Translation is the Art of Failure

Picture of the Day

What is the difference between these two books? They are both called Mechanics of Materials and both by some fellow named R.C. Hibbeler. If you were to say one is a dirty yellow and the other a steely blue, you would be right but that is not the answer I am looking for. If you were to say one is the 7th edition and the other is the 8th edition, you would also be right, but again that is not what I am looking for.

The difference between these two books is one hundred and thirty dollars.

I found out that it didn't matter which edition we had and that night came back, printed a return label for the 8th edition and ordered the 7th.

Story of the Day

I have two roommates. One named Rafa, from Spain, and the other named Shaowei, from Hong Kong. Recently Shaowei's wife received a visa to come to the United States and after one year of being married, long distance, they finally get to live in the same place.

I just happen to share that space. And this is my story.

Shaowei is a PhD candidate in advanced physics and as such, is in the lab almost all day. K_____, his wife, just got to the United States and has no occupation that I know of. From what I can tell she is their room all day and only comes out at meal times to make food (side note: have you ever seen Chinese bread?). I don't know what she does with her time but since I work from home, it is just the two of us in the apartment for most of the day. Still, I only see her at meal times.

Today, after my required eight hours of work. I had hardly moved from my desk and was in desperate need to stretch my legs. It was about 5:30PM and as such, K_____ was in the kitchen making dinner for herself and Shaowei.

As I was on my way out I stopped and said "Hi." The conversation that followed went like this:

K_: Hi John. Where are you going?

Me: I am going for a walk.

K_: Oh a wa... what?

Me: A WalK.

(Pause)

K_: Oh a walk.

          Have fun on your walk.

Me: Thank you I will. I like your dress by the way.

(she was wearing a summery dress with flowers and a lot of ruffles, it was a cute dress but this compliment was my first mistake)

K_: Oh. Sorry, what?

Me: I like your Dress.

K_: Sorry, I don't understand.

Me: Your Dress. What you are wearing. 

(I fan my hands out and pull them across my body)

Me: Your Dress.

(pause)

K_: Oh, I see.

              You like my chest.

Me: (crap)

GTBKOC: Palo Verde Graduate Housing

So it is nine o'clock and let's face it. I am not going anywhere else tonight. It is has been a long day. Full of eight hours of work and two hours of class.  Anyways, now seems like a good time to give you a tour of my current living situation.

So here it is! That is the door to my apartment. Inside are mysteries I'll save for a later date. In the meantime, there it is. That plant looks sad and dead and well, it is. Still, I like the austerity and it is something unique to stop me from entering the wrong apartment.

That is my building on the right. Our apartment is on the top floor and if you look carefully, between the branches you can the window to my room. You can't tell from this shot but I can actually see all the way to Costa Mesa from up there.

Palo Verde houses exclusively graduate students and their families but it is massive and, at the right angles, would have made Piranesi gasp.

Still, at other angles it is quite nice.

 

It even has its own garden area where willing residents can sign up for plots.

 

Also, I now live in the land of baby trees.

And here it is in all its splendor, adorning the very edge of UCI's campus.

This was fun, was it not?

ItsTtoBloggin: New Job!

The Richman Group Company Headquarters in Connecticut

Quite a bit has happened recently but I'll start with the most exciting news. I am employed again!

The Hamilton, a Richman Group development in New York

About two weeks ago I received an email from the Cornell AAP (Architecture Art and Planning) career services about a full time summer position working for a development company. I probably get an email from them about once a month with job opportunities but they are normally located in New York or Chicago. However, this job would be in Yorba Linda, California, or about halfway in between Irvine and Loma Linda. Convenient.

I whipped up a great cover letter and sent that off with my resume. A few hours later I had an interview lined up for the following Monday. The catch came on Sunday when I got a second email requesting that I bring a pro forma along with me. I had to look up what a pro forma was and even then, had to call my good friend Tanner to have him explain it to me.

I emailed back and explained that if they were looking for an analyst I don't have any experience as such. Luckily, they emailed back and said they were still interested in meeting.

The interview took place at a Starbucks in Yorba Linda. Even though the Richman Group has some ten billion dollars worth of real estate holdings, they do not yet have an office in California. Pam, the woman who was interviewing me, came out to California to start TRG Pacific Development (TRG stands for The Richman Group) three years ago and has been so busy with proposals and construction that finding an office hasn't been a priority until now. Anyways, the interview went great and a few days later I was hired!

 Not a Richman Group holding, "the Michelson"

I have been telling everyone this but, it turns out a Cornell connection is worth more than any actual experience or knowledge.

Oh and I work mostly from home, more on that later, but every once in a while I get to go out. Yesterday I attended a reception for the Urban Land Initiative on the roof garden of the newest and tallest building in Orange County.

Sky Garden on top of the Michelson, my apartment is right where the railing meets the far wall

Kari and I are engaged!

and I couldn't be happier.

