The outside of my apartment.
So technically, it’s been finals week since Monday, but my first and only exam begins at 3:30 today. I feel like I’ve studied to the point that my brain can’t really hold any new information. At this point anything I try to put in through studying seems to bounce back out. This is why I’ve pretty much stopped studying at this point and am blogging. If I were going to do badly on this exam (Linguistics), I’d know it; my friend Sarah, who’s in the class with me, figured out that even if we (at this point we have the same grade) get a B- on the final, we’ll still have an A- for the class. So I feel okay about it.
My roommate Marcella and I in our apartment.
I’m actually really sad about school ending. This year was very new for me; I was living with one of my best friends, I have an awesome boyfriend who goes here (at least he did first semester), I joined an a cappella group and met a ton of new people, and I genuinely enjoyed all of my classes. I’ll be more sad about moving out of my apartment than anything else. Suffice it to say I had the most fun this year at school than I ever have before. I even have grown to love Linguistics, something I never even considered studying. If I had more time at UConn I might have considered minoring in it; but unfortunately, I won’t be able to.
My only complaint is with Residence Life. They have been completely unhelpful in sorting out housing matters for me and my future roommates next year. Because of their shortcomings we are going to have a random roommate and my friend who was meant to live with us first semester has nowhere to stay. It’s frustrating, but I’m guessing lots of students have experienced the same problems with them.
Today I’m particularly sad, because it’s a lovely day and campus looks particularly nice right now. All the trees are green and budding and there are only some puffy clouds in the sky. It’s sunny and warm and so beautiful I could almost cry, I don’t want to pack up my things and say goodbye to my friends and be four hours away from Jan, I don’t want to sit around every day at home looking for something to do. I wish I could take a class up here or just lengthen the semester so my friends could stay here too. So many of my close friends are graduating; I can’t really imagine how they feel right now. I don’t know what I’d do out in the great expanse of the future. Driving through Newport this past weekend I felt like I haven’t really accomplished much, partially because I know the people there are richer than I’ll ever be, and also because it reminded me of my favorite book, The Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut. The book opens in Newport, with a crowd around a mansion’s concrete wall, desperate to see the spectacle within. I want to be inspired by something like Kurt, my favorite author, was inspired by the tall gates and marble homes of Newport. I want to see everything.
One of the mansions in Newport.
This summer, as cruel as I make it sound, may actually be one of the best. I’m going to Block Island for two weeks as per usual, staying in the house my family has been renting for years. Right after my 22nd birthday my family and I are going to Provence, in the south of France, for two weeks, to stay in an old farmhouse on 40 acres of lavender farms. It’s the type of thing most people only dream about, and I do too, I just don’t want to know how I’ll feel after I get back and the whole of August stretches before me unkindly and I have nothing to fill it with.
I want to make art this summer and run and do all the things I think about but never go through with. This means I’ll have to motivate myself somehow. If Jan gets his job in Newport then I’ll be up there fairly often, I’m hoping, with plenty of time to just wander. I plan on doing the entire cliff walk, a 3 mile hike around the cliffs on the edge of town. I want to sneak into mansions and find the haunted rooms and do cartwheels on their finely manicured lawns. I’ll get there, I’m sure, it might just take a while.
For now, though, I’m just sad to leave this place. I’m sure I’ll feel the same warmth and safety of being back on campus in September, but I am still adjusting to letting go of the time I’ve had here recently and saying goodbye to good friends and places. It was a very good year.
Robin
I’ve tried to keep out of the whole swine flu (now H1N1) hysteria, but this morning I heard something that made me extremely nervous. Bear in mind that I’m a serious hypochondriac, and am terrified of weird diseases and getting sick and dying. It scares me to no end to hear people panicking on the news and all around me, but I’ve been fairly level-headed so far. I even kept my cool when a kid next to me in the dining hall was talking about how he got back from Mexico two days ago. And I didn’t start wearing a mask when people were talking about swine flu in Vernon (30 minutes from UConn).
"Ok, if you live here, here, here, here or here, you're going to die. Probably."
