The Biggest Bookstore on... Europe, Sort Of

I remember when Amazon's slogan was "The Biggest Bookstore on Earth." At the time, I quietly, maybe quixotically, favored Barnes and Noble's newer online venture, bn.com. It featured faster shipping, but mostly, it was the market underdog. Remember, I'm a Clippers fan.

Now, I swear by Amazon. They hooked me with their "prime" shipping program--unlimited second-day shipping for a flat annual fee. I'll order anything from them, even shampoo.

(I like collecting different shampoo bottles. They make such extravagant promises.)

Anyways, I digress. The point of this blog is to note that I am, suddenly, more or less unexpectedly, in London. And on my first and possibly only night here, I was drawn to the largest bookstore in Europe, Waterstone's.

I'm being charged by the minute for this connection, so I'll write more later.

Peet's

Back in Boston and settled in for breakfast at Peet's Coffee and Tea. A schizophrenic (?) man keeps saying, "Laptop is newspaper," and rocking back and forth. An employee named Lily has just told her third customer since I got here that there are no bagels here (I was the first.) The beauty of jetlag: I woke up at 7 am totally refreshed (though still fighting off a hint of Sasha's flu.)

Lisbon

En route to Lisbon via Zurich. This blog may yet be recalled to life.

Stanzas Written On The Road Between Florence And Pisa

I first encountered Lord Byron's poem as a sophomore in English class. I think there were three poems that really hit me hard in high school and that still echo in my head from time to time--this, "The Love Song of Alfred J. Prufrock," and "A Dream Deferred."

---
Oh, talk not to me of a name great in story;
The days of our youth are the days of our glory;
And the myrtle and ivy of sweet two-and-twenty
Are worth all your laurels, though ever so plenty.

What are garlands and crowns to the brow that is wrinkled?
'Tis but as a dead flower with May-dew besprinkled:
Then away with all such from the head that is hoary!
What care I for the wreaths that can only give glory?

O Fame!—if I e'er took delight in thy praises,
'Twas less for the sake of thy high-sounding phrases,
Than to see the bright eyes of the dear one discover
She thought that I was not unworthy to love her.

There chiefly I sought thee, there only I found thee;
Her glance was the best of the rays that surround thee;
When it sparkled o'er aught that was bright in my story,
I knew it was love, and I felt it was glory.

Gone With The... Kimel?

I don't write here very often anymore. This is in part because I haven't been moving around much lately--but more because most of what I've had to say feels as if it would be uninteresting to people outside of my head. Posting progress reports on DemiDec releases = not so intriguing.

On second thought, I probably ought to have written something about our DemiDec retreat in Mexico, but at the time we were all so busy eating tacos and wrestling with a publication crisis that it didn't even occur to me.

They were really good tacos. It was a really good trip.

Anyway, if anyone actually still visits this blog -- thank you.

A parting pointer: www.gonewiththekimel.com.

Woof

Daniel: my heart just jumped
i accidentally knocked over the subwoofer
and it made the noise
of a very hurt dog
demidec.chen: Appropriate noise for a subwoofer...

Hiatus Coming to an End

I've been in Boston this week. I accidentally brought along hydrocortisone cream from Mexico and, in a confused moment, applied some as sunscreen. I then washed it off vigorously hoping my whole face wasn't about to deflate.

On Hiatus

Will return once DemiDec is published.

Not Vanilly After All

Mini is resting comfortably on her first evening in town.

Not Fade Away

I should share why we named little Milly little Milly: because just then, when I had woken up my mom to wish her a happy birthday, we decided it was a little miracle that she had recovered and would be coming home in the morning--and the Spanish word for miracle is milagro.

Little milagro = little Milly.

Sometimes, life presents timing so ironic that it sounds like a screenplay someone's writing at a Starbucks.

But I have some good news. The breeder, Julie, in a very considerate gesture, is sending us Milly's sister on Tuesday. She'll have some big paws to fill, but we look forward to her arrival.

And Craig suggested the perfect name: Vanilly.

Didn't Make It

Just got the call. Little Milly died at almost exactly the moment we finished naming her...

Mysterious. Serious. And Better.

Happy to report that vet's update today is that Mitty/Tuaca/Sitka is doing a little better--upgraded from critical to serious. She's no longer minute-to-minute, in other words, and the real problem is that they still haven't figured out what's wrong with her (or her kidney.) Still, I'm optimistic, and hopefully she'll be able to come home soon and resume chewing things.

"Critical But Stable"

So says the puppy hospital. If she makes it through the night, she might make it, period. So I'm guardedly (and perhaps unjustifiably) hopeful.

Too Short a Stay

If she doesn't make it, my family and I will have had the most awesome pup ever for the shortest possible time. And if she lives, she'll be not just the most awesome but the most spoiled, too. Heck, she can have the giant alpacas.

Oopsie? Blizzard? Taro?

Doppio? Igloo? Bear?

Boba? Fuji? Stormy?

Casio?

Wounded Dell

Tonight my laptop screen fell off -- but only halfway. What amazes me most of all is not that it broke (it's mine, after all) but that it's still working, even with a half-amputated display.

Tremendous thunderstorms all evening long. If I were Charles Dickens, I'd describe it as a night full of symbols and portents for the future. Since I'm not, I'll instead note that I had dinner with my cousin's boyfriend's older brother. There's family, there's extended family, and then there's... my cousin's boyfriend's older brother.

A Tale of Three Taxis

I inspired two taxi drivers to fight today. One pulled the other out of his car and punched him. The other whacked back. Nothing too fancy, just your typical sidewalk brawl. Not because they each wanted me as a client, but because each wanted the other to take me instead. The people behind me in line were much older, wore jewelry, and didn't carry backpacks. They probably looked like better tippers. While the two of them brawled, I walked down the street to a third taxi.

This driver, a Russian man, waved at the fight. "America wonderful country," he said, "But sometimes too much freedom."

The Demise of a Dropout

My Final Return to Harvard University
or
scribblings on an airplane

My friend Sasha, who ran away to Europe to become a composer and buy a house in Belgium, would warn me against using the word "final" too loosely. "You've said it before," he'd say, "And look where you are now."

He's right. I've always been too aware of endings--even of endings I've invented ahead of time, to mark progress in a life that has been more spiraling than straightforward. As a second-grader, I used to be sad that I would never be a first-grader again.

But he's also wrong. Because while from time to time I may still walk the streets of Cambridge (no doubt observing the increasing dominance of chain stores), and will undoubtedly have many more chances to pass through the Yard and study my Canaday A-13 window before some daring university president finally knocks the building down to make way for something less depressing, I have no reason to believe I will ever be back as a student.

Perhaps as a fellow. Or even a professor. These seem remote prospects, but I've learned not to discount the remote: in almost every case it's only a hop and a bus ride away. That's how I found Patzcuaro, a town in the Mexican mountains where I wrote parts of my undergraduate thesis. Arguably that's how I founded DemiDec (though you'd have to substitute a jaywalk and a Chevy Blazer for the hop and the bus.)

As I write this, I'm flying across the Midwest. A few minutes ago we crossed over Chicago; I looked out the window just in time to see it disappearing into the Great Lakes.

I have a template I ought to be designing, for Resources. I have poems that I kind of feel like writing, old-style sonnets, the sort that I like to utter now and then in cheesy homage to past greats (and, more than that, just because I love the way rhymes sound.)

But nostalgia has the upper hand for now.

The first time I flew to Boston, I did so with a teammate, Becky, and her mother. One week earlier we had won nationals, eaten Reuben sandwiches and--to the best of my knowledge--said our farewells to Decathlon. I brought along a trenchcoat. It seemed like the appropriate thing to wear. The next day, I would be standing on the steps of a dorm feeling the wind lift it a little, pondering whether I could spend four years in this place full of bricks and homeless men, when a student unexpectedly approached me with a psychic flash.

"I know what brings you to Harvard," she said. "You want to be a writer."

Maybe I looked the part: hands in pockets, studying the grass, at a slight remove from everyone else. Or maybe everyone who goes to Harvard either wants to be president or a writer of prose, and I just clearly wasn't the former. I was still digesting the import of a year in which M Building defined the outer limits of fun and purpose. Those limits were busted, the purpose fulfilled, the fun captured in an album full of anecdotes. It seemed reasonable to imagine that anything was within reach, if I only designated to it the same passion that had helped my teammates and I find our way, via mischief and, well, mostly more mischief, to New Jersey.

...to be continued...

The Unknown Enemy

"I don't like avocados," said Su, as he slipped a slice of pizza covered in avocado slices toward his mouth. The three of us were sitting outside at the below-mentioned "Sicilia Fresh."

"So," I said, "You dislike a food you don't recognize?"

Suddenly suspicious, he stopped before biting down.

Goats and Rhinoceri

Reading about this odd couple brought me a spark of morning "awww" after an all-nighter devoted to DemiPlanning.

My Last Column

At dinner tonight, a high school senior was aghast at the idea of someone going to Europe on her own. “It would be like—like driving without a cell phone,” she said to me, between bites of a BLT. “So dangerous!”

Having both gone to Europe on my own and driven for years without a cell phone, I felt lucky to have lived this long. And I didn’t have the heart to tell her that I got my first ticket (for an illegal left turn) driving out of the cell phone shop parking lot.

Yes—I was playing with the buttons.

Only one person I knew had a cell phone in high school. His parents used it to track him down at night, thereby interrupting our breakfasts at Denny’s and our various exploits with the school keys. They made up for it by taking us out to sushi.

