Wednesday, December 30, 2009

Tuesday, December 29, 2009

Random trivia

I just saw that Wikipedia news stated that China announced the discovery of the tomb of Cao Cao. This is probably not relevant to anybody, but when I was teaching English in Beijing, I played a variation of 20 questions and Botticelli with my coworkers as an "exercise." Basically I wrote down the name of someone famous that we would all know on a card, and gave the card to someone to have as their person. Its very interesting to see what the pool of known figures is between you and a person raised on the other side of the Earth, and I guess I was surprised by how small the pool was. At the time, in the summer of '08, even Barack Obama was only known by like 75% of my coworkers. My favorite people to use ended up being people like David Beckham, Hilary Clinton, LeBron James, Mao Zedong, Kim Jung-Il, Thomas Edison, the Pope, Sun-Yat Sen, Pu Yi, Bruce Lee, etc.

Red Cliff was a popular movie at the time, a Chinese made film that crossed over to the American audience moderately well. It was about famous battles during the Three Kingdoms Era, and especially this famous general Cao Cao. So I had my coworkers explain these stories to me and started incorporating Cao Cao into my 20 questions game. There's my 2 cents. Now if only I was the hero in Slumdog Millionaire and went on a quiz show and was asked a question about Cao Cao for $1,000,000.

I have just come back from back to back trivia nights actually, the first at Johnny D's in Somerville, and tonight at Joshua Tree in Allston. They both use Stump Trivia, which I have learned is a game produced uniformly by a company and distributed to bars nationwide. So the questions are very professional and its organized quite well, and pretty different from Tombs Trivia. Either way, there are questions and you have to answer them. At Johnny D's, me and my Belmont Hill friends did pretty well for ourselves, but finished around the 30th percentile. The highlight of the night for me was getting "Valhalla" correct on a pseudo-guess, and then answering the question about what "female head of the Washington Post during the watergate scandal later ran a Fortune 500 company?" I didn't really know but I remember Katherine Graham, I believe from a Time Magazine article way back a decade ago, and guessed her and got it correct.

Tonight, it was just me and 2 other people. Somehow, our skills complemented each other enough for us to be in contention heading into the final round, when one of our trio had to leave to catch a train. So it was up to my friend Chris Jarrell and I. We were able to guess Ford Field for the location of the 2009 NCAA final four, and Jack Nicholson for the home of where Roman Polanski's sexual assault took place. Then in the final round, there were 2 questions where you wager an even number from 2-10. If you get it correct, you get that many points. If you get it wrong, you lose half that amount. The first question we didn't know and lost 2 points. The second question was what country assumed the presidency of the EU council after the Czech Republic in April of 2009? Well I took a course on the EU while studying abroad in the EU, went to most of those countries, and saw President Vaclav Klaus of the Czech Republic speak at Georgetown in October! And....I didn't know the answer. I knew that I had read it somewhere and could cross off a bunch of countries, say Portugal and the UK, but I didn't know. Chris was thinking France or Belgium and was desperate enough to try to call for help, but in a rash move I put Sweden down, wagered 10 points, and ran the question in before Chris could change it. Then I heard from someone that the answer was Belgium, and was like, ah fuck. Oh well. 5 minutes go by before the trivia presider, who in a bizarre coincidence was a former acquaintance Katie Pope, announces the answer: SWEDEN. I actually jumped up in the bar, it was kinda embarrassing.

Wednesday, December 23, 2009

Recursive behavior

Have you ever wondered where the word etymology comes from? And then did you think about how weird or ironic that was? I mean it's like defining a definition, I don't know what the best word to describe this phenomenon is but it's something recursive. For the record, etymology comes from Greek, etymos meaning true, and logos meaning word. Here are some other examples of this: (WARNING: Some of these have been rumored to tear a hole in the fabric of the universe)

1) http://www.google.com/webhp#hl=en&source=hp&q=google&aq=f&aqi=g10&oq=&fp=cbc2f75bf9d43a8f
2) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia
3) Using an easy button to find an easy button.
4) Studying how to study.
5) Using a time machine to go back in time to create the first time machine.
6) Fixing a problem on a microscope by using another microscope.
7) Putting CROSSWORDANSWER as the answer in an Crossword. I know, where do I think of these?
8) Having a robot create robot copies of itself.
9) Drawing yourself drawing.
10) Giving out an award for the best award.
11) Philosophizing about philosophy.

EDIT: I guess the word I'm looking for is that these things are META.