But this morning my roommate Ari called me to tell me that there was a confirmed case in Stratford, the hometown of my roommate Marcella, who is there right now. I called Marcella to tell her the horrifying news, but to my surprise she had already known and wasn’t afraid. “Can you wear a mask, just to make me feel better,” I pleaded. She laughed and told me it was fine.
THIS IS ALL YOUR FAULT.
And on a certain level, I know it’s fine. But I can’t get the idea out of my head that if I get this flu, I’m going to die. I know many people feel the same way, which is why there’s such a panic. But out of the hundreds of people who have the flu now, I don’t think the percentage of death is terribly high; it’s a killer virus in the sense that pneumonia can kill you, though mostly the elderly and young children die from it, or those with weakened immune systems.
Still, I’m afraid. I keep having dreams of quarantines, zombies wandering the streets and pigs running around biting people. I’ve been drinking Emergen-C exclusively and trying to avoid public places. Even now I have a headache and I’m starting to worry it could be the harbinger of illness.
The near future.
Should I be worrying this much? Of course not. But I blame the media for my overreaction. If you’re going to constantly report on a story about a virus spreading across the United States, you have to be prepared for stirring up some chaos. I’m guessing in the coming weeks the news will be reporting that swine flu isn’t as deadly as first thought, and things will go back to normal. People will forget, as they did with avian flu, SARS, malaria, yellow fever. It will become a thing of the past, though it will still exist as a threat. For now, though, I reserve the right to worry. It’s just in my blood.
Robin
Filed under: Food, Movies, People | Tags: darjeeling limited, india, restaurant, slumdog millionaire
Last night I went to a restaurant in Providence called India, which was beautiful and luxurious, and didn’t really remind me a lot of the country. That’s only because I don’t really know what to think of the actual place, India, because of what I’ve seen from movies. In the past year I’ve seen 2 movies that give completely contradictory impressions of India, and I hope that I can someday go there and find out for myself what it’s like. But in the meantime I’ll try to reconcile the two views by way of finding a median.
Jason Schwartzmann, Owen Wilson, and Adrien Brody in The Darjeeling Limited.
The first movie is Darjeeling Limited, which I loved. As a die-hard Wes Anderson (the director) fan, I knew going into the theater that I was going to have a great time. Anderson’s movies are fantastical and he seems to view everything through the lens of a story-teller. His scenes are like drawings from a children’s book, with bright colors and patterns dominating the sets. Everything is filmed very simply, with straight-on shots and continuous scenes contributing to the sense that one may be reading a picture book instead of watching a movie. Darjeeling was beautiful because of the use of colors within scenes, but didn’t really give me an accurate idea of the place it explored. In the movie, India is a magical place where all the women wear jewel tones, all the children are friendly and innocent, and the country can be explored from the safety of a train car without actual exposure to the people. But Darjeeling, although it’s meant to do so, overly-romanticizes the place. I feel a connection for the characters, but not for the land.
The children from Slumdog Millionaire.
Conversely, Slumdog Millionaire, the famed Oscar winner, paints a much darker picture. The majority of Indian people live in the slums, with shacks for homes and dirt floors. Most of the characters are devastatingly poor or disadvantaged, and the only people who have risen above the poverty level are drug dealers. Children in this movie are drug mules, prostitutes, and their lives are nothing like a children’s book. Slumdog is beautiful but sad, and although the movie managed to garner a little bit of attention to the slums of India, the people living within them are still existing in a realm of squalor and oppression.
So the restaurant India didn’t really help me in my hopes to discern what the real India is like. The restaurant is very pretty inside, with silk archways and long cotton curtains separating the tables; Bollywood movies play on a large television next to the bar and belly dancers float around the aisles. It’s an India that doesn’t really exist except in the minds of Americans. There were two girls giving free henna tattoos, and I got one on my palm of a peacock. But even they didn’t really know anything about India. “Before Indian women get married, they get henna drawn on their hands, right?” They shook their heads and said they didn’t know.
The henna drawing I got last night.
