Work and Workings of a Nerd

I wasn’t planning on writing about this, but I ended up writing it for an oral report for my Chinese class. Characters first, Pinyin second, English last, hilariously disjointed and contrived language all around.

上个周末，我父母(parents)来斯坦福大学看我。因为他们来，我舅父(uncle)和他家也来了。星期六，我们打算在旧金山(San Francisco)玩儿。

我们觉得天气会下雨，所以我们要在房子里面开始。十一点，我们去 Golden Gate Park 的 De Young 博物馆(museum)。现在，博物馆有 Tut 国王的陈列(exhibit)，可是我听说不太好。因为票很贵，我们没有去看 Tut 国王的陈列。我们只看了被子(quilt)和画。

在博物馆，我差不多跟着我表弟(male cousin) Owen 看。他九岁，有活力(energetic)。他妈妈 Berkeley 毕业，可是他真聪明。我表妹(female cousin) Maddy 十三岁，也很开朗。他们都是戏迷，也表演(act)，所以他们唱歌唱得很好。

然后，我们去唐人街(San Francisco Chinatown)看春节游行(Chinese New Year Parade)。五点半游行开始。我们在 Union Square 看很多孩子跳舞，有名人，和漂亮的车，可是我最喜欢的东西是龙。别的人对龙投爆竹(firecrackers)，龙在爆竹上走。

晚上八点，我们去唐人街吃晚饭。来斯坦福大学以来，我不常吃中餐，所以去旧金山的时候，我一定吃中餐。我觉得 Sam Wo 饭馆是最好吃的饭馆之一。这个饭馆在 Washington 路，很小，可是菜不贵。如果你要炒面(fried noodles)，你应该去那儿。如果你知道在唐人街有很好的点心，你应该告诉我因为我正在找。

吃晚饭以后，我父母，姐姐去 Oakland 飞机场，可是我舅父来 Peninsula，所以我跟他回来。十一点我回校园，很高兴我跟我家人过了一天。

问题

1）为什么我们不看 Tut 国王的陈列？

2）为什么我喜欢 Sam Wo 饭馆？

shànggè zhōumò, wǒ fùmǔ (parents) lái sītǎnfú dàxué kàn wǒ. yīnwèi tāmen lái, wǒ jiùfù hé tā jiā yě lái le. xīngqīliù, wǒmen dǎsuàn zài jiùjīnshān (San Francisco) wánr.

wǒmen juéde tiānqì huì xiàyǔ, suǒyǐ wǒmen yào zài fángzi lǐmiàn kāishǐ. shí yīdiǎn, wǒmen qù Golden Gate Park de De Young bówùguǎn (museum). xiànzài, bówùguǎn yǒu Tut guówáng de chénliè (exhibit), kěshì wǒ tīngshuō bútài hǎo. yīnwèi piào hěn guì, wǒmen méiyǒu qù kàn Tut guówáng de chénliè . wǒmen zhǐ kàn le bèizi (quilt) hé huà.

zài bówùguǎn, wǒ chàbuduō gēn zhe wǒ biǎodì (male cousin) Owen kàn. tā jiǔ suì, yǒu huólì (energetic). tā māma Berkeley bìyè, kěshì tā zhēn cōngming. wǒ biǎomèi (female cousin) Maddy shísān suì, yě hěn kāilǎng. tāmen dōu shì xìmí, yě biǎoyǎn (act), suǒyǐ tāmen chànggē chàng de hěn hǎo.

rán hòu, wǒmen qù tángrénjiē (San Francisco Chinatown) kàn chūnjié yóuxíng (Chinese New Year Parade). wúdiǎn bàn yóuxíng kāishǐ. wǒmen zài Union Square kàn hěn duō háizi tiàowǔ, yǒumíngrén, hé piàoliang de chē, kěshì wǒ zuì xǐhuan de dōngxi shì lóng. biéde rén duì Lóng Tóu bàozhú (firecracker), lóng zài bàozhú shàng zǒu.

