Agassi Open

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I adore Andre. Want to be like him when I grow up. Can't wait to read his book, though not sure when I'll get to...

More Agassi Open - the 60minutes interview ... Part 2

Good luck to Richard Gasquet with the cocaine charges. It's not a performance-enhancer, rather the opposite effect - shouldn't that be important in judging these cases?

And good good luck to Billy. He's been in jail nearly six years already.

Inspire Me!

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Viktor & Rolf always inspire to lose the walls, artistically speaking.
Watch the Fashion Show and hours of video in their archives.


Check out their website tour. No wonder Rufus loves them!

Writing a bit

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and waiting for 'Tech. Can you believe I'm itching to get back to Caltech?

A bunch of poetry books in the pipeline. I tried to stop writing them for a while, then someone upset me and I started a third book to be titled "Big Girl" with poems about the yuppie/wealthier-class young woman in Nigerian/similar climes.

I just started reading a Nigerian novel I found around the house that is very good. It's as vivid as Things Fall Apart (by Chinua Achebe), although it describes a different time (the 60s I bet, just after Independence) and place (a hypothetical university with a mix of Nigerian staff and expatriates.) Understanding this novel (I don't, really, although the language is simple like Things Fall Apart) you understand the politics of today's Nigeria. I'm surprised that even terms like "godfather" were already in use then. The novel is The Naked Gods, by Chukwuemeka Ike.

My mind is changing, changing...

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What is the nature of time? Read the winning essay by Julian Barbour on The Nature of Time, then browse more Expository Essays on the same topic at the FQXi, the Foundational Questions Institute.

Shortly, you will be able to view essays on this year's topic, "What is Ultimately Possible in Physics?"

Public Art

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COMMITTEE FOR RELEVANT ART, CORA (Winner of Prince Claus Award 2006)

We Are Cultural 'Landscapists'. The MISSION is to create an enabling environment for the flourishing of the contemporary arts of Nigeria and to increase human capacity of the continent. VISION is to make Culture the Prime Investment Destination for the Country and the Continent by 2018.

I attended the CORA book party yesterday, celebrating the nine shortlisted works for this year's Nigeria Prize for Literature (Poetry.)
Had an excellent time meeting some of Nigeria's sweetest poets, some of whose works I've started reading. Reading poetry is not bad. It doesn't hurt. Nor does it bore if you choose well.

Fiction: Honeymoon

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HONEYMOON
By Tosin Otitoju
ootitoju@hotmail.com

Tradition holds that newlyweds would spend thirty days away from their friends, family - their routines. The period is spent visiting sites of history and culture. As the new couple soared together, gliding among monuments, they would learn about love and permanent marriage. This obligation is so sacred that every newly-married couple in the land is given leave from work to enable it.
Per and Flooy are a newly married couple on their honeymoon.

THE WEDDING
On the wedding afternoon, the friends of Per and Flooy dutifully escorted both to the town square after work. Weddings were conducted outdoors in a green patch surrounded by tall, important buildings and dense, colourful traffic. One by one, the couples came in focus of a camera to declare verbally that they were new spouses. After every three declarations, an intern rang a small, shrill bell; this constituted the wedding proper. The whole show was typically broadcast on screens above the roads throughout the town.

Per and Flooy declared just after the bell, adding that “permanent love and marriage” would be their goal. They waited for the next two couples, and then the solemnization by the bell, before kissing and then skipping off to join their friends.

THE PRESENTS
Among their crowd were their cousins who handed Flooy tickets to see the ancient town of Jerusalem. Their workmates gave them a very classic trip – up the Nile to Sudan to see the oldest human skeleton. Their uncles and aunts had collected enough to present them with a fifty-meal dining card, so that they could enjoy fantastic dinners on the honeymoon.

The couple glowed and hugged thanks throughout their company, while everyone tingled with excitement about the parents’ gift.

