Friday, July 31, 2009

Things that I have acquired today

  1. Wedding present for Emily: matching Woot Shirts. Normally this kind of thing would make me gag, and I have no idea if she + hubby would actually wear them, but I don't really care because this present amuses me. The Suess-y artwork is also a plus. Besides, I never buy gifts from the registry. Other items I was considering include a bloodied chef's knife and tickets to the Louisville production of A Chorus Line (the Oct run is not on sale yet, wtf).


  2. Google Voice number: In case you haven't been following this, in an ever onward quest to take over the world, Google is moving into phone and voicemail services. You can get a phone number through Google and link your mobile/cell/office number to this number, then tell your contacts to call the Google Voice number. This thereby frees you to switch numbers as you please, and you could foreseeably use this phone number for the rest of your life. I finally got an invitation to set up a gVoice number, and then faced the quandary of what to choose for my number. Like any good nerd, I started looking for numbers like 314-1592. Unfortunately, all the good variations of pi, e and the golden ratio appeared to be taken. There were also no numbers with the words "crystal," "cyclist" or "foodie." So, then I typed in:
    True, it is a dirty Jersey area code, but this was better than being stuck with something from say, Wyoming or Mississippi.

  3. Plane tickets to Tokyo: Singapore Air is doing a special on roundtrip airfare to Tokyo from LAX for $473. Yeah, that's right. Somehow in the last 24 hours after Liz discovered this deal, we managed to convince ourselves that not taking advantage of this sale would be a travesty, and perhaps even a crime. So, we'll be trekking to Tokyo and Kyoto in November. I've already got my "Japanese in 30 Days" phrase book. Fugu, here we come!

Monday, July 27, 2009

Zombies Attack Chicago!

Last weekend, Wicker Park played host to a massive band of roving zombies. The horde of undead had collectively risen and come out for a Michael Jackson Thriller Zombie Walk, an event one part flash mob, one part killer dance moves, one part gore. When Melissa jokingly suggested going ("Check out this facebook event...not to say that we should go"), my only question was, "Why aren't we going?" So on Sat night, I found myself in a bathroom, dousing my hair with talcum powder and applying circles under my eyes with the appropriate rest-in-unpeace zeal. The end result looked something like this:

To further prepare, I also spent some time analyzing the Thriller dance. Actually, there seems to be a cottage industry of instructional videos that show you how to get the perfect blend of Jackson-finesse and jutting, angular movements. My personal favorite was this 80s (parody?) video of "Totally Rad Dances with Dancing Kim," in which the narrator talks about how the Thriller dance is "totally cool" and she is "totally obsessed" with it. If you are looking for a more accurate version of the choreography though, I recommend this 40-part video series with helpful mnemonics for each dance move. I can now do the March Booty Swim!

At this point we were running 15 minutes late, and racing to get to the meeting point of Wicker Park. I mentally surveyed our options for the rest of the night should we not find the zombie horde; what bars could we hang out inconspicuously at with outstretched claws?

Luckily, as we were walking down Damen, we were greeted with the sound of howls and screams in the night. All of the sudden, we were in the midst of a mass of people who looked something like this:

There were definitely a few confused pedestrians who got caught in the zombie invasion. One guy said to his friend, "And this is why we live in the suburbs." (Then he pretty much put on a shirt that said "I am a square.") Actually, the event invitation made sure to emphasize a few ground rules, the first one being "No touching of pedestrians!" Also, "Do not drip blood on the sidewalks!"

We continued down Ashland towards the Polish Triangle, hooting at cab drivers, banging fists on bus windows and reaching outstretched claws to people who had otherwise been having a peaceful al fresco dinner. At first, we tried to stay on the sidewalks, but as the crowds grew in size and unruliness, the zombie mob ended up blocking street traffic and intersections. It was like being at Critical Mass, only with fewer bikes and more blood. (Wait, scratch that, there's plenty of blood at Critical Mass too.) And for hipster-approved Irony, there was even an Anti-Zombie Task Force of people clothed in black leather waving batons, trying to arrest and control the zombie horde.

After looping back to the Damen/Milwaukee intersection, we milled around in front of the Wicker Park Fest stage, until a security guard tried to shoo us out of the street. Someone muttered, "Yeah? There's 700 of us and we don't have to go anywhere!" Then, a bike with a stereo system trailing it pulled up to the front of the crowd, and on cue, we all began to dance.

Dancing to Thriller in the middle of the moonlit street in sync with hundreds of people dressed up as zombies was one of the most surreal experiences of my life.

