Tuesday, March 30, 2004
Knitting is the New Rock, Pink is the New Orange, Reading is the New Sleeping.
Didn't make it to Alternative Fashion Week, Tosca and salsaing were great. I suppose "Unashamed, predatory lust" was apt for my operatic deflowering. And I want more. John has appointed himself culture nazi and apparently we'll be going to the Royal Opera (where, unlike the ENO, they don't sing in English).
I tried to be a different kind of culture nazi Friday night, but John slept instead of joining Wendy and me at the Cast Off event at the V&A. Wendy and I relearned how to knit, in a room full of museum goers of all ages, where the music was thumping, the beer flowing, the videoart projecting, and the hub bubbing. I may post pictures at some point of human knitting (I am an excellent needle) and my garish scarf in progress. It has a certain erratic charm, but is more a tactile record of my experiments with how knitting works than a piece of apparel, as Wendy commented. I replied, "Almost a pillow book, of sorts. But with no naked Ewan McGregor, more's the pity."
You can also check out this article about the Cast Off event, if the Times site is accessible to you. Arthur notes, 'the only word in quotes correctly attributed to me is "No." Most of the rest captures my meaning (and sometimes makes me sound rather more clever) but in no way resembles the words I used.'
I think I stumbled across Flaneur.org from the blog of one of the a softer world creators. Anyway, this essay about the freeway and public spaces and community memory in New Orleans is lovely, and I might use it in one of my essays for Planning Theory/Problem Structuring Methods. Look at how easily my web surfing is rationalised. Hoorah.
Also rationalised away: I'm going to find some way to incorporate Call Centre Confidential into our group project/presentation on phone line staffing at a fictitious airline, and even the brilliant Suburban TrunkMonkey is more than funny (and its funniness, particularly Episode 4, is beyond funny all on its own). It's useful, because we could have "a DeskMonkey that you can call out when poor service is delivered." OK, maybe that's a stretch. Anyway, DeskMonkey's Kevin's great idea, and I'm stealing it.
More easily justified are the many Global Citizen articles by the late Donella Meadows I've been reading, along with her book of the same title (due back in the library this evening), since it was actively recommended in class AND I can use it for my OR414 essay, glancingly. I really like her writing, and I agree with a lot of her concerns about sustainability. But I also question some of her arguements, and am working on figuring out if I agree with this critique of her reasoning and of the application of system dynamics to big systems.
Now I'm off to the library and then to this; even if knitting's the new rock, I still like live music.
File Under: Pimping my smart friends
Ranjith's venture, Yousendit, is a great way to transfer files when your quota on the server is absurdly small like mine. Files remain on their server for a week, I think, and it's just what I've been needing to get files from home to school and back without wasting a lot of data CDs. I love it when having smart friends pays off.
Wednesday, March 24, 2004
Tourist by osmosis
Wendy arrived Monday from Toronto; she’s visiting for a week. Monday evening we went to Greenwich and Canary Wharf and Trafalgar Square. She bought travel Scrabble at a games shop in Greenwich. I picked out a bag of pretty marbles (so that I can lose them, of course), and a kite. At my insistence, we stood on the Prime Meridian. The photos of that weren't great, but there are others here.
By the time we got home, ate aubergine pita sandwiches and Lebanese sweets from Taza, and drank a bit of Ardbeg* it was rather late so I didn’t get my ass handed to me at Scrabble. That was remedied yesterday night, after we'd dined at Wagamama, imbibed at the Princess Louise (where my brother joined us), and viewed photos at The Hospital.
The gallery was so horribly, horribly lit that I spent the whole time annoyed at Annie Leibovitz, even though some of her shots were amazing. There is such a thing as too glossy. It was very hard to look at the photos without getting distracted by reflections of yourself and the other gallery visitors and the pictures on the wall behind you. Sitting on the floor was a partial remedy. The bad lighting made me a sourer critic; some of the images of musicians were snapshot-ish and gritty. She was probably aiming to capture something about the performers' lives, but it felt like she just didn't make the effort to create something technically beautiful (which she clearly can do, based on other shots which still weren't cover-of-Vanity-Fair-like).
Tonight, Tosca, and tomorrow I'm thinking of lobbying for Alternative Fashion Week before salsaing. I'm even getting some work done while Wendy does the British Museum and National Gallery thing. It's a good thing the term break lasts five weeks, though.
*Ardbeg’s my new favourite single malt, smoky but sweet. Wendy was a bit put off by the smoke: it reminds her of smoked salmon (anaphylactic shock-inducing for her, like all fish products) and the smell of the brakes on the streetcars in San Francisco.
