In Honour of My Grandpa

Is this grief I feel?

Or confirmation I've

not been sad before

Sometimes I don't even know what to do with myself. It was good that it ended, but that logic cannot fill me back up.

And who will defend me?

check this out

My friend is here visiting from NYC and we were sitting in the living room discussing the H1-B. It's that time ladies and gents. At the end of this month the lawyers will send in our applications. 50% of them will be automatically rejected - randomly chosen to not even be considered. The other 50% will await the kindness of the US government to see if we can continue to work here.

As if our futures were not uncertain enough there is the added complication of the bail-out, the stimulus bill, the depressed economy. My friend is telling me that companies on the TARP - troubled asset relief programme - are not allowed to apply for work visas for their foreign employees. "Buy American" has become "Hire American" and is disturbing in both spirit and effect. Every time there is a problem this coutry kind of rolls up into a ball - like an armadillo, or Buster from Arrested Development. Will they do more harm than good this time? we will have to wait and see....

Ahoy G20!

I got published!!!

Math! How I love thee!

Afghani woman on self immolation

"Don't burn yourself," she said, lying on her hospital bed. "If you want a way out, use a gun: it's less painful."

from here

One of my roomies was signing up to see a shrink. So they asked her a few questions to match her up with someone suitable. They asked, of course, "Do you have thoughts of suicide?" And my roomie told me that she was shocked. Suicide is not even an option, she said.

It's one thing to think suicide is not an option. It's another thing to understand how it would seem like an option to some hypothetical body. It's a third stance to consider it for yourself day in and day out, or maybe late at night when considering what you should do tomorrow. C is not healthy I gather. Is option B toeing the line? And what about that afghani woman? Is there a difference between suicide from depression and suicide as the last and only act of independence?

Either way, sounds like it hurts. BTW I am reading Sylvia Plath.

P.S. Do Jamaicans commit suicide?

The Outliers - Malcolm Gladwell

Just finished this book today while stranded in a tunnel on a delayed outbound Red-Line T(rain) ride to Davis. (I'm glaring at YOU MBTA)! I felt a small smug feeling when I found out - in the last chapter - that Gladwell is of Jamaican decent.

Otherwise the book just left me with a feeling of being bombarded with interesting bits of new information, that were arranged in just the perfect way for me to be unable to draw any kind of logical conclusion. What was the point Gladwell? Was it aimed at policy makers; encouraging them to generate more opportunity? Was it aimed at the ordinary man; giving them a way to blame lack of opportunity for a lack of success? Or was it supposed to generate a kind of fatalism? You could be a genius that worked from dawn 'till dusk... Those things are necessary but not sufficient for success... you can still fail, chances are, you will fail. People will still stand in your way, things won't work out, you will be stuck in the drudgery of the everyday... unless you are granted the random opportunity given by luck to those of "good" birth, "good" means, and "good" skin colour.

What am I supposed to do now Gladwell? No answer? Thanks for nothing. Wow, I am a ray of sunshine today.

bed time haiku - I know i will never break , but...

I beg for tears now;
One drop to ease the straining
dam behind these eyes

...for the white man.

"The abilities, the intelligence, the promise of these young men will be squandered in their attempt to eke out a living doing the simplest, most mindless chores for the white man."

-Nelson Madela , Long Walk to Freedom, my copy page 33

This is exactly how I felt working for my last supervisor. Oh snap! Good riddance my friend. ha.

But will I prosper now that he is gone? We make jokes at work all about how the partners are afraid of Office 2007. We make jokes about "partner math" which is simple, slap dash math that latches on to the biggest roundest numbers on a page and yields nothing but broad estimations. Haha! so funny... Does this mean we get more stupid, dated and timid as we move up in this firm?

The more time I spend away from school the more I feel my intelligence is squandered. How do I stem this flow?

BTW I started reading Mandela's book. It was gifted to me two summers ago. It is quintissentially inspirational. Expect more quotes.

Hipsters, be free!!

"The dance floor at a hipster party looks like it should be surrounded by
quotation marks. While punk, disco and hip hop all had immersive, intimate and
energetic dance styles that liberated the dancer from his/her mental states – be
it the head-spinning b-boy or violent thrashings of a live punk show – the
hipster has more of a joke dance. A faux shrug shuffle that mocks the very idea
of dancing or, at its best, illustrates a non-committal fear of expression
typified in a weird twitch/ironic twist. The dancers are too self-aware to let
themselves feel any form of liberation; they shuffle along, shrugging themselves
into oblivion. "

-from here

I often feel the need to move freely. To dance, to fight to frolic. Where can I be free?

Authority and desire

Today I retire the confession "Me hate authority. Authorty hate me," even though that is still very true. I think I can be extremely frustrating to my supervisors not because they feel like I am incompetent, but because they see nothing standing in between them and what they want from me except my own stubborn unresponsive will. The problem is, they can't make me want what they want, mostly because ... I don't know what I want.

In other news, I went for drinks with this guy from the office. My roommate has informed me that that counts as a date. He had hinted a couple months ago that we should go out for drinks. I thought it was a casual team thing - we work together - so I was enthusiastic. Last week when he came over to ask me to drinks that night, it would be dishonest of me to say I didn't sense the date vibe. He was WAY too nervous. He hesitated, his voice stumbled, he practically whispered the invitation. I resisted the urge to run. The honest part of me was therefore not surprised when we were the only ones at the bar that night. We had fun.

