Broccoli

"But, Anne" my uncle asked looking quizzically at my mother across the dinner table as we ate, "you hate broccoli."

My mother was strangely upset by this. She pointed at me and said with a raised voice, "I've been eating broccoli all her life to set a good example for her, and telling her that I like it, and smiling through the whole thing."

I remember being approximately 10 at the time and thinking that that was a silly way to go about things. If my mom really wanted to teach me a lesson about healthy eating she should have told me that she hated broccoli but ate it anyway because she knew it was good for her. I thought that would have been a lot more relevant a lesson for me, given my mother's cooking. The whole of it wasn't a very big deal to me though.

At this point I remember being woken from my thoughts by a significant shouting match between my mother and my uncle. Looking over across the table I saw my two cousins who were present, my brother Isaac, and my infant sister, all of them younger than me. I was thinking that this was somewhat of a silly thing to get so upset about, and that this probably constituted a far worse example than having a personal distaste for vegetables. I guess it takes a hell of a bratty 10 year old to be mentally condescending to adults, but I've never been a particularly nice or polite person anyway.

The next day we had the bane of my existence: freeze dried peas with carrot cubes, corn, and lima beans. I suppose none of those items would be so terrible of themselves, it was more they had been frozen together in one bag and the soupy water which emerged from the microwave reheating process and coated everything. It always tasted to me just like too many colors of paint mixed together looked: not unlike puke. I was careful not to protest, seeing as my mother had apparently suffered for 10 years with broccoli and was quite bitter about it, I figured my requests would fall on deaf ears.

The day after that was broccoli again but my mother had a bowl of the leftover frozen vegetable mishmash. I remember getting caught glancing at it.

"I don't have to eat broccoli because I don't like it," my mother snapped defensively.

My grin must have given me away as I eyed her bowl eager to file away that logic for the next meal I didn't like. She puffed up like a cat or a bird trying to look bigger than it is and glared at me a little.

"I can do that because I'm an adult."

That is, for the record, one of my least favourite excuses ever.

My mother is still very bitter that my uncle ever let on that she doesn't like broccoli. So bitter in fact that I have, on numerous occasions, forgotten that this incident ever happened only to later be reminded of it when my mother complains about it. I'm probably not going to ever understand that.

I cook with broccoli from time to time now, but it is always in something. Stir fry is the usual candidate for this. My mother always served the broccoli plain and soggy from steaming, not even with butter. This is another thing I'll never understand. Almost all vegetables can be dressed up and made tolerable if you put the effort in and can stand spices. Perhaps the fact that we ate everything plain in my house growing up has something to do with my brother, or perhaps mom never really learned to cook. Maybe its a little of both.

The steamed broccoli on the stove looked odd today at first and I stood there for a moment staring at the chunks, almost not recognizing what they were, before adding a portion to my bowl.

"I don't think I have had broccoli in years," I said, "like I think last time I had it was high school."

Magpie looked up from his bowl, "You don't like it?"

"Nah, its alright. It probably just says something odd about my eating habits."

"Pretty sure I've had dishes where you cooked it."

"Guess I haven't eaten it plain in some time."

Oddly enough the broccoli was probably the highlight of the meal. Its not to say Magpie can't cook: far from it, it is simply that I have been eating almost exclusively sandwiches and things which can be ordered via phone for delivery to my lab for the last week. At some point the grease just gets to you. You miss fresh fruit and vegetables. Sometimes you don't even know you miss them until you have them again. Apparently I missed supposedly boring, flavorless, steamed broccoli enough to go back for seconds on it.

Everybody always says that as you get older you grow more like your parents. This is a concept I'm uncomfortable with on many levels. Somehow, in that sense, I find eating plain broccoli, (which I find a bit boring and slightly unpleasant but quite tolerable) very comforting. Its purely symbolic and has no real bearing on anything. However, its one of those pleasant reminders that we are all individuals with wills of our own to be what we choose to be, and not necessarily victims to the same shortcomings as our parents, or mindless automations crafted by our circumstances.

< ego >

So the manufacturers of a certain robotics company were on campus today repairing a beta unit which is being tested with out student body as a target market.

I walked up...asked a little about the machine...just hoping to see the inside. Turns out the company had sent a legitimate engineer to debug the beta unit instead of some tech. We talked for a while, he showed me some stuff, he started talking about how things worked. He seemed kinda uncomfortable talking to me and preferred to discuss things mostly with Vex Victim who also showed up to see the robot.

The other guy who came with him found me pretty interesting though and we talked for some time. The first guy was pretty upset with the machine and after Vex Victim left he ranted a bit, half at me half at the machine.

"The log files stopped working...the logs...why do the logs take up this much space?"

I waited patiently watching him. He turned to me and grinned, "What, genius girl going to fix my machine for me?"

