live. love. linda!

Cardio, part II

2012-01-31T23:48:00.002-07:00

overwhelm builds on overwhelm; every task is something I'd be excited about doing, but having 8 of them at once makes them all tedious and half-assed; list after list of things not crossed out; but when you feel like can't take it, spend some time with people. anybody. the less medical, the better. and then, when you remember to breathe again, when you see what a small part of life these tasks are, start over with fresh eyes. And that's how life goes on and things get done.

Cardio, part I

2012-01-26T20:22:00.000-07:00

So apparently cardiologists have a deeply engrained sense of "left" and "right" which is the opposite of mine. That was a confusing 3 days

My first patient

2012-01-18T21:36:00.001-07:00

Touched my first dead body today. She's quite old and thin (I briefly wondered if she died from starvation), and probably had a hysterectomy (or c-section?). She seems like a pretty cool lady. Her skin is pretty tough due to the embalming fluid, but it's still kind of flexible.

I've been really excited about anatomy since the beginning of the school year, but right before going in, I felt suddenly apprehensive. Am I ready? What will it be like, having an ex-person beside me? The same hands, eyes, feet, that they once had, but can no longer use? What if, after all this excitement, I'm that girl who fainted in the first lab? But it was all alright; my agitation didn't amount to anything. It was almost calming seeing her.

She has lots of moles and small hands, a lovely rib cage and small, sagging breasts. In the next many months, we're going to be cutting into her and opening her up, layer by layer, part by part, examining the structures that her mother and father and her whole life gave her. Many tissues and organs are going to be removed from her and stored elsewhere. And that's exactly what she wanted us to do.

It's easy to think of these bodies as just anybody off the street, but they're not. We're not coroners. We're learners. So they aren't just dead people - they're dead people who, while living, made the decision to use themselves to teach young idiots stuff they can't learn from a textbook. That takes some kind of altruism and courage, something I can't say I have.

And you look around the room, at the hundred or so dead people lying on the counters, and in that moment all the zombie jokes/fears seem so absurd. How can you feel anything for these people but gratitude, and awe?

"Game"

2012-01-12T22:00:00.001-07:00

In cognitive psych we touched on the bit of ontology that's concerned with "what makes something what it is" - essential properties of a thing. Many psychology experiments probed how *we* think about "what makes something what it is". What features define a bird? The conjunction of wings, feathers, and a beak?

Psychologically we categorize quite naturally, but it can be hard for us to say why something belongs in a category or doesn't; the textbook example is "game". It's difficult to describe what essential features make something a game or not a game, a set of features that can be applied to all games and non-games. Pretty much all games have rules, but lots of other things have rules too, like politics and driving and work. Games are generally fun, but it's not always fun and they're not fun for everyone, and things like going to movies is fun but it isn't a game.

A 2 year incubation period and 2 games nights later, I've come up with a feature I'm pretty satisfied with:

A game is an activity in which the only purpose of the rules is to make the activity just hard enough to be enjoyable.

In other words, a game is an easy activity with a catch. Get the ball into the hole! oh, but you can only use this stick to move it around. Get to the other side of the pool! oh, but you can't get out and run. Express confidence that you have a better combination of cards than other people! oh, but you can't look at theirs. Also notice that no (conventional) games are impossible, while almost any other branch of human endeavour can contain goals that are. Baseball would not be a game if the batters could run whenever they felt like it, or if the bases were kilometers apart from each other.

The rules in driving are for safety and efficiency; the rules in politics are to prevent corruption or insanely bad regimes for insanely long times, and work never aims to make something "just hard enough" - in most activities in life, easier is better.

I would love some examples and counterexamples to improve the definition :D

It's serious, but not that serious

2011-12-20T13:43:00.010-07:00

[on removing indwelling lines for candidemia:]
"It's not fun to put another line in, but it's even less fun to die." - Dr. Boyington

"this is a russian prison. Try to avoid going there if possible." - Dr. Saxinger

Dr. Senior

"Risk factors [for gestational diabetes] are similar to type 2 [diabetes] except that type 2 is more common in men. Pregnancy is less common in men."

"it's conjugated with fish semen. Don't ask me how they discovered this." [on NPH insulin]

[on rigid diet/insulin regimens] "I meet people in the clinic who've had diabetes for 60 years...They've not had too many complications because they can follow the rules...The ones who couldn't follow these rules are dead."

"you don't get a prize for getting the blood glucose down from 35 to 5 ...the coroner isn't going to praise you for saving him from ketoacidosis but having him die of hypoglycemia."

on self-treating hypoglycemia: "Again, if you've got a juicebox in the car, that works just fine. in the summer. Not so much in the winter and you're parked outside. Because you just can't lick that popsicle fast enough."

"sometimes people will say 'we did a test for microalbumin' - what do you mean? you did a test for albumin. It's not mini-donuts or something like that. It's just 1 donut instead of a pack of 24!"

student: "Can you give drugs or sugar up the bum?"
Dr. Senior: "you might get arrested...it's considered rape in a lot of places."

"you may want to start smoking so you have a smaller baby"

Dr. Lewanczuk

"in free range people..."

"the technical term is 'gunk'."

"so we tell ourselves this fairytale..."

"the other 8 all died of lead poisoning. acute lead poisoning, in the form of a bullet."

"that phloem and xylem stuff you learned repetitively in grade six and junior high and high school about 5 times and you didn't know what the use was of learning it - there was no use - "

"in this lecture I will tell you how high blood pressure led to communism."

Dr. Ritchie

"I know this is a lot of information and may be confusing...here is a picture of a duck."

Triple I is Just Awesome

2011-11-22T22:53:00.001-07:00

To the tune of the Discovery Channel song:

I love the viruses
I love bacteria
I love ascaris
and histoplasma

I love the whole block
with all its nasty bugs
boom-de-yada, boom-de-yada
boom-de-yada, boom-de-yada

I love pig tapeworm
I love listeria
I love hemolysis
I love malaria

I love the whole block
with all its graphic pictures
boom-de-yada, boom-de-yada
boom-de-yada, boom-de-yada

I love the lymphocytes
I love evasion
I love encephalitis
and inflammation

I love the whole block
it makes us paranoid
boom-de-yada, boom-de-yada,
boom-de-yada, boom-de-yada

I love the quinolones
I love the macrolides
I love the cephalosporins
and aminoglycosides

I love the whole block
and all our sneaky weapons
boom-de-yada, boom-de-yada
boom-de-yada, boom-de-yada
boom-de-yada, boom-de-yada,
boom-de-yada, boom-de-yada

and polysporin is only for impetigo.

E

2011-11-19T10:05:00.001-07:00

I met you in the dining room at the retirement residence. You were usually the first to clap after each piece. After I finished playing, you came up and we talked for a few minutes. And every week after that, for 2 years, you showed up early to listen to the music, clapped after each piece, and talked to me afterwards just to catch up.

You brought me newspaper articles about things like the oldest geisha alive and a travelling band using instruments made out of old car parts.

When I left for university, we kept in touch by sending cards and letters.

When I came home for christmas break, my parents drove me to the residence because I wanted to see you, even though I didn't know how to find you. Then, in a rather creepy way, I found out your room number and surprised you. You, being the mild mannered woman that you are, opened the door and said, "well, I'll be damned, kiddo." You told me your story; your career, your first love, and how everything changed after he died.

I didn't realize it, but we were friends. It was pretty cool having a friend like you, knowing that I'm sitting beside 76 years of life, who is somehow willing to talk to a teenager with all 18 years of wisdom. A friend who likes music by The Postal Service just as much as "Daisy Daisy".

During my second year, we lost touch. When I came back for the summer to volunteer at the residence I was afraid I'd never see you again. While I was playing I wondered if you would show up. You didn't. I really felt that I lost you, and felt guilty for not writing in the past few months.

Turns out you had a fall and after some operations, were now in long term care. So I visited you there, in a less creepy way this time. Clearly you remembered me and my music and school, and we had good conversations about life and stuff, but it's obvious that things were different. You’re deeply unhappy here, and I could see why – it looked like a hospital where everyone’s just waiting to die. And I saw how callous, how unlike you you could be when you’re miserable. You're not as lucid as you used to be. You were confused about some things, and asked the same question a few times. It struck me how quickly things can change when you're that age, and understood my mom a bit more when she's anxious about visiting her parents.

That was the last time I saw you. Wherever you are now, something has been lost.

Because the past doesn't exist anywhere but in the memory. So I will fade, and someday, so will you.

But I can play those songs that made you so happy back then, and you'll be here, for now.

rosy retrospection

2011-11-13T16:27:00.003-07:00

"do you like UA or UT more?"

"I miss Toronto a lot
and the UofT campus
with its old buildings and busyness
but what I see when I think of UofT are the sunny days in king's college circle
and let's be honest here, there weren't a lot of those."

The winter is a romantic time. With the clear blue sky and the blinding snow. And the blunt, dry cold that manages to make you feel like you're wearing nothing at all. But your hearts are warm - not that it makes you feel any better. You are still shivering and your toes are numb and you'd like nothing better than to go inside, ANY inside. But there's something out here that makes it worth it, and you've got a friend who's there for the same reason.

The walks late at night, alone, through the snow down Harbord. The air seems foggy, covering the whole city in the orange halo of street lamps. The quietness is so calming, and the solitude is somehow empowering. There are surprisingly many people on these streets, and you are so miniscule; you might as well be very very lost, but you aren't. You know where you're going, clearheaded in the midst of the fog, and the city is yours.

Developed my love of wandering through the mushy spring, sunny summers, orange fall and slushy winters, picking up leaves to press when I get home. Of discovering nooks and crannies of old, underused buildings and getting lost in the same places over and over again (but it's not being "lost" if you're not going anywhere). Of feeling the traces others leave around the city: graffiti, posters, toys, art, music. Wandering through libraries, picking up books on things I'd never considered, sitting on the sunny reading room floor and looking at pictures of clouds and rock formations. Because life goes on after that midterm.

People filled my life up; they still do. But maybe what's so special about Toronto for me is that I learned how to be alone, and happy. To be anonymous, and belong. To use that freedom to explore and play in the urban vastness that I was once so ambivalent about, and now miss deeply.

Finances

2011-10-03T18:45:00.000-06:00

It's a good thing I love data-mining my own life, or else budgeting could never be this fun. :D

Things that give me hope, pt 1

2011-09-25T13:42:00.003-06:00

The first google result for "game of life" is about cellular automata.

Magic

2011-09-05T23:02:00.002-06:00

This is going to come out even more dorktastic than it sounds in my head.

