New Gadgets

In an attempt to bring back the joy of opening presents to the holiday season, I bought myself an iPhone today. And since our family collectively decided to forego all Christmas ceremonies this year (no decorations, no presents, no parade, and a filet mignon dinner that I made), I was left to my own wits to pamper myself. That's where The Baron, aka new iPhone, comes in.

My purchase is entirely justified, though. At least enough to settle my own cognitive dissonance. I'm not usually one for purchasing expensive toys, especially ones that are trendy, so I had quite a time convincing myself that I needed or deserved sch a fancy gadget. Keep in mind that my previous phone was a $10 pay-as-you-go phone with a different SIM card stuck into it. So this change is quite an upgrade.

The reason that finally convinced me to buy an iPhone was not just because of the incredibly fast network, nor the ability to access the internet whenever I want to, nor even the vast array of apps available right at my finger tips. No, my main reason was far more trivial.

It's important to stay on top of the trends when you work for a technology company. My main reason for purchasing an iPhone was to step into the 21st century and understand for myself just how mobile technology is revolutionizing the population. I couldn't use my dinky old phone to do so, so a new high-powered phone was necessary. Exactly how are services on these new phones monetized? Where are advertising dollars going? These are very important trends to follow.

Or maybe it's another way of saying "I wanted one because everyone else has one."

Holiday Politics

This is my first holiday season amongst the ranks of the corporate world. And while my company's flat corporate culture should ease the stress surrounding work holidays, I still haven't been able to grasp the slight politics that I'm sure are lurking somewhere.

Who do I give gifts to?
Should I even be giving gifts? This was one of the first questions I asked, and it turns out in my office, gifts usually come from the top down (or from publishers who send us swag in exchange for more business). That means that I should be waiting for my bosses to show their appreciation. But does it end there? What if I want to give my bosses presents to show my gratitude? How do I do it so that I don't seem like a sycophant? Should I even attempt such a thing? There's no way to keep anything secret from my coworkers when it comes to handing out goods of any kind, so perhaps I should avoid giving things all together.

I did end up with a final solution for this. I handed everyone on my team a holiday card with a candy cane. I'd like to think I was humble for barely mentioning the fact that it was actually I who drew the cards, but really I just couldn't think of a way to tell anyone without sounding like I was bragging or hoping for extra brownie points.

What genre of gift can I buy?
Eventually there does come the exchange of gifts, most often through a Secret Santa or a White Elephant. This year it was a White Elephant. Had I had more time, I would have found some office-appropriate, such as something off http://www.iliketotallyloveit.com/. But of course I end up procrastinating on something like this, and I'm left to my own brick and mortar resources. I settled for purchasing a comedic book - a rather neutral gift. And to avoid being boring and being thought of as run-of-the-mill, I put a twist to the wrapping and covered the book in many many layers of newspaper. I gotta say, watching someone unwrap about 20 layers of newspaper really made my day.

Other good gifts - Chia pets. Massager. Things you'd frugally never get your self but always had hoped to own. Office Space references are too cliche.

What gifts can I accept, and how am I going to repay the favor?
Inevitably there comes a time when someone wants to offer you a gift. Luckily I have not yet been put in a situation that compromised any sort of ethics. Getting treated to lunch now and then seems harmless in my mind, especially if my whole team is going, and especially since I don't decide where the money goes. I can't influence who gets what money, and I don't believe that accepting a gratis lunch now and then is so terrible.

But, there are also times when the gift is so extravagant that it becomes inappropriate. A couple of years ago, one of my coworkers received a $400 watch from a vendor. Clearly something like that cannot be accepted without the receiver feeling obligated to give something back in exchange, whether that's an equally expensive gift or the promise to spend more money in the future.

Since I'm just starting out and barely at a position where I need to be pampered to sweeten business deals, I haven't had to deal with anything of the sort. I just graciously accepted my free lunches and the bottle of Bordeaux from my boss, and then went back to work.

I sure hope I acted appropriately. Actions during the holiday season influence what people think of you well into the new year. I really hope I'm not coming off as just someone ungrateful and full of demands.

Are Digital Relationships Less Meaningful than Face-to-Face Contact?

