At the moment, the UK is like a big party in which I only know a single person. I’ve had a long standing theory that parties are most successful when all guests know at least two of the other guests. The reasoning behind this is that if someone only knows one person at the party, that one person (if the are considerate) has the added pressure of making sure that individual is doing ok, which means that person can’t socialize as much as he likes. The singly connected member, as his friend wanders around, invariably will become isolated at some point, which tends to not be a whole lot of fun either. There are certainly exceptions to the rule; I’ve been to a number of successful parties where that guideline has been violated. For instance, people who are only connected through their significant others may be an exception (I suspect it is because even if they haven’t met the people their S.O. knows, they know of them, and the others don’t think of S.Os as completely new people). Also, I think if the party is meant to be a meet new people event, rather than a hanging out event, then the rule doesn’t apply either.

For me, I have the fortune of finding myself living with a really great roommate here in Cambridge. She’s been super-helpful and friendly. I think we are off to a good start, based on my vast experience with roommates (I’ve had something like 10*). I guess the only downside of the large amount of hospitality shown me is that as she invariably attends to the commitments of her normal life, I am occasionally forced to adjust back to being more self sufficient, which is a challenge.

It’s like the UK and all of its associated experiences is everyone in the party that I don’t know and I need to start developing some additional links into it. Once I have those, I think everything will feel less strange. I think the added benefit of doing this will be to reduce my perceived dependence on my roommate. My three days of being the new houseguest are up, so I’m actively concerned about not becoming the fish that stinks. I really don’t want to draw the resentment of my roommate for being in the way. However, like any unfamiliar party, it’s difficult to get started. I’ve gotten pretty good at connecting myself at people parties. I am less good at doing this at the new country, new culture, new surrounding party.

Fortunately, I made a list of things to occupy myself with today: I am going to cycle to the MSR offices. Then, I am going to buy a light rain coat somewhere on High Street, as I’ve discovered it rains pretty unpredictably here. Oh, check out my flat on my Picasa page.

*I laughed while counting my roommate number,  because I imagine the way I was doing it was similar to how people count the number of people they’ve slept with.

So this is the day before I leave for the UK. I was able to find housing in a flat overlooking the river and I am extremely excited about meeting my roommate to-be. I needed to tie up a million loose ends like canceling my cable service, figuring out what to do with my mail, cleaning my desk at the lab, and last minute shopping. While running my chores, I made a number of observations.

1. Why do people buy stuff at the soda vending machines at Costco? The 20oz. bottle of Coke in the Costco vending machine costs 75 cents. An infinitely refillable cup of Coke from the food counter 20 feet away costs 55 cents. The cup of coke is not only infinitely larger, it probably will stay cold longer because you can put ice in the cup. I understand kids wanting to buy from the vending machine because it is magical and all, but how about the adults?
2. What are my deficiencies that make up for my strengths? I am a firm believer in the conservation of attribute points. That is, every one of our gifts and strengths is balanced out something weak. For example, I have beautiful fingers but ugly toes. Other things about me that are above average include: my being good at math and science (I mean, I’m no Will Hunting, or Vaughn F.R. Jones, but I was one of two people who didn’t make my Korean Math 1B TA shake his head at the state of American High School education), my above average height, my lack of acne, my full head of hair, good health. Things that I think balance those pluses out are: I have horrible eyesight, I suffer from bad allergies to pollen and cats, I get huge and painful canker sores, I’m not great at sports. I hope to make a definitive list. I would also like to see someone else’s list, preferably someone who is the complete opposite of me (i.e. has never had a canker sore, perfect vision, but really really short).
3. Are roller shoes totally awesome, or totally awesome? If they sell them in the UK, I’m buying a pair. Otherwise, getting them when I get back.
4. I love the Wham! song “Freedom”. The video, shot in 1980s China, is quite interesting too.
5. I found a blog post about someone’s anniversary that probably puts anything your S.O. did for you to shame.