Hospital Haiku (Brooklyn, summer 2008)

Pain sings like echoes
stuck rebounding between these
curving pelvic walls

Worse Things - That trashy girl from grease

Excerpt from a song from Grease... I am so guilty

"but there are worse things I could do I could flirtwith all the guys, smile
at them and bat my eyes.Press against them when we dance, make them think they
stand a chanceand then refuse to see it through,that's the thing I'd never do. I
can stay home every nightWait around for Mr. Right, take cold showers everyday,
and throw my life away, on a dream that won't come true"

Gaza - Educate yourself

It's never too late to figure out what's going on. Take your head out of the hole and find out...

Who is Hamas

Gaza Crisis: Key maps and timeline

Profile: Gaza Strip

still looking... still reading

Equal Rights - Peter Tosh 1977

If wars were to stop right now... If we had "peace"... would the problems really go away or would they just be easier to ignore?

At least I'd be a little less upset in the mornings as I listen to BBC online from my little cubicle at work. Maybe I'd would never have to be ashamed for not knowing enough about the world... for not even really thinking about or trying to, much less really fullfilling my responsibility to the other people on this planet

My conversations would sound less hollow. My problems would seem more important. My ambitions more noble. My education more whole.

But we would be worse people. Except we wouldn't even have the chance to fix it, because we would never know.

More importantly all those people, would still be suffering.

Let's do the hard thing and ask for the right things. We will all be better for it.

Listen

Everyone is crying out for peace yes
None is crying out for justice
Everyone is crying out for peace yes
None is crying out for justice

I don't want no peace
I need equal rights and justice
I got to get it
Equal rights and justice

Everybody want to go to heaven
But nobody want to die (father us Jesus)
Everybody want to go to up to heaven
But none o them, none o them want to die

(Just give me my share)

What is due to Caesar
You better give it on to Caesar
And what belong to I and I
You better, you better give it up to I

(I'm fighting for it)

Everyone heading for the top
But tell me how far is it from the bottom
Nobody knows but
Everybody fighting to reach the top
How far is it from the bottom

Everyone is talking about crime
Tell me who are the criminals
I said everybody's talking about crime, crime
Tell me who, who are the criminals
I really don't see them


There be no crime
Equal rights and justice

There be no criminals equal rights and justice
Everyone is fighting for equal rights and justice
Palestine is fighting for equal rights and justice
Down in Angola equal rights and justice
Down in Botswana equal rights and justice
Down in Zimbabwe equal rights and justice
Down in Rhodesia equal rights and justice
Right here in Jamaica equal rights and justice

Jungle Fever

I'm getting an error when I try to post my Girl-talk videos from the summer, so iIll talk about this instead:

My roomie just admitted until recently he thought that Jungle fever was a legit medical thing... When his friend told him she had jungle fever, he asked "What are the symptoms? Are you ok?" But seriously, jungle fever is the new pink - it's hott. Go for it! Why get caught up with fear, worry and other silly things? Brown skin is sexy. You know you want to...

Flakes, bookshops and Camus

Visited a great little used bookstore in Harvard Square the other day. One of my friends opened Camus' "The Plague" and found a tax return check for $475. She takes it to the counter and the man there breaks out laughing. "She works here," he says. "She's such a flake!"

I thought about it. That is ridiculous, but exactly the kind of thing I would do. She placed her check -probably as a bookmark - into the book, and somehow, without remembering, shelved it in the bookstore and then - responsibly - filed for a new check, but still...

That woman, is me . I love her, with all her flaws.

Acutane

My roomie is going on acutane for her acne and brought back this huge reader that she has to go through before she starts the 5 month course. Supposedly we have to watch her for depresison and crying spells while she's on the pills. More than that though... Apparently you SHOULD NOT GET PREGNANT while on the meds. So the reader has a whole set of sections trying to dispel the myths around sex and getting pregnant so that the patients don't accidently knock themselves up.

My favourite myth of all:

" 'Sexually active' means that you move during sex. If you don't move, you can't get pregnant."

I have no words

Retired confessions... that is all.

I got paid yesterday. Kaching!!! So I am DETERMINED to retire this confession:

" I don't know how to manage money. I spend too much. Where did I get these expectations for the kind of life I want to live? Perhaps I have illusions about who I am. "

This check is going to last a looooong time - if I can help it. I'll let you know when I decide who I am. In the meanwhile I have a new confessions, based wholly in my job, my anger and my frustration:

"me hate authority. Authority hate me."

This is in part in honour of the pallindrome that is now Na's age. Welcome to 22 Na and thanks for the shoutout. You boosted my mood. With the crap that's been happening, I'm due for an upturn in life.

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 Company

pic courtesy of the bbc:

My company is approximately 3% black. Of the 10 people in that 3% about 2 are African American, or rather, American at all. How does that make you feel?

In other news, the economy went to shit today. What the US need was a good Finsac-king. Jamaican style. Omar Davies style. Ah well.

I found out today that in about 2 years, people in my position usually do an externship with another company/organization. I wonder if I can get a job in Jamaica... in the government somewhere. I guess I can start planning from now eh...

Girl Talk

This guy is hott. Check out his stuff. You can get his latest CD for free! (although you should probably pay him)

He layers the most incongruous samples, to create pure danceability. Will I see you NYC Nov 15th?