1. Pay attention. Or at least look like you’re paying attention
2. Use “cop eyes”- dart your eyes everywhere really quickly, like a cop who’s looking for trouble
3. Bad guys like to keep their backs to the wall
4. Bad guys look around for victims, but they don’t want to be caught looking for victims. So look at people.
5. Bad guys want an easy target. Make yourself look like a difficult target.
6. You don’t want to be a wolf, but you don’t want to be a sheep. You want to be a sheepdog.
7. When you wear a winter coat, leave it unzipped. It shows that you exude body warmth, like a sheepdog. Wards off the bad guys.
8. Walk like someone who runs fast.
9. Don’t walk with your head down.
10. Street muggers are stupid, because they risk jail time for petty cash. So act like you are smart and confident and they won’t want to mess with you.
Watch out, bad guys. Guess who just learned some street smarts.
This past weekend was really great because I got to see my family (yaaaaay!) My dad came to help me move from Beacon Hill to Mission Hill. I’m going to miss Beacon Hill, it’s a high-end, very cute neighborhood that’s right in the middle of everything. Mission Hill is nice but much less convenient. One difference I’ve noticed right away are that my new place has more noise in the neighborhood ( I live on a dead end but my neighbors are partying college students). But I haven’t really been spending a lot of time in my apartment actually. The whole weekend I was out showing my parents and sisters the city. We went to the Museum of Fine Arts, hiking out in World’s End reservation, shopping in the downtown, and wandering around Boston Commons and the North End. We went to a lot of great restaurants- a brewery in Brighton with 100 beers on tap, a fancy french restaurant that had this amazing egg-cooked-in-a-jar appetizer, a nice Italian restaurant in the North End. It was so nice seeing my family and pretending that I know more about Boston than they do.
This week was the first week of fall league and it’s been good so far. The team goes to a nearby bar after the games to hang out and get sustenance. I am going to spend so much money this fall… But besides ultimate, this week kind of sucks because it’s been awful awful weather and I have an obnoxious cold so I’m basically walking around like a zombie. I know people on the T are giving me dirty looks when I cough into my arm.
In other news, Leah and Mom gave me an idea when they were here, that I should record some of my guitar playing on video or something so they can see it. So when I have a voice again, I will try and record some videos for people. I’m really excited about that!
More blog later…
Really interesting article advocating for more applications/real world based math education. I can definitely see the future of textbooks going in this direction!
So I have a lot of songs that I like to play on guitar, but I’m also taking requests! Suggest a song for me and if the chords are available online and it’s not too incredibly hard I will learn it and play it for you the next time I see you.
yay!
Overheard this conversation while walking in Boston Commons:
Woman: What’s a samosa?
Man: A mimosa with scotch in it.
So I’ve been working at a real job like a real person for about a month and a half, so naturally I know everything there is to know about work right? Anyway, because I’ve been thinking about this and because I’m on my lunch break, I thought I’d post about what I’ve learned at work so far. Certain things that I didn’t think would be important have surprised me with how important they actual are. Well, let’s get to it.
1. Information is the most important commodity.
Everything I do is based on information. I get professors to review our books so we can get more information on which parts of the books are the most compelling. In order to do this, I first have to get contact information for the professors. To get this information, I need help from the sales reps, and I get contact info for the sales reps from a database. Plus I also use records of book adoptions to decide which reps to talk to. Every link in this chain is held together by information, and if a link is inaccurate or missing, it screws everything up.
More importantly, markets run on information. If we want to reach the greatest number of students, we have to know where those students are. To make the best books we need information from professors how they teach and information on how students learn best. The best thing I think anyone can do for a job is to have as much information as they can about the product, company, and industry.
I remember when Alice and I were in Colorado, we went this bath & beauty store to get some free samples. I remember being really impressed by how much the woman at the store new about skincare and about each of the products. I think I might have even bought something. Lesson- information is very powerful.