So I am still looking for a place to live in Cambridge. I have a couple of promising leads but nothing finalized. Browsing the listings on the Cambridge University rentals board has provided a great deal of entertainment, however. I came across this posting for a house with three rooms the owner wishes to rent out. In the listing information, the poster has to describe each of the rooms. On most posts, this is stuff like room size, bed size, what furniture is inside, whether you have a private bathroom, etc. You know, standard stuff. But, in this particular posting, in addition to the standard info, Bedrooms 1 and 3 contain the description, “this room is well-suited for scientists, mathematicians and engineers.” Bedroom 2, on the other hand is “well-suited for scientists and mathematicians” (but not engineers). What it is about bedroom 2 that makes it so unsuitable for engineers? Guess we’ll never know…

I’m going to be in Cambridge, UK this summer, so I’m currently looking for a place to live. In the UK, most rentals are for 6 months minimum so I’m most likely going to end up staying in a room in a shared house, or in the dorms at Cambridge University. I’m leaning towards the former because I think it will be much more difficult to cook in the dorms. Plus, I discovered that the colleges at Cambridge that have accommodations over the summer are in the plain buildings, rather than the castle-like ones.

Today, while browsing around postings online, I came across an ad for a group of students in a house looking for a “young and fun” housemate for the Summer. Well, I was thinking it’d be perfect because they’re probably pretty laid back, and would know the area pretty well. Unfortunately, their definition of “young and fun” (as specified in the “age of tenant” section of their post) was between the ages of 20-25, which I no longer qualify for. That made me feel really, really, old.

I had a surprisingly busy Saturday. I went to Maryland Day, UMD’s open house. No rappelling down the side of buildings, but there was some other stuff to see. I put up some photos from this weekend (and last weekend) at my Picasa page. Be sure to check out the 50,000 cupcake Maryland logo. I personally contributed by eating 6 of them. They were giving out trays to take home, and in retrospect, I should have picked one up and had breakfast for all of next week. My friend Kiki’s band Five Four was playing their CD release party that evening so I went to that as well.

This morning, I was thinking about all of the petty life goals I have. The petty life goals consists of the goals are simply goals that I think would be cool to achieve, while not benefiting me directly in any way (otherwise they would make it into the regular life goals). Many of these might not actually be goals, in that I’m not actually trying to accomplish them. Rather, I just wouldn’t mind if they happened to me. Over the years, I’ve come up with a lot of these “wouldn’t it be cool…” things and this morning I decided I would write some of them down. So, in order of what I thought about this morning (and by no means an exhaustive list):

• Being friends with an (A/B+)-list entertainment celebrity. I mean not just meeting one, but being friends with one. I think my arbitrary definition of friend is that when I email them, it takes them less than week to reply and it’s not through a publicist. Of course, this first involves first meeting one. I feel like my chances are slowly slipping away, as the group of people I know and will likely meet (computer science researchers, techie types, lawyers, doctors) don’t frequently cross over with the entertainment types. I think the best time to have achieved this goal was in high school and college. I see some possible openings though. I can either change the world from my work, and get invited to an influential person shindig (e.g. TIME 100 people who shape our world), apply my work to the entertainment industry (e.g. PIXAR), rely on my brother who is going to be a superstar journalist, or have one of my current friends with celebrity aspirations achieve massive success.
• Be featured on the Sartorialist blog. Preferably sporting something that costs not much more than the stuff I currently wear.
• Have a pen-rendered version of my face (that doesn’t really look like me) in the WSJ. This is a relatively new one I came up with while reading the WSJ on the flight back from Europe a couple of weeks ago.
• Develop a British accent.
• Be of use during an emergency in the middle of a plane flight. I don’t know if this one is really a petty life goal, seeing as it’s sort of serious. I was definitely jealous of the doctor on my flight that helped the woman in the forward lavatory (the plane had to make an emergency landing in Amarillo anyway, though). He got applause at the end. I’m sure it didn’t hurt that he was also Patrick Dempsey good looking. It would make my year if I heard the crew announce, “if there is a computer scientist aboard, please ring the flight attendant call button.”

I’m sure there are more. Just can’t think of them right now.