I also am now living in Irvine, CA. I know, I know. This is a lot for one blog post. I just want to say that I am entering a new phase of my life (Engagement and Grad School Part II) and for those of you who still occasionally glance this way, I am planning on keeping up this blog as a way of sharing my new experiences. So, in the first stages, keep an eye out for two new types of posts: ItsTtoBloggin (It is Time to Blog Again) and GTBKOC (Get to Better Know Orange County).

Sunday Morning

So here I am again. Today I however I chose Santa Barbara Roasting Co, which used to be one of my favorites. It used to be one of my favorites because it is now overrun by the most peculiar people. It is an otherwise very enjoyable environment and they do have great coffee.

Yesterday was Westmont's Commencement. The Class of 2011 is leaving Westmont forever and this is significant because the Class of 2011 is the class of my residents from when I was a freshmen RA. I was entering my third year when they were entering their first. I was a senior when they were sophomores and I was in New York when they were juniors. I say this because yesterday was filled with das Unheimliche. I left for one year and returned to find that three had passed, just like a real life twin paradox.

Evan was working commencement so Matt and I rode up with him (to take advantage of his parking pass) but then were left to fend for ourselves. This is what Matt looks like:

I am very proud of all my S&Q men. Earlier in the week I stumbled across this year's yearbook and found that all of the guy senior standouts (full page bios) were from my section. I went, yearbook in hand, to anyone in the office who would listen and pointed this out. That is why I was not surprised that both of the awards given to outstanding seniors were given to guys from my section.

Dan Sargent (above) was given the Dean's Award, for superior academic achievement and significant contribution to an intercollegiate team. Dan has started for the soccer team since he was in my section. On top of that, Dan managed to graduate with 3.91 GPA. In the award, his coach was quoted saying that Dan was the best scholar athlete he has had in twenty years. He is going to graduate school at Columbia next year and still manages to be one of the most humble guys I know. When he first showed up at Westmont his suite mates learned of his high school exploits not from him, but from a facebook group people in his high school had started, devoted solely to him. Still not convinced of how awesome Dan is? What if I told you his middle name is Van Dam? No joke, his full name is Daniel Van Dam Sargent.

 Felix Huang was given the Kenneth Monroe award and had similar distinctions. He was student body president by the end of his sophomore year and things only got better from there. Felix lived in my suite when I was an RA. I witnessed how he would take the cares of all Westmont on his shoulder.

As strange as it was, I was very proud and it was great to see how far they had all come.

Saturday Morning

I don't mean to wake up early on the weekends but it always seems to happen anyways. Today however, instead of bringing a blanket out to the living room and reading or, more likely, playing video games, I was forced to shower and go out in search of breakfast elsewhere. We had a house guest in our living room and very few people have the same problem I do of sleeping in.

So I am at Starbucks. I set up my computer in a corner and have been sitting, stunned by the amount of people passing through. At any given point this morning every chair is filled, there are ten to fifteen people in line and a similar number standing at the bar, waiting for drinks. Granted, it is the morning of Westmont's graduation, it is still impressive the volume of customers.

The Adventures of Evan and John: Part II

Saturday:

The first thing we (mom, dad, Evan, and I) did on Saturday was drive out to Alpine for breakfast at Janet's cafe. I had a fruit, yogurt, and granola bowl that 10% yogurt, 7% granola, 80% fruit and 3% lettuce.

The second thing we did was search for nylon strapping to attach the new pool cover to the roller. We went to two hardware stores in Alpine and finally to Leslie's Pool Supply.

By this time it was around noon and we had nothing planned until dinner. Evan and I decided to go on an adventure downtown to the Museum of Contemporary Art (MCASD). We arrived at the downtown location, there is another branch in La Jolla, we discovered that there were only three exhibits open. Undeterred, we threw on our visitor stickers, a white, circular sticker with an obese orange 'x' in the middle, and made our way into the galleries.

Exhibit A - Video artist. Subject: North American southwest, post-pre-colonialism.
Walking into a darkened gallery, the first video a visitor is presented with depicts the artist, walking on all fours, wearing a coyote mask on the top of her head. Subsequent displays: artist in a field, artist in a rocking chair with a dog. All video footage of the artist is done against a changing backdrop, representative I guess, of the milieu of contemporary contradictions in the southwest.

Exhibit B - Mixed media sculptor. Subject: Itself.

Exhibit C - Video artist. Subject: Nuclear reactions and Madame Curie.

The whole experience took about twenty minutes. However, we still had time on our parking meter so we decided to walk around for a bit. A few blocks to the north and we stumbled upon an urban farmer's market running through little Italy. We strolled through and still had enough time to get back before the meter was up.

The afternoon was filled with poolside languor and the kind of movies that are only fit to watch in the afternoon. We concluded the night with burgers at Station Tavern in my new favorite part of San Diego, South Park.

