dreams bleed into reality

Sometimes I have really vivid dreams and later on I think little things that happened in dreams actually happened in real life. Actually that happens to me on a semi-regular basis.

Other times I feel strong emotions in dreams and when I wake up I feel like that for the rest of the day.

Other times I wake up from dreams within dreams and it's layered and when I wake up for real I'm not immediately sure if it's reality or still a dream.

And (although this is the most rare), once in a while I really, really feel that reality is a dream. Not in the fantasy "I wish this were a bad dream" way, but in a physical feeling that my surroundings are made up and from a dream.

Crazy! I think dreaming is amazing. Reminds me of this xkcd comic:

material happiness

Midnight ride down the 280 in Gary's new car, which he picked up today. It's a dark, dark gray BMW coupe with a sunroof....in his words, a "pretty sweet ride." It is in fact a very smooth ride and a really nice car. His driving leaves something to be desired (he kind of doesn't notice stop signs...and has a hard time with red lights too), but I guess it's only in college that you'll get to drive at 110mph down a deserted highway while listening to classical music in a brand new BMW. At times I feared for my life. But at others I just sat back and enjoyed.

anecdotal

Clare: You know, dim lighting does seem to increase productivity.
Me: What?
Clare: Haven't you noticed that you work better when it's dim?
Me: Umm....not really.
Clare: Oh. Maybe this is how CS majors differ from everyone else.

I've developed a dislike for wearing real clothes. Pajamas are amazing. I wore pajamas when we went to the trampoline place, I wore pajamas to the Xanadu party last weekend (not quite up to standards with the low-cut shirts all the other girls were wearing), and I wear them at least half of the time I'm the the dorm. PAJAMAS! AMAZING! :)

I also have cardboard box in the middle of my floor that contains about 30 individual bags of Cheetos. It's been there for about three days. Gary dumped it in our room and refuses to take it back. What am I supposed to do with 30 bags of Cheetos? I don't even like Cheetos that much. Hum. Anyone want Cheetos? I'll mail you some.

Reading about the VT shootings sends shivers down my spine. The New York Times reported that not a single one of the injured victims was shot fewer than 3 times. Head, abdomen, chest. Wrist, elbow, arm. That's scary.

an interesting article

pearls before breakfast: washington post cover, sunday, april 8

it's a lovely day

Don't take my depressing posts too seriously. I don't. :)

ps. the average on my E60 final last quarter was a 43/100. Hahaha. 23% of the class got between 0 and 10 points. How can people actually get below a 10 on a final.......?

adrift

I know I haven't posted in a few days. Partially because nothing has happened and partially because posting requires thinking and if it's one thing I came home to escape from, it's thinking. It's been a good few days. Relaxing. I'm not doing anything, not thinking about much. Just floating along, eating and reading and sleeping odd hours, and being carried. For once, my parents aren't even telling me to be "productive." They just let me eat and sleep and read and stay in bed all day. It's nice.

Thunderstorms today. Also quite beautiful. Scary to drive during but lovely to listen to and even to be in. I feel....peaceful, almost. I surrender myself to whatever the future will bring. No expectations.

sushi; femaleness + techiness

I went to a delicious sushi place in San Mateo for lunch today. Totally made my day.

Clare pointed out that the girls of the draw group (her, me, and Tina) have been getting more....female. Haha. Poor Trevor. We have been, though. I've noticed it too. Kinda nice :) You know what else? When I got back from San Mateo this afternoon, Trevor was studying in our room, and he said, "Yay, Helen's back!" and was happy about it even though I just sat down and started playing Tetris like always. Isn't it nice, when your presence is appreciated, even if you're not being interesting or funny or anything else? It is. I think our draw group really just enjoys being together, which is what makes us work so well.