As I was driving home from school Thursday night, I heard a familiar song on the radio that I really liked. I thought the song was by Michelle Branch and decided it’d be a cool song to learn. I rushed home to see if it’d be hard. However, I was slightly confused because I thought I would have learned it already, given that I was sure I had heard it before. Back at home, a quick search of the lyrics instead revealed that the song was “Say It Again” by Marié Digby.

So, about Marié Digby. A couple of months ago, I was obsessed with learning how to play Rihanna’s Umbrella song on the guitar. I discovered some time before then that even with the tabs available, it’s much easier to learn by watching someone playing the song. Thankfully, there’s YouTube. So I found Marié Digby’s really nice acoustic guitar version of Umbrella (it was featured on the TV show The Hills). Well, she’d posted some other videos with her original songs, and one of them was “Say It Again”. I think I must have liked the song back then as well, but couldn’t find tabs (and I’m not good enough to figure out song chords myself). Anyway, I discovered that she has a new CD out (released on my birthday, coincidentally), and I was thinking about getting it. I felt extra hip because I had found her through non-mainstream channels.

When I last encountered Marié Digby on YouTube several months ago, I found an interesting factoid about her. I’ll save some of that for later in this post. But now, more intrigued than ever, I searched some more and came across a link to a WSJ article claiming that Marié Digby was hiding the fact that her YouTube videos were part of an elaborate marketing campaign launched by her record label.

“Ms. Digby says she chose the songs. Hollywood Records bought the Apple Inc. laptop computer and software that Ms. Digby — who lives with her parents in Los Angeles’s upscale Brentwood neighborhood — used to post her YouTube videos.”

At first I was dismayed at the betrayal. But, Digby blogs that the WSJ twisted her words to fit their thesis. That by itself isn’t that convincing, as it’s expected she would reject the premise of an article that paints her in a less than flattering light. But, I also know that reporters can paint an inaccurate, sensational, picture. After re-reading the article, I’m disappointed that the WSJ story also tries to be misleading, which is kind of hypocritical. The above quote is deceptive in the way the sentences are arranged. I think the juxtaposition of the sentences implies a connection between the company supplying the laptop and being the mastermind of her appearing on YouTube (but is careful to not explicitly say that). All the facts say is that at some point in time the record company bought her a laptop. True, that laptop was used to post her videos onto the Internet. But maybe, the laptop was actually intended for email and to learn some UNIX shell scripting. Who knows? The music booking “scandal” is a bit fishy too. I think in general, for signed artists, no matter how unknown, it’s pretty standard procedure to go through the label to book them.

I certainly think that Digby is playing up the part about being “new”. Is that dishonest? Maybe. But is that really different than cultivating any type of image (e.g. Beltway “outsiders” who are actually quite familiar with politics)? I’m sure by the time I found her, she’d become popular on YouTube and her label had noticed and was doing some coaching. So, I’m a little annoyed that her YouTube videos made it seem like she was undiscovered (and misled me into feeling cool). I’ve decided to buy her CD, nonetheless. I like the music. I also think at some point in the past she started out as the image she tries to present these days (see this story about some of her pre-YouTube cred). But, the main reason I’m doing it is because she went to Cal (Go Bears!); that will get her off the hook any day. She sort of left halfway through, but if I I’m not holding that against Aaron Rogers…. But, perhaps as a reflection of my ever so slight annoyance, and also hedging against the event that I find out Hollywood Records was masterminding this whole thing, I’m going to buy the CD off Amazon instead of waiting to catch a live show to buy the CD.

Why am I talking about chorizo? Most people who interact with me on a regular basis will probably say that I have a tendency to start discussing topics that seem to come out of the blue. As a result, I find it interesting whenever I consciously document how I arrive on these seemingly irrelevant subjects. For one, I’ve concluded that Wikipedia is a big contributor to this trait of mine, because it is just so easy to visit tangential subjects; I wonder how diverse six degrees of Wikipedia separation will get you. In any case, if I am consciously aware of the path it takes for me to reach what may seem like a random subject, it is actually pretty logical. Here’s an example.