I’m not sure how realistic the idea of taking a train across India is (as in Darjeeling), but maybe I’ll be able to experience it for myself someday. For now, I guess I can only appreciate what I know of India from movies, television, and of course, delicious Indian food.
Robin
Filed under: Bizarre, Celebrities, Design, People | Tags: heidi montag, plastic surgery, spencer pratt
By now I’m used to celebrities getting plastic surgery; unlike people I know in real life, celebs don’t seem real to me, and I’m okay with them changing themselves as one would the nail polish or a pair of shoes. It’s safe to say I spend my free time doing things of no benefit to me in any way, and this includes looking at celebrity websites, namely Perez Hilton and Pink Is The New Blog. They’re fun and distracting, and almost like reading a serial soap opera online. I get to enjoy the perks of gossip without the backlash of hurting anyone I actually know, and to me these people are like characters in a book. A horrible, boring book.
Today, though, I saw something that actually freaked me out and got me thinking. It was a picture of Heidi Montag, that MTV non-celebrity who has become so ubiquitous in tabloids. Only it was a picture of her from 2006. That was about the time her existence was first acknowledged by the television-watching world, when we knew her as LC’s annoying roommate. After she moved out, Heidi began an intense transformation, which, somehow, I hadn’t really picked up on until now.
Heidi before and after her first surgeries.
Just a note: I don’t give a shit about Heidi Montag. This isn’t about her, it’s about the way people feel they need to change their appearances to suit their lifestyles. This includes the Ashlee Simpsons and Demi Moores of the world. Heidi Montag’s transformation just scared me because I didn’t notice it was happening, or had happened, until I saw the old picture of her. It was as though your best friend had slowly turned her eyes green from grey and you didn’t notice until they were already a different color. I feel like I was missing something.
Another reason Montag’s change makes me feel weird is that before her plastic surgeries, she looked like a normal, pretty college girl. She’s my age. She now looks like a 30-something ex-debutante who spends all her money scrounging up vicodin and buying clothing to make herself look younger. Her face in the “before” picture could be someone in my class, in my dorm, walking past me on the street who I wouldn’t notice. And then I’d turn around to get a second look and they’d have fried bleached-out hair and a nose job and be strutting in front of 100 cameras.
Heidi Montag now, with her husband Spencer Pratt.
Heidi Montag as she used to be.
Heidi Montag, why did you get plastic surgery? Your boyfriend is a douche and a half, as anyone who has ever seen “The Hills” knows. You, and every girl, should know better than to do something this grotesquely personal for a guy. Your face is different and it’s no wonder you alienated all your friends. I don’t think I’d be able to look in the eyes of someone I used to know as a normal person who now looks like she was molded out of silly putty and coated in makeup and hairspray. This isn’t just to Heidi Montag, this is regarding anyone who thinks they can make themselves into a walking doll and still maintain their old lifestyle. Montag’s (now) husband is the only one who hangs out with her because he’s probably the one who urged her to change herself. It just bums me out that her friends and family let it happen and now she looks vaguely like her own evil twin. Ladies, don’t let this happen to you.
Robin
Lately I’ve been feeling kind of like an old lady. By lately I mean the past two or three years. I’m not complaining, I just have been feeling very old… I don’t have the same spunk or whatever as I did as a teenager, which is kind of a bummer. Plus my little sister is turning 17, and I’m pretty depressed about that. 17 was one of my favorite ages, and I feel like I was just there. So here’s a basic rundown of the factors that contribute to my aged feelings.
1: I love to knit.
My life now.
For most of my time at UConn I’ve been social chair of UConn Knitters & Co. Granted, I haven’t really had time to attend any meetings this semester/year, but I still technically hold my title. And it still counts because I knit all the time whenever I can. Especially when watching all those bad movies I love so much.
2: I will watch/listen to anything.
