The Games We Play

As a senior in high school, I attended a symphony performance that highlighted a 12 year old concert pianist.  His execution wasn't perfect but his bashful yet determined personality made up for it.  When he stood at the end of the piece to take his bow and receive his applause, I hoped for a long career for this kid.  I leaned over to my friend and sang his praises.  She looked at me and teased.  Why was an eighteen year old so enamored with a twelve year old?  I laughed back.  "Don't you see?  This isn't about me; I think I just found the boy that my sister is going to marry."  She completely lost it then but I simply nodded.  "It's going to happen."

A month later, I went to Bulgaria for a week.  One of the host families I stayed with had a girl a few years younger than I and a boy a few years younger than her.  The family made me feel at home when we spent an entire evening watching family home videos of the son at ballroom dance competitions when he was 10 or 11.  It was endearing.  The boy and I could not speak more than one word of each other's language but we seemed to still have a good rapport.  At one point during the trip, he spoke to me in Bulgarian and told me that I was free to sit down and that his sister was in the kitchen getting a snack to eat.  The sister ran in from the kitchen to translate for me, only to find me already following his directions.  The boy looked at her and laughed.  I looked at her and smiled.  "We understand each other," we both said in our respective languages.  I wondered how I could get this awesome kid in the family.  "This is the boy my sister should marry."

Twelve years later, I have to admit, I still play this game.




Listening to this song on repeat.  This is my latest choice in a future husband for my sister.

Say My Name by Kangnam

A Nation Conceived In Liberty

On Tuesday, on my way back to my lab, after a meeting on grounds, I cut through the cemetery like I usually do.  As I walked through it, I was impressed to find someone had placed a small American flag at the tombstone of a Civil War soldier in honor of Memorial Day.  I looked at the rest of the cemetery, wondering if others had left flags too.  Then, my eye caught sight of the statue in the middle and I remembered that I was in a confederate cemetery.  These men fought and died for a cause and a nation that no longer exists.

I walked out of the cemetery with Abraham Lincoln's words ringing in my ears:  "Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation, so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure."

Could the United States endure the war?  We take it for granted that it did.  But, looking at those soldiers' graves, I can see how it was no guarantee.  There were many who did not want a part of any more.

It was certainly a long bloody struggle to make sure that "that nation...so conceived could long endure".  Men and women died for that cause.  Families wept for their lost loved ones.  Friends were separated and sometimes even fought against each other.

I wonder what the Civil War looked like from the outside.  Did France or England watch with bated breath whether this grand experiment in democracy would survive or self-destruct?  Or did they simply yawn and let those Americans fight among themselves like hotheaded teenagers in some family squabble?

Now we live on a world stage where, for better or worse, the world can daily watch all of our infighting and struggling.  Do we look like we are engaged in a great conflict or something much less noble, less honorable?  What issues are we fighting for?  Are they worth it?

I don't really have any answers.  But somehow I feel it would be a tragedy for a country that has fought this long and hard for a country dedicated to the proposition that men are created equal to fall apart because we can't balance a budget.

Flowers outside the UVa cemetery

Feline Fanboy

Last week, I took care of my friend's cat while she was on her honeymoon.

Meet Levi

Isn't he absolutely adorable?

We passed our evenings in comfortable companionship.  He always remained nearby and sometimes had these funny moments when he just had to be petted and coddled that moment.

This resulted in him walking across my friend's laptop while I was looking through pictures of the Japan National Team training camp.  I tried to save the computer from him but too late!  A little marker came up, alerting me to the fact that he had somehow pressed the button combination necessary to download a picture.

Because it was my friend's computer and a Mac, I wasn't sure how/where to look to find the picture to delete it.  I left it.  My friend returned yesterday and immediately sent me the picture Levi downloaded after I told her about it.

We had a good chuckle over it.

She told me that loved Levi has recently gotten attached to a little soccer ball I brought her back from Germany.  It hangs from her bedroom window and he spends a lot of time batting at it and trying to pull it off the window.

I started laughing.  Of course the soccer ball is none other than one from Schalke 04, the very team that Uchida plays for.

I should have figured; Everyone adores Uchida.

Arts and Crafts

Yesterday, my friend and I burned through six episodes of Dance Academy because it took us three hours to make these:  

TOTORO

My friend's handiwork

Mine

Her roommates were enthralled at our dedication to our domesticity: 

"Look at you two, over there, hand sewing."  

"Ohhh! CUTE! You are making...felt thingies."  

I couldn't get over how cute they turned out, even with all their imperfections.  I went home and excitedly showed my own roommate.  "Look!  Isn't he adorable?"  

She looked at him and then back at my beaming face.  She looked back at him. 

"Umm....I can't quite figure out what it is."  

Sadly, you either know what we made (and love it and want one for yourself) or you don't.  

If you want to know what we made, I highly recommend the movie My Neighbor Totoro by Hayao Miyazaki which captures childhood in all its simplicity and imagination.

If you want to make one for yourself, then you can find the pattern here.  

Sometimes I Worry; Mostly I Don't

I work in a pretty scary lab.  When I give my friends the tour, I always give them two perspectives about it: (1) how we do cool science and (2) how the lab should serve as the set for a horror movie.

