Obligatory End-of-semester/college post

Today is the last day of the semester and of my undergraduate career and I guess I can't just let it pass quietly without writing anything about it. First, a re-cap of this past semester, and then some reflections on the eight semesters before this one.

I'm not sure, but I think that this past semester was probably my hardest semester yet. Sure, I could have taken 12 credit hours and had a great slack-off last semester, but the masochist in me won that argument and so I ended up taking 7 extra completely un-needed hours (Portuguese and Russian). I also tried (and failed) to have a part-time job during this semester, but I had to quit a few weeks ago because I just wasn't hackin' it. I'm glad I did because these last two weeks or so I have been going full-bore just to keep up with school. I didn't keep track, but I don't think there was a single weekend this semester when I didn't have to come to school during the weekend to work on something.

In the end it was a pretty good semester though. It is still too early to officially call it a success because I have yet to receive any final grades, but I am anticpating mostly A's, and I am hoping that I have done just well enough to edge my final GPA up over the crucial 3.5 mark to graduate with distinction. I won't be able to give the official report on that for a few weeks though. Anyhow, my classes were interesting, I learned a lot, and despite the hectic schedule I think I actually enjoyed this semester. How could I NOT enjoy a semester full of linguistics and foreign language classes though?! If only I didn't have that one international affairs class then this would have been a pretty fantastic semester.

It was a pretty good way to end my time here at CU. People keep asking me if I am really excited to be graduating and if it feels weird, but really it just feels like the end of another semester to me. It probably won't start to resonate until about a month from now when the next semester starts up and instead of heading back to school I'll be busy putting my shiny new degree to good use driving a bus.

As for being excited, sure, I'm excited, but at the same time I'm not. I'm excited about making some money and not being so poor all the time. I'm excited about having a job with no homework and where I can come in, work my 10 hours, and not have to think about it again until the next shift. I'm excited about the prospect of maybe having some stability in my living situation (well, eventually...) and not having to live in my grandma's basement. I'm excited about being a ski bum for awhile and doing who knows what after that; the world is my oyster! I'm excited about closing this chapter in my life and starting a new one.

At the same time, however, I have been a student for pretty much as long as I can remember, and I feel like I'm starting to get pretty good at it. I'm not excited about the potential monotony of having a job. I'm not excited about not constantly learning interesting new things. I'm not excited about leaving the college-student social demographic and quickly becoming too old to do fun college-kid things that I never did as a college kid. I'm not excited about no longer being around lots of other attractive young (single?) people all the time.

So graduation is kind of a mixed-bag for me, but I bet it is for lots of graduates, and I bet I'll get over it. College also had plenty of highs and lows. Some classes were great, others were not. Some professors were interesting, some were dull. In some classes I learned a lot, and in others I learned very little. Average it all together and the experience as a whole was good. Here are some of the highs and lows:

Highs

• First-Year Chinese - Everything was new and exciting and interesting and Chinese was fun and the teachers were good and my classmates were cool. It was a great start to college.
• Freshmen Dorms - Some of my best friends from college are people I met in the dorms. Sure, they weren't perfect, but I'm glad we had to live in them.
• Having an apartment and roommate - Dorms were fun, but so was having an apartment.
  
• Physics for Non-Science Majors - My teacher was a Nobel Prize winner and who knew that physics could be so interesting! What a great class.
• Global Change - Another great science class that I would not have taken if it weren't for core requirements. The teacher looked like the Unabomber (who happens to be jailed here in Colorado), but he was a great teacher and we learned all about global warming and climate change. By the way, GO SEE AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH!
• Study Abroad - I am so glad that I was fortunate enough to be able to spend a year studying in China. It was really an amazing experience that I am sure will continue to affect me for many years to come. Also, the research program I did in China before finally coming back to the USA was great too.
  
• Political Geography - I've never worked so hard and still been so afraid of failing a class before. This class was challenging, but so interesting. Dare I say this is the best class in the whole International Affairs major?
• People - I have met lots of great, fun, interesting, smart people in college. They have all helped to influence who I have become over the past 4+ years, and I thank them for that.
• Linguistics - This was definitely my favorite major and I pretty much loved every single linguistics class that I took. I almost didn't even take any linguistics classes, but then I decided to major in it and I am so glad that I did.
• Languages - Learning Chinese is probably the most important thing that I am taking away from college, but I also got to take a little bit more Spanish, I started Russian, and I have a pretty good start on Portuguese now too.

Lows

• Second and Fourth-Year Chinese - It is unfortunate that so much of my Chinese major was so miserable. The teachers for these classes were miserable and they made the class miserable. We had special not-so-nice Chinese names for them. Sometimes we joked about how their evil gazes could melt our souls (and not in the cute, romantic way). Their passive-aggressive silent treatments made our hearts freeze. They were awful.
• International Affairs Seminar - This class was taught by a lady from the Economics department who didn't seem to know or care about international affairs where we have learned to look at the whole picture. She told us on several occasions to ignore the politics and social aspects and instead just focus on the economics. She wasn't very nice either.
• Hmm, there are a few other lows, but they weren't actually all that bad, so let's not dwell on them.

It sure has gone by quickly. I think of the person I was when I came to freshman orientation way back in 2002 and I'm pretty sure I am a better, smarter, more social, more interesting person now on the other side of the tunnel. In the end I think college has definitely been worth the time and money. I don't regret not getting into the other school I applied for and I have enjoyed living in Boulder. I just hope that the end of college does not bring boredom and monotony, but instead brings bigger, badder, cooler, and more varied adventures and stories... starting with bus-driving (starting dark and early tomorrow morning at 5:30am!)

Well, I guess I should study a little bit for my last test, Portuguese, and then I'll be heading up to Vail to rest up for tomorrow's early start to the next chapter. I'll be back in Boulder next weekend to move out of Grandma's basement. I love Grandma, but I'm glad I'm moving out of there.

On that note, while in the USA rappers and hip-hop artists rap about bling-bling, women, and fast cars, Taiwanese hip-hop star Jay Chou raps about his Grandma in this song called "Grandma" (wai po). This is a sweet video about his grandma's birthday and how he planned this big party for her at an old restaurant and stuff but how all she really wants is her good memories of the past. So cute.

Sudden Realization

The strangest thing happened to me the other night as I was falling asleep in bed. For some reason, like a bolt of lightning from out of the clear blue sky, I was suddenly overcome with this profound feeling that capital punishment is wrong. I have always been pretty neutral/apathetic about capital punishment. I mean, I never thought it was a good thing, but I thought, "well, they have done horrible things, so it's probably not too bad to do away with them." But then all of the sudden it just seemed like a horrible thing to me. I mean, sure, most of them have done horrible things, but does that make it right to kill them? Maybe this article about the botched 34-minute execution in Florida this past week that I had read earlier that day had something to do with this change of heart.

I don't remember how I came across this video by Psapp a few weeks ago, but it seems appropriate here. *WARNING* this video contains some cartoon violence.

Rockin' the Português!

I gave a presentation in português today, and basically I rocked its socks. I talked about the different dialects of Portuguese. I had to limit it to just 5 minutes though, which was hard because there is a lot to say about that subject. I would have preferred to have this presentation be 25 minutes and have my International Affairs presentation only be five minutes. I'm not sure yet, but I think that Portuguese might be just as much fun to give presentations in as Spanish or Chinese... (dare I say more fun?). With a little bit more practice I might even be able to trick people into thinking that I actually speak it!

Anyhow, with that presentation behind me my to-do list continues to shrink. I still have plenty of work to finish over the next 5 days, but compared to what I had on my plate a few days ago everything is looking pretty good.

I was going to put up a song in Portuguese, but I couldn't find that I liked (here's what I found, but it didn't meet even my low standards). So instead I'm going to post this song that I've been addicted to for the past week or so called, "Falling by the Wayside" by People in Planes. The last song that I was addicted to was "Move Along" by All-American Rejects. Like that video, this video also features a long-haired lead singer. I think I am just jealous that I can't have hair like that. Contrary to what the song says, I am not losing control, nor am I falling by the wayside, I just like the song.

Random

This post is titled "Random" because I am going to talk about a few random things.

• Music Taste
  Kristi O called me the other day to tell me that they played a clip of "Gasolina" on NPR and that she thought of me (because I put that video on my blog a few months ago). You should listen to the story on NPR (it's about 5 minutes long), but basically it's about this 64-year-old guy talking about how after recently being fired from his job, he began listening to the CD Crunk Hits: Volume 2 . He said that while he would never recommend an entire CD by any of the artists featured on this compilation, as a compilation he can't get enough of it. I think that he makes a good point that just because music isn't necessarily "good" in the sense that a music critic might use it, it can still be "entertaining."
  
