Heavy Negotiation

Our superintendent (who shall not be named) has a history of not giving us snow days on days where we are in dire need of it and giving us snow days when it RAINS. Yes. RAINS. Needless to say, we weren't very optimistic that today would be cancelled.

So, last night, in orchestra, we were discussing something or other when one of our cellos said very loudly to our conductor, "We should go and play obnoxious music outside of Mr. 's house until he lets us have a snow day!"
Naturally, we concurred, but our conductor did not. Psh, well he only had one class to teach tomorrow anyways.

However, despite all our grumblings, Mr. did get it right. As in...I'm not skipping class to write this blog post, which would be....bad. Plus, I'd probably get kicked out of the library if they saw I was on blogger.

~'Cilla

Sleeping Like a Horse

This morning I was standing against the wall on the first floor waiting for my engineering class to begin. I must have been looking at the floor or something, because a man walking by stopped and commented, "Are you sleeping horse-style?"

"What?" was all I could muster.

"Are you sleeping horse-style, or are you meditating?"

"I was just standing restfully."

"Yes, that's what we call sleeping horse-style. You know, horses sleep standing with their eyes closed..."

"Actually, my eyes were not closed. I was just looking down."

"Oh." He continued on his way.

Why anyone would have thought I was sleeping, I can not imagine.

-Philip

Just in: Proven Way of Preventing Violence

My history teacher is strange. By strange I mean very, very strange. He once conducted a lesson on how river deltas are the result of rivers "pooping," because the water doesn't want to step in its own poop.I just thought I'd put that out there.
Today, during class, somebody started drumming on the desk. People don't do this very often in my history teacher's class (we'll call him Mr. LB), because Mr. LB is possibly better at getting mad than he is about making funny comments of the sort no other teacher would dream of making. He is even better at elevating his voice.

Today was no exception. Mr. LB shouted in a voice that must have disturbed the innocent English class next door: "Stop tapping on the table!"

"Sorry, I can't help it," responded a weak voice from the back of the room.

"Can't help it!" erupted my teacher.

"Well, I can, but I don't think about it."

Mr. LB calmed down completely and said very simply, "Tie a piece of tape around your finger." As if this solved everything, my teacher began to resume what he had been saying.

"What?" exclaimed the student.

"Tie a piece of tape around your finger," Mr. LB replied calmly.

"Why would I do that?"

"So that you don't tap on things."

The whole class was listening intently, and isolated laughter bounced around the room. It was hard not to laugh, looking at the student's face. Of course, Mr. LB thought what he was saying was completely normal, or at least acted like it.

"Did you just make that up right now?" asked the student, eager for an explanation.

"No," responded my teacher, holding out his hand. Being in the front row, I could see that he did, indeed, have a piece of tape tied around his finger. "I do it every day. It helps me keep from tapping on things. More importantly, it helps me prevent myself from hitting people over the head. Don't you ever wonder why this class isn't violent?"

"I thought coffee did that for you," mused a student, referencing a conversation that had  taken place months ago.

"It used to." He then shifted his attention back to the student who had been tapping, who was now sitting uneasily in his chair. "What are you waiting for?"

"I don't know..."

"You don't know." Mr. LB raised his voice for a second before returning to normal. "Oh, I don't think I have any good tape."

"Where's the bad tape?" asked the student, who was obviously interested in the idea.

"It's in the middle drawer of my desk."

The student crossed the room and sat down at Mr. LB's desk. "Which drawer?" he asked.

"Middle drawer," answered Mr. LB.

"Which middle drawer?" asked the student impatiently.

"The long middle drawer."

The student fumbled around for some time before he found the middle drawer.

"The long middle drawer. That's the short middle drawer."

"Oh." The student opened a drawer, and looked inside. "There's tape."

"Wasn't that the point?" asked Mr. LB, beginning to laugh.

"Yes, but I don't know what tape to use."

"Do you have a wart on your finger?" asked Mr. LB. The student, along with the rest of the class, was bewildered.

"No..."

"Then use the duct tape anyway." Mr. LB stated firmly as we watched the student remove a roll of duct tape and wrap it around his finger.

"Warts?" I asked, after a short silence.

"Yes," said Mr. LB. "Duct tape helps you remove warts." The class was horrified. I was sure everyone else had the same image in mind: ripping a wart off with duct tape.