2. Problem-solving is really important
In school, problem-solving is just another way of saying, “Do this problem. Now do a hundred of the same problem.” Needless to say, I’ve never considered myself much of a problem-solver. But it is so important at work. It’s about diving into something you’ve never seen and using logic and intuition to figure it out. I’ve had to fix various machines that I’ve never used, following sketchy diagrams, and fought with it until I figured it out. I guess I could have asked someone, but no one knows how to fix the copy machine and since I’m an assistant, it’s kind of my job. For that kind of situation, when you seem stuck, you can’t just give up and say, “Well I’ve never done this before.” You just have to figure it out.
3. Work is like a really bad computer game
Often at work I feel like I’m playing a real live version of those old adventure games I used to play on the computer when I was younger. In those games, if you wanted the flower on top of the mountain or something, you couldn’t just go get it. You had to talk to the dude guarding the mountain, and get him something to make him happy so he’d let you through, and then you needed tools to climb the mountain and pick the flower, etc. That’s how it’s like at work: Very simple tasks often involve many different steps and talking to a lot of people. For example, the other day someone asked me to find them a file. It took me most of the afternoon because I had to talk to about five different people. So work is like playing a game of Pajama Sam but instead of conquering Darkness you’re fixing a typo (and it takes just as long).
4. Multitasking is important
Not necessarily the “listening to music while working” type of multitasking, but the juggling lots of different projects multitasking. I’ll often be working on a certain project and then have to drop everything for a bit to work on a more important thing that just came up. It’s hard to keep track of things but I like doing more than one thing at once because it’s more interesting.
5. Organization is good.
I’ve gotten much more organized over the years and it has helped me immensely. Basically I just make a lot of lists. Like, A LOT. It’s really necessary, considering how many books there are to keep track of and how similar they sound. For example, it’s easy to get mixed up between “College Algebra Essentials” and “College Algebra: Early Functions Approach” and “College Algebra and Trigonometry” (All which are written by the same author). So I like making lists, and excel spreadsheet are awesome as well for organizing.
6. Proofreading matters.
Not just grammar stuff, which is also important, but checking names, dates, addresses, on ISBNs on everything before sending them out. I use templates for certain emails and the last thing I would want to do would be to forget to change the name on the letter and send a professor an email addressed to another professor. That would be dumb and embarrassing. So I try to avoid the inevitable by double-checking things all the time.
7. Technology sucks.
If the computer programs at my work weren’t so slow and finicky, my job would be at least three times as easy (what is this, a job for ants!?) There’s not much I can do about my computer being stupid, so I just try to get to know the program and not make it mad. And not kill it.
8. Math helps.
Ignoring the fact that I work on math textbooks, I use a lot of math at work every day. I calculate sales forecasts, add up honorarium, and other arithmetic stuff. I definitely enjoy doing math stuff- I get a certain sense of satisfaction when I do the math instead of using a calculator. There was a brief period of time where I did precalc problems when there was nothing else to do at work. That ended pretty fast, but I did learn what an arcsin is.
Ok that’s enough writing. Frisbee tomorrow (!!)
- I’m slowly becoming addicted to coffee. I used to have it maybe once a week at work, now it’s more like every other day. I’m very nervous that I’m soon going to become dependent on it, but it’s just so good to have that mid-afternoon boost of alertness…I can’t give it up.
- I’m learning some more songs on guitar. My current favorite songs to play are Vaporize by Broken Bells and Losing My Religion by REM. I’m also down to my last guitar pick because I keep losing them.
- I saw a mouse run through my apartment today, which makes me kind of glad that I’m moving out.
The best thing about having someone else around is that you can go out on the town, do cool things that feel strange doing alone (and yet all things that I’ve done) like seeing shows, going out to dinner, etc. So Catherine came on Thursday and after work we walked around the commons and the North End. We saw a free production of Shakespeare in the Park, “All’s Well That Ends Well.” It was interesting because some of the actors had British accents and others didn’t even attempt one. The production was really good, I’m always impressed as to how much better Shakespeare is when you’re actually watching it. But we were also struck by how love in Shakespeare is portrayed like magic. People in Shakespeare fall in and out of love for no reason at all and will do anything to get the person they love, even when that person is a total douche and doesn’t like them. I kind of think that Midsummer Night’s Dream makes the most sense out of all of Shakespeare’s comedies because it is magic that’s making the people fall in love, there doesn’t need to be a real reason.
