Yeah!

I am guessing I am not the only one who hates to check on mail box. Everything is online nowadays, and oh, those junk mail, can we request a stop to that already? These days, the hatred is still there but there are a couple of things I was anxiously waiting to receive: my renewed driver's licence, some bill, and USCIS correspondence related to my Adjustment of Status application. After two weeks of not checking in, I gather myself to the box.

And....the so called green card is here via USPS! I am officially a permanent resident of the US of A! No more fear of deportation when my work permit expired or when company decides to tank me. No more! Baby Boddler K wouldn't need to worry about his mom got shipped out back to her native land.

What sweet is that what I have is not a conditional greencard. And since I am married to a US citizen, in three years I am eligible to be naturalized. Should I change citizienship then? I like the perks such as serving in jury duty (Law & Order naivette) and having a voice in the political arena (not). Well, who knows. We will think of it when the time comes.

Our timeline (here just imitating what people out in immigration forums posted, not that I am a member of any of those):

• November 8 - Filing form I-130 (Hubbostrich's Petition for Alien Relative) and I-485 (my Adjustment of Status) together by ourselves
• Mid November - Receipts for form I-485
• Late November - USCIS requests for more documents pertaining to my legal status as of
• December 10 - Biometrics appointment at supporting office
• January 31 - Interview at field office
• February 1 - Approval notice for I-130 and I-485, green card starting date all the way to 2023
• Early February - Actual card received thru USPS

Three months just past by like that. You have to love the government when things like this befall on you, specially, after reading all the horror stories of the internet.

Thank God.

What's next? Changing my last name so we all have the same name? Nah, I like my name.

That Little Card that Could

Hubbostrich and I have been married for almost three years before we finally put our feet down to apply for an adjustment of status for a permanent residency for me. I have always been maintaining a student visa or a working visa thru my stays in the US of A. I am legal like that.

For this adjustment of status, the amount of paperwork needed was daring and mounting. But two Saturdays and a couple of melt downs later, we finally got them done and sent both applications and pertinent back up documents overnight to Main Office.

You get to tip your hats off to the government for our case. Original applications were sent out to State X, they then got assigned to State Y, before finally ended up at State Z, where we are. It's amazing things did not get lost in the mail. Also, by the end of the third month (which is today), we already got our interview done with the agent at our local field office. The interview was relaxed. We were both under oath. We showed requested documents, he marked stuff on the application form. Hubbostrich showed him a picture of Baby K. We talked about streets named after WW II heroes. It was just random.

At the end of the interview the Agent said "I intend to approve your application but I just need to perform one security check by the end of today. If everything cleared, you should receive your card in 30 days."

Agent couldn't confirm to the specific of this check but one resourceful individual could always Google, correct? My speculation that it should be this one. For all tend and purposes, one can only hope the result will be a "No Record". Vaya con dios.

Let's see where we are in the timeline when I finally get a card issued (or not). I am reaching a point of desperation like never before for a green card which, of course, will be a subject of another post.

Baby PhD

What can I say, I miss Hubbostrich so much. He spent a week after defense in College Station to finish up some lab work and now he is visiting his family. Yes, he is a Mr. Dr. N now!

On behalf of my sanity and health, I can't wait until he gets back here Wednesday. Sleeping with the light on and eating junk food are recurring old habit I need to rid of, all while I am nursing a cold. Although, I am enjoying driving his SUV to work everyday and that working late is not such a sorrow with no one to come home to.

Yesterday, I texted him a couple times, I didn't get any reply. I then sent him a picture message of me doing an impersonation of Hannibal Lecter just to relay a message that I was getting a little bit annoyed, I still didn't get any reply. As last resort, I called him twice in a span of one hour but they went straight to voicemail. I know he knew I was ringing him. After all those my only conclusion is that the biatch is ignoring me for reason I have no clue what, which is more annoying than the ignoring itself. Gosh. What a resourceful wife to do? Call her father in law of course!

"Who is this person?" says FIL.

"Aw, I am bored and lonely here. You guys are having fun without me!"

"Oh, you're about to miss this kid more, I am about to beat the s*it out of him!"

"What happened?"

"Well, since he's a PhD now, he thinks he's the smartest person in the world...he is actually pretty ignorant."

"Aww, you're the dad of the PhD, of course you are smarter! It's only paper work."

"I know, I just don't have the credentials."

Now I know where Hubbostrich get his "confidence" from.

Hubbostrich was handed the phone. He told me that this father and son are having the highest time of their 33 years career as a-father-and-son. They have been talking for hours on anything and everything. There were a lot of beer drinking involved and a lot of leaving the tables from disagreement on some X, Y, and Z topics. Taking my calls or responding to my texts is simply wasting time and out of place. The nerve!

