actuality.log

I haven’t done this in ages.

Judging from the relatively static appearance of this web site (emphaticallystatic.org, remember?), you’re probably under the incorrect assumption that things have stagnated under the hood as well. Perhaps this list of recent going-ons will change your mind. I’ve emphasised tasks that I’ve completed.

1. Made the “favicon” (the little icon in the URL bar) transparent.
2. Upgraded an ancient WordPress to something current.
3. Correspondingly upgraded all plugins and modified them to suit my needs.
4. Tuned caching to improve site responsiveness.
5. Prevented spam comments from messing too much with “most popular posts” calculations.
6. Cleaned up code to look-up the database less often, further improving site responsiveness.
7. Updated XHTML 1.0 Transitional pages to XHTML 1.1 pages.
8. Completely remove styling from XHTML pages; perhaps even images?
9. Clean up CSS and get it to validate.
10. Ran over source with Emacs to indent it better.

I normally stay clear of the yapping about current affairs on this journal because it gets in the way of the customary highly-self-centered content. But this article on the daily hits too close to home not to comment about: (American) Students struggle to get (Indian) visas.

The first (and currently only) comment on their web site sums things up nicely:

“What a cry-baby piece!

Given that the USA operates one of the nastiest and [most] unaccountable visa regimes it is hardly a surprise that other countries have taken to treating American citizens as the Americans treat them.”

This is it people; this is what I’ve been waiting for.

Not very different from that abused little kid who spends fifteen hours a day in front of the TV hoping to escape from it all, I’ve wiled away the past five years of my life in graduate school. Sure, I’ve learnt a thing or two, and have a few pieces of paper making my stay seem legit, but you and I both know it’s about time I stepped into the real world and faced it like a man. Or mouse—which seems more likely—but face it nonetheless.

I don’t intend on stalling under fear of the unknown anymore, nor do I intend on wasting my time on trivial pursuits. I am finally motivated, and I’ve formulated a plan; a real plan with a realistic timeline.

And I fully intend on carrying it through.

(I better get something useful done before this caffeine buzz wears off.)

Fuelled perhaps by events I’ve disclosed recently, I’ve been persuaded to “put myself out there” and “see more people,” before it’s “too late.” Sadly, this has been the source of some heartache, as I am a stranger to being turned down.

You see, I’ve always managed to avoid rejection, just like how I’ve always prevented my slaves from staging a violent and bloody uprising: not keeping slaves.

Perhaps I should be more discerning as to who I ask out. It’s just, though her beauty was only skin deep, being size 0, she seemed beautiful all the way through.

You know the conversation is taking a really wrong turn when your mother—somewhat formally—prefixes a discussion with, “And, on a more personal note… ” The queasiness that such an innocuous string of words can arouse in the pit of my tummy will be apparent to anyone who knows my situation as well as I do; for you see, you then know exactly what’s coming next.

It is quite customary where I come from, that, when one is regarded to be “of marriageable age,” their parents assist them in finding them a life partner. And by “assist,” I mean they force you into marrying whoever it is they deem “right” for you. Somewhat sneakily—and quite successfully—over the past half-decade, I’ve been evading this sensitive issue with my parents under the guise of being “entirely engrossed with my PhD work.” It’s not surprising in the least that you see right through the pretence, and soon figure out that this is merely a smokescreen to buy me some time; time to explore, experiment and mature enough to make up my own mind on such matters. But what is odd, is that my parents seemed to realise this is a blatant lie too, yet willingly played along with it.

Luckily for yours truly, his little fib provided them in turn with a watertight excuse when solicited by people whose only job seems to be disposing daughters they’ve grown tired of. The blanket excuse of their son being in school—doused in the connotation of his immaturity—almost made them seem earnest when they harped about how ready he was not, how his studying occupied him entirely, and even, how he’s just plain incapable of supporting their daughter at the moment. This made it incredibly simple for them to mercilessly decline any and all who approached; and not seem conceited.

This ensured life was good. As good as it could be, anyway.

And in this time, I’ve grown quite accustomed to my independence. Yes, I’ve fallen once or twice (or eight times), but for the most part I’ve gotten to do interesting, fun things for which I otherwise wouldn’t have had the opportunity. But, as you obviously realise, I still don’t have a lot figured out in my life. I don’t know what I want. I honestly don’t know what I am going to do, or where I am going to do it at. I don’t know what makes me happy; in fact, I am quite certain I am not emotionally, financially, or in any other regard, entirely capable of keeping myself satisfied, let alone another.

Given all that, and given the general state of confusion my life is in, I am not entirely certain this topic is appropriate to bring up any time soon, but with the PhD phase of my life coming to an end (hopefully), my beloved argument is failing to hold water. Today, I found out that my mother is not going to mass-decline any and all requests for her son’s hand, and furthermore, will gleefully proceed to do things in order to set me up. I’ve fought long and hard, but being that I don’t have the energy to fight anymore, or even explain things candidly, I put my arms up in the air and told her to go ahead and do whatever. As in, if someone comes up and keeps advertising their little girl to her, I asked her not to think about me and proceed to do whatever makes her happy.

As long as her measures don’t bind me to follow through in any way.

The following just a random collection of responses I’d scanned but didn’t use in the article:

I told you the article was complete a while ago, why are you still here?

Well, not really.

So I’ll leave you with one that was particularly useful.

Happy Whateveritisyoucelebrateordont!

This article has concluded, stop clicking!

… they loved me!