Are the relationships you build remotely, where the primary mode of communication is through the internet or the phone, weaker than those you build in the flesh, where primary development comes through face-to-face contact?

I had an interesting discussion with my former professor today about the value of in-person relationships. It started off with a discussion about interacting with clients and whether the convenience and cost efficiency of giving presentations over the phone outweighed the benefits of building a better relationship with in-person contact.

While I agreed that, in the case of clients, it's much better to build a personal rapport by meeting with the client and taking him/her out to discuss things not related to the job, that might not always be the case with personal relationships. In personal relationships, both parties are supposed to be equals. One side is not supposed to be responsible for serving the other side. So does the same theory apply?

I suppose I'm somewhat biased. I've made a lot of friends via the internet through various art sites, many of whom I have not yet even met. And I feel closer to some of my online friends than I do some of the people I see almost every day. I believe it's more a matter of personality and interest matches than it is face-time.

But can these relationships be maintained solely through the internet? I feel much closer to some of the online friends that I've actually met in person. Would I feel the same way had we never had the pleasure of seeing each other in real life? It's hard to say. I would like to think that yes, I'd feel just as close, but I'm not sure that's true. I think there's a certain something that one can only take away from meeting someone. That also brings up the question, would we be even better friends if we lived closer and saw each other more often? I don't think that's a given either.

In the age of Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, and others I wonder if the multiple relationships that we're all trying to maintain via those vessels are as valuable. As friends are collected like trading cards, we seem to well surpass the 150 relationships that Dunbar theorizes is the maximum number of meaningful relationships one can maintain. But how many of the hundreds upon hundreds of "friends" we all claim to have are actually relationships beyond simple acquaintances? Does the friendship dynamic change when we have the ability to simply leave an "I'm thinking of you" wall post to make it seem like we care? Does it even matter or can we just give it up to a changing of the times?

Insanity Friday

I did not partake in crazy Black Friday events this year. Though one of my fondest memories will always be squeezing past the unruly Black Friday mob at Best Buy with my dad one year and ending up the sixth and seventh people into the store, I decided that sleeping was a more valuable use of my time.

The family and I left the house around 2 to pick up some Black Friday scraps. Looking back, it was probably the safer and easier thing to do. At least we had less of a chance at being trampled to death. In these economic times, the level of crazy seems to rise exponentially to the dollar amount saved from a discount. When resources are scarce, people tend to revert back to a more primal nature and gather as much of the resources for themselves with even less regard for the well-being of those around them.

To avoid all of that, we casually strolled through the piles of clothes tossed haphazardly across store floors, around the DVD bins whose contents had long been ransacked, and past flustered and angry store personnel just waiting for their shifts to end. I managed to snag a few good DVDs - Pan's Labyrinth and Primal Fear being two of them. Pan's Labyrinth is an excellent movie if anyone has not yet seen it. And Edward Norton debuted his major movie acting career with Primal Fear. How could I resist?

Personally, I love how casual we were this year about Black Friday. I don't know if it's a sign of the current economic struggle or just our timing, but there were no mobs and no insanely long lines at the cash registers. There were always free parking spaces. But I think the best reward for our nonchalance is the 40% discount we received on a new laptop at 9:30PM, hours after most people were done Black Friday shopping.

Microsoft was offering a 40% discount on anything in the HP online store if you searched with Live.com. Of course the whole system was backed up, and most people couldn't make it past the customary "Oops, the page you are looking for does not exist. Please try again later" page. The thrill of possibly getting such a discount reminded me of my old Neopets days, hitting refresh just hoping to get that rare, pixelated item. I had fun just constantly refreshing the page while playing Super Smash Brothers on a separate screen. Persistence paid off, and once again, I can say that Black Friday was a complete success.

Warning: Advertising talk ahead

I've been thinking a lot about advertising's continuous progression towards the eventual monetization of every little action leading up to a sale. I can't help but wonder what will happen to the world of marketing as we lose ourselves inside an illusion of security once we start believing our dollar values are correct.

Perhaps I should give some background to my concerns. It's no secret that the traditional advertising business has been shaken up due to the increased level of measurability and accountability digital advertising provides. That's yesterday's last week's news. When you market online, you can track every little click, every time the mouse hovers over an ad, every item you toss into a virtual cart. With traditional advertising, the best you can do is sit there and hope your ad was seen or heard by someone in your target audience. Anyone. But who's to know?

