits, I'd say.

After brunch, I met up with a college friend in Manhattan. On the way there, I spotted a group of people in 1920s garb:

There seem to be a number of Jazz Age-themed events going on this summer, even more so than usual (likely prompted by the recent The Great Gatsby film). I was reminded of the Gatsby party I attended in May -- exactly a month ago, as it happens -- which was an industry event hosted by Fitzgerald's publisher and included a costume contest. (I dressed up but didn't win; there were some truly spectacular costumes!)

So I got bubble tea in Chinatown with my friend (it seems like I have quite a few moments that involve bubble tea...). He's a Californian who moved to New York a few months ago, whom I didn't realize was in town until I bumped into him at an alumni event on Monday! He was a few years ahead of me in school and we'd lost touch for a while after he graduated, but he's now working at a start-up in Silicon Alley and lives downtown. 

We met up with one of his friends in Central Park, who was hanging out on the lawn with a few other people we didn't know. It was a gathering of, at least from my perspective, friends and strangers connected to each other by a few tenuous degrees of separation. Though it seems unlikely that I'll encounter these people again -- and in a few months I would be hard-pressed to even recognize them on the street -- for an hour or so, we shared a blanket, a conversation, a patch of sunlight in the Park -- a tiny slice of New York.

At one point, there was a moment of silence -- a completely natural, contented lull in the conversation. We watched a group of small children chase each other around on the lawn, and soon observed that they were all following one small boy who held aloft some sort of styrofoam disc. I was distinctly reminded of The Lord of the Flies -- it was an uncanny analogue of the conch! I said as much to the others, and we had an entertaining few minutes trying to spot the Piggy of the group.

Our group splintered apart in twos and threes. My friend and I wandered through Central Park conversing and taking in the sights and sounds of summer. We stumbled upon a guitarist/vocalist duo performing in front of the lake (with a very professional sound system) and sat in the grass for a few songs. We found a large, fenced-off section of road where people were rollerskating in circles around a rock band which had set up in the middle of the walkway. There was a chalked-off section next to the band where people were dancing, and so we ended up swing-dancing to live music in the middle of a roller derby! (My friend is, incidentally, an excellent dancer; it's a shame we didn't overlap at school for longer.) We also happened upon trio of busking musicians consisting of two drummers and a bagpiper:

The snare drum (obscured in this photo by the man in black), the djembe, the bongos, and the bagpipes seem like a highly unlikely combination (especially the bagpipes!) but they work surprisingly well together. It was a perfect microcosm of the diversity and cooperative spirit of this extraordinary city. (My friend got their card, afterwards; apparently they have a website.)

We then got coffee with a third friend, another Stanford alumnus making his way in New York. We only had an hour, but it was an hour well-spent: a potent reminder that even in this bustling, hectic place, we make time for each other because it's the small moments as much as the grand gestures that comprise any human understanding.

We had dinner near his apartment in Greenwich Village with his roommate. We tried an American restaurant she suggested, and passed a merry hour or two getting to know each other. She's an architect from Hawai'i, so naturally I broached the question of whether she can play the ukulele! (Passably, was the answer.) My friend plays the guitar and also, to a lesser extent, the ukulele, so we're going to play for each other sometime. (I didn't know this about him until today.)

And then we went our separate ways, the two of them to catch a film in the Village, and I to the F train headed into Queens. I spent a quiet hour reading on the subway, with the rumble of the train and a dozen indistinct conversations in the background. In Queens, I stopped by my favorite neighborhood bakery to buy a cake for Father's Day tomorrow.

All in all, it was a lovely day in the City. Here's to more such days in the future.

Cover-a-Week #18: "Colors of the Wind" from Pocahontas (Disney)

This one's a request:

http://youtu.be/zx_QrqvpvmM

I am reminded of my commencement ceremony almost exactly a year ago; a group of my friend dressed up as Disney princesses for Wacky Walk (a Stanford tradition where, instead of processing solemnly into the stadium, we capered in wearing costumes, carrying signs, holding balloons and props and silly string, serenaded by the infamous Stanford marching band). I wasn't Pocahontas -- I was Mulan, for which I sewed a costume. Ah, memories.