"OK, Babe, just don't get those guns out. It will be one heck of a Law & Order: Criminal Intend episode."

Hubbostrich to his dad, "X says that we should not drink and be near guns."

His dad in the background, "Tell her, there are three just laying around in the table, and a couple knives scattered around the room."

Hubbostrich then says, "Even Goren couldn't figure this out, one person got a gun shoot, another has knife on his eye, what are you gonna describe to 911?"

"Yeah, when Goren looked at your dad's background...a former *** agent...and your background...a doctorate degree in Chemical Engineering...what is going on here?" I added.




And then I broke Hubbostrich the reason why I insisted on talking to him that instant.

"My mom just called and she is wondering why we are not pregnant yet. Are we doing the best we can? We need to remember that I am about to wither on my 31 years of existence in the world."

This is so inline with what my sister put in my Facebook status when I announced to the world that Hubbostrich passed his defense.


All I need to say to busy bodies (and to myself from time to time) is this quote from where else but my favorite Ecclesiastes 3:

There is an appointed time for everything, and a time for every affair under the heavens.

Uban oh Uban

Bermula dari ngomongin uban, dasar cewe-cewe chatting royals...

bu!
uban saya tambah banyak
*wail
*beat chest in sorrow
*hide under a rock

you want to hear where my uban is
di alis
hahahahhahah

WHAT
hows that possible

kmrn dah dicabut tumbuh lagi ????
itu brarti udah akut
si Stacy What Not to Wear itu highlight putih

she's probably starting a trend

lol that
trend udah dari jamannya si mamiek
inget mamiek nggak

no
anaknya P. Harto?

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v229/wahyudi/mamiek.jpg

LOL!!!!!!!
kagettt

haahahaha
inget nggakk

inget2
what about this

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjht-TR2MJoD8BJKhPpE-LeMstu6GWXX9CKOEznbxOJZR1ft-jnWrYYQ2VAoAL-Jz_at6jhoWzeNBylS17j80_1sy9Lfy_wRS_dESNA4F4FTYvfiEU2mfIyoKw35JpgU25GJ0lGyQ/s1600/koes2.jpg

lebih menyentuh hati
4 3/8 nada

nada pertama!

hahahahah
no 1/2 nada

No Habla Ingles

Hubbostrich finally finished his dissertation on Thursday. He is working on the slides for presentation since then. His defense is this coming Friday. Apparently, all of these have finally taken a toll on him. As a little break, we said yes to a birthday lunch of a girl in the gank today. In the car,

I feel better today.

You were that burnt up...burnt off...I mean...burnt
out yesterday?

Yeah!

At the lunch, the two of us were casually discussing NY's recent drama with her job and how talented she is overall. [Crossing our fingers, but NY's going back for good is imminent. More on this tomorrow when words are finalized. Damn you, JCP. I so want to switch carrier to be an advocate of the law.]

I think your sister has an excellent English skill of anybody I know, even you!

...Hold on!!

Babe, you mix up words

Yeah? What words?

You want me to make a list?

[Thinking about conversation in the car 20 minutes ago] Burn up?

That's what they do at refineries, Babe

Burn off?

That's also what they do at refineries

Burn in?

That's what you guys do at your work

Burn out!!!

Three strikes and you're out!

LOL LOL Hey, but my writing skill is supposedly better than hers

Yes, your editing skill is excellent

I think it has to do with time you spend with
somebody

You meant I didn't notice her flaws as much as yours?

Exactly

This reminds me of a conversation in the car coming back from a lunch with NY, brother, and then Fiancestrich. Apparently, I uttered a word with a wrong pronounciation and was innocently unaware of it. That prompted NY to a bashing which is pretty mild according to her standard.

"She can't speak proper English, you can't speak Indonesian, how do you guys communicate?"

We all couldn't stop laughing.

Miaow

Nothing strikes my senses a couple of mornings ago other than stumbling upon this article via a certain microblogging. It sucessfully raises my blood pressure as well as mental confussion, the article hit bases too close. As we all know, Hubbostrich and I have teamed up on the so-called Western-Asian household model for a couple of months and counting now and we do have a few ideas on raising our future children "succesfully", certainly not the Tiger Mom way.

Anyhow, after a careful examination, the WSJ footnote mentioned that the article is an excerpt of an upcoming book by the author. So it is more than possible that controversy is intended as part of book marketing. Although, I am not sure how succesful this gimmick is for your more-than-average pedestrian. I, myself, am going to wait for a library copy instead of wasting a couple of hard earned yuen on it. I guess it is not hard to infer what we could get out the book. I sincerely placing hope it is not a how-to manual for every day Tiger Mom but more like a memoir, shall we say, a path to author's parenting-discovery.

