How I Celebrated the Moon Festival

Today should be a day of eating. At least to me. I didn't think when I booked my dentist appointment that it would fall on the same day as the Moon Harvest Festival. Sweaty palms, and fear the dentist was intermingled with dreams of moon cake and tea.

The reason? The second of two appointments to repair fillings. For those who don't know me, I am terrified of needles. I scare myself days in advance at the impending possibility of having to take a needle. My heart rate quickens at the thought of it, and for someone who is willing to just get stuff over with, instead I was entertaining thoughts of backing out and rescheduling the appointment for another day. My secret wish is to have someone hold my hand while I get a needle.

This time my dentist was more sly-- as I was lying down, she was swabbing my mouth with an unknown blue gel, and sat there with her right hand hidden.

"Doctor, what is that in your hand?" I struggled to try and get a peak.

"It's nothing dear. Just lie back and relax. Just relax..."

"It's a needle isn't it? It's a needle." I was gripping the arm rests until my knuckles were white.

"Patricia, I gave you a needle when we fixed the first filling. This time is no different"

I relaxed. She was right. Same as last time. Last time was okay. So I relaxed, opened my mouth and after a few pep talks on not looking at the needle she finally inserted it into my cheek.

"Now Patricia, this one is slightly different, it's going to freeze half of your mouth, your lips, and most likely your tongue" I let out a loud hrmp? A whadda you mean mumble! She kept on asking if I was feeling numb and I replied no. We did that a few times as she continued to inject me with whatever it is she used. After the third time of answering not numb yet, she pulled out and commented that sometimes people react more slowly. I'm not sure if sleepiness was a side effect, but my eyelids were heavy and I struggled to stay awake. The procedure itself was okay, not a problem. Save for the second I think I did fall asleep.

And so I went home, face frozen stiff, saliva dribbling out of the side of my mouth, all to see my parents eating dinner. The smell of food made my tummy growl. Oh the pain! Have mercy! I decided to go buy some safety shoes while the numbness went away. Last time it only took about an hour. However two and a half hours later I still can't feel my face. Two hours of dribbling, two hours of hunger, two hours of gagging on my tongue and not being able to swallow! Perhaps the dentist injected too much into me? Aiiiyeee!

Jersey Revisited

It’s a warm and sunny afternoon and I once again find myself stuck in New Jersey. After so many trips down to this Godforsaken place, I seem to have not learned that the 3:30 flight out of here is ALWAYS cancelled. If there’s a bright side to anything and everything, it was the fact that I checked in this morning and only had to drop off my bag. Oh the advantages of being able to use the empty web check in line! It was as I was dropping off my bag that they announced they were cancelling the flight and the clerk immediately booked me onto the next one. When she handed my ticket, I was already seated at the back of the plane. I turned to look at the regular queue and wondered if the 20 people there would be able to fit onto the next flight. I asked the clerk and said that it didn’t look too good.

Oh how I’ve missed New Jersey.

The worst fucking airport in the world. Quite literally.

Quite honestly, there’s nothing like waiting out a 4 hour delay with the people who should have been on your plane, and the people who will be on your flight. As each minute passes, the camaraderie builds, and everyone is united in the end by a common bond of bitterness for Newark airport and travelling for business.

Despite that, I can’t say that I don’t have fun here. At the end of the day it isn’t all that terrible here—good shopping, especially when our dollar is par with the American, daily marathons of Law and Order, and fantastic fantastic Italian food. If I had the CBC here, then my life would be complete. Bha ha ha. Perhaps deep down in my heart I really did miss this place.

