This Happened: Lost in Translation

Wednesday, March 30, 2016

I somehow made it to the cafeteria at the Daio wasabi farm. I'd already withstood a couple months of being illiterate in Japan, so it wasn't shocking. Although navigating an unknown village by bicycle without being able to read street signs was a new feat. But then, of course, the food ticket machine didn't have any photos on it. I would have to translate between the characters on the machine that would take my money, and the plastic food display on the table. Possible, but a considerable amount of effort.

Instead, I held the door open for a man and woman with a baby in a stroller. I pointed to the man which plastic dish I wanted realized, pointed to the machine, and shrugged my arms in the universal sign for I-don't-know. He pressed the button, I inserted the money, and eventually received the correct dish: cold soba noodles garnished with seaweed and wasabi, with dipping sauce, and a side of wasabi greens wrapped in tofu skins. Wasabi greens are rather difficult to come by in my hometown-of-the-moment (i.e., Pittsburgh). It was worth the awkwardness (which was pretty much constant in my life in Japan anyways).




It only got more challenging on my bike ride back to the train station. I had traced my path returning to the main town, but could not for the life of me find my destination. Another hour was spent wandering the streets approaching total strangers saying "Eki?" and getting slowly closer and closer as I was pointed in the correct direction like a mindless hitchhiking robot. Being an English speaker in foreign countryside really cuts back on the communication dimensions.

In all my months of jeans renovation never had there been a more evil pair of pants than those studded ones.

Sunday, January 12, 2014

I was an odd, crafty high schooler. Now I'm an odd, crafty grad student. Not much has changed, although my writing has gotten much worse. I was digging through old files (isn't digital archiving great?!), and found my main college essay that I sent with my application materials when applying to undergraduate universities. I forgot how darn weird this thing is.

As weird as it is to have an entire college application essay focused on modifying jeans (denim, not genes), the weirdest part is that this essay is probably the best writing I will ever do in my life. People write blog posts longer than this thing! My English teacher's only comment was, "You're either brilliant, or schizophrenic." So there's that, I guess.

And now, without further ado, 17 year old me writes a college entrance essay for an open-ended prompt:

Seam ripper in hand, I eyed the jeans suspiciously. There they were, lying on the floor, lazy, boring jeans, easy to attack and unrepentantly blue! Cautiously, I approached the pants, knowing that at any moment I could recover from my temporary insanity, and realize that I was stalking an inanimate piece of clothing. Seeing an opportunity to strike the unsuspecting prey, I thrust my scissors into the thigh, and quickly followed that hit with a slash of the seam ripper. My hands moved swiftly to attach patches of fake tiger fur, filling the holes made by my crude weapons. Grabbing the thread and needle from their position on my belt loop I sewed the denim and fur together, before either could escape from my reach. Standing back a moment, I inspected my sewing, slowly regaining my sanity. Bright orange and black fur peered out through the gaps in light blue denim, quite a rare specimen!

Mirrored closet doors opened with a light pull from the hand, and I placed the creature on the stack with the rest of my collection. Warily, I watched the new jeans’ reaction to the other pairs around it, wondering if it would be accepted into the pack. Thankfully, the tiger jeans quickly became one of the group, accepted by the unadorned, older leaders, yet surprisingly rejected by its fellow companion in alteration, the studded jeans.

In all my months of jeans renovation never had there been a more evil pair of pants than those studded ones. Sterling shapes of smileys, butterflies, and stars fluttering down the vertical seam of the side of the pants fool the hapless stranger, making her think she is safe with such whimsical little figures. I too was deceived by this façade, for a time. But quickly I learned about those delicate butterfly wings and their graceful slopes, ending in a dangerous spike. More than once the wingtips have attacked, leaving faded scars about my arms, revealing my past inexperience when I knew not of the dangers of brushing an idle limb against the fortified pant legs. Aiding the butterflies in their quest to prick the wearer were the tiny silver spokes that poke out from the back of the metallic studs. If straightened, the spines will not only loosen their hold on the fabric, causing the studs eventually to fall off, but they will also inflict unknown amounts of nagging pain on the wearer as the tiny little points migrate from fabric to skin. Many times I would pause, wondering why I had felt compelled to make these evil studded jeans, “Why? Why am I forced into choosing the plain, monotonous pair, and unable to choose the others? Why will the stores not sell decorated tall-sized jeans?” Sadly, my questions were never answered, and so I continued with my hobby, protecting myself from the malevolence of the studded pants. I promptly removed the few remaining rogue butterflies and all spokes on the backs of the studs were firmly redirected back into the denim and away from the wearer, thwarting their dastardly plans and making studded jeans safe for future generations!