Sunday, December 20, 2009

Halfway Done with Senior Year

It's winter break and I'm home and want to blog. It's been another great year and I really feel the need to encapsulate it. First semester senior year started off a bit like first semester freshman year - except that we knew what we were doing. There was all the newfound excitement of being 21 in Georgetown, reuniting with previously abroad friends, and taking in the benefits that come with being the premier class on campus. This culminated in either Senior Dis-Orientation, a thoroughly enjoyable shitshowvaganza, or the seemingly never ending Halloween weekend. There was one point where classes seemed easy, people were optimistic about getting jobs, and every night seemed like a good night to go to Tombs. Then classes started getting hard, the crossword became an anchor weighing me down, lots of friends didn't find jobs, the Red Sox got eliminated and the year ended too quickly. Still though, I will remember it as a great semester that, though my 7th, involved a lot of firsts. Since I love making lists, here goes.

Among the firsts: going to AASA's Fall Ball, renting a car, getting dim sum in DC, going to Tombs Trivia, stealing flowers from NSO, visiting College Park, Outdoor Education trip (horseback riding), visiting old town Alexandria, going to a Chinese grocery market in Tyson Corner, tutored for cash, ran to the National Cathedral, sampling numerous restaurants, going to a Bill Simmons book signing, attending a dinner thrown by the Greek club, mopping up a floor of shit, getting a keg, waking up 10 minutes into a test, writing a crossword not for the Voice, being a food judge, and throwing a party (twice).

Overall it was a semester of senior leadership in Ultimate, continued Ramen consumption in pots, job applications, catching up with all the people I always got along well with but never got to hang out enough with, trying to get off campus, working on math homework with Maggie, Liz and Emmie, working on computer science homeworks with Emmie and Henry and bugging DJ, watching less sports, going to 21st birthdays at Tombs (at least 10), great ultimate parties, forgetting people's names, and Tombs Trivia.

It's been a great semester but not without its flaws. Like all times at college, I feel we can all get so caught up in our busy lives that we don't do the things we do agree are most important, but are more often luxuries we put aside. For me especially, I have a hard time doing things that are perpetually low priority, and as a result we didn't have cable for 3 months after we ordered it. In addition, this was a semester that I feel I really could have had all A's. I don't have my transcript yet but it probably won't be the flat 4.0 so that's less than ideal, but I'm also at a point at which grades aren't too big a deal.

So it wasn't a semester of crazy adventures and lots of traveling, but it was one of hanging with great friends. Other people really made this semester happen and it's made me realize how strange friendship really can be, how little we might really understand of it and how much we sometimes take it for granted.

Monday, December 14, 2009

Song Lyrics

Every year during exams, I choose an exam song. I then listen to this song lots and lots of time during the period, including right before any given exam. This tradition dates back to I believe junior year of high school. While I won't reveal these songs, several of them are present in the lyrics that I have chosen.

Random song lyrics that are meaningful to me:

"Well I've traveled around, I've been all over this world,
Boy, I've never seen nothing like a Galway Girl." -Steve Earle, Galway Girl

"This is our decision, to live fast and die young,
We've got the vision, now let's have some fun.
Yeah it's overwhelming, but what else can we do?
Get jobs in offices and wake up for the morning commute?" -MGMT, Time to Pretend

"And my tires were slashed and I almost crashed, but the Lord had mercy,
and my machine she's a dud all stuck in the mud somewhere in the swamps of Jersey." -Bruce Springsteen, Rosalita

"She used to run track back in high school,
Now she tricks on the track right by school.
She takes the loss cause she don't want to see her child lose,
So respect her, or pay up for the time used." -Wyclef Jean, Sweetest Girl

"And you know it might not be that bad,
You were the best I ever had,
If I hadn't blown the whole thing years ago,
I might not be alone." -Gin Blossoms, Hey Jealousy

"One minute I held the key,
next the walls were closed on me,
And I discovered that my castles stand,
on pillars of salt and pillars of sand." Coldplay, Viva La Vida


Saturday, December 5, 2009

Winter weather

It was snowing the other day, first of the year, which meant that everybody is updating their Facebook status. Most people were really excited, which is a general reaction to the first snowfall in a while, but I wonder how many of them have actually stepped outside. I'm no eskimo, but I know that this is not the good kind of snow. Its hitting the pavement and instantly turning into slush, and there seem to be scattered raindrops intermixed with the snow. Snow is fun, slush is terrible. That's basically defined my winters wherever I've gone. It does remind me how miserable winters back home could be, and though I'm very glad to have grown up where I've grown up and had seasons and blizzards, done some sanding and salting and all that, there were some bad times in there.