BookExpo America, or, "Hey, Look, a Galley!"

Today was my first time attending BEA (BookExpo America), which is the largest publishing trade fair in North America (and possibly the world, though the ones in London, Frankfurt, and Bologna are probably bigger). It's held at the Javits Center, which might be one of the most inconveniently located spaces in New York. 

BEA was... huge. I was not expecting it to be quite so huge, even though, considering it's attended by all of trade publishing in the US, I really should have known. I saw some old friends from Algonquin, snagged a cupcake at an author signing, and of course, picked up a tote bag-full of ARCs:

(The tissue box is there for perspective. I lugged that pile from the West Side back to Queens in ninety-degree weather, and it's absolutely worth it.)

Advance reading copies -- and free finished books -- are one of the best perks in publishing (which, admittedly, is an industry without that many perks). I have fond memories from my college internship days of scouring the Penguin Classics overflow shelves for books on my autumn quarter syllabi. This time, the loot is mostly historical fiction, literary fiction, and women's fiction, with a random cookbook that I got from a friend at Workman in there (third from the bottom).

Other things seen at BEA:

I think they're Pokemon? (How many sales assistants does it take to assemble a five-foot Lego statue?)

This, too, might have looked more normal at Comic Con... :-P

Themed cupcakes!

(The post title is an inside joke, for those of you who are really confused.)

Cover-a-Week #17: "Code Monkey" by Jonathan Coulton

Now with a new external microphone -- thanks, Lucas, Brett, Kat, and Julie!


http://youtu.be/rE7GX7m7nrk

Jonathan Coulton, in my books, is the new Tom Lehrer for the nerdy set. (Is that redundant? The original Tom Lehrer was a mathematician...)

I played this song about a year ago with the band at Stanford's Big Dance, as the tempo works for swing. (I can hardly believe it's been a year since I left California!) The social dance community had a tremendous overlap with the engineering (especially computer science) community, so it was quite well-received. :-)

A Journal of the University Years

Here is a slightly fictionalized account of my evolution as an English major, illustrated entirely using armadillos:

The dark days of pre-med... ("Quoth the raven, 'Nevermore!'")

Upon overhearing my former classmates:

"And how much reading do you have?" (See, I remember exactly how much chemistry homework I used to get.) 

Or, in my case...
Everyone else: working on group projects in Gates (Stanford computer science building) until 2am
Me: holed up alone in dorm room, on the floor, open books spread out in concentric circles around me, writing papers

I look back at my blogging history from last year and cringe at the truth this armadillo speaks.

And then...

3am? That's cute. It was more along the lines of: peers blearily at the mess of paper (no longer neatly arranged in concentric circles), peers blearily at the small army of tea-stained mugs invading said papers, wades through the detritus of the all-nighter to find a printer as the first rays of sunlight illuminate the room.

But wait! Right before I hand it in...

Cue a second mad dash for the dorm printer, followed by a mad dash to my professor's office (possibly still in my pyjamas).

P.S. -- Don't deny that you laughed at the post title.

Social Dance in New York

One of the things I miss most about college is social dance. I was told by people in the Bay Area dance community that there is little waltz in New York, but a lot of good swing dancing. I've attended exactly one dance event in the city thus far; I enjoyed it, even though the turnout was unusually low (thanks to a rainstorm), but noticed that the style here is rather different (more structured, for one).

I came across this article about swing dancing in the city:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/23/arts/dance/swing-dance-clubs-go-retro-in-new-york-city.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

Of course, this means I'll have to really learn how to swing if I'm to dance here. (I know enough to hold my own for a few dances, but I was always more of a waltz person.) There are also classes at a lot of New York dance halls, but that's a whole other level of commitment.