Tuesday, March 23, 2004
Mars rover livejournals and other links
(My indebtedness to the Check this out thread for my internet addiction is finite, but only because I found some of these on my own.)
Spirit Rover and Opportunity both have weblogs. And Peter Norvig, formerly behind the coding of the rovers, now works for Google.
A very funny man want you to send postcards to his mom. She doesn't know why she's getting all this random mail. The web is evil. Like the fru-its of the dev-il, eeeevil.
Also, addictive: possibly along the same lines as Grow (linked by Aloke a while ago) here is tinygrow.
Speaking of Aloke, I really like his Africa Blog. His post about the latest coup attempt in Equatorial Guinea reminded me of my uncle, who was working in Malabo for awhile, telling of how there was no fishing boats allowed on the island because Obiang after overthrew Macias, he ordered all the boats sunk so that the tactics he used to oust his uncle couldn't be used on him. It seems that's an urban legend or me remembering wrong. Really, the truth is more than disturbing enough.
Sunday, March 21, 2004
FutureAmbassador on Tesco Finest Belgian Chocolate Mousse
FutureISConsultant and FutureAmbassador went to Tesco earlier. They were sampling the Tesco Finest Belgian Chocolate Mousse FutureAmbassador picked up as I put some groceries away.
FUTUREAMBASSADOR: Mmm, orgasmic.
[CUT TO ME, LAUGHING]
FUTUREAMBASSADOR: No seriously, it's orgasmic!
[I LAUGH HARDER]
FUTUREAMBASSADOR: Hey Christina, you want to try some?
ME: It's probably not vegan... I'm being good.
FUTUREISCONSULTANT: Yeah, it probably has eggs. [STARTS TO READ LABEL] Yes. And condensed milk... oh sugar! This has pork gelatine in it. I can't eat it.
FUTUREAMBASSADOR: I'm sure it's just a tiny bit.
FUTUREISCONSULTANT: No, I can't eat any more. Otherwise I'll feel guilty. I'll just lick this last bit off my spoon.
[TIME PASSES, FUTUREAMBASSADOR CONTINUES TO SAVOUR MOUSSE]
FUTUREAMBASSADOR: Orgasmic. To the point that I'm waking up in the morning and thinking about this.
ME, LAUGHING AGAIN: Can I quote you on this?
FUTUREAMBASSADOR: Sure.
Saturday, March 20, 2004
Another brief thought
I like Blogger's recently updated list. I wonder if The Poetics of Decay is designed as a multi-hit source for googlewhacking, or if that's an unintended consequence. If it is a consequence at all; I haven't found one from it yet. Who knew there were so many sites discussing both teleology and salvia?
It's the end of Lent Term as we know it, and I feel fine.
So, twenty weeks of lectures and classes down, two days at the beginning of summer term to go. That's it for classroom learning. In direct contrast to my reaction the first time I watched The Wizard of Oz, I am not sobbing that it's over: even though I'd like my favourite courses to keep going so I can keep learning cool shit, I'm looking forward to getting caught up on sleep and (this is sick, I know, my glee and anticipation) writing a whole bunch of essays and projects to be handed in by April 26, the first day of summer term. I'm also looking forward to reducing my dependence on the Tube -- I might get a bus pass instead of tube pass for April, because signalling errors and heightened security after the bombings in Madrid make for stressful transit underground.
April 28 I fly to Singapore and probably Thailand for 10 days for a much-needed break, then it's 2 exams and the summer project and writing the thesis. And then I'll be done, which means along with the essays I need to spend the term break figuring out what I want to be doing come September, and on which continent.
Anyway, blah blah blah. Last night the Operational Research and Decision Science students gathered at the Columbia Bar. Drink, drank, mildly drunk. From John, I learned about the existence of The Bayesian Songbook. I only sat in on one week of the Bayesian stats class, but was still amused and impressed by Seth's catchy description of the users of the songbook, "what, a choir of priors?"
Other nerdiness:
Whilst using the facilities at Columbia Bar, [name omitted to protect the guilty party] came up with a causal loop diagram for the system dynamics of intoxication and toxin excretion. Ex post facilities usage, he wrote it down. There's apparently A PARADOX!! about the links between alcohol consumed and drunkenness and toxins excreted. I think he was just buzzed, but I have the diagram safely filed in case he wants to write a paper about it.
By 9:30 I was home and watching the last episode of Sex and the City with two of the flatmates, my brother, and two of Future Thinktanker's sibs who are visiting. I think Carrie must have been overly influenced by the sad, sad music playing when she was in Paris, because otherwise there is NO REASON to be moping in Paris. None. Not even if you're dating Mikhail Baryshnikov and he's paying no attention do you.
