A rat!

I found a rat in front of Green Library tonight. I caught it and now it was in my plastic drawer (My rationale is, if I do not get it, it will be eaten by a cat on a Halloween night anyway). I made my ipod box as its bed, some tree branches and landscaping wood as its toy, some water, some pretzel. I hope it will survive.

Iron man

Hi I am officially an iron man now. I still cannot imagine how some people can do it in one day. I finished it in 4 weeks. To really push it, I probably will be able to finish it in a week. But one day? No way! One reason is that running became harder for me. Now I weigh about 10 pounds more than last year. Those body weight makes quite a difference, as if you are running with a ten-pound dumbbell on the waist. On a second thought, I guess that is why I should keep running, to control my weight so that it would not crush myself into a couch potato.

I was in a bike trip with Julia, whom I know during the business summer program. She is very talkative and positive, so I enjoyed the ride with her. Then I went to the city with my best friend (Well, I forgot his psuedo name in my blog entry, so let me just call him the real name here) Victor. We went to a boring Africa America Disapora Musuem and then went to a Chinese restaurant. His son is also my best friend, and he calls me as "soma". I think that's because his home has a cat named "soma", so he took the short-cut. Victor's wife has a job in the city, cataloging some anthropological antique. She is one of the nicest woman I've ever met. She just took her GRE test yesterday. Because after Victor is done with her Ph.D., she is going to take on a Ph.D. degree as well. Their son will must have a hard time to match parental education in the future.

I need to go to bed now. I got up early this morning for the bike ride (6am). When I walked out of the apartment, what did I discover? The amazing morning smell! It's nature's breath that has not been contaminated. I think some how my memory is very much linked to my sense of smell. It brought back some memories about my past, although I do not exactly know what is the memory. I just loved the smell. I will hit the bed now, and try to get up early again.

So close

3.1 miles run, 0.8 miles swim, 1 mile bike. 2 days to go. So close.

Ready to go home Nov 17-25.

Almost a cardinal iron man

Hi, I am doing the cardinal iron man thing. It is not a intense competition. You sign up, and then just accummulate miles for biking, running and swimming. In the course of 4 weeks, we will self-monitor to finish the whole iron man race: 26.2 miles of running, 112 miles of biking and 2.4 miles of swimming. There are still 3 days to go, and I still need 6.3 miles of running, 1 mile of biking and 1.6 miles of swimming. Statistically, I am a little behind the schedule on running and swimming, but I am on my way to finish it off on Sunday.

What else? Oh, I've started a consulting gig for a SF company, 1-2 days a week. It is a friend's friend. It is a company of pet accessaries, like collars, tees and belts for tiny dogs, stuff that I will never buy myself. They have this massive sales data that they do not know how to analyze. I started the work last week, and tonight I just estimated the sales rates for their 36 products. It can be interpreted like that: If you put the product in 100 retail stores, what precentage of the stores will make a sale on the first day, blah blah, blah. I am quite empowered by my superb skills in Stata and analytical skills in figuring out the algorithms. You better have both.

Oh, finally, who is my computer science class going? Well, I begin to relive my life of feeling like a good student. I haven't had that feeling for almost ten years, as the college classes in social science are always too fuzzy for me to conclude whethere I am doing well. CS class is different, either you get the code right, or you do not. And I have to belong to the crowd that are able to figure out the code. Though time-consuming initially, I think I am absorbing the material really well. A or A+, I would imagine.

Feeling pretty good

Yeah, I know. My recent blogs have been boring. I sorta block my feelings out of the blog and only talk about what I have done in daily life. But who care those things? I guess my readers are more interested in whether my inner-life still experiences turmoil as before, whether I am still the old sensitive self.

To some extent, I still am. No day passes by without me questioning myself, "What's the point?" But then my busy schedule just carried those fleeting thoughts away. I feel lucky that I am surrounded by a bunch of supporting friends. These are the friends to whom I told about my depression about two years ago. It is a little eerie. What if I did not have that episode of depression? Does it mean that I will be friendless now? Seriously, revealing my vulnerability two years ago is still paying dividends. I trust them much, and vice versa (3 of them actually made my friends blog list). A good analogy is gambling. You have to put the ante on the table. If you do not, you are not to win. I was pushed to join the game, and now I see the benefit of being open to friends.

