Songs without Words

I stuck my foot so deep into my mouth that I burned my big toe on stomach acid. FML.

Picture unrelated

So I’m happily studying viruses in the library when all of a sudden these loud, resonating “squick schlick” sounds start emanating from across the room.  Yes, that was meant to be as disgusting as those onomatopoeias suggest.  So I think it’s someone getting too into a piece of gum or some bubble tea, but I stand up to see a couple busily making out just below the giant concrete atrium.  And for twenty grating minutes, they proceed to French kiss as if they wanted to asphyxiate each other.  The least they could do is just deal with their pent-up sexual tension by just copulating and getting it over with, but they just kiss and kiss and kiss.  SQUICK SCHLURP SQUEEEET.  And then they finally stop so that the guy can blow his nose like a vuvuzela several times.  I guess her massive slobber finally used its slimy flagella to reach his nose, causing allergic rhinitis.  Good grief.  Get a room!

Yes, the original creator of some work or technology should be protected from other people trying to profit from non-collaborative, unapproved use of that creator’s work. But that being said, I think that the extremes of so-called “intellectual property” in the modern Western society are bizarre and inappropriate.

Unlike my frying pan, which I rightfully own through the trade of money and which represents a tool and not some link to society or the greater human consciousness, my ideas – my songs, drawings, whatever – are not simply purchased through my earnings in work or service. I would not be much of a composer had I not studied Bach and Brahms and Schoenberg. I would not be much of a cartoonist without being exposed to the work of Kiyohiku Azuma or Rumiko Takahashi.

It is arrogant to think that ideas, which stem from the amalgamation and then fusion and recombination of thought and inspiration from past and present, are so easily demarcated and tangible that they may be analogous to a frying pan. This is as absurd as the idea that a human can “own” a cat. Ideas and living things – and they are largely the same thing – owe their existence to a phenomenal amount of sources. In an ideal situation, they belong to everybody.

It is because there are thieves in this world who seek to counterfeit, people who did not contribute to the idea at all, that we have to have laws about copyright and patents. That is all well and good – I certainly would not want someone selling my music under his or her name for his or her profit. But nothing should be so absolute so as to hamper the progression of knowledge and its applications to human benefit, especially with regards to technology that were not all that innovative in the first place.

As an example of this grotesque culture of greed, in which people who have no intellect to think that there might exist a metaphysical significance to objects attempt to levy ownership over what was never theirs in the first place, I’ll give the example of the Bristol-Myers Squibb taxol fiasco. BMS opposed strongly the entrance of generics into the taxol market. Broadly speaking, taxol was discovered by the US government and belongs to the US people. BMS attempt to patent taxol as delivered with castor oil as an injection. Then, it sued a Canadian generic company (after the 5 year exclusivity period) with a patent it never had and never will have.

All of this for a compound that was never created from human intellect. It is absurd to think of paying the yew trees for it, but if that’s so, then it’s even more absurd to pay humans for the idea (paying for the object is of course reasonable, as it costs money to extract and/or to produce). If anyone owns a patent on taxol, it’s God or Gaia or Mother Earth.

Claiming that taxol is your “intellectual property” is tantamount to the Europeans landing in America and claiming that all the land belonged to them.

Art is the same way, and I intended a long time ago to write about derivative works (fanart, doujinshi, etc.) but I never got around to finishing that entry. An art is generally speaking passed down, directly or indirectly, from some master to some apprentice. There is no artist that I know of who can create works without (a) having things around to look at, (b) training through class or self-teaching, or usually both. Both of these are acts of absorbing outside influence.

Human creation comes from two stages: first, the acquisition of source data, then second, inspiration and transformation of those sources into a final product. No creation and no genius exists without precedent. Here are two cases to underline my point:

1. Takashi Murakami of “superflat” fame created the petal-y design for Louis Vuitton (which I happen to like a lot), but he is hardly the first to use four-petal motifs in art design. Louis Vuitton is foolish to sue artist Nadia Plesner over her not-for-profit fundraising t-shirt logo, which neither promotes counterfeiting (no moreso than Evangelion’s famous “Eila” in place of “Fila”) nor is any more alike to the LV design than Takashi Murakami’s own art draws on Doraemon and Ghibli.