However, one thing I did not miss was New Jersey men. At the beginning of my trips they sound pretty flattering in a corny and lame way, but by the end of the trip, their compliments become borderline creepy and pervy. It doesn’t matter if they’re 15 or 55, they have no problem saying lines such as, Hey baby, you can ride my train any time; Honey, my day was going to hell until I laid eyes on you. Now my life is complete; Baby, why don’t you come over here so I can tell you something special; or even better, Baby, how old you are? I could give you some serious loving. The ones who feel they can grab me get a slap. In general, men outside of the GTA seem to be more forward and are definitely not shy about voicing their inner most thoughts (or what I prefer to describe as expressions from the loin). I wish I could strike up the same kind of reaction in men back in the T-dot, although if that were the case I’m sure I would be equally disgusted. I must admit, it certainly is a self-esteem picker upper when there is some place in the world where you can turn heads. Whaaaat? I need to look at the positive side-- if I'm doomed to attract the scary people, at least I'm attracting someone. If it’s in New Jersey and New York, all the better. I keep my fingers crossed that I’ll meet someone in fashion or the media who will sign me to this insane contract, do a blitz of whatever it is they do, and retire young with millions to my name. Bha ha ha. A ha ha. [sigh].

I do hope this is my last trip to New Jersey though. I know I said camaraderie builds as everyone waits out the flight together, but the creepies also emerge from the crowd. And most often they gravitate towards me. Well, what can I say? I have the great fortune of being able to meet a lot of married business men when I travel. They’re all “nice” of course. The latest was a round and rather loud man who kept on insisting that he buy me a drink, while spitting all over my sad looking grilled chicken Caesar salad (say no to the TGI Fridays at Newark terminal A). With a sigh I took my chances finished everything I thought could be spit free and waited until we were told to board… which was a mere 1 hour later.

Lessons learned:

a) Stay away from pervs and creeps.
b) Slowly back away from the ones who approach you and repeat over and over again how beautiful you are.
c) If they touch you: slap them.
d) Slurred speech and grabbing motions equal trouble. Run away.

Engineers Explained

A funny by someone at CMU (hrm... wherever that is). So nerdy and sooooo written by an Enginmaneer.

Engineers Explained
People who work in the fields of science and technology are not like other people. This can be frustrating to the nontechnical people who have to deal with them. The secret to coping with technology-oriented people is to understand their motivations. This chapter will teach you everything you need to know. I learned their customs and mannerisms by observing them, much the way Jane Goodall learned about the great apes, but without the hassle of grooming.

Engineering is so trendy these days that everybody wants to be one. The word "engineer" is greatly overused. If there's somebody in your life who you think is trying to pass as an engineer, give him this test to discern the truth.

ENGINEER IDENTIFICATION TEST
You walk into a room and notice that a picture is hanging crooked. You...

A. Straighten it.
B. Ignore it.
C. Buy a CAD system and spend the next six months designing a solar-powered, self-adjusting picture frame while often stating aloud your belief that the inventor of the nail was a total moron.

The correct answer is "C" but partial credit can be given to anybody who writes "It depends" in the margin of the test or simply blames the whole stupid thing on "Marketing."

SOCIAL SKILLS
Engineers have different objectives when it comes to social interaction.

"Normal" people expect to accomplish several unrealistic things from social interaction:

* Stimulating and thought-provoking conversation
* Important social contacts
* A feeling of connectedness with other humans

In contrast to "normal" people, engineers have rational objectives for social interactions:

* Get it over with as soon as possible.
* Avoid getting invited to something unpleasant.
* Demonstrate mental superiority and mastery of all subjects.

FASCINATION WITH GADGETS
To the engineer, all matter in the universe can be placed into one of two categories: (1)things that need to be fixed, and (2)things that will need to be fixed after you've had a few minutes to play with them. Engineers like to solve problems. If there are no problems handily available, they will create their own problems. Normal people don't understand this concept; they believe that if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Engineers believe that if it ain't broke, it doesn't have enough features yet.

No engineer looks at a television remote control without wondering what it would take to turn it into a stun gun. No engineer can take a shower without wondering if some sort of Teflon coating would make showering unnecessary. To the engineer, the world is a toy box full of sub-optimized and feature-poor toys.

FASHION AND APPEARANCE
Clothes are the lowest priority for an engineer, assuming the basic thresholds for temperature and decency have been satisfied. If no appendages are freezing or sticking together, and if no genitalia or mammary glands are swinging around in plain view, then the objective of clothing has been met. Anything else is a waste.

LOVE OF "STAR TREK"
Engineers love all of the "Star Trek" television shows and movies. It's a small wonder, since the engineers on the starship Enterprise are portrayed as heroes, occasionally even having sex with aliens. This is much more glamorous than the real life of an engineer, which consists of hiding from the universe and having sex without the participation of other life forms.