I used to be a discriminating, cynical teenager, unwilling to even listen to certain genres of music without crying out in disgust, totally anti-establishment and hated most of what was on t.v. It seems things have really changed as I find myself at 2 p.m. watching TLC
From "Born Without A Face". I live for this stuff.
medical dramas in a daze, eating yogurt in leggings and just kind of not caring. My 16-year-old self would throw up if she saw me now. I can sit on the couch with my roommates for hours and watch the worst kind of stuff on television, watch the dumbest movies online (see: movie marathon last tuesday), I’m okay with listening to pretty much anything on the radio (the only station I get every time I drive home from Rhode Island is country and I’ve slowly become ok with this. why? WHY?). Anyway. I comfort myself by saying it’s making me more “cultured.” Or whatever.
3: I don’t like loud people.
From 7th to 9th grade, I used to hang out with the loudest, most obnoxious kids you would ever accidentally encounter in a Starbucks and hastily leave because of. These kids were pretty much always stoned and looking to cause trouble and bugging adults just because they could, wandering aimlessly around our town center and being the people most normal members of society avoided. By the time I was in 10th grade, I’d dumped these kids and gotten better High School friends who helped me get on honor roll and into college, and yes, I guess I started being more normal around that time, but I could still stay up all night and drink when I was 17. And I loved being loud and singing and yelling. I’ll admit I still act that way around my friends at home, but in public when I see kids bothering adults just to get a rise out of them, or when people are unnecessarily loud just to get attention, instead of wanting to join in, I want to call the police.
4: I can’t stay up late anymore.
Me and my roommate Ari in High School. I was probably drunk. And it was probably 5 a.m.
This is one of the more ambiguous reasons because my sleep patterns can vary so much. Suffice it to say that throughout High School I could stay up until 6 a.m. and be perfectly fine the next day at 10 when my friends and I would go get breakfast at the diner. The last time I stayed up all night was the night I first met my boyfriend and we walked around campus until it got light out (though I really only did that because he made me). Since then, my latest nights are usually brought on by accident, especially in the Summer when my sleeping patterns change and I start going to sleep at 6 and sleeping til 2. This happens usually once a summer and I have to stay up for 48 hours to reset my body clock. Recently, though, as you can see by my Spring Weekend entry, I’ve been going to sleep before 2. Sad.
No wrinkles as of yet, but this sunburn may have sped them along. I’ll keep you posted on just how old I’m feeling once I reach 22.
Robin
Since I transferred to UConn, I’ve always felt just a pinch removed from it as a community member; I never had an orientation, I only know the teachers in the Journalism department, etc. But that all disappears on spring weekend, that most carefree of weekends when everyone is drunk and walking around parking lots every night. Here’s a play-by-play of my experience this year- I have to say, it was better than those in the past. But I also apologize in advance to my parents, if they’re reading this! I promise I was responsible and safe. It was spring weekend, I had to go out! Ok. Don’t be mad. Anyway.
Thursday
Jan (aka Yon, aka boyfriend) gets here around 4. I bought this terrible mixer-syrup drink thing called “buttershots” that’s supposed to be great for making cocktails. It tastes like a pancake, which I thought was great, but everyone else hated.
Don't try this.
Jan and I have a couple of drinks at my apartment and then take the bus to the music building, where I have a half hour of Chordials rehearsal. All of the Chordials are drunk and rehearsal falls apart, so we walk over to St. Mark’s church to hear some of the other groups sing before we head off to Carriage (official location of spring weekend Thursday). In St. Mark’s, Jan laughs loud and alone in the middle of a quiet song; more of a bark of “HA” really. But it’s so funny and loud that I start laughing
uncontrollably. I’m pretty sure everyone in the church was drunk, except the priestess, who was knitting on the stairs.
After the a cappella concert, we all walk towards the rape trail together. Once there, we all kind of disperse. Carriage is probably the easiest night to be with your friends as all the houses are numbered so you can find everyone easier. Jan and I go between three or so houses throughout the night, get exhausted, and leave around 11:30. On the walk home on the rape trail, he picks up individual leaves and lights them on fire, explaining that the smell reminds him of his childhood and that he loves the “nostalgia” of it. We are promptly laughed at by people walking in front of us for this explanation. Once we get back to my apartment, we eat DP Dough and listen to Beyoncé. Good start to the weekend.
