T-ride Formal Dinner

This is yet another post that reveals how much my life revolves around T-ride. Sigh.

The first picture is of me, H-nok (4th year PhD student in Development Sociology, Korea), and Huong (1st year MA in Public Administration, previously worked for the World Bank for 10 years before coming here, Vietnam). Huong says working for the World Bank was like a holiday compared to graduate school. These two women are among my closest friends in the house.

And the second picture is of T-ride women and the other women who were guests at the formal dinner.

finally, pictures from stockholm

I've finally downloaded the pictures I took during my 4 day layover in Stockholm! Need to delete them from my computer so I have space for Friday's trip to the yurt, and Saturday night's formal dinner at T-ride.

You can view the other pictures at this link:
Stockholm album.

Password is: 123456

More thoughts on T-ride

Yes, I'm having a lovely time living in T-ride, and it really feels like a family sometimes. K-gan (the guy on the left in the picture below) has adopted me as one of his older sisters; H-nok, a 4th year Korean grad student is his other older sister, and we're both also close friends. But I think we mostly think of each other as many cousins living in the same house. :) (28 of us this year, and 30 next year!)

It's not always fun and laughter though. Last Saturday, we had a preferment meeting where we decided to offer 4 spots to high-schoolers who completed the summer program, and put 8 of them on a wait-list. We began the meeting at 9am, and it was 10pm when we finally ended our meeting.

After that, some of us were really mad at some of us, and most people decided to have a party and have a few drinks to restore general goodwill and harmony in the house. Me included. I didn't drink that much, but I certainly had to drink a bit to regain happy feelings toward a few people in the house!

It was a "closed meeting" so I'm not allowed to talk about what went on during the meeting; I'll just say that it was sometimes vicious and combative. Everyone was really tired and unproductive this week.

Tomorrow night, most of us will be going to an overnight trip to a nearby yurt for a light camping trip. It's an enclosed space that will be warm, plus we'll have sleeping bags so it's not going to be too rough. I didn't want to go at first because I was SO tired out after that super-long meeting last weekend that I thought I needed some time away from T-riders. But since most of my friends from the house are going, I decided last minute to go with them too. :) Can't have them bond without me!!

a couple of the T-ride boys

K-gan is on my right, and Calvin on my left. K-gan is a junior in the Marines, and is an Urban Planning major. Calvin is a senior in History. Calvin is the practical joker who tried to make me think I was crazy. :) :)

really??

Am I intimidating?? Do I have a laser stare?? No, really, am I a scary person??

We've been doing interviews all weekend with the 19 high-schoolers who are applying to the dorm/Cornell. The foundation that funds our dorm also funds summer programs for high-schoolers who are then able to apply to live in the dorm.

Apparently, one of the boys I interviewed said (not to me, to other ppl) that I intimidated him because every time he looked at me, my stare was unwavering and intense, and he could feel this "rush of kinetic energy" (??), and it completely intimidated him so he had to stop looking my way.

I thought that was really funny because I was actually a little bored in the interview and my mind was starting to wander a little so I was trying really hard to focus on him and look interested and engaged.

But apparently all I managed to do was look scary and weird.

falling in love

. . . not with one person, but with my entire dorm. :) We had a Talent Night Show tonight, and I was just blown away by all the different acts: a comedy "blues" act with guitar and trumpet, an avant-garde piece (nothing happened), readings of stories, guitar/singing, Latin-Israeli dance, funnyman/straightman acts, lip-syncs to "Goldfinger," Aretha Franklin and the Backstreet Boys . . . these kids were really great. I had so much fun watching them.

Living here has really brought to life a range of emotions that I never would've felt had I continued to live off-campus in a tiny apt the landlords of Ithaca keep around for impoverished graduate students. It really is a kind of falling in love; messiness and all. :)

beer-pong!