Watching from a safe distance, I reflect upon my hobby, pondering new designs, while searching the room for an extra pair of jeans in need of adornment. A quick scan reveals the careless detritus of my life scattered about the floor. Finally, my eyes rest upon the sorry appearance of yet another bland pair of jeans, lazily grazing upon the stray threads dwelling in the rug. There, in its current boring state, lies infinite potential and my responsibility, nay, my mission, is to decide the personality of these pants, a vibrant image of the future already forming in my mind. I must start my work again.

I am a Vacuum Scientist

Sunday, November 10, 2013

I am a vacuum scientist.

Well. Not really. But sort of. If you read this response from Berchenko-Kogan to "what do grad students in math do all day?" you will understand. All the ups and downs in a grad student's pursuit of truth. What it's like to come up with a novel [and doable] research question. I'm not even a math PhD student, and the article still applies! It's a really good explanation of what it means to be a PhD student in the sciences:

"This goes on for several years, and finally you write a thesis about how if you turn a vacuum cleaner upside-down and submerge the top end in water, you can make bubbles!

Your thesis committee is unsure of how this could ever be useful, but it seems pretty cool and bubbles are pretty, so they think that maybe something useful could come out of it eventually. Maybe.

And, indeed, you are lucky! After a hundred years or so, your idea (along with a bunch of other ideas) leads to the development of aquarium air pumps, an essential tool in the rapidly growing field of research on artificial goldfish habitats. Yay!"

When I was first dating J, he asked me a question I get asked frequently: "So...what do grad students do all day?" The Berchenko-Kogan response is a good overview of the entire PhD program and touches upon the things we actually do: read a lot, look for holes in the literature (i.e., thinking), develop questions in those holes (i.e., thinking), pursue those research questions (if in an applied science, such as myself, through psychological experiments, data analysis, and questionnaires), and write about that pursuit. There's a great deal of email writing, video-chatting, and face-to-face meeting, as much of this happens in collaboration with other professors and students either collocated or somewhere else on the planet. When it's conference season, I'm creating presentations from my writing and doing a tiring amount of social networking.

In short, PhD students read, think, design, and communicate. Oh. And we also wear a lot of pajamas. Because it's what's inside our head that matters, fools.

I also really like this visual explanation of what a PhD thesis contributes to the whole realm of knowledge: http://matt.might.net/articles/phd-school-in-pictures/. A dissertation is just a tiny pimple on the face of all of human knowledge.

The Window

Sunday, July 28, 2013

"I can't guarantee that the window will be open later."
With that, my fate was sealed. At 22 I was pretty much incapable of forging my own path in the face of an authority figure. I made feeble attempts at deferring graduate school for a year, but then did not pursue that avenue when it actually mattered. Basically incapable of saying "wait", I plodded off to grad school. As is often the case, everything worked out wonderfully, although this same passive behavior steered my life in whatever direction circumstances presented for years afterwards.

For some, taking the path of least resistance can be terrible, but despite signing my life away to post graduate work for 7 years, life gave me plenty of opportunities to travel, which was all I really wanted to do before attending grad school. Work travel taught me that I can travel alone, but that I don't actually want to. 'Not for an extended period of time, anyways. And so, not taking a year off to travel turned out to be a fine decision. I decided to own my decision to attend graduate school immediately after my undergraduate coursework, instead of whining about being forced down some path that my own cowardice forced me down. Actively making the decision to remain in grad school now turns that choice into my own, now.

But there are other decisions to be made in life, and you cannot always sit on the lazy river of life choices unless you truly wish to constantly attempt to own decisions others have made for you. It's not exactly the best path to happiness.

As I get nearer and nearer to graduating (again), that same window hangs precariously open. Do I take the path of least resistance, or do I choose the course which I might maybe actually want to pursue? How does a consummate wimp learn to own her decision now, before it happens, rather than in hindsight?

日本: Onsen-ler

Monday, March 11, 2013

hamam: a communal bathhouse (in Islamic countries)
onsen: a hot spring in Japanese, and sometimes, the facilities around the hot spring (i.e., a communal bathhouse)

If I feel like talking about scandalous things, I will regale you with a short story about how I visited a hamam in Turkey and due to my occasional blood sugar problems, promptly fainted. There are more details, but those are for another time. This eventful trip was actually my second visit to a hamam, giving me an all star record of 1-1-0.

So far in Japan, my record is 2-0-1. If a 'win' is a visit-sans-unconsciousness, and a 'loss' is fainting, then what is a 'tie'? A tie is when you're sitting on a bench with your head between your knees and decide that you are way too high up and need to be sitting on the floor. A tie is when you internally debate whether you should ask for help or just give in and let go of all senses right there on the changing room floor...but instead, 10 minutes later, you're fine.