wǎnshang bā diǎn, wǒmen qù tángrénjiē chī wǎnfàn. lái sītǎnfú dàxué yǐlái, wǒ bù cháng chī zhōngcān, suǒyǐ qù jiùjīnshān de shíhou, wǒ yídìng chī zhōngcān. wǒ juéde Sam Wo fànguǎn shì zuì hǎochī de fànguǎn zhīyī. zhège fànguǎn zài Washington lù, hěn xiǎo, kěshì cài bú guì. rúguǒ nǐ yào chǎomiàn (fried noodles), nǐ yīnggāi qù nàr. rúguǒ nǐ zhīdào zài tángrénjiē yǒu hěn hǎo de diǎnxīn, nǐ yīnggāi gàosu wǒ yīnwèi wǒ zhèngzài zhǎo.

chī wǎnfàn yǐhòu, wǒ fùmǔ, jiějie qù Oakland fēijīchǎng, kěshì wǒ jiùfù lái Peninsula, suǒyǐ wǒ gēn tā huí lái. shí yīdiǎn wǒ huí xiàoyuán, hěn gāoxìng wǒ gēn wǒ jiārén guò le yì tiān.

wèntí

1)    wèishénme wǒmen bù kàn Tut guówáng de chénliè?

2)    wèishénme wǒ xǐhuān Sam Wo fànguǎn?

This past weekend, my parents came to Stanford to visit me. Because they came, my uncle and his family also came to the Bay Area. On Saturday, we met in San Francisco to see what to do.

We were worried that it would rain, so we decided to start indoors. At 11:00AM, we met at the De Young Museum in Golden Gate Park. Right now, they have an exhibit on King Tut, but I heard that it wasn’t very good. Because the tickets were also expensive, we didn’t look at the King Tut museum. We just looked at the quilts and paintings instead.

In the museum, I mostly followed my younger cousin Owen around. He’s 9 years old and has a lot of energy. Even though his mom, my aunt, went to Cal, he’s smart. My other cousin Maddy is 13 years old, and she’s also outgoing. They both act and are musical fans, so they both sing well.

After that, we went to Chinatown for the parade and dinner. The parade started at 5:30, and we stood at Union Square to watch. I saw many dancing elementary school kids, famous people, and nice cars, but my favorite were the dragons. Peopole threw firecrackers at the dragons, and the dragons walked over them.

At 8:00, we went into Chinatown to eat. Since coming to Stanford, I rarely eat Chinese food, so when I go to San Francisco, I have to eat Chinese food. I think Sam Wo Restaurant is one of the best restaurants. It’s on Washington, and it’s small, but it’s cheap. If you want good fried noodles, you should go there. If you know of a good Dim Sum restaurant in Chinatown, please tell me because I have been looking for one.

After that, my sister and parents had to go to Oakland airport, but my uncle was driving back to the Peninsula, so I got a ride with him. I came back to campus at 11:30PM. I was very happy to spend the day with my family.

(Note: if you actually want a tournament report and specifics about what I played, head over to my other blog)

Last weekend, my roommate Tom and I woke up early, hoped in a rickety white van, and drove across the bay to Oakland to participate in Grand Prix: Oakland, one of the competitive, open, official Magic: the Gathering tournaments. Allow me to provide some background on many important topics here.

Magic: the Gathering is a card game where you put together decks of creatures, sorceries, artifacts, and more to play against someone else’s deck in an effort to reduce them from 20 to 0 life. With over 10,000 unique cards and a couple hundred new ones printed each year, Magic is a potentially costly hobby that involves a lot of thought and strategy to be successful at. I myself have been playing on and off since high school and now play mostly with my drawmates in my dorm. Most recently, I had the opportunity to teach a student-initiated course on Magic here (for credit) where we actually applied real academic topics to Magic. Pretty nifty.

So Magic is just a game, but players take it very seriously. There are professional Magic players today, and Wizards of the Coast, the creators of Magic, run many tournaments, from weekly tournaments in stores with as few at 8 people to National and Worlds tournaments with 5 digit payouts. Needless to say, the community has invested a lot in this game, and it’s a big deal. This particular type of tournament, a Grand Prix, is an open event, meaning that you don’t need to win any tournaments to qualify to go, but also qualifies you for more exclusive tournaments. With only 20 a year, both local players and international players will attend, either to move up in ranking or just for chuckles.