I was sitting in Chipotle, eating a carnitas burrito yesterday. The person spooning the meat into my burrito was sloppier than usual and the meat was widely dispersed over the entire surface of the burrito. Usually, the meat is in a neat mound in the center. As I was eating, I noticed that I liked the fact that the meat was scattered in every bite, rather than clumped into a large mass. This led me to wonder whether the ‘real’ SF burrito from the Mission district taquerias (Chipotle makes a variation of the San Francisco Burrito) had ever made this discovery. Or maybe, the real taquerias actually make their burritos with the meat scattered on the surface (I should have paid attention). Thinking about SF burritos reminded me about the chorizo burrito served in a taqueria next to UC Hastings that I am fond of. Then, thinking about those burritos made me remember how over winter break, while making paella, I made the horrible mistake of buying Mexican instead of Spanish chorizo.

As a PSA to anyone out there making paella: if you use Mexican chorizo instead of Spanish chorizo. UR DOING IT WRONG. Mexican chorizo is kind of a bright orange and soft and squishy. It comes packaged in this plastic bag that makes it look like a sausage, but when you cook it, you’re supposed to squeeze it out of the plastic. After cooking, it kind of looks like oily ground meat (which it is) and then you spoon the meat into tacos or burritos. Spanish chorizo, on the other hand is more firm, and is more meatlike in color (i.e. looks like salami). Spanish chorizo can be sliced into disks and put into the paella. I had trouble finding Spanish chorizo at my supermarket, but acceptable substitutes include cooked linguica, or according to a forum, even kielbasa. Just don’t use mexican chorizo. You will get a puddly, oily paella. Disclaimer: Since I do my shopping at mediocre chain supermarkets (the fanciest I tend to go to is Safeway), my descriptions may not apply to everyone. I think that maybe at real butchers, both chorizos actually are packaged like regular sausages , and there is a more technical difference the two (i.e. one is cured and the other is totally raw). Besides, if you know that I’m wrong and/or shopping at a real butcher, you probably know there was a difference already.

My post was about to end above. But, this morning, when thinking about this entry, I remembered how last Fall, we had a Japanese industrial researcher in our lab. I took him to get some Mexican food. Before going, I asked if he’d had Mexican food since he got here, and he mentioned he’d gone to Taco Bell down the street once or twice. Well, I figured he hadn’t had real Mexican food. When we got there, he said he wanted a chorizo taco, but I thought he was asking me what chorizo was. As I started to explain, he let me know that he knew what it was because it’s very popular with beer in Japan. Not only did I underestimate his knowledge about chorizo, I totally underestimated his knowledge about Mexican food in general. As we were eating, he mentioned that as a college student, he and a bunch of other students went on an extended tour of Mexico. During the trip they made and ate their own tamales and enchiladas. Oh SNAP! I don’t think I’ve been any further south than Tijuana.

A confluence of events has prodded me into restarting my blogging after a year of being dead. In fact, I was seriously considering scrapping it and just moving to Twitter and adding short little updates about my life. Divine intervention, perhaps? First, I received a real, genuine, comment from someone about my poutine entry, which touched me because I didn’t think anybody still read the blog. Second, a friend mentioned that she had just discovered it and really enjoyed reading it. Well, that made me feel super-guilty that everything on here is a year old. I think it’s the same feeling I get when I have visitors and my room is a huge mess.

Anyway, given the renewed interest in the blog, I decided to check out what the fuss was all about. The first thing I had forgotten was that the title was so clever. Then, I went and read some of my old entries. While some were ho-hum, there were others that brought back fond memories of events in the past that I had totally forgotten about. It really is a shame that there are probably all sorts of great stories I could tell about what’s happened in the past year, that I probably won’t remember in six months. The fact that I might lose those stories makes me want to write them down here.