I made it through okay, then bought some peach Fanta and Pocky and promptly went to a second bathhouse. I had already paid for it, why not? Nothing bad happened. I'm a big girl. I survived. It was lovely. There's nothing quite like soaking in a hot mineral bath after a day of lugging your giant DSLR around. And just sitting there. Until the hot water makes you ever so slightly light headed that you forget about all that work stress nonsense.

Because. Seriously. It's nonsense.

So, when I google 'japan onsen', I get a lot of naked people.

There's a reason for that. That's sort of what it is (Turkish hamams aren't much different). You put your shoes in a locker, you buy a ticket from the machine, the cashier lady gives you a key for a locker in the changing room, you stash your stuff in the changing room, go into the pool room, wash yourself off with soap and water, and then sit in the hot water for awhile. There's usually a hot/44 degree or bubbling section and then a cooler, 42 degree not-bubbling section. Sometimes there's a sauna room. Afterwards, you dry yourself off and then change back into clothes.

Modesty and body image problems should've been left in the changing room lockers. Now if only I could store my blood sugar problems there too.

日本: Yen Monies

Monday, February 11, 2013

My first week in Japan, I was feeling a bit content and generous, so I left an American-sized tip on my dinner. 5 seconds after leaving the restaurant, the waitress had chased me down into the street to return my money to me. So. Tipping, that grand American vice - not such a great idea. If you're feeling generous, keep it to yourself ;)

Now I've Done It

Friday, July 20, 2012

When I was 16 years old, I would ride my bike to work everyday, about one mile each way. Nothing major, although I would get honked at sometimes mid-commute. But then, every time I needed to be somewhere at a specific time, say for marching band practice, I would get a flat tire. I replaced the tube, I took it to a bike shop, but still got another flat tire. At the end of that summer, I swore off ever riding a bicycle again.

~Ten years later, and I've done it. I've gotten back on a bicycle for myriad reasons, but mostly because my employer is subsidizing the cost. And now, someone who has not ridden a bicycle in ten years is riding around downtown Seattle. I'd think it was sort of hilarious if I weren't so darn worried the whole time. Maybe someday I'll even figure out how to get on/off the derned bike.

This Happened: Oversight

Wednesday, June 13, 2012

I was thinking the other day, while packing all my worldly possessions, about the process for getting all this stuff into my 600 sq ft apartment. More specifically, I was thinking about transporting this over-sized canvas print from the bedroom.

I purchased this 4' X 3' "Secret Garden" print pretty much instantaneously, but it wasn't until I returned with it to my car that I realized I had a problem. I had no quarters left, parked at a meter running low on time, and a painting that would not fit in my car any way I tried.

It honestly had not occurred to me that my little Japanese compact would not be able to handle a ginormous piece of artwork. Long story short, I played the damsel in distress card and J rescued me from having to live out my old age at Southside Works.

This Happened: Snowpocalypse

Wednesday, February 29, 2012

I'm about to turn into a mushface. Please excuse the mess.

In a spoiled-princess-like huff, I walked up the stairs, unable to convince him to hang out. He had excuses. He had to be responsible. Do homework, get sleep for his 20 hour work day the next day. I complained about how I don't like just being dropped off. I knew I was being irrational and silly, and I complained to my friend for an hour anyways.

A few hours later, J said he might be done with homework at 8pm. I gave him his zombie Valentine card, he said I already had mine, but didn't know it.

When he dropped me off at my apartment, we stopped in front of my car. It had magically been shoveled out of its snow tomb! I sat there, sort of dumbfounded. I asked, "Who did this? Who would do this?! Did someone not realize it wasn't their car?" He said, "You must have a nice neighbor." I asked if it was him, he said he had been busy working yesterday evening, remember? Still a little baffled, I got out of the car and as I passed my own, he points out that there's a lump of snow on the windshield. I dig it out, and it's a red envelope. It was one of the letterpress cards we made at a workshop a few weeks previously (I am keeping the contents of the card to myself, ha, suckers).

So. While I had been bitching to my friend about how I know I'm being an irrational baby, but etc. etc...he had been digging my car out of two feet of snow! If I had just looked out the window, I would've seen him right there! Sometimes, life is like I'm stuck in some wonderfully ridiculous romantic comedy.

This Happened: Reluctant Pick-up

Friday, July 15, 2011

We were all new. It was the first event of the year. Piled on the bar's top deck with graduate students from all different disciplines, it was a sort of forced mingling. Well, a sort of forced mingling that we failed at for the most part, until my friends and I were approached by a fellow who introduced himself as a dancer. We all talked for a bit about our programs, life in Pittsburgh, neighborhoods, hobbies, the usual student small talk.