Tom and I happen to fall in the latter group. In the wake of teaching the class and the convenience of Oakland, I figured this would be something we should do for the experience and convinced Tom to come along. Neither of us were willing to invest the time or money to play seriously, but we put some thought into the decks and headed out.

The event was held at the Oakland Mariott City Center, and we arrived arrived 8:30. After paying our registration fee, we headed over to the Burger King for their hearty food, then went back to the exhibit hall. On the way in, I noticed and laughed at a sign, “Open to the public.” I don’t imagine that a room full of people battling with cards is a very hospitable setting.

To be honest, I was expecting a lot more spectacle surrounding the event, but other than a few stores who had set up shop as sellers along one wall, there wasn’t much to look at. The room was filled with tables to play Magic games, which is probably where the most exciting things would happen. A stage at the front had a table set up for “feature matches” between well-known players, but other than that, you can imagine what a room of tables looks like.

The players meeting started just after 10, when everyone took a seat to listen to the necessary announcements. Blessed by my last name, I ended up sitting across from Raphael Levy, a French hall of fame Magic player, which I only confirmed by sneaking a look at his deck list. In fact, over the course of the day, I saw several other well-known Magic players, which just goes to show you what news I pay attention to.

I was pretty shocked that someone would come overseas for this tournament. I knew that players traveled for tournaments, but flights are very expensive just to play Magic. Even beyond the pro players, regular people came from far away just to play Magic. The people I ended up playing against came from LA, Utah, and Las Vegas, and I talked to a German man while I wrote up my decklist. Tom and I complained about the $30 in gas and other costs for parking and tolls, but in the end, we didn’t sacrifice much at all to be there.

I’m not sure how many of the 700 people there traveled to come, but they were certainly geared up to play. Instead of being ecstatic and joyous, people were generally pretty quiet and focused on doing well. A few clusters of people were chatting, but it was certainly not a lively party. Once the actual tournaments started, the biggest excitement was running to the places around the room where matchups were paired.

I played 3 rounds of the tournament before deciding to drop out of the main event. As fun as playing is, I figured I should take in more of the general experience of being at a big tournament and took a second look at the sellers and watched some of the other matches.

Although not my usual crowd, being a part of the Magic community kind of made me realize how far into it I’ve gotten. The community is just a small part of the nerd community, and of course it has its own jargon and common ground. Just walking around, I would hear snippets of conversations about how “getting thoughtseized turn 1 allows dark depths to wreck zoo” and such, and it reminded me that even if I wasn’t nearly as serious as many of the other players, I was very familiar with the game.

In psychology the week before, we discussed how expert knowledge can enhance working memory. For example, given a very short presentation of a real chess board, a chess expert can remember the positions of all the pieces, whereas a novice might only remember a few details. At the tournament, I realized I had developed the same knowledge for Magic as well. Looking at a game position for maybe 4 seconds, I could quickly absorb the entire situation: what decks both players were playing, about how far they were into the game, and, given life totals, who was more likely to win at that point.

Tom and I left just before 5 with the intention of not showing up to one of these events again. It was a good experience to actually see how the pro scene works to relate to students if we decide to teach the class again, and I did get to meet Gavin Verhey, a Magic writer who helped us design the class. Since we don’t play competitive, though, we’re not in it for the main event.

So it’s back to playing in the dorm room, also open to the public, though perhaps with slightly fewer cards to be swarmed by. But it’s okay. We make up for it in Tom’s diet soda and N64 Super Smash Bros.

If my cooking blog hasn’t made it apparent, you should know that I really like food. I’m not much into truly fine-dining, and I don’t think I have any in-depth knowledge of particular cuisines or cooking techniques, but thanks to 2 sisters and a mom, I really enjoy being in the kitchen and watching The Food Network.

