kismetism

Oh, hello, New Year.

Everything seems to sneak up on me, with a full time job… I always forget to write/muse/reflect on my circumstances. When I check my last year’s New Years log, I’m shocked at all the serious changes that have been wrought in my life. I’d been out of school for half a year, but still looking for work. I was still living at home.

Now I’m employed at a highly visible company, doing something that I actually went to school for. I moved out and adopted the kitties I so badly wanted (and adore). I’m pretty proud that I managed to make a realistic resolution and actually meet it, but the trade off is that now I’m not sure what I should follow it up with this year.

As ever, the losing weight resolution was a miss. I was doing pretty well exercising, actually, this last month… but then I got really sick and missed a bunch of days in a row and haven’t quite forced myself to start again. In any case, it wasn’t really enough to really lose weight… just maintain it.

I’m a little tired these days, probably from the simple fact that I’m finally embroiled into the full-time-work force and it basically means less free time than ever. Sometimes I really miss lazing around and doing nothing.

So this summer really took me by surprise. It hasn’t become particularly warm yet, and there are still some weeks punctuated by random showers, so there weren’t a whole lot of worldly indicators of the time. But at some point it occurred to me that ATDP is going to start like, this month and I haven’t done a single thing to prepare.

Because, you know, I’m not teaching. For the first time in seven years.

It’s a source of much melancholy for me, honestly, but also some relief. I think I was an okay instructor and generally was proud of what I was doing. Seeing students go from knowing nothing to producing surprisingly polished final projects was really satisfying. But for the most part, I don’t feel like I really had any hand in “producing” amazing web designers: all the students who I’m most proud of generally took their learning into their own hands, which is why they turned out great work.

And working with struggling students to hit a baseline could be frustrating, but also rewarding in its own way: helping them figure out that if they just keep at it, and not be afraid to experiment, they could come up with some neat stuff, too. In this way, I was pleased to be teaching a more creative course where student effort literally equates better final products.

There are some things I won’t miss, of course. Dealing with problem students. Having to underline and enforce the cheating or the plagiarism policies. Listening to student whining, whether or not it’s actually heartfelt. Sitting through faculty meetings where I’m not really learning anything new, or possibly being passive-aggressively scolded for running my class the way I was.

Berating my TAs for not turning their weekly student evaluations in on time. And yeah, I probably won’t miss writing student evaluations, myself.

I will miss, however, the general interaction of students and TAs and instructors. I’ll miss collaborating with my TAs and our inability to decide on where to have lunch. I’ll miss meeting the clever students that floor me with their quickness, their adventurousness… something I feel like I don’t have enough of myself these days.

I’ll miss being a part of a force of teachers who are genuinely passionate about inspiring and pushing their students to be better than what the regular school system makes of them, to try and help them understand that there’s more to life than grades and test scores and even college.

But… I guess, as they say, I’ve had my time. And it was a phenomenal one. So thank you to all who were involved in this particular period of growth for me, both as a student and an instructor. You know who you are.

Well, I’m not sure I’m totally coherent on this matter still, but if I put it off much longer, it’ll become irrelevant… so here goes.

After months of pacing and nail-biting (except I don’t actually have that habit), I’ve finally been offered a full-time position at Zynga as an associate game designer and I will be starting next Monday. :x

The whole story of submitting my resume and interviewing is really somewhat entertaining, but too long and maybe too detailed for a public space. Suffice to say, I am deeply indebted to Quad for his dogged pursual of my case from the inside, without which I’m sure my resume would still be languishing unnoticed.

I’m also intensely gratified that despite the fact that I originally applied for front-end development (a tech position), my first set of interviewers were actually interested in finding out what I’m all about and recognized that I’m more suited to design, and were willing to redirect the recruiting process to suit. They treated me like a real individual with unique needs, so despite the occasional feeling that I would get where I was a fish in a restaurant’s waiting-to-be-cooked tank, I can’t really be angry.

And I didn’t hesitate for even a nanosecond when I finally got the call.

I’m nervous and excited to be starting in a position that I feel I’m lucky to have, but am totally ready and eager to dive in and start learning anew. Even if it does mean I have to commute to SF every weekday. >_> Once I settle in, I’ll probably consider finding something semi-permanent and closer to the Bay… whereupon I will be on my way to fulfilling my New Year’s Resolution. :D

So this is my last week of “freedom”, as it were. Gonna use it to finish chugging through Wind Waker, cause who knows what sort of free time I will have when work begins… >_>

(note: yes, this is part II, because part I was written almost as a gut reaction to the piece… which was mostly just confusion and turmoil and not worth reading anyway. after stewing on it for twenty-four hours and reading the follow-up, I think I am now in a much better position to reply coherently. so here it is.)

