Aleksandra the Great’s Exploits

Dave and I went to the Sakura festival at Fairmount Park last Sunday. Though the event was free, the things there were quite expensive ($7 for one crab cake sandwich, etc.). And despite what the sign said about a tea ceremony from 3-4pm, some woman came out and shooed all of the tea-drinkers away at about ten of three, saying there would be no more tea ceremony. It was enjoyable, though, and I’d like to go for more of it next year.

That’s not really the subject of this post, though (I didn’t do enough cool stuff or take any pictures to make it a worthwhile entry). I went for a walk by myself for a while and came upon these two metal horse sculptures, upon one of which sat two children. I am of the opinion that you don’t sit on objects of art, so I was already worried about these two kids and their upbrinings. When a man walked by with his bike, the first boy asked if they could ride it, which of course they couldn’t. Then they asked where he got it, and he told them in West Philadelphia. Then the boy asked “Ain’t we in West Philly?” The man with the bike, probably refusing to answer a question so grammatically incorrect, asked the boy if he could repeat his question. So the boy said, “Isn’t we in West Philly?” And that’s when I stopped paying attention to contemplate the boy’s transition from slang to actual, if improperly-used, English. I was pleased.

Since I’ve decided that I want to transfer, and that I’d rather commute (if I don’t get in to any of the three transfer colleges) than have to live here, I did not really feel like walking all the way over to Carlyle (my assigned dorm for next year, either my second or third pick, and all of five minutes from my dorm) to spend the approximated 45 minutes signing up for a dorm that doesn’t really matter. My dorm selection time happened to be 8:18, which would probably make me miss the Colbert Report. This was all just unpleasant, and I considered not even going.

But I don’t usually skip required university events, so I went. By the time I made my way through Carlyle, which is, admittedly, a rather nice-looking dorm with a central mostly-cement courtyard, the people in charge of housing had already talked to everyone else supposed to select a dorm at my time. Oh, well. I went back alone to a room where maybe five or six housing people were standing and sitting around talking. One girl said, as if annoyed that I had been late although I arrived probably 15 minutes early like the website recommended, that she had already talked to the others and would explain to me what she had just told them. Apparently, there were no more spots left in Carlyle. Heh. By the time they get so far down on the housing selection list as I am (and this is only the second night?), they sometimes run out of rooms. But since I’m guaranteed housing, they’ll definitely fit me in somewhere. She even said they would try to find an opening in my first choice dorm. Well, that’s nice.

I, not really concerned with housing and just rather amused by my fortune, didn’t get upset or demand a room or anything of the sort. When I left, one of the housing boys said he wished all of the people they had to tell that to were like me. I didn’t quite have the heart to tell them that I probably wouldn’t be living at NYU next year, anyway.

The transition from daylight saving time to standard time is pleasant because for weeks after (if you, like me, are too lazy to reset your clock and would not dream of waking up in the middle of the night to set it at the correct hour) you can look at the clock and know that you actually have one more hour before bed than the clock says you have. It just gives you the sense that there is somehow more time available in the fall than there was in the late summer.

Daylight saving time, on the other hand, forces you to adjust the clocks almost immediately, or else suffer every time you mistakenly believe there are six hours left before bed when really there are only five. Besides for rushing me in resetting the clocks, daylight saving time confuses my daily cycle. I keep glancing at my computer clock and thinking that it is an hour ahead—surely it can’t be this bright outside at 5:30 when it’s supposed to be dark by 6! In the summer it’s acceptable for the sun to set after 8, but during the spring, when I should spend evenings doing school work and getting to bed, the extended daylight only makes me procrastinate, wishing I had time to be outside enjoying it.

I am aware that it saves energy as well as daylight, and that as an environmentalist I should be thrilled that we don’t have to use electric lighting as much now as we did a week ago. It just happens to be a very unpleasant initial change. And, since I haven’t been feeling well the past two or three days, I blame daylight saving time for messing up my health.

In other news, I have submitted all of my college applications. Hopefully there will be more than a post or two before the one revealing the admissions decisions (provided the response is agreeable).

I was doing so well with posting somewhat regularly and then I just lost it again. It’s partly because I had midterms and a paper due. It seems like I worried too much about the exams because I didn’t think they were that difficult, but I haven’t gotten the grades back yet.