I finally read HP7 this summer, remembered why I was so enthralled with the series, and started re-reading from the first book.

At about the time of year Harry would have received his letter from Hogwarts, I got my program package for med...and I felt like I really was going to Hogwarts. Excited for this new world and anxious about whether I'm up to it; getting my instruments, browsing through stethoscope pamphlets (which include every detail but the price), white coat etc. feels pretty much like going to Diagon Alley for the first time. But mostly, I'll be learning about the secrets of the human body and how to fiddle with it...which is pretty magical in itself.

Toronto things

2011-07-25T00:55:00.008-06:00

Unexpectedly early departure from Toronto makes me regret not exploring it more. But, here are my favorite Toronto things I did get to do with my time there...

1. Walking around in back alleys admiring graffiti/ art

2. Shopping at the Eaton center

3. 3-hour TTC adventure from Scarborough to Pearson with two errand stops in between, and arriving 1 minute early

4. Midnight trip to high park

5. Having breakfast and cake at 1am at Futures

6. Seeing a sunset from Center Island

7. Super cheap Chinese/Indian/Korean/Japanese etc. food

8. Jaywalking on an hourly basis and crossing streets with 0 seconds left on the light

9. Terracotta soldiers at the ROM

10. Being captivated by/tearing up at a piece by Kara Walker film at the AGO

11. Two of my favorite operas put on by the Canadian Opera Company <3

12. A bunch of concerts, from Beethoven to Stravinsky.

13. High Park's emus and llamas!

14. he hugs and tears at Pearson airport

15. Admiring the stained glass windows in the annex

16. Gawking at strange art at 3am

Fairly roughed up getting
into this glorious outfit.

17. Being obnoxious in a 1000-people group and sitting down in the middle of a large intersection while others held up signs saying "your boss will never believe you"

18.Wandering around Kensington, laughing at the witty things in Blue Banana, and trying on nice/vintage/ridiculous clothing

19. Shopping at Honest Ed's for...oh, pretty much everything (at least once)

20. Seeing Owen Pallett at MTV Live!

21. Walking, sitting, playing along Lake Ontario

22. Classes from the third floor balcony of Con Hall

23. Peeking at all the movie filming sets on campus, and noticing places like Con Hall and UC on TV

24. Ogling mansions in Rosedale

25. An eclectic concert at the Offcentre Music Salon (Toronto Salon: Streetcar 501 stops at Off Centre), my favorite piece being warning labels from items in a cupboard (e.g. aspirin) set to vocal music.

What I wish I did, if I had more time:

High park in the summer

Allan gardens

Music garden

Toronto zoo

Santa Claus Parade

CN Tower

Pride Parade

Skating at Nathan Phillips

TIFF

Wonderland

I'll live those as a tourist. :)

my vasovagal (almost) syncope

2011-07-20T22:18:00.000-06:00

It goes something like this: a lightness that lasts a few seconds longer than you expected. you notice that you're breathing differently, a bit too shallow, and try to control your breathing - but it only seems to make the sensation worse, maybe because you've acknowledged it. Sweat. Then black splotches and bright flecks twinkle, and you look for support - sometimes easy, sometimes hard. When it's hard, you drop onto your knees and put your head to the ground. No loss of consciousness if you're quick , although all is black and the sounds are muffled. No big deal - just vasovagal almost-syncope (almost-fainting from overstimulation of the vagus nerve, slowing down blood supply to brain, which is why you lose some sensations).

In a couple of minutes you are totally fine, back on your feet and energized, but you're inundated with surprise and concern and that's when it gets really embarrassing. Losing control of your body is always embarrassing to some degree, but fainting is mentally associated with shock at something you've witnessed or heard - your body saying "I can't handle this!"

Many people faint at the sight of blood. I apparently faint at the thought of fainting. well, almost: I blacked out (losing sight) but ran away to sit down and drink water when I felt it coming on, and avoided passing out. Nothing special, and it's happened before (the most dangerous time being crossing the street during rush hour), but the circumstance was noteworthy: I was stabilizing a bird while a tech was cleaning its wounds, with the ugly part already over, and was reading a sign in the room. She saw me looking away and said "are you ok? you gotta get used to this if you're going to be a doctor," and I told her I was fine and was just reading a sign. After a few minutes, I started having shallow breaths and started sweating, tried to ignore it or control it, which didn't work. Asked another tech to take over for me and took a break.

The conclusion for any reasonable person reading this: you faint at the sight of blood. She was cleaning a wound. But it was a puny wound. A few scrapes and a small abcess. If the worst wound I've seen was a tsunami, this one was splashing in your bathtub. And I felt totally normal during the ugly parts of cleaning; in fact, I was bored. Then someone mentions me being bothered by a procedure, I remember that time I blacked out during a circumcision (I had fasted for 16 hours, and the baby's crying (not bleeding, surprisingly) got to me), and it's like my mind went "am I panicking? should I panic? panic panic panic".

I guess this post isn't really about my fainting - let's face it, they were not spectacular episodes, having consciousness/memory intact and all - but also about my ego. I really thought I would be the last person to start passing out in the face of trivial stimuli. I really thought I was above this problem: I've eagerly observed metal rods being inserted into and across live bird bones, and similar fixtures on humans; I've injected/pumped into beating animal hearts and removed (pristine!) brains from dead mice without a flinch*; and I watch surgeries on youtube for fun. And I black out in front of a scrape?

A doctor advised me to think of blood as just another material - "if I spilt tea sauce, it would be pretty silly to be upset; same with blood, it's just what we're full of." Good advice for lots of people, but I don't think that's my problem. I'm cool with blood. I'm bad with sounds. And I'm super bad with suggestion. At this point, I feel like part of fainting is just a psychological path my body takes when I'm uncertain (first time doing something) and the right elements are present. The problem is, it's too inconsistent for me to do anything about systematically.

One question on my mind is, is it going to get better as I get exposed to more medical procedures? Or is it going to get worse as I have more episodes and escape from them the same way (kind of like panic attacks)?

Another is: how am I going to be a doctor if I black out unpredictably at trivial procedures, or worse, thoughts of fainting? What if I pass out in the OR?

At least for now, I'm in control, but I'm curious /afraid for how it develops. For now, I think I'll drink lots of gatorade.

---
*not wanton cruelty - these are standard electrophys procedures, and were needed to prove where your electrode was anatomically. The animals were heavily anesthetized.

The most beautiful thing I've ever heard Richard Dawkins say

2011-07-14T14:21:00.003-06:00

From a young Richard Dawkins's Royal Institution Christmas Lectures, a full two decades ago:

Now, imagine a spaceship full of sleeping, perhaps deep frozen, explorers, would-be colonists of another world. Perhaps they are the last population of Earth, despairing Earth is about to be destroyed, sending out a colony to look for a planet anywhere in order to carry out humanity.

Imagine that the spaceship turns out to be almost unthinkably lucky: it does chance to arrive on one of the very very rare planets capable of sustaining our kind of life...The passengers wake up and stumble into the light, and they see a beautiful world of waterfalls, green leaves, mountains, colored animals and birdlike creatures flitting about - can you imagine how it would feel if you woke up, perhaps after 100 millions years of sleep in a spaceship, and found yourself on such a world?

...you'd surely bless your luck in arriving on such a rare world, walk around in a daze, a trance, unable to believe the wonders that met your eyes and ears. well, this will almost certainly never happen to us. And yet, in a way, it's just what has happened to us. ...

Some of life must be devoted to living itself; some of life must be devoted to doing something worthwhile, not just perpetuating it. This is, of course, how people - quite rightly - justify spending taxpayers' money on the arts and on conserving rare species. But sometimes, when we justify academic science on these grounds, people get rather philistine and say things like: "oh, so you think the government should spend the money on your scientific research because your research is fun for you, do you?"

"fun" isn't really the right word, is it? After sleeping for 140 million centuries we have finally woken up in the Universe. We've opened our eyes on a wonderful planet, filled with color, teeming with life. Before very long we shall have to close our eyes again. Finding out about the universe in which we've woken up, answering questions like "What are we doing here? what is this universe in which we've woken up? what is life, and what, if anything, is it for?" Surely the enterprise that answers questions like that, science, deserves a better title than "fun". Put like that, doesn't science sound to you like just about the most worthwhile way in which you could possibly spend your short time in the spotlight?

As much as I am uncomfortable with some of his others views (e.g. militant atheism), man is he a kickass lecturer at science - awakening the wonder at the core of the scientific pursuit. The series is very much for the layman and at least entertaining (if not insightful) for a biologist - highly recommended.

Pity the Sunset

2011-05-27T14:52:00.004-06:00

There is a handful of songs I love for which accurate and complete lyrics should be easy to obtain but don't seem to exist on the internet. I've taken to transcribing them. Why here and not a popular lyrics website? Because I like collecting things.

Legend

male part

female part

both

Pity the Sunset

As performed by Lena Horne and Ricardo Montalban

From Jamaica, by Harold Arlen (music) and Yip Harburg (lyrics)

When the sunset peeking at you from the sky

Pity the sunset

When the roses see you strolling by

Pity the rose!

Poor rose, poor sun

Poor star up in the blue

Can’t hold, can’t hold

a candle to you

When my heart begin to love you fine

Pity my poor heart

Like the roses on the vine

Like the sun that you outshine

Pity man with a heart like mine

Who would dare to catch a dream like you

Me, a sunset?

That’s the truth.

Fancy that now!

Little rosebuds jealous when I walk by!

Poor sun, poor rose,

poor blossom in the tree

Can’t hold, can’t hold

A candle to me?

Come the time my heart had love you fine

Pity my poor heart

Like the roses on the vine

Like the sun that you outshine

Pity gal with a heart like mine

Who would dare to love a man like you.

Pity sunset

Pity roses

Pity pity the poor hearts who would dare

catch a dream like you.

Aria

2011-05-23T00:38:00.001-06:00

So it looks like this isn't only the end of a year, but the end of a segment of my university career. I think I'll miss the exploration that undergrad offered - going to physiology and psych classes by day and physics colloquia in the afternoon and philosophy by night is something I'm gonna have to say goodbye to at this point. I'm excited for med, but I don't think any school will offer the amount of intellectual satisfaction that I have as a science undergrad, when profs are happy that you're curious about tangentially related things because you might make a good grad student. The decreased freedom that accompanies any path you choose, I guess, whether it's grad school or carpentry.