Carriage on Spring Weekend
Friday
Woken at 10a.m. by some kind of street-cleaner contraption noise outside my window. Jan and I go grocery shopping and then head over to Willington Oaks, where our friends Liz and Nick and Kelly live. I wasn’t ready for all the heat and am wearing a black shirt and jeans, and Kelly has to loan me a sun dress because it’s about 80 degrees out. We spend the day sitting on the stoop having a barbecue, which kicks off 3 days of eating nonstop for me (basically). Surprisingly, I don’t get a sunburn, and am so full of hotdogs and hamburgers I don’t even feel like drinking. After napping on the couch I’m rejuvenated and have my second wind, so Jan and I go back to my apartment. No one is there so we make our own drinks, which are pretty disgusting because I tried to conserve money and buy the cheapest alcohol available. We walk across the street to my friend’s apartment, and then we all walk the rape trail.
The Rape Trail on Spring Weekend
Celeron was maybe the most crowded I’ve ever seen it, and I pretty much had to run to keep up with Jan, who is so tall that he can leap through crowds like a gazelle. It was the eve of one of the Chordials’ birthdays, so she was walking with us too. The 3 of us lost everyone else we were with, but miraculously found my friend Caroline under a tree. There’s no service at Celeron on spring weekend, which I’m guessing is due to the overcrowding and the thousands of people trying to make calls at once. We lose Caroline soon after finding her, but run into two of Jan’s friends and wander with them. Around 12:30 we’ve pretty much exhausted our aimless-walking capabilities and head back up the rape trail to my apartment.
Celeron on Spring Weekend
It’s already my friend’s birthday by the time we get back on campus, so we stop at Sgt. Pep’s and I get us a pizza to celebrate. The five of us devour it as soon as we get to my apartment, even though Jan and I had been eating cookout food all day. His friends leave after eating and I tuck my friend in on my couch. Everyone is so tired that we all just pass out. I’m just glad I got out of Celeron alive and without stepping on broken glass or anything.
Saturday
Had to wake up at 9 to meet the Chordials so we could sing at Oozeball (UConn’s traditional “volleyball, but with mud). Everyone is exhausted and none of us can really talk, let alone sing, from yelling over the noise of the crowd from the night before. I thought I was being weather-smart by wearing jorts and a t-shirt… turns out it was too hot for that. Either way, we all feel very awkward because the throngs of people playing oozeball clearly are enjoying the rap blasting out over the field, and they probably don’t want to hear us sing all-female a cappella during their weekend of debauchery. We’re uncomfortable, but really too tired to care too much, and no one can really hear us anyway because there are only 3 microphones. I’m not trying too hard to impress anyone anyway because Jan is still asleep and anyone I know who would be up at 10a.m. probably isn’t playing oozeball.
But soon everything is okay as we realize there’s tons of free stuff on the field. After singing we rush up to the food area and eat hot dogs and hamburgers and brownies and chips. And lots of water. Because all of a sudden it’s 90 degrees. I drive back up to my apartment, wake up Jan, and we head back down to the field so he can get some free food and schwag they’re giving away. We take some fun, but cheesy, but free photobooth pictures, which I would scan if I could. There are people riding around on rented Segways and stilts. Before we came back I changed into a tank top because it was so hot outside. Guess what! My roommates and I don’t have any sunblock. I figured I’d probably get a little burnt, but nothing more than a rosy glow.
We call some friends and they come hang out with us for a while. We go back over to Willington Oaks with them and hang out for a while, and then head over to Margarita’s for my friend’s birthday dinner. Jan and I are both exhausted from walking around all day, and the soles of my feet are covered in blisters from my sandals. We sit in the Mexican restaurant surrounded by 10 of our friends and acquaintances, both of us feeling kind of funny. Also I’m out of money by this point so we just order an appetizer and share one soda. Cool.
Totally exactly where I want to be when I have sun poisoning!
