Retrospective

It feels like every time I post here it's about looking back at old posts and reminiscing. I would have made this entry in my livejournal (I still have one!) except it wasn't letting me log in to the point where it temporarily banned my IP.

So there's that.

But one of the blogs (! lol) that I had talked about how maybe I'll return to happiness when I'm older... in my twenties haha. It should be noted that this particular entry came from 2004, before I graduated from high school.

It was slightly painful to read how I wrote. I thought it was so cool and edgy back then. Hah.

Good thing things on the Internet never die, amirite?

I will probably regret typing that sentence in another five to ten years.

But as I sit here in my high school bedroom, I do have to wonder. Am I mis-remembering wrong? Was I happy? Back then in high school. I wrote about yearning to return to being happy and carefree prior to when I went to Japan. About how maybe, melancholy was inextricably linked to responsible, and growing up meant that you could no longer be carefree and happy because you had to be ~responsible~ instead.

Was I happy and carefree back then? I guess "carefree" is one way to classify the style of writing I used to have.

The posts made me remember how much fun I had with my online friends in our guilds and chatrooms. The days we spent collaboratively writing stories together, playing games together, chatting and connecting on a human level together. But teenage me also wondered if part of life was moving on from things you used to find fun and enjoyable, but had simply lost interest in. Though perhaps I think, some part losing interest, but more part finding other things to be interested in.

I don't really keep in contact with many people from my online high school days, sadly. Ramsey. Eon I follow on facebook. Same with Dylan. Still talk to Keith. Haven't talked to his brother. But digi, PN, France, Fantasy - haven't heard from them (or if I'm being honest, remembered much about them until I re-read those posts and saw the amazing layout my friend had made me).

I tend to post more thought piece writings on my private journal space.

But it's funny.

Sitting here during shelter in place (day 49?) kind of makes you thoughtful. Being here in high school room makes me remember more things. Opening up and turning on my personal laptop for the first time in at least two or maybe three years... there are a lot of memories to unpack. Pictures and screenshots that were casually left on the desktop. Old conversations from the last time iMessage was open, texts from people I no longer talk to.

I have been so incredibly fortunate during this pandemic. I am able to afford rent, even if I'm not really living in my apartment. I have a job still. I have a job still! It pays well, even if I did get a 4.something% decrease in order to help my company avoid furloughing more workers. I am quarantined with family, so I am not 100% alone. My family's house has a washing machine and more than one bathroom. It also has a desk! And I have a work station set up. And there is food I don't have to worry about buying because my mother wants to do all the shopping.

But I am uncertain about the future of my job. Originally, my intentions were to work in this position for a yearish, then go back to doing program management. With the current job market though, that has changed. That is, assuming that I can find enough work to justify my position staying on. It's hard when so much of what I was hired to do (keep track of deals and budgets) will have its workload so drastically cut.

It feels like I'm walking around in a bit of a fog. Which, if I were myself speaking to a friend, I would say is perfectly acceptable given the time that we're in and the stress of living back at home.

Normally, my patience for staying at home caps at a max of like, a week and a half, maybe two weeks.

But with this situation?

I don't know. And it's scary. I know that this is better so long as I have to shelter in place and WFH. My current apartment is, quite simply, terrible for that. Plus there's no washer/dryer.

I was planning on moving anyways, even before this whole pandemic. I had looked for houses. Almost said yes to a place with some people. But I didn't want to move before my Paris trip. Which oh man. Feels like last year even though it was a month and a half ago.

I mean, I guess I'll just have to see what life throws at me and where life leads.

One of the quotes from my old blogs I liked a lot. And something to keep in mind these days.

"The most wasted day is that in which we do not smile."

Truly, there is a lot to be grateful for.

It feels wonderful to write again this much. I've missed it.

But does it spark joy?

I never thought I would be out of practice for writing. Or struggle to figure out what exactly to write about.

I was looking through my older entries - they're kind of all over the place. A lot of them have to do with traveling and just kind of any ol' randomass thought I happen to have. Some of them talk about a thing in a place. Some of them talk about just a place. Some of them talk about just a thing. But here I find myself struggling.

To be sure, there are some really cool things in the Peninsula and greater Bay Area that I've been trying to explore little by little, or some things that I've stumbled on. Like the fancy Taco Bell in Pacifica that opens onto the beach. A Taco Bell. On the beach.

