Fortune cookie

The sweet yellow fortune teller says
"statistics are no substitute for judgement"

and my lucky numbers are 3, 5, 11, and 19

family dinner

Expecting!

We’re expecting…a niece or a NEPHEW! They are almost 4 months along, and it is fascinating that this little life is GROWING inside. I have seen sonogram pictures over the past few weeks and they are amazing themselves, but they don’t compare to what I heard this weekend.

20 magical seconds. I listened to a recording of the baby’s (I don’t know what to call it/HIM/her) heartbeat. Unbeleivable! I don’t know where to begin describing it. It was so strong and fast, beating rhythmically, frantically…pumping blood to what? The few inches of body? The heartbeat was so strong and so fast, like the little one was running sprints...does it even have legs yet?

That’s the thing that amazes me…it is not yet 4 months, and yet there is this incredible, real, loud, pounding heart that is just beating away…yet so much else of the baby has probably yet to form…probably doesn’t have any digits, other “vital” organs haven’t formed, eyes?, ears?, lungs? All of the things that make us human are lacking, except for heart…there was a heart, perhaps the thing that makes us most human?

Hanging Orchid

This is an old-style thai house. It has none of the frills and stuff that we ceaselessly accumulate to fill the space we have. This traditional house had nothing but aplank to sleep on, a floor, a roof, and these flowers. Thats it. No walls even.

Earth From Above

My sense of enormity was inspired last night as I saw the world from above. I saw the city from the 96th floor, atop the John Hancock building, staring out into the man made sea of buildings. This land of a million lights for miles and miles….all lighting up a million different universes make up Chicago.

You may remember a hundred years ago, there was a small fire that burned a few of the buildings down.

Since then, hundreds upon hundreds of buildings have gone up in their place. Awe inspiring is just not descriptive enough. When you think that men, like little ants, built up the city one stone, one brick, one floor, one building at a time…reaching skyward as the city spilled over and was then corralled by the lake. And still under construction!

All man made? Is that possible? There must have been some divine intervention, I mean just LOOK, is this not comparable to Niagara Falls, Muir Woods, or the Grand Canyon? The lights, towers, the silent mayhem that is going on below. People filling every space, every floor, every room…life teeming out of every concrete corner. The lights! There are so many, too many to count. Top to bottom, east to west, north to south….light upon light upon light. Can we have made this? So much energy in this place, rivaled only by the sun it seems.


I was battling an anxiety to get out of what I thought was so familiar…so Chicago, but going up and seeing for miles and just realizing that ‘downtown’ as it is generically called by suburbanites like me is divided into 20 distinct neighborhoods, just in “the loop” alone. The thought that just a couple buildings could EASILY house my entire suburb, made me just realize that there is so much city left to be discovered.

I have lived here my whole life and this is the first time I have been here. WHY HAVE I NEVER DONE THIS BEFORE?

Night Hancock

Sea Foam

Physics 112

I can remember back to my first college physics classes studying light and fluid dynamics and magnetism. I am so fascinated with the way thoses classes explained the world. A bird in flight, a traffic signal, the tide, a pool ball. I can still recall coming out of each class(feeling a bit nerdy)and being in awe of just having learned how this or that works while fitting so nicely into the principles of what i was learning.




I saw this glass while at a lecture recently. I noticed that it was half full:p and also noticed the reflection of the words on the screen transposed in the reflection of the water. The rays of light bouncing around in the glass and totally understanding why...i wish i could say the same for the lecture.....so naturally i swiped the glass so i could take some pictures. I look at this picture and i feel a sudden(and brief)insight into the world, just like my weekly freshman physics revelations.

Mishkat

House Boat

Recommendation

I happened by a couple pieces of paper that caught my eye and made me pay close attention. The pages were brownish and old looking. It was stationary, but old and it had come from a type-writer, not a printer.

My eyes searched for the date, January 1985. I started reading, realizing they were references or recommendations. Not just run of the mill recommendations, but full page almost gushing recommendations of work ethic and dependability and accuracy and most notably, ‘likability’.

This last part was what made most impression on me. Yeah sure, you think about the work that is to be done, that’s what you are looking for. A person who can get the job done. But being liked…that’s such an intangible quality, and one that is so often overlooked in a work relationship.

The pages both used the words, “character”, “likable”, “nice to be around”. I was very proud to read this on letters of recommendation for my dad and wish him the same experiences in his new job.

life less ordinary

Sad how easy it is to fall back into life. Didn't even miss a beat, it seems. Everything around is so comfortable and so much as it always has been.

So much of the everyday just comes and goes, passes us by. Though, about a year ago, everything was different, every single thing...from going to the grocery store to GETTING to the grocery store on the back of a crazy motorcycle taxi! The sights and sounds are still very real in my mind. I can smell the slightly offensive strange food being sold on the street and hear a low roar of people buying and selling in the marketplace so vividly in my head.