• Finals Masochism
  Everyone (including myself) likes to moan and groan and whine and complain about how busy they are at the end of the semester. Everyone has umpteen final projects to do, long papers to write, tests to study for, and homeworks to turn in. As much as we complain, I personally actually enjoy this part of the semester. This is the point where you have to have your shit together. This is where all the things you've been learning about over the course of the semester start to come together and make sense. This is where you get to put all of that expensive shiny new knowledge to use. Also, how great is that feeling you get when you turn in the very last thing and you are free?! It's a great feeling, but you can only achieve this feeling after a few weeks of stress.
  
• Girls, Girls, Girls
  The end of the semester also brings some bad news though. The end of the semester is also when you realize that you have, once again, missed out on all of those great dating opportunities. It seems like I had a particularly high-quality crop of women in my classes this semester. Out of all of my classes, I can probably think of at least 6 girls who I should've/could've/would've liked/tried to date. All six of them had various combinations of being pretty, smart, in-shape, fun, funny, interesting, bi-lingual. Sure, a few of them were more appealing than the others, but really any one of them would have made for some real first-class dating material. If only I had the cojones to ask one of them out for even just a cup of coffee or something... But then I got to thinking that even if I had the cojones, I still would have had to overcome at least three other significant barriers to dating:
• Time - dating takes time, and time is one commodity that I did not have this semester.
• Money - dating also costs more money than not dating. Even when I did have a little bit of money this past semester, I was having to work for it, which took time, and that takes us back to the first barrier.
• Bachelor Pad - think about how many women want to date a guy who lives with his mom. I think the answer is zero. Now try to imagine how many women want to date a guy who lives in his grandmother's basement. Yeah... not many. And that brings me to my next topic.
  
• Moving Out
  Sure, I love my grandma, and free rent is nice, but there are a few reasons why I am really looking forward to moving out of my grandma's basement:
• Sexyback - Living in my grandmother's basement is not helping my sex-appeal, and I need all the help I can get.
• Furnace - Maybe I was spoiled growing up in houses that had virtually-silent hot-water baseboard heat as opposed to noisy forced-air heat. As if just the sound of the air coming through the duct isn't enough, my room is also right next to the furnace, so I also get the added auditory pleasure of listening to the furnace itself humming away as it blasts warm air into the house. As I am laying in bed trying to sleep, some nights it seems like the furnace spends more time on than off. I lay there as the anger and annoyance inside of me boil faster than the temperature in the room, waiting for the thing to finally shut off. When it finally does, I feel like I need to hurry up and fall asleep so that maybe I won't hear it the next time it comes on (which will be all too soon). The duct into my room can be opened or closed, and I have tried both ways but it is equally loud in both positions. I would rather the house be freezing cold than have to listen to that furnace click on and off all night long.
• Spaciousness - The room I live in is not large. I am quite accustomed to having my clothes and stuff strewn about all over my floor, but at least I like to have a place to put them when I finally do clean my room. In this room though, about the only place I have to hang clothes is on the ski pole that is sitting with one end on the bookshelf and the other end on the back of a chair that's sitting in the middle of my room.

And I think that's about it for today's randomness. On that note I will leave you with a song called "Random" by the beloved Lady Sovereign. It may not be a "good" song, but I think it's pretty "entertaining."

*WARNING: This song does have some bad words, so if you are offended by that kind of thing then don't listen to or watch this video. ALSO, if you didn't like the last Lady Sovereign song that I put up, "Hoodie", then proceed with caution and at your own risk and don't say I didn't warn you. But I personally think that this song is less annoying than that last one was.

Insomnia: Part IV

You guys are probably sick of reading about my sporadic insomnia, but I'm not sick of writing about it yet, so here comes the latest episode.

I don't know if tonight's insomnia is due more to the mocha coffee that I had this evening, or to the bar of delicious organic dark chocolate that I had after that, but whatever it is my mind is racing and I can't shut it off. Granted, I do have a lot on my mind these days...

I've already planned out, put a lot of thought into, and even jotted down two pages of notes for my next 6 blog entries or so (not including this one, number 7 I guess), and I still can't sleep. I've also already put a lot of thought into the 5 or 6 projects/tests/homeworks that I have due over the next couple days, but still my mind won't rest. I haven't had any MINI-mania tonight though... nor have I spent much time thinking about fixed gear bikes. I've probably rolled over in bed from one side to the other at least 30 times so far, but still no sleeping.

Anyway, I have lots to do tomorrow, so I should really try hard to get some sleep. We'll see how many of those planned blog entries I actually end up writing too, since last time I did this I didn't end up writing about any of them...

After I posted my last entry about insomnia, the next day I remembered a good song called "Insomnia" by a guy/band that I really like named Faithless and I was kind of mad that I hadn't posted this song instead. But then I thought that there will almost surely be another chance to post a song about insomnia, so tonight I'm posting that video. There are a few other songs by this group that I also really like and maybe I'll post them too in the future.

The Wall...

...is fast approaching. I hope I don't hit it. I feel like I might, and the really hard stuff hasn't even started yet...

What was I thinking?

I have oatmeal for breakfast pretty much every day. Not the microwave kind, but the kind you have to cook on the stove. I love it and I don't know if I could ever get sick of it. A lot of times I also have yogurt. For the past few weeks though I've been thinking, "what would happen if I were to mix a cup of yogurt into the oatmeal?" I mean, I like oatmeal, and I like yogurt, so it's possible that mixed together "yogurmeal" might be tasty too. Afterall, oatmeal tastes good with milk in it, and it tastes good with fruit in it, and it tastes good with soymilk in it, so yogurt seems like a good candidate too.

Well, I was wrong. It tastes bad. Don't ever mix yogurt into your oatmeal.

Christmas Wishlist

Wow, how is it already December again? Do you ever get to an age where you are no longer surprised by how fast time flies?

With Christmas fast approaching, I was looking at my Christmas Wishlist from last year and I started making a revised edition for this year, but it wasn't really coming together very well. I really just have this one addendum:

First, go see An Inconvenient Truth (really, go see it! I command you to!) and then go offset my or your CO2 emissions by buying carbon credits from any of the places listed here, or any other similar place you might find. Essentially what this is is that you can calculate how many tons of CO2 you emit into the atmosphere every year through driving, using electricity, heating your home, etc. (The average American emits 7.5 tons), and then you can "buy carbon credits" where your money goes towards the production of atmosphere-friendly energy production, essentially canceling out your CO2 emissions.

The main thing is that nobody should spend any money on gifts for me, and if they must spend money, then it should be on something good and philanthropic since I myself don't really have enough money for philanthropy. Sure, there are some things that I would like for myself too, but I think I'm old enough now that I don't need to ask for things for Christmas anymore. Also, I don't really need anything, mostly just want.

In other news, my hermanita came back the other day from a month in Australia. I hate her because she can go to Australia for a month and get a boyfriend, but I can't get myself a girlfriend no matter how long I am in a place. Anyway, she brought a couple of CD's back with her from Australia and I thought that one of them sounded exactly like the girl who sings in this song, Southern Sun by Paul Oakenfold. It turns out that I was wrong. The girls who sings in this song is from New Zealand, not Australia. Anyway, it's a good song.

Happy Quitter

It might be a little optimistic of me to claim this week a success when it's still only Thursday, but I don't foresee anything really happening tomorrow so I'm gonna go ahead and do it now.

If we say that the week starts on Saturday, then that means I have already had three good things happen this week, (maybe three and a half).

First, on Sunday, I finished my bus-driver training and passed my CDL test, so I will be ready to start work ASAP after school ends.

Second, on Tuesday, I turned in a small project for my Spanish linguistics class. This wasn't a big deal though, so that's why it's just the "and a half" thing.

Third, yesterday on Wednesday, I gave the presentation that I've been dreading for my International Affairs senior seminar class (a.k.a. the class from hell). Judging by the lack of stinging/attacking questions from the teacher, I think I did a good job. I felt like I knew what I was talking about and that I had arranged my presentation in a clear manner and gave some good evidence (graphs) and stuff... so that's good to have behind me.

Finally, today I turned in my computer for the transcribing job that I quit last week. I haven't really done any work for them for several weeks now, so in my heart I guess I already quit awhile ago, but now it's official. Now I can use that extra time to focus on the myriad of final papers/projects/presentations that I have in the next two weeks.

Yup, time is running out as far as school goes, and on that note here is called "Time is Running Out" by Muse. I know I've already put up some Muse videos before, but not for awhile now. And besides, you can never really have too much Muse in my opinion.