Things I learned this year:
-sleep is dynamic and wonderful and important, and I've just skimmed the surface
-relationships are complicated, but there are lots of things you can do to have a happy relationship
-I can read and write. well.
-neuroscience at UofT is a real hit and miss, and the course descriptions correlate only weakly at best with the course content level.
-1kB can make the difference between "epic fail" and "epic win"
-animal behavioural studies can be very elegant or infuriating, depending on which animals you want to watch behave.
-ROSI is a tank compared to some other schools' student service systems.
-professors are RIDICULOUSLY receptive to cold-calling, as long as you're interested and willing to do some work. I'm not sure I'll ever again be in a situation where I can say to a total stranger, "hey, I'm doing X and noticed that you know a gazillion times more about X than I do....wanna chat?" and be met with "come by my office tomorrow!"
-the social aspect of the internet is becoming not so much a distraction as an addiction - time to get more real life friends
-how to talk into a silent, blank computer screen for 2 minutes and not let my voice quiet into a whimper
-how to talk into a silent, blank interviewer for 2 minutes and not let my voice quiet into a whimper
-how many huge changes happen to create a robust event which, on game day, seems like it's been that way forever.
-I am way too young to be this sentimental, but this is what I have to work with.

EEB403 in particular:

-we really have no control over bugs, with our nets and repellent and raid...we just occasionally escape our insect overlords.

-our forests are basically empty in the middle section. I didn't think anything grows between the ground and the canopy, but that's just us.

-everything bites. whatever doesn't just hasn't gotten pissed off enough.

-finding someone with a compatible sense of humour can make a huge difference in your trip.

-don't lick anything on the ground, and don't eat stuff you find in the forest. But if you really have to, follow the monkeys.
-3 hours is a ton of time when you don't have the internet.
-there are times in life where it is prudent to brush your teeth with bottled water. Like when the water that comes out of your taps is brown.

-the milky way is something you can see with your naked eye, as long as you're in the middle of nowhere.

-projectiles from very tall trees always hurt more than you think it will.

-afterbite is ALWAYS worth packing.

-Janzen's story : evidence ratio is very high. On the other hand, style is in the unnecessary, and I haven't seen papers with style in a while.

Critique of Friday, not Rebecca Black, or why all songwriters should learn how to rap

2011-04-01T10:37:00.004-06:00

The famous Friday, sung by Rebecca Black, has been derided widely for its lyrics. Yes, it's a list of events we don't care about. But I don't think it's the lack of content that makes the lyrics so awkward to listen to. It's how the content matches up to the rhythm. Here's why:

1) There are lots of songs without original content, and the lyrics may be annoying, but they're not awkward. (Eg. Baby: loved by many, hated by more, but nevertheless had a better lyricist than Friday.)

2) When the lyrics are arranged in a different rhythm (E.g. Bob Dylan "cover"), they actually sound pretty decent.

3) When the lyrics are hard to understand, like when sped up, slowed down, or played backwards, it sounds pretty decent. Many comments on youtube say things like "this sounds better than the original", and although part of it is because it's a funny/mean thing to say, there's some truth to that.

There's a disconnect between lyrics and music that 2) and 3) fixed. Here's how:

First, crash course on meter: meter is basically how many main beats there are per cycle, and this cycle repeats throughout a song. For example, a waltz has 3 beats per cycle, and that's why your foot movements repeat every 3 beats. In every meter, there are some main beats that are naturally stronger or weaker. For example, in the waltz, the first beat always feels the strongest, and the next two are weak.

'Friday' has 4 beats per cycle, and the pattern of strong/weak beats are: Strong, weak, medium, weak. All the notes in between those four beats are even weaker. When you set lyrics to this, we tend to "hear" the lyrics according to this pattern of emphasis.

Let's take the line:

(Modified from Sebastian Wolff)

We usually say:

gotta have my bowl, gotta have cereal.

Now try reading the sentence with these emphases (that the song puts on the words):

Gotta have my bowl, gotta have cereal

we don't pronounce "cereal" like that, or emphasize the word "have", so the last line sounds really forced. similarly:

(Note that the beats don't necessarily fall on the notes; in blocks 2 and 4, they fall in between.)

This reads:

Yesterday was Thursday, Thursday

Today is Friday, Friday

(Which line did you think sounded worse when you first heard it?)

The first line sounds natural enough, but the second line is awkward. we don't say "TO-day", we say "toDAY", and we almost never drag out the word "is" to the same length as other words. In fact, we could fix this line by switching some words around, while keeping the same music and meaning (or lack thereof):

Friday is today...

or better yet,

Friiiiday's today...

Content still stupid, but at least not forced-sounding.

So, I argue that the lyrics sound awkward (ignoring content) because the music forces her to pronounce the lines differently than we say it. In the Bob Dylan "cover" (2), this is resolved: because he's speaking instead of singing, there is a tendency for emphasized parts of words to fall on stronger beats, and there is no music to constrain it. This is, in fact, how it plays out in the Bob Dylan "cover" (verify for yourself - I'm too lazy to write out music).

So when writing lyrics to be most natural (and I realize this is not the goal sometimes, but I suspect that discomfort wasn't the goal here) why don't we just strip a song to just words and rhythm? oh wait, that sounds familiar - it's rap. When rappers put a lot of words on the wrong beats, they sound stupid at best and incomprehensible at worst. So put your lyrics to the rap test: say them out loud over the music, not sing it, and see if they still make sense. If they mostly do, leave it be; if they don't, time to think about the wording a little more.

Z

2011-03-09T19:24:00.001-07:00

Your laugh is the only thing in this world I can in good conscience call a "giggle".

Your insane kindness always catches me off-guard.

Sometimes I can't believe anything bad could happen to you.

Your warnings of mood swings, fury, and sadness still unsubstantiated.

Maybe you're so happy that even those moments seem like playtime.

Or maybe I never allowed that side of you to show.

Maybe you cried for days about him. Maybe you hated her for it. Maybe the realities of life and career sunk in and you felt the pressure that you never knew was always there.

But I won't know, because of the questions I don't ask and the emotions I don't risk.

Fruits of boredom

2011-03-08T14:35:00.004-07:00

When I'm so tired of work that my brain crawls out through my ears, I

shine bright lights in my eyes and accidentally find out how fragile I am.

(You feel like you're a pretty invincible organism until you see what you're made of...)

make pom-poms (Martha Stewart is one clever lady.)

put flowers in places they're not supposed to be and ignore rules of photography.

decorate Munny and his hat.

dirty plates with paint!

Mini-politics

2011-03-01T18:12:00.003-07:00

1. At least in the public eye, the UTSU seems to fight exclusively for things they can't change in ways that don't work. My biggest issue with their track record isn't the ineffectiveness. It's the "fight". Their image - at least the only ones we see of them, and the only one that they present of themselves - is always one of conflict. Instead of working/negotiating with the university, they antagonize the governing board at every step. Their action plan for Drop Fees consists of group shouting and flashing hundreds of shiny, beautiful posters. From all the emails I've gotten from them, it seems like UTSU's response to *anything* is to get people together and yell at somebody.

It's the equivalent of a screaming baby: it worked when you couldn't do anything else, but now that you can use language and reason, someone might actually LISTEN to you if you did.

Especially if your screaming is for no good reason half the time. Example: our club was sent an email about a new policy at UofT which will prevent clubs from booking spaces on campus, charge us external fees, raise fees, stifle your speech....and recruiting club members to join them at their protest at the governing council meeting.

So I read the policy. It was an update of a very similar policy from 1989, adjusting fees for inflation. If anything, the rules are less strict than before. Preventing from booking/external fees? That's if your group is doing something inappropriate in the spaces, e.g. damaging, illegal, inciting hatred, etc. And even that wasn't anything new.

The UTSU acts as if they have no common ground with the government, governing board, or anyone else in power. (Perhaps this distancing helps them appear useful - establish an enemy, and fight them.) But the fact is that all of these groups want good education, good university, and good student experience. No one wants to be the bad guy. Policies aren't put forth because they're evil; so find out why, and if you can think of a better solution, discuss.

2. Past elections: I could not tell between the two slates last year. one was orange, one was green. All their words sounded the same.

3. This year: finally, some tangible goals. reasonable sounding people. StudentsFirst(?) spoke up at the general assembly about having realistic goals that would actually benefit the student body. What they want: use UTSU salary to cut student fees, actual communication with administration instead of rallies, homecoming, more clubs funding.

4. They ran. A bunch of the core team got disqualified for technical faults. They withdraw from the election because they can't use the posters they've printed because they include the full team, and can't print more because they don't have the budget to. The incumbent UTSU peeps, while not doing anything wrong, weren't very transparent to the opposition group or campus publications. People were angry/bummed.

(There's some disagreement in the stories; some individuals from the other slate say that the core team never had candidacy according to the rules, because they didn't have enough full time student nominators. Also, they say that SF had individual posters in addition to the group ones, and the other members could have stayed in the race - they chose to withdraw, but were not forced to.)

5. SF gets mad. They disrupt a meeting. They claim that the democratic principle is being violated. Their website used to contain their campaigning points; now it's a cry for boycotting the election and petitions to sign. Made a new facebook group: Students for democracy at UofT, where they bash the CRO, antagonize the incumbent UTSU members and the other slate, and likes anything posted by anyone doing the same. Including a comment comparing the UTSU to North Korea. Classy.

I'm bummed too, but kids, if refusing candidacy to people who really did mess up on their nomination forms = a totalitarian regime where the flow of people, material, and information is entirely controlled and enforced with life and death by the state, you are the same as the people who decry the governing board's evil evil schemes at every little unpleasantness.

6. Nasty methods.

a. Students for Democracy's level of bashing and antagonism is impressively similar to the methods they hate from the UTSU.

b. You complained about posters. You've GOT publicity now. So the people who weren't disqualified should run with it; why withdraw? does leaving core positions uncontested lead to a better election? Better decision making for next year? Or does it just stir up enough bitterness that you'll feel avenged, and perhaps remembered for the next election? In any case, if you're not running with what you can, your mind is not on the students. It's on politics.

c. Save democracy by not voting! Fabulous. If you want to make a point, spoil your ballot. vote 'no' on everyone. Adding 200 people to the apathy pile is every bit as ineffective and pointless as the annual Drop (flat) Fees protests.

:(

Careers never to consider, I

2011-01-30T14:49:00.002-07:00

Stats Consultant

because nobody ever wants to learn it
if they did, they wouldn't come to you
they just want you to tell them 20 steps
to get one pretty number
an asterisk on a graph
dear lord

[excerpt from my frustrated rant on msn, found by B.]

Discovering

2011-01-13T21:42:00.001-07:00

It's been a few years since I wrote a self-reflection that no one likes to read, and I miss the lack of enthusiasm so much that I'm going to write another.

In university, I've added a few items to my inventory of "self".

