Bad decisions for love...

One of my friends, got into school and told me that her boyfriend was planning to move with her when the time came. They do not live together now, but certainly will then, and she seems just too excited about the idea. A couple of months ago, she had made the decision that they would not move in together until he got a job. That situation has not changed, but she has clearly softened her position.

As the heartless pragmatists that I am, I think it's a good idea not to move one's emotionally dependent, oft depressed, unemployed bf into one's home, especially when that would necessitate some financial dependence. But, maybe that's why I'm still single. If it makes her happy, is it a bad idea? I suppose time will tell. But that's the problem with 20/20 hindsight, it accounts for info you couldn't possibly have had at the time. Within reason, are there REALLY any bad decisions when it comes to pursuing love?

And clearly the stakes have changed. Maybe it's "better" for him to move in with her, than for her to move out of his life...

The African American Male...

I have been doing some high-school algebra class observations, to learn more about the teaching experience. I'm tagging along with an old expert teacher and we often debrief with someone at the school to discuss what we saw and learned.

We've been recently watching this one teacher who seems to have complete control over the class (real impressive to watch) and in the debriefing the old expert teacher applauded his use of eye contact, and with one reference to one student interaction:

" We're told, the number one rule with African American males.... you have to look them in the eye, acknowledge them and honour their presence."

That seems like a good way to treat anybody really. But, do people really have a special rule book they use on how to interact with the African American male? Is what the African American male wants acknowledgement and honour?

How would I know... I'm not even American.

Funny (NYT)

Article talking about the Bahrain protests. Below is a quote talking about the signs that Sunni minority has been oppressing the the Shia majority:

"Here in Bahrain, we have been in bed with a minority Sunni elite that has presided over a tolerant, open and economically dynamic country — but it’s an elite that is also steeped in corruption, repression and profound discrimination toward the Shia population. If you parachute into a neighborhood in Bahrain, you can tell at once whether it is Sunni or Shia: if it has good roads and sewers and is well maintained, it is Sunni; otherwise, it is Shia.

Funny, because replace "Shia" with "minority" and you have the exact same picture in the US.

Lessons from Egypt

Things are far from over in Egypt... protests continue; Mubarak is digging in, to try and stay in power until September (!!!!); "Western" leadership are speaking out of both sides of their mouths - supporting democratic aspiration while supporting Mubarak staying in power "for the time being"; Israel is freaking out about the potential fall out from a change in the Egyptian guard - who will keep Gaza's other border locked now? etc etc etc

But while all this is happening, students of political science and history can take notes... what are the potential and limitations of peaceful protests? Will it work in Egypt? Will it work in Palestine? Did it work in Tibet? in India?

Clearly the situation matters.

As a Jamaican, the stories of most of our national heroes instill me with the belief that sometimes, you have to raise your arm in violence, in particular, when violence is used against you. While many factors brought the end of slavery, I have the feeling that violent slave revolts were a necessary precondition. This is the only way to make oppression economically impractical.

Food for thought... interesting discussion below:

Waiting for Superman - comments on state-run education

I watched this wonderful documentary about the failures of state-run education in the US. Maybe "wonderful" isn't the right word. It was heartbreaking, highly disturbing and raises great questions about, the real lack of opportunity in the US, the dangers of bureaucracy and the idea of American exceptionalism even in the face of clear evidence to the contrary - everything American is the best! Best education system, best healthcare system etc

This particular film is even more thought-provoking for me because I am now a graduate calculus TA at a large state university. The film speaks mostly to high-school education, but I get to see what that system spits out. Let me tell you this... the kids are not prepared and I don't think I can possibly help them. Not only because they are so far behind, but because I shouldn't be their calc TA. The university pours the little money they have into the math grad programme in order to attract more grad students, so they can serve as cheap TA's and basic math instructors, because tenured professors are so much more expensive. Then, we were explicitly told to put our calc teaching behind our other grad school work ... we are , after all, PhD students first.

Putting this all together, even if I were the best Calc TA in the world (and believe me, I'm not) I would still be doing them a disservice because I cannot, at the core of it, be wholly invested in my kids' education. This is a big dilemma

Kaplan and the Grapes of Wrath - taking advantage of the labour market

Someone I know is really feeling the economy and is looking for a part time job to bide the time. He aced the GREs, so he thought... I'll be a part-time GRE instructor for Kaplan. After a grueling interview process spaced out over weeks and weeks, he was finally told that he was good to go and simply needed to come in for training.

The next training session, however, was full... so they would be in touch about the one after.

Upon inquiry, they only run training sessions when the need arises, so my friend will be in limbo until they deign to call upon him.

It turns out that Kaplan has high turn-over, so they interview about 300 hundred people for 30 spots and keep 270 as a huge reserve army. Unbeknownst to the interviewee, you will be at the beck and call of Kaplan in order to be a measly part-time GRE instructor. That's some dishonest, Grapes of Wrath bullshit.