At the end of the night, it was pointed out to me in the middle of 7-11 that there was a bloody hand print on the back of my shirt. Grr, and I really liked this shirt too! If it doesn't come out in the wash, I am going to personally hunt down the perpetrator and make them wish they were undead. I have no idea when it happened or who did it (was it the guy that I gave a fake name to?), but let's just say the Thriller Zombie Walk left an indelible imprint on my life.

Saturday, July 18, 2009

To the Southside and Back

There are those who look at me and see a smallish Asian girl, with glasses and an air-conditioned desk job, and might be inclined to think that I am far from being a locked out gangsta, set trippin' banger. Well, I am here to disabuse you of the notion that I have no street cred, because I have officially seen the Southside of Chicago. And I don't mean Kenwood (where the Obama home is) or Hyde Park (Univ. of Chicago hosts the nation's largest private police force). I crossed the Midway Plaisance and survived, with all vital organs intact and no wallets mugged.

I only have anecdotal evidence for this, but I assert that the city of Chicago is the most racially segregated in the country. It is absurd how neighborhoods on the Northside seemingly have no minority residents, while large swaths of the South and West sides are essentially black and Hispanic ghettos. There is essentially no mixed housing. In addition, public transportation routes are designed in such a way that traveling to and from the Southside is time-consuming and difficult. Chicago's local government being what it is, I have no doubt that this was purposely done by the political powers that be, to further separate and divide the city. Needless to say, nice girls generally do not travel to the Southside on a lark. Then, what on earth was I doing there?

The adventure started when I kept reading about Soul Vegetarian East, an old restaurant on the Southside run by Black Hebrew Israelites and specializing in vegan cooking. I mean, given the rarity of vegetarian restaurants in Chicago, and the allure of alt-history religious trappings, how could you resist this combination? Besides, the menu was predominantly soul food, and I was curious as to how well you could possibly do soul food sans meat or butter.

Somehow I was able to convince Katherine and Melissa that this was worth a trip to 75th St. Moreover, I suggested a post-dinner trip to Rainbow Cone, another traditional Southside institution. This is at 92nd and Western, which under normal circumstances is not particularly close. However, since we were already that far south and probably never returning again, this would really be the only opportunity we'd have to see it. Oh, and remember how public transportation sucks in this area? Since getting from Soul Vegetarian to Rainbow Cone would require a ridiculous number of buses and transfers, we opted to bike the 6-mile distance in between. After dark, on a weekend night: the prime time for gang-related violence. Ain't no thang.

Over the course of the journey, heads turned at the sight of three young, non-black women pedaling bikes down the street. We were asked where we had come from, as if people wanted to make sure we weren't lost. One woman stopped in the middle of crossing the street and yelled at us, "Ya'll be careful now!" We thanked her as we sped past. One man tried to reverse-racially profile us, and berated us as being University of Chicago students who were about to "go back to Hyde Park and sit on the internet." Suffice it to say, we stuck out like the Rocky Mountains. All this for some ice cream.

I will say that though I never felt threatened, I often felt uncomfortable, and I've done some searching as to why. Was it because I wasn't used to being in an all-black neighborhood? Would I have felt as uneasy in Humboldt Park (a predominantly Puerto Rican area)? We biked through some parts of Chatham, home to the infamous Roland Burris and according to Wikipedia, predominantly middle-class. The streets were quiet and lined with one-story bungalows, much like any other neighborhood, and yet I still fought to quell panic whenever a car slowed beside us, or someone passed next to us on the sidewalk. How does it feel to be a young black male walking around say, Winnetka (a wealthy northern suburb)? Has there ever been a case of reverse white-flight, where whites moved into minority neighborhoods en masse?

Then suddenly, as we crossed to the other side of the railroad tracks, 95th Street suddenly became "safe." Words cannot express the wave of relief I felt as a Borders, Panera Bread and Gamestop came into view. We were in Beverly, a heavily Irish-American neighborhood, home of the annual Southside St. Patrick's Day Parade and Chicago's 3rd highest median income. Rainbow Cone was frequented by a diverse crowd of middle-aged parents with small children, goth teens and blue-collar men. The suburban normality was jarring.

Here's the route we took last night from Soul Vegetarian to Rainbow Cone. Total distance: 5.6 miles. In retrospect, it would've been shorter to take 87th street west, but then we would have missed the scenic part of Halsted and 95th...The colored flags indicate locations of murders in Chicago in 2009 thus far. You can also see that our end point at Rainbow Cone is in a decently well-to-do neighborhood, across the street from a country club.

