Mystery Solved

For more than a year now, I’ve been perplexed by a random tower I saw standing in the middle of an otherwise very modern street in the City of London. What in the name of all that was holy was this old, apparently-Medieval tower doing in the middle of the road–surrounded by some metal-and-glass structures? And why did no one seem to notice it, even enough to put up a plaque? I suppose there was some plaque or sign somewhere saying what it was, but until today I had been puzzled about what this tower was.

Then, because I was bored while sitting at the Architecture Library where I work, I picked up a book about the architecture of London. As I read through it, I cam to the area of the City I’d been walking through when I found this tower. And there! in the middle of Wood St, was “St Alban’s Tower”! My mystery tower. Apparently it is what remains of Sir Christopher Wren’s St Alban’s Church, which was largely destroyed in the Blitz.

Here’s the picture I took of it:

 

Funny Stories

So I have two funny stories.

1. So last night I was sitting in my room downstairs (it’s a basement room) when someone knocked at the door. Thinking it was one of my roommates, I dashed up the stairs, and . . . it wasn’t one of them. It was a strange. Oops. I should have been more cautious, peaking up the stairs so I could see and not be seen from the glass door. I went to the door anyway and went to open it–possibly unwise, but I had my cellphone in my pocket and I wasn’t too scared. The door wouldn’t open. It was locked, so I unlocked it. Still, nothing. I struggled with that damn thing for a good minute or two before giving up. Then the guy on the other side of the door just started to talk through the glass. Lo and behold–I wasn’t surprised–he asked if I wanted to buy a newspaper subscription.

2. Today at work at the library, I got a call from my boss. Hard to explain, but basically she was here earlier and one of the staff here showed her that someone had dumped quite a few books at the ends of the shelves instead of putting them properly in their places. Well, this could have been anyone–patrons, even. However, the boss said that these were definitely books we (me and my coworker) had shelved yesterday–though obviously, not all of them were shelved correctly. I had shelved books downstairs, my coworker upstairs. These books were upstairs. Ergo . . . Well, I knew it wasn’t me anyway. I think my coworker got lazy (or something) and simply didn’t shelve them. Instead, she just put them at random on the shelves. I don’t know that for sure, but it is the only conclusion I can draw.

Okay, so that story isn’t funny. At all.

 

Home for the Holidays

Yes, I am home for the holidays. I love to be here. I’m in a far better place now than I was at the end of last semester. Not much is very different outwardly, but this entire semester was far less traumatizing than last. Just many, random things that made last semester a strain. It kind of feels like I’ve been going for a year straight–that summer was no vacation, and that the school year began in January and went until a few days ago.

In any case, I’m home. I wished my dad a happy birthday (it was the 15th, while I was still in the middle of finals) and then celebrated my brother’s birthday (the 20th). He asked for a 3-layer cake, two yellow and one chocolate, topped with strawberry icing. That is precisely what we gave him. Mom bought a marble cake mix and we pureed some strawberries to mix into some icing. It was delicious. Lots of Christmas cookies going around, too. Too much junk! But what else is new?

I don’t think I’ll get bored. I’ll be working down at school three days a week. The rest of the time I’ll be home. And I am perfectly capable of doing nothing for a while. I honestly need downtime to feel sane. I need to catch up on my downtime. I could sit and watch TV or read until the end of time, probably. As long as there’s someone around to talk to once in a while (and there always is around here), I’ll be great. Oh, and I probably need a chance to write and/or draw. That will help keep me sane, too.

I will upload some pictures tomorrow.

 

A Mercy Killing . . . ?

Would it really be so wrong to go through with a mercy killing of my English teacher. Not for her sake or mine, but for the sake of all those poor students who will have her in the future?

Obviously, that would be hellishly wrong, and I certainly have no plans of murder. I’d like to smack her, maybe, but I’ll restrain myself and get away with a mean evaluation. Alas. That’s all I can do.

One way of ruining an otherwise perfectly fine Monday morning: waking up at 6:30, going to catch the bust at 7:30, waiting for it until 7:40, getting to campus at 7:55 and having five minutes to race across campus (what a third of a mile, half a mile?) to get to the building where my exam is. I’ve never been to the room in which the exam is being held, I only know it’s on the second floor. Despite all, I got there only about five minutes late. My heart was racing, I was panting, I was a little sweaty.

