Tuesday, May 27, 2008

Dumpster Ball

This post is called Dumpster Ball, because my brothers taught me a game this weekend called Dumpster Ball. Sound hickish, doesn't it? Well, that's because it is. It's exactly like golf, except the holes are dumpsters (don't aim in the dumpsters, you just have to hit them--I know, I had that problem, too), and there are no clubs, because, really, do you know how hard it is to hit that little ball with that little club head? It's pretty darn hard. Dumpster Ball is much easier than golf, and therefore more enjoyable. So they taught me, and I played it, because I'm a hick

But, despite the fact that I play dumpster ball, I generally consider myself a fairly open minded person. I try to treat most people the same, and because of this, I find I have a pretty diverse group of friends and acquaintances (thought not all of them know that I play dumpster ball). That seems to be the way I like it.

The more and more I meet people from different cultures and areas, the more I learn about the world. I really love that, and I don't understand why everyone wouldn't want to know as much as possible from actual people who've actually lived elsewhere. So every time I get a 'you're really open-minded!' comment, I feel a little uncomfortable, because I don't think I'm that much different from most people. I think most Americans get a bad wrap.

We teach hundreds of foreign languages in school including Spanish, Chinese, Farsi, Tagalog--pretty much anything you can think of you could be taught here in the US. Granted we don't have a vast amount of fluent bi- or triligual speakers, but we don't have a great use for them! Europeans get flustered with Americans when they don't speak French, Italian, and German, but we don't live near countries that speak these languages. If I lived in Spain, I could go to France on the weekends and become fluent in French, but alas. When I lived in Germany for a summer internship I asked if, as in many US schools, they taught Chinese. They kind of laughed at me, "but what would we need Chinese for?" Um, if you ever needed to do a business deal in China? If you decided to take an internship there for a summer in college?

We also get a bad wrap for not knowing simple things about other countries. We all remember the woman on 'Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader?' who did not know which country was the capital of Budapest. Millions (probably) of angry Europeans and who knows who else complained about how stupid Americans are. She also made a comment about thinking Europe was a country. We'll just ignore that for a moment, because many people were offended simply because she didn't know the country Budapest belonged to. So first of all, let's remember that the 5th grader is an American, and he got it right. From there we'll go to...dude, I don't even know that. But I also don't know the capital of Montana or Kentucky. I showed this to my Venezuelan labmate, and he laughed very hard. I asked "Do you know what country Budapest is the capital of?" He said, "Uh, no." Ah, I don't feel so bad

(but the "I thought Europe *was* a country" . . . yeah, we can give her the hick of the year award for that)

I could go on . . . about how my South American labmates (who are, in more ways then one can count, pretty terrifically awesome, but one has gone back home--sadness) are terrified of Muslims and pretty much Arabs in general. (But, I've recently learned, only in the US. If the Muslims are living in Canada, they're cool . . . ) I'm thinking that if an Isalmic extremist had a choice to explode me or the both of them, s/he would probably definitely go for me, and yet I am unafraid! How does that work?

I could also tell you about my friend Alisha's cabbie in Leeds, England, who when she talked with him about Boston responded with, " yah, but there's too many patties there, aren't there?" OK, cabbie man, I thought people stopped using the term 'patties' about a hundred years ago.

Turns out, it's stressful to be an American. The whole world has an opinion one way or another about our country and how it's being run and what we're doing wrong and who we're discriminating against and who we don't understand because we are so 'closed minded,' and we can't even rebut these ideas, because 84% of Americans are dissatisfied with how things are going. That's a large percentage! Sounds like we are very disappointed in ourselves. Well, geez, friends. It looks to me like everyone has problems. I'm not saying we shouldn't worry about ridding the world of discrimination and misunderstandings, or that Americans don't have reasons to be dissatisfied with other aspects of the country. I'm just saying that there's a bigger picture here, and compared to everyone else, we're doing alright . . . or at least not as bad as some people might say . . .

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Thursday, May 22, 2008

Bunny

Sorry, friends. I haven't blogged in a while, and I will tell you why. It is because somebody died. I really tried posting, but when someone I know dies, I just can't get the creative juices flowing, because when I try, all I can think of is that person and what they meant the everyone they knew. I even tried blogging about him and his death, but the truth is as much as I think my writing has improved, I still couldn't write well about it. I wrote about half a blog just to get my emotions out, and then I reread it, and tried to edit it to make it presentable, but it was truly terrible, and so I junked it.