Some more than others, yes, but there was much love. And this wasn’t just in the open-ended questionnaires, the “objective” rating schemes hinted at the same thing too!

But, with the sycophantish nature of the exercise, was I really going to get tips to improve?

Oh, the nail-biting suspense builds!

… words thrown out of context.

The sheer number of students involved—well over 200—ensured a wide variety in points of view, and the artificial sense of anonymity they enjoyed resulted in a degree of candidness I was surprised to see; sometimes brutally so. It’s like they’d forgotten I’ve spent a dozen or so hours with them each week, and they’re really not nameless to me. Perhaps, their extremely-alike and hard to discern handwritings,

lured them into this fictitious sense of security. Oh, the poor, misguided young’uns. And, in case you’re wondering, GSI stands for Graduate Student Instructor.

Some of the responses were verbose,

while others were more wordy still,

some were terse,

a few, extremely so,

but the verdict was clear…

Another inopportune pause. Patience is a virtue.

… making sense of the cacophony.

Emanating merely from a fortuitous alignment of the stars—or an assiduously calculated scheme driven by my desperation to pay for grad school (one can never be too sure about this sort of thing)—I had, in the fall of 2006, a most fascinating and enjoyable experience helping teach a junior level material mechanics course: ME 382. The quasi-teacher’s hat that I’d just donned (apart from legitimising my absence from the lab) allowed me to interact with curious, eager young minds full of energy, and it was such a gratifying experience helping mould them in my little way.

(In actuality, the experience mostly involved walking the young’uns through their weekly homework and I was rather engulfed in its soul-destroying monotony, but this is my story and I intend on fully embellishing it. If you have a problem with that, I suggest you write your own story; one that’s filled with your precious facts.)

As is customary here at the university, toward the end of the semester, the students are given an opportunity to provide feedback on (and to) their instructors. Designed to help the teacher improve, this feedback is solicited in the form of a pseudo-objective poll and a more traditional questionnaire. Being that these evaluations were carried out a few months ago, and in the interim I’d moved on to other remarkably fun and stimulating tasks (there are a ton of those going around when you’re camped in graduate school), they had slipped my mind. That is, until I received an innocuous looking e-mail a short while earlier.

The importance placed on this feedback oozes from that last line.

“Who responds to these? I certainly don’t,” I muttered to myself as I began to tear open the large orange envelopes half-expecting them to be nearly empty. Much to my surprise, it turns out everyone responds to these things and don’t just treat filling them out as 15–20 minutes of freedom from their regular lecture. As I began reading through the copious brazen commentary, I decided it’d be a swell idea to offer the world a totally random (yeah, right) sample from this overwhelming pool. Why? I don’t know, I just did.

There is, however, the little matter of this:

Obviously, when questioned, I’m going to inform them that I didn’t know it was to be confidential even after I’d procured the envelope. And, with that out of the way, I think it’s high time we turned to the actual responses.

The amusement will proceed after this disruptive pause.

All the pretty girls I saw around town were walking around with the prettiest of flowers.

Ugly girls didn’t even deserve ugly flowers.

Then I became poorer.

Update: In case you were wondering, I believe that buying the lens will one day allow me to take candid portraits such as the following:

Because, you know, the scrumptiousness of a meal is purely determined by the pots and pans used.

… and it took less time.

A most curious thing happened to me a short while ago. But before I get into that story, I’m going to bore you with a bit of a back-story to set things up a little.

You see, after years of good use, a few days ago I lost my toque-like winter hat. While this might not seem like a big deal to most of you, you have to see it from the perspective of a little boy from a tropical place that’s usually 40° C (104° F) living in a frigid town that’s now -20° C (-4° F). With my torn clothes and my shoes worn sole-less, that little woolen headdress was the only thing standing between me and an icy death during my daily commutes. In its absence, I’ve been forced to chart my routes such that I spend as little time as possible outdoors, because I’m sure I’d look quite hideous if my ears fell off.

Though I’d been pretty meticulous about it (I’m alive-enough to write about it, amn’t I?), things went rather awry today. As I was heading home after a hard-day’s work, I thought it’d be a smart move to detour to my landlord’s office and pay my rent for the month. This wasn’t as bright as I’d imagined, and caused my under-clad self to be out in the cold for a really long time, and nearly resulted in me passing out before I finally reached home. Forestalling this, I stepped into an unlocked university building (after desperately attempting many locked doors) along the way, and rested a bit as I warmed my now-purple-turning body up.

It’s in this situation that the aforementioned “curious thing” occurred.

As I was cosily relaxing, a woman comes up to me rather tentatively and stammered something like, “Oh hello, were you waiting for me?” I looked at her quite puzzled, and nodded no, “No, I’m just trying to get warm, I’m not waiting for anyone.” (In the best homeless guy imitation I could muster.) And, nicely warmed up by now, I slowly rose and began to walk away.

It was then that it happened, her soft, expectant expression changed to one that was so miserable, and she instantly began to weep. I looked at her thoroughly confused as I was, but things started to make more sense a few minutes later. Between the weeping, I gathered that she was on a blind date she’d set up from the Internet, and I was warming myself up around where this guy told her he would meet her… thirty minutes ago. She’d mistaken me to be him, and worse, she thought I got up to leave after I’d seen her.

I explained to her that I would have done no such thing.

I lied. She was hideous.

I bought a hat a few minutes later.

One of the perks of growing up is that you can now give (and receive) expensive gifts. On a related note, here’s what I made my new phone do with some hackery.

I was to have bragged about this some time ago, but it slipped my mind. Ah well.