When we get back to my apartment we realize why we both felt funny; because of our friend the sun. Jan is just burnt a little on his neck and cheeks. The whole of my back, chest, shoulders and upper arms, as well as the back of my knees and the top of my feet are covered in the worst, most raw sunburn I’ve ever had (sidenote for my mom: this will never happen again!). I can barely allow clothing to touch me without feeling the worst pain I’ve experienced in a very long time. Plus I’m hobbling around like a grandmother because the soles of my feet are blistered.
OW
We go back to Willington Oaks and I don’t even feel anywhere near in a drinking mood. Probably because of all the sun poisoning. Anyway, the only booze we have left is the gross syrup stuff with nothing to mix it with. My friends are celebrating the birthday still and they live right across from our other friends with whom we barbecued. Throughout the night Jan and I walk back and forth between the two apartments until we get so tired that we just give up and head back to Hilltop.
We watch 3/4 of Notorious and pass out. Except he just passes out at first, while I am in excruciating pain and searching desperately for the sheet of paper that tells us how to change the temperature in our apartment. It’s currently set to 70 degrees for some horrible, horrible unknown reason, and I can’t find anything online to fix this. I’m scurrying around the apartment and rifling through my roommates’ drawers trying to find the number when Marcella gets home and loans me her fan. After plugging it in and pointing it at my face I pass out too.
Sunday
We sleep late and my roommates and Jan and I all go to the dining hall for breakfast where we gorge ourselves on pancakes and sausage and eggs. The sunburn is so bad that I have to cover it up with a t-shirt because the heat of the sun, even with sunblock on, makes me feel like I’m frying eggs on myself. Jan has to head back home and after he leaves I run to CVS to pick up aloe and strong sunblock with the $8 or so that I have left. Ari and I spend the rest of the day recovering inside and watching shows about the best sandwiches in America. Marcella miraculously returns home with a leftover grinder which Ari and I eat ravenously. More sitting around happens, then we watch Rachel Getting Married. Now we’re all tired and I feel so out of it because of the sunburn. I’ve been chugging water and trying to apply aloe every hour or so, but I still am in so much pain.
Basically, the weekend was alright, but there’s no way I could keep up with doing spring-weekend like stuff every weekend. I skipped the final night of partying at X-Lot (Saturday’s designated party area) because I just don’t feel like standing in a parking lot, pretty much ever, and I knew that out of the tens of thousands of drunk people there I would only probably want to be around 10 and I would only actually be able to find maybe 1, not including Jan.
But besides that, I learned a valuable lesson about sunblock. When I get home for the summer I think I’ll go to the dermatologist right away for a mole scan, just to check everything out. For now, I’m going to try to sleep despite the pain in my upper body, with the fan pointed at my face, slowly recovering my normal skin and dignity.
Robin
Ok I’m REALLY sorry I’ve been bad about blogging this week, but Friday was the Chordials Spring concert and the entire week was insane with rehearsals and whatnot. Thursday night I was at the music building from 6:30-11:30 and then this weekend my family was visiting and I just never found an hour where I wasn’t too dead exhausted to sit at the computer. I swear, Boyz II Men style, that this week I’ll be better.
Anyway, I’ll show you all pictures and video from the Chordials concert at another time, but for right now, here is something to start your day off right. I don’t know if this is real or a hoax- but if it’s fake this girl is a comedic genius. It’s too good to be real. But my roommates and I spend too much time on the internet and fully enjoyed this hidden treasure of youtube. I hope you like it just as much as we do!
Robin
I don’t know how many of the books in my house got there; I can usually only assume that, if there’s a pile of new literature sitting around someplace, my dad probably just got back from a shopping spree at Borders or some similar chain bookstore. He does this on a whim, and often. Our house is peppered with books I know nobody in our family has ever read and probably never will. I don’t think I could even count the number of Bob Dylan biographies laying around- I think my dad is hoping to find some new, secret information in each one. Regardless, there are some treasures hidden among the 50% off bargain books my dad brings home, and one day in high school I picked up Tuva or Bust because, well, it had a funny title.