As you already guessed, the parents of both newlyweds were expected to come together to pick out the most fantastic tours of their children’s honeymoon. Per and Flooy soon found out that it would be “The Seven Ancient Wonders.” Flooy had been hoping for the moon, not the kitsch Seven Wonders tour. Her in-laws could afford it, and she was certain her own parents knew it was the most desired honeymoon gift of the decade.

THE HOTEL
Soon, the guests left the couple alone with the clerks who led the couple to a newlywed hotel. Here they ate marvelously, slept luxuriously, and in-between these they spent hours holding hands and talking dreamily about all the trips they would soon make.

Two days later, it was time to begin touring.

The morning was glorious, with the sun’s rays bursting into their room, signaling time for breakfast. They had a jam and marmalade feast that was laid out with twenty cubes of exotic breads, all different, all appetizing.

Breakfast in bed was followed by a nap. Then they bathed and dressed for their trip. Flooy chose a dress in ivory printed with tiny begonias, while Per wore a youthful teal-and-khaki ensemble. They decided to get some exercise, so instead of calling for a vehicle, both strapped on their streamliners and soared out of the hotel window.

They traveled for a number of hours in the direction of the mountains, and soon were present among the ruins of the old city of Jerusalem, making small spirals on the rough ground in an attempt to brake their flying.

MOSQUE
Their seventieth hour as a couple found them in the vast courtyard of the mosque, where beggars used to crowd in wait for the alms of the faithful. In those days, hundreds of years back, after Friday worship, the mostly wealthy pilgrims would drop their zakat, their alms, with the men who lived in the streets or the poor shanties of town and made their living on the mosque grounds. Now, the courtyard was the starting point for tours of the mosque.

A guide led the tourists to another area, a confection of small, hexagonal tiles said to have been once covered in shoes of every tribe and type. The guide showed them moving pictures of the same room over the centuries until the time of the Great Quake that sunk Jerusalem.

From the shoe room, they entered a grand room in which the faithful had prayed on thousands of mats facing Makkah in the south. On the screen, the patchwork of colourful carpets looked like a most elegant velvet quilt.

The building used to have five minarets, but three were now broken and hadn’t yet been restored. The central dome that roofed the praying area glistened with a gold that recalled similar domed houses of Australia and Antarctica. Mohammedans could be found in both countries, hence the architecture in parts of these islands used gold, and domes, and minarets, and even retained the use of a star in a crescent moon perched atop the highest reaches of the building.

Mohammedans were few anywhere outside these two places, the movies explained. The people of Mohammed believed that a man would find at most four permanent loves in his lifetime. Since they also believed that marriage could only take place between a man and a woman, and each woman of course could only marry one man, it was usually the case that all the desirable women were already married. Mohammedans often took wives from among the wider communities of non-believing women, and this helped remedy the imbalance in their spousal pools.

SYNAGOGUE
Per and Flooy were flying hand-in-hand as they passed over the tall birch trees that separated the mosque from an ancient mud wall into which the Jews had wailed their prayers for a thousand years. The tradition held that the Father of the Jews lived in the wall. Hence, the faithful took off their sandals and donned black robes over their street clothes before proceeding to whisper into the wall, in deep conversation and prayer which caused them to rock back and forth. Sometimes, if they didn’t feel like talking, they squeezed a letter in one of the many gaps in the wall.

The tour guide at the synagogue explained chattily that Jews busied themselves with two things: successful careers, and preparation for the coming of the son of God. One percent of the world was Jewish, more than the Catholican population of the day, the guide said.

The Jews didn’t believe in flying. They couldn’t shave their heads, eat meat, or gather with non-family members after sunset. These practices made them stand out in the world since bald heads were on every model in every magazine, most meals contained meat, and most parties or socials took place at night. In those days too, young people liked to spend their free time flitting around in the air, as it was a fun and inexpensive mode of transport.