1. I really, really love rigour.

If you had asked me in high school whether I need all the details to be crystal clear or am cool with a "good enough" explanation, I would adamantly tell you that I need to UNDERSTAND EVERYTHING. That didn't change, but I am more sure of this conclusion now. I didn't know just how displeased I would be with a hand-wavey explanation, and how much extra work I was willing to do to clear up the last bit of vagueness.

At the same time, I must also soften that statement. Looking back, I didn't know ANYTHING about evolution in biology IB. I didn't know ANYTHING about bonding in chemistry. And if I took a specialist course in molecular biology, I'll see that today-me doesn't know anything about molecular biology. I'll never understand everything. It's about understanding at the *present level*. When I look for answers, I don't look for more information ("Aren't there other proteins?"); It's to resolve all the pieces of information I've already been given, and hunt down, iron out every contradiction or incompleteness I can come up with. My goal isn't perfect understanding; it's perfect consistency, which is very different.

2. I am able.

This is probably the biggest change. Until about a year ago, I always felt like I was fundamentally incapable: slow to understand things, not clever (in the creative sense), and had to make up for my lack of understanding with tons of work. When I succeeded, it's because this compensation was enough. When I didn't, it was this fragile support crashing down. I explained all my IB grades this way, and nobody would believe me. I was afraid of taking courses for specialists, or were advanced, or had just about anything that indicated that it was designed for someone "better", ie, not me. Because...I'll be taking it with ENGLISH majors! Who are good at writing! or PHYSICS majors! who are good at physics! The critical fact I missed was that those physics majors had just about the same education as I did up till that point; only our plans were different.

I've discovered that I actually have pretty decent intuition, especially for logically-presented information. That I organize things into relationships very easily. That I have decent writing, even in unfamiliar areas. I have faith in my ability to learn, and to make up for whatever I lack. The thing I think about most when choosing courses is no longer, "how hard do other people find it?" but "how much will I learn?" I think I know at least one person to thank for this, for permeating incredulous me with the belief that if there is something called intelligence, I have it. Is it objectively true? I don't know, but it's allowed me to explore and accomplish a lot more than I would if I didn't change.

3. I've lost a lot of self-discipline.
I used to be able to control myself very well from reaching for the power button or that candy. All it would take is "Linda, that's not what you're supposed to be doing." Now...that warning is quiet, and I often tell it that what I'm doing is no big deal. 5 hours later, I feel really sad and ashamed. It goes on for days sometimes. If there was a singular most depressing thing about my life, it'd be this one.

Tree

2010-12-17T14:17:00.002-07:00

There's definitely no room for a tree, so I made a space-efficient one with Nadia.

It's less than 2 (fractal) dimensions!

Feel free to send me 2-dimensional presents to put under my tree. :)

V

2010-12-13T18:14:00.004-07:00

We talked like that back then? I thought we barely knew each other.
You even wished me happy birthday.
why don't I...

remember.

complete strangers again. It does fade, doesn't it. I'm not immune either.

I don't know if what you said was art or truth, but I know you could've done it. I probably could too. In that time the world becomes pure sensation, and all yours. Then perspectives start to change. Life starts to change.

It's a dangerous place.

Maybe thinking about things too much is bad. Maybe feeling too much is bad. Even if they are true. Because ultimately, you still belong in this world. There are things to do here. You've probably returned many times, you must know by now.
Hope you keep going, because you're important. To others, and in your own right.
Don't bet on the cat, though.

Fun things to name your pets after

2010-12-06T23:50:00.010-07:00

I don't have any pets, which gives me plenty of time to think of names I would give them if they existed.

1. Prestigious universities

(You can always tell when Harvard drinks out of the toilet.)

2. Current celebrities

(Have you met Brad Pitt? He - DOWN BOY. STOP THAT.)

3. Sovereign nation-states.

(I don't understand why Iran and The-United-States cannot get along. Also, why is The-United-States trying to hump all the other dogs in the neighbourhood?)

4. Office supplies

(my two cats, stapler and hole-punch)

5. Organisms much larger or much smaller than them

(Elephant and Whale, my pet bunny. For the husky, call him E.coli.)

6. Actions they cannot perform

(This is my goldfish, Hiker. The name is self explanatory, *wink* ha ha ha)

.....and leave your polite visitors puzzled forever.

7. "Even if I had named my cat I would not tell you. Get out of my house" works for cats, and has a classy Germanic charm. For other pets, simply replace "cat" with the species of your pet.

For best effects, get several pets and name them from different categories. You can have international politics, academia, and a safari under one roof!

[The photos in this post were taken mostly from a stickerbook I have. bunnies were from fuckyeahbabyanimals.com via google images and goldfish from wikipedia user Bjwebb]

Why the trip there is longer than the trip back

2010-11-24T17:33:00.002-07:00

It seems to be a common experience that going to a destination takes longer than coming home from there. In fact, we're even tempted to judge the distance to be greater (which of course is impossible). I've never experienced this effect so profoundly as last night, when I walked a long way to an unexpectedly far bank after some errands.

Of course, the obvious explanation is that if you're going somewhere unfamiliar, you *actually* take more time because you have to stop to ask for directions, go the wrong way sometimes, etc. But it happens even when even if you take the objectively same time to travel the objectively same distance (as I had done yesterday, corroborated by my watch).

I can think of two reasons from introspection (which isn't as quack as the common interpretation of the term, by the way).

1. When you're going to a new place, you are uncertain of what landmark to look for in the distance; therefore, you never feel like you're very close to your destination. On the way home, for example, I can recognize that familiar Metro store from many blocks away; even though I know I'm not there yet, I feel like I'm "almost" there because I can see it. It's just a little bit more. And a little bit more to the next landmark. On the way to the destination, however, I'm not sure where to expect the landmark/sign/etc. to be, so the trip always feels like "ugh, I've been walking so long, am I there yet?" and an unsophisticated glance around me (that which doesn't know what to look for) assures me that I'm still not there.

2. When you're going to a destination, you pay attention to the surroundings more than if you're coming home. If you're going somewhere, you'd better make sure you don't miss it. So, whether we consciously do it or not, we scan the environment more, and we look at more things. On the way home, you could probably be blindfolded and still make it back. If we mentally measure time by how many events take place, or how many landmarks we remember passing, then the trip to the destination would seem farther (or longer) just because we remember more events on that trip than the trip home.

I can't seem to find more about this on the internet except a few sentimental Helium articles. If you have any thoughts, I'd love to hear them!

Illusory accompaniment, or why your singing in headphones sounds bad to everyone else

2010-11-15T23:03:00.008-07:00

One of the most special things about singing in a choir is that nobody sounds good by themselves. I don't mean this in a "we all need each other, let's all hold hands and proclaim the greatness of cooperation" kind of way. No, think about this. If you play piano, your piece sounds great regardless of how you play it or who your audience is. Same for guitar, violin, etc. where even if all they have is a single line, it can sound virtuosic and melodious. But if you sing your choral line alone, you sound merely passable at best.

The obvious explanation is that in choral music, each line is not meant to have its own melody (although the best composers sometimes manage it); but even if you listen to a soprano who has all of the melody sing their line beautifully, they sound merely 'ok' to you. You might know that they're in tune because they have proper spacing between all of their tones, but it does not sound nearly as beautiful to you as it does to the singer.

Another observation. When you hear someone singing a song you're not familiar with, their singing sounds random and sometimes even pretty bad. But listen to the original song a few times, and listen to them singing the exact same way - and they sound awesome (or even if it isn't perfect, they don't seem nearly as tonedeaf as they first appeared).

I think this is all because when you have heard the accompaniment, it stays with you permanently in a schema related to this song. That is, when you're singing your line, with or without the choir, you still hear the rest of the choir's harmonies singing with you. Someone else who hasn't heard the whole choir has no idea of the harmony, and all they hear is your bare, random line. I've practiced my alto line a few times at home, enjoying the sound and the music in my head; when I thought about the actual notes I sang, I thought: no sane person would enjoy singing 7 E's in a row and think they sound great. But of course it's not so monotonous to you because you can hear the changes in other voices even when they're not present. Same with pop songs - you can hear the accompaniment in your head, supporting your pitch-perfect singing, but your audience can only hear you. That's why people singing with headphones on, even if they are perfectly on tune, sound bad to the average observer.

As a solo pianist or guitarist or fiddler, you reproduce the entirety of the music, so experience makes no difference. But when you can only reproduce a part of the music (ie, one melodic line in a choral piece, or the vocal part of a pop song), what you hear is different than what everyone else hears (and this is completely ignoring motivational factors, like our desire to believe in our own competence). So I guess I'd conclude that if you were auditioning for American Idol (which is necessarily solo voice), it's better to pick something that the judges have surely heard before.

In case the aforementioned experiences are unfamiliar, here's a nice example of the same kind of top-down effect we came upon in a tangential physiological context: a simulation of what you might hear if you had cochlear implants:
http://www.healthaffairs.uci.edu/hesp/simulations/simulationsmain.htm

You can select from low- to high- quality simulations, where the more channels, the clearer the sound. Listen to 3-channel . Then listen to 8-channel. Listen to 3-channel again. If you're like most people, it's a lot more comprehensible the second time, and pure noise the first time sound like unambiguous words the second time.

Half of the enjoyment of singing in a choir is being able to hear all of the other voices to make the music make sense, and make bliss.

"Too Asian" - a few details

2010-11-11T00:19:00.000-07:00

Maclean's published an article about how Asian keeners are making university difficult for white students. It attracted a lot of...attention, and within hours they appear to have pulled it from the website. Thanks to people from the internets the full text was retrieved cached (the cached page is also not available anymore.)

I think the reason why the article has been so decried as racist is that it has very weak support for very strong statements, thereby sounding like the authors' own biases - which they well may be. Anecdotal evidence is terribly insufficient, especially when you're dealing with such loaded words: just because someone said it doesn't make it presentable.

I especially like how they prefaced the comments from university professionals:

Indeed, discussions with Canada’s top university presidents reveal for the most part that they are in a state of denial.

“This is a non-issue,” wrote U of T president David Naylor in an email. “We’ve never had a student complain about this. In fact, this is a false stereotype, as we know that Asian students are fully engaged in extracurricular activities. So the whole concept is false.”

Yes, please take the words of a few pissed-off students over people who actually work there and have statistics. I'm just glad they didn't launch into the opposite: "asian people are taking all the executive positions in every club ever".

About the content:

Still, an “Asian” school has come to mean one that is so academically focused that some students feel they can no longer compete or have fun.

