It's been a busy week - surprise, surprise. Done something everyday - many experiences.
Monday: Naveen's friend Elise was still in town on business, so we went down to Houston St. for sushi. BTW, it's pronounced House-ton, not like the city in Texas - very confusing. So we met her and her cousin there - it had good sushi. We had some good conversation too. It strikes me that Naveen is very close to his friends - her really does treat them like family. He was already sharing dinner with Elise before I had determined what I was getting last weekend! So that was pretty fun.
Tuesday: I worked. Let me just say for those that wonder if I get anything done - I do work from 8:40 to at least 5:15, sometimes till 7pm everyday. So there. But today I went home early to go swimming. And I did 26 laps! I was so proud of myself - it was wonderful. For some reason it was an easy day, and I just flowed. I got a bit tired of the frog-stroke, but was awesome at free-style (that's the one with the regular kick, right?). I just chugged ahead. I gave myself 45 minutes, and when I had completed my goal of 20 laps, there was more time, so I just kept going. And made it to 26 in just under 45 minutes - go me. So that was the goal I set for myself. Now I looked it up - officially 1 mile is 29 laps (about), so now I'll go for that goal in the next 2 weeks while the pool is still open (closes at Labor Day - boo :-(). I love swimming. Then went home, got a quick shower and dinner, and Naveen and I headed to a concert of "Badly Drawn Boy" at Spiegeltent down on South Seaport. It was awesome - this semi-large tent (but only held maybe a couple hundred people) set up on the pier for concerts. Nice atmosphere - dark curtain-like material and booths lining the side, then a wooden floor in the middle in front of the stage. And the pier outside also was right on the water and had a bar and tables and a beautiful view of the Brooklyn Bride! Great spot! So we listened to the band and the guy from Manchester was just fabulous. Really into his music - emotional, passionate. He was in a funky mood, but he seemed to just play what he wanted and had fun with teh music. I liked his songs about wrestling with life. Naveen and I sorta bonded over the music. And the guy played several different guitars, harmonica, piano, and sung lead. Awesome. Just good fun. I sat and wondered - why Naveen likes somewhat melancholy music (lots of emotions and talking about the hardships of life and love) when he doesn't tolerate negative emotions in real life. I asked him after and he said it was just more poetic. And some of the songs of this guy made me just want to experience life more - that's when I really wanted to go and live in another country for awhile. Although I have to say, I'm doing a pretty good job of experiencing life now. :-). For some reason I thought Matt would've really liked the concert. It was just good stuff. Made me happy.
Wednesday: Work again. Stayed late, but got home and rushed out the door again to meet our guests for dinner - Bret (Naveen's roommate) and his girlfriend Alison. They are really fun people. They had seen this guy try this Kabob place on that show "No Reservations" where a chef travels around the world trying whatever food wherever, and tries to appreciate it. So we went to the place from the show in Queens. Sorta darker than Manhattan - a little different feel. But wow was the restaurant neat. Tiny place - like 5 tables crammed in a 8 x 25 foot place. Colorful eclectic art all over the walls. We sat down and asked the guy behind the counter if there was a menu. He said (in an accent) "I'm the menu. You nice to me, I give you good food, you not nice, you get no food." Ok then! We asked for drinks - they have no water. You have to order something. He listed a bunch of things that they had that day for food, and we said yes we like lamb, and then he said he'd just bring whatever he wanted for us and we'd really like it. Which was true. We had this awesome hummus and falafel place to start with pita bread. Then he brought 4 huge plates of meat sauteed with vegies and some were over rice. 1 was hunks of lamb (on the bone), one was beef ribs, one was beef kabobs, and one was chicken, rabbit and duck. They each had their own vegies which I loved - okra, squash and eggplant, tomatoes, greens. I don't even know about some of them. All was just so tasty - so much food! We were very pleased :-). Crazy place. As with a lot of places in NY I don't know the name and only vaguely know the cross streets of this place :-). But it was a great experience. And the company was fun too!