Per had no sympathy for the superstition of this people, but he envied their dedication to work and vocation. Neither he nor his wife was superstitious. What sense was it, they thought, to revert to the thought patterns of millennia past, days so clearly inferior in quality-of-life to the present? In distant history, hunger had caused people to see monsters in benign shadows, while delirium made them merge physics and god; disease was always the result of jealousy backed with anti-god powers.

Yet Per’s wife had idols of a sort; idols in the here and now – her friends, her sisters, and their total acceptance meant as much to her as the thunder god or moon goddess might have meant to her early ancestors.

CHURCH
The sun had been one of the most worshipped gods in this land. Now, the cross held dominance. The sun was getting low in the sky now, and the couple determined to visit another monument before retiring to their hotel room. They traversed the cobblestone on the west side of the synagogue and found a short bridge where the gentle breeze loosened bright red flowers from the trees above, causing a shower of sorts. They walked on, hand-in-hand, in the direction of the former Catholican shrine that also lay in the valley of the ruins.

Per knew Flooy’s superstition about conformity. This was why he was careful to learn about fashion; perhaps she would never leave him, but only if he behaved according to convention at all times.

He hoped this would be enough.

He hoped he would be enough.

He glanced over at her, the most beautiful thing he knew in the world, his lily flower, his new bride. He watched her bald head and auburn eyebrows. Yes, he would do anything to see her face every morning. He smiled thinking the way her eyebrows crinkled then arched animatedly when she talked. He remembered the way she looked when she first undressed and thought grimly that he, for his part, would never leave her.

At the moment the couple arrived at the crosses that marked the shrine and cemetery, their thoughts - at that moment - ran perpendicularly. Flooy suspected this, Per did not. As Flooy Lily Wura’s brilliant red-lashed eyes focused, first on her husband, then on the statues of a Catholican married couple – a man in black tuxedo and his bride in head-to-toe white, with a silver heart behind them and a brown cross before them, as Flooy took in this picture of splendidly correct marriage, she smiled to think how nice the next ten years would be with a good man like Per by her side. She saw visions of babies and trips. Youthful sex. Afternoons comparing notes with her sisters on aforementioned babies and trips and sex.

While the shrine and cemetery had served for fifteen decades, her youth would last for fifteen years at most. With Per, her adorable first husband, she was determined to spend ten of them, and then retire like was the fashion, until she made a mid-life marriage.

Why then did she, just three days ago in the center of the town, swear to love him forever?

Because, silly you, romantic weddings all have the forever clause.

ARAB FILM FESTIVAL

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Mark your calendars.
California (especially San Francisco)
October 15 - 25, 2009.

I didn't realize he was dead

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Naguib Mahfouz, one of the world's great people.
Biography @ Wikipedia
Pictures @ images.google.com

He died August 30, 2006.
Guess I was too preoccupied to register the obituary.

Happy September

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Full of music, laughs, and flow, and maybe just a little hustle.

My new love

Shayo, by Bigiano.
Shayo means booze.
The kid is so cute, and so positive. I so dig androgynous hotness.

African Reader's Library

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I met this writer, Akachi Adimora-Ezeigbo yesterday.
Read more about her at 234next, and at sunnewsonline (so people really do it everyday)

I thought her elegant and...gracious? A new friend, looking to help me learn more about publishing options, brought me in to her office at the University of Lagos for a chat. Today I read her award-winning children's book "My Cousin Sammy." It made me sad at times, you know, the little daily cruelties in the family. The story is more interesting than some of the African literature we got in primary school.

For months I'd been trying to remember the title of a book that we read in Primary school. It had references to Bamenda, which we were told was in Cameroun. It wasn't an exciting read. I would maybe never have found it, was even considering posting a help request on the yahoogroup of my former classmates, when I got home found "The Village School" by Anezi Okoro. This wasn't the book but at the end was printed a list of other titles in the "African Readers Library," with short descriptions.

