passion

Currently listening to the soundtrack of 2046, and California Dreamin' (from Chungking Express) on repeat. No one can tie music to a film as strongly and sublimely as Wong Kar-Wai does. It's so painfully beautiful. Maybe it's the mild flu I have that's making me woozy, but now I want go to Hong Kong. I'm in the mood for love. (ba-dum-ch!)(boy, that was bad)

I'm from Harvard. Fear me!!

Had my first day of teaching today. Since it was the first day, I just taught 1 big class instead of several small groups. There were about 50 kids there, all Asian, probably all Chinese. They gave some awed oohs and ahhs when they heard I was from Harvard. That felt good (mmm, respect points). I reviewed exponents, and gave them some problems. It went pretty well; I thought I did ok, though I had to work with the Chalkboard from Hell (I had to like put all my weight on the chalk to make any visible mark on it). And the kids were well behaved. Less annoying than the bunch in the specialized high school class, anyway, which I stepped into for awhile. Having a 6/7th grader tell you how to do a problem more quickly is not fun. In fact, it gets on your nerves. Hm, better make up some absolute value problems for tomorrow.

Yesterday, in the course of doing various jobs for my mom, I had to be the witness for the wedding of a Chinese couple who didn't know English well. Not really a wedding, just a marriage ceremony I guess. It was at the NY government building where they give out marriage licenses and such. Any romance was certainly sucked out of it by the bare (but clean) room with a podium and the middle aged woman with blond hilights and bold eyeshadow doing the officiating. Well, the couple seemed happy at least. I hope they had a nice dinner somewhere.

Recap of the Yankees' weekend series with the Cubs

Game 1:
Cubs: We're almost gonna wi....
Matsui: No.

Game 2:
Cubs: Hitting..is..so..difficult...
Jeter: Booya.

Game 3:
Cubs: We give up.
Yankees: Ha.

^.^

I've been ingesting waaay too much baseball these days. Funny how in the summer I just withdraw into a corner with nothing but sports radio and a book or two to keep me company. (Do people become insane doing that after a while?)

Coincidence

I recently finished both Ian McEwan's Saturday, and Steven Johnson's Mind Wide Open, and, curiously, both books include the same quote from Darwin: "There is grandeur in this view of life." It's very applicable in the books, but I thought it was cool I was reading both at the same time. *moment of harmonic cosmic alignment*

*end moment*

I got the Music Issue of Believer Magazine today, just for the CD. Ok, just for the Spoon song. But it's a sweet CD, with 17 artists doing covers of other artists. The Spoon song isn't fantastic, but I'm enjoying the others so far, especially the blues-y ones.

*twirl*

Can't believe I didn't see this until today: A. O. Scott has an absolutely glowing review of Miyazaki's work.

And, it's been a great day to be a Yankees fan. The new stadium looks fantastic, though it won't carry all the historical weight of the old (but hopefully the mystique and aura will still be there). The game tonight was also one of their best of the year. A late inning rally, a game-winnning home run, the Yankees of the dynasty-era have finally returned!

Could've sworn that wine and one and four made two..

Architecture in Helsinki was fabulous. Or, in the words of a guy talking on his cell, super-incredible! (that's totally my new favorite adjective)

It was quite amazing to see them, all eight or nine or them, run around on a tiny stage, seemingly picking up instruments and playing/hitting/shaking them at random. They played all the songs from In Case We Die, and then some. And listening to them talk about cricket and whatnot in their Aussie accents was adorable. They're such a happy bunch.

It was quite dark in the hall, so I have very few pictures:

the stage


AiH!