First of all, thank you Wall Street Journal for deliberately choosing a controversial title for the article to intentionally rile up readers. This is, obviously, what “good journalism” is all about after all… to color the upcoming excerpt in a negative light and get thousands of readers upset and inviting angry comments and even more worthless trolls that would have been less likely to happen if you had not LIED about the author’s original intention. Bastards.

For those of you who are uninformed of this “foofaraw” (Lloyd’s word), here’re the relevant links. (I didn’t post this as a link post because I wanted to make sure people read the follow-up and not just the original article.)

• The original article: Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior. This essay is an EXCERPT from the author’s upcoming book, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, something that is only printed in easy-to-ignore italicized text at the end of the piece. (more “good journalism” there.)
• The follow-up: The Tiger Mother Responds to Readers. Where the author clarifies that her book is more of a memoir of her experiences with strict parenting and how her position has changed.
• CNN weighs in: Chinese moms vs. Western moms: Is there a mother superior?. Has a decent video interview, too.

When all is said and done, I honestly believe that Amy Chua is completely well-intentioned and just trying to understand why the marked differences between certain child-rearing strategies exist. She acknowledges that there is no single formula for all children, but points out that there are definitely “quantifiable differences” in the way the two cultures approach it. (She has statistics, even.) Again, I deeply resent WSJ’s interference with what should have been an open-minded and self-reflective piece, not a shitstorm.

That said, I’ve attempted to catalog my thoughts into several different categories and will go through them as systematically as possible. Sometimes I agreed with Amy, and sometimes I didn’t. Sometimes I agreed with comments, and sometimes I didn’t. As a result, the following is going to be a mishmash of opinion and reflection and introspection. Since this is a topic I am very close to and feel very strongly about, it’s going to be a long read, so I hope you’re comfortable!

“Fun” Work

What Chinese parents understand is that nothing is fun until you’re good at it. To get good at anything you have to work, and children on their own never want to work, which is why it is crucial to override their preferences. This often requires fortitude on the part of the parents because the child will resist; things are always hardest at the beginning, which is where Western parents tend to give up.

This is, I think, for the most part, true. There is no better explanation for why I hate math; it’s because I suck at it. And if I had listened to my dad and practiced the basics until they were solid, then practiced more advanced stuff until it was solid, then… etc. I genuinely believe that I wouldn’t suck (and therefore, hate) math so much. Alas.

However, I don’t think it’s always true. I think there are certainly times, especially later in life, when a person can develop an interest in some skill and pursue it and suck at it and still find it fun enough to continue trying. I also think it’s a little unfair to say Western parents “give up” here. Western parents try to find what their children are already naturally inclined to, so that this desire to pursue it regardless of early mistakes is what pushes the child forward, rather than the parents themselves.

The problem is when you’re trying to teach critical skills (i.e. math) that all children need to know and hate for whatever reason. It may be that a more disciplinarian approach is necessary. I could criticize the Western education system here, actually… the way math is taught is extremely dependent on the previous level and it proceeded too fast for me (or I just didn’t get enough homework in early stages). I probably should not have been in the advanced classes with my less-than-stellar understanding, but by then it’s too late.

But let’s try talking about something a little less critical… like, say, music. Why IS it that Chinese parents find it so fashionable to foist some sort of musical training on their children? (And why is it always piano or violin?) It’s not even parents who got the same treatment when they were children… my parents didn’t have any formal musical training, yet they started me on piano when I was four. Wat? This must have something to do with growing up and appreciating music in ways that you can’t when you’re a child. Both parents who have had forced musical educations end up being grateful for the skill “later”… and parents who went without end up wishing they had someone to force them to learn it when it was easy.

I got lucky. Or… maybe it was my PARENTS got lucky. I hated learning piano and after x years of learning docilely, I started to fight back. No amount of shame at my piano lessons (and trust me, I did feel a lot of it) would make me want to practice when I got home. But then they found an article for the San Francisco Girls Chorus in the paper. And maybe they thought something like, hey, it’s like Girl Scouts, only for music! I must have already shown some inclination towards singing for them to bring me in for an audition, and the rest is history.