DATING AND SOCIAL LIFE
Dating is never easy for engineers. A normal person will employ various indirect and duplicitous methods to create a false impression of attractiveness. Engineers are incapable of placing appearance above function.

Fortunately, engineers have an ace in the hole. They are widely recognized as superior marriage material: intelligent, dependable, employed, honest, and handy around the house. While it's true that many normal people would prefer not to date an engineer, most normal people harbor an intense desire to mate with them, thus producing engineer-like children who will have high-paying jobs long before losing their virginity.

Male engineers reach their peak of sexual attractiveness later than normal men, becoming irresistible erotic dynamos in their mid thirties to late forties. Just look at these examples of sexually irresistible men in technical professions:

* Bill Gates.
* MacGyver.
* Etcetera.

Female engineers become irresistible at the age of consent and remain that way until about thirty minutes after their clinical death. Longer if it's a warm day.

HONESTY
Engineers are always honest in matters of technology and human relationships. That's why it's a good idea to keep engineers away from customers, romantic interests, and other people who can't handle the truth.

Engineers sometimes bend the truth to avoid work. They say things that sound like lies but technically are not because nobody could be expected to believe them. The complete list of engineer lies is listed below.

"I won't change anything without asking you first."
"I'll return your hard-to-find cable tomorrow."
"I have to have new equipment to do my job."
"I'm not jealous of your new computer."

FRUGALITY
Engineers are notoriously frugal. This is not because of cheapness or mean spirit; it is simply because every spending situation is simply a problem in optimization, that is, "How can I escape this situation while retaining the greatest amount of cash?"

POWERS OF CONCENTRATION
If there is one trait that best defines an engineer it is the ability to concentrate on one subject to the complete exclusion of everything else in the environment. This sometimes causes engineers to be pronounced dead prematurely. Some funeral homes in high-tech areas have started checking resumes before processing the bodies. Anybody with a degree in electrical engineering or experience in computer programming is propped up in the lounge for a few days just to see if he or she snaps out of it.

RISK
Engineers hate risk. They try to eliminate it whenever they can. This is understandable, given that when an engineer makes one little mistake, the media will treat it like it's a big deal or something.

EXAMPLES OF BAD PRESS FOR ENGINEERS

* Hindenberg.
* Space Shuttle Challenger.
* SPANet(tm)
* Hubble space telescope.
* Apollo 13.
* Titanic.
* Ford Pinto.
* Corvair.

The risk/reward calculation for engineers looks something like this:

RISK: Public humiliation and the death of thousands of innocent people
REWARD: A certificate of appreciation in a handsome plastic frame.

Being practical people, engineers evaluate this balance of risks and rewards and decide that risk is not a good thing. The best way to avoid risk is by advising that any activity is technically impossible for reasons that are far too complicated to explain.

If that approach is not sufficient to halt a project, then the engineer will fall back to a second line of defense: "It's technically possible but it will cost too much."

EGO
Ego-wise, two things are important to engineers:

1. How smart they are.
2. How many cool devices they own.

The fastest way to get an engineer to solve a problem is to declare that the problem is unsolvable. No engineer can walk away from an unsolvable problem until it's solved. No illness or distraction is sufficient to get the engineer off the case. These types of challenges quickly become personal - a battle between the engineer and the laws of nature.

Engineers will go without food and hygiene for days to solve a problem. (Other times just because they forgot.) And when they succeed in solving the problem they will experience an ego rush that is better than sex- and I'm including the kind of sex where other people are involved.

Nothing is more threatening to the engineer than the suggestion that somebody has more technical skill. Normal people sometimes use that knowledge as a lever to extract more work from the engineer. When an engineer says that something can't be done (a code phrase that means it's not fun to do), some clever normal people have learned to glance at the engineer with a look of compassion and pity and say something along these lines: "I'll ask Bob to figure it out. He knows how to solve difficult technical problems."

At that point it is a good idea for the normal person to not stand between the engineer and the problem. The engineer will set upon the problem like a starved Chihuahua on a pork chop.