Finally somebody spoke. "That's disgusting."

"The wart, or the removal of the wart?" asked Mr. LB. He clearly missed the point. "I don't think removing warts is disgusting."

"It is!" shouted somebody else. "When you do it with duct tape, anyway!"

"It's not like you rip the wart off," laughed Mr. LB, acting it out. "No, the adhesive in duct tape helps get rid of warts. Some chemical." The phrases "That makes sense," "Oh," and "Well that's different" rumbled through the class.

And all this because someone was drumming on his desk.

-Marianne

I didn't even know homeroom attendence was that important

In history my class went to the library to work on our research papers. Then I had English, in which I was also working in the library. So I went to the room that my English group meets in. A few minutes later, one of my group members came in and said, "Rebecca, like four of the housemasters are looking for you."

"There are only four housemasters," someone said.

"Well, I mean, some of the people are campus aides and stuff."

I thought that was weird but I didn't have any idea what it was about. So I just stayed in the room until a couple minutes later a campus aide came into the room and asked me if I was me. I consented and she told me to come with her. She didn't know if I needed to bring my backpack, so I brought it.

"Just go to the house office," she said. "Your dad is there." Hmm....what is going on??? I was rather woried; was there some kind of emergency and my parents had to come to school and tell me about it? I walked along to the office, full of curiousity and fear.

Let me stop this thrilling tale here and back-track a bit, this time telling the story as I later heard it from my dad.

The phone rang. Expecting to hear news of a bomb threat or something, my dad picked it up. Instead, he was informed by a recorded message that his daughter Rebecca was absent, and please remember to call the office when your children are absent.

This was a surprise, Rebecca had gone to school. Ah, but she walked to school by herself today. What if something happened to her and she never got to school? Even if it was just a mistake on the attendence, he thought he'd better check.

So, arriving at the school office, he asked the secretary if there was some way to check if I was in class. The secretary said that I had been marked present for chemistry, but not for homeroom.

"So she was definately in chemistry?" asked my dad.

"Well, that was on the computer, so if you don't make an entry it automatically marks you as present. The homeroom attendence is on paper."

Could someone call the classroom she's in and ask if she's there? Alas, the secretary has a twisted ankle so she can't run up to the fourth floor and look for me. Eventually someone went to my classroom, but it was empty. (Recall that my history class was in the library.) But, as it was right at the end of the period, they assumed we had already switched classes. So they went to my next class, English, but that was also empty because we were also in the library. All through this process, the secretary was reminding my dad, "She's probably not even cutting class. You'd be surprised how often there's a legitimate excuse." Yes, that's what we're all worried about.

Eventually they figured out that I was in the library. This brings us to the part of the story you've already heard. So it only took a moment for the situation to be explained to me. "Were you late for homeroom or something?"

"Yes," I said. "I got out of chemistry late and I was late for homeroom."

"Oh, okay. Check with your homeroom teacher tomorrow to make sure she fixes that."

I went back to the library.

"Are you in trouble?" Someone asked as I came in.

"No. I mean, yes. I got expelled."

She started at me for a second in shock. "What?! Are you joking? Yes, you're joking."

Yes, I was joking. I briefly told them the actual story, and then we got started with our work.

-Rebecca

Interviews

All of a sudden, I've been contacted by colleges about interviews. Naturally, I agreed to do them, because to refuse would not look very good. During the last few days, I have tried to think about what I might say and practice answering questions. I don't mean to say that I was particularly nervous, but I wanted to make sure things went smoothly.

My first interview was for the University of Chicago. I was supposed to meet a young Asian man with dark-rimmed glasses at a Peet's Coffee in Brookline. It was crowded inside, and I didn't want to just stand there amid all of those people. So I waited outside in the cold for a few minutes until a man who fit the description appeared and made eye-contact with me. We introduced ourselves, decided that Peet's was too crowded, so was a nearby Starbucks, and we ended up in a Finagle-A-Bagel. After he got a drink, we sat down and the interview began. It turned out to be a lot more like a conversation than a traditional interview. We discussed the University of Chicago, why we liked it, he told me some things about it and I said some things about myself. He kept appologizing for rambling too much--I think he was more nervous than I was. In the end he said it was his first interview.