Can you say heaven?

It's definitely something that sparks joy. Like many many people, my roommate was watching Marie Kondo's tidying up Netflix show (which was so incredibly wholesome and just overall feel good so long as you're not like... reading it as a personal attack on how much crap you have aha) and I... I can't tear myself away from the tv if something remotely interesting is on. So I ended up watching it too.

It was an interesting idea, that of "sparking joy" and the original Japanese phrase it came from. But as I was searching for something to write about, and then started to think about things in the bay area that I've found that bring about this small sort of joy, well, I think it's pretty easy to tell at what point I actually found something to write about.

Other things that have sparked joy recently in my life:

1. Finding the Georgian Street Food truck on Independence near the InNOut/McDonald's/behind Costco. Oh man. The food. So good. Meat skewer. Cooked over an open grill. Georgian soup dumpling. I had it cold so I imagine it was probably a lot better... but it was still really tasty. Definitely going back there. I have a date with a bread filled with cheese and an egg.

1.5 Eating a brisket sandwich on the beach. The brisket was delicious. The bbq ssauce was delicious. The sandwich bread was garlic bread which, if it were real garlic bread, I would only give like, a 4/10 but because it was my sandwich bread I give a 9/10. Even more excitingly, I only ate half the sandwich and was full.

2. Stumbling upon the S.S. Palo Alto. I picked a beach at random to eat on, and by random, I mean the closest beach. That beach ended up being Seacliff State Beach, and I think there was free parking on the street and you could walk down to the beach using nifty stairs. The toll booth was closed when I drove through. But then randomly, on the beach, at the end of the pier, I was like, "wait is that... a ship?" "Are those... treads?" "No wait that part is definitely bark but I'm pretty sure those are treads" "...that is a ship right and not just a rock. Is that also a rock?" I didn't think to check google until after I left, and then when I was trying to find of the name of the beach I stumbled upon the name of the ship and was like "ohhhhh."

I mean it was a Monday....

Actually the ship is really cool. Read more about it here: https://www.californiabeaches.com/ss-palo-alto-concrete-ship/ But it used to be an oil tanker and then an entertainment ship. And apparently is made of concrete. And apparently is the most famous concrete ship on the west coast. Also, appparently, it used to be signifcantly more ship-like and has sunk a fair bit due to storms and the waves. There's a really interesting gallery here: http://photos.santacruzsentinel.com/2017/01/24/cement-ship-through-the-years/#21

Guess that means I'll have to go back sometime soon before it sinks completely. Thankfully Aptos isn't too far and I've received word of another BBQ place I need to try.

Joe Hisaishi... in concert!

So somehow, luckily, I had found these tickets for Joe Hisaishi Symphonic Concert: the Studio Ghibli Films of Joe Hisaishi just as they had opened another showing on Sunday evening so naturally, I bought two tickets. I mean, Hisaishi's music is some of my favorite in movies and I've been to Zelda concerts, video game concerts, etc, before, so of course I would get tickets to hear them do it with a live symphony.

I didn't realize that it was actually Joe Hisaishi conducting the concert until he walked out on stage. Before he came out, the current Consulate General of Japan gave a speech, which I thought was a little strange.

"What is the Consulate General doing down here in San Jose at a concert?" I was confused. Then this gentleman walked on stage to a roaring applause and I was like oh. shit. I had to turn to my sister.

"IS THAT JOE HISAISHI???" I said in my loudest whisper.

"YES," she whispered back.

"HOLY SHIT." I lost my shit a little bit.

Joe Hisaishi is the cutest effing Japanese grandpa conductor. The venue had cameras that captured his facial expressions and gave us an actual view of the frontside of the conductor - not something commonly done at the concerts I've been to, so this was even more amazing because it was Joe mothherfucking Hisaishi. He got super into what he was conducting and would every so often crack into this brilliant and kindly smile that just melted your heart. Definitely one of the more animated conductors I've seen! Like, he was actually a lot of fun to watch to the point where they would show videos from the movies on the big screen but I would be watching him bounce around and cue in different sections.

The most amazing thing though, was how he transitioned back and forth between playing piano (I GOT TO SEE JOE HISAISHI PLAY THE PIANO OMG) and conducting. It was so ridiculously smooth that I can only hope to one day attain a level of being able to switch back and forth between tasks in the kitchen like stir frying something and washing the dishes the same way he, seemingly effortlessly, switched from playing this piano bit (memorized of course) to waving in another cue and then back again to the piano.