This other microblogging site, on the other hand, succesfully brought us a lighter, I mean sarcastic, note on the subject. I must say it is a much better channel to direct your disapprovement. I can't stop LoLing on its almost daily witty one liner (and footnote) and don't get me started on the Asian MILF, she totally images the original Tiger Mom's profile.

San Bruno Fire Lawyers

Yesterday, I mentioned to Hubbostrich that before long there will be a lot of advertisements offering "helps" for victims to represent them on San Bruno fire cases. It's troubled me that these lawyers are going to make so much money on top of other people's sufferings!

And they didn't wait long. While searching for San Bruno updates on Google news this morning, three of such sponsored links popped out. Dismay.

Inception

I told Husband that I love him, but I am going to watch Inception by myself. Two weeks from now seems like a long time to wait for such a blockbuster. Armed with high expectation from the reviews of internet reviews and real life people, I pushed myself to be out of bed at 9 AM last Sunday morning. I freshened up, drove and bought my ticket at the counter. Matinee show was at 10:20 AM.

The studio was small and at 10:15 AM it was almost packed. It was no problem for me. I was just by myself, I didn't have to ask people to scoot over to make room for my party. I seated myself on the middle row by the aisle, giving an extra seat in between me and a couple.

To tell you the truth, movie goers at 10 AM Sunday morning were interesting. I spent more time people watching than paying attention to whatever it was they were playing before the lights were out. This one woman in moccasins and a matching jacket particularly caught my attention. She was sporting the look of just got out bed and was thoroughly confused looking for her husband who was already perching up there on the second from top row close to the projector. They ended up going to the bottom quarter of the seats, a decision I still didn't understand. I call those rows Looser Rows, that's what you end up with when you are late to a movie.

Going to a movie for me requires ultimate effort to be on time for a good seat. At church, there's always a seat somewhere, provided that you just have to face the eyes of the congregation on lookers. At work, well, everybody is always late for work, plus you are already designated a place, so who cares.

Then, there were a group of four teenagers headed by a queen bee. They got there pretty late when the lights were about to be dimmed. As time progressed, the group went on to become band of teenagers. Queen Bee decided that the front rows were just not good enough for them. She directed everyone and their popcorn and drinks to sit on the stair aisle effecting themselves as fire hazard.

One of them who sat on my side of the aisle had a little problem breathing. It seemed that he had a little stuffy nose going on, even so, he still tried to breath from the one that was free. Added that breathing problem to his soda slurping and popcorn munching and I could not really concentrate on what was going on with the movie. One minute the Inception team was in Paris, in another in Africa. One minute they were working on one dream, next minute they were two stages into.

Not long after, a security person evaded them from the stair premises. The band was left with either taking the front rows or demanding their money back. If I were one of these infantile baboons, I would take up that offer and come back for a midnight show next weekend. They, however, took the front row seats but not before leaving trails of popcorn and candy wrappers behind. But, hey, at last, I can concentrate.

As for the movie, I don't mind watching it again with Husband. It has all the necessary ingredients: cool special effects, a simple story for a mind boggling concept, good actors, and, ultimately, a very low cost per minute (at 248 minutes, it sure worth all of my $6). At first, I thought what more do I want. And it dawn on me. It could have been better. A better movie would not let me winch my eyes from it even for a split second, not band of teenagers, not people went back and forth, not my hungry and thirsty self. It will afford me to concentrate on more thought provoking aspects of the movie, how Leo became this good, the gidget character, the psychology, technology and fantasy behind, and, finally, how I would like to go working for this team.

We Are Jaded and Tweeting

Best conversations these days are still with that Dianosaur gal. Here is one of them, edited and translated to protect the innocence.

Me: You go softie, I go jaded, what's wrong with us

Her: Its called growing up, we become bitter

Me: I know

Her: Maybe we should all move to tibet, find our inner being

Me: Follow @DalaiLama first, baby step you know

Her: hmpft

Me: LOLOLOL

Overheard by the Hot Tub

Guy 1: I think she's pretty cute.

Guy 2: Nah, she's not.

Guy 1: You don't think so?

Guy 2: I've seen her in pretty bad light.

I wonder what the two bears gonna do tonight.

Yeah, I don't know. I hate to be prejudiced but I can't help too in this situation. I was walking to the gym by bypassing apartment's pool area when I overheard these two guys sitting on the hot tub talking about some girl. I like to imagine that they changed their conversation topic because of me.