Now I carry my phone everywhere (though I’ve resisted PDAs and iPods, both of which are bound to eventually become part of our cell phones anyways.) When I graduate from the Kennedy School in two weeks, I’ll be traveling with it to Boston on a flight I booked at www.aa.com, staying with it at a hotel I pricelined™ and carrying a laptop with a Verizon wireless card on the same account, for broadband access anywhere in the city.

Nowadays, this sounds passé. But then I look back again, and remember that I didn’t even have an e-mail address until I got to college.

The first day of orientation week, I shot off a message to a friend at U.C. San Diego. We had been told that starting college meant losing touch with almost everyone in your past life. That wouldn’t happen to us, my friends and I figured: this new e-mail thing would keep us connected.

It mostly did. I think we remained more closely-knit than if we had gone our separate ways just a couple years earlier. I can only imagine how much more true that might have been if we’d had livejournals, free nights and weekends, and the Facebook.

I only discovered the World Wide Web at the start of my sophomore year. It was a barren place. No Napster, just a few pioneering class web sites, hardly any flaming. Amazon was two months old—and had been around several weeks longer than Internet Explorer. The term “cable modem” made us think of modems with cables sticking out of them, and DSL sounded like some kind of foreign shipping company. Hotmail was what happened when you sent a letter to Arizona.

But it wasn’t just the Internet that was different then. Californians had only recently discovered the appeal of blending fruits, yogurt and ice to make smoothies (to the delight of a fledgling company called Juice Club.) The SAT still had antonyms (I never understood why they went away.) Bookstores were places where people bought books. “Is” never meant anything but is, and an animated movie signified something hand-drawn, not Shrek but Beauty and the Beast. Airlines served meals and your parents could walk you to your departure gate. Buffy hadn’t slain any vampires yet—at least not on TV.

There were no TVs in Tressidder, let alone flat screens—and, alas, by the time they were installed, Buffy wasn't slaying vampires anymore. You had to file paper forms to get pretty much anything done, from transcript requests to selecting your classes. The parking lot didn’t take credit cards. And people who regularly snacked on froyo from the now defunct CoPo were busy founding companies with equally Stanfordish names—like Yahoo.

By now I probably sound primeval. But I graduated from Stanford not that long ago, in 2002 (true, I took two years off along the way.) Some of you were around then; you probably remember how poorly cell phones worked on campus even at the start of the 21st century. None of this was very long ago.

Still, there are times when I look back at my original Stanford days (because there are bound to be more) and miss that palpable sense of opportunity in the air, that feeling that tomorrow hadn’t been shaped yet—and that we would be the ones to shape it. Every few days it seemed another friend had left Stanford to join a start-up—or had come back post-IPO to recruit the rest of us.

Then I remember that Stanford’s probably always been that way and undoubtedly still is. Our "wind of freedom" continues to blow towards the future (though not always towards Washington) and from our place on the Farm (or the Arrillaga Alumni Center) we get to help make the weather.

---

This fall, Daniel Berdichevsky will be traveling overland (on his own, but with a cell phone) from Malaysia to Madrid. For details, e-mail him at dan@demidec.com.

Sicilia Fresh

I'm writing DemiDec "letters of engagement" at a restaurant that looks suspiciously like Baja Fresh, right down to the white lacquer tables, except it serves Italian sandwiches, pizzas and salad. There's even a salsa bar, which features coleslaw (I wish it had gelato.)

There's wireless Internet, and to the side of the restaurant is an integrated coffee shop with its own tables, Starbucks-style. That's where I'm working. The chairs have cushions.

At the table next to me, eight women are holding a knitting party.

* * * a few minutes later * * *

One of the women, her hands moving quickly, is talking about how her two dogs, Spike and Ernie, died within a month of one another: the first of of lung cancer, the second of diabetes. I can ignore Starbucks music, but this I can't help but listen to.

Now, another is talking how her dog got cancer. "They amputated his leg to get rid of the tumor. But the chemo was so expensive that my husband would go to Tijuana every few weeks to buy the drugs. They were much cheaper there."

A third chimes in. "Mine died, too. Glaucoma and then kidney failure."

Someone else tries to change the subject by saying, "I like this sweater."

Doesn't work. "I had a cat who got cancer after having a deworming shot," interrupts a fourth. Everyone expresses outrage. "Yes," she confirms, "A deworming shot. It became a fast-growing cancer, and they couldn't close the wound. At the time, I took him to a pet oncologist and he'd never seen an animal come down with this after a deworming shot..."

This is apparently turning into a pet loss support group. I may need to leave before I ask if I can learn to knit with them.

Quiet Days

Today I met a Polish plumber. He cut my dad off in the middle of his describing exactly why he wanted more water in the toilets. For this, I was thankful.

Earlier I visited with the USC/MAST Decathlon team. They fed me delicious chips and salsa. "We don't want to be forgotten," their coach explained, and I don't think they will be. They're starting early and are poised to have a tremendous year.

This made me giddy yesterday--the opening to The Hitchhiker's Guide of the Galaxy. My friends Ali and Igor basically fell asleep during the rest of the movie, but I was won over by the rhyming dolphins and never looked back.

...the world's about to be destroyed /
there's no point getting all annoyed...

Now, if it had been alpacas singing and doing backflips, I might have died last night a happy man.

Faro and Away

As I drove away from a house that was sort of a home this morning, the radio played a couple lines by the Eurythmics:

Here comes the rain again
Falling on my head like a memory.

The rain was actually yesterday, and here I was wearing sunglasses and pondering a dash to the beach, but it still seemed fitting.

Link to my latest column at the Stanford Daily: http://tinyurl.com/coykf. It may be interesting to compare how it's published with how I wrote it.

I just finished reading Spin, a novel in which mysterious forces shield the Earth, then accelerate time all around it, so that for every year that passes on the surface, a hundred million pass in outer space. Imagine: in just 40 years the sun would be expanding into a red giant. We're talking serious global warming.

The author, Robert Charles Wilson, is masterful at coming up with interesting "big ideas." It used to be that his characters, his plots and his endings didn't measure up to them. Now his characters and his plots do, and his endings are quickly catching up. Between Spin and The Runes of the Earth, the muse in me is stirring again.

Last quick (but important) update for the day: I learned this morning that I passed my thesis. My advisor's comments were kind, and her criticisms valid:

This is not necessarily a traditional PAE in that there is not an obvious theoretical framework - a gap I lament. Moreover it must also be said that during the process of researching and writing his PAE, Mr. Berdichevsky availed himself only very occasionally of faculty input. However, having said this, it is also the case that he is a gifted writer, a smart student, and an entrepreneur who in this case was clearly committed to his client, Grupo FARO. It should further be said that his final product, tellingly titled, "As Faro As I Can See," is full of practical recommendations, tactical and strategic insights, and also some cautionary notes which, under the apparent circumstances, seem entirely justified. Because Mr. Berdichevsky is so gifted in so many ways, I would not claim that this document represents his best work. It's less deep than it might have been, less well organized in its overarching framework, and less far reaching in its implications than would ideally have been the case. Nevertheless, it's professional and practical. And, from the evidence at my disposal, it's seems the client came out well ahead, and was in general satisfied with, and grateful for, the relationship.

Which means I'm really graduating in three weeks (!) and that it's time to start looking toward next Fall, when for the first time in several years I won't have school to attend. I'm tentatively planning an overland journey from Malaysia to Madrid.

Dry Erase Pen on the Door

This is it. The last time I'll sleep in this house. I've never really known it that well, as I've mostly been in Boston and in the Bay Area since my parents moved in five years ago--but there's still a lot that's happened here for me.

I watched the 2000 Election, witnessed 9/11, rooted for the Clippers. The neighbor and I once had a serious disagreement about shrimp. Mike, Steve, Sheldon and I gave birth to a board game in the bedroom. Misty bit a magazine salesman at the front door, and years later died in the kitchen. And, of course, much more. It's odd, though: a lot of the things I remember about this place are the places I left it to, from great trips to grad school.

I didn't get to say goodbye to my Cambridge apartment. It was rented to a new tenant while I was in Taiwan finishing my thesis (which was not on Taiwan.) Perhaps better that way: a clean break, free of seeing the shelves empty, the boxes piled up.

Inevitably, a lot of things turned up in the process of packing. Among them, my sophomore year roommate's missing keys (sorry, Sasha), a CASIO check I forgot to deposit (henceforth a high-opportunity-cost souvenir, not unlike my CASIO experience overall), and my tenth grade journalism ID (I had poofy hair.)

Column Six

Three weeks ago, I was nearsighted. Once I would have had little choice in the matter. A few laser bursts later, I see 20-20.

I’ve heard innovation in science and technology described as the process by which the impossible becomes possible, the unimaginable imaginable, the unprofitable profitable. These things may be as true as they are grandiose; I don’t presume to judge. But here’s my take: innovation, and “progress” in general, steadily shrink the role of the arbitrary in our lives.

Flat irons straighten hair, perms curl it. You can have longer fingernails in about five minutes. Air conditioning makes it possible to live (and die) in Las Vegas. Perfume, deodorant and Listerine strips let us choose how we want to smell.

Electric lights allow us to achieve sleep deprivation. Cell phones and the Internet (Facebook, anyone?) mean our friends aren’t just limited to people who live nearby (though it doesn’t seem to reduce the incidence of dormcest.)

Not even the day someone’s born is completely arbitrary nowadays. Sure, you have no control of it—unless you’re very spunky in the womb—but expectant mothers can schedule C-sections for particular days, and now that the mystery of conception is a little less mysterious, many couples try timing pregnancies to fit larger life agendas.