On truly American holidays, though, one must return to truly American cuisine. This past weekend was the Super Bowl, and I had the privilege of determining the menu to serve ~25 people. Here’s what I came up with:

• 10 2-liters of assorted beverage
• 6 bags of chips
• 1 jar salsa, 1 jar queso
• 6 Pizzas
• 40 Pizza rolls
• 60 Chicken wings
• 2 bags of cookies
• 1 Veggie Platter

When I was initially creating the list, I considered trying to find classier stuff to eat, but I quickly realized that a Super Bowl party with cauliflower quiche and sparkling apple cider simply would be as good as a bag of Doritos and a can of diet soda. When we left the grocery store with our cart-full, I realized that it was difficult to believe that anything we had bought could actually be called food. Anyways, for the most part, it went pretty well, I think, though there are some lessons in this. Let’s take an item-by-item breakdown:

Drinks

This I was particularly worried about. I found 2 answers about portions, which said about 2 2-liters per 5 people. I discovered that 1 2-liter is apparently equal to about 5.6 cans of soda, which was taken into account in buying. The breakdown went 2 bottles of coke, 2 bottles of sprite, 2 bottles of diet coke, 2 bottles of lemonade, 1 bottle of fanta, and 1 bottle of mountain dew. The coke ran out, but we had leftovers of the sprite, diet coke, and lemonade, meaning that we probably roughly had enough to drink.

Chips

6 was definitely low-balling. 2 bags of tortilla chips and 2 jars of dip was definitely the wrong ratio, but moreover, the chips went quick. The ratio I found was I think around 1 bag per 4 people. Instead, I’m going to vote that 1 bag per 3 people is the correct way to go. Besides, that gives more variety.

Pizzas

As far as dinner plans go, people only seemed interested in either a) burritos or b) pizza. Because we didn’t put in our pizza order a week before, it seemed better to not worry about delivery issues and breaking the bank, so we got frozen pizzas instead, which were extra-cheap for the Super Bowl sales. I found a few recommendations for how much to get, but ended up buying a little less since I figured that people would be full of other snacks. In retrospect, I probably should have stayed at the recommendation, being roughly 1 pizza for every 3 people.

The bigger difficulty I had, however, was that our dorm oven isn’t particularly big. It also only has 1 rack. A little overlap on the corner allowed 2 pizzas onto the 1 rack, but that’s still pretty slow. So if you’re not well-equipped, I think delivery pizza might be a better option in any case.

Pizza Rolls and Chicken Wings

I was trying to think of good, somewhat substantive junk food to eat, and that’s what I came up with. Both are very easy to pop in the oven frozen to cook, and they both went fairly quickly. The wings I got were actually of the boneless variety, but were still fine. As far as pizza rolls go, I don’t think you can get much further from real food than pizza bites. Let’s go down the ladder of foods that it evolved from:

• Real food. Real food has a recipe.
• Pizza. This might be an urban legend, but I believe that pizza was originally just something made at the end of the day to use up extra ingredients, which is believable.
• American Pizza. In the land of convenience, we took the art out of it and reduced it to the key ingredients: dough, tomato sauce, cheese, and toppings (mostly meat). A friend once mentioned seeing someone use ketchup instead of tomato sauce. That doesn’t sound tasty.
• Frozen Pizza. It’s too difficult to make real pizza, so we have them package up all the bits, and we just throw it in the oven.
• Chicken tenders. Too difficult to prepare the chicken. Just bread it and deep fry.
• Chicken nuggets. Mix the chicken in with something starchy and bread it, and freeze it. Comes in nice bite-size chunks that can be eaten with fingers.

And so frozen pizza + chicken nuggets = pizza rolls. So probably not real food, but it’s okay: they’re still delicious.

2 bags of cookies

I figured we should have something sweet to balance out all of the salty. These ran out fairly early as well, so I think I would double the amount of sweet to bring along.

1 Veggie Platter

This was my token attempt to ensure that not everything we were eating would shorten our lives. I think it failed, because the ranch dip it came with was pretty good as well.

So that was that. It was educational in terms of figuring out how much people eat and will certainly help with future party-planning. I think the #1 lesson, though, is that in these things, don’t lowball. Real food is expensive. Fortunately, nothing we bought was expensive. I don’t think anyone would’ve complained about an extra bag or two of chips to stash away for a later snack, so here’s the rule I’ll be running with from now on:

Determine how much food to get. Get 25% more than that.