Once the ability to trace actions to money is available, every action now has a value. Of course this value will fluctuate given a multitude of circumstances, but there's a number somewhere nonetheless. And when there's a number, there's math to be done. Advertising used to be so unstructured, where companies just tried random copy and creative materials. The revolutionary direct marketer and copywriter David Ogilvy championed the use of testing to actually make advertising recommendations credible. And now we're to the point where every click online is valued.

The newest trend I've noticed is the increase in modeling and valuation of online actions. There are now even more formulas, and everything you do online potentially has a dollar value attached to it. Did you just look at a product? Did you put something in your virtual cart butt hen decide you don't want it anymore? All of these actions are worth something to the marketer. And you can bet they'll try to determine just how much those actions are worth if they haven't done so already.

My concern is - what if we start becoming too dependent on these models? They are, after all, still just guesses, albeit smart guesses. Are there any consequences that we can't see yet?

One of the main reasons for this current economic meltdown is the extensive use of models whose origins eluded the majority of the people working with them. The models were used to price the really crappy mortgages based on how high the risk of default was. However, models are simply frameworks meant to guide predictions. What people didn't take into account was that the real world cannot simply be squeezed into a formula because its nature is to be chaotic. And that's the same issue that the new marketing valuation models will soon encounter. This BusinessWeek article explains what I'm trying to say in a much more eloquent fashion.

The final question, after all of that background and speculation, is, "Have we considered the risk in building these new marketing valuation models?"

Yes We Can, Together

On Tuesday night, I witnessed something that finally made me really proud again to be an American and doubly happy to have been in New York. No, I'm not talking about the fact that Obama is our newest President-elect, though that certainly played a big role. I was extremely happy to see that the enthusiasm had returned to our nation.

Voter turnout was a record high. The AP reported that there was about a 64.1% voter turnout rate. We haven't seen that kind of interest in the elections since the sixties. Also, a record-breaking 138 million people came out to vote. People actually got up early to vote. Many people ended up waiting in hour-long lines that wrapped around themselves.

And once the new President-elect was announced, people in New York (and elsewhere) flooded the streets to celebrate together.


The crowds in Union Square about 20 minutes after CNN declared Obama the winner of the 2008 elections. There was a giant flag that people were crawling under and flapping up and down. By the end of the night, the flag had disappeared, mostly swallowed by the crowd. Everyone was ripping apart the flag, an action that might typically be seen as disrespectful. But that night, it was almost symbolic, as if everyone were getting a piece of America. Hopefully, the government of the next four years will again be for the people.


This guy was walking right up Broadway in Times Square with a flag trailing behind him.


I needed a quintessential New York photo of a hotdog stand... especially one that supports Obama/Biden.

I don't think our country has gotten together like this, shared a moment together since the period directly following 9/11. It makes me happy when I can see that we can all put aside our differences and come together as a country. I know Obama's election has not bound our country's citizen's together the same way 9/11 did, but we can all admit that we're living through yet another moment that'll certainly go down in history. And though America may still be divided by social and economic ideological differences, there are signs that show we're moving towards a more cohesive country - something we haven't seen in a long while. I think even those in other countries are starting to sense a change, that America might move away from being the arrogant, elitist country that we were for the past eight years and actually work with other nations to come up with globally beneficial plans.

A Step Towards Simpler Times

I've always wanted a pen pal. I was introduced to the concept around second grade or so, and I loved it. We would send letters back and forth to someone from another school, but the forced conversation was impossible to enjoy. What I wanted was a real penpal, someone I could exchange handwritten thoughts with. I wanted the experience of eagerly awaiting by the mailbox for the next installment of "Letters from [location]."

Well, now one of my good friends, who's currently living in Abu Dhabi, has unwittingly allowed me to subject him to my stream-of-consciousness via prose. And who knows through where that stream has meandered? I almost feel like I should've been kinder and warned him of the letters that he'll be receiving.