It makes me think, that having labour unions is a lesser evil than not having labour unions.

Walk away people, walk away.

Her Morning Elegance

Discovered on a friend's blog here

It reminds me of so many things... somehow filling the viewer with nostalgia even while delighting with new ideas.

Most of all, it reminds me that when I was younger and I thought of the kind of woman I wanted to be... I wanted to be "lovely".

Square Peg, Round Hole - the break with Consulting

So my manager flipped her shit over the passed two weeks and apparently had a couple meetings which will probably result in me being fired earlier than I had hoped... I find out on Monday. They say, that the case I was on was "below my level", so the good work that I did do for 4 months, doesn't count, and for some reason, the opinion of my supervisor (who thought I did great) doesn't count. What apparently does matter, is the dubious last two weeks of the case where I really didn't have much to do at all. All that is left is this crazy manager of mine, who without actually really ever looking at my work and while ignoring the person who does see my work, has decided that I am not up to scratch. But it's not just her, it can't be... someone staffed me in the position where I couldn't win, people refused to listen when my supervisor had a differing opinion, someone decided to have that meeting where neither I nor my supervisor were involved or spoken to, to decide my fate. And my teammates had to be complicit... one fellow is running around showing my work as his - perhaps he will get that early promotion he is gunning for. My consensus reviewer assured me, "your opinion was heard". How is that possible when noone asked me what my opinion was? There is something, wholly inconsistent and deeply disturbing about this whole process.

It begs the question... if they set me up to fail... what did they expect? It posits the answer... they expected me to fail. You can't win if you are constantly asked to change someone's opinion of you.

My consensus reviewer decided to tell me that I had all the qualities to be great at this job, even more so than some people who are great at this job, but something just didnt click... it was like fitting a sqaure peg into a round hole.

After this news, I go back to my desk from which I can see through the glass doors of the adjacent conference room. Inside was my manager and the rest of the team, and projected on the screen was the model I had built to "help" my teammate. In that moment I learnt the definition of so many words... wrath, outrage, insult, frustration...

So, this is not just to rant. But to preserve for posterity. And hopefully warn any of you against the dangers of corporate america and in particular big consulting firms. These are not meritocracies, you will not be judged on the quality of your work, you will be asked to do shitty things for money and the worse thing you can do is not fit in.

Below is pretty much a day in the life.

United World College

The effectiveness of the United World College sneaks up on you over time. Every conflict, every terrorist attack, every war, every injustice becomes personal... not just because we were taught to be "global citizens", but because we know people in all these places, caught on both side of a war, washed away in that tsunami, crushed in that earthquake...

The other day there was a bombing of a random cafe in India called the German Bakery. I have to wonder, are my freinds ok?

Below is a project that someone below me in school is working on... a small documentary on the groundwater in Delhi. Not revolutionizing the world in the traditional sense, but changing the way we think about the world may be just as powerful...

http://www.groundwaterup.com/

The Mad Cow - Hormones and the mind

You've heard the old joke... Why do they call PMS, "PMS"... because "Mad Cow Disease" was taken.

Without going into details of the ebb and flow of my hormones, I have come to realize that once a month every month I come to the realization that I am unattractive. After I finally noticed that I have this same thought every 28 days, I have learnt to laugh at myself and think "this too will pass". However, even armed with this self-knowledge I cannot prevent the thought from popping into my head. And between the moment of that thought and the moment of realization, I am often truly saddened.

We all, in some way witness the link between chemicals and thoughts. I think of the clinically depressed, and I wonder... even knowing that they are depressed, they cannot stop the thoughts from coming. Unlike me, they cannot laugh it off... because it never passes.

How to get a visa

Went home for Xmas and got my H1-B visa. The guy who interviewed me was crazy cute... I wonder how one gets into the foreign service? The window next to him was servicing the other types of visas. There were 20 rejections to every visa granted. People cried. Worse than that the whole process was kind of inhuman - waiting in line in the sun.. being shunted from here to there with no order or explanation. The US embassy in Jamaica really needs to learn how to treat human beings.

I got my visa a week later. It's a simple process if you have a job like mine I guess. It's a simple process if you are educated too and have a history of travelling. Next step... green card?

Anyway, on the way back into the country yesterday the customs officer looked at my documentation, smiled and me and said "welcome home". He was so warm, yet it sent shivers right through me. Is the US my home now, even if it doesn't feel like it is? Is Jamaica my home?

I saved my first million JA this year. I'm thinking of buying an acre of land out in Lucea. Is this a smart business move or just a way to mark my territory?

Are you Happy? Sad? Jealous?