Even then, the lab and its vibrant personality doesn't bother me much.  After spending more time with this lab than probably anything or anyone else in the past six years, it's hard for its noises, building-shaking compressors, and quirks to ruffle my feathers.

Today, the other research group started up the compressor and I complained to my office mate.  "What?  They're running the tunnel today?  On a Friday afternoon before Memorial Day weekend?"  The fact that they were turning on an experiment that burns oxygen and hydrogen at supersonic speeds didn't even really cross my mind.

However, about an hour ago, something felt different.  I pulled myself out of the email I was writing and stopped to listen and feel.  The office was shaking while a loud rumbling and high pitched squeal echoed from outside.  In a second, I was on my feet and out the door and down the stairs.

I spent the next few minutes searching for the lab manager to ask him about the new noises and the shaking.  I wasn't worried, I told myself.  I just wanted to make sure.

Not finding him nearby, I went to investigate.  When I went to the back of the lab, I looked over at those pressurized tanks that I see outside my window every day.  They were rumbling in that weird frequency that drove me outside in the first place.  Meanwhile, the large wheel valve in the middle of the system and its chains shook slightly.  I looked at that valve with its rusty hinges and suddenly realized how little I worried about all the possible problems with my lab.  Without wanting them too, the 'what ifs' started rushing in and I fairly ran past the oxygen tanks with their ominous warnings.

I hurried over to the old nuclear fall-out bunker, its roof just peeking out of the ground, and settled onto the top step that led down to its entrance, nestled well into the hill my lab is situated on.  Then I caught the interesting situation I was in, finding an old bunker that was intended as security during the Cold War but which has only been used as testing for experiments with explosions and projectiles and started to laugh at myself.  I looked down at the bushes near the steps and found myself looking staring down at a groundhog, cautiously watching me from the entrance of his own safety bunker.  On those steps, the noises seemed far away.  The air was calm and I felt cut off from my self-propagated anxiety.

There I stood, on the steps of that bunker, feeling a sort of kinship with that groundhog, while I looked at my lab and marveled.  My lab, for all its quirks, demands respect.  I must never forget that.

When another machine started up, one that was almost deafening, I smiled and started walking back towards the entrance to the building.  This machine was one that I was well acquainted with.  On my way out of the back area, I ran into the lab manager who was releasing pressure from one of the machines, pushing down the grass around it in large swells of energy.  The manager saw me and paused what he was doing so that we could hear each other when we spoke.  I asked him about the machines and the strange new noises.  He smiled at me and thanked me for coming to find him.  "Those noises aren't normal but we are well aware of the situation and are shutting everything down."

Just a typical day in the lab.  It's times like this that I realize I chose anything but a typical career.  :)

Night and Day

MH: Attended Fujieda Higashi High School which is famous for, among other things, its soccer program and putting out great soccer players.

Me: Attended the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics, whose name alone probably serves as an explanation of the school's focus. 

MH: Never attended college.  

Me: Never stopped attending college.  

MH: Started his first real career path job at age 18.  

Me: Has yet to land her first real grown up job.  (No shame, honestly.  I don't regret my stints as a custodian, pizza-maker, dry cleaner, pruner or TA in the least) 

Me: A rocket scientist.  

MH: Not a rocket scientist.  

MH: Speaks German, which is a distant cousin to English.

Me: Speaks Chinese, which is a very distant cousin to Japanese.  

MH: Wrote the number one bestselling book in Japan for 2011.  

Me: Dreams of publishing something one day.  (Although I can claim second/third author on a few journal articles) 

MH: Adores his niece.

Me: Adores her niece.  

Even two people who are as different as night and day can find something in common: Nieces rock!

Baby's curious face

Me and my niece - taken by the niece

Signs

Since I'm relegated to walking this summer, my pace of traveling has afforded me the pleasure to stop and pay attention things to which I've only given a cursory glance.

One of those 'things' being signs.  

Some signs remind us of our past

This man was only 16 (15 according to Wikipedia) when he joined the services.  On D-Day he single-handedly charged a German machine gun emplacement.  For this, he was awarded the Medal of Honor which is the highest medal decoration one can receive by the United States government.  Apparently he also won a Soldier's Award by also saving another soldier from drowning.  However, the Medal of Honor would be awarded posthumously because he died six days later in battle.  

How often I have passed this sign and never actually read it.  But now, I'm glad I did.  Here is a man who served his/my country for half of his life and gave his life in defending it.  I am reminded of the sacrifice of many so that I could lead the life I do.  I am also reminded that people can act with great courage and do much of their own volition.  

Some signs have multiple meanings.  

A sign about a bridge in honor of those who build bridges.  But I have a feeling this isn't about civil engineering feats.

Some signs take you by surprise and help you discover hidden things.  

When I read this, I was shocked.  Take-Off and Landing?  What?!  So I poked around between the bushes and found, as I had started to suspect, the landing pad for the helicopter for the hospital.  I wonder how many signs in our lives could help us find hidden things in our lives if we stopped to read them.  

Some signs just make you laugh (even if that is not their intention).  

 I know that this was meant to be a real warning.  But I had to laugh since we live on Earth which of course has a magnetic field in use.  Might as well put up a sign that warns us that gravity is in effect.  Or that diatomic nitrogen and diatomic oxygen are present.

And some signs are not to be put into words.