before my memory started

My dad has been on a crazy photo-archiving kick for the past few months. He's gone through a couple thousand old photos of our family and scanned them in to a Picasa album. Well, several albums at this point. Now he's gotten to some old 35mm slides from the early 80s, when he and my mom were living in Singapore and my sister and I were born. Some of these photos I've never seen before! There's a pic of my mom walking our old white poodle, Maggie, pregnant with me under a billowy blue dress. Then there are pics of 1-year-old toddler me doing various things like playing piano, holding a squash raquet, walking Maggie with a red leash, carrying around this blanket that I refused to give up for I-don't-want-to-admit-how-many years. I've seen baby pictures of myself before, obviously, but the ones that really strike me are those of my mom holding me, or taking me places that I no longer remember. Like a shot of Mom and me and baby Kim, sitting on a picnic blanket in a grassy field in Singapore surrounded by peacocks...! Or a family pic of my parents and Maggie and me, before I had any siblings. My mom looks so beautiful, with eyeliner and crazy-patterned dresses. I wonder if she felt scared, having her first baby in a foreign country with no family around, and I'm sure my dad was working long hours as he always did. Now I really want to call her. She really is the best mom in the world, and I've told people this - often they try to challenge me, but nobody's proven me wrong yet. I guess I've gotten used to living on the opposite side of the country from her, but I should really make an effort to call her more often. I'm the worst at calling people. But my top priority should be Mom!

comfort food

Leeks are amazing. They make my entire kitchen smell incredible! Why did I never know this before? I'm making a mushroom, roasted red pepper, and goat cheese bread pudding, which turns out to be a rather elaborate recipe with lots of chopping involved, but the aroma of my apartment right now makes it all worth it. Rainy weather like this really makes me want to cook, especially warm, veggie-filled dishes like casseroles or stews. Mmmm. I'm even more excited about this dish because I started off my Saturday by waking up at 5:30am and biking to the boathouse, where I proceeded to get into a boat in the pouring rain and row it to another boathouse, then de-rig it in and load it onto a trailer, all in the pouring rain. All the while knowing that everyone I knew was probably still asleep in their warm, dry beds. But now I have a delicious-looking casserole baking in the oven. Yay!

the ships are coming in

I have such a short attention span recently. Maybe that's why I can barely sit down to write out a complete thought here on this blog. I used to blog daily, and I'm not really sure why I don't anymore. I sort of feel like I have nothing satisfying to say. Maybe it's been a weird summer. I've gone through vague periods of happiness, discontent, and determination, without a real concrete grasp on why I felt any of those feelings. Sometimes you feel really happy, like everything is going your way, and you don't really stop to question exactly what caused the bliss, but you just want to prance down the hallway and sing songs when nobody's listening. And that's enough. When you feel vaguely unhappy, for a single day you can write it off to waking up on the wrong side of the bed, and subsequently eat a cookie and wait for the end of the day, i.e. your chance to wipe the slate clean with a good night's sleep. But when the unhappy feeling sort of lingers, on and off, for weeks, you start trying to identify it, which is actually really difficult sometimes. Maybe there are a lot of things in your life that are not as you want them - you want to finish school but feel like it's not imminent, your boyfriend lives in another state, you make much less money than your shopping habit would prefer, you want to make art/craft but lack enough time... obviously these things can be changed. On good days, you can overlook them and know that they will change. On bad days you start questioning your life plan, wonder if you are doing the right thing with your career, fight the thought of abandoning things that you've invested a lot of time in but are making you unhappy at the moment. I know that a lot of people really have no idea what they want to do with their lives at this point, and are graduating or changing jobs and feel apprehensive about not knowing what to do next. But I feel it's almost as hard to have a really exciting grand plan for years and then suddenly start to wonder if you want to change it. It's easier to stick with the original plan, but what will make you happiest?

Anyway, who really knows anything anyway. I harvested two giant pinkish heirloom tomatoes last week, the only two good ones I got off that plant whose seedling I bought at the farmer's market. The weather was far too erratic this summer for my tomatoes. When I sliced one open, it smelled like V8. I don't particularly like V8, but this tomato was delicious. I've gotta think of a better use for a freshly picked tomato than just eating it slice by slice...

I'm racing in a 4+ in the Head of the Charles Regatta in 2.5 weeks. I'm pretty stoked. Our lineup has not really found our swing in the boat yet, which makes for some frustrating practices, but hopefully we'll figure it out soon. I used to hate rowing in 4s because the set was always crap, and I'm hoping my mind will be changed soon. Seeing the sunrise over the Boston skyline in the morning is one of the most fantastically gorgeous things I see all day. Really makes up for waking up at 5:30am.

characters

Everyone knows that the people at MIT are not a random representation of the general population. I'm not talking about brainpower, but rather the cultural nerdiness that characterizes the entire campus. You can see it with your eyes just by walking through campus for 10 minutes, in the frequency of gangly gaits and high-waisted khaki shorts, the dishevelled hairdo with the pillow imprintation still apparent or the slightly-antisocial lack of eye contact with strangers. Sometimes I get tired of this culture, where the norm is to stay up all hours of the night writing some amazing code or building a crazy robot or running experiments in the lab. Sometimes I wish people would take care of their appearance, not look down their nose at new social interactions, and not make me feel inadequate by their sheer brilliance. I find myself feeling jealous of that world where people wear makeup or a tie to work, go home at 5pm, and go to happy hour at fancy bars on Thursday nights. But at the same time, sometimes I see the truly unique opportunity I have here to really meet some characters here. People who are not afraid to care about unusual things and don't feel ashamed to declare their nerd passions in public. They don't see a reason to hide their love of engineering and look like everyone else, go with the flow. They bang their hand on the table to emphasize their correctness on some science point, and it's so awesome. Maybe the person being proved wrong does not feel so happy about it, but sometimes it's really refreshing to see conventional uniformity go out the window. And it's certainly entertaining.

