Finally Got It

Sameer's flicker site. I finally got the address. This refers to a previous blog entry I made about a week ago when I talked about my amazing friend Sam, his awesome energy, and his "Dutchbaby."

I Saw Bill Clinton in Person Today

bill clinton was on campus today and i saw him!

unfortunately i missed his speech on "prop 87" - a clean alternative energy act - on the ballot in california this november - but, it was still very very exciting just to see his white head about 10 yards way! apparently clinton hung around after his speech shaking hands with the crowd for about 45 minutes. i went to the venue - the UCLA sculpture garden in north campus, just behind "my building," Bunche Hall - late because ... of all things i had a classical japanese class to go to during the speech.

there was truly an electric buzz in the air, which really, i've never ever experienced before... even at any of the olympic events that i attended in nagano in '98, or when i met the emperor and empress of Japan last fall, or the crown prince or princess of japan in Shinjuku more than ten years ago...

people were just screaming and yelling. there were waves of cheering undulating over the crowd depending on where and when clinton moved or waved. funk music was pumping in the background, and there were all of these people whom i've never seen before on campus; a lot of them looked extremely wealthy (big huge diamonds on their hands and expensive frost jobs) and/or power hungry. others were clearly lobbyists, interns, assistants, press people and business people from this or that clean energy group or advocacy.

here is yesterday's story anouncing his visit to UCLA in the student-operated newspaper, the Daily Bruin:
http://www.dailybruin.ucla.edu/news/articles.asp?id=38354

Still So Tired AND My Self-Designated "Reverse Culture Tsunami"

The main purpose of today's entry is simply to complain about how very very very very tired this life in LA makes me. I am already starting to feel pangs of regret about moving back here and being back in the thick of academic life again. (Before moving back to LA, I had considered moving to DC to be near friends and family, or Berkeley, also to be near family. In the end, however, I chose LA because I thought it was smarter to write a dissertation while having access to more teaching jobs and being near my professors).

So, today, Again, I will complain about the traffic - which is JUST an absolute nightmare. I try to be patient, but it just seems like such a wasted life to be sitting on the hot, expansive freeway an unneccesary 90 minutes each day.

Being on campus again is no real thrill anymore either. There are reminders everywhere - primarily lots of reminiscing with classmates whom I haven't seen for a couple of years - about the terrible terrible experiences some of us have had in grad school several years ago. While I was in Japan, I had managed to put all of those things out of my mind and thought that they were behind me. But now that I'm back, I worry about pleasing a lot of hard-to-please people again ... or else ... maybe they won't even approve my dissertation and finally let me ever graduate! (So goes the overly anxious line of thought that apparently floods my nervous system whenever immersed in this type of environment).

What's more, people around me are constantly talking about the number of chapters (of their dissertation) they have produced so far (I have none yet), going on the job market (hmm, not something I am looking forward to), deadlines for applications for fellowships (a despicable, time-consuming and draining process), and other "thises and thats" that just make my blood curl.

Unfortunately, I DO admit, that I do not enjoy talking about these things day in and day out. The constant reminders of all these stressful things are not conducive to my inner Ki and tranquility!!! Nor are all those uncomfortable hours on the *******, ****** ****-ing highway!

So, despite all of this anxiety and frustration, I am trying not to overreact. Of course, everyone must experience some amount of transition time where things just don't feel comfortable after a big move. I realize that it will/should take me a *bit* of time to adjust to this tinsel town world again... But now, in the wake of all this reverse culture shock - which I have decided to call my own reverse culture Tsunami, - I am wondering why in the hell did I choose to return to Los Angeles in the first place... Wouldn't it have been much easier to just move on out to the east coast or Berkeley instead? I guess I miss my friends from Japan now too. And, finally, to my further distraction and astonishment, I have recently found myself wanting to drop this (now clearly) dissatisfying life and become, perhaps, .... a truck driver, for example.

Sigh. ho hum.

Happy NCOD

A day to remember: Happy National Coming Out Day! This blog entry is dedicated to someone I love very much.

So so very tired...

Good Night to you LA Traffic

Ever since I have gotten back to LA I have been just so so very tired that I never want to write in my blog anymore - although there are topics that I think about all the time that seem truly deserving of a blog entry. For example, I would really like to make a list of all the things I forgot about and hate about LA... Like that the TRAFFIC absolutely SUX here. I want to blame the traffic above all for my being so tired all the time. I mean, it takes just so much time and energy to go even only a couple of blocks in this city.

Another blog entry that I think is ripe for the blogosphere is the surprising diversity of UCLA, which is also something that I had either forgotten about while abroad, or just taken for granted while I was living in this city before. It really is astounding how many different ethnicities and foreign nationals are present on the UCLA campus. My first two days back I overheard a surprising number of conversations in Korean and Chinese. I also heard people talking in Japanese, Hebrew, Arabic, Persian and Portuguese. And this was all in a matter of about 30 minutes, during the short amount of time that I was walking around campus. After I thought about this further a little, I realized that the friends I had met over the course of my second day on campus included 1 Bulgarian, 1 Arab American, 1 Palestinian, 1 Greek, 1 Indian American ... and an Italian. How remarkable is that?

A picture of "my highway," the 405, which from now on, I intend to avoid like the plague. This image was taken right below the Getty Center, which is only a few blocks west of UCLA

But sigh, I am too tired to talk about these things in further detail. My dashboard time has sapped all the energy and fun out of me. LA, its hot sun, high prices, and nasty traffic are wearing me out. Apartment hunting is taking a lot of time too. Meanwhile, I have been struggling to write a 20-30 page paper by Sunday, all-the-while bopping around as people's guest because I am homeless and have no desk. Sigh....

Staying at Sammy's

Picture of me and Sam taken last year in Tokyo.

Tonight I am crashing at my good friend, Sameer's pad in UCLA grad housing. I became good friend's with Sameer last year when I stayed at Sokendai in Japan. We were living in the same dorm and working on the Sokendai project on oral history and digital archives - which Sam and I call Dejiden...but that is a long story for another day.

In any event, what I want to record in my blog tonight is how full of life my good friend Sammy is. First of all, it is actually thanks to Sam that I have a blog at all. He is the one who got me started - and he also got me started on Flickr!! - last summer after impressing me with his own marvelous sites. Sam has three blogs actually, which can be found on his blogger profile. I can't find his Flickr site right now, but I'll be sure to update this later with the link.

Another picture of Sam and me in Kamakura, also taken last summer.

The main reason Sammy deserves a little blurb in my blog tonight is that, as I suggested before, he really is an amazing guy. When I got here at 11 pm tonight, he decided to just whip me up a little something called "Dutch Baby," which involved mixing may of the ingredients for pancakes in addition to nutmeg, sugar, and butter. After throwing the ingredients in a pan, he baked the amazing pan-cake like desert in the oven for about 20 minutes as he all the while filled me in on the details of Steven Wolfram's A New Kind of Science, Wolfram's program called Mathmatica, and theory called chaos theory. In addition, as he talked, checked ingredients, and regulated the time on the oven, Sam was happily laying out a beautiful place setting for me, replete with a jazzy place mat, an orange cloth napkin, and a lively blue ceramic plate.

Sam's Dutch Baby was sooooo good. He chopped up some bananas to put on top and then put some syrup on. Believe me when I say that his cooking and lively attention really hit the spot after my long, six-hour drive down on 101 from San Jose.