There was just something about him playing piano that made the whole thing seem kind of special. It felt like he was adding in flourishes here and there to parts of songs; these were listening experiences that you couldn't hear just from the movie.

There were parts too, with the Totoro song, where sections were playing and I don't know, it's so moving that tears started to run down my face. I don't know what it is about that song - the nostalgia perhaps - but I get really close to losing it when I hear those songs regularly, and hearing them live just pushed it over the edge.

Oh yeah. There was also a part where this marching band came in. Hella random, but damn was I jealous of all those people who got to perform!

But now I want to watch all the Ghibli movies. There were definitely parts of movies I didn't remember at all haha. I wish I had the income and the space to pay for the blue rays with the gorgeous covers. Hell, I wish you could buy those as posters.

...time to scour the internet for posters I guess!

Questival San Jose 2018

A few months ago or so, I took part in something called Questival for a day and a half. A quest festival (get it? ha.) that the organizers put on in cities around the US. At its most basic, you have 24 hours to complete as many (or little) "quests" or tasks or challenges of some kind with a team of 2-6. The one I did yesterday was focused on San Jose, though really, it was more like the South Bay.

It was incredibly incredibly fun, if doing scavenger hunts and challenges are your thing. Basically for questival, I sort of see it as paying $20 for a pretty cool daypack (that folds up!) and $20 for these people to organize a bunch of fun things for you and some friends to run around doing.

The Questival started officially Friday evening, but in a sense it starts before that when you first pick your team name. For our team name, we eventually decided on Como se llama llama? which we were all pretty tickled about. And that's what kind of matters. Except if you're actually... going for the challenge of trying to actually *win* one of the awards (and if you're trying to finish the most events or get the most likes or whatever you're definitely in the running), your team name will probably be announced at the closing ceremony. So there's that to think about.

You also need to sign up for the App, which.... is definitely not without its faults. They sort of ran into the same problem Pokemon Go ran into when they first launched, where their servers were most definitely not equipped to handle all the racers accessing them at the same time. There were many upload failures and crashes and glitches, though, as they told us at the closing ceremony...  none of them are programmers so their app was definitely... a work in progress. I really want to look at the code of how the search function actually worked because that was absolutely terrible. It worked maybe 10% of the time, and never when you typed in the whole correct word you were looking for. Like, it's baffling what code they actually used because of how broken it seemed. But while the app was definitely a key part of the questival, it wasn't really the main part.

About 24 hours before the opening "ceremony" they release a list of the challenges, though some challenges they also add during the event itself since I definitely saw challenges that were not there before and were not on the original list. It's super nifty because you can definitely use them for planning purposes since there are way too many challenges for one team to actually do (though, man, I would be really interested to see how many you could really do).

The challenges vary widely, from doing outdoorsy-things like hiking and taking pictures of the landscapes, fitness things, to doing good in the community by volunteering or other random acts of kindness, finding locations and going there, to making things, to really random quirky things that felt kind of like dares from the organizers. Really, there was something for EVERYONE no matter what kind of things you like to do. The challenge was getting everyone else on the team to agree to the tasks you wanted to do and squish them into the time frame that you had to do them in. Every task needs to have a special totem in it that they give out at check-in though, so even if you have a team of six, it's not like you can split into squads and do the different tasks since you must have the totem in the picture, otherwise you get disqualified. But it's pretty cool because no matter what you like to do you can probably find something.

Our team was three people - myself, my boyfriend Elias, and his friend Betsy. We tried to plan a little bit before hand but that sort of... sizzled out. We thought we were going to be able to volunteer at the non-profit that Betsy used to work for but unfortunately it ended up being closed on the Saturday, but at least we were able to go to a different charity and thankfully, it was close by.

Elias was still finishing up work, so Betsy and I went to checkin without him. Check-in was pretty...underwhelming? I thought it was going to be some sort of ceremony thing but it was basically a tent with dudes running check in and then giving you a backpack and a flag-totem. Once you got those things, you were pretty good to go and leave, though there were a few challenges you could only complete at check-in, like taking pictures of your backpacks (technically you could do this anywhere) or dancing at check-in or taking a picture of your car. We almost forgot some of them.