Still no girl in my life. It came so odd. When I break up with Yuphen, I thought the sky was so open that I could meet great girls. Now eight years have passed, and I am still as sexually-deprived as ever. The other day I was attending (actually observing) a campus event called "Full Moon" for the first time (The event is for senior males to kiss freshman girls. But hey, a lot of sketchy graduate student observers). Feel pretty horny (Congressionman Mark Foley, thanks for the term in your scandel. I have to look up the dictionary to know what I mean). It is good to have a girlfriend. I think I am lonely, no matter how much I want to deny it.

Another thing bothering me recently is the health of my Niangniang. I really really want to go back to China this November (I am going to make a decision by this Friday). Think about what she has done for me, there is just nothing I can do to repay that. Yes, my family produced my flaws, but they also prepared myself in facing those flaws and striving ahead. I almost feel that they are a constellation of stars, far away but always watching over my shoulder, emotionally distant but also give me unmatched blessings. What if I lose one of the stars? Well, my life won't change at all. I won't even be emotionally depressed for too long. But I know, once a while, especially when I am lonely, if I look up to the dark sky, I know something is missing. Everything is stil the same, but everything will be different at the same time. That's the irony. So I want to see her before you pass away.

My sensation sometimes will tangle with the past. The other day I saw a butterfly on campus, and I told myself, "It is a deja vu. I saw this before!" I think hard, and then everything is back. I was a kid, with Yaya and Niangniang. We had a garden. In the summer, the small white butterflies were everywhere. And dragonflies too. Yaya planted all sorts of flowers. They were all blossoming. I even saw a humming bird once, I swear. The grape was also growing, and sometimes I found snakes. As Yaya said, snakes liked the the shadow of grape ivies. I took of my sweater and chased the butterflies. When getting close, I wiped it at the butterflies. Their wings would be damaged. I tried to kept them alive in small jars, but they would be all dead within one day. I sometimes also got dragonflies, but they were much harder to catch, as they changed directions rather unpredictably. Sometimes when the butterflies were parking on a flower, I would sneak by and catch it by the wings with my two fingers. My fingers would have those white powders from the wings, and Yaya said it was poisonous....

Damn it! Sometimes I feel that my memory was my burden. I could remember things so vividly that invoking my memory was too costly in my busy schedule. But I know they are always there. My past is my present, and my memory is my treasure. Whenever I feel so out of touch with my folks back at home, one small dose of memory usually is enough to warm my heart and wet my eyes. It reminds that I have been there, lived a life, passed through those amazing people, but never formally said "Thank you". I know, some day, I will shoot a documentary (Have you seen "7 up"? I want to make one like that), or write a book, and I know to whom they will be dedicated.

So I've got the job

Now what?

Update

I'd love to give you an update here. Nothing exciting happens though.

Remember that I told you that I had a very bad interview a couple of weeks ago? Well, it turned out to be not bad, as I was invited for an onsite interview scheduled for next week. I am also planning to go back to China during my Thanksgivings holiday. Probably I will be able to see my Niangniang for the last time. Her health is deteriorating very quickly. She does not hear well, and she cannot speak well any more, and she begin to lose track of days. I hope she can hang on for one more months so that I can say good-bye in person.

My class has been well. I had a bad lecture on Monday. I prepared too much materials, so I got nervous. As spoke faster and faster, my English could not catch my thoughts, and my breath could not catch my English. It was pretty aweful. Fortunately, on Wednesday I revamped my approach of the lecture, preparing a little less materials and increased the classroom interaction. I think I did quite well yesterday.

US stock markets are doing very well, so are my mutual funds and my stocks. What stocks I have? I have five: AET, COH, MRH, WMT, MOT. I used to have FDX, AEOS, and XOM, SBL. I got out early with a profit, but I could profit more if I had held on them longer. It is very unpredictable.

I began to take a computer science class this quarter (because I thought I might work for this high-tech company soon). It was very time-consuming, but I think I was born as a natural coder. I think I will eventually excel in that class. Sociology might be the long detour between my career as a techie.

I am going to get my eye examined next week. I am also going to see a dentist very soon. I ate well and slept well. And I know I am going to get quite a few jobs offers by the end of the year.