Okay, so this is how you play beer-pong:

Stand across a long-ish narrow table (does not need to be a ping-pong table) from the other player, and line large plastic cups on both ends of the table. I think you can arrange it anyhow you like, but preferably not just in line. more like:

x x x x x

x x x x

x x x

I think. I can't remember really. :p

Anyway.

You can bounce a ping-pong ball toward your opponents end, and if the ping-pong ball enters the cup, your opponent has to drink it. Now, this is where it's different from ping-pong. If you bounce the ball, your opponent can swat it away from the cup, so the goal is to get the ball in without bouncing it. Kinda like throwing it straight into the cup.

I guess you could make it a non-alcoholic game, but I think it's really fun only when your senses are impaired by alcohol--swiping balls or bouncing balls on tables becomes much more fun under those conditions.

NOTA BENE: I don't play this game because I don't really drink, and I hate beer.

Second childhood

Just saw Jet Li's "Fearless" at the theaters tonight . . . with a couple of undergrad guys from my dorm. I predict that in three months' time, my only friends will be fellow Telluriders. The movie was really fun (I love Jet Li! I love martial arts movies!) and I'm learning that Keegan and Keith are really sweet guys.

Keegan is in the Marines, and an Urban Planning major, while Keith is a mathematician and a jazz musician. Keegan is really, really into being a Marine, so I'm learning a little more about that, especially since we both like to eat lunch right at 11:30am (along with Michael). Keith is the chair of the committee we're both on, and is a bit of a joker. They're all really funny actually, but Keith and Calvin are the more "serious" jokers.

I feel like I'm in college again. They're playing beer-pong in the dining room later tonight, but I will not be playing beer-pong with them since I learned during my college days that I'm allergic to beer.

Oh yeah, we're on Fall Break so that's why I went to see a movie on a Sunday night. Haven't done any work, but will work hard starting tomorrow!

accidents and offices

Was trying to get paper towels in the bathroom in my dept building (see, it's dangerous for me to hang around there!), and my hand slipped from the dispenser handle, and I cut my middle finger on the metal edging. It isn't that bad, but I need to use a band aid and can't really put any pressure on the area, so typing is a little complicated.

Oh yes, and I now have two office spaces I can use! I share a large student office space with 3 other students in the Kahin Center (houses the Southeast Asian Program), and it has a very large window but walking back from the Center is scary at night because there's a stretch of road that has bushes and trees on both sides. You can't tell if anyone's hiding in those bushes. One side is a cemetery (very picturesque during the day), and the other side is the back lawns of a couple of frat houses.

Prof 2 is in the Asian American Studies Program, and they have a very small office that 3 profs share. All the profs have larger offices in their home departments (my prof has a very sunny office in the English dept) so they only use the tiny shared office to hold their weekly office hours. Anyway, Prof 2 got the administrator to give me the keys to that office so I can use it when none of the other profs are there.

I mostly need the space to work at night because Rockefeller Hall is located in the center of campus, the elevator in the building is locked at night (and I have a key to that too!), and the big doors to the fourth floor where the office is are also locked.

That way when I'm in the office, I feel very safe because only staff/faculty have building access. I've had a somewhat . . . "interesting" relationship with this prof in the past (Prof 2 from a prev post) but this year's it's been going really well, thankfully. Oh the little things that make grad students happy . . .

no turkey trip

Was accepted to present at a conference in Turkey this Nov, but finally told the organizers I wouldn't be able to go because:

-- the ticket for the 4-day conference would be $820.
-- travel time one way would be around 20 hrs.
-- I haven't actually written the conference paper, so it would force me to write something, but doing it under pressure might turn the paper into something I may not be able to use for my dissertation. And right now, the dissertation should be top priority.

I felt really sad about not being able to see Turkey but I'm also actually very relieved because now I can read, think, and write at a saner pace. Still . . . Turkey! Sounds like it would've been fun, but as a friend who is now a prof on the West Coast said, if I don't have the mental or physical capacity to enjoy the trip . . .

(FALL IS HERE. VERY BRISK AND CHILLY.)