Classic culture constantly updates itself to remain relevant to popular culture. From Pride and Prejudice and Zombies to “PLAY!“, a symphony that plays video game music, all types of entertainment are bridging that gap between classy and cool. One might wonder how to take the analytical, perceptive, cerebral detective Sherlock Holmes and make him successful again in today’s culture. Well, quite simply, take the parts of people that haven’t changed much and play them up. Holmes can use his acuity to setup an attack on a foe as vicious as that in Batman Begins or The Bourne Identity. And I think our love of Superbad and Napoleon Dynamite shows that we love awkwardness and bromances more than ever.

The general plot follows a classic detective setup: Holmes and Dr. John Watson apprehend Lord Blackwood at the beginning of the movie in the midst of a occult ceremony and have him hanged 3 months later. Soon after, however, Blackwood apparently rises from the grave, and Holmes must investigate Blackwood’s resurrection and stop a plan in action. Along the way, he meets Irene Adler, an American thief working for a third-party and odd love interest.

Though the movie is just over 2 hours long, you won’t get bored watching Holmes jump from scene to scene. Like many crime dramas today, the movie runs through a series of scenes played out in live-action, only to have Holmes come by later and put together more parts of the scene from details around the room. The action involves all the fisticuffs and explosions you could want and keep the movie moving through potentially slow points. Although somewhat formulaic, the setup stays fresh through moody scenery and Holmes’s insights.

We, of course, crave deep characters on top of an engaging plot, and the cast delivers. Having once been a House watcher, I’m familiar with the portrayal of Holmes-inspired characters, but Robert Downey Jr. plays the original with perfect strangeness. He fights scrappy, exhibits hilarious antipathy and scorn for others, and ribs and toys with his assistant Watson at every turn. Jude Law, playing Watson, plays the foil against Holmes. For his own development, Watson is engaged and planning to move out, beginning a tug-of-war between his desire to move on with his life and his knowledge that Holmes very much needs him. Mark Strong as Lord Blackwood is suitably sinister, though his character isn’t particularly interesting. Similarly, Rachel McAdams as Irene Adler isn’t prominent enough to make her relationship with Holmes anything more than an amusing side note.

Just like many of the series reboots we’ve seen recently, Sherlock Holmes isn’t quite your classic Sherlock Holmes, but what you remember probably isn’t the best part of it. Maybe the action is rawer, and maybe subtlety gives way to cinematic epicness, but the essential cleverness and methods are all there. It won’t make you think very hard, but I give it the slow head nod for having been a lot of fun.

Welcome to 2010; I hope 2009 didn’t leave a bad taste in your mouth. For some of you, I’m hoping that reading my New Year’s Hopes has become a something of a tradition for you. And as usual, I will pretend that my readership is growing and explain why these are Hopes. They’re basically like New Year’s Resolutions, except called something different. Nowadays, resolutions have picked up a connotation for automatic failure, I think. And I myself am not really resolved to do any of it, though would be happy to see them accomplished.

Before I put down my newest resolutions, let me take a look at how I did on last year’s.

1) Beat Tom at Racquetball once

Success! Though I should probably qualify that. Yes, I did beat Tom at racquetball by getting to 15 points before he did. Other notable facts include:

• Tom, to the best of my knowledge, hadn’t played racquetball for at least 5 months before
• I had
• I was playing with my own racquet
• Tom was playing with a racquet that really requires a glove to use correctly
• I had a glove
• Tom didn’t

Still, I’m much better than when I started and certainly wouldn’t have been able to beat him a few months before. Count it.

2) Pick up my own project for fun

Also success. It wasn’t what I had originally intended, but teaching this Magic class was definitely something that no one else was making me do, and I learned a ton doing it. I naturally learned a lot about Magic, but I also got to find some really cool applications for a lot of topics, put together a syllabus and course and lecture materials, and even host a podcast. And on the side, it was just downright fun holding office hours and working with Tom on it. Huge win.