And the exam was a 50-question multiple-choice test. For an ENGLISH class. It sucked. She should have asked all questions about Richard III and the Wars of the Roses and I’d have been a happy camper. But she asked several questions about poems we spent like five minutes on in class and then a bunch of stupid, specific questions. I should be absolutely irate right now, and maybe I will be soon. But the truth is, I knew it was coming and I knew what would happen. She pulled this shit on the midterm, too. In any case, I got a 78%, which is pure bull because I know all the stuff we read. Oh well. I hope I still end up with an A anyhow. With a slight curve (and I think there will be one), I might end up with a B on the exam. The only other thing I got a B on was the first response paper, in which I didn’t spell out specifically that I knew “ruined” meant “un-virginal”. I’ve known that since like eighth grade, k thanx. So I will probably still end up with an A (I hope). But still . . . I’m pretty upset about it.

 

Various and Sundry.

It’s been some time since I’ve actually graced you with an update of my doings, so here follows the miscellania of my rather unremarkable existence.

Yes, classes have started. This is the end of the third week already, and, alas, it seems that exams and papers are suddenly breathing down my neck. It always happens that way. They sneak up on you, just as quiet as a spirit, then pounce and invade your mind with a kind of paranoia–I have a book to read and a paper to write on it, an exam to start studying for, a group project to find partners for, an out-of-classroom project to write up, a short paper to write to which I have given nary a thought, I have readings to read for every class and information to store for every teacher despite there beings hardly space enough in my poor head for all that information. And yet I persevere, even though the kitchen is dirty and the bathroom too; but that isn’t my fault, since I clean up after myself . . . but that, my friends, is another story completely.

Last weekend I went to Mt Vernon. It was a hot day, but I had a wonderful time. There was a market out front with people in period costume selling their goods–there were lots of baskets, pottery, chairs, food, all kind of fun things. The mansion was pretty impressive, too. It’s definitely my style. I compared it in my head to Versailles and thought that I would much rather live at Mt Vernon. It was clean, simple, and neat, which I like quite a lot. Granted, it was probably a little more disorderly when the family lived there, but still I liked it a lot. It was also pretty fun to see all the outbuildings and take a look around at how the first President of the United States lived–surprisingly humbly, yet magnificently for the time and place.

This trip was actually for class, by the way, but it gave me an excuse to go somewhere I have wanted to go for a while without ever quite having enough motivation to actually go.

While I was at Mt Vernon, I missed a home football game, which I shouldn’t have missed because we won a big, big game after two really bad, bad losses. Oh well. I’m a bad luck charm or something. I’m going to go this Saturday to the game, and watch them lose . . .

Hm, well that’s about it. Oh, and I apologize that the link below won’t work–YouTube is mean and took down my montage. Jerks. I’ll add pictures of Mt Vernon sometime later if I ever think of it.

 

Some Nastia Liukin Love

I finally finished a drawing that I’ve been working on for ages and ages. It’s not that the drawing itself took me forever, but that I didn’t work on it all last semester or all summer. I had Nastia drawn, I just hadn’t done the background. The background really didn’t take too long because I just did a gradual grade from the corners, which wasn’t hard. The hardest part was keeping my hands clean and not smudging what I already had drawn. The drawing is from a photo taken back in 2003. She was like a stick with a big head and lots of forehead back then, but she had so much STYLE in her gymnastics (still does, mostly). So, here’s my obra de arte:

 

And the Beat Goes on

Yep, last night was another night of gymnastics and another controversy. Oh dear. And this has been big news too. It was a leading news story on the local 6:00 news, and it’s not like Nastia Liukin is from around here.

In case you missed it, here’s the breakdown. During the uneven parallel bars event finals, America’s Nastia Liukin and China’s He Kexin scored the same number. The result was not a tie, as you might expect, becuase the IOC baned ties in gymnastics. The result was, instead, that He Kexin won the tie breaker.

There’s been quite a bit of media surrounding the fact that Nastia got silver and not gold. Basically, the gist is that Nastia was robbed. Now don’t get me wrong; I think Nastia is great and I’m positive that He Kexin is underage. But there was nothing wrong with the scores they were given relative to one another. In fact, if anyone was not scored correctly, it was Yang LinLin . . . I mean, Yang Yilin, which is her REAL NAME, AL TRAUTWIG. In any case, I still fail to see how she ended up below Nastia and He.