self-inflicted

I am pretty proud of myself. I woke up at 7:15am today and went straight to the gym for an erging session of 2 x 30 minutes. Yes, this may sound like a torturous endeavor, and in some ways it was, but I feel triumphant for using my willpower to do something painful that I don't enjoy for the greater good of my health. Really the point is to make me a better rower, by becoming stronger, with the end goal of having better rows in the 8 on Tue/Thu/Fri mornings with the rowing club. I think the weeks of rowing regularly has made me strong enough that erging this morning was not as painful as it usually has been. My killer playlist also helped. :)

I'm planning to play basketball later today with officemates, and row tomorrow morning on the water. This might be going overboard on the frequency of workouts I really need, but I really do enjoy the physical exertion, which feels especially good when you have built up at least some stamina. I remember last spring I used to do like 8 workouts per week, just because it was fun. Plus it really helps me forget about the monotony of sitting in a desk chair for hours every day. Darn you, computer modeling.

I've been super frustrated with research for the past week - sometimes I feel like I have no resources to go to with questions, since our lab group is so tiny and my advisor is usually MIA or at least too busy to give my research much serious thought. Or that's how it feels to me. I know this means I have to look out for myself, and I think I do a pretty good job of it, but sometimes it's beyond discouraging to have to sit down with fat textbook when there's probably a real person out there who could just tell you the DL in half the time and a quarter of the frustration. Makes me want to throw the book out the window and go erg it out. Which, if you've ever erged before, should tell you something.

if you keep your eyes open

I see a lot of weird things biking to the boathouse at 5:45am for rowing. There aren't many cars on the roads, so I can sort of space out about my cycling and observe my surroundings.

Today I passed a woman who appeared to have left the house without her pants - she was just wearing black underwear, a jacket, and hiking boots. Weird.

Then a baby squirrel tried to play chicken with me. I managed to dodge him without a scrape.

I biked past the candy factory, which usually smells like Junior Mints or Tootsie Rolls. Today it smelled distinctly like french toast! Oh, how torturous for someone who had not yet eaten breakfast, and would not be eating for another three hours.

In a dumpster near the MIT Museum, a giant seagull was foraging for food, and found a whole slice of pizza which he prepared to fly off with. Gross... seagulls are like giant flying monsters.

The river was foggy this morning, and our row was full of snafus (one missing rower, a coach boat that ran out of gas), but I did see a red-wing blackbird hopping around on shore, looking for food. And a mama mallard duck and 5 baby ducklings swimming around after her! The biggest bummer of this prolonged cold weather is the noticeable lack of baby ducks. Other typical sightings on the Charles include cormorants, which are black birds that seem to swim under the water with only their head sticking up, and frequently dive underwater like stealth mode. Canadian geese abound - they would be kind of beautiful if they didn't poop everywhere. My favorite early-morning sighting is the black-crowned night heron. It took me forever to figure out what this guy was called! They always stand alone, without moving, on some log at the edge of the river, showing us their long white torsos and short spindly legs. They wear a black cap and cape, and I saw a long white plume feather one time. Coolio.

where am i now

I just came back from a full week out of town - PV conference in Philly, stopover in NYC on the way back, party in Connecticut for Ammamma's 90th birthday, and a little shopping in Natick before arriving at home. Man, that is a nice mall - I wish I had the money to shop in some of the fancy stores! I walked around 5th Avenue in NY on Friday before meeting a friend for lunch, drooling over the gorgeous dresses and luxe purses in the window displays, sparkling jewelry and stacked heels. I could tell by the suit-bedecked salesmen waiting with smiles in the doorway that I could not afford any of their wares. But I definitely enjoyed looking! Even the people walking around Manhattan are beautiful and stylish, in polished businesswear or perfectly-draped dresses, big sunglasses, and gorgeous skin. I would be so inspired daily from just people-watching if I lived there. I made a mental note to visit more often. Wouldn't be hard to accomplish that since my current frequency is like once in two years.

The conference in Philly was pretty fun, and I'm glad I went. I learned a lot about why people make different kinds of solar cells, and how. It definitely helped me to understand the state of the industry, as far as achievable efficiencies and standard manufacturing processes. I also learned how secretive everyone is with the specific details of their processes, and how much I dislike that. I mean, I attend the conference in order to increase my understanding of solar cells and how they are made, but if nobody wants to share their gritty details and struggles to improve performance, then how are any of us supposed to learn? Maybe if we all just shared all our secrets, we could truly overtake the world energy scene with solar power. Just an idea.

Anyway, Philly seemed like a great city with lots of good food and interesting bars to check out. There's a cool area of South Street where many building sides and alleyways are covered with amazing mosaics of tile and mirror, including the "Magic Garden" with bike parts and colored bottles too. Unique and interesting. I did see the Liberty Bell, briefly, from outside its glass enclosure. Not that exciting I guess... it's a giant bell.

On Saturday I made it to Connecticut for Ammamma's birthday party, which was almost a full-day affair including three cakes, catered Thai food eaten under an outdoor tent, giant pink peonies in vases, cold margaritas, a bounce house for the little kids, and some groan-worthy karaoke to end the day. I loved hearing stories of the old days, about how Ammamma met Grandpapa, and how he followed her rickshaw on his bike before they were married. My cousin made a great slide show of old pictures with a dramatic soundtrack that brought tears to many people's eyes. Mine included. Aiyo!