You see? They found me an expression of music that I enjoyed and I did the rest. They never had to ask me to practice my music, because I took care of it on my own. The threat of doing poorly in rep(ertoire) checks meant enough to me, ME personally, that I took my own rehearsal in hand. (They were less pleased later on when Girls Chorus started to interfere with school attendance, but oh well. >_> )

At the same time, now (at the tender age of 26, lol) I can also admit that I was grateful for the piano lessons, even though I’ve let my skills atrophy so much that it’s probably like I had six years instead of twelve. Just yesterday I was playing scales for the hell of it and promising myself that when I’m more settled, I can commit to something like learning a new song every month. Another resolution to add to the pile.

Conclusion? Hell if I know. Sometimes critical skills are not fun and require more rigid discipline. Sometimes, to get children the skills that you wish they would develop, you can find an acceptable alternative to the “traditional” paths.

There are, of course, the times when even things you are very good at stop being fun, something that Chua kind of ignored. Because just garnering compliments is not enough for true enjoyment. Or maybe when you have fun things to do AS your work… and then they become these weird hybrid activities that are fun when someone’s not paying you. But I guess that’s another topic altogether.

(Or maybe it’s just later in her book. Surely at 13, her daughter was probably pretty good at violin, but still wanted to quit?)

Building Self-Esteem

Confidence in myself and my abilities is definitely something I grapple with regularly, but I don’t think it’s to any extent that is particularly unnatural.

First, I’ve noticed that Western parents are extremely anxious about their children’s self-esteem. They worry about how their children will feel if they fail at something, and they constantly try to reassure their children about how good they are notwithstanding a mediocre performance on a test or at a recital. In other words, Western parents are concerned about their children’s psyches. Chinese parents aren’t. They assume strength, not fragility, and as a result they behave very differently … Chinese parents demand perfect grades because they believe that their child can get them. If their child doesn’t get them, the Chinese parent assumes it’s because the child didn’t work hard enough.

This is, I think, a rather interesting observation / viewpoint, that Chinese parents view their children as strong, thus it’s “okay” to be somewhat verbally abusive, whereas Western parents view their children as “fragile” and are therefore more careful with their words. It’s even more interesting when I consider how strong friendships are sometimes heaped with verbal barbs between one another, whereas fragile (or new) friendships are rarely threatened thus.

But Chinese children are rarely “friends” with their parents, even as adults, while I think Western parents often show a higher success rate of being on more friendly terms with their children after they’re grown. Does this mean a Western child-parent relationship is viewed as a tentative friendship that must be grown into something stronger? Does it mean a Chinese child-parent relationship is viewed as inviolable?

Hmm.

In the end, I think that building up a child’s self-esteem can only be assured with more parental involvement. A Chinese parent who scolds and then doesn’t invest themselves personally is not really any better than a Western parent who says “it’s cool” and lets it slide. If the parents don’t invest themselves in their children, then I think it’s more likely that the child will grow up feeling like they are not worth anyone’s time.

I also think it’s very important that “failure” be handled cautiously, while being mindful of possible repercussions. Everyone has off days, but it’s no excuse for being lazy. At the same time, it is absolutely not healthy to cement the idea that failure is equated with great shame. Mistakes are a fact of life and they can be OVERCOME. Perfection is one enormous fabrication; just look at evolution if you want the ultimate model of trial and error. Yes, some mistakes are worse than others, but in academics? Bite me.

Also…

The fact is that Chinese parents can do things that would seem unimaginable—even legally actionable—to Westerners. Chinese mothers can say to their daughters, “Hey fatty—lose some weight.”

Um, yeah, no it’s not. I am exceptionally sensitive about my weight and body appearance and I know exactly who to “thank” for that.

Obligation to Parents

Second, Chinese parents believe that their kids owe them everything. The reason for this is a little unclear, but it’s probably a combination of Confucian filial piety and the fact that the parents have sacrificed and done so much for their children … Anyway, the understanding is that Chinese children must spend their lives repaying their parents by obeying them and making them proud.

This is definitely true. :P Personally, though, I hold the opinion that Chua’s husband did/does.

“Children don’t choose their parents,” he once said to me. “They don’t even choose to be born. It’s parents who foist life on their kids, so it’s the parents’ responsibility to provide for them. Kids don’t owe their parents anything. Their duty will be to their own kids.”

Having said that, I do feel an everlasting debt to my parents and intend to see it through. I often joke that their money is my money. But when I’m finally independent (not TOO long from now, hopefully), the reverse will be true. I don’t exactly resent this obligation… I merely accept that it is there, that I feel it, and that I would be deeply ashamed of myself if I am unable to care for them in return. How can you really hate something that has developed because of the things two people have done for you because they love you?