When the Weather Outside is Frightful

I've had a pretty hectic day today (haha, I say that as if it's in the past tense... *sigh*), but then the snow came and it seems to have made everything better because in weather like this you just can't rush things no matter how badly they need to be rushed.

Most of my day was spent rushing though. I rushed to school to skip my first class to work on a project that I turned in at the beginning of my second class and then skipped the rest of that class to work on the homework for my third class and to work on the presentation that I have to give tomorrow but that I was supposed to turn in to my teacher on Sunday. Naturally, I also forgot something at home this morning, so between finishing the project that I skipped my first class for and the time that the project was due, I had to rush home to get the thing I forgot. Of course I decided not to take my bike to school today because it was cold and I felt lazy and I had an unusually large backpack load today, so I took the bus instead even though the bike is ALWAYS faster (ALWAYS). So coming home to retrieve the forgotten item took almost an hour on the bus as opposed to maybe half an hour on the bike. I could continue, but the point is that it was one of those rush-rush-rush sort of days.

But then this evening when I decided I had had my fill of being in the library for one day, I went out to catch the bus either home or to Basemar to get some dinner and some coffee. But when I got there, it seemed that the busses weren't really running because the roads were so bad and I guess they were probably getting stuck and stuff, so I decided to walk even though I didn't really have that much time to spare. But that's where the beauty of the snow comes in. On a normal day I just don't have the time to take a nice leisurely stroll home like that, but on day's like this it's actually the fastest way home for me, so I like to take advantage of it.

As I walked down the hill towards Basemar, all the traffic was struggling with the ice and the gravity. Once bus was stuck diagonal across the road. It made me feel a little bit more nervous about when I start driving a bus in Vail where I will probably have to drive in the snow quite often. I hope I don't get stuck...

When I got to Basemar, I decided to go to Whole Foods and agonize over how expensive their food is. After much agonizing, I settled upon an over-priced but delicious chocolate cookie, and an over-priced but slightly less delicious Odwalla Super Protein bar. Then I continued walking down Moorhead towards home.

I considered hitchhiking down Moorhead to Graham Ct., but then I thought that it would be weird. I wonder if I would pick up a hitchhiker on Moorhead... probably not, but I would be more likely to pick one up there than on the side of the highway. So with my hands in my pockets I continued walking and actually it was a pretty nice walk. Just as I was getting to my normal bus stop, the bus went by. So it took me just as long to walk home and take a pit stop at whole foods as it would have taken me to stand there and wait to take the bus home. I'm just glad I live close enough to school that I CAN walk home. The whole way home I was hoping to witness a car accident due to the ice, but no luck. I'm not asking for any major carnage here, but even just a little fender-bender would have been appreciated.

Something like this would have been perfect. I don't really understand why these people think that it's a good idea to bail out of their cars before making impact though:

Dreamtime

Ok, here comes yet another post about some strange dreams I've had recently:

• Jennifer Aniston was driving around the ranch with some dead possum in the back of her truck. She made me pick it up and throw it in the trash and it was hard and crunchy and gross. After I put it in the trash she was off on her merry way.
• I was driving a bus rally-style to East Vail, but because I was late anyway nobody seemed too upset about it.
• I was running and leaping very high over a bunch of benches in a train station with some unknown friends. I think one person is in my Russian class. We took pictures and 3D Videos of each other using her humongous digital camera the size of a poster board.
• I bit into an apple that was really an orange, and then I went to the store for some spaghetti instead.
• There was a moth that kept flying past me and I kept telling it to go bother a butterfly or something, but it wouldn't listen and got angry and spit some moth dust at me.
• Someone told me to get on a pogo stick and I did, but with every bounce I went higher and higher but I didn't know how to stop it and eventually I was bouncing really high.

I wish I could remember more of them because there were some other stranger ones. Man, dreams are weird. Speaking of weird dreams, remember that dumb girl pop band named Dream that was almost cool a few years ago? Yeah, I don't either. Man, I'm glad they didn't really make it, they're annoying. Here's their main hit single, He Loves U Not.

The Uniglutton

Because my entire Thanksgiving "break" has been devoted to bus-driver training, I haven't had time to catch up on any of the school work or transcribing work that I would have liked to have done during this week away from school. Therefore I decided that instead of spending my one day off of training today going down to Boulder to have Thanksgiving dinner, that I should instead stay here in Edwards and work on my various homework assignments. Mom was able to go down to Boulder for dinner though, so it was just me, myself, and I here celebrating Thanksgiving. It sounds kind of sad, but it isn't really that sad because I don't really care that much about Thanksgiving anyway. Also, in the spirit of this gluttonous holiday I did consume an inordinately large amount of calories during the course of the day, so I didn't miss out completely.

I did manage to get some things done today, but not as much as I was hoping. These last three weeks are going to be tough; I have lots of things to get done and it's going to take lots of discipline and good time management to get it all done. This is one reason that I finally decided today to send an email to my transcribing supervisor telling her that I intend to terminate my employment there. I really just don't have time for that job anymore and I don't really need it anyway since I'll be starting the bus driving job the day after school ends. So, even though I will miss the money I made at that job, I will be looking forward to leaving that job behind me.

Speaking of that homework, I need to get back to it.

I usually try to pick a video that is at least a little bit related to my post, but I can't today, so here is a completely unrelated catchy Taiwanese pop song with some silly dancing. I doubt anyone will like this song, but that's okay because I like it. It's called something like "Open one eye, Shut one eye" by Jolin Tsai （睁一只眼闭一只眼）.

Television

First off, bus-driver training has been going fantastically and actually I am almost done. My trainer said I was a quick learner. I have three more days of route training and then I will take my CDL test on sunday and then I will be good to go and won't have to come back until I start work the day after school ends.

I have been looking forward to today ever since last week when I learned that MTV's Real World Denver season premiere was going to air tonight at 6:00. While I enjoyed seeing familiar parts of Denver and DIA and such, overall the season premiere episode left a bad taste in my mouth... The roomates haven't even been in the house for a full day yet and I already can't keep track of who likes who and who has made out with who. Then there's the homophobic religious guy... It's probably a good thing that this first episode sucked though because now I'll be less tempted to waste time watching future episodes.

Since tomorrow is Thanksgiving, I won't be doing bus training, but instead I'll be doing my transcribing job which I haven't done for like two weeks now... and I also need to make a powerpoint for a 30-minute presentation that I have to do next week...

There will be no video today because I couldn't find one that struck my fancy.

Curbcheck

So I've finished two days of bus-driver training and basically it's pretty freaking sweet. The first few hours yesterday were kind of boring, but then after lunch I finally got to get behind the wheel of a real-life bus and do some maneuvers through several different road-cone obstacle courses. I pretty much aced every single maneuver on my first try and my supervisor was pretty surprised at how well I did on them. He was like, "are you sure you have never done this before?" As a result I am progressing rather quickly through the training which is good news because I don't have a lot of time to devote to it. Actually I wish we were going even faster. Over the past two days we have probably lost at least 3 hours to sitting around while my supervisor drinks coffee, bullshits with other drivers, or tells/repeats various irrelevant stories.

Today I actually got to drive on a route and pick up real live people and it was kind of scary. Driving on the road and stopping at stops and picking up and dropping off people is pretty different from backing through cones at the bus barn. Luckily I only closed the door on one lady, and I only ran over one curb and luckily I didn't have any passengers at that point. Also, I haven't hit anything, I didn't even knock over any cones!

Learning how to physically maneuver the bus is kind of a small portion of the training though. A lot of time is spent to learning about various procedural kinds of things. I have to learn virtually word-for-word the extensive pre-trip vehicle inspection and brake test procedure that I will have to do for my big CDL test. There are also lots of check-in/out procedures to remember; learning what forms I need to fill out when and where I need to sign and when I need to take odometer readings and such. I haven't even started to learn how to use the radios or the satellite bus-tracking system yet. I also still have to learn all of the routes and the stop names and stuff.

So overal the training is going excellently and I am really loving it. Driving a bus is a little bit harder than I had always imagined it would be, but it's also just as much fun as I thought it would be. Try not to be too jealous of me, ok?

Also, I haven't made any big mistakes like this guy did:

High Point

The high point of my day today occurred as I was walking out the door of the library the girl in front of me with a few books in her hand set off the detectors. She stopped and looked around all confused and then walked back through to talk to the security personnel and said to them, "Oh, do I have to check these out?" Oh man, it was priceless.

Today's video is pretty neat. It's a song "Comme Elle Vient" by a french group called Noir Desir. It makes me want to learn sign language.