Web sites where you can “virtually hunt” have been in the news lately. You select an animal you want shot, and the company does it for you. It’s ghastly—but it’s in keeping with innovation’s erosion of the arbitrary. Why let the fact that you live in a penthouse apartment in Manhattan stop you from terminating an elk in Missouri?

People change their names. There’s even a newly-minted Jesus Christ with a driver’s license in Washington, D.C.

People change their faces. Makeup has allowed this for years, but now we have Botox, facelifts, rhinoplasty, photofacials and whatever Michael Jackson did. Sooner or later there’s bound to be a pill to stop hair from going white. In the meantime, there’s dye.

People change their heights. Children can opt for growth hormone, and adults for surgery—a painful procedure, involving the intentional breaking of bones, but in a world where higher shoulders correspond to higher salaries, maybe not an absurd one.

People can even change their gender. Their moods. Their attention spans. The sizes of their various parts.

First cable TV supplied us more choices; now DVRs permit us to watch what we’ve chosen whenever we want to watch it (VCRs once promised the same but nobody could program them.)

Our location and local climate no longer limit what we can eat. Fast shipping and good refrigeration give us apricots in February and cheesecakes as far as UPS can ship them.

So when I consider what future innovations may bring us, I look toward the things that are still more arbitrary in our lives. For instance, Red Bull notwithstanding, we still have to sleep. Someday we may see treatments that reduce how much.

To some extent, we’re still limited in where we go to school by where we live, and we’re still limited in where we can live by how much we own or who we were born to. E-learning promises to give us more choices no matter what our location or economic condition. Controversial political innovations, such as vouchers, address the same issue.

We can’t control the weather—but once we couldn’t predict it, either. We can certainly change it (see global warming) and someday we may be able to do so intentionally. For instance, scientists have been working on ways to divert hurricanes and to seed rainstorms during droughts.

The fact that most of us can’t learn languages as well as native speakers past a certain age—and that we don’t get to choose the language we natively speak—is arbitrary. Tools and treatments to allow genuine language mastery later in life would be a hit, and not just with expats, church missionaries and the spy industry.

Studies have shown that on average people tend to be attracted to others who look a little like them. But why should the length of someone’s second toe (which correlates closely in married couples) make a difference in your choice of life partner? “Love at first sight” is the most arbitrary thing of all. Companies already sell perfumes laced with pheromones that claim to increase your physical desirability. Someday, someone is going to hit on the right formula. On any given night you may be able to choose not only how attractive you are, but what kind of mate you want to attract.

A hot debate in politics, one that may have helped sink John Kerry in the final presidential debate, is whether or not people choose their sexual orientation (in other words, whether it’s arbitrary or discretionary.) So far science has weighed in on both sides, and this isn’t going to stop anytime soon.

What definitely isn’t arbitrary is whether technology ought to keep pushing newfound options into every nook and cranny of our lives. We should pause more, evaluative and decipher an innovation’s significance. Drugs aren’t the only things that have side effects. Maybe some things are better off within the realm of choice—but maybe others, like our children’s hair color or the age when they enter puberty, shouldn’t be.

Of course, even all-holds-unbarred innovation ultimately runs headlong into some immutable arbitraries of life.

Men can’t bear children (with one notable exception who can’t run for president because of where he was, arbitrarily, born.)

We can hide it, but we still grow old.

We can defer it, but we still die.

Did I say these things were immutable? I take it back. I’ve imagined them (and I’m far from the first one) so they aren’t unimaginable. They may sound impossible, but so was FedEx, once. And they’re bound to be profitable.

Notes on Harvard

My family is moving, which means I'm packing boxes and finding old things. Tonight I came across the notes I wrote when I first visited Harvard as a pre-frosh. Here are some excerpts...

* * *

The good: Freshman accommodations generous, campus beautiful, free long-distance calls for pre-frosh. Food not unpalatable. Lunch area very polished. Well-versed professor. Spring weather.

The bad: My host was late and very hungover. Some people look unfriendly. Some dorms remodeled, many not. "It takes six months to develop friendships." -- Stranger #1. "The change in culture and climate can be a shock." -- Stranger #2. Limited conversation at lunch table, almost a reluctance. See no fire, only ice.

* * *

I flip on. The notebook is filled with my small, black script. Different pages are dated different years. Here and there, an e-mail address. Physics notes. A blank page labeled, "Notes on AP Government." A story sketch titled, kind of pretentiously, "For Peace to Endure." Notes on health, from when I took it with my running coach over the last six weeks of high school (it was that or not graduate.) Diary entries from each time I visited Harvard, for whatever reason, between when I left as a freshman and when I returned for grad school. One of them leads off with, "What you leave behind can find you again." On another page, I lament the loss of Baja Fresh's original "to go" dishes. I flip again, and find an equation: "E equals h times v." Next to it, a quote from my friend and teammate Sage Vaughn, now an artist: "Creative ideas are sown in the soil of noncomformity."

The Replacement (Not)

Apparently a local raccoon (or maybe a carbs-obsessed coyote?) realized we were short a pet and nominated itself as Misty's successor.

I was up late (still am), reminiscing a bit, writing a bit, when I heard noises coming from the kitchen. This didn't exactly cheer me up. So my mother and I went down to investigate. Nothing there. We returned upstairs.

About fifteen minutes later, the noises resumed. We all went down again, and this time I admitted to myself that maybe I was still a little afraid of ghosts. After all, this was the same kitchen.

But if it was a ghost, it must have been a very hungry ghost. We found shreds of Chilean ayuyitas (sort of like biscuits) all over the counter. It's nice that the pet door is still getting some use. Nonetheless, we reject the nomination.

The Only Explanation

I've been thinking, and I've concluded Misty must have been at least one-tenth alpaca; nothing else could explain how cute she was.

Sunday Night

In the end, she didn't make it. My dad and I just found her, stiff but peaceful, in the kitchen.

When the Mist Recedes

I wish more of you had met Misty when she was younger--even just a year ago, when she could still climb the stairs and jump up and down like a kangaroo. Now she is dying. Several times a day she goes into convulsions, then falls over. Sometimes she yowls: a cry of pain as if she were being eaten by the neighborhood coyotes (the sad fate of many pets in Porter Ranch each summer.)

It's been a sad week, in a cumulative sort of way. I could see 20-20, but one of my grandfathers went blind for ten minutes--most likely a small stroke. My grandmother suffered a stroke, too, a larger one, or a combination of several, and lost the ability to walk. My mother flew to Chile to spend the weekend with them. That left me Misty. And I want her to live long enough for my mother to get back and say goodbye.

* * *

In happier news, I attended a political rally yesterday. John Kerry came to Valley College to endorse Antonio Villaraigosa. In many ways it felt like a leftover bit of the 2004 campaign. Bush-Cheney supporters showed up chanting "four more years" and flaunting anti-Kerry signs.

At one point, the microphone blew out. Kerry continued to orate, in his kind of clumsy, kind of affable way, for a few mute seconds before realizing no one could hear him. The crowd grew uneasy. The Bush-Cheney chanting grew louder. Then a man with a shock of white hair and a considerable tummy stepped forward, lifted his hands, and began singing the Star-Spangled Banner.

Everyone took it up--and while that melody of hope and pride drifted off-tune through a warm spring afternoon, the Bush-Cheney supporters quietly exited stage left.

Saluting South Carolina

I don't often post about current events, but in light of my apparent graduation from a School of Government, I thought I'd dip my feet in the pond.

First, you may have heard about recent Republican moves toward preventing Democrats from fillibustering (i.e. prolonging debate indefinitely) in order to block certain Bush appointees to the federal courts. Some conservatives, apparently including the Speaker of the House, have been making the case that Democratic senators who oppose Bush's nominees are really just against people of faith--and that these Democratic senators must themselves lack faith.

I therefore admire Republican Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina for urging flat-out that this stop. Sunday, he said on Fox:

"What I do not want to do is cross the line and say those who oppose these nominees are people who lack faith. I don’t believe that. I don’t think that’s appropriate."

* * *

In other news, the bodies of two children were found in a pool of sewage in Georgia. Investigators are still not sure if foul play was involved.

Right. Because children drown themselves in sewage all the time...

Between this and the train disaster in Osaka, it's been a sad day out there.

"...your invisibility notwithstanding..."

My Kennedy School advisor wrote me today to say, "It will please you further to know that your invisibility notwithstanding, I gave your PAE a [passing] grade."

I'm grateful. To her, to FARO, to the friends of HCAP, to everyone else who helped me finish my second thesis on schedule for a change.

What's more, I think this means... with or without a bibliography... I'm actually graduating.

Column Five

I was lucky to attend an elementary school where the teachers served us trail mix during standardized tests. I came to think of them as an opportunity for snacking. But years later, when I took my GRE on a computer, the administrators forced me to stash my trail mix in a locker. Either they were worried I had written vocabulary words on the peanuts or that I would spill on the keyboard (given my history, the latter would be a perfectly reasonable fear.)

At any rate, computers permit more than just taking traditional tests on a screen; they enable entirely new testing methodologies. Thus, the GRE and the GMAT are now computer adaptive, which means that they get harder when you answer questions correctly and easier when you make mistakes. This allows them to pinpoint your score by seeing how far up or down you diverge from the performance of an “average” test-taker.