However, that aside, the I don’t mind that Nastia and He tied; I don’t however, like that the tie was broken or the method that was used to break it. They received the same score; the received the same A score; they received the same B score; when you throw out the top and bottom score given by individual judges, then threw out the next highest score, too, they were still tied. At this point, surely even the IOC will see reason and would say that they both deserved gold. But no, there was yet another tie-breaker: throw out the next highest score given by individual judge. And that is what gave He Kexin the gold.

These rules were in place before the competition began. In this case, the problem was the rule, not the way it was followed/not followed. Either allow ties or make the tie breaker be something sensible, like looking at the qualification score and either 1) using that to determine who wins or 2) averaging it with the score from finals to determine who wins. It makes a hell of a lot more sense than just going down the line on the scores given by individual judges.

Just another item for the FIG to very very seriously think about. Add to that list: the age rule, the overemphasis on difficulty, lack of artistry the death of the all-around, the two-per-country rule . . . and the list goes on.

And so does the constant beat of controversy.

 

Flood

The Flood!

The drain is draining...

Sigh.

Just when I thought . . . Well, I was going to say, “Just when i thought things were getting better”, but I can’t honestly say that I thought things were going to get better.

I got to my place here at a little after 4:00. I immediately had a snack, which was kind of anything in sight. I sat down to watch food network while I ate (I do so love to do that!). It started to get darker and darker. So I checked the weather, and lo and behold this enormous storm is making a move to clobber. I like storms. I figure this will be kind of fun. It started out with hail about a quarter to a third of an inch in diameter. Not huge, but pretty big actually when it’s pelting the ground. And my car. I kept a watch on my car, but the hail wasn’t really big enough to do any damage.

Then it started to absolutely pour. It was as heavy as the hurricanes I’ve seen go through here. Very heavy rain. I watched it and just thought, “Wow! That’s so impressive.” Then it flashed to my mind: my room! It fooded before I got even moved in, and I’ve been dealing with wet carpet and then no padding under the carpet. So I ran down to check it. And guess what? It was flooding. There’s a window well. It has a drain, but it was raining too hard for the drain to keep up. So it back up and came in the window, which is just a few inches above the drain. Luckily, the book I had there on the ledge didn’t get wet. I was saved by diligence and by the fact that I had a plastic file folder there which blocked the water from my books.

I moved pretty quickly. I got those books out of the way and grabbed a towel from the bathroom–not mine of course, sory to whoever belongs to the towel. The water on the window ledge was probably an eighth of an inch deep and the water was going over the ledge and down the wall into the carpet. Yep. I put up with wet carpet, then industrial-strength fans to dry it out, then carpet with no padding, and just when it got dry, it got wet again. I grabbed my camera and though to take some pictures. They aren’t great, but it’s something.

So, of course, something else goes wrong. I don’t understand. Don’t people go through a week without three disasters happening? Doesn’t that happen? Seriously. This is bull. I’m going to ask for a month free rent or some kind of compensation, because it’s utterly ridiculous. The landlord promised to get it fixed, but in the meantime “inconvenienced” is a tad of an understatement. And even without the flooding, I’m getting a little fed up with this place already. My initial optimism has more or less evaporated. Sadly, the flood water have not.

PS. Mine is the only room affected.

 

The Great Age Debate

When I first saw this on the New York Times website:

Records Say Chinese Gymnasts May Be Under Age 

I just about had an aneurysm. A big old, full-blown aneurysm. Because my brain was about to explode from the fact that the New York Times had picked up on this story. The shock isn’t that the Chinese had broken the age rules–because frankly everyone in the gymnastics community has known this for months, and even when it came out I don’t anyone was honestly shocked to the core. No, I was shocked that a major (and I mean major) news outlet was picking up the story. Today, the story has spread like wildfire. It’s everywhere. Just Google it. ABC News, Yahoo. It’s everywhere.

Now, I have a few quick points to make before I go on and give my own two cents on this entire debacle. Officially, He Kexin and Jiang Yuyuan are of age. Their passports say that they are old enough to compete in the Olympics. Therefore, as far as the IOC, FIG, and all official matters are concerned, they are of age. Second, the rules say that a gymnast must turn 16 in the calendar year to be eligible as a senior, ie for the Olympic Games. Thirdly, there is absolutely no way to prove one way or the other what age these girls are.