So what if they are homosexual. I have to give a slap to myself sometime.

Unusual Day

What a weird day today is. I woke up this morning and just wished I didn't have to. As I dragged myself out of bed three minutes after the alarm went off, I thought that 07/07/07 was such a good date, while 07/07/10 is not.

The day being unusual started with my drive to work. First, I almost hit another car turning left just went I was turning out my apartment complex. Gladly, he stopped before he actually turned left and gave me the right of way. Second, I was late to switch lanes and was trying to hit on the gas, I thought I did a good job but the car behind me honked. I rarely got honked.

Then, there were uncountable mistakes I did at work when I was the one operating the machine. Seriously, those mistakes were too many to count. Luckily, I didn't break anything or kill anyone over the 10+ runs. They were petty mistakes and can easily be fixed or got rerun. I just never made that many mistakes in one day.

What else? Husband butt dialed me twice and didn't pick up my return call. This was the first time he butt dialed me ever.

All in all, I have a premonition that this is God's telling me that something "big" is coming my way. O Dios mio.

So, good bye, just in case I manage to stupidly kill myself tonight. I would like to have this epitaph on my tombstone:

"She'd only hope she did a much better job leading her life."

Still Depressed

While we are still talking about the depression episode, I figured I needed to record tonight. In attempt to clear my mind, I dragged myself this evening to a neighboring market place. There are a nice grocery store, fast food restaurants, cafes, bakeries and many small businesses in the area. It is quite a convenience. So I walked across the manicured neighborhood. Blooming agapanthus greeted me all the way. I even smelled some fresh flowery scent in the air.

At the store, I picked up a couple of odd ends of stuff, mainly junk food, and rented a DVD from the box. This evening, it was 2012. I had had strong premonition about the movie, not only on the cheesiness of the story but also on the non-sense science, it was confirmed. At least, the shrimp burrito was a perfect dinner. At the end, I feel the need to neutralize the built up negativity. I found that endless dose of The Muppet Show was just the answer.

Yes, there is little difference in my life two months into the marriage. Husband, we both know, I need you here pronto, lest, I am going crazy.

Blah

I don't know what it is about this summer. I have been feeling depressed, very depressed. I am feeling ungrateful of all worldly things (and this marriage). At first, it seems that I don't care about the past, present and future, and that I am slowly losing my faith. But at a closer look, it is not that I do not care about the present and the future.

Being helpless usually instills nothing but fighting mechanism in me. As such, things eventually got better. This time around, I am just mad and being frigid. I refuse to correct the situations instead I act in ways that is destructive.

I'd like to think that this is merely a post wedding melancholy, but maybe I just lost it.

I don't like this and I don't like talking about it with any real person so I am channeling it out here.

Blah.

Seriously

In light of the so-called drama, I couldn't resist to post the following excellent eye-opening piece up here. It is applicable to the situation, as we, in a sense, are geeks, religious geeks. LoL. Come to think of it, it could be applied on any social groups, circles, etc. As for me, I am a GSF1 &GSF5 carrier, so people beware.

Taken from here via Facebook. © 2003 Michael Suileabhain-Wilson.

Five Geek Social Fallacies

Within the constellation of allied hobbies and subcultures collectively known as geekdom, one finds many social groups bent under a crushing burden of dysfunction, social drama, and general interpersonal wack-ness. It is my opinion that many of these never-ending crises are sparked off by an assortment of pernicious social fallacies -- ideas about human interaction which spur their holders to do terrible and stupid things to themselves and to each other.

Social fallacies are particularly insidious because they tend to be exaggerated versions of notions that are themselves entirely reasonable and unobjectionable. It's difficult to debunk the pathological fallacy without seeming to argue against its reasonable form; therefore, once it establishes itself, a social fallacy is extremely difficult to dislodge. It's my hope that drawing attention to some of them may be a step in the right direction.

I want to note that I'm not trying to say that every geek subscribes to every one of the fallacies I outline here; every individual subscribes to a different set of ideas, and adheres to any given idea with a different amount of zeal.

In any event, here are five geek social fallacies I've identified. There are likely more.

Geek Social Fallacy #1: Ostracizers Are Evil

GSF1 is one of the most common fallacies, and one of the most deeply held. Many geeks have had horrible, humiliating, and formative experiences with ostracism, and the notion of being on the other side of the transaction is repugnant to them.

In its non-pathological form, GSF1 is benign, and even commendable: it is long past time we all grew up and stopped with the junior high popularity games. However, in its pathological form, GSF1 prevents its carrier from participating in -- or tolerating -- the exclusion of anyone from anything, be it a party, a comic book store, or a web forum, and no matter how obnoxious, offensive, or aromatic the prospective excludee may be.