So I did.

I'm now holding a business card with the email of the company's CTO on it.

Now all I have to do is survive the formal interview.

PS: For anybody who cares what was wrong with the machine...they were running a full windows system on the robot. It was throwing a lot of "send error report" requests and generally locking up. Eventually when it started up again it loaded all the names of the tabs but not the designated content. I confirmed that the contents of the tabs were indeed stored in separate files from the GUI structure. Then it I remembered that the other guy was complaining about the size of the log files. My guess was that the log files had grown so large that windows didn't have any more HD space to swap out data in and so it was unable to load the file which contained the tabs content. Guess I was right!

Party in the ECE building

Its 3:30 AM.

I wonder if the couches in the first floor IEEE lounge are actually this comfortable in reality or if I have only ever sat down in them when thoroughly exhausted.

There is no reason I suppose they should not be this comfortable, they certainly are of excellent quality. The pair are matching black leather and comfortably seat three people each. There are not even food stains, scuff marks, or rips in the fabric. How did we get such nice quality couches in a student lounge? We are so spoiled.

Someday if I am rich I would love to have couches half as comfortable as these.

"Its like a bread product scanner," a voice pipes up.

I turn and laugh as Ginger stares at the lightly unorthodox toaster he found in the lounge and plugged in. It has a pair of heating elements at the top. As the toaster works the slice of bread product designated to be toasted moves slowly past the heating elements into a transparent plastic chamber and out again. At first I want to belittle him for being so easily amused but only realize that I too seem to be transfixed by this simple kitchen appliance.

Ginger and I sit down with our now-toasted bagels and spread apricot honey cream cheese on them. We sit them and eat in pretty much silence.

That is one of the things I sincerely enjoy about Ginger. He doesn't feel like he has to be talking to be enjoying something. I think the fine art of shutting the hell up and simply taking things in has mostly been lost in this day and age. Instead we have to make small talk about everything. I have to wonder how much of moments you miss if you are too busy explaining to everybody that they are happening.

We were joined shortly later by a friend Purple's and my lab partner from another class. We were joined shortly later by Purple herself who had a bagel and then invited us into the Women in Electrical and Computer Engineering lounge (which is open to all, just controlled by that particular club.) This offered us the opportunity for caffeinated tea and candy. The couches are not as comfortable but it has a poster on the door with a picture of Captain Picard holding a mug of tea always makes me smile.

Tea, Early Grey, Hot

After that we back to work for another few hours.

It was 6AM. I needed to stretch my legs again.

Wandering upstairs I chatted briefly with the Vex Victim and my friend Playlist. After that I wandered downstairs. The women's lounge was open in it, and Purple and her friend were still there working.

"Hey," Purple said, "you having issues logging into the CS department network from here?"

"Haven't been trying."

"I can't get in."

I was going to go toast myself another bagel but the lights were off in the IEEE lounge and two other friends of mine were passed out cold on the couches. Instead I told my lab partner I was going home for a quick nap.

I appreciate that I can wander a random building at 6AM in the morning and still find many people to talk to, that we can share food and swap stories. They say misery loves company, but truth be told I'm not really miserable working like this: mostly just tired. The work we are assigned is quite enjoyable, its just a lot of work to do. That's how we wind up here I guess. A sad part of me knows I will miss this sort of thing when I graduate.

Perhaps if I do not find a real job instead of opening a place which delivers cookies and milk I'll make a homework cafe. It would be open from maybe 5PM until 8AM and serve dinner, breakfast, and snacks. It would have lab benches on the side so people could do lab work, and internet so people could shell into whatever machines they needed. As a matter of fact it would be designed to be just like working in a lab, except that you can eat there.

Surprise! You've Got a New Housemate!

"Oh, and Gilby moving in tomorrow," Hannalore added yesterday afternoon as she walked past my room.

"Uh...who is Gilby?"

"He's replacing you on the lease."

"I'm paid up until June..."

"Oh, well he is going to live in our living room during May, then he is going to live in your room."

"Uh...were you going to tell me?"

Hannalore looked at me fairly quizzically, "I just did."

You may think Hannalore is the resounding jackass of the century but the reality is she is not. She has a fascinating cocktail of neurological issues, a few of which overlap with my brother's, but she is not nearly as severe. This helps me understand her a little and sometimes translate her issues to the other housemates.

The bottom line is she lives in a totally different world than the rest of us. There are many things about her we will simply never be able to sympathize with: for example, she can not stand physical contact with other human beings in any form. It bothers her deeply. She is one of the most absurdly picky eaters I have ever met. I can probably count all of the food items she will eat on my fingers. These things are just how she was wired when she was born.