The Adventures of Evan and John Part 1

I just returned from a wonderful weekend in San Diego.

It went something like this:

Friday:

Matt no.1 (Roommate), Matt no.2 (Marine, high school friend of Matt no.1), Evan and I all pile into Matt no.1's little Toyota Matrix. Three and a half hours later we roll into Carlsbad and drop Matt no.2 off. It is about one o'clock and we are hungry, not to mention exhausted from approximately two hundred and ten minutes of hardcore underground rap. Matt no.1 (just Matt from now on), Evan and I grab some "real" Mexican food, because "Santa Barbara has crappy Mexican food," from hole-in-the-wall Filiberto's in Encinitas. We roll from there, down the coast to Matt's house. There we discover photo albums of thug-life, high-schooler MattyG. He has a neck the size of my thigh and shoulders set about as wide as a Voltswagon beetle. He was a star lineman on Torrey Pine's high school football team.

Around three my Dad makes the trek to Solana Beach to retrieve Evan and I. We return to Rancho San Diego for just long enough to say hi to Mom before heading out again. Our next destination is Halcyon Tea in South Park. Friday nights they do a free tea tasting from five to seven p.m. Like wine tasting, they start with the lighter teas first. Beginning with a white tea they move towards the darker, more oxidized teas as the night goes on and the sun goes down. Evan and I arrived shortly after five and sat down with two other customers at the far end of the bar. One, a late-twenties Asian guy wearing a baseball cap and Cal t-shirt. The other, a forty-to-fifty year old woman who had recently been laid off. The former felt the need to constantly remind us he had just come from Hamilton's, a local dive bar. The later felt the need to constantly remind us how pitiable her life is; no, you should not make your tea in the microwave and yes you have mentioned that you are just making tea just for one.

The first half an hour went relatively smoothly. Evan and I were cracking jokes, making everyone laugh. The inebriated asian guy (IAG) was providing adequate entertainment as well:

IAG: I love that poo air.

Me: (snorts tea, chokes) What was that?

IAG: The poo air.

Me: You'll really have to excuse me. What?

IAG: I love the way the poo air smells. It just tickles my nostricles.

Me: ...

All tea is made from the same tea plant. The tea leaf becomes a white, green or black tea based on how it is processed after harvesting. A Pu-erh is a type of Chinese tea that is aged and fermented after it is initially processed. Pu-erh teas can be made from green or black teas and are aged anywhere from one to forty years. In IAG's defense, they smell amazing.

By six o'clock we were joined by a small balding man who had died his thinning hair a jet black, possibly to match his younger, Asian girlfriend. By sixty thirty our crowd had grown to include a weekly "regular," probably another poo-air expert, and a small cohort of Korean grandmothers.

All together, a very enjoyable experience.

Worst 13.1 Miles of My Life

mile1.
It is a bit cold outside but life is good, I can do this.

mile2.
Kari and I running together, talking, joking, and generally having a good time.

mile3.
I leave Kari behind, picking up the pace a bit. My right knee starts to hurt but every person I pass is a place I move up.

mile4.
Right knee really sore and tight, I start experimenting with different gaits

mile5.
Right knee really hurts but there are winner and losers and I am a winner

mile6.
I am actually loser, can't run downhill at all and slow to a walk.

mile7.
I can't run at all by this point. Every person I passed is now passing me, probably laughing.

mile8.
Kari catches up to me, checks in, runs on.

mile9.
I have to walk how many more miles!? This is going to take forever.

mile10.
There are still people passing me. A few concerned racers ask if I am OK. A few more offer words of encouragement.

mile11.
It is now painful just to walk. I am going really, really slow. Three old Asian men pass me.

mile12.
I can see all the way down to mile thirteen. I can also see Kari walking my way. If I was

mile13.
With Kari's help I've almost made it.

mile13.1.
I limp across the finish line in 511th place. I eat an orange slice and find a place to sit while Kari goes for the car. I am not exhausted, just relieved that the pain has stopped. I thought that I would have been embarrassed by my performance but it was such a long trek and as I finish I realize this is not the case.

Freedom, a Novel by Jonathan Franzen

Whoa.

A lot just happened. I was accepted to University of California, Irvine and almost died from shock. I also ran-walked a half-marathon and almost died from physical pain. Ok. Maybe that is not a lot. Maybe it is just two things. Still, those were significant events and two near-death experiences for one week is a lot!

So,

Irvine it is!

I am really, really to excited to say this. Irvine, was my first choice and, as many of you know, my last chance. I had all but let go of the possibility of graduate school a week ago when I got the email. This all sounds a bit dramatic but it was surprisingly was quite the opposite. I really had a peace about my future before I found that out. It was just slightly more peaceful to find a plan for next year. It is not that the rejections made this acceptance sweeter. It is just good to go through the process of self-doubt and come out again the other side.