...In Canada, say Canadian high school guidance counsellors, that means the top-tier post-secondary institutions with international profiles specializing in math, science and business: U of T, UBC and the University of Waterloo. White students, by contrast, are more likely to choose universities and build their school lives around social interaction, athletics and self-actualization—and, yes, alcohol.

I understand the speakers who are bitter/deterred. If they weren't here, life would be more relaxing and successful. But university actually isn't about clubbing. Nor is it an inherent right. It is not even about social interaction or being an interesting and happy member of society - there's LIFE for that (and the first 12 years of school). University is and should continue to be a sacrifice of time and effort to become *productive* for society.

If the goal of university is to produce society-smart people, it wouldn't look like what we have now. Transcripts would not be the first screening for application processes. How many questions you answered correctly on a test would not be the main measure of achievement. If what you want are street-smart students, not bookworms, change the system. not the players.

A song

2010-11-07T01:04:00.000-06:00

At this hour I can't bear to listen to these songs that bring up the ghost of our past for fear that they'll plunge my viscery into another bout of sentiment.

IT IS DONE
IT IS RESOLVED

go on to the chorals and the orchestrals
the eclectics that carry no meaning yet, only beauty
let me find comfort there.

Notes on a dream

2010-10-07T02:20:00.003-06:00

While napping, I had another nested dream:

[begin 1]
1. I'm in my old arrangement of room, on the laptop, talking to Patrick and another guy who was his friend. He tells me that love/life/relationships/etc. is hard, and he has been married and divorced, which was shocking because he was my age. (now that I think about it, this guy was modelled after someone else named patrick.)

[begin 2]
2. I wake up on my bed (current room) to find lots of stuff strewn on my bed and in front of it; bananas, gifts, stuffed animals, food. Friends and family were coming to Japan (or HK?) to celebrate my birthday. It was not my birthday.

[begin 3]

3. After waking up, I'm walking around outside doing something mundane, like grocery shopping. I think, wow, I had one of those nested dreams again. B might be interested to hear about it.

[end 3]

2. Continue: I broke off a banana from the bunch and tried to eat it.

Peculiar thing 1: The banana felt real in every way - it looked right, peeled right, the temperature difference, the texture to the hand and to the mouth - EXCEPT taste. It tasted weird, and although I appreciated someone giving me fruit, I couldn't fool myself into thinking it tasted good.(1)

I'm going with friends in a car, we're talking, having fun.

[end 2]

1. I'm back in my room. Damn, it was just a dream.

Peculiar thing 2: I consciously REJECTED my "reality", and opted to go back to sleep - and go back into that dream, with my friends, when it was my day and I was showered with good things. I knew that I was in "real life" and that was just a dream and had no practical value; I had a life to live, but not yet.

The more surprising thing is, I actually did go back to the same dream, which never happens in real life (if I try to get back into a dream, it just rapidly evolves to be something totally unrecognizable - chaos, perhaps, or maybe there is a stochastic component?). (2)

[begin 2]
2. Continue being in car having fun with friends.
[end 2]
[end 1]

Then I actually woke up.

Nested dreams are such awesome adventures. Sometimes it screws with you - is the delirium because I'm up at 4am or am I in a dream? To which I have to say, if you're on an adventure, make the best of it. That's another discussion altogether...

Maybe that's why Inception seems so realistic to me. (The only disagreement I have is with the scaling: I don't think dreams play that much faster than real life, it's just that dreams skip a lot, like scenes in a movie. Oh, and the fact that you could plant an idea in someone else's head and have them think it originated from them is easily accomplished without all that work. See: confabulation, misinformation effect, prototype generation, silly effects using schema, etc.)

(1) I guess, like Dr. Urbszat said, it's really hard to imagine or dream taste and smell. But I wonder why that is. Maybe it's our most stimulus-driven sense (for example, emotions, vision, etc. are very top-down). Maybe because it's our truest sense, or one most basic to survival.

(2) This is another possible reality test - if I can get back into a dream, I'm dreaming. But I've had more absurd situations without realizing it was a dream: I once dreamed that images from my previous dream were captured and loaded onto my digital camera. I browsed through the pictures of the mountain and the lake. All I thought was, this is awesome! I was so disappointed when I actually woke up and there was nothing on my camera. XD

Few brief thoughts

2010-09-28T22:42:00.001-06:00

1. It was nice discovering conversation outside of school, the involved but reasoned, non-judgmental kind. And with an existing friend no less.

2. I now know what it means to say "It is an honour to be working with you", and mean it with exploding sincerity. Until now I thought it was just niceties and exaggeration, but occasionally, you get to feel incredibly LUCKY just to sneak a peek at someone so amazing (mind you, people are rarely "amazing"). I feel like I won a lottery. An exciting, stressful lottery.

3. I have cleaned and re-shuffled my room. I feel like a new person.

4. I realized that oversensitive, manipulative, and aggressive people may not be that way inherently; the "victim" can also influence that behaviour. If you enable manipulative behaviour by being constantly apologetic, being unconditionally available to every little emotional blip, and pay attention only when they're negative or aggressive, you are helping that person get worse (from what may have been a near-random action to start with).

5. I am surprisingly not stressed, even though I am incredibly overwhelmed with work.

6. Rejections and likings no longer involve big bouts of emotion for me. It is calming and I feel like I've matured - it really shouldn't be that much drama. But at the same time, I lost something. Some part of me is numb and has been for a good while.

Everyone's an actor

2010-09-05T17:13:00.009-06:00

Writing an email with authority was something new to me. My most used phrases in emails are typically "thank you so much for your ______", "Would it be possible to______", "at your convenience". Not things like "mandatory", "deadline", and "your responsibilities...."

I did not know how to be authority, so thrown into this new position of authority, what did I do? I acted authority. I drew from my knowledge of what authority was supposed to sound like, and I used that script, albeit modified with my natural tone (read: quirky sayings and llamas). So I wrote a compact, somewhat-friendly/somewhat-assertive email telling people what to do.

At around the same time, a friend became a potential collaborator in a big project, and suddenly our discourse completely changed. I was shocked at how utterly unrecognizable her words became. A friend became a stranger, and warm happy conversations became cool, professional jargon. I realized that she was playing a different role now, with a different script.

It occurred to me that the vast majority of people in authority must have gone through the same thing, whether they realize it or not. Everyone had to start somewhere, and nobody is born with authority (not anymore, at least). Nobody is just one day inspired to say to a group of people, "We have committed to assertively integrate high-quality infrastructures to exceed customer expectations."* They learned it, consciously or subconsciously, by looking to their own authorities - people who got there by acting, too.

And it works, because their followers are enacting the same story, copying from similar examples. They are to be flexible where authority is rigid, be abnormally polite where authority is abnormally inconsiderate, and they should be a thousand times more enthusiastic just to be normal.

Many reasons are cited for enacting and continuing the story. Trust in authority is important for the working relationship. Intimidation improves obedience. Professionalism is good for posterity. It's like a photograph: pictures taken of you without your knowledge are some of the best, most genuine, and warmest. But it has wrinkles, or your mouth is open too wide, or it's from an angle you find ugly because you never look at yourself that way. When people know that a camera is being pointed at them, they stop all of their life - their emotions and actions - to stand up straight and put on a Colgate smile.

We should not throw away portrait photography, throw away professionalism for casual banter. But we need to *start* with a different intention. Ignore the script, and think first about the essentials of what you want to say, to do, to present. There is no reason why one has to feign distance with a friend just because they're also working with you. Authority need not be detached, professional, and impressive. Authority is just leadership, and leaders often do better by connecting with their audience than by making themselves seem untouchable. And if people ignored the previous examples and found their own way to be authority, business, politics, and even science would be a very different place.

What I'd love to see in a leader isn't that he impresses me, but expresses himself. It's not to see that they're professional, but personal. I don't want someone who intimidates me, but someone who motivates me.

And I'll try my best to be that person.

* a sample from Dilbert's Mission Statement Generator (unfortunately not online anymore), gleeped from wikipedia.

Mexico!

2010-08-31T23:58:00.003-06:00

As post-mcat celebration, my parents and I went to Mexico!

The people were lovely, the place was beautiful, but their plants blew my mind. So colourful and showy.

This one is not shy about its naughty bits.

A plant that produces a large fake flower by changing the colour of its leaves to purple, then spitting out real flowers that are tiny. Flowers are more expensive than leaves to make, so this really gives you more bang for your buck. Tricky plant.

Did you know that palm tree babies look like this growing up? I certainly didn't...

What was really cool is that you see a lot of interaction between plants and animals. In Alberta, it's a little hard because it's pretty cold most of the time, and you don't tend to see a lot of bugs except bees pollinating flowers for a short period in the year.

But in Mexico, if you just look at pretty much any plant closely, you can see signs of interaction with insects. For pollination, you see lots of bees, beetles, and occasionally hummingbirds. You also see a lot of ants around certain plants, carrying large rain-battered plant pieces with incredible speed to their colonies.

Here is an overachieving ant who was having a little trouble with its loot.

Rest assured, I didn't spend my whole vacation staring at plants and bugs. I also did some of this.

simple

2010-08-16T23:29:00.004-06:00

I hope I never become a travelling businesswoman
or have so much money to spend in hotels
that I am no longer excited to see
what kind of tiny shampoos they gave us this time.

Stampede love

2010-07-26T23:24:00.003-06:00

The best of stampede for me:

1. You know you live in a blessed country when police are in the street and people are actually cheering.

2. a jazz band in a painting!

3. The fact that the city of Calgary not only took into account the amount of horse poop there would be on the street, but actually made the street cleaners a part of the parade.

4. Here is a tank which spun 360* at the crowd before moving on. (without opening fire.) AWESOME? awesome.

5. pretty women in pretty feathers!

6. Pretty women in nostalgic dresses (and sumbrellas!)

7. An ice acrobatics show, featuring the cutest Olympics Gold Medalists ever.

8. Being glad that I am not a mommy pig, and will only have a maximum of two babies suckling at a time.

(Note the brown piglet lying across 3 other ones.)

9.I believe this one speaks for itself. *hugsllama*

Help

2010-07-25T00:28:00.004-06:00

I'm not great with technology, but when I'm interested in a particular thing, I quickly gain expertise when given enough time to play with it sufficiently. Like my camera. Or whatever MS office product I've needed in the past.

Webmail was not one of those things.

It has been two years and I still have not figured out how to permanently erase deleted emails. For some reason, however, deleting messages from my trash in thunderbird has worked in the past.

Apparently I'm supposed to have a toolbar that says this:

Hide Deleted | Purge Deleted

Mine says:

| | | |

And for the life of me I could not find an option that would get me the other actions.