Such a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure approach to test administration may be more efficient, but it also introduces new sources of test-taking anxiety. For instance, you can’t go back and change your previous answers, or skip tough questions and return to them later. In fact, you can’t skip questions at all. Worse, if an easy one comes up, it’s cause for panic—since you must have done something wrong to deserve it. And if you get an incredibly hard one, that’s great!—except you may not be able to answer it.

This new emphasis on computerized testing may explain why after 27 years, the nation’s leading producer of mechanically-scored paper testing forms, Scantron Corporation, spun off a new business unit to explore opportunities on the Internet. This unit’s products have included web-based software that allows students to “take their tests online or on paper”—a clear concession to the growing popularity of Internet testing, and one sure to strike fear in the heart of #2 pencil manufacturers.

It’s one thing to have computers decide whether you answered “b” correctly and then adjust the next question accordingly. It’s another for them to score the quality of your prose. In Michigan, computers are doing just that, grading sixth graders’ essays. One company, Pearson Knowledge Technologies, offers products employing “Latent Semantic Analysis” to perform “automatic writing assessment.” Pearson claims that its software, unlike human graders, never gets tired or bored. It even rates essays for style.

I do agree that essay test responses should be typed whenever possible. Nowadays people grow up using word processors that allow them to cut-and-paste; it seems awkward to test them on a skill (straight-through-writing, for lack of a better term) that they don’t practice very much. Typed responses also eliminate potential bias against students with bad handwriting.

But in life, we don’t write for computers (unless we’re in the CS department.) Computers don’t shop at bookstores. They don’t really understand the difference between the verse of Walt Whitman and that of a Stanford Daily columnist who dabbles in rhyming ditties. Do we really want our sixth graders conditioned to write text in a way that will satisfy a software algorithm?

I’d rather consider existing problems in multiple choice testing and look for new ways to resolve them. For instance, some current standardized exams aim to penalize guessing by deducting a portion of a point for a wrong answer. However, most test-takers are still advised to guess as much as possible, particularly if they can eliminate at least one answer choice.

Instead of a straight-up guessing penalty, I propose introducing a new aspect to multiple-choice testing: a “certainty factor.” If it were implemented, you would be able to choose not only your preferred answer—a, b, c, d or e—but also how certain you are of it—20, 40, 60, 80 or 100%. If you were 100% certain and you got it right, you would receive full credit—say, 1 point. If you were only 60% certain and you got it right, you would only receive 0.6 points.

Conversely, if you were 100% certain and got it wrong, you would incur the full wrong-answer penalty—perhaps 0.5 points. But if you were only 40% certain and got it wrong, your penalty would shrink to 40% of 0.5, or 0.2 points.

This kind of testing would require students not only to know something, but to consider how well they know it. Critics might complain that this makes test-taking too much like gambling. I disagree—it’s simply a formalized extension of what is already taking place every time someone decides to make a guess. Furthermore, the testing process would teach important lessons in risk management and decision-making—and significantly reduce the possibility of people who are naturally "good test-takers" guessing their way to a high score.

Are certainty factors the future of testing? I’d love to say yes, but I know it’s not too likely. I’ll give it… 20%.

Daniel Berdichevsky hopes his editor doesn’t run this column through “Latent Semantic Analysis.” He welcomes e-mails at (a) dan@demidec.com, (b) demidec@gmail.com and (c) dberdich@stanfordalumni.org.

March 2001

A long time ago, I didn't know what a blog was, but I sort of had the idea: I would write travel update e-mails from different places. I just found four of them, from Turkey and Georgia, and posted them here. They're probably more fun than eye surgery. If you're interested, you can click the March 2001 archives in the lower left.

Rereading them reignited my wanderlust. And early May 2005 sounds like a good time for a trip...

E-mail and IQ

I just read an article on CNN.com suggesting that checking e-mail during the workday lowers IQ relative to checking it less frequently.

This is troubling... maybe if I play Mozart I can counter the effects.

The Rain is Gone

Saturday morning. Last night, I lost the archetypal struggle between "man and bed" as follows:

Bed: "Come here."
Me: "Yes, but first..."
Bed: "Come now, or I'm going to start tossing your pillows out the window."
Me: "Good try, but I know better: a bed can't toss a pillow. No hands."
Bed: "Try me."
Me: "Umm..."
Pillow: "Help!"
*distant plopping sound*
Bed: "One down. Two to go."
Me: "Aaah! Okay, I'm coming. Please, anything, but not the pillows..."

Thank Apu Pinchau (Incan creator-god of the alpaca) I was able to escape the clutches of "bed" around 7:30.

* * *

I'm sipping Earl Gray tea made with an infuser. Thank you, Sun and Julia, for reminding me of Captain Picard's favorite brew. I picked it up at Whole Foods yesterday in a massive tea-acquisition expedition, from which I also came home with white, green and decaf vanilla maple.

* * *

So, I've promised a post about what the LASIK procedure was like, and it's time to deliver.

Before the procedure began, my mother and I waited in the "Freedomvision" lounge watching the TV talking heads debate the new pope's "hard-line" views. After a while, I lost interest and instead admired the letter "v" in the Freedomvision logo. It looked like a bird. Not all birds have good vision, but eagles do, so I was reassured.

Eventually my doctor's younger colleague, Dr. Shaw, came down to greet me. He is an energetic man of Indian descent, and looks about 25. "I'm here to give you your Valium," he said.

I thought the Valium was optional, I said.

"It is," he explained, "But you really should take it."

He then lectured me on the benefits of being sedated. When he was done, he smiled like a defense attorney who had made a very good case, or Garfield after eating lasagna.

"Thanks," I said. "But I think I'll opt out."

He walked off, disgruntled. A few minutes later he returned with Dr. Gordon. "So. you taken your happy pill yet?" asked the older optometrist, fixing his eyes on me, one bright, one dull (from two different procedures.)

"Two weeks ago, you said it was optional," I reminded him.

"Yes," he admitted. "But you really should..."

"I've spent the last two weeks preparing to come in today in a state of--" I gestured up then down with my hands, thinking of Weber, Cathers and the team from Granada Hills--"High energy and low anxiety. I don't need it."

Or at least I didn't till you all started pressuring me to take the darn thing, I thought.

The standoff continued for a little while. I asked if the Valium would improve the chances of the procedure working out. No, he said, it's really for afterward, so you just go home and sleep.

"I'm sleep-deprived enough that won't be a problem," I said. (I didn't tell him my plan was actually to go home and blog.)

At last they relented, and it was time for the actual procedure.

It began with Dr. Gordon putting little marks in my eyes. "I can write any initials you like," he offered. "They'll be very small but last a few years."

I thought about it for a while. "D and D," I said. For DemiDec.

"Okay," he smiled.

There were, of course, no initials. He just put dots in m eyes. But I give him credit for fooling me with the straightest face you can imagine.

Then I walked into a larger room full of equipment, the lead surgeon (Dr. Elkins), a nurse (Laura), and a teddy bear (whom I named "alpaca.")

"Is the bear here to squeeze or something?" I said, amused.

"Exactly," said the nurse, and handed it to me.

At first I was skeptical, but it turned out that squeezing a bear when someone is slicing a flap in your eye is a really really good idea.

The slicing itself was the most painful part--or, rather, the setup involved. Dr. Elkins placed a suction cup in my eye, and then a circle of bright white lights began to whir. The cup was so highly-pressurized that I went blind right after it came on. The whole world shrank away into darkness faster than I could blink (not that I could have blinked if I'd wanted to--they'd pinned up my eyelids.)

Each eye then took 40 very long seconds to perforate; fortunately, the second one went faster when I began (very quietly) reciting poetry.

The weirdest part (for lack of a better description) was when the surgeon pulled back the flap with a tiny edged instrument. I could see my whole field of vision slowly floating away and to the right. Then when it had been totally removed, I could see straight ahead again, but only very blurrily. "Air bubbles," explained Dr. Gordon.

The actual LASIK part was easier (as opposed to what they call "Intralase"--the removal of the flap.) I had to stare up at (in their words, "fixate" on) a bright red light which flickered for about 20 seconds. The hardest part was seeing it with my right eye--everything was just a pale smear. With my left, the light was a beautiful, fixed point, like a red giant from this year's Super Quiz curriculum but without any contradictions.

I smelled something burning; I decided not to ask what.

Between eyes Dr. Gordon said, "You're doing well, Daniel."

"Thank you, Dr. Gordon," I said, politely.

The nurse then said, "You're doing well, Daniel."

"Thank you..." I began, and realized I had lost her name.

"Laura," said Dr. Gordon.

"Thank you, Dr. Laura," I said. Then my second eye caught fire and I went back to squeezing the teddy bear.

When the procedure ended, I stood up slowly. The world was bathed in milk--but painlessly so. Within an hour it felt as if I had a giant eyelash trapped beneath my right eyelid. I took a quick nap, watched The Hostage, and then pondered how to sleep with goggles on. (Still haven't figured that out, and three nights to go.)

By the next day, I could see 20-20 out of my left eye. My right one is still catching up, but already the world is an amazingly clear place--reading license plates is particularly fun--and to celebrate I've been drinking lots of tea (though not eating any meatballs.)

* * *

Just scheduled an appointment at the DMV for this Thursday. I need a new license that doesn't require me to have corrective lenses. It might be the first time in my life I'm happy to visit the DMV.

A Thought on AP Classes

If AP classes truly seek to model the college experience in a high school setting, they should allow unlimited absences.

