Waiting for the Ferry

Snowy Christmas

This is the first time it snows in Houston since I have been here! It was fairly light snow, but it certainly makes this Christmas a memorable one. These are some pictures I took on my way home. Where else could you see cacti or a giant armadillo covered in snow flakes?
Merry Christmas from Houston ya'll!

I pulled over to take this picture. It was cold outside!

You can barely see the snow flakes in the picture...

Flags

White Barbecue Hall

Armadillo

My Car 

Small Things

Sweet Tarts
Christmas-singing monkey puppet
Shoes
A Hair Dryer
Post-it Notes

And you are everywhere. Three days seems like forever and they just started two hours ago.

I love you.

Cleaning Up

1:22 am; break time.
I've been cleaning and organizing my apartment for a while; I can't believe she will be here tomorrow!
Today I took the GRE and got a fairly decent mark, though not exactly one that will allow me to go straight to Grad School...all that's left to do is to send the applications and see how everything turns out.
I have to be at work at 8:00 am, and then I'll go to the airport! : )
Something tells me I wont be blogging for a while, but I'll try to at least upload some pictures.
By the way, I finally changed the light bulb on my car, but tonight I noticed that it was out again....I guess I'll have to check on it tomorrow again.

Reflections at Borders

I love to take pictures of things and people reflected on windows. I know I really need to work on the lighting on this image, but the next one is much better. There were people studying around me so I didn't want to bother them. This is a portrait of me in despair, after having studied for several hours and realizing that the GRE is three days away and I am not going to get the mark I need. Oh well, so is life, I'll just re-take it next semester, I still have time to send applications to other schools!

Reflections at Borders 2 

Partial Moon Eclipse at Rice's Observatory

I meant to post this picture earlier. On October 27th there was a partial moon eclipse and I went with some friends to see it at the Rice University Observatory. What you see here is a large screen projection of the eclipse, and the inside of the observatory in the background (where the dim red light is coming from). I was standing outside when I took the picture, and they had two more telescopes for the public. So I could look up and see the eclipse right above me, or peek through their telescopes too. It was a beautiful night!

Finding Ways to Measure Time

For some events in life, clocks and calendars are not really relevant.

Somehow it occurred to me that each person has a unique system of measuring time according to events in their lives and the events in the lives of those around them. I call them Variating Degrees of Time: Important events take the form of landmarks in our life, and we break up greater units that are not necessarily equal in length (of time) based upon them. Perhaps there is one cornerstone that breaks somebody's life in two: having a child, losing a loved one, immigrating to a different country, are all examples of this case.

Second to those, we could name events such as meeting the person you will eventually marry (marrying that person will be a cornerstone too), getting a degree, finding a new job. Those are followed by the ones that I call the "Re's"; they have a more immediate effect and are not so rare, but still carry a considerable significance in the path to greater events: Being REunited with your significant other, REturning home after a long trip, RElocating or moving to a new apartment, and so forth.

The interesting thing is how my "number one" events become "number two's" in other people's lives and vice-versa. My sister's wedding certainly breaks her life in two; she can refer to events before and after it, and use it as major "landmark" in her own time. It is important to me, I understand the significance of it, yet in my life it is not quite a number one; I would consider it a number two. To my girlfriend, the same wedding means a trip to a different country, meeting my friends and family, and perhaps experiencing a new culture. Exciting, yes, but probably a number three. To her parents, it will mean fun stories when she comes back home, some pictures and a nice evening with their daughter (and if she actually likes my family, it might mean a little more), but it would likely be ranked a number four.....and so on.

The closer you are to somebody, the smaller the degrees of time you will attach to events in that person's life. When you actually share the same degree, you have reached a point at which that person is absolutely indispensable in your life (losing him/her, will break both your lives in two). As the degrees increase, the effects that those person's events have on your life decrease accordingly.

Why in the world did I come up with all that? I don't know. But it's 4:00 am and it's time to go to bed. Maybe if some day I get a PhD in Sociology I might polish the idea a bit more and use it as my thesis, so dear audience, you may borrow it, but don't steal it! (The chances of me getting into sociology are perhaps 1/10,000 anyways, and the chances of having an "audience" greater than those people who are more than two degrees away from me is even smaller than that!).

Ok, enough nonsense for tonight...

141 Boxes

One hundred forty one boxes
I just moved around today
big and small, old and brown,
light and heavy by the pound

Too many, too many boxes!
I moved around today.
Stacked them in neat stacks
so that I can find my way

One hundred forty one boxes
but I don't know what to say
for once I have moved them all
one hundred forty one more
are already on their way.

One hundred forty one boxes
I just like the way it sounds,
but don't like to have to move them
or to carry them around.

To Change a Light Bulb

Some things in life seem to be pretty simple. Everyone can change a burned out light bulb at home right? How about one in your car? You would think it's the same thing.

So I woke up this morning, pretty confident of the relatively simple task I was going to accomplish today. I've been driving with my bright lights on for ....a few months ( I know, what a bastard) and since my inspection sticker is about to expire I decided it was time to change the burned out bulb.

I opened the hood...looked around, unscrewed a couple of screws, and then realized I simply needed to pull a plug and, quite literally, get the old bulb out and slide the new one in. Easy! Or so I thought. The plug has a locking plastic pin that after 90.000 miles is (obviously) stuck. First I tried with my bare hands, then with a screwdriver, scissors, pliers, and a pocket knife. It did not come out.

Oh how incompetent I felt! I cannot change a damn light bulb! Now my fingers hurt, they're cold, and I might have gotten battery acid on my shirt. How pathetic. What's worse, I wasted over an hour trying to do this and did not get to study the chapters I wanted to read for my GRE next week!

No light bulb, no chapters, expired sticker...great.

Now it's time to go to work, I'll see if I can figure this out tomorrow; I have the day off.