But I wouldn’t have my own kids and expect this to be true.

Social Interaction

Chua never specifically talks about a “lack” of social interaction, but it was a big talking point for the commenters who were against her particular mode of parenting. Here’s one.

I have had the pleasure of managing and working with many asian american friends who have come from a similarly high pressure/high achievement oriented childhood. While most of them were wonderful, smart and ambitious they all — all of them — lacked a broader sense of perspective, empathetic humility and true leadership qualities. In other words, they were socially incomplete and, somehow, not fully developed as people.

I wasn’t allowed to go to sleepovers until I was in middle school (hi, Kim!). Even Chorus summer camp was off-limits or shortened. In elementary school, I very occasionally went to friends’ houses for birthday parties. I had all the early trappings of a traditional Chinese parent-child relationship.

Except, well, they let me go onto the computer. Where I had AOL and role-play. And boy did my dad regret that sometimes. (hi, charge-per-hour internet!) Who knows how that early exposure to a creative writing chatroom, changed my eventual social trajectory? It certainly gave me the perspective that online interaction could be as worthwhile as face to face interaction, which is a value I hold near and dear to my heart.

Maybe this was a saving grace that allowed me to connect with people, albeit in a limited fashion. My parents always warned me, of course, not to share real information… cause of all the stalkers, you know. I uh… generally obeyed this. :x

Things changed a little when I hit middle school and met The Girls. Suddenly I was going to sleepovers and holding my own! But I definitely remember some tension when I took AIC at ATDP and started developing new connections there that my parents were less than pleased to have me pursue, at the expense of studying for SATs. By then it was too late, really… I was addicted to the gratification that you can only get from having fun with friends and wouldn’t hear a word in edgewise.

Would I be socially stunted if I didn’t originally have the internet and if I hadn’t found friends to hang out with at lunch? It’s hard to say. Part of me thinks no, but another part thinks about my friends in elementary school and that alien feeling I got whenever I attended those birthday parties. I don’t regret not being allowed to stay the night at said parties, but maybe this was because I just wasn’t socially adjusted that young… at least, not in person. I had only two friends from school, neither of whom I had very much in common with, and only interacted with other children on a regular basis when my mother was friends’ with their mother.

At any rate, I recognize that my particular growing circumstances were relatively unique. And though I wouldn’t trade it for anything, I won’t deny that maybe it could have gone very wrong if some things hadn’t gone very right.

Wow, okay, I am finally done. I think I’ve come a long way from our original “Asian Parents foofaraw” about eight years ago, don’t you think?

Talk about your low key New Year. We spent it watching the countdown on Manda’s television and playing Bang… probably some of the more aggressive games I’ve ever participated in. >_>

Lately I’ve been busy, but only socially… have just been visiting with friends and family… and family friends. My extended family has been overrun with young children (brother, cousin, and another cousin)… which can sometimes be amusing, but is mostly just sort of terrifying to me. It makes me feel irritated because they squeal and pout and don’t know how to behave themselves. It makes me scared because they clamber up and down the stairs at breakneck paces and I’ll hear random crashing noises when I’m locked up in my room.

It makes me feel old because while I have not been “the baby” of the family in many years, I was still always “the youngest”.

As far as life is concerned, I’m still floundering. Getting a job is now the priority and though I have a small pile of bookmarks to positions I’ll be throwing applications at, I really have no idea where I might end up in the near future. Combined with the fact that I’d still like to get my own game off the ground and my mother’s strange circus of a side business that she wants to start, things look more uncertain than ever. Materially, anyway.

I re-read last year’s New Years log and, for once, I remember exactly how I was feeling back then and I am beyond grateful that I no longer feel so emotionally sapped. Still not out of the woods yet, but at least things aren’t looking so desolate. >_>

Anyway… yeah. First, find a job. Second, move out. (Sorry, Mom, there’s no way I’m staying here for longer than necessary.)

And when that’s all settled, get a cat. Yes, that is totally going to be my New Year’s Resolution. Screw “losing weight” and screw “getting more sleep”. If I don’t have a cat by the end of this year, then you can all say that I fail life, okay?

