American Rhapsody

Exciting times

Krazy Kitty — Sat, 05 May 2012 11:50:00 +0200

Many people, knowing me well (or having had a glimpse at my schedule the previous year), wished me "many travels" for 2012.

The year started a bit slow, with eight or so weeks in a row spent here in Germanland, fighting the cold and darkness with music, hot chocolate, and budding friendships. I enjoyed the homeliness of it, enjoyed anchoring myself in this place, making it mine as I had never taken the time to do it before.

Still, as early as mid-January, I was already starting to plan a few trips, and by the time the end of February came, with its few days in Paris and holiday in Rome, I was feeling antsy and more than ready to travel again.

Then somehow things precipitated.

At the end of March I was in London, via Paris once more. Two weeks later I was back in Paris, on a stopover to spending Easter with family in the South of France. Less than a week after I was back, I was out of the door again, heading this time to Munich, where I have spent the last three weeks (minus a weekend back here in the place I do laundry, cook dinner with and for friends, and can cast a vote in the French elections) visiting colleagues.

Munich was good, work-wise and after work. We had a few days of excellent weather that made the parks so much better; I got to see a friend who is living there for a year (and hang out with Brazilian law students at the same time), visit the zoo, see some modern art, walk around a city big enough to do so for hours without getting bored. I can't say I really love it, though, in spite of what the raging comments from my German lab mates, most of whom either grew up or studied there, could have let me expect. In spite of its long tradition of SPD mayors and high rate of inhabitants non affiliated with any religion, the capital of beer is also that of Bavaria, with its deeply ingrained conservatism, catholicism, and Bayrisch-speaking, Lederhose- or Dirndl-wearing patriotism; as a result it feels too clean, and the life that a hundred thousand students (walking in the path, for instance, of the White Rose movement) could give it just isn't... there.

I am back just long enough for a few loads of laundry, careful repacking, and a final say in the presidential run before boarding the plane that will take me back to America. This is a long awaited trip, one that I have imagined almost since the minute I left Los Angeles eighteen months ago, one that I have planned for months, and that I am so excited to take that I sometimes have a hard time falling asleep at night.

I will stay there three weeks, visiting first good old Southern California, then Boston, the Chicago area, D.C., and New York. (The traveling does not look optimal, especially the part where I head back West a thousand miles or so just a few days after flying from the West Coast to New England, but it had strong constraints. I don't think you could find a better solution.) I will see dear friends, good people, and places I have missed so much despite the unshakable confidence I have that they are not what I want for myself, long-term. I will do science, talk science, breathe science in great settings where to do so. I will mix the old and the new, as I discuss new projects, visit my current boss in the institute that is welcoming him for a few months, hang out with people I met in Germany, meet with collaborators I have gained since leaving the U.S. I will go to the beach, have a barbecue or three, go out dancing. I will walk the path down memory lane and make more memories as I so do, and I will love every single minute of it.

Then I'll be back, at the end of May, most likely with an aching smile on my face. And instead of cooling my heels off and incurring the risk of wallowing in the pain of leaving, once more, some amazing people thousands of miles behind me, I'll fly out to Barcelona for a week of friends, sun, and music at Primavera Sound.

I don't think it too daringly ambitious to claim that this is going to rock my socks.

Things I've Done This Week — 6

Krazy Kitty — Sun, 11 Mar 2012 20:08:00 +0100

I had Ethiopian food for the first time. In the train back to Germanland, I realized I do recognize some of the people who seem to commute between cities on either side of the border. I wrote and debugged a whole lotta code, and had a board marker fight with my officemate. I painted my nails yellow and orange. Colleagues outlined a new lead to explore for a project that was in stand-by. I listened to my recording of La Traviata, with Maria Callas in the leading role, a total of six times. A friend invited me to go see Barbara. We discovered with surprise that movie theaters can be full in our lovely city, and settled for drinks, a long, long walk along the rivers, and a conversation about religion and politics instead. I rediscovered Harper's magazine's Weekly Review^[1] and started vaguely emulating its style in everything I wrote, including my radio chronicle for Je m'ennuie bien^[2].

Notes

[1] Harper's Weekly Review

[2] Je m'ennuie bien

Things I Did Last Week — 6

Krazy Kitty — Wed, 07 Mar 2012 23:01:00 +0100

Hugged my grandma.

Met with a guy I hadn't seen in eight years. It was fun. We share a similar "and then I decided to try research, and then I loved it, and then I got my PhD, and six months later I started a postdoc, and I love it, but I still don't know what I want to do when I grow up" story, as well as a love of the Magnetic Fields. Many people share that story (probably more than people who even know of the Magnetic Fields).

Hugged my mom.

Flew to Rome.