There was "An African Night's Entertainment" by Cyprian Ekwensi - I can still feel my heart race as I remember the sheer danger and excitement of following this story in reading class, was it primary 5 with Mrs. Emokpae? or Primary 4 with Mrs. Ogu? A similar story to The Passport of Mallam Ilia which we read in JS3 (Junior Secondary school) with Mrs. Bickersteth, the unforgettable, finishing schooled, then Head of English, now Principal of Queen's College Lagos. I just checked online...Ilia was of course written by Ekwensi.

On the list was also "Eze Goes to School" which is still very popular, but whose story I've forgotten, "My Father's Daughter" which I remember owning once, but it must have been unexciting, and on the third page of the list, at #16 was Promise, by Ashere, J. Promise was a book like "My Father's Daughter" - a girl's narration of some rustic living somewhere with not much action.

I would never have guessed that: "Promise is the story of a girl growing up in rural Cameroun..."

In those days, definitely Primary 6, 6A, with Miss * (three letters, two syllables, what was her name? jheri curls, dark and pretty and shapely and didn't let us play all the fun music at our class party at the end of primary school, so we trooped to 6C where the usually tough, cane-happy, short Ghanian Mr. Baa was letting the kids go crazy with disco etc. Was her name Miss Oji? She died soon after we left school.)

Where was I? In Primary 6 we had a book, not in the African Reader's Library, titled "Aduke Makes Her Choice." Aduke learrned typing and shorthand and things like that. I don't remember the "choice" she made, though. I remember the words stenography, and I think menstruation (which usually irked Aduke, or was it the Bamenda girl of Promise who noted this?) I remember Kenechi seemed to understand this part, mensuration or whatever, while I sure didn't. Kenechi is a nurse now. Thanks to facebook, I'm in touch with Primary school friends even.

Being on the campus of UNILAG...well, although it has that waterfront going for it,it's not a perfectly beautiful campus, but it is a campus, with all the youthful energy of late teens and tweens. I like campus energy, especially if it's all kinds of intelligent young people on campus, not only engineers.

Instinct, Natasha

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It's my instinct to make love, art, whatever; not war. Does everyone share this instinct? Not these city people. I guess chickens in a coop behave nothing like free-range chicken too. Crazy Lagos.

I have a short story from earlier this year: hope you like it. Wrote it in the middle of the night in Yola (after listening to Rufus' Natasha a lot I guess) Yowz, I miss Yola.

Natasha - A short play / picture book
January 24, 2009
By Tosin Otitoju
ootitoju@hotmail.com

Natasha is a friend of ours. She has lived in the United States of America for 15 years now, since she was 16 and starting her first week in the University of Indiana. She went from there, summa cum laude, to advanced engineering research in California, and now with her PhD, she is a professor living in Beverly Hills.
Natasha is not only very good in mathematics and engineering; she is also very beautiful with a good sense of fashion. She likes to spend money on clothes, which she collects like pieces of art. Do you think she has it all? Let’s ask her boyfriend.

Hans: Men, I love her. She doesn’t have “it all.” For example, she is so skinny because she hates to eat. I spend an hour everyday trying to make her eat.

But she looks lovely, we protest, so thin.

Hans: She is getting smaller and smaller. I worry for her. Nowadays – she doesn’t know that I know – she goes away after every meal. To the ladies room. To vomit everything.

Really? You should have her see a psychologist.

Hans: Tasha? You know she’s from a different culture. Psychologists are not in her culture. But yes, I agree, she has an eating disorder. I wish I could help her. Ah, there she is.

Natasha: Hey love. Sorry I’m late. (Smiling) I’m always late.

Hans: Darling! It’s OK. We were just about to order. What will you like?

Natasha: Er, not really hungry.

Hans: ‘Tasha?

Natasha: Maybe ice cream. Strawberry.

Hans: And a sandwich? Some rice? (After a minute of haggling, they decided Natasha would get a salad with her ice cream. Hans got a chicken and potato casserole, and we got our usual, fish and chips. )

Hans: Natasha has been unusually sad.

Natasha: I am always sad.