As a result, nearly every geek social group of significant size has at least one member that 80% of the members hate, and the remaining 20% merely tolerate. If GSF1 exists in sufficient concentration -- and it usually does -- it is impossible to expel a person who actively detracts from every social event. GSF1 protocol permits you not to invite someone you don't like to a given event, but if someone spills the beans and our hypothetical Cat Piss Man invites himself, there is no recourse. You must put up with him, or you will be an Evil Ostracizer and might as well go out for the football team.

This phenomenon has a number of unpleasant consequences. For one thing, it actively hinders the wider acceptance of geek-related activities: I don't know that RPGs and comics would be more popular if there were fewer trolls who smell of cheese hassling the new blood, but I'm sure it couldn't hurt. For another, when nothing smacking of social selectiveness can be discussed in public, people inevitably begin to organize activities in secret. These conspiracies often lead to more problems down the line, and the end result is as juvenile as anything a seventh-grader ever dreamed of.

Geek Social Fallacy #2: Friends Accept Me As I Am

The origins of GSF2 are closely allied to the origins of GSF1. After being victimized by social exclusion, many geeks experience their "tribe" as a non-judgmental haven where they can take refuge from the cruel world outside.

This seems straightforward and reasonable. It's important for people to have a space where they feel safe and accepted. Ideally, everyone's social group would be a safe haven. When people who rely too heavily upon that refuge feel insecure in that haven, however, a commendable ideal mutates into its pathological form, GSF2.

Carriers of GSF2 believe that since a friend accepts them as they are, anyone who criticizes them is not their friend. Thus, they can't take criticism from friends -- criticism is experienced as a treacherous betrayal of the friendship, no matter how inappropriate the criticized behavior may be.

Conversely, most carriers will never criticize a friend under any circumstances; the duty to be supportive trumps any impulse to point out unacceptable behavior.

GSF2 has extensive consequences within a group. Its presence in substantial quantity within a social group vastly increases the group's conflict-averseness. People spend hours debating how to deal with conflicts, because they know (or sometimes merely fear) that the other person involved is a GSF2 carrier, and any attempt to confront them directly will only make things worse. As a result, people let grudges brew much longer than is healthy, and they spend absurd amounts of time deconstructing their interpersonal dramas in search of a back way out of a dilemma.

Ironically, GSF2 carriers often take criticism from coworkers, supervisors, and mentors quite well; those individuals aren't friends, and aren't expected to accept the carrier unconditionally.

Geek Social Fallacy #3: Friendship Before All

Valuing friendships is a fine and worthy thing. When taken to an unhealthy extreme, however, GSF3 can manifest itself.

Like GSF2, GSF3 is a "friendship test" fallacy: in this case, the carrier believes that any failure by a friend to put the interests of the friendship above all else means that they aren't really a friend at all. It should be obvious that there are a million ways that this can be a problem for the carrier's friends, but the most common one is a situation where friends' interests conflict -- if, for example, one friend asks you to keep a secret from another friend. If both friends are GSF3 carriers, you're screwed -- the first one will feel betrayed if you reveal the secret, and the other will feel betrayed if you don't. Your only hope is to keep the second friend from finding out, which is difficult if the secret in question was a party that a lot of people went to.

GSF3 can be costly for the carrier as well. They often sacrifice work, family, and romantic obligations at the altar of friendship. In the end, the carrier has a great circle of friends, but not a lot else to show for their life. This is one reason why so many geek circles include people whose sole redeeming quality is loyalty: it's hard not to honor someone who goes to such lengths to be there for a friend, however destructive they may be in other respects.

Individual carriers sometimes have exceptions to GSF3, which allow friends to place a certain protected class of people or things above friendship in a pinch: "significant others" is a common protected class, as is "work".

Geek Social Fallacy #4: Friendship Is Transitive

Every carrier of GSF4 has, at some point, said:

"Wouldn't it be great to get all my groups of friends into one place for one big happy party?!"

If you groaned at that last paragraph, you may be a recovering GSF4 carrier.

GSF4 is the belief that any two of your friends ought to be friends with each other, and if they're not, something is Very Wrong.

The milder form of GSF4 merely prevents the carrier from perceiving evidence to contradict it; a carrier will refuse to comprehend that two of their friends (or two groups of friends) don't much care for each other, and will continue to try to bring them together at social events. They may even maintain that a full-scale vendetta is just a misunderstanding between friends that could easily be resolved if the principals would just sit down to talk it out.