So what do I think? Let ME tell YOU.

These girls are too young. It’s not fair to the other gymnasts, and though nothing really can be done to change it because of the reasons stated above, it will forever taint any and all medals that China wins. Two gymnasts are almost certainly under age, but there’s pretty strong suspicion about the others. In fact, only one gymnast–Cheng Fei–is absolutely age eligible. We only know that because she competed in the Olympics four years ago when she was, almost certainly, under age. If China wins the team gold, I will be royally peeved that the US–which has followed this rule–were beaten out by cheaters. If He Kexin beats out Nastia for the gold on bars, I will be royally peeved, also that Nastia lost out. Four years ago, Nastia was good enough to win a medal at the Olympics, but she couldn’t go because she was a year too young. Now He is a year too young, but she gets to go to the Olympics and possibly beat out Nastia, who played by the rules and had to stick around for four very long years. That stinks of unfairness.

And oh, yes, it is cheating of the highest degree. There appears to be some sentiment going around the gymnastics boards (hey, I have a lot of free time at work, so sue me), that it’s okay for the Chinese to break the rule because it’s a bad rule. This ain’t apartheid, folks. I don’t agree with the age limit. I mean, swimming doesn’t have an age limit, and swimmers don’t normally peak at 14-16 years of age. Gymnastics does have an age limit that excludes girls under 16, when the peak for gymnasts is often 14-16. Why is this rule in place if it excludes so many girls who are in the very brief prime of their abilities? It’s purely PR. Image.

It’s a sucky rule as far as I’m concerned. BUT (and it’s a big, huge but), that doesn’t mean it can be broken. It’s not a matter of injustice. It’s a matter of a bad rule, but it’s bad for everyone, if only everyone follows it. It isn’t fair that some people lose out while others don’t. Everyone has to play by the same rules, or it’s CHEATING. Faking ages gives a huge, huge advantage. It gives China a wider range of gymnasts to choose from. As I mentioned, many athletes reach their peak at this younger age, so not only is it a wider selection it’s an arguably better selection, too. They have a distinct advantage, an advantage just as great if not greater than doping. So for those who seem to think that it is alright to break a bad rule, or that it doesn’t matter much, I’m afraid I totally and utterly disagree.

Some people almost seem to suggest that this age falsification is acceptable because it’s happened it the past, that the Americans are showing sour grapes. Come on. Just because Soviets and Romanians and Koreans falsified ages in the past, that hardly makes it okay now. Some have said that Americans are being hypocritical because of all the athletes caught doping. That’s entirely irrelevant. Because athletes in another sport have doped, that has no bearing on the validity of American calling out the Chinese for cheating.

This isn’t about sour grapes, either. This is about exposing the rampant cheating. It’s happening now for several reasons. The Chinese are favored to win, and the favorites are always scrutinized more. In the past, China was a contender but never so heavily favored, so the scrutiny wasn’t there. Also, evidence exists now that even four years ago couldn’t be dug up. There are documents and articles that give evidence of the gymnasts’ age, types of evidence that exist now that China is more in the information age. Shifting focus and blame from the Chinese to Americans who call them out for cheating is simply a diversionary tactic. It doesn’t mean that the Chinese aren’t cheating.

Now, there is one argument that I consider very legitimate. And that is this: there’s no proof. There is no solid evidence. We can speculate til we’re blue in the face, but that’s it. Now, we pretty much all know the truth, but basically the Chinese are laughing because they can get away with it. Or maybe they’re just as alarmed as we are. They bungled their age falsifying a little, but didn’t expect anything to happen, or were smug enough to believe that nothing could be proven or done about it. It could be that they’re shocked their mistakes came back to bite them. But not hard, because they were right; no one can do anything about it.

Now, to flip the coin a bit. No one can blame these girls. There has been a slight undercurrent of anger towards the gymnasts. Some online posters want the Chinese to fall on their faces because they’re too young. Others have veiled implications that they blame the gymnasts themselves. Let’s get real. It’s not the gymnasts who are to blame. What are they supposed to do? Tell the national team coach, their family, the Chinese government, that no, I won’t allow you to falsify my age! I am going to insist upon waiting four more years before I can compete in the Olympics. Of course not. It’s officials and coaches who are to blame. So everyone has to keep away from these girls.

