audrey says stuff

I like working where I do. Except when the printers get hungry…

(Happy April Fool’s!)

Look, it’s a cassette tape! But…it’s online :)

I never actually made a real one of these, but here’s my stab at an online muxtape.  

I can’t get itunes to export the playlist I made in any normal format, or I’d paste the stuff here. Sorry.

Muxtape’s pretty firmly in the pseudo-legal realm, but I like it, because it doesn’t try to be too many things.  It’s got a metaphor, and it sticks to it.

If you make one, let me know! 

I was sitting today, and wondering why Easter is “Easter.”
People always mumble about the reduction of Christmas to Xmas or Santa stuff, but Easter can’t really be abbreviated. And what does it mean, anyhow? Look east-er? Sunrise is in the east, so um…in the sense of the sun rising again, so does resurrection make sense?

Wikipedia had an interesting explanation.

The modern English term Easter developed from the Old English word Eastre, which itself developed prior to AD 899. The name refers to the Eostur-monath, a month of the Germanic calendar which may have been named for the goddess Eastre in Germanic paganism.^[4]

…which makes no sense to me, given the Christian nature of the holiday. Other people call it something related to it’s Greek name, Pascha (passover, pesach), in Slavic languages, it’s the “Great Day/Night”, and apparently Croatians just say “The Resurrection.”

They make a lot of sense, those other languages.

Otherwise, the non-commercialization of Easter vs. Christmas was the topic of this article. The author makes a good point about the non-fuzziness of wearing an iconified, dying human as fashion accessory.

(To sum: Everyone likes a feel-good family story, no one in their right mind particularly likes guys being tortured on crosses).

And yet, it’s Happy Easter, because Easter’s the happy ending to the gruesomely sad story.

Happy Easter, all.

(Let’s just say that they do speak English, yet they don’t speak English down there.)

Getting off the plane in Johannesburg, I had no idea what to expect. During the past 23 hours of airtime, my legs had been going numb to the tune of TED talks on Africa, Ladysmith Black Mambazo and the Lion King, and Fodor’s guide to South Africa. All that was, perhaps, too much to absorb in a semi-conscious state, because I still didn’t know what I should find at all.

Did my luggage actually, really make it over? In a bout of distrustful paranoia, I’d only checked one bag, and borrowed TSA-friendly locks for it to boot. Expecting the worst, I had carried on a large backpack with a spare set of clothes and my malaria pills. Would I get mugged? Would I actually get the chance to maybe punch someone?

We (coworker and I) arrived in Johannesburg at about 4pm, a little concerned about getting through customs and all in time to make our 5pm shuttle pickup.

It was a tad stressful, because we weren’t sure where the shuttle was supposed to pick us up. After being happily shocked to retrieve our luggage, we made our way to the exit. A hippie looking sort of lady with a tattered “Youth Hostel” sign ambled up, and asked if we had a place to stay. We did, and when she heard where, she dismissed us with “Oh, that’ll be the guy with the orange sign. He’s around.”

He wasn’t, so we asked the security guard about hostel pickups. He started to explain, shook his head, and started walking us to the pickup area. After five minutes of following this man, who was chatting with his friend the whole time, we suddenly found ourselves no longer in a noisy airport walkway, but in a sunlit, silent area between two buildings. His friend had vanished, and there was another man following 20 feet behing us.

Just as I started calculating whether to run with my backpack, or drop it, our “guard” smiled and pointed to the sign at the end of the alley, and the driveway beyond it. “Hotel Pickups and Shuttles.” We weren’t getting mugged, after all!

We were, however, in the wrong place. The taxi drivers at the hotel pickup spot knew this, and we were a little worried, since it was nearing on 5:00! After explaining the situation to the cabbies, one actually gave us change to call the hostel. With the help of an information desk (who let us use their phone for free, AND helped us dial), we deciphered that the meeting point was the information desk, and all we had to do was stand around.

Standing for a bit past 5, we realized that there had been no need to rush, really.

The car radio on the way to the hostel spouted the usual traffic, stocks, weather, and crime reports. Barring stories and warnings, South Africa was looking to be quite the pleasant trip.

We got to the hostel uneventfully, met Jess, and…found that all restaurants close early on Mondays. Alas.