A more serious form of GSF4 becomes another "friendship test" fallacy: if you have a friend A, and a friend B, but A & B are not friends, then one of them must not really be your friend at all. It is surprisingly common for a carrier, when faced with two friends who don't get along, to simply drop one of them.

On the other side of the equation, a carrier who doesn't like a friend of a friend will often get very passive-aggressive and covertly hostile to the friend of a friend, while vigorously maintaining that we're one big happy family and everyone is friends.

GSF4 can also lead carriers to make inappropriate requests of people they barely know -- asking a friend's roommate's ex if they can crash on their couch, asking a college acquaintance from eight years ago for a letter of recommendation at their workplace, and so on. If something is appropriate to ask of a friend, it's appropriate to ask of a friend of a friend.

Arguably, Friendster was designed by a GSF4 carrier.

Geek Social Fallacy #5: Friends Do Everything Together

GSF5, put simply, maintains that every friend in a circle should be included in every activity to the full extent possible. This is subtly different from GSF1; GSF1 requires that no one, friend or not, be excluded, while GSF5 requires that every friend be invited. This means that to a GSF5 carrier, not being invited to something is intrinsically a snub, and will be responded to as such.

This is perhaps the least destructive of the five, being at worst inconvenient. In a small circle, this is incestuous but basically harmless. In larger groups, it can make certain social events very difficult: parties which are way too large for their spaces and restaurant expeditions that include twenty people and no reservation are far from unusual.

When everyone in a group is a GSF5 carrier, this isn't really a problem. If, however, there are members who aren't carriers, they may want occasionally to have smaller outings, and these can be hard to arrange without causing hurt feelings and social drama. It's hard to explain to a GSF5 carrier that just because you only wanted to have dinner with five other people tonight, it doesn't mean that your friendship is in terrible danger.

For some reason, many GSF5 carriers are willing to make an exception for gender-segregated events. I don't know why.

Interactions

Each fallacy has its own set of unfortunate consequences, but frequently they become worse in interaction. GSF4 often develops into its more extreme form when paired with GSF5; if everyone does everything together, it's much harder to maintain two friends who don't get along. One will usually fall by the wayside.

Similarly, GSF1 and GSF5 can combine regrettably: when a failure to invite someone is equivalent to excluding them, you can't even get away with not inviting Captain Halitosis along on the road trip. GSF3 can combine disastrously with the other "friendship test" fallacies; carriers may insist that their friends join them in snubbing someone who fails the test, which occasionally leads to a chain reaction which causes the carrier to eventually reject all of their friends. This is not healthy; fortunately, severe versions of GSF3 are rare.

Consequences

Dealing with the effects of social fallacies is an essential part of managing one's social life among geeks, and this is much easier when one is aware of them and can identify which of your friends carry which fallacies. In the absence of this kind of awareness, three situations tend to arise when people come into contact with fallacies they don't hold themselves.

Most common is simple conflict and hurt feelings. It's hard for people to talk through these conflicts because they usually stem from fairly primal value clashes; a GSF3 carrier may not even be able to articulate why it was such a big deal that their non-carrier friend blew off their movie night.

Alternately, people often take on fallacies that are dominant in their social circle. If you join a group of GSF5 carriers, doing everything together is going to become a habit; if you spend enough time around GSF1 carriers, putting up with trolls is going to seem normal.

Less commonly, people form a sort of counter-fallacy which I call "Your Feelings, Your Problem". YFYP carriers deal with other people's fallacies by ignoring them entirely, in the process acquiring a reputation for being charmingly tactless. Carriers tend to receive a sort of exemption from the usual standards: "that's just Dana", and so on. YFYP has its own problems, but if you would rather be an asshole than angstful, it may be the way to go. It's also remarkably easy to pull off in a GSF1-rich environment.

What Can I Do?

As I've said, I think that the best way to deal with social fallacies is to be aware of them, in yourself and in others. In yourself, you can try to deal with them; in others, understanding their behavior usually makes it less aggravating.

Social fallacies don't make someone a bad person; on the contrary, they usually spring from the purest motives. But I believe they are worth deconstructing; in the long run, social fallacies cost a lot of stress and drama, to no real benefit. You can be tolerant without being indiscriminate, and you can be loyal to friends without being compulsive about it.

Hey, Are You Talking About Me?
If I know you, yeah, probably I am. It doesn't mean I don't love you; most of us carry a few fallacies. Myself, I struggle with GSF 1 and 2, and I used to have a bad case of 4 until a series of disastrous parties dispelled it.

I haven't used any examples that refer to specific situations, if it has you worried. Any resemblances to geeks living or dead are coincidental.