My hope is that this publicity will continue to grow and grow. Yes, another gymnastics controversy, this one before the games even begin! But the publicity is absolutely necessary. It will bring attention to something that has been rampant in the sport ever since age restrictions were put in place. Maybe it will be enough to make people realize how damaging the age restrictions are and that the FIG is short-sighted and is damaging the sport. Who knows what will come of this. My hope is that everyone will know and remember that the Chinese won whatever medals they win through cheating. And I hope it brings changes to the FIG, and maybe a lowering of the age limit.

We’ll see. Stay tuned.

PS. I’m terribly bummed to hear that Paul Hamm is out of the Olympics. How terrible! I was really looking forward to seeing him compete!

 

The Light of Day

I got back from going to the beach for the weekend with my parents. Yes, I’m a loser who goes to the beach with her parents and not her friends–what friends?–or boyfriend–never had one. I had a wonderful time anyway and I got back feeling so much better about everything. It really raised my spirits to go to the beach and just feel slightly optimistic for a while. It reminded me that I have had good times in my life, that I wasn’t always lonely and frustrated by the way my life was going. And thatmeans that I have to get my life back on track. Me. It’s my responsibility. For a while at least, I’m in a holding pattern. I absolutely must be here for another year in order to graduate, but then I’m leaving this hell hole forever. I hate this place so much. It saps me dry. I’ll never, ever live here again.

So, options options options:

1. Try to get a job with a Communications degree and English minor. HAH! That’s a pretty funny joke, isn’t it? I’m not even on the PR track. Comm teaches me nothing, which is a huge, huge part of my utter frustration with my current situation: I was roped into probably the most useless major on campus. What can I do with it? Work somewhere writing stupid press releases, maybe? If I’m lucky… I think I would have a very hard time getting a job in publishing with a comm degree.

2. Go to law school, and become a lawyer. Not, this is a good option. I would enjoy the research aspect of law  (call me crazy) and I can write, form an argument, and present myself well. Lawyers are always in demand and lawyers make very good money. On the other hand, it isn’t quite my life’s passion to become a lawyer. That’s my problem, as I told my mother this weekend: no careers seem to totally fit with me.  And, most worrying of all, I would need to go through three years of law school, which will easily end up costing $100,000 when living expenses are taken into consideration. How can I go into my adult non-student life with one hundred thousand dollars worth of debt hanging over my head? It’s unfathomable. One hundred thousand dollars of loans to pay off; and ten the expenses of starting life . . . how can I feasibly even consider that?

Which, of course, left me extremely upset and frustrated. I’m a very smart person with great grades. I’ll be good at whatever I do, because I just can’t stand failure. But all of my options are extremely crappy. I made bad decisions and let myself be roped into things I should have never allowed myself to be roped into. I should have explored my options way more widely. Perhaps I could have found somewhere with an advertising major, or I could have pursued architecture. All kinds of things; and I ended up with Communications, which is what? What the hell do you do with that? It just added to my utter and complete hatred of my life at the moment. But then there was a glimmer of hope: another possible option.

3. A masters degree in English–from an English university. A friend of mine is looking at doing research in her field-psychology–abroad in Germany. As we chatter via IM, I was venting a little of my frustration and she asked why I didn’t get a masters degree in England since I enjoyed the UK so much. At first, it seemed ludicrous. A masters in what? And do what with it? Then, after a bit of consideration, it occurred to me: I could get an MA in English from a University in the UK and then get a publishing job in London. One of my major hangups about the publishing industry is that it’s almost exclusively in New YorK City, which I do not like at all and would not consider living anywhere near. London, on the other hand, is charming, and is a publishing center. It may not be easy to get a job there, actually, since as someone pointed out to me, its many people’s dream job, too. The problem here: just an MA in English could be limiting. If I fail to get a job in publishing in London, what then?

So, you see, I’m at a very very sticky point and I’m having a lot of trouble finding the right way out. There is no correct way, no good option. Because I didn’t have any proper ideas of what I would do with myself, I went down a vague, useless path, and now I’m paying for it. I think that’s why, at the moment, it feels like my life is in shambles, though I’m sure it really isn’t as bad as it feels to me now. If only I were my brother and had been destined since the age of eight to be a computer engineer! Then I would be fated for a high-paying job that I enjoyed! Instead . . . I’m a smartypants with no specific place to go…….

But there’s light at the end of the tunnel. There are always options.