Today, for the first time, I went to its "help" section. Here are their instructions:

Um, yes, I do.

...soooo...

what the fruitcake what kind of help section is this it doesn't even make any sense are you asking me a question and if so why don't you have a question mark?!

Poor dude who wrote this was probably doing this with his only his brainstem functioning and trying to meet an imminent deadline.

speaking of help, if you need help with ghosts, self-image, or Alexander Moreschi, this is the site for you.

What frustration looks like 10 months later

2010-07-03T15:03:00.003-06:00

A document I composed in the peak of frustration in September last year:

ARHGHGHGHHHH
printer still does not work
do not understand so much of biochem, ALREADY
coughing like mad,
voip is SITLL not set up,
no one can help me with anything
need to pee,
grhahghghahh

The retrospective silliness is comforting:

All will pass.

Don't sleep with your feet to the door

2010-05-31T22:53:00.004-06:00

only dead people do that. Do you want to die?

Do not give someone shoes ("Xie2", homonymous with "evil") as a gift.

If you split a pear between the two people, they will soon part from each other. ( homonymous word pair “分梨" and "分离") So eat your entire pear yourself.

Silly, right? What can shoes do to you? they are dead animals you wear on your feet. And you should see the rules we would make up to justify splitting a pear ("if we split it between the three of us, and each of us takes a bite, then it's ok." because of course, it was not practical for me to eat a whole pear by myself when I was young.)

When people think superstitions, they think, "stupid people who don't understand statistics/science". And it is probably true that most superstitions arise by meaningless chance happenings, and propagated along by our tendency for confirmation bias and use of the availability heuristic. So you may say, "why do you follow these superstitions? They're not true. It [the supposed effect] doesn't exist."

But beyond a simple, testable correlation (or lack thereof) is a very real emotion. Guilt. If you didn't know that giving someone shoes bestowed upon them bad luck, you might just be shocked when she soon after has a car accident. If you know the superstition, it did not make their car accident any more likely, but the fact that you know makes you feel guilty, somehow responsible.

During her pregnancy my mom started embroidering a horse (my zodiac year). Not long before the delivery date, my dad saw that one of the horse's legs looked weirdly shaped, like it was crippled. Worried about having a crippled child, he took apart the whole embroidery. Silly? Yes. Stupid? No. They are reasonable, educated, and science-loving. But if I had turned out a cripple, the everlasting question of "what if" was something he could not deal with. The embroidery was an acceptable thing to trade off for the emotional consequences of this possibility. And that is the emotion that drives the perpetuation of superstitions - we dare not withold even the possibility of the best from us, and from our loved ones.

It has heavier consequences than an embroidery or a fruit. One closer to my heart: a low-income family spending a considerable part of their income on visits from a mystic, who chants and dances to cure their child of epilepsy. Money that could be spent on food, hot water, or school supplies. But the guilt of a parent who has not tried everything and anything on their afflicted child is too heavy a burden to bear.

Knowing that a superstition exists makes it real. It turns an imaginary correlation into a very real emotion, an internal drive that must be silenced by small offerings of silly actions.

Speaking of which, my MCAT is on August 13th. A friday.

Wish me luck!

we are not a virus

2010-05-03T22:02:00.003-06:00

Let me tell you a story about cells.

a community of single cells can act like an organism. For instance, when they run out of bacteria to eat, the amoeba Dichtyostelium all wiggle towards one another and aggregate and adhere into this multicellular slug. with like, feet extensions and everything, so they can migrate to a new spot.

In a multicellular organism, its individual cells can act like single organisms. They can compete for food, equilibrate in a density dependent way, and altruistically kill themselves when they become dangerous for the community. In my view, a multicellular organism is just a very well-controlled community of single-celled organisms.

Phagocytic cells, for example, are like scavengers, foraging for pretty much any food they can get - cells, oil drops, glass beads....but they also follow a rule: they can't eat healthy cells in the organism.

So, what are cancer cells? They are individuals which have broken some kind of self-limit. They divide even when the conditions are not right, and they divide way more than their space and resources allow. When they have proliferated enough, they break the sheet holding them in place to scout for other tissues to colonize.

It's a hard journey for these cells, and less than 1/1000 of them will eventually form successful colonies. the ones that do, though, disrupt the functioning of that native tissue, often by being a structural nuisance (taking up valuable space for nutrient absorption/gas exchange), or by depleting the resouces while being useless to the organ. Since each part of the multicellular community is integral to its function, the organism eventually ceases to function and dies.

Cancer, then, is just a mutation that allows cells to live beyond their means. Instead of thinking of cancer as death, as failure, it is more of the opposite; cells get an extra boost from their mutation and becomes some kind of invincible. They can become resistant to normal cell death, or skip checkpoints that stop them from dividing before they are ready. Cancerous cells are just over-successful, selfish, and without foresight.

In an idea popularized by The Matrix, humans are described as a virus, proliferating and killing the earth. But viruses have no ability to reproduce on their own, instead using other machinery of other cells to replicate themselves. It takes an infection for a virus to proliferate.

But the matter is worse. Humans came from the Earth; we aren't alien to it. We also don't invade trees and get born out of their spores: our proliferation is inherent, just as cell division is inherent. We simply live beyond our means.

we artificially extend our lives even when we are not useful, reproduce and grow even though there is not enough nutrients to do so, and, as our greatest triumph, break out of our modest ecological niche and conquer new environments to keep living. Blindly, successfully, and without a thought of cooperation.

we are not a virus; we are cancer.

Summertime

2010-04-14T22:01:00.001-06:00

These sunny days are so ridiculously and unreasonably beautiful, I can't even stand it. I just burst with happiness and delight and cat-lazy.

The bold colours are out again.

(There is a filming set behind, and a dozen taxi-cabs!)

And I can look forward to pretty plant genitalia.

I swear this field turned from grey to green in two days (of sweet, sweet april rain).

Theme: everything happens

2010-03-29T20:22:00.002-06:00

across a few sciences, I've learned about very different things, but there are certain themes that seem to come up in different forms.

one: Everything happens.

or more precisely, everything that is possible, happens. So why don't we see them all happening? because some possibilities are far more favorable than others.

Thermodynamics (as applied to chemistry): given a mixture, every reaction that can possibly happen does happen - but some products are more stable (ie have lower energy) than others, so those are made more often. So ask "why doesn't this happen?" and the answer will always be, "oh, it does. but it's not likely, or it'll go back again."

Evolutionary Biology: random mutations in a very large population effectively generates "every possibility". If the mutation is important, most of the mutants will probably die or live a pretty bad life. but if they win the mutation lottery and get something cool, they'll pwn at life and their kids probably will too. after a really long time, humans can come by and go "hey! check out this battle-armour-giraffe!*" thinking that is the only type of giraffe that ever existed. But they don't see that graveyard of all the giraffes who had ingrown armours. :(

Quantum: according to one interpretation, an object going from position A to position B travels in every path possible, but everything except for the laziest path destructively interferes with each other (cancelling themselves out).

Stats/intuition for stats: I guess the simple fact that a continuous normal (or t) distribution never reaches a probability of zero is something to consider. And if you look in real populations of stuff, man-made or natural, there are always very surprising deviations from the mean.

also: how wide do you have to make your confidence interval if it's to contain the true mean 95% of the time? 99% of the time? probably wider than you think.

When asked to give a 95% confidence interval of an estimate of how many full-time undergraduates in Canada there are, people gave much narrower confidence intervals - around 66%.

Of course, it may just be me being sucked up by a whirlpool of little patterns. If you can think of other things that agree, disagree, or add to my summary, I'd love to hear it. :)

*does not exist to my knowledge, sadly.

This is how I waste my time

2010-03-24T23:13:00.001-06:00

There are these incredible webcomics that really are as much a work of art as anything in a gallery.

one of my consistent favourites has been the secret knots, a quiet, witty, and beautifully illustrated webcomic about "things we do without knowing why".

Another that I've discovered just today is Busted Wonder. I discovered it about an hour ago, and I am on the 69th comic. It's a continuous story, and I have no idea how it ends. I am mesmerized.

I read about 15 different webcomics fairly regularly, so you can imagine how skilled I am at procrastinating.

some of my other (probably more well-known) favorites include

-pictures for sad children

-brain fist

-what the duck

-a softer world

-all knowledge is strange

So yeah. that's how I waste my time....gloriously. (I suppose they are all kind of escapist, especially busted wonder, but at least I'm not reading Twilight.)

tests now, emotions later

2010-03-09T19:55:00.000-07:00

yes, I need to deal with feelings and not just stuff them and hide them.

but the fact is, there's something more urgent right now. I can't afford to be so distracted. test is thursday. the pain and discomfort is dull and chronic. and hey, my problems aren't going anywhere; they'll still be here after the test. so I'll deal with them after. XD

sorry, feely linda, but think of this as a fight-or-flight response. get out of this immediate danger first, and channel all the focus there...the digestive system can wait.

I don't think I can do this.

well, we've done it before. remember 'math homework kicks boy butt"? and "we'll find out the truth, but let's do it after diplomas"?

boo. the social diploma was worth virtually nothing. those 2 weeks were unhappy.

Shouldn't stop us from owning school. On thursday night we will have a hot cup of tea and cry. or something. deal?

deal. =\

memento hoarding, or space and stuff

2010-02-09T21:04:00.000-07:00

it came from an xkcd forum post:

Re: "MicroSD" Discussion
by TheDarkNerd » Wed Jan 20, 2010 6:16 am UTC
To think, we may very well reach an age where storage capacities allow you to store every piece of data that could define you for who you are, a video diary of your day-to-day existence from birth, any creative work you've ever made, all onto one tiny device.

. . . and then you accidentally inhale it.

Advancing technology gives us increasing space. but we never feel that space, because we fill it with stuff so quickly. Do you remember the time when holding 1GB of stuff in your hand felt SO impressive? how quickly it became insufficient!

you can never run out of stuff. you can always make copies and meta-analyses within meta-analyses. You can increase the rate at which you produce files; for example, when you had 36 pictures on your film camera, you took good pictures, carefully, and missed a lot of potentially great shots. Now we have functionally unlimited space, and your hard drive contains 15 self-shots of the same two faces smiling the same way at every party and youtube videos of people looking into a camera looking pretty for 10MB. It's like a challenge. a 16GB ipod demands to be filled with songs, even if you don't like half of them.

But the real power is to store memories. a picture can be a prompt, an album can reconstruct an entire month of life.

it's your projects, your text messages, your secret rants in a diary.

and a parent, seeing his most perfect child in infinite ways, not wanting to miss a single one in his documentation. "emma made a weird smiley face passing gas today!" etc.

