At the beginning of the week, I was preparing to drive to Washington, DC for a final-round job interview. I didn’t have any breakfast food with me (I’d just shifted to a friend’s place on Sunday night, after vacating the Ladies’ Den (the house I shared with three of my grad school classmates)), so I went to the Bruegger’s Bagels in Squirrel Hill to grab a quick bagel and coffee and use their wifi to jot down logistical notes for the trip.

While I was there, I became aware of a conversation between two older women a couple of tables over. It permeated my consciousness when one of them started repeating the phrase, “It makes me sick,” each time slightly louder and more vehement. I figured it would be some kind of rant on the current mess that is US politics, and I tuned in idly to see where it might go, half-expecting a rant against liberals or Democrats or something.

However, the next thing I perceived was, “I am so glad I grew up when I did, when we really experienced the glory that was America. Can a real American stand up anymore?” followed quickly by, “I know. I get on the bus and put my sunglasses on and just look straight ahead. I can’t look around anymore. It makes me sick.”

It was then that I realized with a jolt that they weren’t talking about politics at all. My stomach quickly sank, and I couldn’t help but continue to listen.

The conversation rapidly degenerated into more slurs against immigrants and foreigners, about how they were diluting this country’s greatness and they couldn’t believe what a mess it’s become, and how unpardonable it was that there are people all over the place who don’t speak English, and how real Americans have had to work hard to get everything but “these people” are just handed everything on a silver platter.

As the conversation turned towards the influx of non-American doctors and medical students, I happened to glance over right as the “makes me sick” woman hissed, “You’re telling me that you don’t speak my language and you’re going to treat me? You aren’t touching me. You aren’t touching me.”

At this point, my mind was racing to figure out if I could do or say anything to respond. Finally, all I could manage was to turn and fix them with a very pointed and affronted stare. They noticed, glancing just briefly at me, and dropped their voices as they started to clear up their wrappers and trash, but still keeping on with the anti-foreigner trash talking.

Once they left, I glanced around the seating area, wondering if anybody had reacted to this conversation, but nobody else seemed to have been paying attention. I shook my head and whispered an incredulous, “Holy shit,” to myself, and turned back to my laptop to try to finish what I was doing.

(I should mention, by the way, that we were roughly a mile from Carnegie Mellon University and 1.5 miles from the University of Pittsburgh, both world-class universities with large international student/faculty populations, as well as the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, which is both a medical school and a series of regional healthcare facilities. We also were in Squirrel Hill, the Jewish neighborhood of Pittsburgh, where you often see many suit/long-skirt-clad Hasidic Jews walking down the street, many of whom probably have immigrant ancestors. Not to mention, the main drag of Squirrel Hill boasts an incredible display of ethnic, cultural, socioeconomic, religious, and political diversity. It’s one of the most real neighborhoods I’ve ever lived in, which was part of why I love it.)

I went on with my day and finally left town for DC, but I couldn’t shake the deep feeling of discomfort that that encounter had created. You hear about these things on TV and in the media, and of course you see passing examples like stupid bumper stickers (such as “don’t blame me, I voted for the American” next to a big X through the Obama logo), but it had been such a long time since I’d seen people actually voicing these views in person. I kept replaying it in mind, and only then did a few snappy comebacks finally come to mind…

- “You grew up in the 60s and 70s, right? In the middle of the Civil Rights era?”
- “Excuse me, but have you ever tried having a real conversation with any of the international people you meet? If you did, you’d find that we have way more similarities than differences, if you just gave us a chance.”
- “You know that this is a nation of immigrants, right? Your ancestors probably came over from Europe, too…”
- “Just because you overhear people speaking another language, that doesn’t mean they don’t speak English. For them to have made it this far means that they’re definitely intelligent people.”
- “Have you ever stopped to think about this from their perspective? They’re the ones who are thousands of miles away from home, in a totally new place, far away from most of their friends and relatives.”
- “You really need to find another neighborhood to hang out in if diversity bothers you so much!”

(Well…I thought they sounded good in my head, but they totally would have fallen flat if I’d actually said them. But I still wish I’d tried.)

I also attempted, to a very small degree, to rationalize why they’d be thinking all this. This sort of strong negativity is inevitably due to ignorance, a lack of exposure to different people or ways of life, and a fear of the unknown. They grew up in a very different era and a very different America. As an Indian-American chick from a non-Judeo-Christian tradition, I’m obviously biased towards a world that embraces diversity and open-mindedness, and in my travels and experiences, I’ve come to witness our united humanity and realize that people are people, no matter where you go. But I know that those experiences, and even that mindset, are kind of the exception to the rule, and also a little idealistic. Still, though, that totally doesn’t excuse such blatant anti-foreigner prejudice and actually saying such hateful things.