Friday night Ricky and I attempted to walk up to Christina’s dorm, but we ended up taking the subway. It was already 1am and it actually felt like winter this past week. They had Cranium up there. I tried to resist playing; how could I take part in an activity that Mr. Connelly hates? Eventually I became a limited player. I feel like I betrayed him.

Possibly more important, I’m applying to colleges again. Late last semester I got really stressed and wanted to transfer to somewhere closer to home (since I come home almost every weekend anyway; I know that’s pathetic), but I’d missed all of the application dates. I wasn’t really considering it this semester until it came time to study for midterms. So now I’m applying to Swarthmore, Bryn Mawr, and Haverford. Needless to say, I’m quite worried. Although I’m not sure that I would transfer yet (I just want to have the option in case I decide to), right now I’m rather fond of the idea of transferring, so getting accepted seems like a much bigger concern than it needs to be. After all, even if I don’t get in to any of them, I’m still in college, and it’s not terrible. I think my wanting to transfer is somewhat influenced by Honey and Clover—it’s an anime about these students in an art college and they have their little group and they’re very friendly with the professor. Maybe I want something like that (as if transferring would automatically create that situation).

Other than that, there isn’t much of import except that it’s the second night in a row in which I’ll be up till five if not past then. Rearranging my sleep schedule is not a good idea when I still have 8am classes to attend.

As I was hurrying to get home from work today, this guy was completely holding up the line of people filing down the subway stairs. He had stopped on the way down to touch a deteriorating part of the ceiling and mutter “morons” to himself. I thought perhaps he had his definition wrong.

By the time I was seated in a pleasantly uncrowded F train car I had forgotten all about the guy. Then, just before the doors closed, he walked on to the car and took his place in the middle, where people usually go to beg for money for some reason or another.

This guy was different. He started off with something about how dangerous it was using MTA and pulled out a piece of the subway wall from some concealed spot to show that the subways were in disrepair. He shouted that someone (possibly a political figure, though I wasn’t familiar with the name) didn’t care. Then the best part: He held up the piece of wall to the ceiling of the subway car and told us to imagine if it fell on a little baby. [I would like to add that he told us that he pulled this wall piece from the L subway stop at some location I don’t recall; the only way it could fall on anyone is if he dropped it while vandalizing the station.]

And what has caused the subways to be in such a dangerous condition? Apparently, it’s the Daily News. He said something like, “If you want to save [money, right? No…] people’s lives [ha!], don’t buy the Daily News.” You meet all sorts of crazies on the subways of New York.

What makes this all the more entertaining is that on the street on the way home from my subway stop, I passed a guy handing out free copies of the Daily News. Influenced by the guy on the subway, I didn’t take a copy; that, or I just didn’t have an easy way to dispose of newspapers.

I’m taking Calc I, which should be pretty easy since I had a lot of it before. Still, calc was my worst subject in high school, so I’ve been worried about passing it with a sufficient grade. It’s even better that our only grades come from two midterms and the final. The first midterm was Thursday. I studied for probably four hours total (that is so much time compared to my usual studying) Wednesday night, but I didn’t know how to do one (simple) problem, and the chain rule had been giving me a lot of trouble.

So today the professor emailed us the results in a list. I first looked at the score for a person with a very similar NYU ID—F. I almost panicked, but then I realized that the A underneath that score was attached to my ID. Yay! This is silly bragging, I know, but I’m excited. The curve on that test was very reassuring. I could have gotten a C with 55%; passing didn’t even require having half of the answers correct.

I recently acquired the Final Fantasy VII soundtrack. While I was listening to it, I realized two things:
1. Unless FFVII is re-released, my little brother (who is eight today) will probably never play it. If he were to play it, the inferior graphics would detract from his ability to like it. His first experiences with video games, after all, were on the PS2.

2. That was the only Final Fantasy game I played long enough to beat. Back then I had priorities; now sleeping and homework get in the way of my playing video games. In an effort to fix this problem, I hereby resolve to beat all of the Final Fantasy games (including VIII, though that could take a while) that I have to date, as well as any that I may purchase in the future.

[Note: I didn’t feel like thinking up a title for this one. Luckily, WordPress did it for me, though this is not my actual 42nd post.]