We went back though and used some of the time that evening to talk about plans for the next day and that night, as well as some of the challenges that we didn't need to go anywhere for. We figured that since not everyone from the team needs to be in the pictures Betsy and I would do some of the challenges while Elias did work (so some people can leave if they need to or do things as needed or whatever, or I would definitely recommend sleeping in shifts if there are enough people, a late night shift and an early morning shift).

I made the mistake of volunteering to eat 1 clove of garlic, raw noodles, and 1/2 a raw onion.

The mistake was the raw onion. I was arrogant and was like "I like purple onions" so I picked a purple onion. Big. Mistake. Second mistake was not picking a smaller onion. I picked a normal sized onion.

The noodles were stupidly easy to do, and the first few bites of onion were alright. I bit into it like an apple. It was fine for a little bit, but then the burn, oh god, the burn set in. It was the same as the kind of burn from eating ridiculously spicy hot sauce. Like, painful. I started tearing up. But I tried to power through. My teammates came to help, thankfully, though I think I still ate like 2/3 of the onion to disastrous effect. It took us like, 25 minutes to eat the whole thing. The garlic clove I just popped and powered through. The noodles we ate in between bites to help alleviate the burn (it wasn't really that helpful).

I think I actually killed off or destroyed a significant number of taste buds because basically until Sunday morning, my mouth tingled every time food or liquid came into contact with it, all the way from the front of my tongue to the very very back of my tongue and throat. Brushing my teeth helped... but only for the front part of my tongue. Nothing tasted right after and everything was just a tad bit painful to eat. And then we almost couldn't get the video uploaded haha.

Betsy and I swore off onions for at least a week though. I made the mistake of thinking I was better Saturday and put some onions in my in-n-out. Regretted it immediately. So much unpleasant burning feelings.

By the time we had.... recovered, neither of us were really that hungry for dinner from all the liquid we drank in a futile attempt to stop the burn (turns out milk products and bread do not work for onion burn like they do for hot sauce). We got Elias to do the "drink something from a straw out of a bag" challenge to have him eat more and decided that that evening, we would go up to Stanford to do the cluster of challenges there since by then he had finished his work.

On the way up we stopped at CVS and knocked out the fitness challenge of doing fitness things (jumping jacks, push ups, etc) on video in the grocery store and got access to a bathroom and then headed over to Stanford and took pictures of the Gates of Hell, the cactus garden, a jade bush, and recorded a short ghost story at the masoleum in the pitch black.

Not going to lie, that was a little freaky. It helped to have a high powered light that I clutched basically the whole time. Taking pictures at night with the flag though, was a little bit of a challenge because our cameras were definitely not that great and it was sort of rainy.

We ended up skipping out on the papua new guinea statues because our team was just was too tired at that point and hungry, so we went to cheesecake factory before calling it a night. We at least managed to decide on a plan for the next morning.

We woke before sunrise to go to a park and jesus. It was early. But it was so worth it! Sunrise was AMAZING. But also the start of a ridiculously long day. By the time we finished - after 6 because they had allowed for submissions to keep going past the normal cutoff time of 6pm due to server issues - I was ridiculously exhausted. Like. So. Damn. Tired. Elias and Betsy wanted to burn things because a few of the challenges involved a campfire, but with the rain and the distinct lack of fire pits open at all hours, it was a little difficult to do that without planning beforehand.

Overall, Questival was amazing fun, and the best part about it, is that you can really scale it to however intense you want it to be. We weren't really that intense. We had something of a plan - my map, with all the destinations pinned on it so that we could do things when we were in the different areas - and I think we were trying to go for quantity. Judging was super confusing, especially since it was all sort of based on the reactions from other teams and it wasn't clear when the judging stopped, but it felt a little bit like Whose Line, where everything is made up and the points don't matter (at least, until it got to the judging but still).

Those six/4+ person teams though, definitely benefit from things like division of labor. There were a bunch of things that we definitely could have split better.

Let's talk strategy.

Of course, Questival is the kind of event that can be as intense or as chill as you want it to be.

I'm the kind of person who likes to organize things. I got a spreadsheet and google maps together before the whole thing, but that was with only a limited time. The spreadsheet was to keep track of the time during the day since there were certain check in challenges that were only at certain times and we didn't know how long they would take. After having done a Questival, I think it would have been worth the time to create a spreadsheet of the different tasks we could do together, were location agnostic, and also to build out some sort of schedule.