Close to the end, he asked me about my application essay. I had done the one about zooming into something--like the Powers of Ten movie. I told him that I wrote about the Mandelbrot Set, about zooming into its intricate details, and more figuratively about how zooming out is like seeing how the complex design comes from the simple rule, how sometimes we are faced with the complex design and have to figure out the simple rule, and philosophical things like that. He seemed interested, but indicated that he did not know what the Mandelbrot Set was. So I ended up telling him about the Mandelbrot Set and advising him to try a zooming program on the Internet. In all, the interview turned out to be relaxing and fun.

But tomorrow is Harvard. That is something to be more nervous about.

Incidentally, I thought I ought to add this amusing story: I received an e-mail from Columbia that said:

ARC Members,
Over the next few days you should see interview requests appearing in your inboxes. As you know, the website and system have changed this year, and I am hopeful that there will be a minimum number of glitches. A few notes...

I then received an e-mail that said the following:

If you received an email from me an hour ago addressed to ARC Members, don't worry. It was just the result of a system glitch or, more likely, user error. The email was intended for alumni, not for high school students. You don't need to do anything.

Amusing, isn't it?

-Philip

Keep Your Head Down

On Sunday I was sitting innocuously on one of the pedestals in MIT's lobby 7 when a gaggle of Asian tourists flooded into the lobby. Now, if it isn't immediately obvious, one can always tell tourists from students and faculty by where they look first: tourists when entering lobby 7 look up, amazed by the giant dome. And such was the case with these tourists. But that didn't last long. Fingers started pointing in my direction, and everyone turned to stare at me. The tour guide looked over and started talking in some Asian language as the group took pictures of me and crowded around for a better look. Oh my gosh, a girl on a pedestal! I imagine they're saying in some Chinese dialect (or maybe Korean). Meanwhile I did my best to continue reading the Economist and not look at any of them. Eventually they left, some lingering to get a better picture, and a while later they trickle back through at the end of their tour, and a few more snap pictures of me before finally leaving.


Sachi

Ahem...Your Computer is Not Fully Protected...

A few days ago, my computer notified me that my security protection had expired and I had to pay for it to keep updating the protection. I thought to myself that perhaps this was not really necessary. It seemed to imply that I would still have whatever protection I already had, and I just wouldn't get new updates. And, we all know that new updates can cause more trouble than they solve (Microsoft Office 2007 for example, or Windows Vista, etc.) But alas, the MacAfee Security people keep tempting you until you give in. After all, who can truly argue against them? They say they know if your computer is protected, and all you can do is listen to them and give them what they want. So finally I paid $70 (this would have seemed like a lot of money before I started paying that much to every college that I applied to) and let it download the updates. What a mistake! Today when I turned on the Internet, a window popped up asking to download something new. Without thinking, I pushed OK. Then I saw to my dismay that there were those little boxes that come automatically checked and you have to un-check them or else you will get lots of things that you don't want. But it was too late! I tried to un-check them, but nothing happened. My computer was in that state in which it is doing something and taking a long time, and you can't do anything about it. So I just sat there, knowing that I was doomed. I decided to spend the time practicing my monologue from Hamlet (an assignment for my English class): "Upon my secure hour thy uncle stole / With juice of cursed hebona in a vial, / And in the porches of my ears did pour / The leprous distillment..." Meanwhile, my computer proceeded to go crazy. First a big, red M appeared with a picture of a magnifying glass, like some kind of Big Brother watching everything. Then new pages started coming up and not loading completely. "This program is not responding" messages were everywhere. When I finally got rid of them all, a message appeared on the bottom right corner of the screen: "Your computer is not fully protected," it said. I could just picture the character. I was the president, or something, and this little shifty-eyed man with a hat low over his face and a black suit came into my office and said, "Ahem...your country is not fully protected." And I would have to listen to him and give him power, and he would take over the country as a dictator. Ah, it is such a relief that now I have to leave my computer and shovel snow!

-Philip

Dice, Ice, Lice, and Malice

Continuing from a while ago, Dan, Zoë, Emlyn and I we eventually got to the restaurant, a sushi place called 'Asian Bistro'. We decided to order a lot of sushi to share; Dan whipped out his notebook and we compiled an impressive list of sushi. After we ordered, we started conversing. About dice. I have no recollection of how we got onto the subject, but we were debating whether one could make a dice out of jello. I pointed out that it would probably be a pretty predictable dice, and wouldn't roll very well. Then we starting rhyming things, dice, ice, lice, malice...wait malice doesn't rhyme. Is there anything that is spelled differently that does rhyme? We couldn't think of anything, but maybe you can. My memory is failing me but I'll try and recount more.

