Jue's Blog (tag:life)

In Boston again, for the second time in a month. Feeling the winter here cut through my coat collar reminds me of places even further north. Incidentally, I just came across this rambling bit, from a nondescript text file I left on my own desktop in November 2006.

There are not enough stars in Boston. Stars, which depending on your vantage point could resemble the icy tips of invisible stalactites or mutilated balls of burning gas floating impossibly through the black. Fortunately, we are very, very far, and the air outside is — without fail in this neck of Maine — very, very cold. So cold it feels like a different shade of cold every time I step outside, the combination of the stars and wisps of clouds and the dry, clear night eliciting a sensory amnesia, a short term memory loss brought on by feelings of metaphysical insignificance before the looming face of infinity above.

I want to record every drop of sensation in words, in calculable thought, in action. But what performance of a verb could possibly capture frost? Or the cruel bent of a tree branch? I can tell you it’s hardly cruel at all in the daylight, and that bodily ache of mine for a word or a sentence, a tome, a treatise on my right to be here, all but disappears after I’ve digested breakfast. (more…)

It’s 9pm in San Francisco–12am the next day for my East-coast internal clock, but feels like it could be the year 2100 for my frayed nerves I’ve been waiting in this damn line for so long.

The United customer service agent at the counter in front of me is expounding on his life experiences. “Let me tell you,” he tells you, you being the tired, irate traveler in front of me, “I’ve worked with this airline for 15 years, and whenever I go on standby for a flight blah blah blah blah…”

I don’t need to finish listening to know that he didn’t even come close to answering the man’s question. And watching the questioner’s eyes gradually open wide, his arms throw up in exasperation, and his feet stomp off in the middle of the service rep’s sentence, I nod ruefully. The line is 10 people long, and this jabbering penguin has spent 5 minutes giving off-topic life-ruminations to each person. I’ve been waiting for over half an hour.

Thank god, another service rep walks up to the counter with a grumpy swagger. He looks taciturn. Efficient. Motions for me to come over. Everything is a blur. I don’t hear what’s going on around me, only the sound of Shostakovich’s 7th string quartet. It’s going into that furious part in the third movement after the adagio for his dead first wife and starts to become dissonant, angry, sublime. How I feel while traveling.

I turn off my Ipod and go up to the counter.

“Hi, I lost my wallet on flight 975 from Dulles. Can you help me find it?”

He can’t, apparently. The plane’s left the gate, I can only file a claim with baggage services. That was efficient. 1 minute response, after a 36 minute wait.

I walk what seems like half a mile to baggage claim, on the way stopping at a diner to order a bacon cheeseburger, fries, and a milkshake.

“Will you be paying with cash or card?” asks the helpful cashier. (more…)

A full day of PhD interviews tomorrow.

Flying from DC to Boston reminded me how much I love airplanes. That, in turn, reminded me how much I love Flickr. Exhibit one, two, three.

From the snowy, moody, and sometimes sunny city of Washington, DC.

For those of you who don’t already know this IRL, I have now made the switch from being a science writing intern in Boston to a social media intern in Washington, DC. My new employer is Science Magazine, or more specifically, Science’s online news division called ScienceNOW.

Since my job consists of monitoring Twitter, Facebook, and the blogosphere all day, I’ve been on top of the science news cycle (i.e. surfing the web) even more than usual. Today has been a good day for wacky news, so I’ll start with the least surprising and work my way up.

4. Water droplets with opposing charges repel each other, as seen in the movie above. Read that again if you’re not surprised. I said opposites REPEL. Remember in high school, when you were taught that opposites attract? Well, not always. And the reason has to do with a complicated bit of physics that you can read more about at ScienceNOW. The weirdest science news after the jump…