I am very excited at the prospect of receiving snail mail, though. I still think the handwritten letter is the most personal form of communication. Even face-to-face conversations don't compare to the written words on a page. So much more time and effort goes into crafting the traditional letter. Every sentence is given more consideration than the typical spoken or typed ones, mostly because there's no going back after it's down on paper. Sure, if you're writing in pencil, you can try to erase it. But even after erasing, the graphite will leave a ghost of the old message. And it's even harder to make your words disappear when writing in pen. You can either cross the error out and leave a hideous mark on the page or you can mask it with whiteout but leave behind a crude sign basically advertising the fact that you made a mistake.

It'll be good. It's time I took some time to myself and composed something meaningful. I don't do much art anymore, and aside from the occasional blog post, I feel like I don't have as many opportunities to express myself. And any news from Abu Dhabi is good news :)

This is where I talk about work

It's hard to believe that I've already reached the 6 month anniversary at work. Time really goes by fast when there are mountains of things to do. But what is it that I do?

I have no clue who's reading this, but I'm going to bet that those who are don't fully comprehend what Search Engine Marketing (SEM) is. That's not me being elitist; that's me admitting that I work in a really niche field. But it's a really niche field that fully appeals to my love for marketing, advertising, and numbers.

There are many types of advertising. Commercials you see on TV, ones you hear on the radio, pop up ads, etc. I work with the most glamorous of them all... the ads that appear when you search for something on a search engine. Go ahead. Type something generic into Google. Say.. "dogs". Someone created those text ads you see across the top of the results and along the right hand side. I didn't create those, but I do something of the same ilk. I think of keywords that people might use to search for our product. All keywords are sold on an auction system. For example, having an ad show up for "dog" would be more expensive than using "little black labrador" because more people search for "dog" and will therefore see your ad more often. So once I have a list of keywords I want to use, I figure out how much I want to pay for each of them

Yet paying for keyword space is not even half of what I do. If it were as easy as throwing money at search engines, everybody would be doing it, and the richest companies would have the best positions all of the time. But the search engines are smarter than that. Yes, one way of getting your ad to show up is by spending the most money. However, your ad also needs to appeal to people using search engines. On a very basic level, appeal is calculated by the percentage of clicks on your ad for every time someone sees the ad (also called 'click-through rate'). That means that the most exciting part of the game is to try to find ways to get people to click on your ad more often than they click on your competitors' ads.

That's what I spend a good majority of my time doing. I'm constantly working with numbers to see what factors can be manipulated in order to get more people to click on our ads. Sometimes, changing just a single word in the ad gets it more clicks. It's often fascinating watching numbers show the immediate effects of your changes and the long-term effects of the economy playing a part in what people are searching for.

Can I say this is what I'll be doing forever? I don't know. Do I love what I'm doing? Absolutely. I learn more and more every day with some of the smartest SEM professionals that I know. And I definitely look forward to learning more.

A Snippet of my Life

I noticed that I haven't written for a while. I would like to come up with a good excuse, but I don't have any. So instead, let's forge forward and stop dwelling on the past about what I did or did not accomplish. Come with me as I take you on a tour of my weekend.

I spent a good part of this weekend outdoors, which, after huddling indoors for the last couple of weeks, was a greatly invigorating experience. Even though I didn't do anything particularly exciting outside, studying in the park at a picnic table under the sun is much more appealing than being indoors. I also got some outdoor exercising in. Exercising outside is much better than going to the gym where everything's so stationary. I like having the scenery change around me as I move about.

Walking was a big part of my outdoors activity this weekend, but I also brought out the bike. I really like biking (I'm not sporty enough to call what I do 'cycling'), but it's difficult to bike when every road around you is on a constant incline. Going downhill is a blast, but at some point you know you have to head back up the 45 degree hill. But I took out the bike and was just wandering around my neighborhood for 2+ hours. The bike and I did make it back up the hill, but I only managed to ride up halfway before giving up and pushing the bike forward. My getting off and pushing the bike uphill was only the second time in the whole 2+ hour journey that my ass left the bike seat. The first time was when I fell off the bike.