2. Bach was astounding, but he had Palestrina before him, and polyphony dates back centuries farther, back in the days when all harmony was chant in parallel fifths. That Mendelssohn could freely quote Handel and that “a theme by Paganini” became a virtuoso piece for piano, of all ironies – that is a testament to the importance of what amounts to “fanfiction” in the musical world. These days, it is the absurd vogue that you can quote dead people’s music but not live ones’. Quoting anyone straight up is just unintelligent, no matter how you look at it. But the worst is when people claim sole copyright on works that include quotes. The notes belong to no one, and a computer given sufficient time could permute notes to produce the melodies of all songs every written with the twelve Western tones and certainly not own all exclusive rights to their use. Heck, I could do that, too, and technically copyright all non-previously-used melodies. And lawsuits based on copying chord progressions – well, I’m not even going to go there.
All in all, I think that the whole concept of IP and copyright as it stands is outdated and needs to be re-examined. They belong to an era of obsessive possession that runs contrary to the modern themes of inclusivity, cultural awareness, and the trading of ideas. Sites such as Wikipedia have taken an important step by championing the person who contributes work without needing to bask in the glory of one-man/-woman heroism.

The 21st century is about global civilization and the power of multidisciplinary collaboration. It is about time to change our conception of the very nature of ideas to catch up to the post-Imperialist, post-world dominance, post-megacorporation society.

The whole medical school application process has taken a big toll on me this past year; of all things I’ve ever attempted in this life, this has probably been the most stressful.  But ironically, it wasn’t stressful because it was intrinsically hard – because, to the tell the truth, it isn’t (yes, you have to write essays, and yes, you have to travel, but neither amounts to an unbearable amount of work) – no … the medical school process has been so difficult for me because I’ve felt so alone all this time.

I’m not the kind of person that goes down the ordinary path.  I’m not the trailblazer who insists on always taking the path less taken.  I’m the person who doesn’t see the footprints on the road – the person who is blind and walks down the path I can hear calling to me, regardless of whether it is the highway or a dirt path into the thick of the woods.

All my life, I have promised that which I thought would be most valuable to those investing their time and emotion in me, as friends or beyond: I will deliver that which I promise.  I will take a long time to make a decision, but once I make a decision, I won’t change my mind.  Those are pretty big promises, but when it really counted, I think I accomplished what I said I would.

People see me doing my thing, and they instinctively just freak out.  I somehow defy their rules and regulations, their expected motivations.  I was hoping that after proving myself a few times, that they would perhaps stop doubting me and learn to trust in my instinct.  I do things on a whim, I do things on my own schedule.  But I do them.

So many people began worrying about colleges in middle school – I didn’t give a hoot until 11th grade.  I said to people: I don’t do things for the sake of getting into college; when I apply, I want the colleges to see me and want to take me for who I am.  And a year later, I came to MIT, the school I liked best, and the school that wanted me for who I was.  I am an Asian male; I am to MIT as AB+ blood is to donor pools; I had to prove myself, and I did.

My early compositions were written off as “too slow” and “étude-like.”  And then my MIDIs were – and still are – described as mildly interesting, but overall disorganized and aimless.  Those were painful comments to get, but I just kept writing the music, stashing most of it away in secret due to an inferiority complex to the only composers that people actually respected or cared about – Beethoven, Brahms, and the like.  Many satisfied theory and composition teachers – and an award – later, I don’t think my music could possibly be all that bad.

The MCAT rolled around a few years ago, and of course people wondered why I was coding a chatbot instead of studying.  After reporting my first practice test’s score to a doctor when he asked, he said I needed to improve.  Keep in mind that it was my first practice test, and that always take the first one without studying at all, just to gauge what I intrinsically know.  With the help of said chatbot, I improved by eleven points, and I think I ended up with a respectable score.

So here we are – the present day.  Yet another round of applications.  I believe just one thing – if you try hard enough, you can make anything happen.  You can achieve anything you set out to achieve.

It’s pretty simple, isn’t it?  That’s what they teach you in kindergarten, and certainly truth does not change over time.  It’s still true.

But by golly, no one believes it!  No one believes me when I say it.  No matter how many times I prove myself – over and over and over again – people leap to criticize my unconventional ways.  People question my priorities.  They wonder if I care about my future.

Strangers, friends, and family alike – adding a pressure ten times the amount any medical school ever did – just by doubting me.  They would criticize the degrees I wanted, chastize me about turning in forms “late” (i.e. near the deadline), question my choice of schools.