Questival officially starts at 7:00pm, about an hour after check in. However, this is only when the app will let you start to upload your videos or photos to the challenges. So if you really want to cram as much as you can into the short 24 hours that is Questival (after 6pm Day 2 you're not allowed to submit any more, unless the app/servers have massive problems and they extend it for another hour) (ie, if you want questival to really be 24 and not 23 hours), plan ahead. Buy materials ahead of time. Figure out what is close to what. Figure out what you want your team's strategy to be. Upload everything asap - the sooner you upload things, the higher chance you have of it getting reviewed and rated. There are also sprints - windows of time where I think they give awards out for thhe most? (or the most liked) uploads of a certain category. But either way, basically, I think it's fairly safe to assume that things that make for a worse picture/video are better off doing at the end of the competition because they're not really going to have much time for people to rank them anyways.

Having a strategy meeting is an absolute must. Having multiple working phones - both with cell service and at least one GPS phone - is necessary if you want to do things efficiently. Because we had to drive around a lot, whatever phone that was being used for GPS couldn't really be used to also upload things at the same time. Car time was valuable time to be uploading and captioning submissions as you ran from one place to the other. Being able to share the picture/video between multiple phones so that you could have at least two things uploading at the same time was also incredibly helpful. For this, you also need to make sure passengers in the car know what they're supposed to be doing and can help out.

I'd also highly recommend having two drivers. As the only driver in our group (since not everyone could drive my car) I was basically stuck driving the whole time and didn't really get the chance to see submissions, since all time outside the car was basically spent doing the challenge itself. At least if there are two people, you can switch things up and it's a little more fun that way for the person who has to drive IMO.

Finished.

I am finally done with my masters program. Finally! I turned in my masters thesis on Friday. I was exulted as I handed the bound 87 page paper in.

I kind of snuck something in there, as an almost easter egg for my thesis.

I have every letter from A to Z in my works cited section. I managed to somehow cite something from every single letter. I had to look up citations just for V and X... maybe that was cheating a little bit, but I legitimately worked those in too.

I am so pleased with myself, it's silly. Almost more pleased than actually having finished.

It's weird being finished. Wonderful, but kind of weird. As I was turning it in, it felt like there was so much more I could have done on it. But there's little sense in worrying about that now.

I don't know what I'm going to do with myself.

A lot of people are asking what I'm planning on doing afterwards. I fully intend on getting a job, but I don't really know what yet. I don't really know where any of my paths lead right now, but I do know one thing. All my paths lead forward. I mean, I'm going to get a job. I'm going to apply to a bunch of different places. I have no one path that's yelling my name out right now. For all I know, one of them could lead to a job in neuroscience or something. That'd be super fun. But it might also lead somewhere else. And that's the exciting part about where I am right now. I don't know where I'm going. It's kind of scary, but at the same time, kind of exciting. I know wherever I end up, I'll be able to make the best of things, and be able to make do. It's a matter of how fast I'll get to where I'm going, and what kind of sites I see along the way I suppose.

Someone jokingly, when I responded that I didn't have anywhere specific in mind (I meant mostly anywhere that would hire me, for the time being) that I didn't really have a game plan (which kind of characterizes my life right now), asked if anywhere meant McDonald's. I got super pissed. I snapped, associating it with all the "lolz non-STEM" kind of jokes people make about how we won't be able to find jobs and stuff. And this person counted himself as my friend, and I was kind of upset that he made that because we don't really have that kind of relationship.

But I was thinking, it would actually be kind of interesting to work for them in like, a waste division or something. Where you figure out how to deal with the waste from their distribution, packing, etc, or deal with making their food healthier or partnering with local communities. Because I think McDonald's has the potential to make a large impact, so just because it's fast food that the higher class people distain for organic and non-GMO slow food, doesn't mean that we should completely write it off.