What a Wonderful Team This Would Be

Don't know much about Super Quiz
Don't know much anatomy
Don't know much about that Shakespeare book
But I do know I'll outscore you
And I know if you outscore me too
What a wonderful team this would be

Don't know much about impromptu
Don't know much in interview
Don't know much about calculus
Don't know what a scantron is for
But I know that one of us has a clue
And if this one could cheat off of you
What a wonderful test this would be

Now, I don't claim to be an "A" student
I wouldn't want to be
For maybe by being a "C" student baby
I can win more medals for me

-- Original Song by Sam Cooke --

This is Your Story

Today I finished the cover letter for the new DemiDec mailing. I had a lot of trouble figuring out what to write until I realized that I was thinking too much about DemiDec and not about the subscribers themselves. So I decided on a theme that felt more right to me--more in keeping with what DemiDec really means to all of us who work on it.

"This is your story."

* * *

Dear Coaches and Teams,

There are so many compelling stories in the Academic Decathlon. Among them this last year…

• Mark Keppel High School, which in its rookie season scored over 40,000 points in Los Angeles County and took fifth overall in the competition (and first in the junior division.)
• Immaculate Heart, which achieved the Arizona IA state title in its first try with a total enrollment of only 58 students.
• Granada Hills Charter, which came in third in California with over 48,000 points and was recognized as the most improved team between the regional and state levels.
• West Valley, which pulled an upset at the Alaska state competition, coming from behind to win on the strength of its performance in subjectives and the Super Quiz.
• Keller, which won the Texas state title for the first time and whose three Honor students took turns as the top scoring Decathlete at the regional, state and nation levels.
• Park City in Utah, which took tenth at nationals and gladdened our hearts by petitioning to change its school mascot to the alpaca.
• El Camino Real, which won its first back-to-back national titles, and Mountain View, which both times made it impossible to call till the very end.
• King-Drew, a Title I school which turned heads by winning its conference in the L.A. Unified School District competition—and also took home the most-improved team award.
• Friendswood, which under new coaches repeated as Texas medium school state champions, defying the conventional wisdom that new coaches need time to “learn the ropes.”
• Hilo, which saw its team split in half after a new school opened and took Hilo’s coach and several Decathletes with it, leading to the most tightly-fought Hawaiian state meet in years.
• West, which didn’t win the California state competition, but whose top Decathlete said afterward that he’d rather have lost with this team, than won with any other.

We count it a privilege to have worked with all these schools and with five hundred others around the country, in states big and small—with teams that meet as a class, others that meet as a club—with coaches who are new, and others who have been involved since long before I competed with my own team in 1994.

But we also know that the stories in Decathlon aren’t about DemiDec, or about any other source of materials: they’re about you.

We’re not the official curriculum. You don’t need us to succeed.

But we would be honored to be part of your story.

Disturbing Dream

I woke up today with much clearer vision from one of the murkiest dreams of my career. Years ago, I dreamed I was a Smurf; over winter break I imagined myself in Hell with the cast of Star Trek: The Next Generations; last night, I was held prisoner by a Nazi supersoldier.

After she and her colleagues first deluded a friend of mine (a writer) into believing he would be freed, then shot him dead, she took a few of us survivors to an expensive restaurant overlooking the ocean. I don't know why. But each time she looked away, I scribbled notes on the back of a DemiDec business card--"We are being held prisoner by Nazis. Get help"--and tried slipping it to other diners.

Two things went wrong with this plan. First, I had drafted several business cards but my hands had been too jittery to finish writing them, so I dropped them on the ground. Our captor found them there with her foot and cackled merrily as she shared them with the table. Simultaneously, the man to whom I had given the final version of the card read it out loud in disbelief, loudly enough for everyone in the restaurant to hear. I realized with a collapsing heart that while he and his companions were in fact American, they were also very drunk.

The Nazi woman holding us laughed at me.

But there was only one of her. And if I hesitated any longer, it might be too late. So I began pummeling her head with my fists. No one else in the restaurant reacted.

She laughed harder. "I have a super-enhanced skull," she said, "You can't do a thing to hurt me."

I ignored a flare of dismay in my chest--and stuck my fingers through her eyes.


* * *

That's when I woke up, pulled off my goggles, shook my head a few times to clear away the nightmare, and had eggs and muffins for breakfast.

World Blurry

Can't really see what I'm typing. But the procedure went well--they gave me a big teddy bear to squeeze, and I only wished I had brought an alpaca. Wearing gogglles, off to close my eyes for a bit, maybe nap.

2020 Visions

I named my senior thesis "2020 Visions: Ethics at the Edge of the Possible"; it was a collection of three novellas that (at least in theory) explored potential ethical issues of the future.

The English department at Stanford didn't allow fictional theses, probably because they knew how easy it could be to procrastinate on them, but the Science, Technology and Society program liked the idea. I even got a grant to go camping in Yosemite.

In the end, the English department's fears proved justified. I finished two years late.

This is how my thesis started:

Prologue: Veils of Ignorance

No one, said death, knows more than you do.

I don’t know anything, I said back, automatically.

Death spoke to me in a vast chamber of his plunder. Here, he must have collected the trappings of the deceased across all time—trophies, treasure chests, gems of every size and color. My feet were wedged between bars of gold and piles of precious stones. Petroleum tickled my toes.

There is a reason you are here, said death.

Simple enough. I lifted my hands in surrender. In the end… I died.

Death chuckled.

He cut a gruesome figure. I had been told he would come for me riding a pale horse, or cloaked all in black. That, or he would double as my savior, and lead me to the promised land. This Death, however, was all bumps and bruises, a splotched figure with a bad complexion. He wore a red coat that might have been a designer label once, but needed to be washed. He stank faintly of cinnamon and sulfur.

You’re not the first, he said. Every so often one of you arrives looking for answers—and bringing some, too.

Who else has come?

A French doctor, for one. He was good at treating plague.

Pasteur?

No, said Death, Nostradamus.

* * *

The premise was that every now and then, Hell needs to update its code of ethics, its census of possible sins. Otherwise, people being judged for new ethical trespasses might be sent to the wrong place by mistake. So at appropriate intervals Hell calls down a consultant.

Among other things, this particular consultant spots inefficiencies in the processes of torture and damnation and recommends that Hell shrink its demonic workforce by about 20%.

* * *

But I digress. The reason I titled this post 2020 Visions is not because I am suddenly nostalgic for my days of creative writing at Stanford (though I am.) It's because in about two hours, lasers are going to slice flaps in my eyes, then burn a predetermined pattern of proteins in such a way as to give me much better vision.

We'll see what happens. And I'll write about it here.

Purple-and-Fold

From the Associated Press, on yesterday's pummeling of the L.A. Lakers by the Golden State Warriors:

Here's how bad things were for the Lakers: The loss assured them of finishing with a worse record than the Los Angeles Clippers for the first time since 1993 -- a humiliating statistic that shows just how far this franchise has fallen.

DemiSummit 2005

Standing: Chris Crisman-Cox, Lanie Kagy, Dean Schaffer, Julia Rebrova, me, Clare Conroy, April Roberson, Melanie Goodman
Sitting: Catherine Chen, Craig Chu, Andrew Miller, Greta Baranowski, Kevin Teeling, Reina Hardy
Not pictured: Tom Brazee, Grant Farnsworth, Saranya Srinivasan

* All captioning from left to right

The P Building Roof

We used a copy of "In the Country of Last Things"--a Paul Aster novel--to keep the elevator doors from closing (thereby locking us on the 25th floor) while we explored the roof of the Palmer House Hotel.

It seemed there had to be something symbolic about that particular title propping open an elevator as Dean, Lanie, Julia, Andrew and I checked out the skyline and yelled greetings to people on the street--none of them heard us--but for the life of me I had no idea what it was.

Certainly it's not the last roof we'll stand on. There's bound to be one in San Antonio.

* * *

I just boarded my flight back to Los Angeles: seat 18F on an American Airlines 757. My favorite tool for choosing where to sit on an airplane: www.seatguru.com. When I was little, my dad and I would often talk about different airplane models, though never military ones--just passenger jets. I still grow giddy when I get to fly on one I haven't tried before, or in a long time.

A woman four seats to my left just said into her phone, "Yes, I told him I wanted a divorce." She listened to the response for a moment, then giggled loudly. Meanwhile, someone in the row behind me is saying into hers, "I don't know what to do to be happy."

Airplanes, no matter what the model, are an odd blend of public and personal space. They're a little like elevators or subways, with people trying hard not to make eye contact even while they have incredibly personal conversations that everyone else can overhear.

* * *

As I walked down the streets of Cambridge last night, a woman stopped me. "Excuse me," she said, "Do you know where I could find a piercing parlor around here?"

I wonder if I look like someone who frequents piercing parlors. Maybe it's my jacket?

It's a Wrap

I'll post more soon about nationals and DemiSummit 2005. Most importantly, it was a great weekend and I enjoyed meeting everyone. Thanks to all, DemiDeckers and AD'ers alike, for together making this experience so excellent. Hope no one got hit too hard by a flying alpaca on the dance floor...

No Snooze

I'm used to "snoozing" after my alarm rings. But Craig woke up like a Polynesian volcano and disabled the alarm. So I'm up, showered, wearing a pink Park City sweatshirt, and ready for another day of DemiSummit discussions. As for Dean, I swear he's stirring, but he claims he once slept through his sister pouring cold water over his head--and that he opened his eyes the next morning to find a very damp pillow.

Updates from yesterday:

(1) Chicago has a tremendous number of revolving doors. There are fifteen DemiDeckers here, which makes the process of getting through each set of these doors protracted--and theatrical. I wish I'd had a video camera.