There was one person who believed in me all along – degrees, timing, school choice, the whole nine yards – who told me to listen to myself and only myself, and just keep doing what I was doing.  And thank goodness, that was my premedical advisor.  I like to think that belief and support was because he saw in me something other people couldn’t – the raw, unabashed idealism, yes – but that second element: the power to make it happen.

I am not a perfect person, and I am not omnipotent – I don’t pretend to be.  I am also not naïve or stupid.

I have goals; I have beliefs; I have a vision and the passion for that vision.

Before forcing me into your conception of how things are supposed to be, what pre-meds are supposed to do, what people should recognize as their “limits” – first consider what grounds you have for doubting me.  Consider how previous parts of my life do or do not fit into your model of the world or the philosophy that you preach.  Only then, only then, tell me that you doubt me.  Only then, break my spirit and hold me back and weigh me down to teach me a lesson.

Because I am a migrating bird who knows his destination, and I’ve got the wings if only you would believe that I do.

Yes, every little move I make or thing I say is being reported.  My life is on exhibition.  My motives are on trial.  I do not belong to myself.

What part of “don’t talk about alcohol around me” don’t people understand?  It’s so freaking simple.  I guess the problem is that you can’t tell people to not do that.  People seem to talk incessantly about it – in lab, out in public, online, etc.  I guess they don’t notice that I turn rather quiet and deadpan whenever this happens.

Drink whatever you want, you can do it next door or in the hallway, too, whatever, right next to me!  But don’t freaking talk about it.  It pisses me off and I don’t want to hear it.  Even when I drink, why would I talk about it?  Do I tell you that I drank a cup of water and a red bean bubble tea?  No .. .  So why do you all want to talk about your “drinks” so much?  Does it make you feel cool?  Sound chill and down with it?  I guess some people might think they’re “confessing” to me, but I’m not a priest and I don’t care to hear it.  My parents drink sometimes, but they don’t talk about it and it’s fine – they drink at the table, I don’t.  My preference isn’t inherited; it’s my own.

Yes, I know this is a part of the young generation’s fashion, like the internet and cell phones – given the disparity between the 81% of high school students who drink, vs. only 64% of adults who do so [Gallup poll].  Of course, not to rain anyone’s parade, but only 42% of MIT students actually drink once or more times a week, so I’d hardly call that the “norm” [news office].  I’m clearly, then, not even in a minority.

It is not a sin to drink, but I cannot perceive of a person as being innocent or pure-hearted if he or she does.  That is because alcohol is an entity to me, a collective being, and one either associates with it or one doesn’t.  And that being, I blame and dislike.  People flock to it as if it symbolized fun and relaxation; ads have made it essential for any football enthusiast and girl in a sleek dress and a young couple at a romantic, high-class date and of course the aspiring young businessperson.  And if you think that way, fine!

But don’t talk to me about it.  That idle chatter can put me in a bad mood for hours or days, and honestly I have no control over that response.  If you want to talk about it, just do it away from me, or just don’t talk to me if you know you can’t help but talk about it.  I’m tired of putting up with this shit and living in the shadow of that vile pestilence.

I’m sure some people would reply: no, you’re just paranoid, because you’ve just never tried it.  Sheesh, believe me, with my overactive mind and through-the-roof stress levels, you think I’ve never desired a salve to loosen myself up and drown away my memories and troubles?  I’ve wanted it badly, very badly.  Badly enough that I don’t think I would even trust myself to use it in moderation.  I’ve probably also inhaled more ethanol than most of you all, given how much I use in lab and to cook as well.  Even in the absence of trying it, I think that I know how it feels.  I certainly would not describe that aura as a negative feeling.  It is undoubtedly happiness and aloof mirth.  But I have to conquer myself and this wretched life on my own, or I will never be able to earn the respect of the angels and go to heaven when I die.

Woke up lousily after not sleeping much; slow computers set me back awhile too.  Everything seemed to be just going so slowly, and I ended up fuming out of control because it was as though the world moved slowly just to grate on my nerves.