(well, okay, I wouldn’t mind if I lost twenty pounds, too. that’ll be my backup resolution. XP )

It’s late and I’m not sleepy. I’ve nothing I want to do in Warcraft, my Facebook games are all up to date, and I actually coded several hours earlier today, so am not feeling guilty about that (for once). Therefore, the only thing I have left to do is write. >_> And I have some things leftover in my head in my head, still, leftover from my China visit… so here we go.

This trip was, I think, a little uncharacteristic of me. I haven’t generally shown or felt much interest in international travel and even less interest in my so-called motherland. So when my parents extended the invitation to me earlier this year, I think they expected me to say nothx. I think I expected myself to say that, too.

But… I had a few good reasons for going against the grain. Well, all good reasons, really. For one, it took place during a transition phase, where I wouldn’t yet be employed, so I wasn’t exactly occupied with other things. Another is that they were planning to visit the World Expo which happened to be in Shanghai, which is an amazing thing in itself. Yet another was that I don’t spend much time with my parents, and (let’s face it) we’re all getting older, so I should take advantage of what time we do have, right?

The final reason was one I alluded to already, in that I felt that maybe I’m finally old enough to appreciate things that I would have missed when I was younger. And the idea that I would be visiting the house that my grandmother grew up in was surprisingly arousing, when nothing else ever had been. I wouldn’t say it inspired ethnic pride, but I found myself moved to a curiosity I never possessed before, at least.

So I went. And I watched and listened, smelled and tasted. And though I rested my brain by reading a great deal (understatement), other times it was provoked into consideration of things I was observing.

If asked if I “enjoyed” my trip, I admit I wouldn’t readily say “yes”. There wasn’t exactly any particular moment in which I would have refused the opportunity to go home early. But there were absolutely times where I was amazed or awestruck. And I feel like I did a lot of learning, which IS something I like. So I would hardly say that the trip was a wasted one, either.

If I had to name China’s “worst” quality, in my opinion, it would likely be the population of people, and all the problems that entails. I complained about the crowds and the smoke, for one. Average level of hygiene is still something very much to be desired… spitting is terribly common, and even urinating in public has not been totally ostracized, much to my dismay. People regularly hose down the streets and sidewalks that they live or work on and up until this trip, I never stopped to wonder why.

I know I’ve said I don’t like to stereotype, but here I can’t avoid it: in China, the people are very impatient. This may seem strange… I would have thought that people would grow accustomed to the need to wait, but it seems the exact opposite is true… people are so tired of waiting all the time (and in China, you have to wait All The Time) that they become accustomed to resorting to any means necessary to avoid a wait.

In traffic, the cars never yield to pedestrians because they’re afraid of being swamped by people and being unable to move. Taxis would very frequently, without any hesitation, swerve into the oncoming traffic lane to get around a brief obstruction in front of them. And at the Expo, people in line behind us would start screaming at some perceived hold-up when in reality, the line was being redirected and shortened. Not to mention the number of people who would shamelessly shove their way to the front of a huge two hour pile-up.

Seriously? And why exactly is your time more valuable than mine, again?

The total lack of basic human courtesy that this impatience resulted in was really appalling and it’s my guess that it’s the sheer overpopulation of China that causes it. It’s like when you have a six lane highway funneling down into a two lane bottleneck. In America, drivers won’t exactly be happy with the situation, but they’ll settle down and manage it as politely as possible. But in China? One third of those cars will just start honking nonstop while another third will curse and swear about how stupid the other drivers and/or the city planning was and then turn their cars 180 degrees to find another way to their destination, heedless of any possible danger they might pose to others in the meantime.

So that’s the thing I hated the most, I think. Though mosquitoes are an exceptionally close second. They weren’t bad until we left Shanghai, and then they were really, really bad. I was in total agony in the last few days, including a couple of sleepless nights, because I would be falling asleep and suddenly hear a mosquito buzz past my ear, shocking me into paranoid wakefulness. That was pretty horrible, too, though in a totally different way.

I also didn’t like how everything in China just felt dirty, no matter how clean it looked. This might have just been something about me, rather than the actual environment… but I’m not really sure. And I hate how asking for ice water at a Chinese restaurant would just confused the waiters. >_> Oh, and of course, I hated the internet censorship. Seriously, that last thing alone would be enough to make me never, ever want to live there. I mean, it’d be one thing if they wanted to censor, like, only porn. But Twitter’s not quite porn, is it? (Despite some efforts to the contrary, I’m sure…) I take it back. Not that I’m in favor of porn, but the whole point is that it’s all or nothing. So nyeah.