It's not often that you see a grown adult who has years of bike riding experience under her belt crash into the curb and tumble onto someone's front lawn. I wish I could say I fell because the bike grazed a large rock or something equally unavoidable, but running into the curb was due entirely to my own actions. I'm not even sure how it happened. One moment I was happily riding along with both hands on the handlebars at the time (I had already gone through the Flobots "I can ride my bike with no handlebars" earlier), and the next moment I rode directly into a curb and toppled off my bike. My only saving grace was that it was a very clean topple. It was one swift movement off the bike, onto the ground, and back on my feet again. There was no wobbling. There was no lying on the grass clutching my knee. It was just crash, tumble, jump, and back up. If I were a cat, I would've walked away smoothly at that moment as if I had meant to crash my bike all along. I should've become a professional terrible gymnast because at least I can look cool while completely messing up.

I didn't want to be outside once the sun had gone down, so I planned other activities for myself once night hit. I've been home alone all weekend, and what better way to celebrate the night alone than by watching Fargo and American Psycho? I'm not sure why I decided it would be a good idea to watch movies about murderers while I'm home alone, but after watching Fargo, I was on a small adrenaline kick that I didn't want to end. So I pulled out the American Psycho and continued the bloodbath on my screen. It was great. I hadn't seen either of those two movies before, so the quantity of platelets and plasma on my tv was quite unexpected but very satisfying. I wonder if my overall enjoyment of those two movies while I was sitting in the dark clutching a stuffed animal says anything about my mental health.

This was one of the more enjoyable weekends I've had in a while. Sometimes it takes a weekend alone to recharge the social batteries and prepare myself to face the world again.

Politics Ahead

The recent surge of political articles in my Google Reader has gotten me actually thinking about the upcoming election for the first time since Super Tuesday. More specifically, Sarah Palin has invaded and threatened my hope and belief that my views on the way this country is run might actually get addressed.

It's hard to avoid talk about Sarah Palin these days. And no matter how much I disagree with her views and actions, I cannot deny that she's a great choice for McCain. Her emergence from a half-forgotten state in the town Bumblefuck, America in order to become McCain's running mate has elevated her to celebrity status. Instead of stories about her adopting African children, we now know about her son with Downs Syndrome and his misfortune at being named "Trig". Instead of cameras snapping pictures of her exposed crotch, her scandals come from the alleged lies that are coming out of her mouth.

And her new celebrity status leads me to the main point of contention I have with her and McCain's entire campaign: she is taking away the focus from real issues. The Guardian puts it best - Who knows if Palin will bring victory or defeat? But the culture wars are back.

This election shouldn't be about whether creationism ought to be taught in schools or whether gay individuals can be converted. These questions have no straight answers. There will always be people on both sides of the fence. And yet, somehow we're back to talking about a woman's right to choose vs. a fetus's right to live all while our country's economy is in shambles. The government just took over two of the largest holders of mortgages and loans, which means more of our tax dollars are getting spent to prop up the consequences of others' greed. The contention between the Georgian peoples and Russia demonstrates just how low the US has fallen from the graces of other countries - we can't suppress Russia quite like we used to. How can we work to solve these problems when we're all just sitting around arguing about creationism?

Right now I'm banking on the increasing spread between the haves and the have nots eventually pulling people away from voting Republican, at least for this election. According to the NYT, the larger the spread, the more likely an area is going to vote Democrat because the middle class, the ones who end up paying the greatest percentage of their earnings towards public benefits, feels the divide more strongly. And already you can feel the American middle class getting restless at the prospect of losing more of their hard-earned money.

Papers and Books

Now that Labor Day is coming to a close, it's hard to ignore the telltale signs that summer is about to end. The days are getting shorter. The air is feeling chillier and crisper. And the kids are wailing about having to go back to school.

I was recently in a college dorm room helping my brother move in. The twin long beds, the broken closet doors, and the cinderblock walls brought back very recent memories. And while I never lived in a room surrounded by cinderblocks, and I broke my own closet door in favor of a makeshift beer pong table, but twin long beds - the epitome of college furniture - really bring me back to all of the dorm rooms I've lived in these past four years.

It's strange that I'm not going back to school this year. After four years of performing the moving in comedy routine, I've finally retired and passed on my role to my brother. And I have to go back to work just like any other day. The full realization that I'm going to be doing this for the rest of my life has finally hit me. I'm going to be attending to my cubicle farm for the next couple of years. I might go back to grad school, but there's only a 50% chance of that happening (which means I don't know either way). There's also the possibility that I might be a drone for the rest of my life. Don't get me wrong; I love what I do, but even thinking the term "rest of my life" gives me the shivers. I almost want to go back to school just to make sure that there are some changes in my life.