So that was a major hit this past year, though I had honestly forgotten about both of those Hopes. Keep it up this year with the following?

1) Watch more than 50 movies.

My draw groups talks a lot about movies, and will probably talk even more about movies now that we’re almost out of college football season. Although I’m familiar with a lot of movies and actors, I actually haven’t seen many of them. I am going to guess that there are about 100 movies on this list that I have called “To Do – Movies,” and those are just the ones that I’ve thought to put down. With new movies constantly coming out, the list will keep growing, but I should start catching up.

The easiest way to achieve this, I think, will be to set aside one evening after dinner each week to watch a movie. It’ll take some discipline to keep it up, but I’ll keep at it.

2) Have less stuff than I did last year.

Over the past couple months, I’ve realized that I have a lot of stuff. When it’s all squirreled away and at use, it doesn’t look like much, but when it’s all in your roommate’s brother’s pickup truck, it looks like a lot. And looking around the house and how bare some parts look, I can’t believe how much stuff was filling up that space. When I look around at things, though, it always seems so difficult to get rid of it, even when it’s been sitting in a box on top of my closet for several months completely unmissed.

I’m not sure what my tactic is here, but I think it involves a lot of using things up and passing on items to people who can put them to better use. Not only will it make moving in and out of dorms a lot easier, maybe I’ll learn a lesson about material possessions along the way.

Best of luck with your hopes, and I’ll check back in in another year.

My draw group talks about movies and TV a lot, and whenever we mentioned upcoming movies, Avatar came up. As such, Alex has told me at least 5 times, “This is the movie that James Cameron has wanted to make for 15 years but has been waiting for the technology to get good enough to do it.” Well, I think the technology is pretty good now.

Avatar is set on Pandora, a wild, alien moon where humans have come to mine for unobtainium. They, however, have to deal with the wildlife and the Na’vi, a blue humanoid race who live on top of a large deposit of unobtainium. Jake Sully, an ex-marine, is connected neurologically to a Na’vi body and is sent to join the Na’vi clan and convince them to move.

Visually, the movie is stunning. Going for the full experience, I went for a 3D IMAX showing, and although the 3D effects aren’t perfect, I was still amazed 2 hours in the movie whenever an object appeared to race to 5 feet in front of my face. Almost of all Pandora is computer-generated, yet the plants and animals never seem cartoony. They ensured that certain aspects, from bio-luminesence to breathing vents, maintain the same, extra-terrestrial feel. Add in a soundtrack that is so strange yet almost familiar (and a musical score from James Horner), and you will be immersed in the world.

The detail doesn’t stop with Pandoran life, however, as it also extends into Na’vi culture. It’s time that you all forget your Klingon and Elvish, for Na’vi is the new invented language to listen to. The Na’vi are technologically primitive, so they naturally have involved rituals and mystical beliefs. I’ll let you see what they do for yourselves, but pay attention to the details of the Na’vi because their culture is fully developed.

What I felt wasn’t as well developed are the characters. Although I can sympathize and understand many of them, I was never surprised. My friend Trey described the military as very “G.I. Joe,” which sounds about right. Early on, you see the conflict between the Colonel and lead scientist (Sigourney Weaver, who even proudly a shirt from her alma mater!), and it’s easy to slot each of the characters into their roles. Many of them are one-dimensional, and those who change do so in predictable ways. Even so, individual performances were strong, even through computer-augmentation into Na’vi.

One last thing I would like to mention is that I think that the sci-fi and fantasy elements were dealt with very well in this movie. Oftentimes, sci-fi movies will get in a trap of trying to explain too much about how the technology works or how this phenomena makes sense. Avatar certainly relies on far-out technology to explain how these humans can control Na’vi bodies and how Pandora as a whole works, yet never make that a big deal. Instead, we’re only given the principle for how it all works, and that’s good enough to understand the idea of the movie.

Overall, I would peg Avatar as a “worth it, but not the whole package.” If you’re in it for experiencing Pandora and seeing what 3D can do now, you’ll love it, but know that you’ve probably heard this story before.

I have a bit more to say after you’ve seen it, so there are some minor spoilers here that I just want to throw out there.