I think this just proves that at heart I am an engineer, and not a poet. Which is fine with me. And I'm sure you'll be happy to know that when you die, you will affect my blogging rhythm for . . . at least a good week. That's life. As in science and engineering everything eventually comes to an equilibrium.

Ah, Kendall, finally you've finally come to the science metaphor.

Do you often talk to yourself while blogging?

So I'm working on something right now, and in the meantime, here is a really really cute bunny:



Cheers!

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Friday, May 2, 2008

Trees, fashion, homework, and email.

I've been slowly composing this list just because I can't remember all the things that are different at once, which, I suppose is a little disappointing, since there's only 4 here. I don't spend all my time comparing my alma mater to my current situtation! Well, anyway, here are the few I've got right now. There are the obvious differences . . . like no really-tall-asian dude, and no integration bee, no spectacular IAP, and no dome dressed up to resemble the one ring which is also powered by solar energy. By the way, my little brother is in calculus right now, and when I was helping him with integration, I mentioned that MIT has an integration bee. He just blinked at me (incidentally, it was similar to the way I would have blinked at my professor from the last post...strange). But here's the list:

4. What they post on trees

At OU in certain nicely vegetated places, they have the trees labeled with their names for to better inform the public who are tree studying...or something. This, for instance, is the Chinese Pistache. Guess where it's from? China! sweet.


This is nice, and surprisingly scientific. MIT, on the other hand, has each of it's trees barcoded. (When I google image searched 'MIT trees barcode' in an effort to find a picture of said barcoded trees, I came across this picture. For young vegetables, too! gotta love German ad campaigns)

3. The presence of fashion.

I'm not saying whether that's a good or a bad thing, but I am saying that I had a whole conversation with my Peruvian labmate about whether or not he should buy more shirts from Hollister and Abercrombie. I told him he could, but that I would make fun of him if he did. I don't think he really knows why. His undergraduate lab assistant and I have been teching him fun words like tacky, preppy, sketchy, and hobag. haha. There's also the possibility that he's reading this. Hey Israel! Say hello to my friends from MIT and also possibly members of my family! I have also started wearing some interesting fashions. I really like the show Bones, and the main character is a kick-ass nerdy girl heroine, and I love it! I also really like her style, so I went out and bought a few brown jackets. Unfortunately, Oklahoma gets unbearably hot in the summer, and I'm sure I'll be leaving those brown jackets at home pretty soon.

2. Pset/homework

I want to preface this one by saying that I was prepared here! I was looking out for this difference. I realized that MIT has some weird slang 'hack, punt, pset, toad sexing, etc.' and I wasn't about to complain to my labmate about how I really wanted to punt this next pset. I noticed the professors sometimes used the work 'set' or 'homework set' or even 'problem set,' but I knew that didn't mean the students did. So I thought I would do a little experiment. I planned to use the word 'Pset' and if I got a funny look the first time, that meant it wasn't widely used, if I didn't, I was safe! So that's exactly what I did. I used the word, and the dude didn't even blink--"oh, it's due Friday." So I figured I was free and clear, no longer worried about it, and started using it. That's when the funny looks started. Turns out the guy on whom I ran the initial experiment had a friend at MIT who used the word, so he understood what the heck I meant. No one else did. And now I can't stop using it. I flipped the switch and now it won't go back. Good job, Kendall. Everyone knows a test group of 1 doesn't produce good results!

1. email/phone for get-togethers.

Uh, so I didn't know this was weird, but at MIT when you wanted to get together with someone--especially a group of people--you would email them all or even evite them all if it was a big party or something. Sometimes if you wanted to have lunch with someone, you'd still just email them, because you never know if you'll get them at a good time, or if they will have reception if they are in the main buildings, or if they are in class, or whatever! Here, I did that one time, and the guy thought it was hilarious. It makes me wonder if that is an MIT thing, or if we all were just technologically advanced or socially awkward or what! Anyway, they apparently do things by text message or like actually calling people here--weird.

Those are my observations thus far! And now I'm going to have a great Friday night. I hope you all do as well!

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