I never realised Baryshnikov defected in Canada, or that he was Latvian. Which reminds me of a late-night conversation in a hostel in 1999 (after earlier-that-evening watching Notting Hill instead of going to a dance performance featuring Baryshnikov, because I had a viewing companion for the former who wasn't interested in attending the latter), about whether Latvia was the new Paris. Everyone present vehemently agreed NO, pink or orange or brown or turquoise may become the new black, but no destination can be the new Paris. Even though I'm sure Latvia's lovely.
I shall now go back to thinking about weightier matters, like whether society ought to be doing more, given the economic implications of falling birthrates, to support parents. (via Is it selfish not to have kids? at TPW) Phillip Longman's concluding paragraph:
In reality, both soldiering and nurturing children are vital forms of public service. One is a traditionally male calling and the other female, which may well explain why veterans enjoy a panoply of benefits and their own cabinet-level agency, while mothers don't. But in the long run, both roles are vital to a nation's survival, with the new realities created by aging and the deepening demand for human capital formation making successful parenting all the more so. A society that fails to recognize, much less honor, its debts to those who form the next generation may expect to vanish.I don't know about the second sentence -- it's much easier to identify and reward veterans than successful parents. So yes, that's what I'm going to think about for a bit.
Sunday, March 14, 2004
A eulogy of sorts
Isak Dinesen wrote "The cure for anything is salt water -- sweat, tears, or the sea." I've been repeating that to myself since Thursday. To truly honour my grandfather and his life, I need to make a trip to the sea.
When you tell someone your grandpa was a commercial fisherman, they often assume he was hardened by the battle against the ocean, a man of few words, dour and elemental. And while Ralph was definitely strong and a hard-working outdoorsman, he was far more than that and was anything but dour. He was a singer, a story-teller, someone who teased those he loved. My grandma was the perfect mate for him; she laughed at the teasing and shared him with his many friends, secure in the knowledge that his love for her was as deep as the ocean and that he was devoted to her beyond measure. The throngs of people he loved were always increasing, because he was interested in people and enthusiastic about making them part of his life, swapping stories with them.
This was just one facet of his enthusiasm about getting involved with people and the world they inhabit. He learned French, Spanish and smatterings of other languages in part to communicate with people on his travels to Mexico or to the grocery store, and in part because he was always learning. He loved learning things, and he loved telling people things he'd learned that they would enjoy. He could spend half an hour showing you a few shells and telling you about the creatures that had lived in them, without repeating himself or getting boring. Ralph was an avid CBC listener not just because he was a fervent believer in having clocks set accurately to the national time signal, but because there was no subject that I can think of that did not engage him. After serving in WWII with the Canadian 3rd Division in Europe, he bought a troller and started fishing the B.C. coast with my grandma instead of pursuing a formal university education, but as cliched as it sounds, he truly was a student of life. His interest in world events was life-long. One of the things that saddened me most about his long illness was when he stopped reading Macleans and Time because he couldn't remember what he'd read a few paragraphs back.
Ralph's vascular dementia meant we lost him gradually. I see this as the small gift in that illness because it gave us time to get used to the idea that he wouldn't always be here, bringing joy in so many ways. First we lost his short term memory, and then his ability to find home again after going for a walk, and then some of his stories. He didn't always know who his loved ones were, what their names were.
But through it all, he was still himself. Grandma Peggy was always his home, his anchor, his heart. He still loved flirting with pretty women, smiling at everyone, crooning the countless oldies he still remembered the lyrics to, and making people laugh. He was still coming up with ingenious ways to make sense of the world and to make jokes that were funny despite their twisted logic, even when he didn't remember as much about what was going on. Last summer at Peggy's 90th birthday, he recognised his old fishing buddies right away, and I'm sure he would have been telling stories if he'd had more energy. His eyes still held his love for everyone. The vascular dementia and the strokes couldn't take away his love for his family and his friends, and neither can his death.
The back-up singers in one of Dean Martin's songs got it right: "sweet, sweet memories you gave me. You can't beat the memories you gave me." While I'm very sad that I won't see him any more, I feel very blessed that Ralph was in my life, that he was in it for so long, that he was himself. To quote another golden oldie, "More than ever, I'm glad there is you." Along with old songs, the ocean will always remind me of him. Soon it will do so provoking more smiles than tears.
Thursday, March 11, 2004
I'm still alive, she said.
My grandfather died this afternoon. It sucks. I don't know if I'm going home for the funeral or not, mostly because I have much work on my plate, which is also why the entries are sparse here these days.