While we were talking about dice, I mentioned something about dodecahedron dice, and then promptly said, "I built a giant dodecahedron once." Everyone turned to look at me. "What?" I asked, not fully aware of how strange my mind was that I had suddenly taken a conversational u-turn, from dice to polyhedron constructions. "Of course you did," Dan said. I turned to Zoë. "She crochets math stuff, I'm clearly not the only weird one." I comment. Zoë blamed that on Dan for giving her the crochet book. "Actually, I got it at the conference I'm going to tomorrow. Well, I got it last time I went because I can't go into the future, I don't just have a hole somewhere. Like a wormhole. Except those are very small." Emlyn comments, "You could widen it with a shovel."

Food arrived, we continued talking, ate, and then were left with a few pieces of sushi on the plate. "At the end of the battle there were four left," Dan narrates. "This one's an outcast because he's on a different plate!" He points to one on the other plate, then picks up one from the bigger plate. "I turn my back to you!" He voices for the sushi piece then turns it ninety degrees. "That's his back," Dan informs Zoë, pointing to one side of the sushi piece. Emlyn and I are cracking up and Zoë just looks at us all and says, "I can't take you guys out in public anymore."

Dan continues narrating the food battle. He places the piece of plastic green leaf over one piece, saying, "This one learned shade." Zoë reached down with her chopstick, "Too bad, you called attention to yourself" and then ate it. As Dan continues to tell the story Zoë takes his pen and draws an 'X' on his arm. "I take back my earlier statement. It's just you I can't take in public." Dan looks down at the X on his arm. Zoë informs him, "I'm going to train Archimedes to attack X's," she says, referring to Dan's cat. We're soon discussing murder plans involving drawing X's on Dan's throat.

"Professor L. hasn't shown up to teach any of his classes. Maybe we should check his room. Oh, nothing in there but a cat and a fake skeleton. Waaaiiit...." Dan details the hypothetical situation.

After we finish dinner, we head back on the (ever confusing) metro. Emlyn and I are chatting, and I was saying, "It's like that time with the jackhammer..." Zoë looks over at me. "You should not be having any 'times with a jackhammer!'" I tell her, "It involved Josh..." I cite a notoriously silly friend of ours. "That's WORSE!" She exclaims.

We eventually parted ways, without telling her the whole story. :)


Sachi

It's Funny How Memory Works...

I entered the miniscule room off the library that my group was doing our English project in. (My teacher reserved a sperate room for each group!) The room is skinny and L-shaped, with just enough space for two circular tables and some chairs. The walls are lined with books and boxes of old magazines: LIFE magazines, TIME magazines, National Geographics, from the 1930's to now. A few more people arrive, and two of them start talking about the school's chorus. "You should sign up for Concert Choir," says one. "I'm in Jubilee," responds the other, refering to another of our schools choruses. "My chemistry teacher is the Jubilee director!" I chime in, talking to the first speaker. "I know," she says. "I'm in your chem class."

Obviously, I'm feeling a little dumb. Well, whatever. it wasn't until this afternoon that I realized that another incident that occured today was very similar....

In Spanish class, we were working in groups, supposed to be summarizing a story together. My group's productivity had degenerated into aimless chatting. "What did you get on the test?" someone asked. "Oh, I got an 86," said someone, and another had a 94. As hard as I tried, I couldn't remember recieving a graded test. I knew I got back a math test, and a chemistry test... Well, that's the kind of thing I don't rember very well.

My Spanish teacher dissmissed us, and as we were leaving she reminded some people that they have to make up the chapter 5 test after school tomorrow. "And who else needed to take the test?" she asked, trying to remember. "Me," I said. I had been absent the day we were supposed to take it. (I think you can see where this is going.) "Okay," said the teacher, "come to room 343 after school tomorrow." Finally, school was over. It wasn't until I was downstairs at my locker that I realized why I didn't remember what I got on the test: I hadn't taken it yet.