First
NYU’s CAS Silver center is connected to two buildings: Waverly and Brown. Brown used to be the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, the very same in which all of those workers were trapped and died in the fire at the beginning of the last century. Today during Lit Int a boy interrupted the class about what he suspected was an alarm. The professor determined that since the alarm wasn’t sounding on our floor and no one else was leaving, we would stay. As soon as she finished saying this, the alarm rang a few times more audibly, so we had to leave. It was a very irregular alarm, though, staying constant for a few seconds and beeping a few more times before stopping, and then starting again. We all casually stood up and gathered our things and turned in our papers before heading out to the crowd in the hall waiting to get into the Silver stairwell. If it had been a serious, real fire, people probably would have died. Taking the Waverly stairs is definitely a quicker escape, even with the slight disorientation at coming out from a different stairwell on the ground floor. Still, the fire escape routes here do not seem much improved.

Second
1. One of the black belts brought (presumably) his child to stretch class last night. It almost made me want (to adopt) a baby. The kid, who couldn’t even walk on his (her?) own yet, wore a little gi complete with a white belt. He (she?) was probably the most adorable baby I’ve ever seen.

2. Slightly worrisome: A sensei (4th dan) is leaving the Seido organization, and not just because he is moving. He assured us at the end of class that there was nothing wrong with Seido and encouraged us to keep training. He said that it was time for him to move on, and though the path would change, the love of karate was still there. So maybe he wants to start his own school? That’s what Kaicho did when he withdrew from Kyokushin. But Kaicho withdrew because he disagreed with the choices made by and the new beliefs of Oyama Kancho. In reading Kaicho’s (probably biased) autobiography, I realized how fortunate it was that I was turned off by the kumite emphasis in Kyokushin (which had seemed highly appealing until I observed a class) because I too disagreed with the principles of the grandmaster. So if a sensei is leaving Seido forever, does that suggest that there are now such flaws in my style? It does not seem possible considering how strong Kaicho’s feelings were just 30 years ago. Still, I must be alert to changes in the organization and not continue training blindly if definite problems make themselves known.

Today is already probably my least favorite day of the week because it means I have to catch up on all of the homework I didn’t do all weekend and I have to adjust my comfortable sleep schedule (bed at 4am, wake at noon) for the coming four days of school and work. This particular Sunday shouldn’t have been too bad, though. I actually got up and made it to an am class of Seido. So I stayed for two classes, both taught by the same instructor. One of the girls who took the class—who happens to pronounce her name the same way I pronounce mine, though her spelling is quite unusual—kept talking after class about how “fabulous” the instructor was. Hmm. I rather disagree. He was late for the 11am class and made us start another kata at 12, when the next class was supposed to start, so the following class ran over, too. It was supposed to end at 12:45, and at 12:53 he said something very along the lines of, “Well, this class ran over, too. We’ll do one more kata. Is anyone late for an appointment? They can go.” So I left, not just out of principle but because I was actually supposed to be somewhere at two.

And that two o’clock event, which should have been the subject of this blog post, was the PAS Mini-mini-con I. When I was at my dorm preparing to head over to Brooklyn, my RA dropped by to do the one-on-one survey thing. She did say that she was considering running a ski trip, and I told her I’d go on that. Then she wanted me to give her an idea for a program that I would attend—like knitting club or getting together in Starbucks (heh) for philosophical conversations. Uhh…. So I had to tell her I’m not really into that socializing thing, by choice, but I don’t know if I’m going to get away with not going to any of the floor’s activities for the rest of the year. She’s probably a really good RA; I just don’t necessarily want to hang out with anyone.

Anyway, back to anime. So I made it to Brooklyn just fine and, with a little help from one of those corner shop salesmen, found my way to the hall where the convention was to be held. The guy at the front desk said he didn’t know where it was (that was okay because I did), but that some other guys were in the building trying to find it, too. So I go up to the fourth floor and I passed the room where the video games (including DDR) were supposed to be. That room was empty and dark. Still optimistic, I figured maybe not too many people showed up, so they condensed all of the activities down to one room. I got to the other room—the one for showing anime—and found two guys sitting outside checking their cell phones and talking about the PAS. We introduced ourselves and discussed the lack of a convention. The trip wasn’t completely a waste, though. We talked about anime, etc. The older guy was very knowledgeable. They recommended things to me, too. People are so helpful. After about half an hour of waiting, we all left. They guy at the front desk talked to us for a little while before we left, and he told us about this website, which he made it seem like he wrote, though I couldn’t be sure.

I had hoped this excursion today would have lasted until 8 or so, and then I would have to come home and have dinner and do homework and sleep. But now I’ve got time to procrastinate.