I saw and did a lot in Italy two weeks ago. But, I think big events like that come with photos, train tickets, museum programs, and other ephemera. As a result, I think the chances of me forgetting about Italy are quite slim. The more mundane, and simple sources of my daily entertainment are the things I think are more at risk of being lost. So, I’m going to write about the recent chain of events that started when I received a 40% off DVDs coupon from Borders. The coupon was only valid on Monday or Tuesday this week, so on Tuesday, I drove over to the closest Borders, in Silver Spring, to pick up a copy of Amelie. I discovered that they were out, so I ended up going all the way to Rockville. The Rockville Borders had this entire Paris theme table set up with a bunch of Paris guidebooks, some other French interest books, and a humongous stack of Amelie DVDs. Clearly, the mystery of why none of the other stores had the DVDs was solved. After finding my DVD, I realized I was behaving like an ideal customer; hooked by the gateway drug that was the Borders coupon. I found myself looking for random stuff to buy at Borders, mostly more DVDs because I had this great coupon, but also books and other stuff simply because I had driven so far already. I’m always a little shocked whenever I catch myself behaving like an irresponsible consumer (other examples of this happening is if I buy something simply because I saw an ad for it). Well, having made my shocking realization, I decided it was time to go cold turkey and check out and get out (not entirely true–I splurged and also bought Roman Holiday for $5).

Well, I instantly gratified myself by bringing Amelie to lab and watching it this evening. An aside: my lab has this beautiful 46″ LCD HDTV, so I’ve started bringing my DVDs to watch in lab instead of at home. Something about Amelie just makes me extremely happy. I think I connect with Amelie in experiencing the sense of gratification that comes when the people around me are entertained, enlightened, or just made happier in general. My officemate, who watched the movie claims that it explains certain quirks about my behavior, like my compulsion to share funny videos and websites with the entire lab instead of being satisfied with looking at them myself. Perhaps, it is the same reason I am always so excited about taking people to the Library of Congress and watching their reaction when they walk into the main reading room (Stephanie and Amy, you made me extremely happy).

Maybe that’s also why I feel a sense of responsibility to entertain the people who make the effort to visit my blog, and why I’m updating again.

Last night, I really wanted to play Grim Fandango. So, on a whim, I downloaded VirtualPC and installed Windows 98 on a virtual machine. Ironically, I used a genuine Win98 CD to install, which I don’t think I ever did when I ran Windows 98 for real. After three restarts and one crash I finally saw the Cloud bootup screen with the scrolling gradient bar underneath. So. Awesome.

Once the Microsoft startup sound played and the teal-green desktop showed up, all these memories of Freshman year in college came flooding back. The slide-out Start Menu, the jagged 256-color My Computer icon, winipcfg, and the having to restart the computer after the smallest change in anything in Control Panel reminded me so much of dorm life in 613B.

Behind me is Tyler, playing SubSpace and chatting on his webcam, while listening to FinK.L. I’m chatting on AIM and ICQ at the same time, with six or seven people. Marc is talking about how his Qualcomm stock just hit $250 after he bought it for $30. Oh, and we’re getting alcohol and groceries delivered from Peapod (Webvan always carded when they delivered).

I’m going to try to track down an ancient copy of Napster to relive the dark period when Rescomp capped all of our connections to 56k because of the skyrocketing network traffic costs.

Just for kicks, I decided I’d post this entry from old Windows. Javascript doesn’t seem to work correctly in IE4 so I went and installed the latest version of Firefox. It is also ironic that the version of Firefox I just installed is newer than all the other versions I have at home and work. I find the anachronism of having a Firefox icon in my retro desktop hilarious. Who knew installing a new OS would be so entertaining.

Take that Vista.

World-famous violinist secretly plays in the DC metro for spare change.

So usually the links I put up are from other people’s blogs and stuff and I feel a little bit unoriginal in terms of finding stuff. However, I heard about this story in the Washington Post over the radio (The Washington Post runs these radio ads about the day’s news stories), last Friday, and I made a mental note to read it. Then, I forgot to track down a paper and didn’t read the article. But, on Sunday, Megan convinced me to check to see if the Post had put it online, which it did, and we read it together (I played a recording of ‘Chaconne’ as we read).

I was going to forward the story to everyone I knew and post it before the usual blogs got a hold of it. Unfortunately, we were running late to meet visitors from California for dim sum and cherry blossoms so I put it off. This morning, to my disdain, I find that it’s made it’s way around the blogosphere. Always the follower. Sigh.