Got a new task, to work on delegating new lounge space for BE and BMES.  Prepared for experiment, but shipment never arrived so I couldn’t do anything.  Spent afternoon compiling info on med schools and made most decisions as to where and which programs to apply to.  Got  an e-mail saying BMES was in debt (= accounts will be frozen), even though we haven’t touched our bank account for months now.  I’m also missing some paychecks.
Came back, room smells weird, clothes still not folded.  Have to head out soon to help cook.  Just wanna get back over here and sleep and clean and edit my essays.  I desperately want to edit the paper, too, but I guess that’ll wait … til I get another e-mail snapping at my untimeliness.

Oh, Bruckner 6, thank God I got you onto my iPod.

There were lots of things I wanted to write about but I just … didn’t … ahaha! It’s like that sometimes, isn’t it? Today was the first time in a long while that I worked 9 hours. Hmm, it’s not really that much, but considering how I am so used to the thought of getting work done outside of lab, it’s a lot. Dinner will always take around 2 1/2 hours now taking cooking, eating, talking, and washing into account; however, I feel like it’s going to be a really enriching experience, and it’s definitely good for the soul to enjoy dinner at an actual dinnertable. I think I’m left with something like 3 hours in the evening to myself, plus whatever down time there is during lab. Today, I actually had very minimal downtime, and that which I did have, I spent trying to learn how to make GUIs in MATLAB. Hmm, it’s easy to make something visually appealing, but it’s not intuitive how to me how they want me to assign the functions …

Tomorrow, I hope to switch my volunteering time out from Tuesday so that I can finally enjoy a normal, uninterrupted work schedule. I’m trying to adjust to summer, but it seems harder than before to do so. I finally sent out my first e-mail as MIT’s blood drive volunteer coordinator. It’s .. not exactly a taxing position, but it’s important to be timely and organized. I am planning on adding an extra task to my job, which is to keep track of how many hours everyone is volunteering. I always wanted to know, but no one kept track at all, which made me sad.

A very generous labmate is willing to give me one of her many comforters ~ I was telling her this morning how I somehow get so cold at night because my blankets are so thin, and it’s keeping me from waking up since I just keep huddling in. I’ll probably be doing my laundry tonight, anyway, so it’ll be no problem to throw a comforter in for the ride as well.

I straightened out my desktop yesterday, so now it boots more quickly and has more programs working on it.  I just have to somehow transfer my listening music there so that I don’t have to listen to the same songs over and over again :).

Mm, I was thinking, and this is sort of back to the first topic again (ahaha, this post isn’t very organized, is it?  Well …), sometimes I feel a little sad at the lack of tutorial help I get from teachers/peers/TAs.  Hmm, maybe I just don’t ask that often?  Nevertheless … .  I really appreciate great manuals, but honestly most manuals suck.  MATLAB’s help included.  It’d be nice to actually have someone teach MATLAB (and no, 10.10 and 20.320’s weak attempts at doing this don’t count – actually, by oversimplifying things, they did a lot of damage).
You see, the fastest way for me to learn how to make GUIs is not to stare at their metric to U.S. units / density converter code which is just sitting there with incomprehensible comments.  There are exactly 2 things I need to know: (1) what is the proper syntax for referring to variables and storing them (including which property in the endless list of properties is actually its “name” rather than its display name), and (2) how I make the output of one action/object affect other items on the screen.  I feel like whenever I ask people (teachers, friends) for things like this, they either cite an elementary example or direct me to a help page or something.  I suppose that’s why I’m reluctant to ask in the first place.

Is it that hard to make a *general* statement?  If I were to explain the particular for loop in matlab to someone (assuming they know what a for loop is), I’d say  “for (your counting variable)=minimum value:maximum value (jumping by 1’s, or min:max:num to jump by num) [next line] whatever you want to do, which may utilize your counting variable [last line] end.”  That way, you can always construct a new for loop and not lose track of what everything means, and you don’t end up making every for loop iterate over i or go from 1 through 10.