Just like we find her bizarre and alien, she finds us bizarre. Everything she does makes perfect sense to her. If you ask her she can even explain it to you in ways that make sense if you can accept her base premises. In her world we are the irrational and bizarre ones. I suppose if you didn't have a sex drive sex would sound pretty bizarre to you too wouldn't it?

The name I use for her here, Hannalore, comes from the Questionable Content character. Its a humorous (and hopefully not considered mean) reference to the fact that another part of her "abnormal wiring" is the fact that she is clincally OCD.

Our common method of communication is logic. Basically we both assert the premises by which we live our lives and then explain the logic which makes us feel the way we feel about things. In this way we can resolve disagreements.

This has its ups and downs. One of the major benefits of this is as long as I can explain to her just why something she didn't like happened, and why it won't happen again, she's pretty much ok with it no matter what it is. For example, the first time she met Magpie, our other current housemate, he had accidentally woken her up by drunkenly stumbling into her room (thinking it was the bathroom) and accidentally ripping the doorknob off the door. I'm a pretty tolerant person but Magpie is a pretty big guy and looks rather intimidating until you learn he wouldn't hurt a fly. But if I didn't know him and he had wandered into my room very drunk? I would have punched him and then run. Hannalore was pretty ok with this situation under the condition that I promised to show everybody where the bathroom was previous to bringing out the alcohol at parties.

The downside of her being like this is from time to time she does things which upset me greatly without having the faintest idea of why I am upset.

When she had found Gilby off some department mailing list and announced he would be replacing me when I left...I thought little of it. After all, I would never live with him right? If my current housemates wanted to live with some total stranger from the internet, they were adults, that was their choice, and I wasn't going to question it. Now, however, Gilby was my problem too. A quick call to Magpie (who was on a camping trip/picking up more crap to put in his room trip I had to skip due to finals) confirmed that he was also not expecting Gilby.

"He can't live here," I said, coming back out of my room and finding Hannalore.

"Why not?"

"He hasn't signed papers. The landlords wil be angry."

"Can he put his things here?"

"No"

"Why?"

"Where would he put them?"

Hannalore paused a moment. "I hadn't thought of that."

Bright and early the next morning the doorbell rang and I rolled over and rolled my eyes. Of course. I had explained my issue to Hannalore as "the landlords won't like it" and "we don't have space." She had, like always, taken me completely literally and probably resolved both those issues herself. She was not going to be able to read the meaning behind my words of "I don't want him here."

Wandering down the stairs I pulled the door open and found a tall dark-haired young man holding a printer in a box.

"So, you're moving in now?"
"Yeah."

"Uh..." I stammered, feeling like all of this was getting a bit out of hand and also struggling to remember what the kid's name was, "How is that going to work?"

Hannalore was standing over my shoulder, "I took care of everything. He's going to store his belongings in my room, I cleared a space. He's also going to live in my room during May as soon as finals are done. I'll be leaving as soon as finals are done so I won't need the space. When June comes and you leave he can move into your room.

"...and...you're going to pay?" I asked. Both of them nodded.

A part of me just wanted to scream and stamp "No," but I am quite short on cash right now due to being both a college student and employment impaired. Additionally, if I upset him too badly I would be screwing my current housemates out of a lot of money next year while they paid for my empty room. Besides, he didn't seem too overly creepy.

We cleared him a space in a storage area and he put his printer in it. We also gave him some keys.

"Do you guys drink?" he asked.

"Yeah, sometimes."

"Do you have a bucket?"

"What?"

"In my dorm, we had a bucket. His name was Mr. Bucket."

There didn't seem to be anything good to say in response to that.

Gilby wandered our house for a little while after that, belittled the sanitation of our kitchen, and left. We saw him again at about 6PM. He said he would be back at about 7 with a friend or two who was helping him move in. At about 8:15 he and the better chunk of a freshman floor arrived and situated themselves in my living room. They commented on how small my home was, and how ideal the back porch was for smoking weed. They then left with the living room mostly unnavigatible due to his stuff.

Gilby returned shortly later and sat himself down on the couch. I asked him to please put his stuff in the storage space he gave him so we could walk around the living room. He made fun of how I keep my room. I gave him wifi access. He complained about the bathroom being dirty. He then started eying the alcohol in the refrigerator.

"Can I have some?"

Normally I answer "yes" automatically but he seemed a little too excited about it and his perpetual whining was beginning to eat at me. "Um, if you pay me back for it."

Gilby wandered the house for a moment and retrieved a shotglass with the school insignia on it. "How much of it can I have of the Smirnoff for five dollars?"

"Um...well...a whole bottle is about 20...so you can have a quarter of it."

"Great" he said, emptying the five dollars from his wallet in my hands. He then removed the vodka from the fridge and sat down at the kitchen table to pour himself a shot. I watched silently.

"Man, this stuff is QUALITY, you can see how much better is is than Gilby's just in the glass."