(2) The Utah team and I have now had cheesecake together two years in a row. This restaurant was less shady than the one in Idaho.

(3) I dance about as well as I karaoke.

Craig is out of the bathroom. Time to go find breakfast for everyone.

Giant Toothpicks

"Bring us the new DemiDecker!" said Derek Painter, a Utah Decathlete wearing a pink sweatshirt (pink is not a color, he had assured me earlier--it's a statement.)

I obliged, and led Craig over to meet him and his teammates, as well as a student from Ohio and another from Connecticut who was busy painting.

Earlier, Derek had met Grant Farnsworth, who singlehandedly wrote a third of DemiDec's materials in the long, mad summer of 1997. For lunch Grant and I finally had sushi and smoothies together--something we had been planning since at least the turn of the century.

Then through the rest of the day he had met other DemiDeckers as they rolled their bags into the gigantic, mosaic-spangled lobby of the Palmer House Hilton: Tom Brazee, who had no voice, Chris Crisman-Cox, who came in a suit (easier to pack the clothes and wear the suit, he said), Melanie Goodman and Lanie Kagy, who deciphered my subway instructions even though they were meant for a different airport, and April Roberson, a Texan.

Over dinner six of us discussed ways to improve the test-writing experience at www.demidisc.com while munching on the Rock Bottom Brewery's "giant toothpicks"--enormous fried taco sticks, as far as I could tell.

But the DemiSummit begins today in earnest. About an hour from now, we'll discuss category organization. Which means I should leave to pick up breakfast for everyone. I learned a little bit about this from our hosts in Taipei. I just wish I could bring back cartons of Taiwanese milk tea.

Right Place at the Right Time

Two minutes ago: I'm standing at a Barnes and Noble in Evanston, putting honey in my tea, when a stout, older man behind me says to his date, "Harvard grad students are nothing special." I cough very loudly.

Raining Bears and Bulls

Two things can help me sleep through the day: jetlag and a very dark room. Last night I had both on my side, and woke up around noon.

My hotel room is on the 21st floor, and the lobby on the 15th; below that are the Chicago Art Institute, the Chicago Sun-Times and a deli that serves pepper jack cheese sandwiches to people who missed breakfast.

Tonight I may take a jujitsu lesson at Northwestern with my sophomore and sort-of-senior year roommate, Patrick. Given that I nearly broke a window trying to learn the lance last week, I can only imagine the possible outcomes of my attempting a martial art.

The Daily published my latest column this morning. Readers of this blog will recognize my fascination with a certain home appliance.

What I'm working on: the DemiDec brochure. Where I'm working on it: a gigantic Starbucks with blue lamps. What I'm reading: White Gold Wielder, by Stephen Donaldson, in which Thomas Covenant--leper, unbeliever, and one-time rapist--must save the world (again.)

Business as Usual

I returned to my weekly RPG today, resuming the role of Canister the explosives guy. It turned out my character (who isn't very bright) had been "out getting pizza" for the entirety of the last session (while the real me wrote a thesis in Taiwan.) In tonight's developments, our team's computer specialist, Nelson, was shot in a UPS parking lot after flirting with a Russian arms dealer.

Refreshments, courtesy of Kaitlin, included cream-filled koala bear cookies and these little Japanese sodas with marbles in them. Mine was strawberry-flavored. Marbles were actually first used as bottle stoppers back in the 1870s; it apparently took a while for the idea to catch on. Someone showed them to me in Taiwan the other day, too, and said they were popular with children who like to collect the marbles.

The session ended a little early for me when I fell asleep on the floor. Darn jetlag.

For Just the Third Time

I have to admit, I'm surprised this doesn't happen to me more often: I just missed my 12:15 flight to Boston. Technically, I could still have made it, as I got to the airport a full twenty minutes before departure, but my bag wouldn't have. And because I'll be spending the next eight days back and forth between Boston and the national Decathlon in Chicago, I definitely needed my suit and, more importantly, my alpaca sweater.

The delay does have a few silver linings:

(1) The gate agent is a science fiction fan. We debated the relative merits of George Martin, Terry Goodkind and Robert Jordan. This was hard for me, as I haven't read Terry Goodkind, but she did agree that Martin was the best of them.

(2) I hiked over to the international terminal for a bowl of seaweed noodle soup in the food court there. It was nice to eat something meant for chopsticks again, and for a change I wasn't stopped by either the airport's token Falun Gong practitioner or the Salvation Army.

(3) I've settled down and been working quietly on DemiDec for the last couple hours, over first a cup of coffee and then two of tea--one green, one lemon-flavored.

Technically, the first time I ever missed a flight, I was a minor--only about ten--and my parents took us to the airport a couple days late (they forgot to doublecheck the flight schedule.) So I'm not sure that counts. This therefore makes just two.

Looking Through My Eyes

Eyes paralyzed, so everything is shimmery and I can't write much. But the good news is that I passed the test, so I'll be having "custom wavefront" LASIK surgery on April 19th. The new laser apparently follows your eye around if you move it during the procedure, which is good because I have restless eyes.

1 Or Fewer Connections

Next time, I'll remember to click that button at www.aa.com -- so that I don't end up on another 24-hour epic journey that could have taken just 13 on a nonstop (there are novels that suffer a similar problem with unnecessary protraction--see Robert Jordan.)

On the plus side, though, I had a row of five seats all to myself on the Nagoya-Chicago leg. I stretched out, stuck my hands under my pillow, and fell soundly asleep. I dreamed repeatedly of very peaceful airplane crashes--each time, we made a safe emergency landing, and in the last one, all the passengers, myself included, bobbed out wearing black-and-yellow parachutes.

For the meal--supposedly pork stroganoff with a side of sushi and a cryptic kiwi custard for dessert--the flight attendant offered a choice of silverware or chopsticks. I went with the chopsticks.

Somewhere over the Pacific I also wrote an article for the Octopus: "John Kerry Elected Pope; Takes Name 'John John'". No offense intended to Roman Catholics or supporters of John Kerry.

Not Again

Toilet here in Nagoya comes with a warning label: “Warmed seat may case low temperature burns. Children, elderly persons and persons with sensitive skin are advised not to sit long on the warmed seat.”

Don't worry, I'm okay.

Sesame Paste

Much like these whole last ten days, this feels too good to be true: I'm munching on (very spicy) sesame paste noodles and sipping coffee while typing at a PC with a flat-screen monitor in my own glass-enclosed, wood-paneled cubicle--all with music from "The Lion King" playing softly in the background. I think Cathay Pacific just became my new favorite airline.

This morning, Buddy, Rachel and Sharon came to see me off. I've never felt so well-taken-care-of. They called a taxi, then rode with me to another hotel where the airport bus was supposed to come every thirty minutes. We just missed it (and Victor) so we evaded (temporarily) a very eager taxi driver, and had breakfast together at Dante's.

Rachel gave me a little keychain that says, "My Heart is in NTU." I like it very much, though of course it might have been even more appropriate for Jon. Here's hoping the best for him and Tina, who, like another wonderful Tina I know in Boston, wears cool hats.

Just finished the noodles and a yummy pork bun. It'll take me days to readjust to American food... worse than jetlag is dietlag.

The music just changed to "Don't Cry for Me, Argentina." What a perfect waiting room for a Broadway fan... and speaking of Broadway, before I boarded the taxi (because in the end we gave in to its enthusiastic driver, albeit at only 1/4 of his original price) Buddy sang a slightly modified piece from Phantom:

Think of us, think of us fondly,
when we've said goodbye.
Remember us once in a while,
please promise me you'll try.

I'm pretty sure I won't need to try.

Zai Jian Taiwan

The tourism office here prints signs with the slogan: "Taiwan: Touch Your Heart." I'm not completely sure what it means, but I do know this: the students I met here have touched mine. Tonight, two, Victor and Stanley, kidnapped me for tea and conversation on the steps of the library; last night, I went out with a larger group for dinner, and afterward we all gathered in my hotel room for conversation (read: gossip), photo-sharing and doughnuts.

How did I spend my first free day after finishing my thesis?

I visited the library, of course.

Yep, I'm hopeless.

Other discoveries these last two days have included delicious Egyptian sandwiches, crafted by an authentic Egyptian who also frequents Dante Coffee, and an outdoor, permanent computer swap meet called something like "gong hua" near the NTU Technology campus. It's techie heaven: sort of Fry's Electronics gone mad and spread out over several city blocks.

Tomorrow: a 24-hour flight back to Los Angeles.

Good news--my editor approved my writing my next column on bathroom innovations. I knew something would come of the talking toilets.

What I'm listening to as I (inevitably) delay packing: "A Place Called Home," by Kim Richey. It's the song used in the Angel episode "A Hole in the World"-- in which Fred dies -- for a montage flashback scene of her character first striking out for California and her unexpected destiny.

I had a chance to settle down / get a job and live in town / work in some old factory / [but] I never liked a foreman standing over me / no, I'd rather walk a winding road / rather know the things I know / see the world with my own eyes / no regrets...

What I'm munching on: well, I was munching on wasabi peas. But I finished the whole bag. So much for in-flight snacks.

Snake Soup

Titan Symphony, 3rd Movement

I first discovered Mahler's first symphony as a Decathlete. Though technically we studied only the fourth movement, I prefer the middle ones. They make me think of weiner schnitzel, fog-clad mountains, and ghostly children in the forest.