Pies (cont'd)

I'd mentioned Midnight Pie in my last post, so I thought I'd add to the list of baked goods I'd posted back in March. Here are the pies that I've made in my last quarter or so of college:

Rhubarb apple banana walnut
Strawberry banana
Blueberry blackberry
Apple x3

The first one was a bit of an adventure. Julie and Stefan brought over some rhubarb that they'd procured, but it wasn't quite enough to fill a pie. So, we ransacked the fridge and pantry to find fruits to stuff the pie crust, and came up with a banana and one or two apples, and a little sack of walnuts. We knew that apples, bananas, and walnuts went well together, but I'd never even had rhubarb before, so I had little idea of how the end result would taste. It was quite good -- I'd definitely make it again!

Thoughts on the Past Four Years, Part 2

It's rare, I think, to encounter a person who recalls her college years with no regrets whatsoever. (Of course, it is often said that mistakes are learning experiences, that what doesn't kill you makes you stronger, &c. I have no quarrel with such statements.) Most regrets, and certainly most of mine, are results of omission -- things I wish I'd done, or wish I'd done sooner, and didn't. I describe them here mostly to set my own thoughts in order, but also in hopes that it might prove instructive for readers, in any stage of life. To wit...

I wish I'd decided on the humanities earlier. I sometimes tell people that I "wasted" four quarters (that's about 1.3 academic years, for those of you more familiar with semester schools) on pre-med, that I wish I hadn't waited until the middle of my sophomore year to switch to a history major. I put the verb "waste" in quotation marks because I think, of course, that medicine as a profession or a field of study is itself eminently worthwhile -- and in general, science for its own sake is a wonderful thing. I only mean it in the most pragmatic of terms for myself; I had a finite number of quarters at university, and the sooner I chose my major(s), the sooner I could begin immersing myself in the classes and community that comes with them. There were quite a few humanities classes that I wish I could have taken, but I never had the time for, because I had to be very careful with intra-major distribution requirements and such (seeing as I knew it would be a very close call trying to essentially complete two majors in fewer than three years). Declaring my major as late in the game as I did -- I declared my first major literally a week before the absolute final deadline year -- led to a few other regrets...

I wish I'd made more friends in the humanities. My friend circle(s), in university, were populated largely by engineers and other techies. A majority of them are computer scientists, with somewhat overlapping swaths of mathematicians, physicists, and mechanical engineers. I was -- only somewhat jokingly, methinks -- designated the group's "token fuzzy." This was largely due to circumstance. Because I had been taking a lot of math and science as a freshman, I ended up meeting most of my friends in those classes, and through them meeting more engineers, and so on. (Another common source of college friends is one's freshman dorm, but the majority of my dorm enjoyed alcohol, parties in loud and dark rooms, and other social pursuits that didn't interest me.) By the time I'd "turned fuzzy" in the middle of sophomore year, most of my classmates already had established friend groups, as did I.

It's not that I wish I had a different group of friends, or that I would somehow "trade" them for others, if I could -- I am very glad of the friends I have made. It's merely that it got tiring, or isolating, sometimes, to be with people who talked mostly about the intricacies of computer science and such over dinner -- which would often fly right over my head, because my friends are incredible at what they do, and even if they weren't, I would have been hard-pressed tell. I occasionally got lonely for people who appreciated the beauty of not only well-written proofs and elegant code, but also particular turns of phrase or feats of argumentative brilliance. It sometimes seemed that we didn't have enough in common for me to converse with them as meaningfully as they did amongst themselves; I sometimes feared that I didn't -- couldn't -- know them in the way that they knew each other, and that perhaps the reverse was true as well. ("Sometimes" is the operative word, here; my social experience was by and large a happy one.)