Anyways, I'm getting rambley. I only meant to talk about graduating for realsies this time, and how I can finally tell people that yes, I'm 100% done now and I've finally graduated and I'm moving on to the next part of my life. (Unemployment lolololjk, I'm going to have a kickass job somewhere even if I don't know where that is yet)

Soylent

Thanks to one of my friends here at Stanford, I had the opportunity I never would have ever taken myself in a thousand years to try Soylent. Soylent is, for those who are fortunate to have never heard of it, a nutritional drink that describes itself as "open source" and boasts that all the nutrients that you need over the course of the day can be ingested in a much more convenient and cheaper form than your traditional foodstuff. Its fans claim that it takes the stress and hassle out of preparing a meal, thus freeing up more valuable time to do More Important Things.

Basically, it's a powder that you mix with water and drink so that you can get nutrients. It was created by someone in the tech industry (surprise surprise) because they wanted to use their time more efficiently, and thought that if they could make something that tastes bland enough that nobody would get bored of (which I don't buy, because you can get bored of boring things too) that you mix once at the beginning of the week and then spend maybe 5 minutes or less making (and drinking probably), you don't have to waste all that time on going out, getting food, and eating.

Unfortunately, a good friend here at Stanford drank the (powdered) Kool-Aid and has replaced about half of his meals (he still eats out socially, he says, he just has soylent on the meals he would normally spend alone) with Soylent and liked the brand name stuff so much he ordered a bunch of it to try for an event at Rains Houses. We tried two different types: the DIY version (that was made to be a 700 calorie meal) and the official Soylent version.

I was raised to believe that you can't really knock something until you've really tried it. And I tried it. And it sucked.

Seriously, it was terrible, both on the conceptual level as well as the taste level. Have you ever eaten chalk before? Or bitten into a persimmon that wasn't ripe enough? Or had Jamba Juice not mix the boosts in well enough? You know how you get that super gritty, really chalky kind of texture that makes you want to chew it because it's so thick, only to realize your mistake after the first chomp because now it's EVERYWHERE in your mouth and you can FEEL all the little grains all over? And then, after you've swallowed, the slight bitter taste from the chalky stuff lingers all over your mouth?

Very very unpleasant.

It also tasted a little like creamed corn. A little on the sweet side, actually, both the DIY version and the official one. I was actually a little surprised, because taste wise, it was better than expected. I expected it to taste like nothing. The official version was also waaay better than the DIY version, mostly because the DIY one was so incredibly viscous that it just clumped together as you drank it. It felt like you were drinking like... something with mass that wasn't actually a liquid. Perhaps that's better, because people were saying that it tasted even grainier to them, but for me it was almost... velvety, but in a very very bad way. The way that makes you kind of want to gag as you choke it down.

Some of the guys there talked about how maybe, what if, in the future, Soylent was the main form of nutrient acquisition? What if it was like a utility that was piped to each house like water, providing nutrients at low cost to poor, impovrished areas. Of course there would still be food... if you wanted to actually pay more to eat the real stuff.

Terrible, terrible ideas. That's not a future I want to be a part of. And as long as there are people in this world who love food, love the interplay of flavors and the textures as you bite into something delicious, or something with a hint of sour followed by a seductively sweet note, that future, I'm certain, will never ever happen. Food is so much more than just something we eat for nutrients. It's time to spend iwth others, to converse, to slow down, and most importantly perhaps, to enjoy. Sure, I suppose I can understand if you're a terrible cook and you hate cooking and just want something easy. For any activity, there are people who love it, and people who hate it, people who are great at it and people who are terrible at it. But there are equally tasty and cheap alternatives for those who can't cook. Trader Joe's premade food is an amazing amazing thing. And it's delicious.

One of the guys argued that it's really hard to get all the nutrients your body needs with traditional cooking. I immediately called bullshit. He countered by saying that he had a vitamin B12 deficiency when he ate his mother's cooking. However, there was a caveat in that he was vegetarian, which already presents problems with getting the proper nutrients especially because B12 comes from meat, poultry, eggs, and dairy. But seriously, it's not that hard to get a decent meal going, and if you know where to shop and have access to it (which, many people don't) it's actually fairly simple to make a meal that has enough of everything in it. You can even make things that don't actually take up that much time (though of course, putting in more time never hurts). But really? Not. That. Hard. Salad, protein, more veggies, some carb, boom. Done. Maybe have fruit too, or eat fruit some other time in the day. But reaaaallllyyyy not hard.

Oh Soylent, you silly drink.

Japan America Student Conference - Aug 12

I meant to blog more about this conference, but oops. I guess I'll post what I have for now and then fill it it later. :) It's a conference of no sleep.