Oh, by the way, my femaleness factor was once rated 0.8/1.0 by a general consensus (compared to such numbers as 0.9 for Winnie, 0.7 for Tina, 0.2 for Yao, and 0 for Peng). My techiness factor is 0.7/1.0 (compared to 0.4 for Winnie, 0.8 for Yao, and 0.3 for Peng, and 1 for Vincent).

I guess I'm pretty female and pretty techy. I wonder if I should take a fuzzy class next quarter just to balance my schedule out, or if I should keep it at the 2 engineering + 2 MS&E + 1 CS that it's at right now. Hmm.......fuzz. Always a question of to take or not to take.

a cheerful note amidst...well, the rest

today was the best day i've had in a while. kind of ironic since i had a ridiculously hard exam to study for/take, but maybe it was because of that that i was able to keep my mind off everything else. after the exam tina and i were full of nervous energy still, so we went to this place and exhausted ourselves. :) just what i needed....physical and mental exhaustion really does the trick sometimes. then you're just too tired to think or do much, period. we went to late night afterwards for an hour with some of the guys (peng, yao, francis, vincent), where we pretty much just hung out and let ourselves relax after day 1 of finals. it was really nice.

i'm really looking forward to going home. mostly i'll just be glad to have finals done with and to have a week of truly......nothing. oh bliss.

late night conversations

Last night was another late night: this time, talking to Clare and Francis until 5 am. Oh boy. Several interesting things came up though.

First, group dynamics. Our group is, as Clare puts it, "very clannish." We're like a family, everyone is loyal to each other, we move and operate as a group. This means that everyone is friends with everyone else, but also that people don't necessarily get close to everyone in the group--there are just too many. And then people end up feeling like they don't really know anyone, or that they're not as close to the others as they'd like. I don't know if this is just a side effect of having to spread limited amounts of energy and free time too thinly, or just because we are inherently defective as human beings and as a group. I personally have never felt too much of a problem with it, because I do have a few people within the group who I'm pretty close to, but apparently others have.

Second...the concept of living for others, and of being a "good person." Clare and I had this sort of mind puzzle a while back: imagine two worlds, one entirely populated by perfect practicing Christians (i.e. they all believe fully in Christianity, do their best to live according to God's word, and will never have reason to doubt), and the other populated by perfect atheists (i.e. all believe fully in logic and scientific reasoning and are never tempted by religion). Would either be as successful as our world today? Would they explode? Would they both be better? We imagined that the Christian world would tend towards a Communist-ish society, where the rich and poor gravitate towards a middle ground and everyone is on equal social and economic footing...would this lead to a homogenous and eventually stagnant society? It's interesting to think about because although Clare loves us all, no one in our group is really religious except her. And she believes that none of us are really "good people" in the sense that we are all ultimately selfish, and she thinks a world where everyone was Christian would be a great place. And we've talked about this a lot before, but for some reason, last night it resonated a little bit more with me. And as a result, I thought about the fact that I really do live entirely for myself, and maybe I should really care about other people more, not just in relation to myself but purely for their sake.

I don't know, just thoughts. The two streams above are connected, because Clare wants more Christian friends. Francis wants more friends period. And I....well, I guess I want more female friends. But I'm pretty happy where I am right now. As Clare puts it, I was fortunate enough to be born into the top whatever percent of the world, to be born smart and capable, to have everything handed to me on a platter, to be a cow munching happily!, and thus I find no difficulty in being happy. It's true. Despite my complaints (like the post two below), I am happy overall. I wonder if my personality and ability to be easily satisfied would be the same had I been born into a less fortunate situation.

wow that was incoherent.

kafka on the shore

As long as I'm reading I can almost forget about everything else. Hours at a time when I can be absorbed in my book and let time pass...thoughts about the book supercede my own. There's nothing else quite like it. Sometimes to keep the feeling I ignore all my homework, don't go out, just sit on my bed all day and read. I guess that's the solitary part of me manifesting itself. But on nice days like today I just open my window and I can feel the breeze, the sunshine...it's so wonderful.

spring break!! please come soon.