I tried to distract myself, zoning out and paying attention to my surroundings on the drive into central Pennsylvania and northern Maryland.

In June, I’d gone to Santorini (a volcanic caldera/island system off the southern coast of Greece) for a week-long hiking trip with VolcanoDiscovery (HIGHLY RECOMMENDED, if you’re looking for a solid mix of geology, history, and culture). It made me very aware of the stratigraphy of the rock faces all around us then, and also ever since I got back. One day we hiked ~10km/6.5 miles and saw layers of ash, pumice, and tephra laid down by eruptions over thousands of years. On another day, we saw lava flows as recent as 50 years ago that are still jagged and not too worn down by erosion, and solid boulders with uniform cracks along their surfaces that came from going from a really hot state to a really cool state very quickly. On yet another day, we witnessed two million years’ worth of geological history on a 300-meter (1000-foot) descent from the towns on top of the caldera cliff down to the sea below, and it was all written incredibly and indelibly into the different layers and types of the rocks. We learned how to read some of the signs the earth has left behind to tell us what it’s been up to over the decades and millennia.

As I drove on, I became aware of areas of exposed rock along the sides of the freeway, inevitably from people blasting through the mountains to build the freeway system decades ago. I started perceiving different layers of rock, different colors and textures and characteristics…and then the tension in my chest and stomach started to dissipate, and I actually smiled a little.

Most days, being a geology and astronomy geek is pretty much an eccentricity that just surprises and puzzles most people. But on this particular day, I realized that it lent me a very different sense of perspective.

All this conflict and hatred and ignorance that we as people witness and create and suffer through…this is nothing but a grain of sand in the Sahara Desert that is deep time, the geological history of the earth. This miasma of negativity, insularity, and fear consumes us and we can’t get away from it…but modern human history is only several thousands of years old, and it rests on top of these reassuringly constant, nearly timeless rocks below us. We were born, and we’ll die, and the natural processes that churn ceaselessly on to create and reshape the rocks below us and the stars above us will endure for immeasurable millions and billions of years, as they already had before our ancestors’ ancestors even existed, and as they still will once the human race no longer exists.

Whether it’s a religion you believe in, or whether the earth itself is your religion, we’re all part of something bigger. The playing field will be leveled for all of us one way or another.

Many people believe in a god or pantheon of gods, and that lends comfort to their hearts and minds. Thanks to this trip to Santorini, I see the rocks along the interstate, and I draw deep reassurance from the fact that life will go on and that this will all still be here, despite the unpleasantness, negativity, and violence that we perpetuate and perceive in our own lives and our constructed world.

At the same time, my designery/problem-solving/empathetic side really, really would love to just sit down and talk sense into people, to break through these walls and blinders of ignorance people build around themselves, and to change their perspectives. But maybe I’ll spend some time hiking or staring at the stratigraphy along the freeway to ground myself (ha, oops, pun not intended) before I give that a try.

Must keep posting, must not let this blog slip again…

Life’s been really busy lately (as if the subject line didn’t get that across already). I don’t think school has ever been this intense for me, and I don’t think I have ever felt so consistently behind like this before.

Part of it is that I took last weekend off to go to the Rally To Restore Sanity and/or Fear in Washington DC. It was incredible, and I was so glad to have been a part of it. I carpooled down from Pittsburgh with my housemate Kim and our classmate Chelsey, but ended up spending the weekend with my friends from Atlanta (Ethan, Jennifer, Matt, Kevin, and Alan). We got there almost 2 hours prior to the official start time for the Rally, and the Mall was already quite full, but we managed to carve out a space for the six of us. General thoughts:
- everyone was super-friendly, positive, approachable, and chill
- LOVED the signs!
- a guy actually interviewed me about my sign, but he didn’t quite get what it meant (it said “yay, zealots. </sarcasm>”) – I think he actually thought I was calling everyone there a zealot, and I’m not sure if I explained it properly (it was the sarcasm/HTML bit that he just didn’t get) or convinced him that that was not at all what I was trying to do, but oh well.
- in general it felt like they were preaching to the choir, but it just felt so affirming to know that so many other Americans do feel the same way my friends and I do: embrace equality for everyone, stop needlessly persecuting all Muslims, try to bridge this horribly polarized divide that has caused such a rift among Americans…
- there was no one takeaway from it, but that’s okay: it definitely impacted how I viewed the following Election Day, in the sense that instead of just voting Democrat across the board because I felt that they’re the party that best represented my views, I stopped and considered every candidate individually (and did end up voting for one third-party candidate). I also think that just the act of collecting in one place (estimates range from 200,000 to 300,000, and I really wouldn’t doubt it!) was in and of itself a huge and meaningful gesture, that a huge chunk of Americans are tired of the bickering and just want to rise beyond it for the greater good for everybody.