The hotel staff must be wondering what I'm up to in here, what with a scrawled "do not disturb" right outside my door, and symphonies, Disney music and 90s pop drifting through it at turns.

Anyways--thesis finished, and delivery arranged. Thank you, FedEx Kinko's. Thank you, everyone.

Countdown

I'll be submitting my thesis to the print service--Mimeo--sometime in the next two hours and twelve minutes.

Now working to Frente's cover of Bizarre Love Triangle:

"The wisdom of a fool won't set you free / but that's the way it goes..."

The complimentary hotel breakfast included ketchup, eggs, tater-tots, a poppy seed roll and a nice cup of coffee. American hotels could learn a thing or two.

Team HCAP

Writer of the Last Paper

The NTU library closed today at five, so I'm back in my hotel. Along the way, I managed to secure a set of surround sound speakers (as well as a seaweed burrito) and am now working to the sounds of Raiders of the Lost Ark, among other things. Thank you, Napster.

I hummed as I strolled across campus. My last night as a student: a clear, soothing dusk familiar from so many evenings crossing White Plaza. It occurred to me that NTU is a little bit like Stanford injected into the middle of the city: Stanford with a T stop.

For some reason, I remembered Parkman Junior High. Probably the humming: that's when I first picked up the habit (and learned how to open a locker.)

The tallest building in the world guided me from place to place. And I smiled when I saw a CASIO sign--just visible through my hotel window.

The pope ((supposedly) died serenely; there are times when it feels good to live that way too.

Vitamin Deficiency?

Sixteen hours to go... I feel altogether too calm. Whatever happened to the good old days of adrenaline rushes before critical deadlines? Maybe I need more antioxidants.

Rationalization

If I don't finish my thesis, would I be eligible to take another trip like this one next year?

A Date Gone Horribly Awry

A couple sat down at the corner table, sipped two tall glasses of iced tea, and then slumped over and fell asleep.

The Inferno

At Dante's Coffee, online after navigating a series of menus in Mandarin to purchase a pre-paid "HiNet card." Dante's is Starbucks with smaller portions and sides of pasta. Sipping a white chocolate mocha for energy.

My new residence for the next two days until I finish the thesis, my taxes and a brochure, then fly home (though I seem to be homeless--over the weekend my landlord gave away my apartment and my parents sold their house): the Leader Hotel. I can't imagine a much more fittingly-named place to finish a thesis for a program on Political Leadership, except for maybe "Procrastinator's Lodge" or "Thesis Inn and Suites."

Nor, looking back at these last few days, could I have asked for a much more appropriate way to end my college career. I gave my last oral presentations, recited sonnets and posed as the Head TF for a pseudo-course on American Education (in which capacity I messed up the "professor's" PowerPoint presentation, much as I used to Dr. Hurlbut's.) I slept about three hours a night, if that, all week long--and lived in a quad again, with two Taiwanese delegates and a fellow Harvard student named Edward who was simply fabulous and reminded me of C3PO. I spoke on the steps of the Taiwanese legislature--and doing so realized how much I really had learned at the Kennedy School. I saw echoes of Stanford in the palm trees, felt hints of past and future everywhere. I helped mill rumors, and exercised discretion at a train station. Basically, I was in a sleep-deprived, hypercharged, mosquito-bitten and cheerful haze.

And among the Taiwanese delegates and staff I met so many amazing individuals, from Buddy (future Stanford grad, I just know it) and Stanley (a seventh-year undergrad, soon-to-be-second-lieutenant of the Taiwanese army, nicknamed "the Socrates of NTU") to Carol (who observed that Edward and I were the two most Asian members of the Harvard group--an honor, since Edward's from Hong Kong), Victor (whose English we understood everyday but April Fool's) and Tina (online auctioneer with a swift dribble.) I won't list them all--won't describe Nancy of the shaved ice and limitless energy or Amy of the erratic appearances and knowing smile--but suffice it to say that I feel as if I've now had the chance to experience three colleges in my life, and the third is almost as extraordinary as the students who inhabit it.

* * *

Two aspects of Taiwan took my breath away.

The first was, of course, the library.

The second was not, however, the talking toilet.

Nor was it the shower at my new hotel, which offers a control panel more sophisticated than an Airbus 319. You can shoot the jets vertically, horizontally or through a hand-held massage unit. If you've never tried a horizontal shower, I recommend it. Taiwan wins an award for the best water pressure on Earth.

* * *

If that was my last spring break, at least it was also my most memorable. And, as I close this quick entry and dive back into my thesis (on page 21 of 50, 20 hours to go) I send wishes for a smooth flight and decent airplane food to LiQuen, Neha, Jon, David, Sarah, Whitney, Edward and Ben, who are somewhere over the Pacific by now. They're a great group, and one more reason (or, I suppose, eight) that I'll look back at Harvard very differently the second time out.

Welcome to Taiwan / The Toilet Redux

I'm still enough of a scholar at heart for a library to leave me breathless. This one, at NTU, is brand-new, enormous, trimmed in shiny wood, with English signs, study rooms, conference tables, endless study cubicles, flat-screen computers galore... and even self-checkout.

Now I know what's meant by the phrase "world-class university library."

NTU itself is more reminiscent of Stanford than Harvard, with palm trees everywhere, and buildings sprawled out over more acres than I've been able to explore yet. The street leading up to the library is essentially Palm Drive, except with taller, healthier palm trees, a rectangular less grassy version of the oval, and a different name--"Banana Avenue."

I'm actually at the library playing "hookie" from our afternoon classes (on Chinese and aerobics) in order to work on my thesis--which is due in about four days. Yesterday, I tried doing the same, but an HCAP representative tracked me down at the local Starbucks and escorted me back to Politics and Film. "Don't you want to enjoy afternoon class?" she asked, and I had no good response ("Yes, but I really want to enjoy my thesis instead," didn't really cut it.) So back I went.

Ten years later, I'm apparently a varsity student.

Anyways, I have a lot to write in this blog--as you might guess. But I should probably focus on my thesis first. This is, after all, my last academic assignment in the foreseeable future--and I can't think of a much better way to end my back-and-forth college career than at a library in Taipei.

* * * * *

A couple closing notes. Yesterday night, we were hosted for dinner at a local sort-of-French restaurant by four NTU professor. Mine professed a passion for Taiwanese beer. He ordered us several bottles. I managed about five long swallows. It's--quite foamy. Perhaps due to the beer, which I don't normally drink, or the long day preceding it, I had to visit the bathroom by meal's end--and when I sat down on the toilet, it spoke to me.

"Welcome to Taipei," it said.

Then it broke out in bird song.

* * * * *

I criticized Dick Cheney on Taiwanese TV today. Standing on the steps of the legislature, I happily blinked a few times at all the cameras, then fired the first volley of my campaign for--um--tbd.

* * * * *

Last night we were up till three at a karaoke lounge. I still can't sing, and I still have a blast not singing very loudly.

A Crisis of Faith

Today I lit sticks of incense at a beautiful and very well-fed Buddhist temple in downtown Taipei. Acid rain ran over my forehead. Our guide, Karen, kept reminding us to be "sincere." I mostly wanted to be dry.

"This is the Buddha of academic things," she said, at the fourth of seven altars, "Place a stick of incense in here for good luck on your studies and your homework."

"Like my thesis?"

"Yes," she said.

I figured it couldn't hurt. Bracing myself for another rush of rain, I stepped forward to slip my stick of incense into the appropriate cauldron.

Of course, I figured wrong: I burned a finger--and dropped my incense onto the damp ground. The rain snuffed it out before I could stoop down to pick it up.

This may not bode so well for my thesis.

The last time I felt so conspicuous--and so uncertain of what to do next--a yamikah had just slipped off my head into a gutter in front of several rabbis.

The Bugs Take Round One

Last night, I came up with a plan to avoid further mosquito bites on my increasingly swollen arms, especially around the elbows: I slept in my windbreaker.

The plan kind of worked. No more bites on my arms. Instead, I woke up to an itchy left index finger... and a second bite square in the middle of my forehead.

FABulous

Today we attended a presentation at a company, PowerChip, in the local equivalent of Silicon Valley, a government-sponsored science park spanning a hundred square miles of San Jose-style suburbia.

Two engineers proudly showed us a fifteen-minute video about the company's latest and greatest achievement: the world's first 12-inch FAB. The video went on to describe the implications of the new FAB. The prospects of the new FAB. The superiority of the 12-inch FAB to the 8-inch FAB.

When it was done, I had only one question--which I think dismayed the engineers.

"Thank you," I said, "For sharing that with us. Your company seems very impressive and we're honored to be here. But I'm wondering--what is a FAB?"

Echoes of Iowa

I did it. Into a microphone. And I don't intend ever to scream like that again.

Presentation Day

Three hours of sleep later, I'm chugging down soymilk tea and trying hard to focus on the presentation I'll be delivering today. All I know for sure so far: at some point, I plan to scream like Howard Dean.

Palm Drive, Taiwan

This may help explain why I feel quite at home on the campus of NTU.

SPF 15

Today's discovery: that my sunscreen (which I shared with about a third of the delegation) and insect repellant are antonyms. I go to bed a bit itchy.

The Alpaca Rug Effect

Extraordinarily sleepy again (I'll probably be nocturnal by the time I get back to the States) but am happy to report (1) that I'm in good hands at National Taiwan University, and (2) today I learned the prehistory of the DemiDec alpaca.