Thursday: Work again. But briefly this time - Naveen came to work with me and gave a talk at IBM - a fabulous talk, by the way. Went well. Then we left at lunch because a guy in my department organized a large paintball match for IBMers that afternoon. We had to drive 45 minutes to get to the paintball place in the middle of the forest. Holy cow. Paintball is a bit intense. I'm glad I tried it, but wow. So we put on all this camoflauge gear and we had a protective mask thing, then our paint-guns. It was a hot day and I had 2 layers of clothes on and heavy boots. So we sweated a lot. And we were just running through fields or trees shooting at each other, hiding behind little obstacles set up. Dude, I couldn't do real war - too scary. And believe me, it hurt to get hit with paintballs. I wasn't very good at first. Well, to give an example - although I bruise easily, I found 10 welts on my body when I came home - most larger than golfball size, even though the bullets are like quarter-sized. Ouch bruises. Naveen couldn't find any on him. His team won most of the time, and he definitely killed more people than I did, and ran more because he was in the game longer. But I had fun, and I felt like I was getting more tactics down by the end, but it maybe is more of a guy's game? Don't know - a bit intense really. We mostly played capture the flag on various fields. It was fun to play with work people, though, and we took pictures - I'll post them sometime I promise!
Today is Friday! I actually got 8 hours of sleep last night so that was fun. Our guests are here until Sunday morning, but another guest comes tomorrow (Sat) morning and leaves Monday afternoon. So I'm sure it'll be a full weekend of city things. Tonight we are supposed to go to see MacBeth in the park :-). And I'm sure dinner after that.
I've been having a ton of conversations lately about life, computer science, career, work/life balance. I'm slowly figuring things out, but it's hard, and there are always unknowns. I still really feel fortunate to have met some of the friends I have here - especially Emina and Shan Shan. It's fun to have these long conversations with people in a similar sitution. Awesome people. But basically I'm not cut out for cutthroat research. I don't know if other fields are like this, but often it seems like Comp Sci people - really successful ones - sacrifice their life for their career. And that just won't make me happy. In several ways I don't quite fit into this field - it's competitiveness and all. But I think I can still do good work and I can't measure myself by other's standards. Now I'm actually thinking of industry - I guess working for IBM basically. Industry does afford some work/life balance - more so than some academic jobs. And the culture is great here. But I wonder if I'd miss teaching. It's really that, or going to a lesser place to teach - not so stressful. Or moving to some random country and working at a coffee shop :-). We'll see. At least I'm evaluating things and it's nice to have these conversations!
Alright - enough for now. Happy weekend from NYC!
Friday, August 17, 2007
Wednesday, August 15, 2007
Places I have lived
Here is a list of the places I have lived (not visited - although if there's interest I could enumerate that too - it'll just take longer). It's in order because I like that :-), although I only list places once.
Salt Lake City, Utah
Scottsdale, Arizona
Tucson, Arizona
Madrid, Spain
Durham, North Carolina
Austin, Texas
Portland, Oregon
New York, New York
Very fun. More to come I believe - I have the exploration itch.
In other random tidbits - I believe I am an engineer at heart. And women here mostly wear skirts or sundresses (out and about) - maybe it's a good Jewish girl thing. I need to find more good skirts.
More about how awesome last night was later (26 laps + Badly Drawn Boy). Good thoughts to you all.
Salt Lake City, Utah
Scottsdale, Arizona
Tucson, Arizona
Madrid, Spain
Durham, North Carolina
Austin, Texas
Portland, Oregon
New York, New York
Very fun. More to come I believe - I have the exploration itch.
In other random tidbits - I believe I am an engineer at heart. And women here mostly wear skirts or sundresses (out and about) - maybe it's a good Jewish girl thing. I need to find more good skirts.
More about how awesome last night was later (26 laps + Badly Drawn Boy). Good thoughts to you all.
Monday, August 13, 2007
Free at last
Phew - I'm finally coming up for air after my paper deadline! Feels good :-).
Some highlights of the last week - swimming 22 laps! Going to restaurant named "Hell's Kitchen" and seeing new Die Hard movie. Sleeping a lot. Department picnic up at mountain resort way north - with some great hiking (aka rock scrambling). Dinner at Tunisian place. Going to Bodies exhibit at South Seaport (old pier/harbor/port). Dinner with friends at a Mexican place, then dessert at a bonafide Chocolate Shop! Then (failed) attempts to play tennis.