After the show we went to Bova’s in the North End for pastries. Definitely the best cannoli I’ve ever had, plus I tried a bit of “lobster tail” pastry which I’ve never had before but was very good. On Friday, Catherine and I went to a Thai restaurant and got super-spicy food, drank too much water, and then saw Harry Potter and drank too much Icees. All in all, a terrific couple of days : )
So I was coming back from my summer league game last night on the subway, and this random guy started talking to me about his life and his plans. It would have been creepy, but there were other people on the train and he was sitting at the other end of the car, which is kind of funny because everyone in the car could hear what he was saying. Basically, he’s a 40-something fat black guy who is determined to get rich quick and has all these schemes, like becoming a huge rap star, owning a record label, becoming a computer genius, moving to California, and other ideas I can’t remember. Here are my favorite quotes of things he said (as well as I can remember them).
- “My name is Barnabuz Balque. That’s B-A-R-N-A-B-U-Z B-A-L-Q-U-E. My real name is Eric Jones, but I don’t like that name.”
- “Jail is not somewhere you want to be, unless you’re a homosexual, you know? Because there’s only men there.”
- “I have a lot of money already, but I want to retire by the time I’m 50.”
- “It’s about making money, not about getting the fast cars and having sex with lots of women and going on Maury to take a paternity test.”
- “I took a memory class, you know. Because my memory was bad from smoking too much pot.”
- “If you’re always on the subway like this (makes grumpy face), not talking to anyone, you’re not going to have any friends.”
Most entertaining subway ride ever.
I realized something when I was coming back to Boston from Wildwood. I knew that the bus ride was going to suck and that I wouldn’t want the weekend to end. But I didn’t realize how hard it would be to leave my friends this time. For some reason when I first came to Boston I wasn’t very fazed- everything was new and exciting and I was too busy to feel lonely. But after Wildwood I realized what I am missing, what I’m leaving by coming here. On the bus back I didn’t feel like I was coming home, I felt like I was going away. But I don’t really have one home now, everything is in flux. It’s true that I do love Boston, but without people to share it with, what’s the point? I know it’s just going to take more time before this city becomes my home, but until then I will miss my other home and all the people there.
Alice is mad because I haven’t posted in a while. So here goes:
These past few weeks have been pretty hectic because I’ve been traveling for tournaments. On the 23/24 I was lucky enough to pick up with a Boston mixed team called Rabblecaddy. We were seeded last in the tournament and shot up ten seeds, getting 22nd out of 32 teams. We did lose our last game to a Canadian team on universe point, which was disappointing on many levels. It was a great weekend- I got to play some mixed ultimate, bond with some of the girls who are also playing Vice, and best of all, got a connection to a summer league team so I finally have ultimate during the week! So I’ll be playing with “Stack to the Future” for a few weeks, which should be fun. Our first game was on Tuesday and we didn’t win but I got a lot of assists (!!)
The next week was just a lot of getting psyched for Wildwood. I packed up Wednesday night and left Thursday at 6 on a bus for New York. Even though I’ve lived in the NY/NJ area my whole life, when the bus turned the corner into Times Square and the flashing lights turned the night into day, I was stunned by the grand excess of it all. It seemed very weird, almost foreign to me.