Hans: You are sadder now…

Natasha: The bombings. They are running my life. I wish I never came to this country.

We didn’t even know that was her country. She never struck us as Moslem – no veil, no Muslim name…

Natasha: You didn’t know? I’ve been watching the thing on TV. My own village, where I grew up – it has been leveled by the shelling. My life – I wish I was there.

Hans: But here you are safe.

Natasha: Safe for what? Alive for what? I am not alive, Hans.

Hans: (aside to us) My girlfriend can be overly dramatic sometimes. But Honey, next year you can go back home and help them rebuild.

Natasha: You don’t understand. For ten years, I’ve been plotting to go back (she slurps some of her ice cream) and still – what?

Hans: And she was supposed to finally go to her country this weekend. A one-year visiting professorship.

Natasha: And suddenly, poof. God, my life. If they would only open one airport. Let me go home and die. I can’t live like this anymore – worrying if my parents are alive.

Hans: She misses her home. The thing is very strange, since she’s very much an American girl now.

Natasha: But it’s very modern in the Capital. The difference is that people there – they know how to feel, feel life. I died already, living in America. Hans loves me: right, Honey? But nobody here can help me.

Hans: I know but I still try. I wish I could get her home. I go to my country every year, sometimes twice. My brother’s wife and kids join my parents and me for Christmas. Just like when we were kids; there’s a tree, plenty of soup and warm drinks, presents…So I can’t imagine, Natasha hasn’t been home in eight years.

Natasha: Was too busy. Grad school, then the Postdoc – ah, I wasted my life. A wasted life. There is nothing now to do but cry for a wasted life.

Hans: I love you. Your life is not a waste. Look, you are beautiful, accomplished, kind, rich, even. Only thirty-one.

Natasha: Excuse me. (She leaves for the ladies’ room)

Hans: I have never known a person so sad. You know, nobody in her family died, fortunately. Her grief is as if somebody died.

We agree that she is sad. We think she has a life here and that she should be patient until she can honour the visiting professorship back home. Of course not now, it’s too dangerous now, with hundreds dying every day in the bombings.

Two years later

Natasha! Look at her on the sidewalk in Beverly Hills, looking glamorous as ever. Granted, she’s a little too skinny. Let’s go over to say hi.

Natasha: I remember you. How have things been?

Alright. You know? And you? How is Hans?

Natasha: My ex? He never understood me. He’s very nice and he saved my life, but for me – I mean, these people don’t know how to feel their life. But he saved my life. I was really miserable those years.

And now?

Natasha: I can’t be miserable. I have a daughter.

Wow. That was – wow. Congrats.

Natasha: It’s not a big deal. Everybody has a child, a few children, at my age. Not around here, but –

I take it you went home then.

Natasha: Yes. The war ended at the end of August. One month later I was in the Capital. My mother kept crying because she said I looked so ill.

Did Hans visit you there?

Natasha: I got pregnant, so he couldn’t – it got awkward. I got very sick after I got to my parents’ home so I spent a lot of time in and out of hospitals. I couldn’t even teach for the first three months.

So you were pregnant?

Natasha: But not for Hans, obviously. I got pregnant after the illness. The father doesn’t know. It was someone I met in hospital. I can take care of the baby, and my mother is here to help me. She’s been here for a year.

That’s such an interesting life.

Natasha: Don’t use the word ‘interesting,’ like I’m an object. I wish I had Hans now. But he could never return to my life.

Have you talked to him?

Natasha: I had a baby. Can’t possibly ask him for anything now. Men have their pride.

I would call him. Just see what happens. He really cared about you.

Natasha: Yes. And I started going to see a shrink now. It’s a nice activity, outside work and home.

Glad you see it that way. You weren’t interested last time we met.

Natasha: But now I think it’s a good help. I mean, if we still had religions, or tight-knit families and elders, but in the modern world I say a shrink is a nice way to confess, clear your head.

How old is your girl?

Natasha: She’s one. Let’s go inside and see her.

