I was exploring the photo gallery of Rescomp (where I work) today and found the following picture:

It\’s one of the few pictures that I was in. And guess what, while everyone was chatting with each other, I was the one eating! In that moment, I think I was dissecting my burger. I suddenly decided I didn\’t like the bun and began pulling the entire thing apart. Unfortunately, the whole thing came apart and I had to eat bit by bit using my fingers. Thus, the photo.

I loved Lele\’s idea of posting a phone number. It was more of an experiment than an actual call-me plea. Of course, what\’s surprising is that nobody…calls. Nobody would unless given the okay either through a blog comment or an instant message.

But what interests me the most is this so-called polite boundary that people are reluctant to cross. It\’s almost the exact thing I am doing research on at GUIR (informal research if anything). This year I got involved with the privacy stuff…how people really are worried about releasing their location, their address, their phone number, etc. We imagine all these worse-case scenarios, yet how often do they really happen? Our phone number is widely available in the white pages, but the only annoyance we get is marketing phone calls. By posting a phone number on the web, who really cares? Not to mention my street address, who would really come? There is nobody (except myself) that is a good stalker. Nobody has the patience to pursue something that may or may not have a plausible relationship. Why are we so worried about our privacy when there is no real risk?

It\’s sad, but people just…don\’t…care.

I received 3 surprising things today. A few days ago, the graduate student I am working with for research sent me an e-mail saying he had something cool for me. My interest was piqued, but I didn\’t want to seem TOO enthuastic. Could it be free tuition next fall? Maybe it was free food! Candy! And to my surprise today, he got me the NO I WILL NOT FIX YOUR COMPUTER t-shirt! I almost died (out of happiness), but I retained my composure. Although the t-shirt is too big for me (it seems like almost everyone who got me a thinkgeek t-shirt neglected my size, but that\’s OK), I was so pleased! Now I can add to the collection of the I\’M BLOGGING THIS shirt from Seth and the defunct DON\’T BLAME ME IT\’S A HARDWARE PROBLEM. from Shroom.

Then for some odd reason, my coworker suddenly became nostalgic. I was slightly irritated at his complaints about how he wanted school to be over and how he disliked work (how he wanted work to be over too). So I wasn\’t being particularly nice (*cough*) or attentive to his concerns. Suddenly over my focus on residents\’ computers, he asked me where I was going next year. I told him that I was going across country to Pittsburgh, PA. He reacted in a surprising way, since we never had never achieved that balance of \”friendship\”. He gave a sad look…for a second…\”so far away!\” he exclaimed. I raised my eyebrows and finished up the laptops I was working on. As I was about to leave, he told me to hold on a second. He wrote something on a post-it and told me to look at it when I needed it. I gave him a curious look and put the folded note in my pocket. I went to my appointment and when I had to wait to let the comptuer scan, I pulled the note out of my pocket. It piqued my curiousity–was he going to be indifferent as I was to him? was it going to be a silly note?

Instead, the note simply read, Be successful in all that you do! Love, Monty

After the appointment, I went back to the computing center and thanked him.

When I returned to my apartment, I saw a small box sitting on my desk. Definitely something that came in the mail. To my surprise, it had a Google sticker. I couldn\’t recall ordering anything online for the last few months. I opened the box and inside was a nalgene bottle with a Google logo. Then there was a note inside. Apparently, they had received my application for the human computer interaction internship, but they received over 2000 applications for 75 positions and couldn\’t accept several highly qualified applicants…like me? It was a nice gift, but it makes me wonder if all 2000 applicants received a bottle or just highly qualified applicants like myself.

Oh yes, lest we forget that my cousin Alan proposed to me today. INCEST!

From time to time, I wonder what kind of impression people have of me when they visit my blog. Because of various incidents, I rarely give out my url to people I recently met. I don\’t include the url in my aim info anymore.

But I don\’t want to be a stealth blogger like some people I know. I have an urge to express myself and a need to receive attention.

But what will people think when they read this conversation from last year? It has been almost a year since it happened and I do look back on it, fondly with amusement.

I was appalled the moment I discovered that my parents got involved in a Chinese soap opera.

It was about some girl that had fallen in love with a guy when she was young, but her mother or something made her leave. Then she met a new guy but the old guy had come back. Then she got pregnant somehow and the new guy thinks it\’s his child, but it might be the old guy\’s child. Then the parents appear. And as most soap opera goes, someone cheated on who and it\’s really not her mother? Are they siblings?

Both of my parents work. But I was shocked to find them behaving like housewives, gossiping about how the soap opera could occur…about who slept with who…

If you overhear people talking about a tv show, you would think they were talking about real people. How would you keep track of what is real and what is not? Last year in my cognitive linguistics class, I learned it was mental models. This year in my philosophy of language class, it\’s all about the pretend speech acts.

One skill I would like to have: mind-reading.

There is so much said that we don\’t really mean. There\’s so much we want to say, but we don\’t say it because we\’re being polite or we\’re afraid to express ourselves. We are afraid of the consequences, because we don\’t know how the hearer will react.

I want to read people\’s minds and not have to guess what they\’re thinking.

But yet, there was a study done on couples. If a couple was totally in tune with each other\’s thoughts, their relationship wasn\’t that great. At the same time, if the couple didn\’t hear each other\’s thoughts at all, then the relationship wasn\’t great. Optimally, it was supposed to be somewhere in the middle–that both people would know 50% of each other\’s thoughts.

But for me, I dislike guessing. I would rather know. Pry into your mind, please!

It\’s strange. Being an INFJ, I am worn out really quickly by all the interaction I had to do with people. Just for work. When I return to my apartment, I can\’t really think clearly. Everything is race race. Maybe it\’s because I put so much energy toward interacting with people that I have none left for myself.

Tomorrow I am getting a tour of Cory Hall by anderson. :D

Today during the meeting, we had to introduce ourselves to the new RCCs. Year. Major. Something interesting about ourselves.

I said of course…\”I have many interesting stories. Most usually involve stalking. Some also include \’meeting\’ people from states that start with the letter M.\”

I paused for a few seconds and like my coworker (who showed that he could bend his arm backwards), I said, \”I can also bend all my fingers backward.\”

Everyone went ewwwwwwwww!

Die Sasser die!

Because I am one greedy little girl, I decided to work overtime fixing people\’s computers. Granted, I was distracted half of the time, playing with my laptop (named Eris after the goddess of chaos). But for some reason, I get some kind of rush when I remove a virus. Like it\’s clean. Some kind of relief for me too.

I have discovered how poor I am at multitasking. If two people are talking to me at a time, I can\’t focus. I can\’t concentrate. I nearly crawl into myself, trying to deal with everything. This is a sign that I can\’t do customer service for the rest of my life. It drains me every time.

I just found out my coworker (who I have always enjoyed being around) is a Regent\’s Scholar. That basically means that he had a full ride to UC Berkeley. All expenses paid. That meant that he was one of the elite in the incoming freshmen.

For some reason, discovering that he is…slightly changes my perception of him. He has always been my sidekick, the voyager in the treacherous zone of viruses and unstable Windows. Yet, for a moment, I envy him. And then, I wonder if he thinks he\’s better than everyone else.

In middle school and high school, I had always considered myself very smart. One of the best. But I never received a single scholarship. I didn\’t get high accolades beyond the string of 5\’s on all my AP tests and the near-perfect straight A\’s. I did graduate high school with honors, but I still wasn\’t the best. And now at Berkeley, ending my undergraduate career, I am just graduating. No cum laude. No summa cum laude. No magna cum laude. Just straight graduating.

But what I have to remind myself is: being smart doesn\’t mean you\’re a better person.