This is a picture i took of some fruit being sold in the market. Just stacked one on top of the other, like the many sensations, i felt one on top of the other...it brings me back to that place that had a pulse all its own.

northshore

sunset beach

attention

A thousand words

I love taking pictures and I want to share them, so I resolve to share.

Pesky Brazil Nut

I was lucky enough to go to the amazon last year and it still fascinates me. There are so many mind boggling facts about the amazon like, it produces 20% of the earth's oxygen or the amazon river contains 30% of the world's freshwater, that i could just list and list and list. Thanks google.

One thing in particular that just is fascinating about mother nature and the symbiosm that exists in nature is the brazil tree. This mammoth tree that grows up to 160 feet tall. They generate their own climate, make clouds and rain. Its own eco-system.

One of several things that are amazing about this tree is that it produces a pod full of seeds, those brazil nuts that no one likes. Well what's fascinating is that the pod is so hard that not a single animal in the forest, and that's thousands, has jaws strong enough to break the pod. It would take a man 20 minutes with a hacksaw to open one of these pods...The brazil tree depends on one rodent with chisel like teeth to open the pods and bury the nuts.

WOW! This mammoth tree is totally dependent on one little rodent. This tree that can house thousands of species of insects and animals in a single tree, totally dependent on one little animal. Life. Nature. Incredible that the tree that is the life blood of the forest which is perhaps the life giver of the world so closely tied to every living thing.

Simulate

I’ve been reading a lot of technical actuarial papers for a project I’ve been working on. I have designed a pretty cool way to run Monte Carlo simulations. It’s the sort of thing I could just as easily be doing for a lab class in college as for work.

I am reading about and looking up many mathematical and statistical principles and am in a new awe. Covariance, correlation, convolution and transformation. I am relearning properties that I am again finding fascinating. How the rules never bend, yet equations, properties, and situations somehow simplify from complex monsters. I am being reminded of why I am such a geek and love numbers. So beautifully dependable and objective. Their properties, amazingly complex but in the end beautiful for their simplicity and the elegance the way everything can come together.

No skin ON

OooOOoooo….the body world’s exhibit at the museum is just on my mind. Days later and I’m still thinking about it, still forming ideas and still in awe. It was interesting, sad, intellectual, grotesque, and beautiful all at once.

Hundreds of REAL HUMAN specimens ‘plastinized’ (is that even a word?) and carefully dissected and displayed. Awesome! These real human bodies of men, women, and children displayed with no skin let you see (quite literally) the inner workings of the body. You could see the muscles, the organs, the nerves the skeleton, and everything else inside from every angle.

Upon entering, the first display made me just stop and think, “Is that REAL?” It is almost too much to take in, my mind was in shock, I ended up spending so much time looking at the first body, at a person who used to eat, drink, and maybe even look at exhibits in a museum. Just frozen in plastic. The bodies were posed and seemed ‘ultra’-real, there was a teacher, a runner, an almost voyeuristic look at a mother and her unborn child, a family holding hands, and more.

It is gruesome to know that they are real and individuals…but with no skin, no color, no religion, they are just people. Just the same mix of red and yellow and blue as anybody.
They are just a mix of many complex systems intertwined and working as one machine. A beautifully engineered machine who’s creation may have been more in exercise in ‘beauty than utility.’

This exhibit, this human body may be more appropriately placed in an art museum rather than one devoted to science.

Check out http://latitude.blogspot.com for Z’s take on this.

Soma-tose

Ever read Brave New World? I haven’t since high school and I’m glad I picked it up again, because I was probably did not get a whole lot out of it then. It’s an Orwelian-esque novel where a Utopia is created through conditioning and chemicals. In this strange society, everyone is conditioned to know their place and everyone takes ‘happy’ pills.

They are happy drones. Of course it begs the question, are they better off not knowing?

Isn’t there is so much that we are (blissfully?) ignorant of? With our TV pills and 9-5 conditioning you have to wonder

“Don’t you want to be free and men? Don’t you even understand what manhood and freedom are?” – Aldous Huxley

Portrait

This weekend while celebrating Maryam's first birthday was the first time that my entire family has been in the same place at the same time, since several people have become part of the family. Now adays, seldom does it seem we are in the same place. So we decided to capture it on film.

What an ordeal, a fun one! In a matter of seconds it was decided that we would try to do a family portrait. And do it NOW! So the house was in a mess as we moved furniture and set up lights and cameras to record this likely to be the last time there are only 10 people in the family, and in one place. We had every combination of sleeping and awake kids, our rooms appeared as if they had thrown up with clothes strewn about and finally we all were awake, dressed to kill and posing.

I guess 20 pictures is not enough to capture a pose with 10 people all with their eyes open and not looking wierd at the same time, but it was a very fun 3 hours.

The best part was the 10 seconds between each time the timer was pressed and the picture was taken. The whole family trying to get the two kids to not cry and look at the camera put a real smile on everyones face. A smile from the heart, not the head...and even though we won't have it in a frame, I have it in my head.