It's really not about technology. Technology only permits the indulgence in an old mentality: what if it might be useful later on? Dare I erase this piece of information? How can I bring myself to delete this adorable picture of my child, even if there are 10 just like it?

The increasing space allows us to never let go.

When your ipod is full, what do you do? you get a bigger ipod. (chances are, your ipod will look obsolete by the time you fill it anyway.) If your hard drive is full, you buy an external hard drive to store your mental souvenirs. Sometimes I don't even remember what makes up that 3GB of pictures, or how many of them are redundant.

it's kind of...spoiled me. when your house is too cluttered, do you just get a bigger house? I think I'd have a good look-through and hold a gigantic garage sale.

But it's so Easy holding on to meaningful and useless mementos of the past that we forget how to let go.

As shelled up as I am sometimes, I'm a pretty sentimental person. I attach meaning and emotion to many things other people have no trouble throwing out.

Just last month, I finally cleared out my text message inbox so that it didn't keep reminding me it was full every time I opened it. (but it was annoying: 75% full is NOT full. 100% full is full. egh.) And the only way I brought myself to do it was by typing out the texts into a notepad file, so I wouldn't be losing the information. moving from one store to another. many of them were not worth typing out, and only then did I feel good about deleting it.

so what if I lost my phone, and lost all those texts? would I forget the special ones? in the next 5 years, likely. would I forget the love they contained? doubtful.

If I lost all the information on my hard disk right now, how would my life change?

I might need a few useful things on it for assignments, and lament the loss of meaningful pictures from time to time. but profs will understand a HD failure, and I will move on. other people's retellings will fill me in about life, about me. my memories will do the same for them.

People have lived meaningful lives for millenia without mountains of explicit cues about their life. At some point, they couldn't even write down their ideas and feelings. Their children never knew what they looked like as a baby, but they could feel the same marvel when they had their own children. They could let go, because all that has happened in the past has become a part of them - a physical scar, a circle of friends, a family, a personality trait.

suddenly now, losing a special souvenir is catastrophic. It feels like losing a piece of your life. It feels like this reminder could tell you all about who you were, who you are, and who you can become. But it's not really gone. whatever I experienced, it's still with me. it becomes me.

So why am I ruminating with these explicit reminders of the past, trying to find clues to this character I'm supposed to play? I already am that person. there need be no script to follow.

As powerful as that your-life-in-a-hard-disk sounds, I think I'd like to avoid it. There must be a point at which the past becomes so weighty that you can't choose who you become.

yo dawg i herd u like pop quizzes

2010-02-01T14:54:00.002-07:00

so apparently there was a mandatory training session on interpersonal relationships and social skills that I missed a while back. Never saw a poster for it, though everyone else seem to have attended. so I didn't sign up for it, alright. but it turns out that they still test you on the material and it still counts in your final record.

worst of all, there's no sparknotes for this stuff.

beautiful things at the moment

2010-01-31T12:07:00.003-07:00

distracted and overwhelmed. another channel to store the music and words and pictures flying around in my head, give them a place to stay. calm, my pretties.

"I'm dreaming now. that's it. One of those rare lucid dreams."
"Like living and knowing that you are alive?"

-the secret knots, "the truth fairy, part 4"

a new word: geniesse, meaning to enjoy, more than enjoy; to savour and swim in...geniessen Sie den Aubenblick, to savour the moment.

Joy

Landlocked

in bodies that don't keep

dumbstruck

with the sweetness of being.

-Joanna Newsom, "Emily"

Ute Lemper's rendition of Youkali, by Kurt Weill

seems to be a catatonic, content, and existentialist road in front of me and I don't know if I like it.

another year, another plant stolen from the University of Toronto

2010-01-12T21:07:00.001-07:00

This time it's a tomato plant named Oscar Higgins. He looks wilty and might die soon.

we shaved his stem hair (he's a pretty hairy dude) and, being hair voyeurs, examined the innards of his hair cells.

if this whole university thing doesn't work out, we can become plant barbers. :D

forget the rules, adjustment is all

2010-01-04T19:42:00.002-07:00

In the cities I visited, cars don't stop for pedestrians or other cars unless they're about to hit them. unwilling to wait 72 hours to cross a street, pedestrians thread skillfully through the traffic, pausing between lanes of traffic when appropriate. vigilant but not reluctant. Standing in the middle of the road, he sees a bus ~30m away travelling towards him at ~70km/h. The bus honks, ignored by the pedestrian. The bus slows, allowing the pedestrian crosses unharmed.

A most common sight, a standard in crossing 4-lane highways.

Are they not more skillful than Torontonians in crossing the road? sure; they're more agile and better at distance/speed judgments. But move them to Toronto, and these skillful pedestrians will cause more traffic accidents than either city naturally. Because in Toronto, when a pedestrian has the right of way, cars stop for them (most of the time). When cars have the right of way, pedestrians avoid them. At first exposure, Toronto drivers are not prepared for wrong-of-way (XD) pedestrians leisurely jaywalking across 4 lanes of traffic.

a sort of coevolution of customs, where things work not because the parties abide by the rules, but because each accommodates for the other.

It's often like that in life, in relationships; it needs mutual shaping, not a series of systematic corrections to the jagged edges. They may not fit together after all.

Adventures and happies!

2009-12-10T19:53:00.001-07:00

My days are so lovely, in so many ways.

Bratty common room got a warm and (de)lightful makeover, and we had a Christmas party there.

Happy music, lights everywhere, and christmas cookies that turned my whole mouth red.

We also had a small gift exchange.

I love watching people open presents. :)

Played on a playground in High Park with a special friend.

while there, lay in the middle of the empty street.

(B helped me take this one!)

And of course with some (read: a lot of) help, dangled on this tree for a while.

On the way back, I got to ride on a train in the very front.

It looks just like a video game!

was given a giant handmade candy cane.

(I thought it was a decoration at first, but it tasted awesome, so I am eating it now.)

Then I made out with some flowers.

Yay!

verdict is in.

2009-11-25T22:18:00.000-07:00

results told, and it's a resounding "DON'T PANIC".

All around me

2009-11-23T14:54:00.000-07:00

There are so many surprising and beautiful things on campus I've never seen, even though I see them every day.

sometimes you have to climb under some tricky thing to see it.

or look through a wounded stained-glass window.

being impractically close also helps.

There's a sort of giddiness that comes from having your face this close to the ground. I was probably an earthworm in a previous life.

Sometimes it's the quietness of the night or the fog.

This night felt and smelt like zombies.

They even threw in ghostly windows floating in the sky!

forgiveness

2009-11-22T11:54:00.000-07:00

at first, forgiveness is a sort of gift we give to the person who wronged us.

"I'm sorry."
"I forgive you."
"thank you."

it gives them a sense of relief, to know that you will not be mad at them anymore.

as we grow up, forgiveness is something we are just supposed to do. if someone apologizes, you have to forgive them.

"I'm sorry."
"I forgive you, I guess."

But what happens when someone has apologized, but you are still mad? what if the pain and bitterness they've caused is too much to do away with in even the most sincere words and actions? and what if you have felt this for so long that it seems right to hold on to the bitterness?

forgiveness becomes something more profound, something internal. but it is not the absence of sadness, hurt, or bitterness. rather, it is the willingness to let go of these feelings; file them away as the past, and stop carrying them around with you. It is that first, very big step towards making peace in your heart. Forgiveness becomes a gift to yourself.

the feelings and thoughts do not just go away when you forgive someone, but taking that first step allows time to smooth the bumps away, imperceptibly but surely.

it is not a statement of, "everything is ok now", but "I want my heart to be at peace with you".

let's start anew.

Intuition vs. rigor in stats.

2009-11-20T15:17:00.001-07:00

went to sta220 (a stats class I'm not registered in) today for kicks. comparison, really, and curiosity.

the professor is fine; he obviously knows his stuff, and explains it very logically. not nearly as entertaining as Spence (my stats prof), though. Vukov gave more detail about what Gosset did for the monte carlo experiment, which was really cool.

except Vukov hardly explains the ideas behind concepts and methods at all before he goes into the math. which is awful.

for some reason, people seem to think themselves superior when they only teach the rigorous derivations, and only append examples at the end. no wonder that people come out of stats lectures completely lost; each step is perfectly true, but it doesn't matter because you can't see the point of it.

You need intuition before rigor in these subjects, because when you have an example situation in your head, the entire framework is there in a bang.

then you introduce the mathematics of it, to give a rigorous result. it's like having the big pieces model plane all come together, and you're just gluing the connections.

for example.

on the difference between population and sample distributions.

imagine you're looking at 10 random people's IQ scores. how are they distributed?

now imagine you're looking at the AVERAGE of those 10 people's IQ scores. then take another random sample of 10 people, and look at their average. get 10 of these samples - how does the distribution of the averages look?

obviously we know that 10 averages will be a lot closer to 100 than the 10 raw scores. and some will be lower and some will be higher. intuitively you understand why the mean is the population mean and standard deviation is smaller than the population stdev.

then you can derive this mathematically, using the summation of individual means and variances.

but if you scratched all this and said, we're going to calculate the mean and standard deviation of a sample distribution of the mean, and just started adding and dividing. what does each step of the derivation mean? what does the result even mean? at most, characteristics to memorize. it is like gluing two things together without knowing whether you're making a plane or a house.

anyway, hurray for Spence and his pedagogical skill, and no regrets whatsoever about taking psy201. :)

H1N1 and public health

2009-11-15T19:13:00.001-07:00

everything surrounding H1N1 elicits so much anger.

look no further than the comments on any news article for the good chunk of the population who claim that swine flu is just media hype for pharmas to make money, people mad because vaccines took so long to make, people mad because they're not getting the vaccine, people mad at clinics throwing out unused expired vaccines, people mad because they have to get the vaccine which is all part of the evil ploy of the Illuminati to kill people and give kids autism.

it is so frustrating to see so many people wholeheartedly agree that everything is stupid, and never try to understand why things are the way the are - and in a society so science-heavy to boot!

that's what makes us scientists, isn't it - when we see something wonky, we try to find a rational explanation of why it is not wonky. (for example, if we find an adaptation in a species that seems utterly backwards, we look to its evolutionary history to see if it might've been advantageous at some point. or if we find that our photons just did something really weird, we design more experiments to see if specific situations always makes it act that way.)

many things in public health certainly are flawed, but health policies are not generally designed with the express intention to screw everything up.

what people don't seem to understand is, when you're talking about disease in populations of millions, billions even, there is no such thing as "all" or "zero" in any practical sense. It is statistical thing, where even the most bizarre possibilities will be found if you look at enough cases.