And I took some videos; they're kinda dark and large in size (but worth it):
Neverevereverdid
It's 5!
Tiny Paintings
In Case We Die
Frenchy, I'm Faking
Need to Shout

My batteries ran out when they got to Do the Whirlwind. =(

(this is belated posting cuz i'm lazy)

i can still get lines in the suit

Though I'm crying inside over my lost opportunity to be professing my love to Britt Daniel right now (this person on craigslist emailed me saying she had a ticket, after i went to bed yesterday, blah), I have another chance to see him at the Siren Music Festival! For free! There'll be six thousand or so ppl there, but I can profess louder than them. :D

I was in a drop-D metal band we called Requiem

God, I love that line so much.

* * * * *
Cute story about the Cubbies in the Times, complete with a picture of the black cat running across their field during Tuesdays' game (awww, they're so cursed):
"Watching the Red Sox win was a very weird experience," said Jim Belushi, an actor and a lifelong Cubs fan. "It was like having a neighbor win the lottery. At first you're really happy for them because it couldn't happen to a better guy. And then you realize that he'll move into a bigger house in another neighborhood and you never had anything in common with him in the first place and he was really a big jerk. I mean, the Red Sox' celebrity mascot is Ben Affleck. Doesn't that tell you enough?"

mild b*tching about grades

While I admit that this semester's grades weren't terrible at all, it really irks me when they reflect relative standing in a class instead of the absolute value of the work that was put in. What are grades supposed to mean if I learned and understood more in a class where I got a lower grade than in a class where I got a higher one?

I guess I shouldn't be complaining because many ppl would love to have my problems, embarrassment of riches n all that. And, it's summer, and I don't have to write any more Expos papers, so yeah, back to feeling un-annoyed.

...

Damnit why are the Yankees losing again??!

It's fun! It's exciting! It's...ARML?

I'm such a nerd. :D

Like HMMT, ARML was just awesome. Gosh I miss math team so much, though it is better to go to contests as a coach/grader, if only cuz you don't have a curfew. But this year the trip to Penn was nearly ruined in the beginning when the bus company apparently forgot that the Queens ppl ordered a bus. So we went to Stuy and waited for like 6 hours while some poor driver for some other team drove from Penn to NYC to pick us up. Luckily, Jan, as always, had a ready supply of other games for us (including a board game called, I believe, Trans-America) (yes, it was actually fun). I think we ran through most of the easy-to-teach +5-player games out there. The students weren't the same, but it was classic ARML bus-trip nonstop games madness, and it was sweet.

Penn State was the same, cept the dorms looked sadder than before. They had pretty nice prizes for the winners (1st place - Mathematica, 3rd place - TI-89 Titaniums; what NYC A got last year for 3rd place - folders with pads of paper inside). Lehigh Valley Fire (their other team was Ice; I thought it was cute) came out of nowhere to somehow get ridiculous scores on the relays and beat out TJ, Chicago, and Exeter for 1st. NYC didn't do as well this year, but I think most of them had fun. I'm quite proud of them. I forgot how tough the contest was until I watched part of the individual round from a balcony, and could feel how nerve-wracking it was just waiting in silence for the question to be read. I guess it seems, especially once you've left it, that competitions are just slap-dash, superficial things created to get kids to do math, but they mean so much for the students, who really work hard, and it feels so good to see them succeed under pressure.

For the song contest, one team rapped the digits of pi, complete with a FOB accent ("Chinees peepl, put yoa handz up!") and beat-boxing, lol. Jack has pictures on his site. I look awful, as usual. More so 'cause I had just gotten out of the bus.

Oh, I also got my DA print yesterday, and a new scanner. Mmmm, art.

And, I just bought tickets to see Architecture in Helsinki at the Knitting Factory! Only $10! Go buy tickets and join Shashi and me. They're really good, I promise. No, their songs don't all sound the same!

Put a stethoscope on, you’ll notice the beat is gone
All that’s left is hesitations from your previous life...

* * * * *
Reason #2941 why the NYT is the best publication ever: the new monthly column in the magazine, Freakonomics, by Levitt and Dubner. This week's article is about monkeys trained to use money: "What he witnessed was probably the first observed exchange of money for sex in the history of monkeykind." Hee.