For a long time all I knew was that Esther Tsai, our poetry writer, came to DemiDec already an alpaca aficionada and that one person's fetish soon became the whole company's mascot. For legitimacy's sake, we held a vote; the alpaca handily beat the emu. However, the election was marked by low turnout and many cute pictures of alpacas. If it had been held in a former Soviet country, emu supporters would probably have stormed DemiDec HQ to overturn the results. (At such times, it's handy not to have an actual HQ.)

So when I had coffee this afternoon in Taipei with Chi-En Chien, one of Esther's teammates from Palos Verdes Peninsula, I learned the backstory. Esther came to alpacas during a week in which the entire PV team essentially moved into one team member's house (the two girls commuted, the seven guys slept there.) One day, Esther noticed two poofy rugs on the floor. Intrigued, she asked the Decathlete who lived there, Etai, what they were.

"Alpaca rugs," he said.

What was it Darwin once said? From so humble a beginning...

Anyway, the two students who brought me to the computer cluster have said it's time to return to the guest dorm to greet the rest of the delegation. Off I go... but first, one feature Boston subways should have, that I witnessed (and used) today in Taipei: a light that blinks to let you know on which side the doors are going to open.

Wish I Could Try This at Home

Forget the toilet. My room's #1 coolest feature: a rectangular section of the mirror stays fog-free even when you shower with hot water and the door closed. I want.

Some Things You Have to Grow Up With

I pressed the button. There's now a nice wet spot on the bathroom ceiling.

Nightcap

This room has special lamps for my feet.

Editables

For the first time in my life, I have a heated toilet seat. Apparently this seat can also "shower" me if I press the appropriate button, but I haven't pressed it yet.

This will be a shorter entry than I'd have liked, because I'm hovering on the edge of dropping into the very low, very white bed and falling straightaway to sleep. I'll be sure to write more either tomorrow morning or in the evening, from Taiwan proper. But first, some assorted thoughts and observations:

"Restaurant-style" service on Japan Airlines simply means that instead of pushing a drinks cart down the aisle, flight attendants walk back and forth with specific beverages to distribute. One man carries a black tea pot, another man a green tea pot; others are in charge of coffee, orange juice, Coke, etc. The meals themselves are nothing remarkable, though they do come with actual silverware.

There was, alas, no miso soup.

I left my hotel not sure where to wander in Osaka at night, so I let my feet choose their own path. They guided me down a neon-lit sidewalk, around a bustling corner--and straight to the local Starbucks.

I bypassed it, of course, in favor of munching on midnight noodles at a small udon bar tucked down a side alley. The chef had distinguished white hair and a short, neat beard; he looked like someone who could be Secretary of State, or maybe call me Daniel-san.

I was mistaken for a hotel employee and asked to sign in when I entered through the wrong door. (I thought I'd found a very sketchy lobby.)

The room service menu is titled "Editables." It's also bright pink.

Everywhere, vending machines and slot machines. Also scattered American franchises, like Wendy's and Seattle's Best Coffee (which I believe is covertly owned by Starbucks, too.) But overall the American stores are swamped by a dizzying bevy of Japanese restaurants with plastic food on display.

So I've chugged down a whole bottle of "SWEAT" that I picked up at a Lawson's convenience store, and I suspect that while it isn't the purified water it appears to be (it's too citrusy for that) it's also not caffeinated. Off to bed... or maybe I'll try pressing that button first.

Osaka

Just wanted to check in from a wireless hotspot I found right outside the China Airlines lounge at the airport here in L.A. I'm about to fly twelve hours to Osaka and should be able to update from there--at the very least I hope to describe Japan Airlines' so-called "restaurant-style" food service. I'm hoping for miso soup. Yum. Spent most of the night awake working on math exams and then taxes--so I expect a nice, comatose flight ahead. Last time I flew to Japan I scared away my neighbor because I had a cold.

Oddly, they called two days ago to let me know my flight would be delayed by two hours for technical difficulties. I have no idea what kind of technical difficulty takes only two hours to fix but is also known 48 hours ahead of time.

Speaking of technical difficulties, I haven't broken anything today, but last night I stopped the Officemax cash registers for about fifteen minutes by trying to buy a mini-tripod.

Thirty Minutes or Less

Last night in my weekly RPG, I drag raced a minivan against a pizza delivery truck. My van had freshly-installed nitrous injectors (whatever those are) but my co-driver and I still lost. Alas. We also blew up a nightclub (it was an evil nightclub.)

A Cup of Coffee

Today I entered Starbucks after a hefty brunch determined not to ask for anything too heavy. Not a latte, not a hot chocolate or a chai, and definitely not a frappuccino. When I got to the front, though, I realized I had no idea how to order just a cup of coffee. I couldn't even find it on the menu.

"What would you like?" asked the barrista, a bearded man.

"Just coffee," I said, uncertainly.

He flipped around, played with a machine, and presented me with a steaming cup of "Verona."

It smells okay. I added three sugar packets and it now sits quietly on the table. But I'm still a little wary.

Also Not Named Tina

Misty as a puppy; alas, she never grew up into an alpaca--but she's still very cute.

Column Three

Some of this echoes what I already wrote in my blog, but I thought I would post it here:

-----
Where am I writing this column?

I could be writing it longhand in a notebook overlooking sometimes-Lake Lagunita. But let’s assume for a moment that I’m on a laptop, and that I require high-speed Internet access to research and procrastinate effectively.

I could be at a coffee shop. A lot of people work in coffee shops nowadays; Starbucks reinvented itself as a place to check your e-mail when it introduced T-Mobile wireless hotspots two years ago, and lots of smaller competitors followed suit. Even McDonald’s is adding wireless Internet access to all its restaurants, with the charming slogan “Bites or Bytes—We Do Both!”

Or, I could be inside an eggshell. But this would require that I be flying Japan Airlines in its new egg-shaped business class seat—redesigned for privacy and comfort, and the ideal way to avoid single serving friends. Several other airlines are introducing wireless Internet access in the sky, including Lufthansa. More would have earlier, but the original venture, called Connexion, lost steam after 9/11 (so did the Concorde, which should have checked with Al Qaeda for scheduling conflicts before holding a public demonstration of its safe return to flight that same September morning.)

I could be at Kinko’s. Kinko’s certainly wants me to be at Kinko’s—it claims to be “your office away from the office”, with no bites required. But frankly, Kinko’s is too much like an office, and not a particularly nice office, for me to want to spend any extra time there (though I did shave at a Kinko’s once. Never again.)

I could be tucked away in a back alley leeching free Internet from an unencrypted source. But this means finding the right alley, which is too time-consuming to be worth it unless you have one of those hotspot tracking devices.

I could be writing while my professor lectures. This is hard in smaller classrooms, but I know at least one person who uses a tablet PC to quietly check e-mail without clicking any keys.

I could be at a municipal park with wireless Internet, like the JFK Park in Cambridge. But when it’s sunny, I can’t see my screen; and this time of year, when it’s not sunny in Cambridge, it’s cold.

I could be at a random motel in western Wisconsin. I’m not, but I did finish a take-home final at one in January. The proprietor was very gracious when I charged into his lobby claiming my paper was an hour overdue; he set me up with a table and a king-sized Snickers bar.

I could be in Half Moon Bay. Like more and more small cities, from Athens to Corpus Christi, Half Moon Bay provides public wireless access anywhere in its downtown area. You can still get a latte with your e-mail at La Di Da Coffee Shop—but now you can take both to go.

Or, I could be at the mall: not just at a café in any wireless-enabled mall (there are lots) but at the Internet Home Alliance’s experimental “Connection Court” in the Willow Bend Shops in Plano, Texas. Unlike the cubicles at Kinko’s, these are plush, featuring Aeron chairs, cherry oak desks, waiting areas with plasma TVs—and yes, easy access to the food court. Laptops are even available in case you left yours in the car.

Or, I could just be at home, or in Tressider. These are both difficult for me, however, as I don’t really live anywhere in particular, and I haven’t been on campus since February.

So—where am I? Here’s the answer: I started this column yesterday in a Boston bookstore café. Then I spilled green tea on my laptop. It kept working for about a minute, long enough for me to e-mail myself a few files—including a thesis that I was about three hours from presenting—before it sizzled fragrantly to a halt.

Afterwards I relocated to my school’s harshly-lit computer cluster for the night. Around eleven, I decided to get a drink. The vending machine only took my dollar bill after a half-dozen tries, and when at last I pressed the Sprite button, it clanged, then gave me a Coke. This reminds me why I avoid computer clusters (and vending machines, which—speaking of innovation—really ought to accept Paypal, or at least credit cards.)

Fortunately, today my backup laptop arrived from California, and proving that it takes a lot to change a bad habit, I’m at another café drinking tea again.

------

In his weekly RPG, Daniel answers to the name Cannister; on the Internet (wherever that happens to be) Daniel answers to dan@demidec.com.

Not Named Tina

They guard my apartment while I'm gone (I'm testing the new Blogger Photo feature in Picasa--let's see how it works.)

Sitting on Eggshells

Bin Laden would be pleased: Microsoft Word recognizes Al Qaeda as part of the dictionary. Condoleezza, too.

I'll be spending at least a third of this DemiDec summer in Texas. Here's one place we're likely to hold DemiDec events.

Done with my latte, on to Lapsang Souchong tea. I first drank this after a long hike in Banff with Sheldon. Canada apparently peppers its national parks with teahouses. This particular tea is so smokey that one person behind the counter here at 1369 can't drink it--it reminds him of when his apartment burned down.

Okay, back to writing my column for the Daily. Something I've learned today: If you fly Japan Airlines business class, you get to sit inside an eggshell.