And for some reason I want more. This thought came into my head this summer when I visited DC for a weekend. Surprisingly, I hadn't actually been to DC in the summertime since a week in high school when I went on a service trip and sweated a small person off me. It was hot and I was intimidated., and seriously, when factoring in summer plans, the hot DC weather definitely came up. It's not fun coming back from a pickup ultimate game on the Mall to Georgetown sweating profusely. Looking back on it though, this was pretty absurd because there are so many places hotter than DC, and even Boston can be pretty comparable in the summertime. But anyways, as should be eminently obvious from this blog, I spent the previous summer in Beijing, which is as hot or hotter than DC, as well as some time in Hong Kong, which is definitely hotter and more humid. When I visited DC this summer, I didn't find it bad at all. It simply didn't feel hot at all, and maybe it wasn't, but some of my friends still complained about it. In addition, spending time in Ireland has made me much more comfortable with being out in the rain. There were definitely some rainy ultimate practices this fall where some people were very uneasy about going out and I was like, hah, this was every practice at UCD.

The point is that the ability to cope with weather is not instilled at birth, it can change over time. I actually wonder how much scientific research has been put to the matter: is it like learning languages, where my "native weather" will always be Boston and all subsequent weathers that I learn will be "second weathers?" Or is it much more fluid and adaptable and you can easily lose your "native weather" if you leave it for a while? I'm more inclined to believe the second one, because I hear of people growing up in the cold, moving to California, and then being wusses around the cold. Bill Simmons is a prime example.

So how great would it be to spend one winter somewhere freaking cold, and just never being scared of winters again? Here are my top few, with approximate latitudes, average coldest month temperatures, population and comments. As always, all sources Wikipedia:

(For comparison purposes)
Boston, United States
Latitude: 42
Population: 620,000
Avg Jan low temp: 22

Edmonton, Canada
Latitude: 53
Population: 730,000
Avg Jan low temp: 3

Ushuaia, Argentina
Latitude: 54
Population: 61,000
Avg Jul low temp: 28

Anchorage, United States
Latitude: 61
Population: 280,000
Avg Jan low temp: 9

Stockholm, Sweden
Latitude: 59
Population: 825,000
Avg Jan low temp: 23

Murmansk, Russia
Latitude: 68
Population: 336,000
Avg Jan low temp: 7

St. Petersburg, Russia
Latitude: 59
Population: 4,568,000
Avg Jan low temp: 16

Trondheim, Norway
Latitude: 63
Population: 260,000
Avg Jan low temp: 20

Rovaniemi, Finland
Latitude: 66
Population: 60,000
Avg Jan low temp: 7

Reykjavik, Iceland
Latitude: 64
Population: 120,000
Avg Jan low temp: 28

Harbin, China
Latitude: 45
Population: 4,750,000
Avg Jan low temp: -12

Tromso, Norway
Latitude: 69
Population: 64,000
Avg Jan low temp: 20

Ulan Batur
Latitude: 47
Population: 1,067,000
Avg Jan low temp: -20

This research actually really surprised me. So I actually looked up all these cities and they passed my test for livability, or at least visitability. I've discovered that cities tend to look a lot cooler on Wikipedia then they are in real life - thus if a city doesn't even look cool on Wikipedia, it's totally not worth visiting. Of these, Ushuaia seemed the lamest, but I wanted to include a southern hemisphere city, and this is the southernmost city in the world and pretty cold. Note that the artic circle is at about 66 degrees latitude north, so the midnight sun can be seen in Tromso, Murmansk and Rovaniemi. Latitude really doesn't seem to be such a good predictor for cold and I doubt many people would have guessed that Reykjavik would be the warmest city in this list, and certainly Harbin and Ulan Bator's ridiculous coldness is pretty surprising. Ulan Bator is the coldest national capital in the world and Harbin is known for its standard Mandarin and where a large Georgetown study abroad program is based which must be such a hard program. Also, I really first came across these cities as a result of a trivia question from Tombs: What is the most populous city north of the arctic circle? The answer, which no one got, was Murmansk.

So of these cities, I actually think most of them I would not want to live in. The ones that are cool, like Stockholm, isn't even colder than Boston. Murmansk looks to be a very industrial port city and would suck, Rovaniemi is really just a tourist town for its natural beauty, Anchorage might be cool but once housed Sarah Palin, and I don't plan on ever living in Canada. I guess Reykjavik, Tromso and Harbin are the ones that really seem pretty cool to me.