I wish I'd stepped down my involvement in the debate team earlier. To be clear -- I really enjoy debate. As anyone who knows me can attest, I can be argumentative at the drop of a hat, often for the sheer fun of it. That's why I stayed with the team for so long. I'd been considering -- and waffling about -- quitting in part because I wasn't sure where else I could get the same quality of discussion of, and intellectual engagement with, the type of topics that debaters so love. (See the above point about divergent interests. Techies by and large don't consider political/legal theory good dinner conversation.) But by the end of junior year, I was quite burnt out. Travelling for debate tournaments meant that I was off-campus from Thursday evening to Sunday morning two or three times a quarter, which meant that I often forwent fun weekend activities (like dancing and films) with my largely non-debating friends. I'd been a debater since high school, and I'd felt the onset of debate fatigue since the beginning of junior year. I hung in there for another year more out of habit and sunk-cost syndrome (which is a psychological factor, as any economist can tell you) than out of true passion. In retrospect, if I hadn't done debate in college, or even if I had quit earlier, I would have been forced (by my own restlessness) to find other activities, and might have ended up involved in several that I rather wish I'd done more of while I had the chance. (Of course, debate wasn't the only reason for my not doing some of the things I wish I did; see below...)

I wish I'd been more involved in the following activities:

(a) Wushu: For the uninitiated, Wushu is a Chinese martial art that, as practiced today, is a sport and an art form, much like karate, capoeira, or gymnastics. I started going to practices the beginning of my freshman year, having had some training in gymnastics when I was small, and some competitive swimming when I was slightly less small, and not much idea of what I was getting myself into, other than that I'd gone to a demonstration and it looked really cool. (Plus, weapons! Eventually. Weapons are generally a plus for me.)

The problem was, practices were twice a week in the evenings, with one practice falling on Friday. Because I would have to fly to debate tournaments on Thursday evenings, I would have to miss practices -- and as a complete newcomer to the activity where quite a few people had been doing it for years, skipping practice wasn't a good idea. It came to the point where I had to choose between debate and Wushu. As evidenced, I chose debate. (If I had chosen Wushu instead, my college lifestyle would undoubtedly have been healthier, come to think of it.)

(b) Social dance: I've written a few blog posts about this, I think. My friend group started dancing around the end of my freshman year and the beginning of sophomore year. I was one of the last people to get involved, because I was a bit shy about it (not in a gender-normative way, mind you -- social dance is less old-fashioned than one might expect). This in itself became a sticking point for me, as it quickly became apparent at dance events that I was somewhat less experienced, and I was always a tad concerned that my friends might get bored dancing with me.

Again, one of the problems that appeared was that there are weekly dance events (Friday Night Waltz), which, as the name suggests, occur on Friday nights. To be fair, the issue wasn't solely debate -- I often had assignments due on Fridays that I, for one reason or another, found myself finishing on Friday evenings, right before the deadline (yes, probably my own fault, I know). I tried to counteract the inevitable deadly silence of working in my room while my friends were out dancing with Midnight Pie, wherein I started baking an hour or two before midnight and invited everyone over for post-waltz pie. It was conceptually lovely, but practically dicey, because my dancer friends had their own conflicting ritual, namely post-waltz boba or burgers. Having leftover pie at the end of the night is not actually a good thing -- the first thought that comes to mind isn't "breakfast tomorrow will be awesome" so much as "it would have been nice if I'd had enough people over to finish the pie."

Ultimately, I think I enjoyed the dance community a little more than I did the actual activity itself (though I do like dancing quite a bit!). It's one of the things I'll miss most about Stanford, and like the below, I wish I'd had more time with it.

(c) Musical theatre: During my senior year, I was costume director for a musical that one of my friends co-wrote. I'd been recruited on the basis of a Tudor gown I'd made in junior year; my friend had seen me wearing it in the hallway of our dorm, and he immediately offered me the position. (Well, the real story is funnier: he wasn't quite ready to recruit his production crew at that point, so he said to me very excitedly, "Remind me to ask you something in six months!" without giving any indication of what it was he'd intended to ask. I knew about the musical at that point, but didn't quite connect the dots until he actually offered me the position months later.)