Also, last weekend my Canadian friend Russ flew in from New Jersey to drag me out to pretend I'm a tourist in between essays and dance practices. It didn't suck. We got friendly with the lions in Trafalgar Square,
went to the Tate Modern and waved at our reflections on the ceiling in the Weather project
(I'm the one in the middle with two sets of hands crossed) then argued about which modern artists were phoning it in, saw Anthony Head (Giles!) as the Pirate King in The Pirates of Penzance, and drove out to Stonehenge and Avebury where the wind was chilly (chillier still because I was stupidly wearing a skirt).
Stonehenge is dramatic and awe-inspiring and has an excellent selection of fridge magnets in its gift shop. I prefer Avebury, which is quirky and charming. I hypothesised that Avebury was the product of a late night in the pub in the dead of winter. "Dudes! When it warms up we totally need to dig a bunch of holes in the ground and stick funny shaped rocks in them. It'll be great!"
Then I stomped about the countryside, towering over trees and puny humans. Here's the proof:
And now I'm going to tromp about Hyde Park and look at the water fowl and contemplate the finite nature of life.
Thursday, March 04, 2004
The Cynic's Guide to Project Management
I was almost on time to OR 404 this morning, as were John and Seth and several others, so we were all near each other at the back of the room. This led to a natural team formation when John Spencer of Shell (formerly or currently, I'm not sure, since I missed the intro as well as the first 3 slides) broke us up into groups to work on a few project management exercises.
The second exercise was estimation -- most of our group had several years' work experience and our estimate for the number of man-days spent in meetings for a ten month flat refurbishing project was more than twice that of any other group. We got exactly the same number as Mr. Spencer. We also came up with his answer for how long it would take him to commute home. We are estimating champions. All bow down in awe.
Along with our realism/pessimism, it helped, I'm sure, that we were the bad cynical kids at the back of the class. This is the list of Key Project Management skills we came up with for the first exercise (large credit due to Seth and John):
- Tact / diplomacy
- Politics
- Coercion / knee capping
- Time estimation
- Nagging
- Lobbying
- Resource organization / allocation
- Persuasion
- Paranoia [When I suggested this, Seth agreed "Paranoia -- if Andy Grove can write a whole book on it, we can write it down here"]
- Contingency plans [a modification of John's original idea that good project managers have a few jobs lined up on the side in case everything goes horribly wrong]
- Cultural sensitivity
- Insight into the baser aspects of man [if Seth weren't already married, I would marry him for that contribution alone... John says "tell me about it, rrrrrrrrrr" (or however you convey he's making a rolling r noise of approval in the back of his throat)]
- Self-control
- Expediency
- Blaming others
- Taking credit for other people's work
- Undermining colleagues
- Strategic perspective
- Stress handling
- Initiative
- Influence & persuasion
- Leadership
- Delegation
I feel the need to note here that the project managers I've worked with are the counterexamples to any nastiness of our list, and part of the reason I'm not as cynical as I might otherwise be. No, really, that was heartfelt. I'm not being sarcastic, it's a speech impediment!
Monday, March 01, 2004
An oranger shade of pale
Thanks to fake tan I've been a whiter shade of orange since Saturday night, in preparation for the dance competition yesterday. We made it to the quarter finals in cha and waltz, got knocked out after third round in quickstep and jive, and have resolved to practice more before the competition two weeks from now. I got kicked in the shins once and my feet are very bruised.
The adrenaline was great, though.
I need some to carry me through the rest of this week. Having just tuned up my c.v. in English, I need to rewrite it in French by Thursday so that I can attend a career fair in Paris in a few weeks. And there are many assignments and frameworks of essays to be written as well, plus dance practice.
This article by Rex Murphy on Mel Gibson's Passion provided a mild jolt of pleasure that might keep me awake for a few hours of class. Murphy on the radio frequently seems pretentious and overly fond of himself (bienvenido a La Casa de Vidrio, desayuno served from 7 to 9 AM, stone throwing daily at 10 AM), and I'm too tired to come up with a logical response to his arguments, but dude can write like a mofo. The friend who sent the link had this line as a favourite, as do I:
I don't know much about Mr. Gibson. And only the longest of waits in the cruellest of airports, bereft of all other print, will make me lift a People magazine where I might learn - if the strain on the verb will be forgiven - something more.I was also pleased by
That snapped the frail charm of dystopia with dune buggies forever.and
Any movie that has so many people so furious for so many different reasons is easily worth the trivial martyrdom of lineup, insanely loud Dolby previews, and group popcorn inhale.