I hope nothing's wrong with my memory, because my chemistry teacher hinted that we're going to have a memorization quiz soon!

-Rebecca

P.S. The English project refered to above may or may not be the subject of another blog post. :)

P.P.S. Happy belated birthday blog! (Ooh! Nice alliteration!)

Sliding to School

Yesterday morning, the streets and sidewalks were covered with ice. It must have rained and then frozen over night. Rebecca and I usually walk to school, but it was so slippery that our mother decided to take us in the car. First, however, the ice had to be scraped off of the car's windows. Then came a slow drive up Hull Street, where every car coming in tried to wedge its way in front of us. Slow, dark, bad weather, everything inconvenient--it seemed like the perfect way to welcome us back to school. Eventually, with the car going so slowly, we decided to walk the rest of the way. The snow was OK, but as we reached the down-hill slope toward the school, there wasn't enough room to walk on the snow. So instead, we slid down the sidewalk. Walking was virtually impossible. Instead, we would grab onto the fence and slide down the slope. Then, we would take hold of another part of the fence, and slide some more. It turned out to be a rather efficient method of travel.

After school, I had a doctor appointment. I always manage to keep the nurses and doctor on their toes by asking questions. Yesterday was no exception. After a nurse gave me a meningitis shot, I asked, "Is this the kind of vaccination that can give you a slight chance of getting the disease?" The nurse began to answer, but she said nothing coherent: "There's always a chance...that's a good question...vaccines never work one hundred percent of the time...I should ask..." As she went blathering on in a dither, I couldn't help but laugh.

-Philip

Just Because Metro Contains the Letter 'T'

Happy birthday, dear Blog! Dial-A-For-Awkward is one year old, started out of a new year's project, and I hope it will continue just as it has for many years to come.

I decided it might be fun to go to DC, a few days ago, so here I am in DC. Actually, I'm in VA, visiting Emlyn, a camp friend, but we went into DC for the afternoon to each lunch with friends of mine, Dan and Zoë. Getting from VA to DC required taking the Metro. I am used to the T, the Boston public transport, and so the metro was quite confusing to me. First off, there is no inbound/outbound like you have in Boston, where, if you're going into the city it's inbound, if you're going out to the suburbs, it's outbound. Instead, they have confusing sign posts that are always in a diagonal to the way the train is going. Written on the sides are stops with arrows supposedly pointing to which side of the track the stops are on, but they don't actually point there because it's diagonal to both platforms. Why couldn't they have two posts, one on each side listing the stops? Sigh.

We did finally make it there, though, and met up with our friends, with whom we took the metro one stop further. While we were on the metro we were reading the caution signs which said, "Do not touch third rail." Dan commented, "Which one is the third rail? Isn't it usually in the middle, which is the second one?" Zoë replied, "I think it's the big one that looks dangerous. But they should probably just makes signs saying 'Don't touch the rails'." Dan replied, "Yes, and then two thirds of the time you would get lucky. Or what if you added a bunch more rails just to be confusing?" I added, "You could make a math problem. Don't touch rail x such that x is less than twice the square of..."

As we exited the metro and looked up at the electronic signs, Dan exclaimed, "Look, less than signs!" To which I replied, "Greedy ducks!" Because that is how I was taught about less than signs in elementary school. "Yeah but what are they eating?" Someone asked. "Each other. The one in the middle eats the last one and then is eaten by the one on the far left." Dan replied, "Oh how pleasant." I expanded, "Then it dies from starvation." Dan said, "So they eat each other and then starve to death. What a wonderful life."

"So the other thing I don't get about the metro," I said, "is exit fees. You have to pay on the way out. I mean, they write songs about that in Boston." Dan looked over at me. "Songs?" He asked. "Yes," I said. "They do!" "Do you mean the one song Charlie on the MTA, from forty years ago?" I nodded. "Yes, they write songs about that!"

By this time we were almost out of the station. Zoë went to refill her card, and Dan, Emlyn and I are left standing there. Dan motions to a baby carriage that is completely covered. "I always think it's weird when those things are completely covered. Like, you don't know what's in there. I bet there's a cougar in there. And when you open it up it jumps out, ROAR, and claws you."

By which time Zoë came back and was completely perplexed as to why Dan was talking about cougars. We then headed off to the restaurant which will be part two of this story to come tomorrow.


Sachi