I remained quiet, trying to be expressionless.

"Gilby's," he announced, "Is like State vodka, but its cheaper. You don't want to try it I think."

I nodded and then returned to my room to study for finals. At least he had a nickname now. About 10 minutes later he wandered into my room still holding the bottle of Smirnoff. "Have I had my quarter?" he asked.

"Uh," I said trying to be perfectly fair, "you probably have one shot left."

"Awesome!" he grinned.

Nothing Says "Merry Christmas" like a Dead Fish in a Jar

When I lived in Hong Kong our work there related to removing as many workers as possible from a designated market. Seeing as there isn't exactly a worker's shortage in China we had to find a place to move all these people into ourselves.

We heard tell of a group of fishermen who had turned their former livelihoods into a tourist concept. Because of tax laws in Hong Kong and the fact that their tour location was out on the ocean they hardly had to pay taxes. It seemed pretty ideal, and as foreigners we were pretty well situated to evaluate whether this would likely become successful or a larger market which we could put our market sector into.

A large flat floating dock formed a "town square" and fishing boats were parked continuously along the perimeter.

What fascinated me most about this place was the gift shop, and what fascinated me most about the gift shop was a rack of small bird-like objects with a slick plastic coating on the outside which hung from fishing line and a key chain loop. They had small googly eyes and a straw hat glued on to them. The small beaks on them made them look nothing short of alien but obviously somebody had found them endearing to dress them and market them like this.

Picking one up I shook it. It made a bizarre rattling noise but seemed to have a significant amount of internal structure to it. Why would somebody put so much internal structure into a cheap little keychain? It could have been solid with a single plastic mold around the outside and it would have held up just fine.

"What is this?" I asked. The translator who we had access to (since this was during work hours) turned to one of the shop owners.

"They are keychains," the translator reported, "They are made from sun-dried baby puffer fish."

I thought about Americans and what those who feel a need to compulsively buy things out of gift shops expect out of gift shops. These were not shot glasses with "I love ex-fishermen" on them nor T-shirts not coffee mugs printed with the same.

They also could not pass as some traditional art form which makes white tourists feel culturally aware and superior by the fact that it hangs prominently on their living room wall at home where passers by might politely ask about it.

Visitor who has come over for dinner: oh, what is that?
Smug host: that's a hand-made Incan blanket from our trip through South America. Its made out of real Alpaca wool and dyed with natural pigments just like the native persons there have done for thousands of years.

Alternative scenario
Smug host: that's a key chain from Hong Kong. Its made of a dead baby fish and coated in plastic, just like former fishermen of Hong Kong have been doing since the invention of the plastic googly-eyes to glue on the front.

I just didn't see it going over quite as well.

It was then that I realized I simply had to have one. What would be more hilarious than to show it off with the same air of arrogance only to watch the people who cared about petty things like that recoil in horror? And it would only cost me about a dollar fifty American? Sounds like a deal to me!

So I bought it and I brought it back to my apartment and placed it in an empty nutella glass. I put the jar with the dead fish in it on the table and stared at it for a bit. The initial amusement of it had worn off and so I left it there and turned my attention to my computer. There I spotted an IM window open previously with PJ.

Every year there are people who you care about but who you don't know what to give them for Christmas. You want to give them something, but you can't think of anything they need or want within a socially acceptable price range. PJ was one of those people that year for me. My solution to this is every year I choose one of these people and give them a small cardboard box filled with small cheap items which they find amusing, and whose sum total equates about to one present. Christmas had already passed but I was scheduled to see PJ in March so I had told him I was bringing his present then. PJ's box had been previously filled with strips of LEDs, a few small parts I had scavenged which were perfect for making robots with, and other misc junk which I knew he would love.

Then I turned to the fish. Even better than me acting proud of this as my own possession, how much more infinitely hilarious would it be if I passed this off as a valuable gift?

I'm not the most rational and logical person I'll admit, but PJ seems to have an abnormally low general opinion of my common sense. Unfounded or founded, it is an awful lot of fun to mess with him using that fact. Opening the IM window again I decided this was a great time for continuing this tradition.

Pika: I got you a souvenir
Pika: hopefully they won't find it in customs, I think they would be upset with me
PJ: What have you done now?

I choose to leave the situation there for the time being and not discuss it further.

In March I brought PJ his Christmas present. He eyed the box carefully, obviously remembering the customs comment.

"Come on," I coaxed, "open it."

He opened it and found the Nutella jar directly on top of his other presents. "Huh," he asked intrigued, shaking the jar slightly, "What is this?"

"Its a dead fish in a jar!"

PJ nearly dropped the jar but instead placed it to one side.

"Come on!" I said, "Nothing says 'Merry Christmas' like a dead fish in a jar!"

"You know," PJ laughed, "I guess its true."