Hmm, so what about what I will miss about China? Or, if “miss” is too strong, what aspects of China do I wish existed in the states?

I’ll miss how picturesque it was, certainly. I didn’t take 571 pictures because I wanted to bore people with a slideshow afterwards (although I could certainly do that XP ). More often than not, too, I would be taking a picture not because I thought something was beautiful, but because something was old… and therefore aesthetically interesting because of it. If there’s anything common in China (besides people), it’s old things. Like this or this or this… or this. (that pagoda/tower totally floored me, btw, when I saw it… felt like something out of Okami. >_>; )

Along with that, I’ll miss how I could look at certain buildings and structures, and be forced to wonder at its history, because it almost certainly had a colorful one. This in addition to things that obviously had history and/or cultural significance, like this. I think I manage to retain some healthy amount of reverence for symbols of religious significance, even when I ascribe to agnosticism myself. Especially for Buddha, since … well, if I HAD to pick a religion at this point, I’d probably go with something like Buddhism, cause I never heard of a Buddhist engaging in holy war or genocide. (And yeah, that would be my only reason. Sorry. ;P )

I’ll also miss how cheap everything was, not that I ever paid for anything. ^_^;

Ultimately, I’m pleased to leave this whole experience exactly as it is and not make too much of it: it was educational and enlightening, but also totally reassuring: you guys can have your Great [Fire]Wall, cause I’m still a citizen of the better place.

But damn, if it isn’t taking me a long time to readjust my sleep schedule. Not helped by the lack of anything demanding on my time. ::sigh::

I’ve wasted a ridiculous number of hours in the past two days reading old logs. And not old weblogs, for once… but old instant messaging logs. I found a CD where I burned all the logs I had from my DeadAIM (lol) and Trillian days… like circa 2002 - 2005.

It’s really strange to go back and re-read these logs and discover … a lot of things I had forgotten. Some of the memories tickle at my brain… like insertions of people’s names randomly into a conversation, to brink them, or old Away messages (“Polly wanna warcracker?”), whereas others made me feel like I was reading the transcripts of strangers.

And there were some conversations that made my blood freeze in a sort of terrified astonishment because they were so intensely personal. And it was startling because they were with people that I really don’t remember getting so personal with.

So much drama and frustration! I know that the masks have gotten to be more durable as I’ve gotten older, but I really didn’t remember how serious the cracks sometimes were. I like to think I avoided a lot of the needless pain and suffering that besets a lot of teenagers as they muddle through life, but it turns out there were still a fair number of incidents in which a little more maturity would have maybe been a godsend.

Then again, maybe not. Who knows. I’m grateful, at least, that some of my currently enduring friendships that were forged and tempered in this time period were not broken by the sometimes brutal honesty.

Truth be told, though, there’s a part of me that laments the fact that I — and maybe others — have grown to acknowledge that it’s not always best to be completely honest. Or, rather, that’s not quite right… perhaps it is “best” to always be honest, but since the truth is not always the most painless route, maturity demands that we suck it up and avoid confrontation.

Which is unfortunate, because I’ve always been a fan of emotional discharges. The positive ones, of course, but maybe you can’t get those if you’re not willing to risk the occasional negative one too? Hm.

I wish I had the presence of mind to log these days, but it’s like there’s just too much to say, so I get tired just thinking about writing it, let alone actually doing. Lately it just seems like the world is pulling apart at the seams.

One thing that’s fanning the gaming flames is the Real IDs + forums stunt that Blizzard is pulling… which, as someone who has Studied Facebook Games And Compared Them To Hardcore MMOs, is a fascinating move that my mind is reeling at. I have a ton of thoughts on the subject, but not much coherency, so I don’t feel good about writing about it.

TIC and ATDP are much the same, while also being totally different. While doing something totally new has been reinvigorating to some degree, I haven’t made so many mistakes since my first year teaching with Trev. I’m overall still having fun, but there’s some stress involved with keeping things running smoothly and I end up worrying about the future too much.

Of course, the really big news was the Mehserle verdict that came out earlier today. I don’t know much about the case except what I picked up off of Wikipedia and I’ll admit that the whole thing only came to my attention because ATDP has been on alert for the sake of students who take BART. While I understood the basics of the case, what I didn’t really follow or recognize was the reality of the expectation of violence in the event of a perceived too lenient sentence.

I guess I continue to be too naive in the face of racial tension, because Oakland got completely torn up today.

Here’s hoping reason and sanity return sooner rather than later.

Oh, and happy birthday, Spark. :x