San Francisco offered the chance to really have an RT focused day. As a part of the Technological Advancement and Society RT, it was ridiculously exciting to be in the San Francisco Bay Area (not just because I'm from here) and be given this opportunity, given that it's home not only to Silicon Valley's famous tech companies such as Facebook, Google, and Apple, but also because of the startup culture that's constantly pushing the boundaries of business and technology. The opportunities seemed endless. 

Unfortunately, endless choices make it extremely difficult to choose a place to visit: should we stay in San Francisco, or go down to Silicon Valley proper? Do we have enough time to go down to Stanford if we do? How much time did we really have in the first place? These questions kind of plagued our RT's discussion of where we should go. We had actually chosen two companies prior, but they hadn't really responded with the kind of firm "no" you need to properly acknowledge that they are not an option to visit, so we were still discussing various options. 

This is why, come five days prior to our actual field trip, we still had no idea where we were going and suddenly Stanford was an option (it hadn't been before because of how long it would take to get there). Unfortunately (or fortunately I suppose) as one of the two Bay Area natives (and the one with more actual contacts in the area) the majority of them were in the South Bay, which meant alternative transportation and logistics of moving from UC Berkeley to its rival Stanford; driving, it takes roughly one hour, but by public transportation it takes about two (which was why it was not an option in the first place). 

I was really excited when I heard that Stanford was an option, but dismayed at the fact that this choice came at such late notice - too late actually, for any of my contacts. We started scrambling to try to figure out a place. The day of RT free time got closer. We did a home stay. The day for RT free time jumped closer by two. We still didn't have a place to go. 

Things happen for a reason though. I'm not a believer of things like "fate" or "destiny" per se, but I do think that things will find a way to work out. 

This is how Tech ended up at Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) to talk to one of their members about net neutrality and privacy on the Internet. Things just ended up falling in to place; someone's home stay actually was kind enough to get us this contact, and we spent a much needed morning to catch up on RT discussion time that had been lost in days prior as well as do an RT reflection.

RT reflection, in my opinion, really helped us grow together as a group, and grow closer. I know for me, I came out of that convinced thoroughly that I was in the best roundtable, and trace of sadness at not getting into Modern Consequences of Historical Education completely gone. Our Tech group is really close, and it just feels so incredibly safe to talk to them and know that I won't be judged when I do so, or that I can be vulnerable to them and that they - all nine other members - have my back. I don't open up easily to other people; I don't like being that vulnerable and I've gone through so much of my life fighting to minimize my vulnerability, but this has been something so unique to JASC so far, and I think a big part of my JASC experience. Really, we have the best RT, even if it means that we are last to do everything since we usually go by alphabetical order. (Woop woop Tech!)

So much happened this day for our group. Other groups probably had, no, *did* have completely different experiences. I heard one group went to Angel Island, another rode cable cars to Ghiradelli Square and Fisherman's Warf. I won't lie, but I was extremely jealous of all the fun they were having and was mildly annoyed at the fact that our RT was stuck in Berkeley most of the day (even though I'm a Bay Area native and have been to these places a ton of times) and wasn't actually doing anything fun. Looking back though, I'm grateful for the experiences we had, and wouldn't have changed it so that we had gone and just done fun stuff (which would undoubtedly be fun, but wouldn't have given us such an amazing experience). 

April, from EFF, was kind enough to talk to us relatively last minute for a really quick time. She explained to us the mission of EFF as well as some of the projects it's doing and the court cases and lawsuits it's pursuing. The big one are against the NSA and the government for breaching our constitutional rights by using cable splitters to copy data from the Internet illegally - specifically, the First Amendment (free speech) and the Fourth (due process). We also had the opportunity to ask her questions about why privacy was important, and what a sort of ideal solution looked like if the NSA was doing so many things they didn't like. I think many of us were also surprised to find out that they were also fighting TPP, the trade agreements that are being proposed between eleven (or was it twelve?) different countries in the Pacific region. TPP has actually been a topic we've touched on and debated a little bit at JASC, but the general consensus seems to be mostly positive towards this, so that EFF was so vehemently opposed to it was a bit of a shock for all of us. I think we've primarily viewed TPP from the Japan-America ties only, especially around the topic of agriculture, so intellectual property wasn't something that was on many of our radars until now. 