Walked arm in arm with my mom. Ate cassatta ice cream. Watched a left-wing protest, with friendly people who smiled a lot and tried to explain to me what this was all about, and a right-wing demonstration for some obscure reason, with very organized, closed-off people. Laughed gently at a museum guard who tried to flirt with me. Got very, very excited at unexpected modern art^[1] and at Etruscan antiques^[2]. Got my mind blown by La Traviata, played in a church^[3], by musicians of the Rome Opera. Bought incredibly pink shoes. Drank cappuccino in the sun.

Flew to Paris.

Notes

[1] Chagall! Matisse! Dali! Braque! Munch! on the way to the Sistine Chapel! Mom, mom, come here, there's a Klimt!

[2] Lookhereanowl! Lookatthelion! Thehorse!

[3] yep, that Traviata, the story of a courtesan -- they used the altar as a table for the parties, it was amazing

Things I've Done This Week — 5

Krazy Kitty — Sun, 26 Feb 2012 19:54:00 +0100

Taught people some creative swearwords in French.

Listened to Louis Armstrong almost exclusively.

Made plans to go hike with some colleagues I like.

Worked real hard on a project I'm getting to really enjoy.

Crossed the Rhine.

Wondered why someone would call Concentric Circles a photo of some definitely non-concentric circles.

Had bread, cheese, ridiculously delicious beef bone marrow, lamb shanks, ramen, petit-fours, and White Russians.

Talked and talked and talked and sometimes just enjoyed sitting quietly there with someone I enjoy sitting quietly there with.

Smiled.

Thursday Evening Conversation

Krazy Kitty — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 23:02:00 +0100

I am chatting with a friend from graduate school, who is a few days away from his final defense and fretting a bit. We talk about someone I've met in Germany who now lives in the same Pacific Northwest city where he, his wife, and their five-month-old son are moving to very soon.

Him: "It's crazy to me, that you've been gone long enough to know people who are now themselves gone from your current place. Seems only yesterday that you were here, and all the whole crew was there, and I wasn't even contemplating ever finishing my PhD."

Me: "What's crazy to me is that I've been gone long enough that you and R made an entire five-month-old from scratch. You were barely starting to think about a family and now you've created a whole human being, happily chewing on nylon books and all."

Him: "Point."

Him: "Also the last time I saw you I was giving you a ride to the airport to catch a plane to the very same city we're moving to. How crazy is that?"

Me: "... Everything will be better after you defend, I promise."

Things I've Done This Week — 4

Krazy Kitty — Sun, 19 Feb 2012 23:11:00 +0100

Work Prepared. Lectured. Tutored. Graded. Wrote.

Social life Instant messenger chats, conversations about Tom Waits, science, or politics with your officemate, long emails and phone calls totally count.

Cooking Lemmethink. Baked apples ?

Travels Bought tickets to the Vatican (as much as giving money to the Catholic church pains me) and tickets for a classical music concert^[1]. Started planning out my... wait for it... trip to the U.S. in May!

Others Mindlessly reading books of The Southern Vampires series. Because my brain was mush. Teaching is exhausting.

Notes

[1] "Well, we don't play Mozart in Italy. We play real music, like Verdi." — an Italian friend of mine

Things I've Done This Week — 3

Krazy Kitty — Sun, 12 Feb 2012 21:44:00 +0100

Social life Painted myself as some sort of boring prude for refusing to see the point of entering a bar with in mind the goal of finding someone in there to bang. Felt my cheeks redden and my heart flutter at the mention of a friend's irredeemable flaws, which as far as I am concerned are somewhere between the most adorable quirks and solid qualities. Drank a lot of tea (including pretty unimpressive herbal teas, my politeness be damned) with various people.

Work Lectured for the first time ever. Two good things happened: it wasn't horrible, and I clearly have a lot of room for improvement. Failed at getting much else done, which (together with events of the past few months) sent me on a downward spiral of self-doubt and impostor feelings. Deliberately banned myself from working and having any kind of thoughts in that direction for an evening and a day. Mixed results so far.

Music Listened to so much Bach I've been whistling entire movements of his Cello Suites. Practiced my viola some (including Bach's first violin concerto, which I have a transcription of, but none of the Suites, although I do have transcriptions of those as well — a violist's world is full of transcriptions). Went to see Mozart's Requiem being played by an amateur choir and orchestra (as a friend pointed out, we're not certain that the orchestra isn't professional; as I replied, if the orchestra had been professional, the horn solo in the Tuba Mirum wouldn't have made us wince). It was, all in all, pretty good, but I nevertheless got annoyed at the thinness of the soloist voices, the lack of dynamics of the orchestra, the weird rhythm that appeared at least twice, and the uncomfortable haste that cropped up over and over again and killed the Rex Tremendae. I'm sure they had tremendous fun, and I enjoyed myself in spite of my pettiness, but I can't help thinking the people who got a ticket in the upper price bracket got ripped off — although admittedly, seeing more than the soloists' heads and a slice of the choir might have been worth a few bucks.

Soup of the week Green beans, small peas and broccoli, with a dash of olive oil. Thank goodness for frozen vegetables.