Rant of the Week

I should've used a better judgment yesterday when my lazy body lulled my mind for a nap. I never take a so-called power nap--a few precious minutes and one will rise up energetically--it is always a long two-three hours one.

I woke up too early by my Sunday standard for a first showing of Harry Potter at 10:15 AM with the girls. After the nap, there was a momentous decision to go to the last Mass of the day or to replenish food supply. The end of Mass and the closing time of Trader Joe's are sadly congruent. Since I don't have the magical ability to disapparate right after communion, TJ's righteously won. And then the devil took my soul.

In a self I-told-you-so moment, I stayed awake till maybe 5:30 in the morning today. It successfully threw my plan to start the week with a bang at gym. I woke up 10 minutes past 11, just enough time to take a shower, wash and dry my hair (no flat ironing today), and lunch.

It's been closer to four months since I requested and underwent an alternative working hours. At first it worked perfectly fine, judging with the many progress I made over the first two months. The potency of the arrangement, however, is dimmer by the day, as machines are kept occupied until 7 at night. Leaving yours truly to many wasted productive hours spent on blogging, browsing the world wide web, and tending to fax machine(more on this later). Of course, those times are spent after gloriously finishing all the mundane clerical type of tasks. It seems that a graveyard shift will be more effective at this phase, research-wise.

As I finished sending out sample, I received an email from the International Students Service at school explaining the difficulty of faxing an important document to my company's fax machine. This document, I must note, has been gracefully and promptly finished on my request last week, a very good job, indeed. I gave the person another fax number as the hour ticks to 5 PM Texas time. She emailed me to let me know that this time the fax went through. She also asked to let her know if I successfully retrieved it. However, the fax line on our end didn't agree with the arrangement, prompting an error of end of job. I spent 20 minutes on the hotline to fix this problem to no avail. Apparently, the IT people had a problem with their phone line. Whoever it is that Murhpy guy. I salute you. I probably will find my luck to a copy a book written by Nick T. Spark, not to be confused with Nicholas Sparks.

Definitely not a good start of the week.

Briarwood Apartments College Station Review

As posted on July 14th, 2009, on ApartmentRatings.com

The apartment unit that I and my two other roommates lived in at Briarwood was great. It was very clean and the carpet was spotless. The maintenance people were reliable so that we never have problems with AC, cable and internet, water leaks, etc. The neighbors were relatively quite, even on the weekend. Also, we always had ample parking space for our second car.

The problems--or should I say nightmares--we had were always with the management, upper and staff levels alike.

1. They went out of their way to change legal document
A few weeks after we moved in June 2008, we received a notice that we still owed them a few hundred dollars for moving in which need to be paid BTOB the next day. We found out that one of their office people managed to change a date on an original paper we all signed for moving in (not a contract, but still it is illegal) to show us that we had money due. That matters got resolved, though, but not until we threatened to bring it to school attorney.

2. They were not consistent on their policy towards money, i.e., be prepared to fight or pay.
Still, toward the end of the contract, my two roommates wanted to stay for convenience, as they are going to graduate soon. My roommates inquired about the money they had to pay in order to move to a 2-bedroom unit. There was a complication since we were staying at a 3-bedroom unit and we had paid that half month rent in advance when we signed the contract for the 3-bedroom. They kept changing their answer day-to-day. But no matter what the answer was, it would cost my roommates a fortune to stay. After a lot of “fightings” with the office people (manager kept leaving office hour right on the dot at 4 PM), my roommates decided to not renewing the contract. FYI, by this time, Briarwood was under yet another new management. But they still treat the tenants like bottom feeders. They claimed that my roommates were not granted renewal because my roommates were one step away from committing violence.

3. They, in short, are hustlers
My roommates had final statement after they moved out to the tune of yet another couple hundred dollars, for paintings, cleaning, and changing drip pans. Not so funny thing is one of my roommate had changed the drip pans (she lost the receipt though, but she still had the fifth of the drip plan set that was not used). My roommate went to dispute the charge about the drip plan with the office, they showed her a picture of a dirty cook stove/oven. My roommate was in disbelief and told them she personally cleaned that cook stove/ oven. Also, they refused to tell here when the picture was taken--it can be easily seen from the picture property as it was taken from a digital camera. Personally, we believe they are hustlers, since they only charged 200 something dollars for painting the whole apartment--it probably cost them more than that. They just wanted to have these easy 200 dollars from us and to get back to us from what happened at point # 2 above.

We are bringing these matters to the College Station’s Better Business Bureau and Texas A&M’s Off-Campus Housing office. We will let everyone know the progress of the “case.” In the mean time, caveat emptor for future renters, you should really think about moving in unless you have unlimited amount of money and willing to part from it. We are mostly students here. In my roommates and I case, we are international graduate students. So that might be why we got hustled in the first place.

