Amazingly, I was able to convince my very stubborn housemate to pay me the rent this month yesterday night. My thanks to Dale Carnegie\’s How to make friends and influence people and all the self-help books/websites I have read over the years.

It\’s not that I am afraid of confrontations. I am the type of person who can see myself doing many things, but when I actually do it, my initial assertiveness and strength completely disappear. But over the years, I have learned to keep myself from cognitively tunneling, to be mature, to really want to say what I want to say rather than fall to childish accusations of you suck, no you suck.

When I heard her walking on the stairs, I rushed out of my room and asked if I could talk to her for a second. We started discussing the issue. In my left hand, I held the sublease contract. I pointed to the third paragraph which stated the definition of a security deposit. My hands were slightly shaking out of fear as a result of my unnatural behavior–standing up for myself. Yet, I never took my eyes off of her, always trying to maintain eye contact even as she looked away about 50% of the time. We debated a bit about the living situation–how her expectations were different from mine.

It started escalating to the point where we were almost interuppting each other, almost a full-blown argument. I starting holding back my tongue even as she made accusations that were exaggerated and untrue. As much as I wanted to correct her, I remembered the way to calm down an angry, anxious horse. As the horse stomped back and forth, the trainer also stomped back and forth. The key was to become as angry and anxious as the horse, so that the horse will want to calm down the crazy trainer. Anger is often an internal state. The words people make are not a true representation of themselves. Rather, it\’s a way to express an imbalance from within. I agreed with her on some issues without resorting to a \”yes…but\” and asked her how she felt about things. I took a counseling approach asking why she felt frustrated and why she felt uncomfortable. A how do you feel about that.

Empathy. Always a key. Everyone wants to feel important. By listening to someone, that someone feels important. I asked her how she wanted to see things done. I basically let her vent. Then I sympathisized. Then I complimented her and told her things that I admired about her (related of course). And in the end, she calmed down and gave in. I gave her reasons why I could not accept her security deposit as rent.

I was just surprised that it was that easy. My other housemate called it manipulation. I call it compassion.

This morning, I left my house at 9:45 am knowing that I had a 10 am meeting. It was cold and chilly as a result of last night\’s first snowfall. I looked automatically to the intersection near my house. The 61a bus was just crossing. I quickened my pace and to my relief I saw the 61c bus behind it. I planned my strategy and was about to jaywalk across the street to catch the 61c bus. Then suddenly I noticed that the light was turning green for the bus. So I rushed toward it, clopping my way with my boots (meant to keep me warmer). The bus driver stopped at the green light and waved at me that he was going to wait, even though I was looking at yet another bus behind me.

I climbed onboard giving my thanks. He responded saying that I shouldn\’t rush (because I could slip due to the cold weather) and told me that the buses come often enough. I said that they come every 10-15 minutes. He insisted that they come every 5 minutes and that was enough despite my bus riding experience over one year.

And I sulked to the back of the pseudo-crowded bus. Always in angst when the bus driver doesn\’t understand how passengers are frustrated with the \”norms\” of the Pittsburgh Bus system – back doors are only controlled by the drivers and passengers cannot push them open, you show your pass when you get on when you\’re going downtown and after when you\’re going away from downtown and this pervasive misunderstanding of why people stand near the front rather than stand near the back (because if the back door cannot be opened, then you need to be at the front otherwise you\’ll have to push through lines of people).

I live on a busy bus line. There is the 61a, 61b, 61c, 61d, 61f, 59u, 56u, and 501 that go to school and back. The unfortunate thing is that these buses often come all at once. Then there would be a 20 minute gap between the last bus and the next even when it is supposed to be 5 minutes spaced out. This is fine most of the time if it was not freezing or if I had a meeting in less than 10 minutes.

So, why do buses come in threes?

One of my new favorite combo words is:

Plausible deniability.

A phrase only coined in the last decade (not for political purposes, but for technological purposes such as WHY AREN\’T YOU ANSWERING YOUR CELLPHONE!). PD THAT!

Have open wifi for plausible deniability. If you\’re doing bad stuff in your network, why keep it secured? Why not just have it open so that you can claim that wardrivers have been…stealing from you! And it isn\’t you!

I never thought that I could use my time productively at bowling. Got design critiques and sketches in done today because I refused to play. WOOHOO!

By the way, my favorite blog has been updated. And I am linked!