Things I've Done This Week — 2

Krazy Kitty — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 23:14:00 +0100

Music Gave three concerts with my orchestra, each one better than the previous one. Thankfully, as venues were steeply increasing in prestige. The last concert was pretty good, in spite of the conductor almost starting off with the wrong piece at some point my instrument being so out of tune that I feared it would never stayed tune during the concert (it more or less did). Could have been better, but it was tremendous fun and my friends were still bright-eyed afterwards, so whatever.

Travels More or less decided on dates for a trip to Roma with la mia mamma. I'm ridiculously excited, as always.

Beverages Had an insane conversation about beers with German colleagues. Unfortunately didn't understand half of it and forgot the other half, but man was that long and complex. I still picked a bottle of Augustiner at the end. Also had somewhere around my volume equivalent of tea, to fight off both the cold weather and my increasing frustration.

Cooking Carrot-ginger soup with bitter orange peel. Apple Jewish cake.

Fashion Got slightly offended at colleagues remarking on the elegance of my all-black concert attire. "Wait, are you wearing eye make-up? It's nice." wins sentence of the week. Embarked on a whole lot of layering (stockings + socks + leg warmers, undershirt + shirt + sweater). Despaired at the blackness of my warmest coat (in spite of the orange scarf and hat I'm pairing it with).

Work Got insanely pissed off at some people's way of sloppily approaching science and wasting my time at the same occasion. Got even more pissed off it took me so long to realize said people were wasting my time. Prepared for my first lecture ever, mostly by screaming insanities at the slides that were helpfully provided by the person I'm covering for. And by helpfully provided I mean that next time you want me to cover a lecture for you please just provide me with a list of objectives and keep your slides to yourself unless they're self-sufficient and easy on the retina.

Things I've Done This Week

Krazy Kitty — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 20:50:00 +0100

Fashion
Purchased a black dress shirt and a pair of black dress shoes to wear at ~~a funeral~~ our three upcoming orchestra concerts. Lost the will to live as I surveyed the racks of ill-cut, over-priced, or badly designed garments (quite often all at once), almost happy to notice that most of them didn't come in my size anyway. Subsequently cleaned the bathroom and vacuumed in said shoes to break them in~~to submission~~.

Music
Listened to Soulsaver's It's Not How Far You Fall, It's the Way You Land on repeat, having rediscovered how beautiful the sound is on a stereo system as compared to compressed music played through cheap headphones or portable speakers.

Practiced my viola a couple times on top of the weekly orchestra rehearsal.

Social Life
Went for drinks with a guy on a Wednesday night. It was not a date as I had mentioned several times beforehand that I would bring a friend and invited other people to join. Other people failed to join and according to one of them and to the friend who did come, the guy is hitting on me.

Went to see The Artist on Saturday evening and for drinks afterwards. It was definitely not a date — and I would never have wondered about it if not for the earlier confusion. Loved the movie, which I found cleverly done and very well acted out and was remembered I stopped drinking sex-on-the-beaches because they're too sweet. Ugh.

Failed to attend a Sunday lunch I was looking forward to because of fever and general head-and-throat-soreness.

Miscellaneous
Found out thanks to a bus strike that it takes me fifty minutes to walk to work from home (under moderate rain).

Readings
Some Jeffrey Deaver book I have already forgotten.

A few chapters of The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle.

The first few pages of Ten Lessons in Clarity and Grace.

Quite a few papers on Gaussian processes.

Work
Cleaned up some code. Implemented a bunch of comparison partners. Tried to make sense out of some simulations. Put together a project for students, which took forever because (a) some things just don't work on Macs (b) the simplified version of the algorithm that I thought appropriate for the course just doesn't work on that data. Worked on some grant proposal and resisted pulling out my hair at some people's use of the English language. Made sense out of some stuff "my" MS student has been doing. Silently screamed insanities at how power can be more important than good science — I was not at the receiving end of that particular piece of bullshit, but still, gets my goat. Tried not to cry thinking of my soon-to-be windowless office. ("But it has a window! Sure, half a meter away from the gray wall of another building. Think of all the pictures of palm trees and all you're going to put up on the walls!", says the guy who is never going to have to sit in any of those new basement offices because he's moving to freaking Los Angeles instead. Ass.)

Hopeless

Krazy Kitty — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 19:35:00 +0100

— So, isn't he a bit young?

— Who?

— Garrett^[1].

— Young for what?

— For you.

— Well, it's not like if I was planning to date him.

— But you do have a date with him.

— I don't. What are you talking about?

— Guy stops by, chats a minute, puts up a bored face so as not to look too eager, asks whether you want to go for a beer sometime, you say yes and decide on a day and time, and you tell me you don't have a date. How clueless do you think I am?

— Oh. Maybe less than me?

(It's not a date. I think.)

Notes

[1] Not his real name, of course.