I got into New Brunswick around 1:30 am and got to stay at Corie and Amy’s house- the new Nightshade house! Weirdly enough, I never saw Corie until we met up at Wildwood, we just kept missing each other throughout the entire day Friday. But everything turned out fine. Then Friday afternoon I got to hang out with Dan R. and play guitar, which was really great because I hadn’t gotten to play Tuesday or Thursday and I wouldn’t be able to practice over the weekend. I learned some new chords and got some tips on how to not suck at guitar. I’m going to be playing Breakfast At Tiffany’s all the time now, I feel kind of bad for my neighbors…
Wildwood was teriffic, I got way too sandy, stayed at the worst hotel in NJ, and drank something green out of a test tube. The best thing was seeing everyone from Rutgers (Nightshade <3). Chilling on the hotel porch, dunking people in the ocean, burning my feet off in the sand, dancing at the Bolero- it was everything you could want in a vacation.
And now I have post-Wildwood depression because the real world sucks. And because my bus came in at 5:30 last night and I’m running on 3 hours of sleep today. But there’s summer league tomorrow and I’m going to play guitar tonight so l can’t really complain.
Last weekend was pretty cool, after playing frisbee on Sunday I went to check out the Fanueil Hall Market, which is kind of like a big outdoor mall with more food vendors. I got some fudge (yay!) and went to a bar called The Tap. I really liked the vibe there, I met some people that were fun and laid back. Although there was a strange dude there, this old bald guy who, whenever I turned around to his side of the bar, would take my hand and kiss it and then pat me on the back. Every time as if he had never done it before. And of course the bartender was just laughing his ass off.
Some other musings from this week:
- I had to do Laundry at a laundromat on a nearby block. The whole ordeal took me three hours. It was awful
- I learned the Cranberries Zombie on guitar, which isn’t that hard, but since I’m playing it on acoustic guitar and I can’t strum very well, it sounds like one of those really tragic folk songs, i.e. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y3J-_fAavm4
- On Tuesday I went running with a running club which was absolutely great, even though it was 95 degrees out. Not only is it a lot more fun to run with other people, but you push yourself more. And I get to know the city better by running through it.
- I have about 20 mosquito bites right now, but for some reason they’re all on my hands and feet only.
- The other day they were giving out free pizza at Planet Fitness. Oh, the irony. Or maybe just a really great business plan
- Quote of the week: I saw two fat kids riding bikes down the street. One of them goes, “This sucks!”
This has been my first week (almost) in Boston and I am enjoying it immensely. When Dad and I got to the apartment, the guy who was subletting said that it’s a “great location, shitty apartment.” Well then. But for someone who has never had a room to herself her whole life, this apartment is awesome. The shower works. And like he said, the location is awesome. I am steps from the Boston Commons and Public Garden, which is really pretty. Plus I can walk to work (yay!!) The funny thing about the apartment is there is a gaslight right outside my window, just like in South Orange.
One thing that’s weird about being in a completely new place is that I keep thinking I see people I know. I saw several people who look exactly like Rutgers people. I also saw a guy who looked like an asian Neil Patrick Harris. I’m not sure how to explain this one, but he basically had the facial features and hairstyle of NPH, but was asian.
I’ve been running in the public garden a lot, which is really fun, but I miss ultimate. Actually the first day here I found some Harvard guys in the park tossing and I played with them for a while. But thank goodness this weekend I got to play some club ultimate with Vice, which was great. I also joined a Planet Fitness, which is basically the cheapest gym there is, plus you can play the game “guy or girl?” when you see people working out there.
Fourth of July was pretty awesome. I hung out with people I didn’t know, played Settlers of Catan, and saw the best fireworks show I ever saw. They did play Katy Perry’s song Firework, though, which kind of ruined it a little. I also saw a guy dressed up like a Revolutionary War soldier and instantly wanted to jump him.
Last note- I bought a guitar!! I’ve been practicing all week and can play very bad versions of good songs. So far in my repertoire I have “Good Riddance” by Green Day, “Lost” by Coldplay, “Scarborough Fair”, “Your Protector” by Fleet Foxes, and “Hold On, Hold On” by Neko Case. However, it takes me like 10 full seconds to change chords so it’s not really a song. Whatever. I’m happy about it.
So that’s what my first week has been like! I’ll write more some other time.