Before leaving, we took a group photo and my friend, "Steve", offered up contact information so that this new guy could tag our group on Facebook. New guy unfurled his arm and offered a marker, no paper. Steve inscribed the contact information on the new guy's arm.

I got a glimpse of his forearm afterwards.

In thick blue ink, drawn on this stranger's arm is my name and my email address. So much for friends that understand the concept of not writing young women's personal information on strangers' arms. When interrogated as to his reasons, Steve's response was, "That guy was weird."

This Happened: Turkey Underbelly

Sunday, May 1, 2011

Um. So, my best travel stories tend to involve slightly sketchy circumstances, and this one is no exception. Perhaps it's the sketchiness that makes it interesting. Sketch = experience?

I had been in Ankara, Turkey for a week as part of a four-month study abroad experience and was going out on the town with a Frenchman, a Danish guy, and a German (this sounds like the start of a bad joke...). We started at a dive bar and stayed until they closed. Then a slightly trendier bar, entirely decorated in shades of orange, and closed there, too. I recall my companions teasing me that they were going to sell me to a taxi driver for three camels to carry them to the next watering hole. 'Not the most culturally appropriate statement, but when inhibitions are lowered, well, it could have been a lot worse.

2:00am in the capital of Turkey is not the most happenin' time. In fact, everything was closed except for one last bastion of neon lights, which the crew promptly entered. We sat down in one of the high-walled, red pleather booths. At 20, I was not much of a drinker, and this night was no exception. While the guys each ordered a beer, I went for a çay (Turkish tea). We refused the mezze dishes offered to us and watched as a blond-haired woman sung on a low stage in front of us. Smoke hovered in the basement we were seated in, and we finished our drinks.

We get the bill, and for three beers and a tea, it's $53 USD. $15 USD per beer. The guys, at this point way past the legal limit, argued with the waiter, asked men in neighboring booths if this was typical (yes, it was). I convinced them to pay the bill, and we were out the door and in a taxi quickly.

A week later, my German friend pointed out that the expensive, smoky restaurant was actually some sort of illegal brothel (prostitution is legal, when regulated, in Turkey). I guess that would explain the waiter asking my companions if they had girlfriends (amongst other obvious indicators). Sometimes my naïvete takes me to strange places.

$7 USD is hopefully the most I will ever be overcharged for a cup of tea.

This Happened: Good Old Swiss Harassment

Sunday, April 17, 2011

I was looking out the cafe front, windows open to a perfect day in the hustle-bustle of Lausanne's Saturday afternoon, trying to forget the utter embarrassment I was experiencing. My muscles were tense, my fingers twisted into knots, all because of a grizzled, drunken Swiss man sitting on the other side of the restaurant. Using my faulty French, I had already apologized to those around me, and they suggested I change seats so that my back would face him. "I don't want to make it worse. I will leave soon," I assured them.

My lunch was delicious, a tomme vaudoise surrounded by quinoa and fresh vegetables: day 6 in the best six days of eating in my life. It would have been even more enjoyable had I not endured 45 minutes of the French-speaking wino, enlisting those seated nearby to translate for him. "He says. Don't be afraid of him." "Un oiseau noir [making bird hand motions]..." 45 minutes of this, feeling my social-awkwardness-meter increase exponentially, watching my beer disappear at a comparable rate.

I wasn't sure how I felt about the bill. A charge for my beer was glaringly absent, and the winking lush across the room didn't help to settle my uncertainty. In the end, even lunch with a side of slurred-French cannot ruin a plate of fresh cheese and veggies, the interior of an old-fashioned cafe, and the total awesomeness of simply being in Switzerland. I paid, hurried out the door, and headed straight for some amazing views atop the Cathedrale Notre-Dame.

On this day I learned that just because the drunk, 50 year old man harassing you during lunch only knows French, it doesn't make it any less awkward.

This Happened: Loch Ness Booze Cruize

Sunday, November 21, 2010

During a 2007 internship in Scotland, I was on a 3-day backpacker tour of the northwest isles, and ended up in a small town on the edge of Loch Ness. We got on the sonar-equipped ferry, meant for searching the dregs of the loch for the infamous monster. But instead of being surrounded by fleece-wearing, camera-clad tourists, it was locals donning their clubbin' skimpies. One night every month, the Fort Augustus ferry plugs in the Christmas lights and turns up the subwoofer, transforming itself into the Loch Ness booze cruise, a chilly experience complete with live music and views of Urquhart Castle. I love finding stuff while haphazardly stumbling (and believe me, I do a lot of haphazard stumbling).