And also, when I was taught the plot function, I was told to do plot(x,y,’b-‘,x2,y2,’c-‘).  No one ever told me you could edit a plot in the figure window.  No one ever told me that plot has THOUSANDS of alterable options.  So for years I was doing the stupid plots that you can barely see and that can only have 8 lines ’cause there are “only 8 colors.”  After chucking all that BS into the trash, I’ve relearned how to plot and I can cycle through visually appealing colors using simple colormaps and the ‘Color’ property.  Who the heck wants to look at cyan, yellow, or magenta lines on white background?!  I sure don’t, and I cringe every time I see a graph that has those invisible lines on them.
One entry in my memory is one entry.  plot(x,y,’b-‘) and plot(vector1, vector2 (equal length to vector 1),’Color’,[R G B (0 to 1)],’MarkerType’,’name’, etc. etc.) take essentially the same time to learn (actually, the ‘b.-‘ business was confusing as HECK for me because they use the same symbols for markers and line type, so I got the orders mixed up).  I’m not living in some RPG, where I have to use a paper towel roll, then a stick, then a pipe, then a bokken, then a sword.  I’d rather start with a small sword, then go to a larger one, then a larger one still.  That is, I need to perceive the essence first, then the details are filled in.  If I’m not going to use paper towel roll techniques when I become more experienced, I have no interest in wasting my memory learning about them.

KNOWING that I can put in ANY property into the plot function is *most important* to me.  Knowing that ‘Color’ is one of them is secondary – I can look those up in help at any time, but if I’m ignorant that the properties exist in the first place, why would I even look in help for them?

One of the greatest pains for me in learning anything is the fact that so many teaching approaches want you to start within the first floor.  Then you go to the second.  Then the third.

What I want to do is start outside, see the whole building, go to the front door, learn which floors have the same layout, know where all the bathrooms are, and then start going floor-to-floor.  Doesn’t that make sense?  I’ve wasted three years learning in MATLAB what should have taken only a month.  Why?  Because they told me to open the program and start typing math equations, line by line.

This is what I *wish* they had said.

“MATLAB, which stands for matrix laboratory because of its strength at handling very large matrices (in any number of dimensions), is a program consisting of many built-in mathematical and analytical functions such as curve-fitting, image analysis, statistics, etc.  To take advantage of these capabilities, the user has the option of using command line interface, programming scripts and functions, viewing and tweaking graphs and figures, and using GUIs.  All of the latter can be created through a simple text editor.  There are three main types of files, .m files (MATLAB programming language text files), .fig files (figures, graphics, and GUI layouts), and .mat files (matrices).  MATLAB can be used in conjunction with external devices with which it exchanges data, such as robotics or atomic force microscopes.”

I’m sure some of you could write better, but you know what, I would’ve been happy with that.  More than happy.  I would have LIKED MATLAB instead of avoiding it like the plague.  What I got instead was basically: “MATLAB is a program that lets you approximate the integrals of ODEs to compute how much chemical comes out of a reaction over time.  You can also plot things kind of like how you plot them on a graphing calculator.  Oh, and you can do 2-D matrix algebra, too.”

I should not have been shocked to see 3-D and 4-D matrices.  I should not have been shocked to learn that MATLAB could be applicable to biology.  I should not have been shocked to learn that strings can be part of a matrix.

But I was.

Good teaching is putting together everything conceptually so that you can present a finished painting to a student and not just a corner of a pencil sketch.

Me: {bending down and picking up Saran wrap strewn over the floor, plus champagne bottles / thumb tacks / computer paper} Sorry, I’m just trying to clear a path to my room.

Neighbor: Oh, don’t worry about it. The only people I pity right now are the janitors.

* * *

This mess is INCREDIBLE. And by that I mean if you had told me about it before, I would have called you liar liar pants on fire. I came by earlier and asked if I could move my stuff into the lounge while people moved out, and the reply I got was, “If you put it in the lounge, the janitors will throw it out.”

Uhh … so you guys (actually, girls) left apples rolling on the floor and ironing boards and peeling shoes and printers and textbooks and Mickey Mouse dolls all over … the floor and the tables?

As my neighbor aptly put it, keep up this mentality and the janitors are apt to pull out rifles on us.

I’m not a terribly clean person, and I just took out some paper towels and soap and wiped down the sinks to get rid of the stains and crumbs. I haven’t moved the plate, silverware, and cup that are sitting there, gathering dust … yet.

The fuck? Ever heard of leaving a place the way you found it?

I just spent twenty minutes on formatting the previous post because WordPress doesn’t know how to LEAVE MY HTML ALONE.  Look, stop randomly adding tags or changing mine!  I know HTML!

I didn’t have a good sleep because it got too cold and I was worrying about something someone said to me before going to bed, so just COOPERATE for once and format my posts according to the html I supply!  Is it that hard??