This last week's economist ran an ad that started "Are you Happy? Sad? Jealous?; Understanding the importance of your emotions in 24 lectures from an award winning professor." It's an odd little course you can order from Dr Robert C Solomon and the write-up goes on to claim that,

"By probing these thinkers and presenting his own views, The Passions: Philosophy and the Intelligence of Emotions will lead you to a remarkable conclusion: Emotions have intelligence and provide personal strategies that are vitally important to our everyday lives of perceiving, evaluating, appraising, understanding, and acting in the world."

Maybe it was reading those words, or the hours of what I now realize was subconscious agonizing that finally put a light bulb over my head. Either way, something became clear yesterday when a work colleague gave me some mixed news. She told me, that she had a clandestine wedding - she got married after 5 months of dating some guy - and that she was quitting the job next month because "consulting was just not for her." Putting aside the fact that she is probably not telling me the whole story, the news washed over me in waves of unfamiliar emotions. I felt ... cold shock, followed by a brief dip into sadness and then a brightening, clear, honest jealousy.

That's right, jealousy... and it felt so good because with it came realization... no, I do not want to be married right now, but I do want to be free of this job. It has nothing to do with my ability to get the job done. No one at this point could possibly accuse me of laziness. It's not even that I am not cut out for the work force. I simply derive very little pleasure from the work I do and the people I work for. In fact, now that I am admitting things to myself, I think it has been making me a little unhappy. I have made a terrible mistake. I have made an even bigger mistake letting the job get in the way of me preparing for my future and doing the things that make me happy.

Don't worry. I am not quitting and I am not going to stop working hard. I just feel light and clear. Now I know why I have been feeling a bit off. It is resolved in my mind and now I can emotionally de-invest and reapply myself to the things in my life, present and future.

Enjoy the Arrested development reference while I try and sort out my life

Borges

"Hladik had rounded forty. Aside from a few friendships and many habits, the problematic exercise of literature constituted his life. Like all writers, he measured the achievements of others by what they had accomplished, asking of them that they measure him by what he envisaged or planned."

- The Secret Miracle, Borges

Some say the mark of a good writer is that they bring to light something that you think you already knew, making reading and writing the art of playing with recognition. Above, Borges has put his finger on one of my greatest fears. Hat's off to you dear sir.

I suggest you also give him a read. In this round of flirtation, I particularly liked Inferno, I, 32, The Witness, Kafka and his precursors, The Library of Babel...

The spark of feminism

"Among the many important questions which have been brought before the public, there is none that more vitally affects the human family than that which is technically called 'Women's Rights.'" Elizabeth Cady Stanton as quoted in The Chalice and the Blade by Riane Eisler

Why are women required to be subservient to men? Why are we paid less? When did this happen?

Think Less

" One of your strongest skills - your high level thinking - is irrelavant for you current position at this company." - My manager to me last monday

How utterly absurd...

Lessons from The Fountainhead, part 2

It seems that this book is still haunting my existence. I am playing with ads by google and one of them popped up about ayn rand. So it seems I should return to my little reflection on The Fountainhead.


My other posts on it are under the 'literature' tab. So here's another installment.

"It was not malice. It was not judgement passed upon his merit. They did not think he was worthless. They simply did not care to find out whether he was good. Sometimes, he was asked to show his sketches; he extended them across a desk, feeling a contraction of shame in the muscles of his hand; it was like having the clothes torn off his body, and the shame was not that his body was exposed, but that it was exposed to indifferent eyes." page 99.

So many things come to mind. The most immediate is the art of blogging. You always have the choice of making these thing public. What is worse than people hating you... people not caring. Almost makes me want to shut down on those privacy setting and make it for my eyes only. But then, how would I ever discover if I was good. How would you?

But on a larger note... It's true that people usually don't give you the chance to show that you are good. Many people usually dont care. Few people are willing to take a chance on a stranger. Thats why, in my PSCI class on Social Capital, I thought that sometimes, social capital is a bad thing. It encourages nepotism and closed-mindedness.

Why dont we all take a chance on someone and something new today.

My work place

Is this a bad sign? What does it say that my work-place is across the street from a Nieman Marcus?

It takes about 50mins for me to get to work from home. Shittastic...

compromising your morals... mmm, delicious

I was talking to a friend about a friend of hers whose father happens to be something like a rich government official type person in China. My friend was telling me that her friend's father was one of those people who ate panda.

Let's think about that for a second. Even if you don't know much about pandas, you know that they are pretty cute and pretty rare. I personally have beef with pandas but let's put that aside for now. The point is that they are very close to extinction and everybody knows that.

You may be wondering 'does panda taste good?', which exactly what I asked. But this is besides the point also. How good does panda have to taste for you to eat an animal so publicly in danger? I thought about it and figured there are three possible reasons.