For a reminder of how independent, how sociable I am…at this age during this time…a list of things I learned during my Thanksgiving trip to the Bay Area:

While on a search for CSS and displaying tabular data, I found an obnoxious defender of tables. Granted, I switched over from tables to complete css more than 2 years ago and still have difficulty remembering all the commands for the css layout. Still, I find it much easier to deal with a css layout than a table layout where it meant a lot of estimations and guesses. In css, absolute and relative positions have saved my life (and my blog\’s life).

It is people like this that have no idea what HCI and usability is really about. Or perhaps, just the obnoxious software developers who believe that it is the user\’s fault for not learning an interface well enough. After studying HCI for more than a year, I can\’t stand to hear an argument without a tradeoff. With any benefit in the world, there is at least one tradeoff. Nothing is ever perfect. Neither is CSS or tables.

But moreover, it is people like this…that grate on my nerves. I do have a few friends who can get caught up in debates becoming more extreme over time in their singular opinion. Over the years working in teams, it is important to always consider both sides of the argument. No cognitive tunneling please! No absolute statements. Nothing is black and white, right?

American culture dictates that females should be hairless, which is rather interesting because shaving off hair only seems to be a fashion statement. Nowadays, not only do I need to be relatively hairless, but I also need to maintain an eyebrow shape (instant facelift, you see) and all these other trivial things.

I remember several years ago when it hit the tabloids that Julia Roberts did not shave her underarms. There was a picture of her exiting the airplane as she was waving and the photograph captured something so unsightly that someone had to report it to the entire world. I didn\’t know why it was such a big deal, but it\’s a cultural phenomenon. Or a societal norm?

That\’s why it was so intriguing when I came across a picture of a female posed with hairy underarms. Why? Who? Where?! WHAT!

I suppose this is the same as the social norm in America (unlike Asia) where if we bump into someone, we are obligated to apologize (even though we don\’t feel regretful at all).

I made it back to Pittsburgh alive after a dreadful exhaustive flight. Why do I have the worst luck and get stuck next to unkind passengers on the plane? On the leg from Minneapolis to Pittsburgh, I got sat next to two teenagers (or maybe they were college students, but they acted immature). At first, I thought it would be nice to have a conversation but killed any idea of initiation when I saw them \”fighting\” each other. One would knock the tray table down for the other. They would shine the overhead lights on the other\’s faces to wake him up and turn up the air to annoy the other one. One listened to his portable music player as the plane ascended (against FDA regulations?) Then they played with their cellphones in the air. *cough* What was interesting was that they had packed bags of candy (similar to what my sister and I would do on long trips). But still annoying.

Although I can\’t say this compared to the trip where I was next to a pleasantly plump woman (nothing against them, but…) who had a spasm every minute while sleeping and shook the entire row. No arm rests there.

Looking back…

10 years ago… I was entering my last year in middle school as an eigth grader. I wore oversized glasses and was still socially awkward. I had exactly one friend, who wasn\’t really a friend but more of a competitor in school. School was too easy for me.

(Exactly) 5 years ago… my first boyfriend-to-be (and now ex) visited me. I was in my freshman year at Berkeley and was still struggling with my sudden ability to make friends easily. I still was socially awkward and sheltered. I thought I was going to be a computer science major. I was in the UC Berkeley Extension because they only had room to accept me in the spring (a not very well-known fact of me). I didn\’t miss home. Since it was less than 12 miles away.

One year ago… I was in San Diego visiting my sister in her last year. I was still smarting from the mess I created in August. I started hated flying since I flew coast-to-coast. Most of all, I had come to love the mhci program I had started, but still felt distanced from other people in the program. I didn\’t feel like I had any close friends in Pittsburgh but at the same time I realized that some people who I thought were my friends weren\’t really.

Yesterday… I finally understand my incredibly quality of having such a large number of (good) friends, which surprises even myself. I went to Berkeley for the third time in the last 4 days to see a friend who drove all the way from San Mateo. At first, I was slightly bitter that I had arrived in Berkeley at 8 pm (after accidentally taking the wrong way to the Bay Bridge toll, I bargained with the toll operator) but it turned out he hadn\’t even left home yet. But when I saw him again 2 hours later (the third time spending time with him in person), all my resentment slowly disappeared.

Thanks to my sister, I present a poem of Thanksgiving. A thing to be thankful for.

A scar is but a scar.
But I still have my car.

The only memories that matter
are the ones that make me fatter.

You can always buy a new pair of scissors.

Or a new paint job for that matter.