No, I won't be going off to classes tomorrow. But at least I can still buy myself new clothes and stationary with the salary that I've gathered since graduation. It'll almost be like I'm starting the school year again.

Mmm horses

I just bought tickets to go see Equus on Broadway starring Daniel Radcliffe! If I can't get my Harry Potter fix until next summer, I'll at least be reminded of its wizardry wonder when I see the star revealing his equine adoration and sexual deviations.

I think what I'm most interested in seeing is whether Daniel Radcliffe can escape the image of Harry Potter. After all, he's been Harry Potter since he was eleven. I just recently had a Harry Potter marathon with a couple of friends, and it was surprising to watch the three kids go from amateur pretenders to professional actors. I wonder if that translates to the stage or to any other character.

I still see Elijah Wood as Frodo (anyone with me on this?). It's a very difficult image to shake.

The Ergonomic Grater

You know how when you walk into a room and you notice a contraption that you've never seen before, you're automatically drawn to it and want to touch it until the owner comes running and screaming at you? That was the feeling I got when I walked into my room the other day and saw an ergonomically designed grater sitting on my desk.



I had seen the above commercial on TV quite a number of times, and each time I cringe because seeing anyone's gross feet is likely to cause that reaction. Yet my fascination with infomercials (which might or might not be the topic of a future post) holds my attention captive every single time that commercial comes on. So imagine my surprise when I find the object of my grotesque fascination sitting on my desk.

Well, of course I had to try it. How can anyone NOT when a personal infomercial product lands on her lap? It was begging to be used. So consider this my official review of the glorified cheese grater.

Because it really is essentially a cheese grater graciously grating off shavings of a foot that, on occasion, does smell like a ripe Limburger. But for someone like me who cannot stand to have a stranger touching my foot, this quick-fix solution is actually very appealing. I still don't think my pride will ever let me go out and purchase another one should this one stop grating, but having one so conveniently placed in my room at least gave me the desire to give the egg a go. And at least I can safely say that I don't have nearly as many shavings as was dumped onto the green towel (why on a towel?) in the video.

Who doesn't love the occasional pointless meme?

IF YOUR LIFE WAS A MOVIE, WHAT WOULD THE SOUNDTRACK BE?
1. Turn on your iPod, mp3 player, whatever
2. Put it on shuffle
3. Press play
4. For every question, type the song that's playing
5. When you go to a new question, press the next button


OPENING CREDITS:
No Cars Go - The Arcade Fire
What an inspirational introduction!

WAKING UP:
Almost Paradise - Mike Reno & Ann Wilson
I highly doubt this would make a good waking up song

FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL:
Road Trippin' - Red Hot Chili Peppers
I wonder why I would choose to go to a school so far away

FALLING IN LOVE:
Let the Drummer Kick - Citizen Cope
Who knew falling in love was so repetitive

FIGHT SONG:
The World at Large - Modest Mouse
Apparently I fight by just walking away

BREAKING UP:
It's a Sunshine Day - Brady Bunch
Wow. How utterly.. appropriate

PROM:
Someone Approaches! - Man of La Mancha
:O (Sorry, couldn't find a link to this song)

LIFE:
The Circle of Life - The Lion King
My philosophy of life definitely governed by the Lion King

MENTAL BREAKDOWN:
Killer Queen - Queen
I definitely could be dynamite with a laser beam

DRIVING:
A Summer Wasting - Belle & Sebastian
I do tend to only drive in the summer

FLASHBACK:
Take it to the Limit - The Eagles
Why is my life full of so much inspiration?

WEDDING:
My Way (A Mi Manera) - Robin Williams
I would love to get married to a Spanish penguin

BIRTH OF CHILD:
Here Come the Geese - Barenaked Ladies
I guess this is what happens when you marry a penguin

FINAL BATTLE:
Affirmation - Savage Garden
Again, so much inspiration

DEATH SCENE:
Nightmare Part II - The Zutons
That would suck if my life were but a dream

FUNERAL SONG:
Outro - Nelly
The end.