1. Panda tastes really good

2. Some people are just douches who eat panda as a delicacy simply because it is rare

3. This guy must be around the kind of people who want to know if he would compromise his morals for them. 

Whether it is true or not, this third is the most interesting to me. Maybe eating panda is a signal that he is willing to follow the crowd no matter how distasteful the activity.He will keep their secret because they  are keeping his... This seems like the kind of bond that would come in handy as a business man or  Chinese government official.

There are many things people try to get you to do, not because the activity itself is intrinsically fun or meaningful, but because it signals the kind of person you are. Most people are more comfortable knowing that you are like them. So you can't judge them, perhaps. Like when drinkers feel uncomfortable around non-drinkers. They love getting that person to take a drink. Or streakers wanting other people streak... or anything really. It's interesting. 

Vogueing and the Female Mind

Call: Twisting Twirling!
Response: Spining Swirling!

Call: Twerking!
Response: Jerking!

Call: Really Working!

All: OWWWWW

Call: I'm talking 'bout eating it up
Response: What?

Call: I'm talking 'bout serving it out
Response: Yeah?

Call: Booyaka Booyaka Booyaka
Response: Bitch !

All: Chaa Chacha Chaa Chaa Chaaaaaaa!


Went to a vogueing workshop. It was awesome!! I had only seen this kind of dance on madonna and youtube videos and it was a good exercise trying to do a new style of dance that I completely and utterly sucked at.

It was good for more than that though. I am constantly frustrated at dance parties here at school and have previously not been able to put the why into words. The guy who ran the workshop said that when voguers hit the dance floor, they bring it all, they give it their ten out of ten and this often results in fights, and beautiful challenging dancing. I end nights here with tons of energy still in my veins. I need a place where I can give my ten without feeling alone.

The chant above must be said with attitude, loudly. The dancing itself is constantly a challenge, a battle and imposition of one's female self - unapologetically - upon the world. But we have to remember that this is a dance done by men. What can they truly know about femininity? Can a female really push hers femaleness so violently forward for display?

Right now I sit with a friend. She has balls of solid brass and last night put herself forward and asked a guy out. Today she has given up on guys and openness and bravery. I, with only half her courage, sit deciphering nonsensical and meaningless phrases that guys throw out at me to see if I can find some hint of real interest. "You rock!" What the hell??

Our approaches are very different. Passive and active we are confronted with a world of sexuality where we just don't run the show.

All: Chaa Chacha Chaa Chaa Chaaaaaaa!

Think like a man

Yesterday, I popped into the bar and made a new acquaintance. He was on his fifth drink - four of which were in shot form - so I'm sure he was more talkative than he normally would be. He first caught my attention when, while giving a friend of mine advice, he told her that she needed to think like a man. Intrigued, I turned to him and said 

"Think like a man? Do tell..."

In the story that follows I shall call my new acquaintance Jack and the girl in question (you will be later introduced) Jill. 

"Yeah! Think like a man!" He said. apparently, men are stubborn and go directly after what they want. If my friend was to resolve her problem, she needed to be direct and get to the point in conversations,  instead of beating around the bush. 

This  seemed like reasonable advice in content, though not in name, so I kept listening. However, at this point a girl came by - this is Jill - and he put out his arm. She hugged him, they flirted a little and then she continued on her way. 

He continued to talk. "You see, you have to play the game." When a girl is  trying to get a guy or a guy is trying to get a girl, they follow certain patterns of behaviour. To succeed you have to know the rules and play. Girls pretend they are not interested in the people they are interested in . Guys always go exactly for what they want and that will never get them any. 

This was beginning to sound decidedly like bullshit. But then mildly-drunk Jack began to back up the bull with some incredible empirical data. 

"You see this group of girls behind me?" I look over his shoulder, and there, on the pseudo-dance floor was an awkward group of girls mildly swaying to the inappropriate-for-dancing bar music. "There is no reason for them to be there, but *Jill* just wants to get my attention." And lo and behold, there was Jill, swaying awkwardly in the middle of the gaggle.  "Now I turn away," He turned more fully towards me so that his back was firmly to the girls,  "and this is going to drive her crazy!"

You see, to get laid, the guy has to think like a girl. He has to pretend he is not interested, until the girl, in frustration/exasperation, starts giving much more overt signs. She becomes so invested, so obsessed! Then the guy can make his move because he knows that he is in!

And surprise, surprise, after a few minutes of the cold shoulder, Jill sauntered over and flung her fluffy white scarf around his neck. They flirted outrageously and I , nauseated,  went to go find some other acquaintances. 

Later in the night, Jill left without Jack and i went over to him to tease him about his failure. But he said, that 100% guaranteed on the night he returns, he is going home with Jill. I have a buck riding on this. I'll let you know whether he succeeds. 

I wonder if this only works for women and men who are utterly full of themselves or whether it rings with a deeper truth. I know I have, on more than one occasion feigned disinterest. But a cold shoulder would deflate and repel me rather than insight me to more overt shows of affection. 

Hmm... food for thought.