So unfortunately we didn't submit the paper that I was working so hard on for weeks. Lovely to work that hard, then have it come to a not-so-satisfying conclusion. We decided to kill it the day of the deadline too. I don't regret working hard, and I think the project came a long way in those last weeks. And I think I proved myself to some people. But it's sad that we didn't get good enough results to submit the paper. We still believe in the project and will keep working on it to get good enough results to submit it to a future conference. But this research thing - it's tough, and draining on a person. Ups and downs. And now I might actually switch gears and work on some different project with IBM for the rest of my internship - we'll see. Luck is cyclic, right? (Because there is an element of luck in research) I'm bound to have 1 project work out if I wait long enough, right? :-). But I have to say Naveen was so good to me during the paper deadline. He saw how hard I was working, and although he was working just as hard, he tried to help me by making dinners and cheering me on. So nice to have that support - yay!
So I came home Tuesday and went swimming in Central Park to work out frustrations. I swam 22 laps and it felt great! Was very proud of myself :-). Still love that. Then Naveen and I crashed and slept 12 hours that night! Ah sleep :-). Wednesday we took it easy on ourselves - staying around the house in teh afternoon and cleaning a bit (so our place wasn't a cyclone). Then we went out to a movie! We saw the new Die Hard which was pretty entertaining. Then went and found a restaurant to eat at - we ended up at "Hell's Kitchen" which was very interesting. I had some tasty fish, and Naveen had spicy pork.
Thursday, luckily, my whole department at IBM was at a dept picnic not at the office! We spent the day at a beautiful Mountain resort up north. Mohonk for those in the know. Beautiful grounds, good food. Too bad we couldn't row or swim in the lake - that was beautiful. But we went hiking up to the Skytop which had a great view of surrounding green valleys. Well, so hiking actually meant climbing over and under rocks - big boulders. It was pretty fun. Then we got to "The Crevice" or "Lemon Squeeze". Basically there were places it was hard to squeeze through - especially with a backpack on! Between a rock and... another rock. And we went on narrow ladders up small canyons, then walked back into the canyon that wouldn't fit more than 1 person across, then had to rock climb out of this canyon! Scary, but a good workout :-). We had fun. And I have to say again, the 2.5 hour ride up and back with Emina and Shan Shan were my favorite parts! We totally geeked out and giggled and got to know each other. We talked about everything - morality, religion, science, women in Computer Science, boys, life balance, career, marriage. They kept referencing New York Times articles, so man do I have to read those more :-). But it was all very interesting and fun. We also talked about Naveen's latest theory that finding your one true passion - the thing you choose above all others - leads to maximizing happiness. And about criticism of people you are close to... It all makes a person think.
So it was a great Thursday away from actual work which was nice for me. Friday I actually went back to work for real :-). Although was in talks most of the day... But we are working on where I'll go next with my work with IBM - could be exciting. Friday night Naveen and I walked back down the 30 blocks to find the Tunisian place again and we found it! It was sorta like Moroccan food we thought. We had a great appetizer of brik. Which is like this egg and tuna and potato concoction in crispy phyllo dough. The for food I had the b'stilla which was awesome. Its this nice pastry thing filled with chicken and good stuff, with a little powdered sugar on top. And Naveen had some lamb chops, merguez which is lamb sausage, and some Mediterranean salad and salsa - both tasty.
Saturday we headed down to South Seaport for some fun, and the Bodies exhibit. I like the seaport, although the shops are basically mall shops. But there are a lot of eateries, and there was a brewery which Naveen likes, and some neat old sailing ships that you can tour. Some street performers too. So we saw the Bodies exhibit - woah did my head spin. Sorta literally. Maybe it was dehydration, but I came out of there a little off-balance - like after a rollercoaster. So if you haven't heard of it, it's an exhibit with real human bodies that shows one system at a time - skeletal, muscular, nervous, circulatory, digestive, urinary and reproductive, then fetal development. All real people, preserved. You walk around them and read all about how amazing human bodies are. It was really cool, but you can see the creepiness factor in it too. The last room had 2 bodies sliced - one vertical slices, the other many many horizontal slices. Very cool, and odd. You just have to desensitize yourself to it :-). The exhibit I think is a very good teaching tool. So after that, we needed some beer - so we got some at the brewery :-). Then we wandered up through the lower east side, China town, and then the East Village leisurely. It was fun just to walk, though a bit tiring. We got egg rolls off a street cart in Chinatown - 3 for $1 - awesome! And in East Village we found a ton of neat restaurants and drinkeries. We met friends for dinner - and I gave in to Mexican finally (Naveen's been wanting it). But it was a really cute place. Naveen's friend from college Elise was visiting, so she was there, as well as Emina and fiance Aled. Good times. For dessert we decided to head to Max Brenner's Chocolate Bar a block away. Emina LOVES chocolate :-). We all shared the Chocolate Mess for 4-6 people. Wow was it true to it's name! Sort of chocolate cake underneath with strawberries, whip cream, ice cream on top, and we could put our own toppings on top - sauces and sprinklings of different chocolates. Holy cow. Sugar rush. We were definitely satisfied.