I’m happy that James Cameron got to make this movie, but I think he had too much time to make it. By that, I mean that the pieces fit together too well.

In my English class, we talked about how in nonfiction, not everything makes sense. You can’t understand the whole world in one go, and parts of it are just inexplicable, from why the grass is cut to why Joey tripped Jimmy back then. This happens to be something that you might even need to go out of your way to fix in fiction, for in a fictional world, everything can be coherent. I know it goes against Chekhov’s Gun, but fiction sometimes feels fake for not having any loose ends.

And I think that’s one thing that bothered me a lot about Avatar. When Jake goes back to capture and bond with the big bird, I knew that James Cameron was one of those sort of writers, and I was searching my memory to figure out what other detail he had left in there that he was going to bring back. I’m a little embarrassed to say that I didn’t catch it in time, but it absolutely happened with the turning point of the battle, and that made me tremendously sad that he did it.

(As my psych prof would say), “All of this is to say that” I didn’t think the movie was great (though still good) because it was canned. The characters were canned, the plot is a classic, and not even the twists made me think. Oh, and the end of the movie was absolutely predictable (though I’m trying to think if I would’ve been more satisfied with any other ending). So yeah, looks good, not a so great as a story.

I think it’s time that I play around with themes, so there might be some changes around here if I continue to think it’s interesting to tweak. I am, of course, not talented enough to come up with my own theme, but I might tweak the one that I found.

On the car ride back from the airport, my mom asked me which room I wanted. I instinctively wanted my room, but I waited for an explanation instead.

“The bed is now in Nicole’s room, and there’s just an air mattress in your room,” she explained, eyes fixed on I-10 and the rain.

“Well, is most of my stuff still in my room?” The bed sort of matters, but I would like to be with my collection of old video games, Dilbert comics, Star Wars books, and other junk that define who I am or, at least, who I was.

“Not really. Most of it is hidden now.” I can understand that. Nothing says classy to prospective house buyers like Star Wars action figures. “Your dresser is in Nicole’s room now, so that will probably be the most convenient.”

I was surprised by the layout of the room when I got here. I shouldn’t have been since I helped to move all of Nicole’s old furniture out when I was here in September. As my mom said, my dresser is now in here, stuffed with my high school t-shirts and other personal effects. The bed and the computer desk I’m using right now are also from my room. I am positive, though, that the throw pillows and lamp were not mine.

The setup is certainly nice. It’s somewhat misleading to say that it’s Nicole room since she hasn’t lived here in about 4 years for more than a couple weeks at a time. I can’t really figure out when it stopped being her room, though, so maybe it still is.

Looking at it now, you would never know that she lived here. As I mentioned, the furniture is all different. Her and my dad’s handiwork in painting the room is covered by a tan-beigeish color that covers most of the rest of the house as well. Even the carpet stain from a painting mishap that I thought would mark this place forever is gone; we replaced the carpeting with hardwood years ago.

The rest of the house has changed just as much. I can still count steps from the top of the stairs to doorways in the dark, but turn on the lights, and I might as well be a stranger. The new fridge is nice, but the new handles on the kitchen drawers feel strange.

It’s the disappearances, not the additions, that surprise me the most. Not only have we removed a ton of junk, we’ve squirreled away most of what makes the house livable. Last night, I was half-way through flossing my teeth when I remembered that I hadn’t seen a trash can anywhere in my room. With the end of the floss still tied around my left index finger, I stumbled into my old room and found the “X-Men” trash can hiding in the corner, without a plastic bag. I took the trash can, then went downstairs to find a bag to line it with.

I knew the leftover “Kroger” plastic grocery bags would be under the sink: where else would anyone ever keep leftover bags? I made it to the kitchen without knocking over any displays and flicked on the lights. Going around the counter, I grabbed the new handle to the cabinet under the sink and didn’t see the mass of plastic bags on the inner left of the cabinet. I knew they were still around. The trash can under the sink had a plastic bag. A search through the washing room cabinets revealed nothing, and I went back and put the floss in the trash can, bagless.