Yet More Insomnia

I'm at it again, not sleeping. Again the culprit is a myriad of thoughts racing through my head. There are so many things racing around up there that I can't even stay focused on being distracted from sleep. Here are just most of the things that are occupying my thoughts. Sorry if it reads like a long, boring to-do list. Feel free to skip it if you want, my feelings won't be hurt:

• I am giving a presentation in my Spanish linguistics class tomorrow. I am feeling so confident and ready and excited for it for some reason. I am thinking about all the clever and insightful things I hope I remember to say during the presentation. I'm thinking about how it will be such a good presentation that it will just blow everybody's socks off (I hope their feet aren't too stinky).
• As soon as I'm done with that I have to go to Longmont to take the written test to get my CDL permit. Have I studied enough? Will the test be hard? Mostly though I'm just excited to be another step closer to realizing my dream of driving a bus. Why am I so freaking excited about driving a bus? Who knows... it's a mystery. Kind of related to the CDL test tomorrow is that while I am headed in that direction I should probably drive up to Dad's house and take my summer tires up there for winter storage. I definitely don't have time to go up there, but as long as I am halfway there already it would probably be most efficient to do both things in one trip.
• Speaking of taking steps towards driving a bus, before I can get the permit I had to get a physical exam today. I think I am pretty healthy, and mostly I am, but the doctor said I had a slightly abnormal urine sample. I had trace levels of blood and protein in it (sorry, TMI?). The doctor didn't seem REALLY concerned about it, but he said it could be indicative of anything from a benign urinary tract infection (although those are rare in men), to bladder cancer (scary). But he said I should just be aware of it and come back in a few months for another urine sample. Kind of scary though, what could it mean? Should I be worried? Should I not be worried? I guess I'll just forget about it for a few months and hope it turns out to be nothing.
• My bus-driving training starts bright and early on Saturday morning. I'm so excited!!! I wonder if they'll get me behind the wheel on the very first day... I hope so. I hope I love it as much as I think I will. But on the flip side, how the hell am I going to balance a steadily increasing course load as deadlines for final papers/projects/tests near, PLUS do 80 hours of bus-driving training before I can start work the day after school ends, PLUS keep up with the transcribing job with which I have already been failing to get all the hours I'm supposed to? It sounds impossible to me... I will be really amazed if I manage to pull it all off.
• Then there's the presentation for the International Affairs class from hell that is due only a few days after Thanksgiving "break." But I'm trying not to think about that very much.
• The application for the JET program teaching English in Japan is due at the beginning of December, I'm not sure if I'll be able to pull that together in time. Then what?
• Oh dang, my car insurance bill is almost due. I don't want to pay it. Maybe I should just sell that car and make my sister chauffeur me around instead.
• How on earth am I going to work enough hours at my transcribing job so that they won't fire me? I've never been fired from a job before and I would like to keep it that way for a little longer at least.
• I still have to find time to finish that one last online assignment for my online International Economics class...
• I really need to clean my room. It's so bad that even I am bothered by it. That's pretty bad.
• Oh, how could I have forgotten about the Portuguese presentation that I've also been thinking about. It isn't for a few weeks still, and I only have a vague idea of what I'm going to talk about (China - Brazil relations), but I'm pretty sure I'm gonna blow the socks off of that one too. I can picture me speaking pretty fluent sounding Portuguese, but when it comes time to actually do it, the words still don't come out that smoothly for me, but it'll just take some practice. Portuguese sounds pretty sweet, by the way.
• I have a couple of ideas that I think would make for really interesting thesis papers in linguistics. Too bad I don't have time to write a senior honors thesis paper. Maybe I'll try to remember them for grad school or something though...
• What will be the next dumb/annoying and time-consuming task that my grandmother will require of me?
• So, that's most of what has been racing through my head keeping me awake tonight. Of course there's also the normal background noise of VTEC Mini Coopers, fixed-gear bikes, random linguistic crap, needing a girlfriend, etc...

Today's video is a pretty song in Portuguese that I don't understand and a video about a stick-figure who really uses his disproportionately-large noggin.

Useful Degree

After toiling away at school for the past 4.5 years learning Chinese and studying everything from Linguistics to International Affairs to Physics to History, I am now just weeks away from earning my bachelors degree. I will finally have an opportunity to put my education to good use, but first I will be taking a pit-stop to realize my life-long dream of being a bus driver.

A few weeks ago I applied to be a bus driver for Town of Vail, and yesterday I had a very easy "interview" and was quickly offered the position. In many aspects this bus-driving job will be a step backward from my current part-time job doing transcription for purposes of linguistic research. First of all, whereas that job looks pretty good on my résumé, this bus driving job won't really help my résumé out at all. Second, I will taking about a 30% pay cut from the transcribing job (although I might be able to keep the transcribing job too and do both, but that doesn't sound very appealing). Third, I can do the transcribing job wherever and pretty much whenever I want, but the bus driving will have a set schedule and will require commuting (because I have the least seniority, I will most likely be stuck with the night shifts that nobody else wants which is a double-whammy because not only am I not much of a night owl, but it also means that I can't take the bus to work because I would have no way of getting home).

But the bus driving job also offers lots of really appealing things that the transcribing job does not. For one thing, I don't get to drive a bus at my transcribing job, also the town of Vail is paying for the training for me to get my CDL. Second, the transcribing job is tedious and pretty boring and requires a lot of self-discipline to sit down and make yourself do all the hours you are supposed to do, but being a bus driver is more the kind of job that you come, do your time, and punch out and you're done. There's none of the stress of keeping yourself from getting distracted and keeping track of how many hours you have actually worked, etc. Third, there is less risk of making mistakes and feeling stupid; with transcribing sometimes I code things incorrectly and I feel like an idiot, but with driving a bus I think there are fewer things to mess up. Fourth, being a bus driver is a more social job than transcribing which is best done in a quiet, distraction-free environment with headphones, very anti-social. Fifth, I will have plenty of time to ski this winter.

So I realize that it isn't a very lofty or glorious job or anything, and I also realize that I didn't need to get a college degree to do it, but I am really excited about it! It will only last through April and then I will be off to do grander things. But I thought that if I were ever to realize my life-long dream of being a bus driver, this is about the best time ever to do it because if I don't do it now, then I will probably have to wait until I am old, retired, and senile before I can do it again.

The next logical step in my bus-driving career will probably be Figure-8 Schoolbus Racing like this:

Saturday Morning

Here is one reason why living in my grandma's basement is not so otimo:

The Scene: It's saturday morning, I got home a little bit late last night, the noisy furnace woke me up around 3am and I couldn't fall back asleep until around 5:00 AM. Now I'm sleeping like a log, or perhaps like a rock; I'm sleeping like the dead; I'm sleeping like a baby; heck, maybe I'm sleeping like a dead baby on a log under a rock... I'm sleeping really well.

8:00 AM rolls around and Grandma yells down to me, "DUSTIN!" startling me awake and out of my lovely well-earned slumber.

Dazed and confused, I yell back, "YEAH?!"

Grandma replies, "ARE YOU AWAKE?!" In my head I'm thinking two things; 1) "No, I'm asleep, I yelled back to you unconsciously just then." and 2) "Well, I wasn't a few seconds ago, but thanks to you I am now!"

I am thinking these things, but all I say back is, "... KIND OF!"

She then goes on muttering something like, "Oh, I wasn't sure if you were home or not... yadda yadda yadda."

Now I'm thinking, "well, one clue that I'm home is that my car is back in front of the house... and my bicycle is also still here... and you probably would have heard me get up and take a shower if I were awake already..." And then I lie there in bed awake and annoyed for a few minutes until I realize that going back to sleep will no longer be a possibility for me, so I get out of bed.

This is only a few minutes after she asked me if I am awake, she then yells, "ARE YOU IN THE SHOWER?!"

Now I'm thinking, "do you hear the shower running? The answer is no." I say, "NO!" She then calls me upstairs because she has to tell me something important before she has to go to wherever she's going. The important news is: "Here is my brother's email address. Please email him today to ask about wedding pictures because he says that the pictures they took turned out well." She then proceeds to try to explain to me that I can print them out, and how she can't get the pictures because she doesn't have email and how her brother already sent them to her other sister and so on and so forth... Grandma, I understand.

That's what my saturday mornings are like these days. I guess it's just as well though because I have sooo much to do today I probably didn't have time to sleep in anyway...

Speaking of working on the weekends, here's a fun little french song by Pink Martini called Sympathique which I think means something like "nice." One of the lines in the song goes, "je ne veux pas travailler" which I think means, "I don't want to work." I agree!

