originally posted september 23, 2000

a touch of the old as the new term begins

Year two has begun, and already a couple of unexpected flashbacks have happened in my life. I'm not talking about the hours of homework I had last year, but some new figures who have older roots.

making the virtual real

This first anecdote was hardly unexpected -- I had known about it for some time. I don't know what it is with DALnet #teen ops and Pittsburgh, but already I've met three people from that chat room in this city alone: one while I was here for Pre-College, one last year while he was attending Allegheny College not too far from here, and now a first-year student whom I've known on #teen for some time but had never met in person until she came here. (Names withheld on all counts, for reasons that I won't go into.)

from next door to next chair

When I first moved to Syosset in 1987, we met our next-door neighbors. They had kids comparable in age to myself and my two younger brothers, so we would often go next door to play in the house or swim in their pool. Then, our neighbors packed up and left for the brighter pastures of East Setauket. We never saw them again... until arriving here.

At Carnegie Mellon, Japanese class offers an interesting social environment. Students always refer to each other using the "Japanized" last name plus the suffix -san. For example, my classmates refer to me as Wairu-san, which is about as close as you can get with the standard syllables. When meeting classmates in other locations, this leads to some awkward situations. Since only a butchered form of the last name, and never the first name, is used for reference, I've often had to sheepishly ask my fellow students what their first names were.

When reading the class's bboard, I see messages attributed to my classmates' full names. Sometimes it takes a while for things to click as I break the original-language names into Japanese-sounding transliterations. When reading one message, things clicked into place: this person had the exact same name as my former neighbor. Things appeared to match up: he was two (academic) years older than I was, was from Long Island, and was interested in computer science. Could this have been the same person I lived next to until some eight years ago? A quick interrogation the following morning proved my suspicions: I had been sitting next to this person for weeks, heard the phoneticization of his name countless times, and neither one of us had suspected a thing.

It's a small world after all, although my former neighbor said that he hates that phrase.

impromptu reunion

As I sat down to type up this monthly update, I was interrupted by an instant message from a guy I went to high school with, but had almost never conversed with by IM before. He goes to SUNY Binghamton, some 241 miles from Pittsburgh. Apparently he decided to come to town with a friend of his whose boyfriend goes to Carnegie Mellon. I was surprised to see him, but gave him a quick tour and exchanged pleasantries. I thought it was quite an interesting surprise, considering that I hadn't seen this friend for some time.

on a personal note...

So the great-granddaddy of all job fairs, the Technical Opportunities Conference has come and gone. In addition to getting lots of Cool Free Stuff, companies actually expressed interest in hiring me for the summer. Already I've had two interviews, and many other companies told me to contact them after the new year for internship opportunities. (Most of the companies are looking for full-time positions to be filled by graduating seniors.) All in all, it looks to be an exciting summer, whether I head out to Silicon Valley, stay closer to home, or work just about anywhere else.

I have parted ways with the Office of Admission, which didn't offer evening or weekend hours to better suit my hectic schedule. I had a great time there, and would recommend it to anyone who's interested in employment on campus. I now work a desk job at the Language Learning Resource Center, a computer cluster and audio-visual lab for students taking language courses. As a Japanese minor in the making, it's a nice opportunity to work with language technology, and as a busy student, it's also an opportunity to get some homework done during off-peak times. I also work the glamourous 9 PM to midnight shift at the University Center Information Desk, where I field questions ranging from "What movie is playing tonight?" to "Could you turn off that damn Rusted Root concert?!". It's a more stressful shift at the information desk, but at least I don't get lonely like I do at the LLRC when nobody comes to use the lab.

Former Mystery Science Theatre 3000 host Mike Nelson gave a presentation and hyped his book, Mike Nelson's Movie Megacheese, on Monday. He is awesome, the presentation was hilarious, and the book is a must-read. Props to AB Lectures for getting this man on campus.

Why is it at Carnegie Mellon that all the women are ugly, taken, or both?

class by class

Here's a rundown of my academic status here, seeing as though I do keep busy nearly all the time.

15-212, Principles of Programming. Certainly no easy course, 15-212 (or just "212" for short) teaches algorithm design and programming structures using the wonderfully esoteric functional language of SML. Anyone who has done work with Scheme or Lisp knows how they put the "fun" in "functional languages." Not bad thus far, although I'm working on this update when I should be hammering away at some SML code and working on structural induction proofs.

33-104, Experimental Physics. One of those courses that I'm taking Because I Have To. Most of the material is pretty simple, although getting decent scores on labs often takes a lot of grunt work and pretty Microsoft Excel graphing skills. It meets twice a week, taking up to three hours per class. The professor is a lot of fun, though, and he keeps things interesting.

36-217, Probability Theory and Random Processes. Or "stats" for short. I kind of like this class -- a lot of the material overlaps from earlier classes, but the leap is made into "real-world" scenarios. Unfortunately, the class is made up of 80-minute lectures crammed into 50-minute classes, so it feels like we're being rushed sometimes. Still, it gives me a chance to apply my mad L^AT_EX skills to typesetting homework assignments.

80-181, Language and Thought. Dropped. Too much language, not enough thought. This is another Course I Have To Take, although I can take another course in its category instead. The 80-minute lectures on the meaning of "truth" (which always made reference to "the morning star is the same as the evening star, so the morning star with the blah blah blah...") were interesting at first but got extremely repetitive very quickly. Not to mention that my professor has a thick Latino accent, so "star" always came out sounding like "estar." This was cute for about 30 seconds.

82-271, Intermediate Japanese I. Continuing towards a minor in Japanese, this course is the only one I have that meets four times a week for the same purpose (i.e. no separate recitation). As a result, homeworks are often due the next day, and I still get about 30-90 minutes' worth of homework a night. This wears on me as time goes on. Furthermore, new projects (like conversations with a native Japanese speaker) make this level even more demanding. Still, it's a fun course, and it's an interesting opportunity to learn more about a culture that has always intrigued me.

and finally...

Weill Aspects is coming. Soon. Honestly. Really. I swear. No. Really.

Back to September 2000, or to the year 2000.