A completely unproductive day has gone by, but it’s all good. I see no reason why I should feel guilty for actually taking the weekend off. Just as a note to other over-worked individuals: it’s ok to relax once in a while. I say this as much to remind myself as I do to re-educate others.

In the process of procrastination, I spent 4 hours on the phone, caught up a bit on the news, stole the antlers off a stuffed dog, and cut up a couple magazines looking for scantily clad women for a collage. I couldn’t have asked for more progress.

So much progress, in fact, that nobody seems to believe me:

bezerker: whatcha doin?
V Annoyed: cutting up magazines
bezerker: why?
bezerker: you aren’t cutting magazines
bezerker: you are doing analysis!
bezerker: lies! all lies!

Listening to:

Last Exit – Junior Boys
10 – When I’m Not Around

It’s the weekend, and I’m up late, again. But this time, I wasn’t greeted with the sad yet amusing sight of a friend becoming sick from consuming one singular strawberry daiquiri. No no. Tonight, I’m in the arms of Analysis, and damn it, he’s got a not-so-gentle grip. I wanted to go out shopping, because I’m still looking for those boots, but I couldn’t find Yasmin, so I was left alone with my homework. Now, I’m slightly dizzy, half-starved, with my eyes glowing from staring at the textbook, but I’m two-thirds done with the homework, so that’s what matters, right?

Goal for tomorrow: Wake up before noon so I don’t lose half my day. But really, what are the chances?

I almost bought myself a new laptop last night, but after a diligent 2-hour fight with my conscience (a.k.a. Yong), I finally decided to forgo the computer, and instead bought myself a new battery and hard drive. Hopefully that will stave off this technophilic hunger of mine for a while….

And now, to take care of this other hunger. *Hears stomach growling very insistently* More interesting revelations to come!

Listening to:

Exciter – Depeche Mode
09 – I Feel Loved

So, because I was a lazy bum and have been slacking horribly on my health economics research, I finally sat down and made a bunch of phone calls to area hospitals, asking about postpartum billing and discharge policy. Did you know that pregnant women don’t exist anymore? I didn’t either, until I called up 15 hospitals, and only three of them happened to have maternity services. There were, however, plenty of hospitals devoted to rehabilitation or chronic illnesses. *sigh* I mean, Massachusetts has a strong Catholic tradition, so don’t you think they’d tailor their services to the market? I guess not.

Now, back to studying Human Diseases.

Well, now that Harvard President Larry Summers has finally released the transcript of his mildly incriminating comments, we can all point and laugh because apparently, this poor man is so clueless as to believe that his hypothesis on women in sciences would be made purely off the record and would only represent his personal views. Honestly, though. You can only play stupid so many times before your corporation either 1) catches on that you’ve been feigning ignorance to cover up your bad decision-making or 2) realises that you actually are incredibly stupid, and thus undeserving of the leadership role they’ve entrusted you with.

But on a positive note, more people are talking about inequality of opportunity because of this incident. So whether you think Summers was just oblivious to acceptable PR practices, or you believe that he was simply insensitive, we might have to agree that he did manage to do quite a job as a provocator for discussion. Although, for a place so close to the epicenter of this whole affair, I’ve heard surprisingly few opinions from the members of the MIT community. Is it that the whole campus population is numb to social discussion and controversy? Or is it perhaps because Larry Summers is an MIT alum (S.B. Economics 1975) and we don’t know whether to love him or hate him?

Recently, I’ve found myself spending an increasing amount of time at my desk, working on my bottomless pile of homework. So much so, I haven’t even found the time to go shopping. It’s really bothersome and frightening, actually. But just when I thought my posterior had become best friends with the wooden chair below it, and I feel like clawing my eyes out because of case studies, you save me. You save me from myself.

“You’re the only beautiful illusion that I need,” you told me. And suddenly, the sky was blue and my world was filled with light once again.

Listening to:


Give Up – The Postal Service
02 – Such Great Heights

Man, what’s up with this never ending homework set anyway? I asked the Professor how much time he thought we should be spending on these exercises and he just laughed at me. Is that a good sign? Or did he think I was just kidding?

Anyway, everyone’s been ooh-ing and ahh-ing about the Postal Service for some time now, so I thought that they would probably be horrible. But much to my surprise, they have at least a couple songs that don’t make my ears bleed, and I must admit, Such Great Heights is possibly the cutest song I’ve ever heard. I was listening to it this afternoon, and instead of walking to Sloan, I ended up skipping along the Charles instead. Damn those cute songs!

I’m such a loser. My friend cancelled our lunch date, so now I’m at the computer cluster typing up a journal entry. It makes sense to me.

So, I discovered two things these past few days. Firstly, I can’t do math for the life of me. It’s really unfortunate that I’m taking two math classes this term. Secondly, the world is really brimming full of people who think far too highly of themselves. Not two minutes ago, I overheard the girl next to me chatting up her friend, talking about how she met some guy who wasn’t good enough for her… because he was “so FOB and only got a 1350 SAT score.” I mean, what is that? Obviously, standardised test scores are the best judge of romantic compatibility. I just don’t understand my classmates sometimes.