Anyhow, a number of people involved in the show asked my why I didn't try out -- these included one of the co-writers, some of the cast and crew, and a few of the adults working in the theatre housing the production. See, I have the occasional habit (an oxymoron?) of humming or singing as I sew and do other such repetitive tasks. Ergo, I was mistaken for a cast member several times, mostly while sitting on the edge of the stage before dress rehearsals, stitching under the stage lights and singing to myself. I ended up giving different reasons to different people; I alternately explained that (1) I had my hands full with costuming, and didn't think I could feasibly be in both cast and crew, (2) I didn't have stage-acting experience, (3) the musical is set in 1840s Nantucket and I would be visually unconvincing as a whaler's wife. (These appear to be listed in order of decreasing validity. Especially the last -- it's an excuse, and I know it.) But the question got me thinking -- I've been interested in musical theatre for most of my life. If I'd come to it earlier -- before I'd filled my extracurricular slate, at a time when I could reasonably expect to be involved in the community for two or three years -- would I have done it? Would my undergraduate years have been richer for it?

(d) Music: Speaking of music, as I'd mentioned months earlier, I got a ukulele over winter break, whereupon I basically spent the rest of my holiday learning to play it. Seeing as I sing, write poetry, and newly learned the ukulele, the next logical step was to start writing songs. I finished my first not long after I returned to school, and then wrote another, and another. Sometime soon thereafter, two of my friends were DJing a dance event and, seeing as they knew quite a few musicians, decided that it would be fun to have some live music. When we were rehearsing, I played one of the songs I wrote for some of these musician-friends, who thought it would be fun to play at the dance. (I didn't actually tell them I'd written it until halfway through the rehearsal.) That was the beginning.

We started meeting up semi-regularly to jam. There were also gigs -- I performed solo a few times at English department events and arts events around campus, and with the group (its number and composition changed a few times in the months we were active). We played with a volunteer organization a few times. Our largest audience was at Big Dance, which is, as the name implies, the major social dance event occurring annually in the spring; we played a half-hour set for a hundred or so dancers. Then one of our other friend approached us with his class project -- he wanted to record some of the songs I'd written, in a studio. And so we did.

This thing, this music thing -- which started out as a few lyrics and tunes on my uke, in my bedroom -- became so much more than I'd expected. I wish I'd had more time to play with this group, to actually get together for a composition session, to put a few years into it while I was in college. It feels like we got nipped in the bud by graduation, right as things were just getting going. It'll be much harder to start over in a "new" city, outside of a college environment, without the people I'd been playing with these few months.

I'll devote a separate post to music and songwriting and ukuleles one of these days. I have some videos from Big Dance, some audio tracks (as I'd mentioned). But this post is long enough as is, so I'll leave it here for now.

Thoughts on the Past Four Years, Part 1

Our commencement was last month. Since then, I've been traveling -- visiting with friends and relatives in California -- and moving my possessions and the detritus of the past four years from California back to New York. I just got home on Tuesday, at some ungodly hour of morning. I've spent most of my time since unpacking and rearranging my room (and evicting my sister from it, as she's apparently taken up residence while I've been in school). It's more complicated that one might think, given that I have to consolidate/shift/toss a lot of my old stuff to make room for everything I've brought back. It's probably the most thorough cleaning my room's ever gotten. I got bored (of course) and consequently nostalgic, so I thought I'd take a break and begin setting down some of the mad whirlwind of thoughts that I have regarding my time at Stanford.

It was not an easy journey, both in terms of my pursuits and my direction. I had, at various points of these past four years, been tested on all fronts: academics, extra-curriculars, people, career. (The Stanford Duck Syndrome, if you will -- paddling furiously to stay afloat, while appearing mostly calm above the surface. The acronym, SDS, also somewhat ironically doubles for the Stanford Debate Society. Go figure.) Looking back, I'm not completely satisfied with my college experience -- there are things I would have done differently, things I wish I'd known going in -- but it was a tremendous period of personal growth.