Elections

After I took my absentee ballot to the county clerk yesterday I suddenly became much more interested in the election. On a scale of 1 to 10, my interest in the election prior to yesterday was probably only a 4.8, but after handing in my ballot it jumped to probably a 7.3. I was not very passionate about any of the issues, or even any of the candidates, but rather had a broader interest in arresting control of the government away from the GOP and seeing the advancement of progressive social issues. So far it looks like the elections have been satisfying in some areas, and not so satisfying in others.

First, the good news.

• The biggest news is that the Democrats took over control of congress by a large margin in the House and by the skin of their teeth in the Senate. There are lots of reasons why this is good news.
• Bill Ritter (D) won the governor's seat, soundly beating Bob Beauprez (R), ending 8 years with republican governor Bill Owens who I have not been a fan of (I guess we like to have governors named Bill here in Colorado). For the first time in 12 years there are more Democratic governors than republican ones.
• Ed Perlmutter (D) won Colorado's 7th congressional district, adding a democrat to the House.
• Democratic incumbents Mark Udall, Diana DeGette, and Ken Salazar all won their districts.
• Minnesota elected a Muslim to the House. I really like that.
• Boulder showed support for doing something about global warming and climate change by voting yes on Question 202 which will allow for an additional tax on energy bills with the money going towards funding programs meant to help Boulder meet Kyoto Protocol pollution emissions standards. While this is a step in the right direction, I think that this should be a much bigger issue. I'm glad that issues like Iraq and corruption got people out to vote for the Democrats, but in my opinion global warming is a far, far more important issue than either of these things and it should be a major issue at all levels of government, not just at the municipal level here in Boulder. Iraq, same-sex marriage, abortion, marijuana, immigration, corruption, minimum wage... none of them are as important as global warming in my opinion.

And now for the less-good news

• In Colorado, Referendum I ensuring equal rights for same-sex couples appears to have failed while Amendment 43 defining marriage as that between only a man and a woman seems to have passed. I'm not very passionate about this issue, but I would have liked to see it pass just because Colorado is usually so conservative and it would have been good to see us pass something progressive like this.
• Amendment 44 which would have legalized possession of Marijuana for people over 21 also failed. Again, I don't really care about this issue, but it would have been neat to see Colorado pass progressive legislation like this.
• While Colorado did add one democrat to the house, it failed to add three more. Democrats lost to republicans in 3 of the 7 congressional districts. This was to be expected though as those districts are heavily republican, and really that we even added one is good news, but still I would have liked to see more. Of those losses, I am most bothered by Marilyn Musgrave (R) winning her district because she is wacko.
• Denver had huge problems with their new electronic voting systems, but on the other side of the coin these problems were partially due to unexpectedly high voter turn-out.

I guess that's it. Overall I think it was a pretty successful election even if Colorado was still a little to conservative for my taste. I also wish people were as concerned about climate change and what to do about it as they are about Iraq. I'm also still a little bit jaded about the American political system in general and think that a two-party system is simply not adequate and that we would be much better off with a multi-party system, but that's a rant for another day...


Today's video is of Marilyn Musgrave:

Baltimore Wedding

I flew to Baltimore this past weekend for my uncle's wedding. It was a pretty good wedding, definitely the best wedding I've been to in at least the last ten years. The ceremony was in a Catholic church not far from the hotel that everyone was staying in. I'm not much of a church-goer, so that wasn't really my favorite part, but the reception that followed was really great. It was held in an old warehouse which has been converted into someone's home that they rent out for events like this. There was an eclectic mix of people in attendance and the DJ was playing some good music. The toast was accompanied not by champagne, but rather by a strong Scandanavian alcohol similar to Vodka called Aquavit. Everyone was warned that this particular beverage should be gulped, not sipped, because if you take just a sip you won't take a second. It was funny to see my grandma slamming back a shot of hard alcohol and then to hear half the people there coughing and hacking after they took their shot. Apparently this is now going to be a Swanson family tradition, unfortunately I don't think there will be any more Swanson weddings for some time still (I guess that since I am the oldest of the next generation of Swansons that I would be expected to get married next, but I'm pretty sure either my sister or one of my cousins will beat me to it).

At the reception there was an official photographer who must have taken about a million pictures, most of which I think were actually shot in 3-D, so that will be cool to see how those turn out. There was also someone taking Polaroid pictures for the guest book. My mother and my sister and I were wearing nearly-matching colors and we were quite a handsome trio if I do say so myself. Our first Polaroid didn't turn out very well though, so we stole it and had them take another which turned out much better. Here's the first botched one though. I didn't like it because I look drunk, but I think I might have just been mid-blink. Anyway, you can see how good we looked.



After the reception we could have gone to a local bar to listen to some music, but I was too exhausted and I fell asleep for 12 hours instead. The next day everyone went to the American Visionary Art Museum, a museum exhibiting works of art by untrained or self-taught artists, many of whom created their art while they were living in mental institutions, for example. It was pretty interesting and there were some pretty neat things there. But after that, it was time for several of us to go to the airport to catch our planes back to Denver, so we walked back to where the rental car was parked only to find that it had been towed. Apparently there was some sort of sporting event going on in Baltimore that day and the parking rules are different for game days. So with some teamwork we found out where it had been towed to, drove there even though none of us really knew our way around Baltimore that well, payed the $278 + $15 credit-card-fee, and sped to the airport to catch our planes. It was a stressful time to say the least.

Overall it was a pretty good weekend though, despite the towing incident. I am finding that the older I get the more I enjoy hanging out with my extended family for some reason. Really I have a pretty fun/cool/funny family. It was good to see everyone and weddings are almost always fun anyway. Also, Baltimore seems pretty neat, although it's hard to really get a good impression of a city when you are there for little more than a day and a half and don't really go to many places. On our trip to the museum we did spend some time driving around both because we took a big wrong turn and also because we couldn't find a parking spot. While many people would find this frustrating, I enjoyed it because I got to see a bit more of the city that way. Baltimore has lots of cute row houses and old neighborhoods with narrow little streets that make for lots of character. I loved them! I think Seattle is still safely in the #1 position as my favorite US city though.

So yeah, that was my trip to Baltimore. It was fun.

Today's video is a song by Lilly Allen that the DJ played at the reception. I'm not going to describe it because she spends the first 30 seconds of the video doing just that. She is a year younger than me and is from about the same part of London as Lady Sovereign. If you despise Lady Sovereign, you might actually like Lilly Allen, but then again, you might not; no promises. And if you get halfway through the video and still don't like it, go ahead and stop watching it because there aren't going to be any surprises later on, I can tell you that much.

You did WHAT?!

I don't really understand the American public. First they elect Bush the first time 'round back in 2000. Then for some reason they re-elected him in 2004. And now, since gas prices have receded a few dimes per gallon over the past month or so, Americans have rushed to car dealers in droves to snatch up their big, lumbering, gas-guzzling trucks and SUVs, with their sales in the month of October "doubling from the year before in some cases (Fortune Magazine, "American car buyers get a case of amnesia")." According to the article, not only did sales of large trucks and SUVs increase dramatically this past month, but sales of hybrid vehicles actually declined. This is kind of disturbing news for me

Firstly, from most of the things I have read about gas prices, higher gas prices are likely to become the norm rather than the exception. As oil field reserves around the world peak, oil production (and consequently gasoline production) is stretched to its limits, and as global demand continues to rise, prices will naturally continue to rise. And so any recent drop in gas prices is probably temporary and we will probably see $3 gas again soon enough. Interestingly, by buying these fuel-inefficient vehicles consumers will help to drive demand back up which will probably help to send prices back up to where they were, and higher.

Secondly, Bush is right when he says that American dependence on foreign oil is bad. The combination of our voracious appetite for oil and relatively high international oil prices contributes to volatility in the international system. Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, for example, would not be in the position of power and influence that he is if it weren't for all the money Venezuela is making from high-priced oil exports to the US. I don't think Hugo Chavez is really very dangerous for the United States, but he is certainly one of the most vocal and charismatic champions of the anti-American sentiment around the world.

Along this same point, but perhaps more crucial, is the relationship between US demand for oil, Iraq, Iran, and Afghanistan. When I first heard the argument, "we are in Iraq because of oil," I thought it sounded like conspiracy theory. But in my political geography class last semester my teacher spent several class periods giving us a pretty sound explanation of why Iraq and our demand for oil are related. I am not capable of eloquently reproducing that argument here, but the basic jist of it is that Iraq and Iran have the fourth and third largest conventional oil reserves, respectively. By invading Afghanistan which has no real interest for the US other than a strategic location, and by invading Iraq which has large oil reserves but low production due to depleted infrastructure from international sanctions, the US is surrounding Iran.