However, the one big downside: it set me back several days in my schoolwork and research. I worked pretty feverishly for the first half of the week and really burned myself out by Thursday, and had to take a day off. It was pretty intense; I just could not shut my mind off Wednesday, and had to put on something comforting and familiar to try to relax. (That something was The Empire Strikes Back, and it did do the trick.)

I’m still working pretty hard on several semester-long projects: thesis work has actually taken a back seat to the work for my classes. For my Social Impact class I’m trying to do field research but still have no idea if I’m truly making any headway. At this point, I’ll just be happy if I make a B and get through it. Information+Interaction+Perception will be taking off soon–we’ve been collecting our data and organizing it in a few different ways to try to help guide us towards a final product, which will be coming together in the next few weeks. (I’m creating an information design piece on factory farming.)

Thesis is slowly coming along…I’ll be doing a few dry-run interviews with some of my Pittsburgh JET friends, then reaching out and contacting some of my survey participants for both interview and journal recruitment. We’ll see how it goes!

The 2nd week of December will be a madhouse. We have our final presentations for I+I+P at the start of the week, and our thesis poster session AND Social Impact show the same day at the end of the week. It’s crazy that it’s just a month off.

Orchestra’s also moving along–we have a concert in two weeks. I switched out my strings a couple of days ago, only to find that one had frayed to the point that it was actually only hanging on by a thread. I took photos to document it–it’s incredible that it hadn’t snapped a month ago.

On top of that, I’ve been working hard on something super-secret that will go down when I’m back home for winter break…that’s all I’ll say about that, but if all goes according to plan, it will be great. :)

There are already things about this site’s layout that I want to change. Bah, if only I had time!

I don’t want this to become a “this is what I’ve been doing lately”/”let me document my day” blog. But I’m just doing this to force myself to keep on writing. May the next entries be more content-rich!

You know the show Undercover Boss? The one where a well-known company’s CEO goes undercover and works in entry-level jobs in his company?

It hit me tonight, during the episode about DirecTV, that the show is a public enactment of human-centered user research, and that the CEO is assuming the role of a designer. He (which I use because every episode I’ve seen so far has featured a middle-aged white guy) is trying to ascertain what the issues with his company are by jumping in headfirst and immersing himself in the thick of things, trying to understand how his company actually functions and what actual employees truly face and deal with on a day-to-day basis. He learns about their jobs and them as people, and he empathizes with them as he himself takes on their responsibilities. He then comes out of it and makes changes company-wide that are directly informed by those real-life experiences, both as experienced by him and as related by the people for whom he’s designing/planning.

There are days when my classmates and I wish we could shut this “designy sense” (like “spidey sense”) off and just accept things at face value and “make pretty stuff” again. But this was a cool realization. It’s neat to see a real-life example of these concepts at work in such a prominent way.

Spring break is here! It’s not super-relaxing, but it’s nice to not have stressful deliverables hanging over my head, for once. I still haven’t gotten to actually see any of the “touristy” stuff around Pittsburgh, but getting out and enjoying the warm(er) weather and wandering a bit around Oakland and Shadyside has been really nice. I’ve walked around 7 miles in the last 2 days–not a ton, but it’s more than I’ve done in a long time (though I probably balanced it out with that chai from Caribou and that amazing ice cream from Oh Yeah!…). If not for a meeting I have with my new thesis advisor this afternoon, I would definitely make it out to the Mattress Factory or the Carnegie Museum of Natural History or something.

What actually prompted me to post something in here, though, was the Gchat status message of my friend Shuby:

Yelp took my review away! Weirdos.

I’d heard a fair amount about the controversy surrounding Yelp already, both the original East Bay Express story and the more recent allegations of extortion. I used to be a really big fan of theirs–the idea of an online review feature with vetting and such a generally positive vibe really appealed to me–but after this recent news, I scaled back heavily and just sort of “hovered,” but didn’t use them so actively anymore.

But talking to Shuby revealed that a negative review of hers had been pulled; it was still visible on her profile, but no longer visible publicly. That was the final straw for me, and I e-mailed Yelp to have them delete my account, with an explanation of why. It’s one thing when there are these faraway allegations with some random website you aren’t extremely invested in that occur with people you have no relation to, and it’s easy (or easier) to brush them off. When it happens to a friend, though, that’s something else.