Getting home posed another problem as none of us were particularly keen on biking all the way back north. The closest train station was the red line 95th/Dan Ryan stop, the southern terminus of the line. For those unfamiliar with Chicago, I will mention that prior to this, the only first-hand story I'd heard about the 95th St stop was from JT, who said that she'd fallen asleep and mistakenly gotten off there once. After leaving the station, she tried to bolt into the McDonald's across the street in a panic. Unfortunately, it was the type of McDonald's where customers have to be buzzed into the restaurant. The clerks behind the counter were ROFLing at the sight of this clearly lost white girl.

Putting that aside, we gamely opted to bike to the 95th station, and had crossed back over into the seedier side of town when my bike rolled over a thin sheet of metal with a loud pop. Egads, a flat tire. I had a spare tube and pump on me, so I could have tried fixing it, but this wasn't exactly the type of location I wanted to linger in. We decided to simply walk the rest of the way to the station, and luckily this only turned out to be three or so blocks. Somehow, being on a moving bike makes me feel invincible while I feel completely vulnerable as a pedestrian. In retrospect, I really should have brought my pepper spray.

I've no regrets about exploring the Southside, however with the amount of unsolicited attention we attracted, it would be foolhardy to go back again. It amazes me that one of the richest neighborhoods in Chicago is separated by the thinnest of margins from super sketchy, impoverished urban blight. Beverly is surrounded by predominantly black neighborhoods that were predominantly white until the '60s. Why was this neighborhood able to hold on to its white population?

And for reference, this is the full map of YTD 2009 homicides in Chicago. From the map, it is clear that incidents happen disproportionately on the south and west sides of the city.

Monday, July 13, 2009

Dell Vostro 1520


I've been putting this off for a while now, but I finally sat down and bought a new laptop. My current computer (Dell Inspiron 5100) is now a Triassic 6 years old, so I figure I've gotten my money's worth, and can afford to move on to something that doesn't have a panic attack under the duress of Photoshop. No, I didn't cave; I am still Mac product-free.

The new Dell Vostro 1520 goes something like this: Intel Core 2 Duo P8600 2.4 GHz, 3 gb ram, Nvidia Geforce 9300m 256 mb video card, 250 gb 7200 rpm hard drive, 15.4" display, DVD burner, webcam, laptop bag included. It comes with Windows XP Professional installed with Vista cds and Windows 7 upgrade rights, so I can upgrade if/when I want to. (I know, if I were cooler, I'd be running solely Linux. Yeah, yeah.) The outside of the case is cherry red, which is my new favorite color. (Or not. I didn't have another option.) With various sales and other discounts, the whole shebang set me back $746 + tax. This is about 33% off the amount I paid for my last laptop, or an even steeper discount if you account for inflation.

It feels weird not to have a browser history, almost as if a good chunk of my past and my identity has just been wiped out. In the meantime, I am still soliciting ideas for a new desktop wallpaper (so far, suggestions have included Naruto, two votes for Bruno, and digital abstract). As a stopgap measure, I am currently using chef Philip Foss' photo of a mussel, which may or may not be in good taste. (I did find Bruno hilarious, after all.)

Sunday, July 12, 2009

The Times They Are A Changin'

-By the end of July, four of my closest friends in Chicago will have moved out of town.
-They will be replaced by new hires, some of whom were born in 1988.
-That seems ridiculously young somehow.
-I am anxious.
-"All" my friends are leaving me behind.
-Is this what it feels like to stay in Ithaca for life?
-If you had asked me at graduation to predict which of my college relationships would strengthen/weaken in the future, many of my predictions would have been wrong.
-Yet I am still fairly confident in my estimates for what will happen with the four people mentioned above. Perhaps this is simply hubris on my part.
-I met two new people last night.
-One of them was an ABC girl, the first one I've met in Chicago, oddly enough.
-In the last week, one of the Fed AEs got engaged
-While another couple broke up.
-I have completed my second year in Chicago.
-It comforts me that I know the city like the back of my hand.
-The thought of starting anew in a new location is daunting.
-I have been reading Fuchsia Dunlop's memoirs of traveling to China as the first Westerner to study at the Sichuan Institute of Higher Cuisine.
-She managed to barge her way into kitchens, hearts and "forbidden zones" like Tibet through sheer chutzpah and tenacity.
-I know what I want, but I don't know how to get there.
-I want to go skydiving.

Wednesday, July 1, 2009

Today's Department Meeting Agenda

  1. Kumbaya Sing Along*
  2. Introductions
  3. United Way Fundraiser
  4. Project 26
  5. Regulatory Reform Proposal
*Gotcha...yes, this is a joke!