I know, it sounds like total conspiracy theory, but I think it makes sense. Sure, the US rhetoric regarding all three of these countries has been mostly about security, humanitarian aid, terrorism, and those elusive weapons of mass destruction, but then you have to ask yourself, if it were really just about these things, then why did we go first to Iraq which appears to have been telling the truth when they said they didn't have WMDs (and it appears they didn't have any ties to Al Qaeda either), when North Korea on the other hand has been very clear about its intentions to build WMDs? Well, one possible factor is that North Korea doesn't have any oil. Or why don't we go into Sudan, a hotbed for international terrorists as well as the site of perhaps the worst current humanitarian disaster in the world (with the exception of Iraq, perhaps)? Well, Sudan doesn't have much oil either.

So why would the United States go to such great lengths to invade Iraq and surround Iran? Well, probably to help ensure cheap oil for the US so that Americans can drive their big trucks and SUVs. Until recently it was enough for the US to simply maintain their cozy relationship with Saudi Arabia, but in the face of rapidly increasing demand from countries like China and India, in combination with declining oil reserves, it's going to take a much more hands-on approach by the US to keep oil prices low. Of course, if we didn't USE so much of the stuff then this wouldn't be such a big problem for the US. But don't tell the US public this; instead let them keep driving their land yachts because they like to sit high off the road and have a commanding view of the vast American landscape...

Speaking of the landscape, that's the third reason why this news is so disturbing. You don't have to be a climatologist to be able to understand that global warming is real, is coming fast, is our fault, and will probably have disastrous consequences. In fact, you probably don't even need a high school diploma to be able to understand it. Sure, the movie The Day After Tomorrow had a lot of hyperbolic Hollywood entertainment packed into it, and global warming probably won't have quite such dramatic effects, but it still should have made people think. And then there was Al Gore's great movie An Inconvenient Truth, which I still think everyone in the world should see, that spelled it out clearly and accurately. Unfortunately that movie lacked the Hollywood action necessary to lure most American movie-goers. So if simple economics aren't enough, and international security isn't enough either, and not even saving the planet from an unprecedented climatic disaster is enough to make Americans drive more efficient cars, then I don't know what is.

Actually, it seems like simple economics is the most powerful tool here, it's just that as this article claims, Americans have amnesia, and they probably lack foresight too. If we could keep gas prices high enough long enough, maybe Americans would finally start to think differently. Or perhaps if they went high enough then alternative energy sources would become economically viable. So as much as I loved getting change back from my $20 on a full tank of gas a few years ago, I think that in the long run high gasoline prices are actually a great thing, but dang it America, why do you keep buying those gas-guzzlers?

I've heard all the reasons for why people claim to like these behemoths:

• "I like to sit high so I can see over everyone" -- You wouldn't have to sit so high if everyone else didn't drive them too.
• "I like how safe I feel in a big vehicle" -- Big vehicles are more dangerous to other drivers, and most small cars these days are just as safe. Actually, because small cars handle better and are more maneuverable, in a way they are actually safer!
• "I need to be able to haul lots of _______" -- This is only true in a few cases, most of the time you just end up driving yourself and perhaps a passenger or two around town looking for a Starbucks and a gas station. When you do need to haul lots of passengers and their gear, just take two cars! And if you need it to haul around your large family, then that's a different problem because the world population is also getting too big and so you shouldn't even be having that many kids anyway, unless they're adopted I suppose. Also, while you are busy hauling all your stuff around in your big truck, I'll be hauling ass right past you in my speedy little Mini and I'll be getting over twice or perhaps even three times the fuel economy as you too.
• "I like how powerful they are" -- Whatever, trucks and SUVs are slow. Even the fastest ones are still not that fast by fast-car standards.
• "I like they way the drive" -- Again, you are wrong. They handle like mush.

I love a rumblin' tumblin' gas-guzzlin' V8 engine as much as the next red-blooded American, but it's just irresponsible to drive those things all the time as a primary mode of transportation. I could go on, but I think you get the point.


Hopefully technology like that shown in this video can become mainstream:



At the bottom of that Fortune article, there is a link to another article about how obesity also increases fuel consumption. That's a rant for another day though...

Halloween Memo?

It seems someone didn't get the memo. Did the entire CU population not get the memo that it is Halloween, or did I miss the memo that nobody was going to dress up for it? My costume isn't very creative/original/interesting, but I like it anyway. I found doctor scrubs at Savers for $4.50, and I bought a crappy creepy stethoscope for $2.68. I wasn't even planning to get a costume because I didn't think I would have anywhere to wear it, but then I got invited to a costume party last night, so I decided I would probably need a costume. Maybe I'll get a picture of it... and then again maybe I won't.

Anyway, here are some funny dogs.

Learn By Doing

I went to Veloswap today which is a huge gathering of cyclists buying and selling all kinds of bikes, bike parts, and bike paraphernalia. I went last year too, but since I didn't have any money and wasn't really looking for anything specific anyway, I just ended up wandering around wishing I had more money.

This year I actually bought a few things though. After waiting in a long line to get into the place (held at the National Western Stock Show building), I then had to wait in another long line to use the one ATM in the whole place because I was stupid and didn't go to the bank before I came. I had to pay a fee to use the ATM, but it figured I was still ahead of the game because I told the parking attendant to take her $6 parking fee and shove it while I went and found equally good parking for free elsewhere (I didn't really say that to her, but I wasn't very polite either).

So, after finally getting in and getting my money, I was off to the races. Unlike last year where I wandered around aimlessly, this year I had a bit more focus. I was looking for a new seat, a new front brake, a new front brake lever (if one should strike my fancy), and possibly a new handlebar (bull-horn style, specifically). As I snaked my way through the slow-walking crowd I quickly scanned the items being offered at each table. My first find was a seat. I was looking for something with a cut-out down the middle so that it wouldn't make my crotch go numb after only 30 minutes riding it. This seat I found had this crotch-saving cutout, a sleek low-profile design, titanium rails, and because it had been in a crash and got scuffed, it was only $5. For some people a scuffed seat just won't do, but I don't really care about scuffs. It is really just cosmetic, and actually having a damaged seat will probably reduce the likelihood of it getting stolen on campus. Anyway, I'll have to take it on a little bit longer ride some day to see how much better it is than my old seat.

Then I found a brake caliper that looked nice. It was black, and it was only $10. I probably could have bargained it down, but I don't really enjoy bargaining. Not long after that I found a brake lever that I thought would do the trick for only $5. I wandered around a bit longer, saw the type of handlebars that I thought I might want to get, but I ended up not liking them and so I didn't buy them. I also saw an old frame quite similar to the one I have now (same make, close year, different model, cooler colors; black and red) for $48. I was about to buy it and maybe build it into a second fixed gear, but luckily it was too big for me and so I didn't buy it. That's when I realized that I should leave before I spent the $45 I had left on something that I didn't really need.

So then I came home to put my new parts on my bike. The seat went on without any problems, but after a few hours of tinkering and a trip to a bike shop, I have realized that the brake caliper I bought is the wrong size. Before I left this morning to go to Veloswap in the back of my mind I was thinking, "Dustin, you should probably measure that thing so you can be sure to get a new one that fits," but alas, I didn't. I thought they were probably all the same and so I thought I would probably be okay without measuring. Well, I was wrong... luckily I'm not out too much money and I guess that's how you learn these kinds of things...

To remedy the situation I have bought another brake caliper on ebay that I am quite confident will fit. I didn't get the same bargain for it, but I think I'm at least not overpaying (too much). Hopefully it will arrive quickly and I can install it, but in the mean time my bike doesn't have a front brake and I don't think I'm "brave" enough to ride it anywhere without a brake.

So today I got on my mountain bike for the first time since I got the fixed gear and it felt really weird. After exclusively riding the fixed gear since September, getting back on the mountain bike felt kind of like driving a big, slow, lumbering, excessive Ford Expedition for the first time after months of driving a light, simplistic, lithe, Lotus Elise. So, in other words, I hope my brake arrives quickly so I don't have to ride my mountain bike for too long.

Speaking of the Lotus Elise, today's video is a video clip from the BBC TV show Top Gear testing a Lotus Exige which is just like the Elise only faster and better. I like this car a lot, and for most of the same reasons why I like the VTEC Mini. Because it does more with less. This car has a 1.8 liter Toyota 4-cylinder engine, and in this clip they race it against a Ford Mustang with a 5.4 liter V8 with quite a bit more horsepower. However, because the Lotus is so small and light, and just all around better, it beats the Mustang. I love it. It is at the same time both extreme and minimalist.