Aw, you’re sure you’re not too busy?

Natasha: This is life, for living, I’m not too busy. (she leads us in through a small gate.)

Natasha’s mother: Ahlan bikum. Ahlan.

Natasha’s daughter: Eeek!

Natasha: There she is – Farah.

Notes:
Summa cum laude – graduating with highest honors.
Ahlan – greeting, welcome, in Arabic.
Farah – name, meaning happiness.

Hustle or flow

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I so hate hustling, you know, that big city mentality, me fighting working against the world.

Couldn't blog this month

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Sorry

O'Bama

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I read The Audacity Of Hope last week. I read it very quickly. It's a good book featuring Obama's thoughts on US Government, Money, Race, God, Policy, Family, etc.
I'm reading Dreams From My Father this week. Now, that is an infinitely interesting book. I'm glad it's so long. I really like the end, which narrates, finally, his Kenyan family history. (I had to read the end before I properly got there; you feel his relief at finally KNOWING where he's from.)
I wish many "lost" Black people in America could come out here, even on short visits, 'cos it's rare to feel at home, in the regal sense of the word, in America when you're Black.
I wish I read more of the AfrAm works that we did in that blitz of a course with Charles Metze III in Freshman year at HU. Now I see what a diligent kid I was, how diligent many of us foreigners were, to have got As in these courses in spite of not having the background knowledge - slaves, OK I had seen "Roots", but we hadn't heard of Thurgood Marshall, Richard Wright, even Toni Morrison, and we had just one semester. The main text for the course was fantastic: From Slavery to Freedom, A History of African Americans by John Hope Franklin.

My sister Kehinde graduated last weekend with a degree from The Mecca. The real H.U. She studied Business: Hospitality Management. (Anybody hiring? Seriously. I would hire her in a heartbeat.)

Last week's news:
New Poet Laureate of England - Carol Ann Duffy
New on the Time 100 List - Rafael Nadal
Still the best in the world - Dinara Safina

Birthday

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Birthday is on May Day folks.
tonight: cartoons and pineapple.
tomorrow: whatever's fun.

Life is amazing, even without electricity in my house.
there's a lot of fun stuff I could tell you, but my Papa might think it immodest. You know I'll still tell.
Girls are weird. Boys make more sense. Someone I know (yours truly) decided to try polygamy. She tried it. Her boyfriend returned two days later from a trip. She told him (well, he knows her, so he knew from her poetry that she might do something like that someday.) He did the sensible thing: tried to "adapt," then eventually started being a bit too busy to hang out regularly.

Could you see a typical girl doing the same as boyfriend? She would get so pissed, then waste a lot of her time fretting over the situation, maybe even trying to change things. Girls are weird, dude.

There are downsides to polygamy, like "who's the daddy?" - I think that's why all the mores around marriage started in the first place. Then also the fact that it leaves less time for "somebody." I guess everybody knew that.

The poetry book is done. I'm so happy. It's so nice to FINISH something this big. You'll read the poems soon, over a hundred of them, everything from Haiku to "Saguaro" with some music and limerick in between. I got a chance to read some today, and my audience had a fine time laughing. Who could ask for anything more?

Aish baladee and Nutella

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It's funny how well Nutella goes with aish baladee. One is an Italian chocolate-hazelnut spread, beloved of travelling students everywhere, baladee is the barely-there-light Egyptian local bread. Yum.


It's funny how lovely dark-haired white guys look in Adire/Batik, the locally-dyed cloth famous among Yorubas.

Yes, I know this post could use some visuals :-o

...so I just added the pics and links. do i have volunteers with cuter pictures of oyinbos in Naija clothes?