it is a shame that nearly 500 vaccines went to waste because they were not administered in 24 hours, but statistically, this means they estimated the daily needed number with ~99% accuracy. and generally in stats, that's a pretty good standard to aim for.

but humans have such terrible intuition for probability and statistics. We are emotional beings, and there is so much emotion surrounding death and disease that it does not mean anything to know that we prevented fatal disease in 99.9% of children, when the only thing emotionally important is the 0.1% that died from vaccine complications.

moreover, we are selfish. it's no consolation that estimates were 99% right. what hits people emotionally is the familiar sentiment, "I'm not even allowed to get this shot yet, and you're throwing them away like you have too much!"

anyway, I remember being very interested in epidemiology after (only!) 2 of Rowe's lectures on evolutionary medicine. I'm still so fascinated by epidemiology of infectious diseases, and am even willing to learn more complicated stats to understand it. but today was a little disillusioning; if I were ever to work in public health, I'd have possibly the most thankless job in health care.

because no one remembers what happened *before* that vaccine.

even when a bad thing is absent, you kind of miss it

2009-11-06T11:42:00.000-07:00

that familiar pre-exam anxiety - the butterflies, and panic, the I'M SO SCREWED feeling - has been strangely missing from all my midterms. don't get me wrong - 4 days before the exam there are genuine tears and sobs, but just before the test ...no nerves at all.

when I'm prepared, I write the test like it's just homework/practice test.

when I'm not prepared, I walk randomly through the mass panic singing night zombies, or whimsical ze frank songs. in my own little world, waddlingstrutting around.

it's reasonable, isn't it? whether you're prepared or not, being calm is the best thing you can do for yourself right before the exam. but paradoxically, it feels like I'm not giving my best if I'm not nervous too.

I guess only results will tell. :)

over the hill!

2009-10-26T18:01:00.002-06:00

that test was eeriely short. I probably skipped 5 pages. D:

nevertheless, bio is done - 3 more to go.

this time I will allocate some part of each day for later tests - maybe 60% PSL, 20% stats, 20% bch.

today we learned about circadian rhythms! which was AWESOME. related so much to psych as well, and my ROP project, which deals with the role of the hippocampus in perception. things of note:

-the pineal gland secretes more melatonin during the summer, when the nights are short, so that you get more "concentrated" deep sleep. of course, these were only tested in animals who don't have the option of staying up till 4am studying or gaming.

-'sleep debt' is real! when sleep-deprived for a while, the amount of glycogen stored decreases and adenosine (broken-down product of ATP) increases, and this activates the "sleep switch", which tells you to sleep.

-the hippocampus is indeed involved in recognition/memory of scenes; has place cells that fire at specific places (rat example).

(-cool tidbit: London cab drivers, who are tested extensively on

knowledge of locations and how to get there, have a significantly

larger hippocampus than the average population.)

things I need to think about:

* what constitutes a scene rather than an object? is there a topological distinction, or is it only based on our perceptual experiences?

>>if based on experiences - how can we make our stimuli rigorous?

>>then again, the distinction between a coffee mug and a doughnut is pretty obvious, even though the two are homeomorphic.

*is the recognition of a place purely visual? can it be olfactory, auditory, somatosensory?

>> is our format of presentation of stimuli even valid in distinguishing ability in perception of scenes? is a rotation of a room complex enough to even involve the hippocampus?

>>what if the perceptual difference can only be seen when they are physically going through different rooms? if that is the case, any "perceptual" deficit would be confounded with memory, as one cannot be in two places at the same time.

umm yesterday I was riding miniature elephants in my sleep. that was my happy place throughout the exam.

also, new template/layout! thank you Jenerocity. :)

not cool not cool

2009-10-25T19:54:00.001-06:00

molecule bio midterm tomorrow; 12/12 lectures understood

Physiology midterm friday; 8/16 lectures understood (it took me a month!)

Biochem midterm next tuesday; 0/9 lectures understood

Stats midterm next thursday; 0.5/3 chapters finished.

(look, a correlation!)

everything is burning.

and super-slow.

usual body temperature: 36.2*C.

average body temperature today: 37.8*C @ armpit, and increasing.

average time between dry chest coughs: 5 min.

head feels woozy when I stand up. pulsing headache when I lower myself.

english starts looking like arabic.

skin feels ultra-sensitive.

yup, can't think of anything more conducive to studying from scratch.

dear pathogens, let's have some time away from each other, maybe till all my midterms are done.

homeless

2009-10-23T23:52:00.003-06:00

cast from Eden, hand in hand.

what went wrong? where is home now?

a trivial thing becomes an impossible luxury.

into a world absent our homely comforts.

into the quiet, dripping world.

all ours.

love

2009-10-17T19:10:00.003-06:00

it is not perfect and it is not meant to be;

it is seeing all the faults of man, of his, of yours -

and giving the best that man can give -

with all your kindness, strength, and pardon;

love is the best that the human spirit can offer.

be

2009-09-27T21:31:00.000-06:00

sometimes I'm plagued by so many layers of thoughts that it's counterproductive. what does it mean? what do I have to do? how will it turn out? will it hurt? will it fail? will it last?

sometimes I think so much about these that they put my actions and experiences all into boxes, boxes too small to do anything with. they are just clutter.

sometimes I just stop and think,

no more "I am so screwed for this test."

no more "I wish these toxic thoughts would stop bothering me."

no more "I am not * enough."

no more "I am not destined for love."

sometimes I stop worrying about who or what I am, and embrace the fact that I ...AM.

I'm here. I can feel. I can love. I can taste and smell and feel and see. I can hurt. I am me.

let it hurt, let it fail if it must; let me strive, let me blunder.

because those things only happen when you ARE, and that's the most precious thing.

ever go outside and think, holy crap, this earth is freaking enormous and complicated. and yet by some freak chance, I came to be, to see all this.

it just makes you want to hug life. it makes you want to touch everything and smell everything.

sometimes it's awesome just to..be.

ahhh!

2009-09-13T09:26:00.000-06:00

it's strange: the first few days of school (wed-fri) seemed like the weekend, and I had to remind myself that homework was real, not just something they talk about on a whim.

now it's the weekend and I keep feeling like I have class in an hour. and that I should be doing homework RIGHT NOW.

I have no weekends!

after skimming a few long-winded blogs by a fellow UofT student on study strategies and tips, I'm quite surprised at how different people are in their studying, and how utterly convinced each one is of their own superiority. but mostly it seems to all sit in one plane, the axes of which are:

1) method: head people and paper people

head people like to understand in their heads; they are the ones who take few notes and listen & think lots during the lecture, and read notes after class to firm it up in their heads.

paper people like to take down as much as possible and make sense of it later; they aim to transcribe lectures to preserve precision and accuracy (though reducing efficiency).

2) purpose: learning people and test people

learning people want to understand all of what they're taught (and more); they care little about what is actually being evaluated.

test people's first priority is what is being tested; if it is not evaluated, it is not valuable to learn/study.

from the people I've interacted with, the distribution seems to be something like this:

I think I'm about at the blue dot.

I don't like the hardcore test people very much. they make me sad and cynical. :(

and really distribution of strategies within the population who actually does well is about the same. except maybe shifted to the right a bit. it's a sad thought - when time is limiting, one who learns to learn cannot beat another who learns to ace the test. unless you're in insane math.

but, who's to say that there isn't enough time for both to flourish?

the fact that there are head-learning people who are owning up everything means that there *is* enough time, somewhere; they may use it better, be faster and more intuitive, but it's *possible*. there is still hope!

most of the strategies do work for some people, and none work for everyone. so take everyone else's advice as "hey, try this" and not "this is the path to uberleetawesome DO NOT STRAY".

there are many roads to an A, even at UofT.

an extra dose of protein.

2009-07-18T13:13:00.000-06:00

so I was walking with my friend yesterday, and my tongue found a little sesame-sized thing in my mouth. I figure it was something stuck in my teeth from dinner. I bit it. it tasted weird.
I removed it from my tongue with my fingers and looked at it. it had legs. I just chewed on a bug that flew into my mouth. BLEGGH.

poor bug though, it must have been so confused right before it died.

ordinary

2009-07-13T16:50:00.000-06:00

in some moments death loses its inherent quality of terror and pain, and just becomes something that happens to you. sometimes it seems no longer unbearably tragic, and becomes an ordinary fact of life.

like "susie has the flu."

like "I got laid off today."

like "I'm moving to another city, and I'm not sure if I'll see you again."

like "I had a great dream last night, but I can't remember it anymore."

yeah, that's life.

sunsets

2009-06-22T14:28:00.000-06:00

at the end of every day you get a neat little gift...huge actually, it covers the entire sky. and it's always different, so you get a surprise everyday!

it's like someone painted the sky with impossibly smooth watercolour.
(Oh, who am I kidding, it's all digital now.)

even flowers get prettier when showered in sunsetlight.

Magnolia!

2009-06-16T16:36:00.001-06:00

I share an office with the funnest person ever!

On my second day Avril (my officebuddy) and I stole a model brain from Dr.Nik and named it Magnolia, and she's been our official office mascot since! (oddly enough, other offices seem rather unfamiliar with the concept of the office mascot.)

Today she was taking photos of stuff she developed for a presentation...and I guess other things in the office seemed more captivating.

I got this email from her while we were both in the office:

brighten your coworkers' day - send them a stalker brain. :)

Prejudice

2009-06-15T11:03:00.000-06:00

I am a female human born on a big piece of land on Earth - the same piece as you, actually - to two people who love each other very much and worked very hard to give me a good life.
we like to eat rice and meat and vegetables and soup, and we can communicate with 2 sets of people who actually make up quite a huge chunk of the Earth's population.
I have a lot of pigment in my hair and iris, and not so much everywhere else. In my blood vessels there are red blood cells made of proteins and iron, and white blood cells that eat bad things. Oh, and there's also plasma. yay!
I like to use my voice to sing and talk and shout, and my arms and legs to hug and dance and wave. I will help you if you want me to, I'll stay with you if you are lonely, and I'll ache if you hurt. I would not laugh at the misfortune of even people who wronged me, and I try not to hurt a bug. I delight in life and the pretty things it holds, and I love finding new things to love about it.
I think, I feel, I love.
And if we are too different to accept each other, I guess that's just the way the world works.

I'm a hermit crab!

2009-06-13T17:45:00.000-06:00

I had been wondering what to do with my estranged msn space, since it felt cringey to keep adding to it and callous to renovate it. So, I'm going to move to this new shell that fits present-me, and keep my old shell as an artifact of weird younger me.

Solutions are delicious.