I was confused when I first started reading it; a memoir, the book reads more like a diary, and I felt like I was intruding into the lives of people I was supposed to know already, but didn’t. Who was Richard Feynman, who was Ralph Leighton, why should I care? It turns out, Richard Feynman was a well-known physicist and Tuva was the memoir written by his good friend, Leighton. The book is about their journey to find the mysterious land called Tuva.
Tuva
Feynman first discovered Tuva when he stumbled across a strange word: Kyzyl. After some research, Feynman found out Kyzyl was the capitol of a land called Tuva, but he didn’t know where it was or how to get there. Tuva or Bust is the story of Feynman and Leighton’s decade-long struggle to find and travel to the country they became so fascinated with; in many ways the book is an allegory for Feynman’s personal journey as he battled cancer and succumbed to it shortly before the pair’s visas arrived.
A 1927 stamp from Tuva.
The book was poignant and a strong revelation of the power of friendship and curiosity; however, I felt that the legacy of the book was not Feynman’s memory (which was already cemented in public consciousness as he was an established physicist before this book came out), but rather the recognition that Tuva gained after this book came out. When Feynman and Leighton wanted to go to the place they considered magical, they met with such resistance that it took years for them to get approved, by which time Feynman wasn’t even alive anymore. Now, Tuva has become fairly well-known as a quirky, almost novelty-like place to visit, as much of the republic has yet to conform to Western standards of civilazation; for example, most Tuvans reside in yurts, small thatched dwellings almost like teepees. They are also notoriously nomadic people, with smatterings of Tuvans around outlying countries.
A Tuvan family with their yurt.
So why talk about Tuva, a place most people have never heard of? Because tomorrow is Tuva day! In the 1980s, while working with Feynman on their Tuva exploration, Leighton came up with the Friends of Tuva organization, with Tuva day celebrating Tuva’s existence, and I believe this year marks the 60th or so anniversary of Tuva being recognized as a country. I already planned on celebrating Tuva day in my own way (maybe by posting about Feynman or something along those lines), but, in an amazing coincidence, Tuva day is officially being hosted by UConn (for anyone who doesn’t know, I go here)!
Tuva is world-famous for its throat singers, and tomorrow the internationally renowned group the Alash Ensemble will be performing at UConn’s Von der Mehden Hall for free. There will also be a free screening of Genghis Blues, a movie chronicling a blind musician’s journey to Tuva. I’m blown away by the fact that Tuva day is going to be held at UConn, and secretly hoping Leighton will be at the Alash Ensemble performance. It’s such a small pleasure for me to learn more about Tuva, either through articles or recordings of their music, and at least to me, it remains the magical place Feynman and Leighton dreamed of.
So, if anyone is around the Storrs area tomorrow and wants to come celebrate this little-known country and its charms, visit the Tuva day website and plan on hearing and seeing some amazing things!
Robin
This week I joined Twitter. I have to be honest, I didn’t know what to expect. Twitter, for anyone who doesn’t know, is a social networking site where users post updates about their curren statuses in 140 characters or less. This makes it useful to keep up with the funny little things friends are doing, but also to keep in the know with celebrities, politicians, news organizations, and others who post bulletins on their Twitter accounts.
My Twitter page!
Before I signed up, I was skeptical. I thought to myself, “why would anyone care what I’m doing at random times throughout the day? Do I even know anyone on Twitter?” Turns out, the site automatically scanned through my gmail and imported the Twitter names of anyone who I was connected to through email. Without even realizing, I knew about 5 people using Twitter alread- including my sister and some close friends from home. Twitter asked me if I wanted to “follow” them; unlike Facebook or Myspace, you don’t add “friends.” By following someone, their status updates show up on your homepage; they don’t have to follow you back, and you can hand-pick who you want to show up on the homepage. When someone follows you, your status updates show up on their homepage.
Twitter even showed me “recommended users”- people they thought I would like to follow. And they were right! For some reason, I’m drawn to follow comedians… I’m following people like Michael Ian Black, Michael Showalter, Rainn Wilson (aka Dwight from The Office), Jimmy Fallon, and a whole bunch of other funny people. So now I get little comedy bursts throughout my day by reading their ever-changing statuses.