Sunday was definitely a sleep in day. I definitely caught up on sleep from Tuesday night on last week :-). This day contained the many failures of trying to play tennis. We walked over 20 blocks to the 119th courts in Riverside Park (they were hardcourt whereas most in the area are clay). Along the way we stopped at about 6 stores searching for tennis balls, to no avail. Thinking maybe we could borrow some, we still went to the courts. We could've gotten a court for a little over an hour later, but we didn't have tickets. We thought we could buy passes at the actual courts, but no - we need to go to the courts at Central Park to get passes. Ugh. Then we decided to just cut our loses and run a bit around Central Park (after walking another 20 blocks back home). We did that, and checked out the courts at Central Park afterwards (drenched in sweat). They of course said to get courts there you had to show up when they opened at 6:30am to get a court for the same day. And if you didn't get there 15 minutes before your court time, the Tennis Mafia would steal your court - no joke. So yeah - playing tennis here is a bit tough! So we retreated home, made a fabulous dinner of blueberry pancakes, bacon, and fruit salad, and did chores around the house that evening :-). We have lately been addicted to this Iceroad Truckers show on TV.
So this is definitely a long enough blog! I am a little more well-balanced now. And looking forward to fun - we have guests this week/weekend. I wonder if I'll get to a real point of relaxation someday. I really haven't had a day of doing nothing for months I think. Maybe that's why people say reading about my activities exhaust them :-). But there's just too much to do now! Hope all's well...
Some highlights of the last week - swimming 22 laps! Going to restaurant named "Hell's Kitchen" and seeing new Die Hard movie. Sleeping a lot. Department picnic up at mountain resort way north - with some great hiking (aka rock scrambling). Dinner at Tunisian place. Going to Bodies exhibit at South Seaport (old pier/harbor/port). Dinner with friends at a Mexican place, then dessert at a bonafide Chocolate Shop! Then (failed) attempts to play tennis.
So unfortunately we didn't submit the paper that I was working so hard on for weeks. Lovely to work that hard, then have it come to a not-so-satisfying conclusion. We decided to kill it the day of the deadline too. I don't regret working hard, and I think the project came a long way in those last weeks. And I think I proved myself to some people. But it's sad that we didn't get good enough results to submit the paper. We still believe in the project and will keep working on it to get good enough results to submit it to a future conference. But this research thing - it's tough, and draining on a person. Ups and downs. And now I might actually switch gears and work on some different project with IBM for the rest of my internship - we'll see. Luck is cyclic, right? (Because there is an element of luck in research) I'm bound to have 1 project work out if I wait long enough, right? :-). But I have to say Naveen was so good to me during the paper deadline. He saw how hard I was working, and although he was working just as hard, he tried to help me by making dinners and cheering me on. So nice to have that support - yay!
So I came home Tuesday and went swimming in Central Park to work out frustrations. I swam 22 laps and it felt great! Was very proud of myself :-). Still love that. Then Naveen and I crashed and slept 12 hours that night! Ah sleep :-). Wednesday we took it easy on ourselves - staying around the house in teh afternoon and cleaning a bit (so our place wasn't a cyclone). Then we went out to a movie! We saw the new Die Hard which was pretty entertaining. Then went and found a restaurant to eat at - we ended up at "Hell's Kitchen" which was very interesting. I had some tasty fish, and Naveen had spicy pork.
Thursday, luckily, my whole department at IBM was at a dept picnic not at the office! We spent the day at a beautiful Mountain resort up north. Mohonk for those in the know. Beautiful grounds, good food. Too bad we couldn't row or swim in the lake - that was beautiful. But we went hiking up to the Skytop which had a great view of surrounding green valleys. Well, so hiking actually meant climbing over and under rocks - big boulders. It was pretty fun. Then we got to "The Crevice" or "Lemon Squeeze". Basically there were places it was hard to squeeze through - especially with a backpack on! Between a rock and... another rock. And we went on narrow ladders up small canyons, then walked back into the canyon that wouldn't fit more than 1 person across, then had to rock climb out of this canyon! Scary, but a good workout :-). We had fun. And I have to say again, the 2.5 hour ride up and back with Emina and Shan Shan were my favorite parts! We totally geeked out and giggled and got to know each other. We talked about everything - morality, religion, science, women in Computer Science, boys, life balance, career, marriage. They kept referencing New York Times articles, so man do I have to read those more :-). But it was all very interesting and fun. We also talked about Naveen's latest theory that finding your one true passion - the thing you choose above all others - leads to maximizing happiness. And about criticism of people you are close to... It all makes a person think.