Overall, it was an extremely interesting (albeit short) meeting and a good chance to really hear from a different side of both TPP, net neutrality, and online privacy. It was interesting to hear their objections to TPP and their proposed solution to "fixing" the NSA. Most of their objections to TPP were that they stemmed from "secret deals made behind closed doors" and the lack of transparency; that the terms of the proposed trade alliance were not democratically chosen. 

I can't help but wonder though - isn't that how a lot of deals are made? Transparency, sure, is nice, but I am not sure everything really *should* be transparent. I'm also slightly skeptical about how democratic the process of agreeing upon the terms of TPP (and TPP itself) should be. We've chosen specific people with specializations in that area to act on our behalf and make these deals because we, as individual citizens, probably don't have the same type of knowledge or background that they do about the topic. Our choices and decisions, therefore, would be less informed. 

As to the whole "secret meetings" and things, a lot of how Japanese culture functions, the way some business is conducted, is indeed in these more "secret" meetings outside of the office proper. By the time the decision reaches the main office - the "front" side if you will - it's already been talked about to all the important actors more behind the scenes in locations the individuals could talk freely without having to worry about one side losing face to the other in front of everyone. It's not necessarily that they go to these secret places for this with the purpose of conducting secret negotiations, but in front of the press and everyone, isn't it sort of natural to need to appear to be more unyielding on your stance? In a course I took on Japanese business, this was one of the things that the professor drove home - that often times, approaching an individual through a go-between or in an "ura" setting (meaning, some place that's a little more private and not in front of others) is necessary to both preserve relationships and move things and decisions forward. Even though they're in private locations, it's out of the desire to not have to "perform" (in a sense) rather than out of a desire to deceive or to keep the conditions and deals from others. But the US side doesn't usually see things that way; these kind of deals lead to distrust and suspicion. Fundamentally though, I have a hunch that the huge opposition to this is largely founded in cultural differences. I think too though, that often we Americans forget that our governmental officials, diplomats, business people, and others in high positions are still humans despite the amount of power they wield. For me it makes a lot of sense that they would be able to talk more freely behind closed doors "in secret" and get more done when they don't have to be the face of their nation or corporation or whomever. 

I digress though. Regardless of my own stance towards the NSA and whistleblowers like Edward Snowden, our visit to EFF was both informative and interesting, but it wasn't the end of our day. 

We (Tech, though I guess I mean I really) had two and a half more interesting parts of the day. The first was right after our meeting, when we made the decision to walk back to Powell Station rather than walk to Civic center or take the bus since it probably took about the same amount of time. Except walking meant walking back through the Tenderloin - something I kind of forgot about, slash, didn't realize that it extended that far up from Civic Center area. Oops.

The Tenderloin, for those who don't know, has the reputation of the worst area in San Francisco (though in this Bay Area person's opinion, probably not as dangerous as certain parts of Oakland) mostly because of the (crazy) druggies, dealers, pimps, and transients who are out on the streets and who also tend to be sometimes kind of aggressive. The Tenderloin also houses a bunch of low-income housing units, with people who fiercely fight to keep those units as low-income housing as the tech boom drives the prices of housing in San Francisco sky high. It's not somewhere you really want to walk by yourself (especially as a woman, especially at night), though it's usually fine in groups of three or when you have a guy with you, especially during the day. But it's a place you want to have your street smart wits about you. So don't act scared. Don't act like a complete tourist. Don't mark yourself as an easy target. 

Unfortunately, I forgot that it was the Tenderloin and that we were traveling in a huge group of ten people with half of us speaking a lot of Japanese, and most of us slightly terrified because of not being used to walking through bad areas. A lot of walking through there, I think, are attitude. You gotta look like you belong, and that no, you are not an easy target and you're walking with Purpose. So that was exciting. 

The .5 exciting part was riding BART, mostly because we forgot it was rush hour and it was crowded and we had to transfer. 

The last though, was when we did large group reflection. I think we've reached a turning point in our group, because people are finally starting to share more and more as RTs have done group reflections as well. It's kind of interesting. I've noticed that our RTs really give us strength - strength to do things like talk to the larger group and open up. The whole delegation of course, is pretty cool, but it's our RT who really acts as our backbone and support. 

I'm glad I decided to stay with JASC.