I think people are apprehensive about using Twitter because they don’t understand it. It’s not a scary new tool, it’s not going to publicize everything you do- it’s completely up to the user how much of their day they share with people. By choosing who you’re following, you get to control who you see, and you can block people so only the ones you want to follow you can see what you’re doing through your updates.
So, if you’d like to see my random updates and follow me on Twitter, I’m at: http://twitter.com/robinmbrowne
Enjoy!
Robin
For those of you who are unfamiliar with the insurance company AIG (American International Group), let me give you a rundown: AIG was a huge corporation, which, according to Wikipedia,
“suffered from a liquidity crisis after its credit ratings were downgraded below “AA” levels, and the Federal Reserve Bank on September 16, 2008, created an $85 billion credit facility to enable the company to meet collateral and other cash obligations, at the cost to AIG of the issuance of a stock warrant to the Federal Reserve Bank for 79.9% of the equity of AIG. In November 2008 the U.S. government revised its loan package to the company, increasing the total amount to $152 billion. AIG is attempting to sell assets to repay the loans. So far the U.S. government has given the company over $170 billion.”
The big deal with AIG isn’t that it was bailed out like so many other companies- it was the self-indulgent spending that occurred after the bailout. Last Fall AIG awarded its higher-level employees with a $400,000 vacation, was given an extra loan of $37.8 billion, and only one week after the $400,000 vacation spent $86,000 on a hunting trip. And to top it all off, in the past few weeks it’s come to light that AIG spent about $165 million in executive bonuses. Keep in mind that they still need to be bailed out, and that the company lost about $40 billion last year.
AIG headquarters in Wilton, Connecticut
This is something to be enraged about, surely; I know that my family and the families of my friends have been affected deeply by the economic crisis and for taxpayers to be funding lavish bonuses is just insane. I’ve been keeping up with what’s going on with AIG, but I learned something today that somehow had evaded me until now: AIG has a headquarters in my home town of Wilton, Connecticut.
Reuters reported that today, in Wilton, there was a tour bus offering a glimpse of what they called “The Rich and the Infamous,” by driving through several nearby towns and ending up in my town. The protestors wanted to drive up to the executives’ homes and put letters in their mailboxes/hands demanding justice for the excessive spending.
I’m not against protesting, I did it many times during the Bush Administration; I just thought this protest seemed silly. It was organized in the sense that they had a bus and a map, but further than that I didn’t see the point. In pictures and videos you see some protestors holding letters they planned to read aloud to AIG employees (had they ever actually gotten to see one face-to-face), but what did they expect? Anything they had to say, you know the employees under fire have heard it from a thousand people already. Plus, the employees already gave back their bonuses. I’m not arguing for their side, I just feel this protest was a misguided attempt at justice.
Protestors outside of AIG in Wilton
When you’re protesting, you should have a plan so the protest is more effective. Whether it be a silent protest, a sit-in, a riot, whatever- know what your goal is. If you’re planning on overthrowing the government, make sure you have enough people on your side to overthrow the government. If you’re doing a hunger strike, make sure you’re not going to cave after 3 hours and eat a snack. This protest was kind of a bad protest, at least from what I’ve seen and read in the news. Those who participated “chanted,” if you can even call their halfhearted yells that, they had signs, but they were ineffective. They protested at an empty office building and went home with nothing gained except a two-minute bit on the news.
Protestors outside of AIG in Wilton
I don’t think I’m in much of a position to be giving protest advice, but I have protested several times before and I wouldn’t count this weekend’s protest as a success. If you’re protesting to satisfy yourself, that’s one thing; but if you really want to enact change, you have to give it all or nothing, and these protestors simply did not do that. It’s time to make real change happen, but it’s not going to occur overnight. Protests are certainly a way to raise awareness about injustices; I just feel that this issue already has so much of a spotlight pointed at it that this protest wasn’t terribly effective.
Robin
internet interest 