Cool research, outside the academy

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Last months in Adamawa
After the last post, electricity returned, and we've had so many hours per day now that I'm mildly sleep-deprived. Basically, whenever we have power, I'm up "using" it, to watch DVDs, read, etc. Watching Indian films now : finaly saw Kuch Kuch Hota Hai, a tearjerker love story with all the biggest names (except Aishwarya), Girlfriends is a surprising thriller - think Fatal Attraction but with girlfriends ;), there was a comedy called mujhse-shaadi karogi (Will You Marry Me?)that draws me to Goa , and I fell asleep watching more last night.

My answer, finally, to the first cry in this blog, dated July 2005, that I've discovered no new science...well, it is silly that I expected to be a researcher in 2004. (OK, 2005 less silly.) It takes time (for some people, for me) to have anything to say. I think the time will come, come soon even, but sad that I didn't know how to have more realistic expectations. Perhaps it's something that PhD programs can teach more to reduce the angst and pain. Ideally, though, it won't be in our trade papers that I do all or even most of my work, because I'm special and prefer higher impact even if it's unusual. That, does not come easily to many scientists. Although my gradschool advisor is way cooler than average, it's still a funny bunch that elects to live in Caltech. Ah yes, I'm planning to go back to grad school, in spite of being certain to be unhappy there, unhappy at least relative to eating cheaply and living simply in Adamawa State.

Compare Pasadena, the town in which I was somehow always a little sad. At least I learned a lot, including this work-life balance thing, how to be productive and relevant while selfishly keeping oodles of ME time. How to get knocked down and get up again. Not to mention practical things like driving and googling. Met some assholes and some lovely people, learned about white people and their civilization, enjoyed wealth for a bit (not that I was making a mega-salary but that the ambiance - the landscaping and the big-money equipment and everybody round having food and health, clothing and shelter, internet and extra, and the time and equipment to be scientists...it was quite a wealthy community.) The sad thing is that I wasn't even one of the sadder people around. What manner of progress ends up with sad people? At Howard, with black folk, there were sometimes delays, annoying people, but not the general sadness at 'Tech. Maybe things have changed since the President changed - he had a clue as to how to make a people sad: work long and hard on "interesting" problems without a clear view as to the real-world solutions and impact of the work. That's the winning formula for sadness.

Finally, the research
What could be more important than better understanding infant care? I watched this thing on Oprah years ago in which a chic analysed and classified baby cries so that you can see scientifically "why" the baby is crying. I wish more girls would do science and have fun with it. In

The Secret Language of Babies: The Five Cries of Newborns
Priscilla Dunstan [claims] babies of different races and culture all have the same five cries ... and since we all have the same reflexes the sounds are the same. (Check the five sounds here, get the DVD)

If you're into this astrology thing, The Pisces Effect is intriguing. Kenneth Mitchell scientifically relates Zodiac sun signs to specific Olympic sports, finding for instance that the percentage of medals in a sport such as swimming or archery, is not evenly distributed among the 12 signs, but actually skewed in favour of their corresponding signs: Pisces and Sagittarius.

Why would I want to be a synchronized swimmer of all things: some attractions - movement, rhythm, it's not goal-oriented in the narrow way that besting your fastest time in running or swimming is, it's more "aesthetic" and "cultural," it's low-impact (safe, no injuries), and it involves teammates so that the stress is lower. Basically you have fun trying it, happy if you win, whatevs if you don't. Makes sense that a Taurean would dig it. Taureans are the synchro queens, per The Pisces Effect. And I dreamt of doing synchro years before reading this, you know?

And great news
TWO cybercafes just opened in my area, feet from the university. 50% lower price even. And they may soon have a wireless subscription. My XO laptop aka One Laptop Per Child, would come in handy then, since electricity is not guaranteed. Can't wait to test the laptop out if/when it arrives.

Big Rush

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cybercafe's kicking me out. hi.
classes started finally. fun. yay.
it's hot. but i can't bitch. happy to be hot for a change.
no fucking flash of electricity at home for the whole week. then again i've never paid the electricity bill. we never do. never will.
too funny.

Cry

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I'm going to cry when it's time to leave this town. Almost cried the day before leaving for three weeks of holidays at Christmas. Why?