So it was a great Thursday away from actual work which was nice for me. Friday I actually went back to work for real :-). Although was in talks most of the day... But we are working on where I'll go next with my work with IBM - could be exciting. Friday night Naveen and I walked back down the 30 blocks to find the Tunisian place again and we found it! It was sorta like Moroccan food we thought. We had a great appetizer of brik. Which is like this egg and tuna and potato concoction in crispy phyllo dough. The for food I had the b'stilla which was awesome. Its this nice pastry thing filled with chicken and good stuff, with a little powdered sugar on top. And Naveen had some lamb chops, merguez which is lamb sausage, and some Mediterranean salad and salsa - both tasty.
Saturday we headed down to South Seaport for some fun, and the Bodies exhibit. I like the seaport, although the shops are basically mall shops. But there are a lot of eateries, and there was a brewery which Naveen likes, and some neat old sailing ships that you can tour. Some street performers too. So we saw the Bodies exhibit - woah did my head spin. Sorta literally. Maybe it was dehydration, but I came out of there a little off-balance - like after a rollercoaster. So if you haven't heard of it, it's an exhibit with real human bodies that shows one system at a time - skeletal, muscular, nervous, circulatory, digestive, urinary and reproductive, then fetal development. All real people, preserved. You walk around them and read all about how amazing human bodies are. It was really cool, but you can see the creepiness factor in it too. The last room had 2 bodies sliced - one vertical slices, the other many many horizontal slices. Very cool, and odd. You just have to desensitize yourself to it :-). The exhibit I think is a very good teaching tool. So after that, we needed some beer - so we got some at the brewery :-). Then we wandered up through the lower east side, China town, and then the East Village leisurely. It was fun just to walk, though a bit tiring. We got egg rolls off a street cart in Chinatown - 3 for $1 - awesome! And in East Village we found a ton of neat restaurants and drinkeries. We met friends for dinner - and I gave in to Mexican finally (Naveen's been wanting it). But it was a really cute place. Naveen's friend from college Elise was visiting, so she was there, as well as Emina and fiance Aled. Good times. For dessert we decided to head to Max Brenner's Chocolate Bar a block away. Emina LOVES chocolate :-). We all shared the Chocolate Mess for 4-6 people. Wow was it true to it's name! Sort of chocolate cake underneath with strawberries, whip cream, ice cream on top, and we could put our own toppings on top - sauces and sprinklings of different chocolates. Holy cow. Sugar rush. We were definitely satisfied.
Sunday was definitely a sleep in day. I definitely caught up on sleep from Tuesday night on last week :-). This day contained the many failures of trying to play tennis. We walked over 20 blocks to the 119th courts in Riverside Park (they were hardcourt whereas most in the area are clay). Along the way we stopped at about 6 stores searching for tennis balls, to no avail. Thinking maybe we could borrow some, we still went to the courts. We could've gotten a court for a little over an hour later, but we didn't have tickets. We thought we could buy passes at the actual courts, but no - we need to go to the courts at Central Park to get passes. Ugh. Then we decided to just cut our loses and run a bit around Central Park (after walking another 20 blocks back home). We did that, and checked out the courts at Central Park afterwards (drenched in sweat). They of course said to get courts there you had to show up when they opened at 6:30am to get a court for the same day. And if you didn't get there 15 minutes before your court time, the Tennis Mafia would steal your court - no joke. So yeah - playing tennis here is a bit tough! So we retreated home, made a fabulous dinner of blueberry pancakes, bacon, and fruit salad, and did chores around the house that evening :-). We have lately been addicted to this Iceroad Truckers show on TV.
So this is definitely a long enough blog! I am a little more well-balanced now. And looking forward to fun - we have guests this week/weekend. I wonder if I'll get to a real point of relaxation someday. I really haven't had a day of doing nothing for months I think. Maybe that's why people say reading about my activities exhaust them :-). But there's just too much to do now! Hope all's well...
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