Academics were challenging throughout, much more so than high school. It seems like a no-brainer, but as one of my grade school friends likes to point out, college is often easier than high school for the specialist and harder than high school for the generalist. I was a jack-of-all-trades in grade school, equally comfortable in the humanities and the sciences (I was, for example, simultaneously captain of the math and debate teams). If only because my high school had more of a humanities bent -- it ran a bit like a small liberal arts college -- I was considered quite good at the sciences among my peers (big fish in a small pond, as it were). I actually got to Stanford thinking that I would be pre-med -- mostly because my parents thought that it suited me -- and considered majoring in math or biology. The best example: I remember taking -- and then dropping -- the hard freshman math class (the H in 51H variously stood for "honors" and "hard" and "hellish," I'm told). It was very interesting material and I met some of my closest friends there, but I just didn't have the time and energy necessary to really do well, what with the other courses I was taking (yes, even as a first-quarter freshman I insisted on maxing out my course load) and the world-class calibre of students in the class (several of them math campers, including a few who did SUMaC, both my year and other years). Dropping the class was a surprisingly difficult choice to make. It was the first time I'd really encountered what I considered to be massive failure, and I felt as though I were giving up -- that completing the class could simply have been a matter of will. Accepting personal limits was never something I've done well, or gracefully, so that in itself was a learning experience.

For most of my freshman year, my courseload consisted of techie classes punctuated with the one series of humanities classes that all of us were required to take, known as IHUM (Introduction to the Humanities). My IHUM sequence was called "Ancient Empires," covering the civilizations of antiquity and taught by the wonderful archaeologist and professor Ian Morris. I quickly discovered that IHUM was my favorite course of the year, my sanity break from all the maths and chemistry and such. I should have realized then that I wasn't doing what I really wanted to be doing -- but I didn't know what it was that I actually wanted out of my college career, and for my future beyond.

My sophomore year consisted of change -- lots of it. I was learning myself, learning my strengths and weaknesses, figuring out what it was I wanted to do with the rest of my time at Stanford and my life thereafter. I had something of a personal crisis in the middle of my sophomore year, after having already taken four quarters of pre-med classes: I realized that pre-med just wasn't for me. By then, I'd tried all of the so-called "Asian" professions at least once; I'd interned over the past few summers at a hospital, on Wall Street, and at a law firm. While I enjoyed each of the internships (more as learning experiences than as career options), I couldn't quite see myself in any of the above industries for the rest of my life. Learning what I didn't want was important -- I'm just glad that I figured out what I did want, just in time (see this post from the end of sophomore year).

I'd begun taking history and creative writing classes for fun. I wanted to do more of it, but wasn't quite ready to give up premed and dash all my parents' hopes for me. But over the summer, I found myself working at Penguin as an editorial intern, and really absolutely loving it. It was something of a coincidence -- I'd applied because I liked the idea of working with books, but I didn't know anything about the industry going into the job. By the end of the summer, I didn't want to leave.

And so I went back for seconds in 2011. In the interim, I declared my history major at the last possible moment in my junior year -- I asked Prof. Morris to be my advisor, because he's awesome and because it was fitting. His class was what first made me consider majoring in history, after all. I began taking more English classes and wanting to do that as well. It wasn't a creative writing course, but ultimately a short story class (which I may have mentioned here), that sold me on the English major. (It seems that there is a recurring trope in my life where I am convinced to declare a major after taking an amazing class in the department, and end up asking the instructor to be my advisor. Elizabeth Tallent became my English faculty advisor.)

If all of that hadn't convinced me that publishing was right for me, one particular episode of my second Penguin summer did. One day towards the end of my internship, I was very casually handed a shiny new hardcover of Those Across the River -- a book I'd first read as a submission the previous summer, which I'd really liked and talked up to a few editors I worked with. I reread it that very night. The incredible rush that comes from holding in my hands a book that I, in some tiny way, had a part in bringing to fruition -- it's a pretty heady feeling.

That's how I ended up where I am, now. A job (and hopefully a career) in publishing, a degree in history and English, and back in New York City, my hometown. It's been a wild ride, to be sure -- not all of it went as smoothly or as well as I would have liked, but I survived, and am a more complete human being for it.

More to come. (Perhaps that ending was a little too... conclusive. There's more, really.)