The house feels like something out of a movie. Have you ever really thought about how the house in “Family Guy” is designed? The layout is so simple, but where is the closet with the vacuum cleaner? And how about washrooms on the Enterprise? Captain Kirk probably has to take a washroom break sometime, and if he seriously had to wait for the turbolift to get him to a different deck for him to go, he might just miss a chance to talk a computer to death from the bridge.

Anyways, this is how the house is. My mom told me to not spread my stuff out in case someone comes by to look at the house. That probably means I’ll be living out of my suitcase, which is fine. The house will stay like this until it sells, which also means that I’ll be coming back to Houston for breaks until further notice. Sorry for crying wolf with my blog post about moving, but consider this my lame duck period. Or maybe it’s more like a death bed.

I wasn’t completely lying about it, though: it’s pretty clear that we’ve already moved out of this house.

A few months ago, I saw an article in the Times about a Disney museum. I read it only out of interest in Disney stuff, but when I saw that the museum was in San Francisco, I knew I had to go. Over Thanksgiving break, I made my way into the city and got to spend a few hours looking around.

The museum is located in the Presidio, one of the few urban national parks around, according to a sign I saw there. It covers the northwest part of San Francisco just below the Golden Gate Bridge and has large fields and neatly laid out buildings. We arrived at a relatively small, but well-labeled building just before noon. Although most of the Presidio was quiet, many people buzzed around and in and about this one.

The Walt Disney Company has been making dreams for kids for decades, and the museum tries to capture the process that led to its cartoons, movies, TV shows, theme parks, and more. Instead of focusing on the company, however, it focused on the man Walt Disney. As I mentioned, the building wasn’t huge, but the designers used all of the space effectively. The exhibits span 9 rooms, starting with Disney’s family and childhood and ending with his death in 1966. Much of Disney’s work since then, including the movies of my childhood, weren’t addressed, but we did get to see more into Disney’s personal interests, such as the vision of the Epcot center and Disney TV shows.

The museum goes through all of these topics in a completely controlled manner. My sister once took a college course where they talked about how museum’s present items to generate a certain response from patrons, and I got the sense that everything in this museum was carefully displayed. Traditional museums can get away with less cohesion: a natural science museum might put dinosaurs and the room next to the Amazon, and an archaeological museum is somewhat constrained by what a particular collection might contain. Those sorts of museums allow patrons to jump around, but in this one, each room leads directly into the next, forcing you to view exhibits in a particular order. I was struck by how well everything fit together and how they built a picture of Disney’s life and who he was.

Given that the building is small, that they packed a lot of content, and that everything is sequential, some areas in the museum felt more crowded than they should have been. Especially towards the beginning when everyone still wants to read all of the panels, I had to squeeze myself into awkward angles to read how Disney drew for his high school paper or how he served in WW1. To avoid crowding, the tickets are marked for timed entry, though they weren’t enforcing it when we came in.

The reading did make me think that the museum wasn’t necessarily designed for children. I thought for a second that it might have been meant for people my age who had grown up with Disney productions and were now old enough to appreciate how it happened, but kids have been growing up with Disney forever. I would put myself at the lower end of patience to read this, so the museum is meant for adults. 7 year old Kevin would never have put up with all of the reading, though he might have liked all of the TVs everywhere.

In fact, the integration of technology was one of the most impressive parts of the museum. TVs were everywhere. Some were just monitors playing clips of movies interspersed with commentary, but many were more cleverly added, such as embedded inside a frame on a wall of other pictures. The museum was mostly looking, not touching, but there were just enough activities to liven slow sections. For example, patrons got a chance to watch footage from “Steamboat Willie” and play instruments to synchronize the sound with the cartoon (also known as “Disney Rock Band”). Many other touchscreens and projections were spread across, but none were too time-consuming to develop lines or keep you from moving along.

Although I would have liked to see more detail on how the animation and filming process happened, I was too engrossed with all of the imagination I saw laid out before me. We finished in just about 3 hours, which should be fairly consistent across all visitors given how the museum is designed. The museum is likely a one-time deal, but anyone with any interest or familiarity with anything Disney should find it an eye-opening and fascinating experience.