Mid-Term Update

So, by my shabby calculations it looks like this semester is halfway through. This is a good time to ponder and reflect. Here are my thoughts on my classes so far in the order that I have them during the week:

• Semantics - This class is kind of a mixed bag for me. I am doing well in it, I am learning a lot, and it is interesting, but I don't think I really care for semantics very much. Semantics is a field of linguistics which deals with the meanings of words. I think the reason I don't like it so much is because it is a little too philosophical for my tastes. Indeed, there seems to be a lot of overlap between philosophy and semantics. It's too much of "well that depends on what the meaning of IS is," kinda stuff. Certainly part of the reason I might not like this class so much might have something to do with the fact that Comment-Blurting-Hair-Eating guy is in it, constantly blurting out annoying commentary. But at least I'm doing well in it. We got our midterms back the other day and I aced it! I thought I had probably done at least well enough for a B, but I never thought I would have aced it. That's always a great feeling.


• Portuguese - This class is also sort of a mixed bag. It's not really living up to my admittedly high expectations. I noticed today in class that although we are halfway through the semester, we are probably only about a quarter of the way through the skinny text book. I was hoping that the teacher would take full advantage of the fact that we all speak Spanish already and therefore already understand a lot of the grammar points, but she hasn't. In fact, she spends kind of a lot of time in class talking about concepts that are exactly the same in Spanish. Yet somehow some of the students still don't seem to grasp it and I'm sitting there shouting in my head, "IT'S JUST LIKE SPANISH!" At this point in the semester we should be able to say way more things than we do, and we should be moving a whole lot faster... On the good side though, it is a cake class and it might be the easiest A I've ever had.


• Morphology - This is by far my favorite class of the semester, and possibly my favorite linguistics class ever. Morphology is essentially the study of grammar cross-linguistically. The professor, who I'm pretty sure was a big hippie when he was an undergrad at Berkeley in the 60's (wasn't everyone at Berkeley in the 60's a hippie though?), has done a lot of research on Native American languages like Wichita and Lakota. In this class we learn about all kinds of different and interesting grammatical systems in languages around the world. The homework involves us looking at datasets of different obscure languages and figuring out what all the bits and pieces are doing in the dataset. I actually enjoy doing this homework! And the lectures are always so interesting. It makes you want to just go out and learn every language you can (as if I didn't already want to do that!). If I come back to school for graduate-level linguistics ever, I would love to take another morphology class.


• Spanish Phonetics and Phonology - This class is basically the study of sounds and how sounds fit together in Spanish. I thought I would really love this class because it is a combination of Spanish and Linguistics, but it turns out it's only so-so. I like that it's taught in Spanish, so I get some Spanish exposure, but really I am learning almost all the same things that I learned in my regular Phonetics and Phonology class last semester, except that I'm learning all the Spanish terminology for it. I guess it's helpful to go over it all again in another language and from another teacher though to really solidify it. Also, it makes for a pretty easy class because I've essentially already learned everything. At least there are a few new things that are more Spanish-specific though, so I am still learning a few new things...


• Russian - I am enjoying this class. The teacher is great! She's passionate, funny, and good at explaining things. Actually, now that I think about it, she reminds me a lot of my favorite Chinese teacher in China... I still can't say a whole lot, but I can already see that Russian is a pretty interesting language. It has a some pretty interesting phonetic and phonological things going on, as well as a pretty rich and detailed grammar system. Really it all seems pretty logical though. There is a lot of agreement and inflection going on which means that until everything is memorized to the point that it becomes natural, there is a lot of stuff going on in your brain when you are trying to create grammatically correct sentences. My only problem with this class is that I am not putting in as much effort as I would like to be. I am keeping up fine, but I could be learning it much better if I were putting in more time and effort.


• International Affairs Senior Seminar - This is the class that I predicted I would hate, and I was right. It's dreadful. What a horrible way to finish up a major which I never really grew to love anyway (although I was starting to finally grow more fond of it last semester). This is supposed to be the class that ties everything together, but instead it is an economics class about the European Union. If it had a better teacher I could maybe get interested in it, but not with this teacher. The only good thing about this class is that it only meets once a week and she usually lets us out after 1-1.5 hours even though it is scheduled to go 2.5 hours.


• International Economics - This doesn't really count as a class because I take it online. I started it last December and I have until graduation to finish it. The whole class consists of 6 multiple choice online assignments, each of which takes about 2 hours to complete. I only have two assignments left, and so far I probably have about an A- average... so that's good I guess.

So, overall I would say that classes are going well. I wish I could drop that stupid International Affairs class, make my Portuguese teacher a better teacher, spend more time on Russian, and take the philosophy and the comment-blurting guy out of Semantics. I also wish that instead of re-learning Phonetics and Phonology that I could instead take some sort of psycho-linguistics class, or a language development class, basically a more hard-science kind of linguistics class. Another more advanced morphology class would be cool too. Maybe that's what grad school is for though.

An now for today's video. Do you like Avril Lavigne? Do you like British people? Do you like MIA? If you answered yes to any or all of those questions, then you might like Lady Sovereign. I wouldn't say that I actually "like" her, but she is strangely and mysteriously infectious...

Everything I Know About Baltimore...

...I learned from Wikipedia.

In less than two weeks I will be flying to Baltimore for my uncle's wedding. I think this will be the first wedding I have been to since my other uncle got married in, um, was that 1996? Yes, I think this will be my first wedding in ten years. So I am excited about it. I am also excited about flying to Baltimore, not necessarily because it is Baltimore, but more because I like flying and airports (probably only because I don't spend a lot of time in them).

Anyway, as the event nears I am realizing that I don't really know much about Baltimore except that it is somewhere on the east coast. Baltimore and Boston could be neighbors for all I know (or knew, rather). So I did what any internet-savvy nerd would do, and I looked it up on the by-the-people-for-the-people internet knowledge database that is Wikipedia. Sure, people berate Wikipedia all the time for not being a real source of factual information, but I use it anyway. Most of the information I find on there seems accurate enough for my needs anyway.

Here are some interesting things about Balitmore which I didn't know before I learned about them on Wikipedia:

• Baltimore is in Maryland - Haha, no, just kidding. I actually knew that Baltimore was in Maryland. No really, I did.
• Baltimore has around 650,000 inhabitants - That is roughly 100,000 more than Denver, but is still kind of a cowtown compared to Nanjing, China which has about ten times that many people, or Beijing which has over TWENTY times that many people, but it isn't really fair to compare Chinese and American city populations. In 1950, however, the city had almost 1 million denizens, but the population has been shrinking since then (until recently in 2000 when it began to climb again).
  
• Baltimore is an independent city - it doesn't belong to any county government.
• In the War of 1812, the British declared Baltimore a "nest of Pirates."
• Baltimore is home to the world's tallest equilateral five-sided building (not to be confused with it's close cousin, the non-equliateral five-sided bilding). I wonder how many people walk by the Baltimore World Trade Center and say in awe, "wow, would you look at the lateral equality on that tall five-sided building!"
• Baltimore has a 311 non-emergency telephone hotline so people don't call 911 when they don't have emergencies. I should call it while I'm there just to see what it's all about.
• Baltimore has a lot of crime - It ranks second only to Detroit among the most dangerous large American cities. It has seven times the national murder rate, six times the rate in NYC, and three times the rate of LA.
• Baltimore's local culinary delicacies include blue crab and beer, where the crab is eaten with a mallet, a knife, and bare hands. Apparently the "chicken box" is popular too, consisting of fried chicken and starch (wait, wan't this invented in Kentucky, hence KFC?).
• The preferred beer is National Bohemian, a.k.a. "Natty Boh," or "National."
• Some scenes for the movie 12 Monkeys were filmed in Baltimore.

I also went to the Speech Accent Archive to listen to what a Baltimore accent sounds like. From the two samples they have of people from Baltimore, it sounds pretty standard, but it seems like there is some deletion of word-medial stops like 't' in "into" or in "plastic."

Today's video has nothing to do with Baltimore (I tried, but I couldn't find any Baltimore-related music videos that I liked). So it is Calle 13 instead. The last Calle 13 video I put up was Atrevete-te-te back in April, which is still an awesome song by the way (I think it means something like 'live a little!'). This one is called Jirafa which means 'giraffe.' I was going to put up a different Calle 13 song, Suave, but it was a little too risqué. In fact, I think this is the only song I've heard by Calle 13 that isn't even a little bit dirty; this one is more sweet and romantic.

Dream Cars: Addendum

I've been on the lookout for good videos of VTEC Mini Coopers on Youtube, but they are all pretty crappy. I did find this video, however, from an old episode of my favorite BBC automotive television program, Top Gear, with host Jeremy Clarkson.