The Oven Bird (by Robert Frost)

I'm taking a Poetry and Poetics course this quarter, and I just finished writing a paper on this particular Frost poem. I'd never read it before this class, but I've come to really like it. (That's the funny thing about papers/assignments; by the end, you come to either love or hate whatever it is you've been working on.) Anyhow, I thought I'd share:

The Oven Bird
by Robert Frost (1916)

There is a singer everyone has heard,
Loud, a mid-summer and a mid-wood bird,
Who makes the solid tree trunks sound again.
He says that leaves are old and that for flowers
Mid-summer is to spring as one to ten.
He says the early petal-fall is past
When pear and cherry bloom went down in showers
On sunny days a moment overcast;
And comes that other fall we name the fall.
He says the highway dust is over all.
The bird would cease and be as other birds
But that he knows in singing not to sing.
The question that he frames in all but words
Is what to make of a diminished thing.

Frost, here, is lamenting the end of an era, which I thought was eminently appropriate to our impending graduation. (Does putting it in writing make it real?) Perhaps that's why the poem resonated with me so, more so than it might have at another point in my life. I know well that Frost is writing about being a middle-aged poet, thinking he's past his prime or being eclipsed by the younger generation of more experimental contemporary poets, but it's a similar sentiment. There's this sinking feeling that accompanies the idea of leaving the Stanford bubble, of being a continent away from the people I've come to know and love. It does feel like the best few years of my life might be slipping through my fingers -- though of course, I hope I'll do greater things with myself in future. I have regrets, I have anxieties, and I have the deep-seated, overwhelming sense of nostalgia for a passing age that Frost portrays so well in "The Oven Bird."

The Stanford Daily: An Interview with Vienna Teng

Vienna Teng, one of my favourite musicians in the world, is performing at TEDxStanford on Saturday. I got to interview her for The Stanford Daily; the resulting article is here:

http://www.stanforddaily.com/2012/05/18/vienna-teng-stanford-renaissance-woman/

She's extremely nice, and a great conversationalist to boot. I'm not sure what else to say about it (most of it's in the article, though of course, my editor and I had to cut quite a bit), but I think we had more in common that I thought we would, going into the interview.

Anyhow, I'll be seeing her perform this weekend. She said she'd sign my ukulele -- I'm excited!

The Ones Left Behind poster!

The promotional poster for The Ones Left Behind is out!

Simon's (the male lead) costume is composed mostly of pieces on loan from the drama department, but Muireann's (the female lead) is my design. Tommy (the composer) and I wandered around in a little Asian fabric shop in San Jose for a good hour, looking for the perfect fabric. It's made of this great satiny material -- it looks even better in person, and should show up wonderfully under the stage lights.

Anyhow, as it says on the poster, ticket reservations are open! They're free, so you should all come see the show!

Happy Pi(e) Day, or, Things I Have Baked This Year

In honor of Pi Day, I thought I'd post the list of stuff I've baked thus far. (I love having a kitchen!) Many of these were done at Midnight Pie (after Friday Night Waltz). Midnight Pie is an event I first cooked up (no pun intended) last quarter. Because there were several weeks where I was unable to attend FNW due to midnight paper deadlines, I invited friends over for post-waltz pie instead. It became A Thing last quarter, and less so this quarter, but I'm really hoping to bring it back.

Anyhow, the list:

apple pie (x6)
blackberry-pear pie
blueberry-blackberry pie
chocolate chip cookie scones (they were meant to be cookies, but came out more like scones)
apple-banana-walnut pie (x2)
pumpkin pie (x3 -- twice with canned pumpkin, once with fresh pumpkin)
gingerbread
cranberry macadamia chocolate chip cookies
"apple" pound cake with strawberry jam and green icing
potatoes

One of these things is not like the others.

Note: most of these (the pies, at least) are modifications of recipes given me by my dear friend John, who's much better at all of this than I am.

Fire and Ice (by Robert Frost)

I presented this very famous poem today in a history class about Einstein and his work. It's a beautiful little piece, and it's interesting to consider in the context of relativity and nuclear technology. 

Fire and Ice
by Robert Frost (1920)

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To know that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.

I'm doing my paper on the cultural conversation between 20th century literature and Einsteinian physics. Relevant authors (of which I'll be discussing some subset in the paper) are people like Virginia Woolf, William Faulkner, T. S. Eliot, Kurt Vonnegut, and of course, Robert Frost.