On the downside, I've never seen the bottom of Loch Ness through sonar ;)

This Happened: Fate and a Camera

Thursday, May 27, 2010

Last June, I was in the Greek Islands (for work!). Halfway through my trip, I was sitting on a beach in Santorini at 9am, just before having to leave to catch a ferry to the next island. I laid my towel down on the empty beach and dug my feet into the sand, only to find an abandoned digital camera. I flipped through the photos, I could identify Turkey as well as the very beach I was sitting on. Running short on time, I delivered the lost camera to the scuba dive shop located directly behind me, and headed to the harbor.

After a day and night on Mykonos, wandering about the town, there was someone new checking into the room next to me. He was asking about things to do in town, things I had already stumbled upon. I offered to show him around and we had dinner. As a conversation topic, I mentioned the digital camera that I had found. He looked at me, surprised, "Whose digital camera?!" Earlier in his trip he had traveled to Turkey to visit family, and ended up on that same Santorini beach, where he lost his camera (and more importantly, the photos on the memory card).

Despite numerous phone calls to the dive shop, who repeatedly insisted that I was lying and that none of their employees would ever steal, his second camera search yielded nothing but a good story.

I'm not sure how two people end up at the same stretch of a smaller beach, and then a day and a half later check-into the same hotel on another island 2 hours away. Do you believe in kismet?

This Happened: Underage Molester of Minors

Sunday, May 23, 2010

Underage Molester of Minors (aka "The Child Molester")
I had a brief flashback yesterday, back to 2003 at the Jersey shore with my friends from high school. There were three of us, 17 years old or so, swimming in the ocean. Every time a wave hit, some random ~12 year old boy would be pushed into us with the force of the water. At first we thought it was an accident, then we realized his hands were brushing over our legs each time. So, G accidentally smacked our underage molester with the next wave, and with the surprise he swallowed a good mouthful of salt water.

Retribution can be hilarious.

This Happened: Turkish Bathhouse Fiasco

Sunday, March 7, 2010

A note on Turkish bathhouses (hamam): some are fully nude while others are partially nude, the one in this travel tale is of the latter type. All hamams are gender-separated except for the really expensive ones in resort towns (meant for those wily tourists). Typically the routine goes as follows: you undress, sit in a marble sauna for a bit, a Turkish woman exfoliates the dead skin off your body, and then you're done.

After spending a bit of time wandering around lost in the Ulus neighborhood of Ankara, Turkey, my Dutch travel companion and I asked for directions, and learned that we were standing right in front of the Şengül Merkez Hamamı, the bathhouse we sought.

We undressed and were ushered into the hot baths, where we sat by a sink and poured hot water over ourselves for 5-10 minutes. After soaking in the hot water, my travel companion was escorted to another room where a bathhouse attendant would give her an intense massage/scrubbing, while laying on a slab of marble. The sauna air was heavy with hot water, and the combination inhibited my ability to breathe. Just in time, it was my turn to be escorted into the much cooler scrubbing room. The equivalent of a brillo pad was dragged along my back and arms, and the washlady pointed out the rolls of dead skin I was shedding with the treatment (yum).

Just as I felt better, I had to sit up and get my face scrubbed. The change in brain-elevation caused me to get woozy and I began to see brown spots in my field of view. As the spots grew larger, the washladies noticed my condition and began pouring cold water on me. Considering I was overheating, the cold water felt good, but it also threw my body into a sort of mini-shock.

The older washlady decided I should get out of the hot bath room. I thought I was ready to stand, but as soon as I turned the corner I knew I wasn't. My vision completely browned out, and my hearing went funny, like I was underwater. I leaned against the wall and lost consciousness. When I awoke fifteen seconds later, I still couldn't see, but I could hear a bunch of foreign female voices. As my sight returned, all I could see was a giant spoonful of sugar heading towards my face. I swallowed, and thought, "Where the hell am I?" And I remembered.

I was in the hamam's lobby, sitting in a chair. It must have been quite a feat for these tiny Turkish women to drag me out there (at 5'11", I'm no small drink of water). As soon as I reached semi-consciousness, they carried me into the changing room where I threw myself on the bed, and I was blanketed with towels.

Nothing says Turkey quite like being dragged around unconscious and half-naked in a hamam.

This Happened: Stories from my Life

Wednesday, August 19, 2009

"Tell us a story from your life."

I was taken totally off guard. It had never occurred to me to mark off segments of my life for public consumption, and I went blank. The embarrassment of this moment lingered with me and as I moved onward from that day, twenty years into my life, I collected short segments and marked them specially to be retold again.