It isn't a VTEC Mini, but it is an old mini with lots of power. My mini would be similar to this one, with a few differences:

• This one has a 1.4 litre original Mini engine which has been modified to make 160 horsepower. Mine would have either a 1.8 or a 2.0 litre Honda engine with over 200 horsepower.
• This one has straight-cut gears, which I hear is difficult to drive. Mine would have a friendly, smooth, Honda transmission.
• This one cost £50,000 (over $100,000), but mine would probably cost less than $30,000.
• This one is green, mine will be black.
  

This car also has some similarities to my Mini though:

• Mine will be just as tiny.
• Mine will probably be just as uncomfortable, and possibly almost as loud.

The Next Adventure?

It finally snowed today, and it's starting to accumulate and bend all the tree branches, but I'm not going to write about that because it's the same thing that happens every year as the earth tilts on it's axis.

I wrote a blog a few weeks ago about how I had no idea what I would be doing after I graduate, but after a few weeks of thinking, pondering, and considering, I have some slightly more solid plans. I still haven't actually lined anything up though, so it is all still just in the pondering stage. But here's what I've got so far:

Now until December 20, 2006 - Somehow manage to keep up with and do well in school and work without dying.

December 20, 2006 - Graduate from CU, move from Grandma's basement in Boulder to Ma's basement in Edwards. Live and work in the Edwards/Beaver Creek/Vail area, possibly driving the Beaver Creek shuttles, or maybe driving the Denver-Vail shuttle vans... It isn't exactly resume-enhancing work, but I love driving and I think I will like it. I might also keep doing part-time work for Infoture, but who knows about that.

April, 2007 - Ski season ends and so will my driving job. Raissa and Dad and I are talking about going on a trip to Europe together, maybe for a month or two.

June, 2007 - Get back from Europe, and probably/maybe go back to work at Chinese Summer Camp again from mid-june to mid/late-july.

July, 2007 - Just as summer camp ends, I might move to Japan for a year to teach English. This little option is totally out of left field, I realize that, so let me explain. Yesterday I was standing in the Humanities building waiting for my semantics class to start when I saw posted on the bulletin board a flyer for an informational meeting about JET (Japanese Exchange and Teaching Program). It is a program funded by the Japanese government to get English teachers to Japan (two different links: one from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Japan, and another from the Consulate General of Japan at Denver). It involves a year-long contract and approximately US$30,000 for the whole year. It sounded interesting, so I went to the meeting. Unfortunately I misread the flyer and I got there an hour after it started, and thus I only caught the last 10 minutes or so. But it still looks pretty interesting. So today in my linguistics class I asked a guy I know who studies Japanese and a Japanese girl what they know about it, and they both seemed to have pretty good impressions of it. Anyway, the application is due December 4, and I think I'm going to go ahead and apply for it. I think I'm totally qualified and they would be dumb not to accept me. I'm thinking that this would be a good way for me to learn some Japanese (which is safely on my list of ten that I want to learn before I'm fifty). It would also be good teaching experience, if only I thought I wanted to be a language teacher... Also, Japan is pretty expensive to just travel to, so this would be a much better way to see the country. And I'm pretty sure that living in a country for an extended period is almost always better than simply visiting anyway. Overall the whole thing looks like a pretty exciting and legitimate opportunity, and I guess I don't really have any other significantly better ideas for what to do. The timing is perfect too because Chinese summer camp should end around July 17th (or thereabouts) and I would leave for this thing on July 29th, I believe. Anyway, I would love to hear any opinions that you might have about this, both good or bad. Why should I do it? Why should I NOT do it?

So if I can actually follow through with this stuff, 2007 could turn out to be another good year for me.

Today's video: I was looking through my computer the other day at some of my own videos that I have taken and I found this short one that I took on the maglev train to the airport in Shanghai. As you can see, it was really fast. I think the top speed was somewhere around 430 kmh, which is almost 270 mph. Yeah, that's pretty fast. It was a neat train ride; totally worth the 50 kuai (that's about $6, or maybe it was 100 kuai which is still only $12... I can't remember)

Dream Cars

Oh my god, I just spent an hour writing a post and then after a series of unfortunate keystroke events, I managed to lose the whole thing! That might be the most frustrating thing in the world.

Anyway, here it goes again. I realize that most of the people that read this blog don't give a hoot about cars, but I do. Sometimes people ask me what is my one dream car. Although I always have an answer to this question, I always wonder, "why just one?" So, if I were to limit myself to ONLY, let's say... five cars, what would they be? They would be these, probably in this order:

1. VTEC Mini Cooper - Take an old Mini Cooper that weighs about 1600 pounds, restore it, give it a 2.0 liter Honda VTEC engine with 200+ horsepower that is fast even in a car weighing almost 3000 pounds, and you have a pretty sweet recipe. At only about $30k, this car is as quick as a Porsche (0-60 in about 4.6 seconds), but gets well over 30 miles per gallon, is easier to park, and is as easy to work on and find parts for as a Honda. Is it possibly the world's most perfect car? I think it might be, and I am pretty sure I'm going to buy one as soon as I can afford it.
   
   
2. Porsche 911 Carerra - Some complain that the 911 has become almost too sterile in recent years, but I love it because it is a precision instrument and an automotive icon. It is more well-rounded than most serious sports cars because it is quite reliable and comfortable to use as a daily driver where as many sports cars are not. The 911 comes in many different flavors. There is the base model, a faster "S" model, and then there's the legendary "turbo." There are all-wheel-drive and rear-wheel-drive variants. And then there's a coupe, a convertible, or a targa top. As tempting as the turbo sounds, I think I would probably go down a notch to the Carerra 4S Targa (fast, but not turbo-fast; all-wheel-drive so I can take it skiing, and targa for the big sunroof). The 355-horsepower 3.8-liter six-cylinder engine will get me from zero to 60 miles per hour in about 4.6 seconds, but it'll cost me about $100k.
   
   
3. Jaguar XKE, E-type - I actually owned one of these for a few years (this is a picture of it), and I still think it is about the sexiest car ever created. The one I had was a 1969 Series 1.5, 2+2 (meaning it had a small back seat), but if I were to get another one some day, I would probably look for a slightly older Series 1, 2-seater coupe with no back seat because they have slightly sexier proportions. With a 240-hp 4.2-liter inline six-cylinder engine, this car was considered pretty fast in it's day, and from my experience they still aren't slow even by today's standards. For a nicely restored example of this automotive icon I'll probably need about $30k.
   
   
4. Audi RS4 - This car can haul some pretty serious ass (5 asses, actually) in luxury and comfort, and with all-wheel-drive it can do it in the snow. With a high-tech 4.2-liter 420-horsepower V8 engine, it sounds pretty sweet doing it too (and it goes 0-60 in about 4.7 seconds). Since all the other cars on this list aren't really designed to haul more than two asses at a time, this car would be a good addition to the stable. But in all actuality, I don't have enough friends to really need a back seat anyway... hahaha. I do kind of have a problem with it being a V8 though because it seems so wasteful. And they aren't cheap, costing about $70k new.
   
   
5. Hmm, I can't really decide on what I would want for this last spot. Would I want a truck even though they are huge and so wasteful? Maybe I would want a Toyota Prius to balance out some of the gas-guzzlers on the list. Perhaps I would want another small, fast, lightweight sports car with a small, economical engine; something like a Lotus Elise or the totally impractical but amazing Ariel Atom? Maybe I would want some other cool old car like a sweet VW van, or a Lincon Continental with suicide doors (the car in The Matrix when they take the bug out of Neo's belly button). Maybe I'll just leave this as a wildcard slot.

So yeah, that would be a pretty sweet collection of cars I think. All of my cars would have to be black, preferably with some sort of dark brown leather interiors, and they would all have manual transmissions. All together it looks like I would need about $230k - $250k for these four listed here. For that kind of money I could buy lots more mediocre cars. Or think of all the bicycles I could buy with that! Well luckily dreaming is free.

For today's video, there is no video. I am not posting one because I still can't get enough of the All American Rejects song I posted last time. I have probably watched that video an average of about a million times per day over the past week. I love everything about it. I love the line, "your hands are mine to hold." I love the video concept of all the different shirts and backgrounds and stuff. I love how emotional the lead singer is. Also, I'm kind of strangely attracted to him in that jealous I-wish-I-were-that-hot sort of way. The girl who he seems to be breaking up with is also pretty gorgeous. I was so enamored with this video that I looked up the director, Marc Webb, and found his website www.marcwebb.com where I found a much higher-quality version of the video along with some other videos that I like but hadn't realized that they were also done by him. I don't think I can post it here, but go there and watch it if you like. As much as I love the video I found on YouTube, this high-quality video is even better because there's just more detail and stuff. Love it!