END CREDITS:
The Queen's Story - Dario Marianelli
It's a dramatic ending. My movie's probably about my mental breakdown (No songs for this one either)

On Friendship

Friendship is a fickle matter. It's so difficult to make and maintain. The relationship between two people is sustained in a delicate equilibrium. But constant changes in the environment are always threatening to tear a friendship apart, whether it's a mutual misunderstanding or personality changes in one friend that the other person cannot accept.

I think in order to maintain a longer, healthier friendship, it's important to continuously give the other person the benefit of the doubt. It's exceedingly difficult, especially if his/her actions seem like a personal offense, but from my experience, often it's the environment that has temporarily changed the dynamics between the two people. Perhaps one side is trying to build a relationship and needs time to do so. Perhaps one side just needs time to focus on work. The level of love in that friendship hasn't changed, but if the other party is offended by the the change in amount of time the two get together and hang out, then the deterioration of the friendship becomes a self-prophesy originating from a simple nonacceptance of the others' time management skills. And that just sounds silly, no?

But perhaps this way of thinking is just a product of my own difficulty in making and maintaining friends. Because of that, I value the friends I do have to a much greater extent. And while I may not always show it, or I may be so absentminded that I don't even think about asking you the things that are important in your life, my love for you does not change. And I know that if you fail to do the same, I probably won't see it as a purposeful attack on our friendship; I'll attribute it to another, more benign and probable, reason.

Can you please spare some change?

I'm not fond of change. And before you start thinking this is a post about Obama, it's not. It's entirely, selfishly about me.

It's not that I don't like all change, because that's definitely not true. I like it when people change their outfits every day because wearing the same one can get repetitive/smelly. I like it when I find change on the ground. I don't pick up pennies so much anymore because they're all over the place in the city, but I still get excited about quarters. I like changes in my life that have been fully thought out and prepared for. Getting a job in advertising was pretty much expected because I've been working towards that since sophomore year.

Unexpected change is what's difficult to deal with. I like to think I'm pretty adaptable, but it still usually takes me by surprise. When I get thrown off a routine, I'll tolerate it, but I will still be completely aware of the change. I don't even like changing stalls in the bathroom at work (fourth one from the right).

This newest change is good for me, though. I know it's good. I just haven't been able to get into the habit of doing it yet. I try to get up at 5:40 every morning to go running. I only get half an hour to run, though, because I need to be on the bus by 7:30, but at least I'm exercising. I need something to counter the fact that I sit in a cubicle all day. But I know I still have a long way to go before I change my mentality into thinking that waking up at 5:40 is even better than sleeping in.

How I know I've had too much finance

To preface the story: my best friend is a neuroscience major.

So she and I were out to a concert tonight, and we ended up sitting with some Goldman Sachs guys. She was talking about neuroscience at one point, and then one of the guys says, "Yes, brains are awesome. They're totally the in thing right now."

That's all well and good until I decided to join in on the brain praise by saying, "It's indeed time to long brains." And yet I can't even claim that it was one of the nerdiest things I've ever said because I actually got a laugh out of the Goldman people.

What's wrong with me? I didn't even study finance.

Who am I?

I saw this on the internets and thought it'd be fun. I hate feeling vulnerable, but I'm not keeping these a secret anymore.

Sigh...

An amusing tale for an otherwise grim situation - the NYT is reporting that gas stations are running out of '4s' because the spike in gas prices is so unprecedented. And the only thing the president (I won't even dignify that with a capital 'p') is willing to do is lift executive orders for offshore drilling, but I won't go on a tirade about his stupid, biased move again.

Things that make me happy

me (10:57:28 AM) - )

me (10:57:30 AM) - :)

me (10:57:33 AM) - my eyes didn't show up

AM (10:57:50 AM) - ahhhaha

AM (10:57:54 AM) - because you're asian

Still giggling to myself about this.

A new wave, perhaps?

I keep trying to find new ways to motivate myself to update my various blogs. I don't post that often, but I would really like to. Now, the normal solution usually wouldn't be to start a completely new blog, but I'm thinking this could work. I'm going to try posting to Blogger where more people can read my posts, and syndicating them to my LJ. Perhaps that'll motivate me more to just write.

We'll see how well this works.