Sincerely,
Former Tenant, June-August 2008, # 383

Sigh

When I was young(er), there was an intention to pursue a career in medicine. And then I got that full-ride scholarship to study anything I want here in the States. The unpaved path to become a medical doctor got slashed out for being not too practical (time-wise and financial-wise). I regret the decision sometimes that I could have done something for my father and his sickness. Maybe he would listen to me, maybe he would have been alive. And to think that I ended up spending a lot of time in school for my field of choice to get to where I am now. The road not taken has made all the difference.

What is left of that interest is the occasional hypochondriac, self-diagnosed persona. Like today, I feel some pain on my left leg around the side close to the knee joint. I immediately consulted several webpages for Deep Vein Thrombosis. I checked on my health insurance coverage just in case I need some hospitalization. I am going to monitor until tomorrow if my pain subsides. I am thinking it might be the result of over working out from last week.

Good night.

Recent Update

Being laptop deprived since Friday has resulted in nights and weekend sans internet. The situation can easily be relieved if yours truly got her ass sitting in front of the desktop unit. She has been just too lazy to do that. Instead she's been focusing her mind on watching endless TV. She would be really happy to catch reruns of any of Star Trek series, but sadly, none of them were on during her waking hour. Instead, she settles on reruns of 3rd Rock from the Sun. Apart from being one heck of a funny series, the celestial body animation in between its scenes kinda reminded her of said series.

In other news, Aunt Flo decided to drop by last night. At four in the morning yours truly woke up with such a pain. Chocolate (and aspirin) has been proven to be a perfect remedy for time like this. She heated up the non-stick pan and made a grilled meisjes sandwich. Apart from the hint of chily oil taste, it worked wonder. Note to herself: get a sandwich toastmaker or dedicate a pan to make dessert like items.

In yet another news, "The One Who Got Away" is getting married. She feels nothing but pure happiness for him and the bride. Congratulations.

Meow

Me and two other girlfriends were going to lunch at an ordinary workday. I came first to the restaurant, there was a pregnant woman with a year old toddler on the sitting next table. The little girl was cute and has a mixed race appearance.

The first of the two friends came, saw me and walked towards my table. Before we had time to catch up, the woman on next table talked to my friend. They knew each other-- although, my friend had a hard time remembering her, my friend later told me. My second friend came in as the woman and the child were about to leave.

My two friends went on a discussion about the woman as soon as the entourage left.

"She used to be so pretty and stylish, remember? She wore all the branded stuff from head to toe."

"I know. I wasn't even paying attention to her at first. She looks so...mumsy. So
that's how people are after they're having a child, huh."

"She should be taking better care of herself."

At this point, I was jumping in to defend the woman. I see nothing wrong with her appearance. She was wearing stylish white capri pants and a gray top. She wore no make up, and her hair is better than mine. She probably gained some weight and her body changed. But aren't those expected for a mother of two? As for the child, she looked clean, healthy, and happy.

"Hey, it's a hard work to be a mother with a toddler and one on the way. I think she's doing just fine."

My friend insisted, "No, she could've done better. She should make time for herself."

Later I found out there were personal problems between my friend's relatives and the woman. So it might explain the harsh judgment on the woman. In retrospect, I might have done the same thing. But as an outsider looking in, trust me, the woman is doing OK, my standard anyway.

So Close to Home

There are three events today that made the day bound to be remembered than most days these days. Two of them hit, literally, so close to home.

1. Earthquake, a 4.3 Richter scale, with epicenter within 20 mile radius of my place of work and residence, at 10:40 AM. From what I've gathered from news, no major impact on the daily life of the South-Bayers. People at work including myself didn't experience any jolt whatsoever. The quake possibly was pale in comparison to the busy, noisy lab activities. Mainly, I suspected the building owner has practiced good architecture on designing an earthquake resistant structure.
2. An apparent murder-suicide that left six people dead (four were children) and one critically injured. It was within one mile from my apartment complex and happened on Sunday night around 8:30. Guns were found in the crime scene. Victim identities slowly revealed. Motive was still in the air. Place of incident, though, is widely publicized. I went on my own tour of the area tonight, although at the end I decided I couldn't take the view of it and drove the other way around. God rest your souls...
3. I asked boss for a swing shift instead of a normal day shift, he granted my request. My sole reason is that it will be more effective for me to work at this allocated window as machines are less occupied then. The lab is my oyster, or as BF texted me a reply:

   Your plan to dominate the world inches forward...

   Uhm, more like mils forward, BF.