Hostel food is edible and hot, if bland, and after a meal of apricot chicken and rice, we tucked in for a 5am safari wakeup call.

Day 1 mosquito count: 2 (Hours in S. Africa: 5)

It’s review time at work again!
We get graded somewhat on the basis of exceeding/meeting/falling short of expectations.
I would argue that really…meeting expectations is pretty much missing them.

It’s been a sad habit of mine to set artificially low bars for myself, that I could either hop, leap, or skip over with ease.
Take this morning, for instance. After waking up ridiculously early due to jet lag (I mean ridiculously,) I decided to go for a 6am swim with the local master’s swim group. Master’s swimming means that there’s a coach at the pool, giving you a workout, and different lanes with different speeds of swimmers. Now, it’s been a while since I’ve been swimming, so I decided to be conservative and jump into the 3rd fastest lane (of 7). Which turned out to be perfect, actually. Except that I eventually realized that I was really in the 3rd slowest lane. A small distinction, but it still made me sad, and feeling very very slow and out of shape.

Alas. Sad that I met the bar I set myself

I’ve been busy and completely off the grid for the past four days~! An amazing feat…my keyboard fingers fwere itching almost as much as my mosquito bites. All four of ‘em. I’ve actually doubled that number since arriving in Cape Town, but that’s what the malaria meds are for, right?

There’s a lot to say about Kruger - it was quite awe-inspiring to see serious African plains, complete with azure sky, golden brush, green trees, and skipping quadrupeds. We went on 4 game drives: two at sunrise, two during the day. The way Kruger Park is set up, these drives are are essentially people driving around in a safari vehicle, hoping for random encounters with wildlife. (Apparently in private game reserves, there’s actual tracking of animals offroad that’s permitted). To give you an idea of the diversity we saw, here are the animals we saw (or at least those whose names I remember).

impala zebra hippo elephant giraffe lion hyena warthog steenbok impala jennacat kudu crocodile wildebeest waterbuck buffalo rabbit leopardtortoise monitorlizard blacksnakeeagle weaverbird baboon vervetmonkey whitebackedvulture beeeaters beardedvulture hornbeak plover

Alas, no rhino/cheetah/leopard. TONS upon TONS of impala, zebra, elephant, giraffe, hyena though.
Enjoy the pics! I’ll write in more detail later.

Today I was thinking to write some emails that need writing.
Particularly, some “hey, I know I suck for not writing this sooner, but THANKS” kinda stuff.

But then I thought that an email was a bit too heavy seeming for that.
Naturally, I tabbed over to facebook for a facebook message. But then I thought of how THAT seemed kinda heavy too.
Everything about communication’s just so darned hard! It requires action and thought. Egads.

So now I’m at a loss.
Mebbe I busts out the notecards.
Probably not.

Laziness-imposed muteness.

Make videos.

I dunno how I’m voting, but the fact that there are people I respect (a lot of ‘em) sticking this all over their status messages, and the fact that it’s a pretty decent speech too (if largely meaningless) is kinda nice.

Clinton doesn’t have anything quite so cool.
I’m a stupid American, it’s true.
Just check out the results for “Clinton music video” (Bimbo #5) vs. “Obama music video.” (Yes We Can).

http://www.yeswecansong.com

Says to me, just by virtue of media and such, that as a gal in Silicon Valley, I should be voting for the candidate who knows how to reach people like me.

See so now - I’m going to go look stuff up and see what people actually stand for. Not bad, eh? Considering I’m Grade A 100% Apathetic Asian American.

Ya know how sometimes, when traffic backs up, and everyone’s in a bad mood, and someone signals and you think…hm…I’m in a crappy mood and this all sucks but I guess I’ll be nice so you slow down to let them in, but they totally don’t do anything?

So you’re like, well…screw YOU jerk. And you’re in an even worse mood than before, so you pull back your generous offering of road space and don’t let ANYONE, even BUGS in, for the next 10 miles.

People really really REALLY need to learn to communicate and learn basic social awareness when driving. Would alleviate so many things. Or maybe most (stupid) people are just incapable of receiving such information. Too much going on to fit in their pea brains.

And decided that this year is not the year of learning to surf. We’ll save that for next year.
A decision arrived upon as a result of already-allocated vacation time, and some really good snow last weekend. (Think I’ve scratched my sliding on a board fix for a bit).
This year can be the year of more land-based modes of transportation! (Once things get warmer, and I stop chickening out).

As I was falling asleep and using my computer last night (simultaneously, as usual), I decided to try to remember what myers-briggs person I was. Rather than retake the stupid thing, I decided to read some profiles and see which ones sounded familiar.
So I think I’m an INFP, mostly because of this paragraph: INTP because oops, infp.org doesn’t exist, and intp.org does. Heh. See the problem here? I remember getting hung up on the T vs. F thing before, but reading the super long profile made me settle on the T bit. Bear with me for a few excerpts, and I promise - no more navel gazing for a while. Which is to say, the first bit her is vaguely related to NOT surfing this year, but the rest is just affirmation for things I think I knew, but really…they ring pretty true.

This bit verifies that yes, I’m interested in tons of things, and also why I’m not seriously good at any of them. But why I stick with them until I feel like I can hold my own. (Snowboarding, carrying on conversations in other languages, ME stuff…)

Dominant Function: Introverted Thinking

While proficiency may not be a central goal, competence always is. Refined competency requires too much effort and has little attraction. It would require practice and that usually bores an INTP. Hence, it is common to see INTPs dabbling at many things, achieving competency, just enough to prove to themselves that they could become more proficient if they wished, but rarely actually bothering to refine their skills further.

This next bit resonates with my “humanity sucks and maybe I thought everyone else was an alien when I was little” side.
Also, my “people, PLEASE learn to DRIVE” thoughts.

INTP’s put great weight on being individuals and essentially different from other people, who they often view as being too alike and too interdependent. Independence touches on many aspects. One is the competency aspect above. When he is interested in something, then the INTP must be competent in it. But there are many things which don’t interest him, and some of these will be things that others may be very competent in and where it may be assumed that everyone should be competent in them.

This bit just says that I’m lazy, and that I think more than I execute on things. A known issue.

Also that I dislike people on the grounds of pretentious fakeness and stupidity. But the fake is much worse than the stupid, because you must be trying to be that way. I guess my pride is rooted here - in finding all those people annoying, I implicitly think they’re more stupid than I am. The part that doesn’t line up, is the lack of mockery…some people (only some, mind you) seem to make fun of me quite a bit. I suppose when it’s serious mockery, and I’m seriously feeling the disdain, it’s true - I have to thrown in the veiled insult. So really, thank you, sucky stupid people. You give me a chance to hone an edge I wouldn’t otherwise get to. And if I’m right, you’re too dense to realize you’re being insulted in the meantime! So fun.

Where they differ from other temperaments (especially from SP types) is that a large gap may exist between knowing and doing. To know is everything, to do is a lower order necessity, if it is necessary at all. This breeds the potential for lazy aloofness. The INTP is often satisfied simply by knowing that he could do something if he wished.

INTPs detest facades and particulary dislike people who exhibit them. Equally, those kind of people also dislike INTPs and avoid them at all cost, for they know that the INTP will see right through them. The INTP’s serious nature also makes them almost immune to mockery and being made fun of, at least when face to face with their mocker. The INTPs defence usually also contains a subtle but biting attack thrown back in the mocker’s face, chiefly because the INTP cannot entirely hide the fact that he believes his opponent to be stupid.

And finally, the explanation for the only mundane thing that stresses me out…schedules. (Yes, I was an administrative assistant for a while. But that was other peoples’ schedules, not mine!) I can be traveling and semi sick with chaos swirling around me, and be totally fine. If I’m supposed to be meeting someone, and I have to make a certain train by a certain time, with a certain transfer, then I seriously get sick to my stomach and grumpily stressed out. Weird. And I always think your social event is gonna suck, but usually have fun when I actually go.

The preference for intuitive perception means that INTPs dislike having their lives planned. They feel a distinct unease before most fixed appointments and cannot fully relax until the scheduled event is over, or at least in progress. However, the dreaded event is usually far less of a problem than had been imagined and usually brings with it a sense of satisfaction.

All done! Back to work…