Anyway, in other news, let’s see…

Like I mentioned, I do have a thesis advisor for next year–yay! He’s the professor who taught our Design Studio last semester, and we’ve struck up this great rapport and had some good conversations about our similar international experiences (he grew up in the Philippines and is very well-traveled, and like me, he doesn’t identify with being completely American or completely from the country of his birth). I also have a secondary advisor–my fantastic Global Communication professor (who’s from Romania), and I’m considering assembling a “committee”-of-sorts, involving relevant HCI and Psychology faculty. Most importantly, though, I do have a tentative thesis topic in mind: developing a resource to assist JET Programme participants upon the completion of their time in Japan, and particularly addressing reverse culture shock, as well as other more administrative things (like pension refunds and the like).

I like the topic, but I feel guilty for going back to “the Japan thing” yet again. I’m sure I’ve driven my housemates and all my classmates–not to mention all my friends back home–crazy with how often I still bring it up, over two years after the fact, but I guess it’s a real case of “you can take the ALT out of Japan, but…” with me. I was fortunate enough to have a great experience that has impacted and changed me…however, the return process was rough, and very difficult at times. Reverse culture shock did really impact me for a solid year after coming back, in small and big ways–and I’m far from the only one. I’m also not the only one who felt unprepared for what Life After Japan would be like.

Anyway, I’m meeting my advisor this afternoon to just touch base and see where to go from here. I may also broach the subject of focusing on something similar but not Japan-related–I was thinking of doing something to help international Indian students when they arrive in the US, but my Global Comm professor advised me against it because she said I, as an Indian, would be “too close” to the subject matter and may not be able to be purely objective. (She only found out 5 minutes later, though, that I’ve only been back to India twice, my first time being when I was 18.)

I’ve also been doing some web work, but not the “for fun” kind…though I find the challenge of constructing a site in standards-compliant XHTML and CSS to always be fun, so it’s rarely “not fun.” I’m redesigning the blog/website of my studio group, and as part of my assistantship, I’m helping to architect and build a site with information about some of the technical resources the School of Design has, and I’m also helping to develop a guide with information for incoming grad students that can be a reference for current students. That should be pretty cool–hopefully it’ll come to fruition by the end of this term, but if not, I volunteered to help out over the summer (wherever I’ll be…). Maybe eventually I’ll find the time to finish implementing the redesign of my website, too (and moving it over to the new web space I purchased last week for much cheaper than my current host)…

Anyway, time to get my day going–meetings, wandering around, and packing! I’m off to Atlanta tomorrow for just a couple of days, to run errands, see family and friends, and pick up my car. Hope you all enjoy the rest of your week!

Lately I’ve been getting pretty sick of this influx of social networking apps–not their existence, but their names.

Flickr. Tumblr. Pownce. Reddit. Utterz.

Give me a freaking break. So now it’s the “in thing” to create an app and give it a name that omits or twists a letter around in a preexisting word? Thanks to Flickr, I can no longer type or read “flicker” without it looking strange. I’m sure that wasn’t what they set out to do, but now everyone is doing something similar and it’s crossed that line from being cute to being ludicrous.

And it’s cool that these apps have all been created out of a movement to connect people online further and to facilitate the faster retrieval of information, but after reading Jeffrey Zeldman’s article on the death of the personal website, I can’t get it out of my head when I think about all this stuff. I remember the days when I–when everyone I knew–would put everything up manually. Photos, current music faves, books we’d read recently, favorite bookmarks. But now there’s Flickr, last.fm, AllConsuming, and del.icio.us, and dozens of sites just like them. People embed these apps and applets into their personal sites–which have typically evolved into blogs–and so their sites have become a lot more effortless, and in some ways, a lot less personal.

I do have a Flickr account. It became a necessity in terms of uploading the 3200-plus photos I took during my two years in Japan–there was just no way I had the time to thumbnail them and manually code and update my website to host them. I will admit that I hesitated in signing up for Flickr, though, in the hopes that I could indeed do it myself. But with the exception of creating a del.icio.us account a while back and updating it maybe twice, I haven’t touched it. I also have an active account on Facebook, but that’s a little different from these labor-saving sorts of sites.

I’m the type of person who digs my heels in when some new, flashy item or fad comes along. IPhones? Pfft. mp3 players? Why, when CDs work so well? (I did give in and I own a Creative Zen 30GB media player…but I will never give up on CDs. The mp3 format is, by definition, quite lossy and compressed, and I can’t stand listening to a symphony or quartet or violin concerto when it’s all muffled due to minimizing the file size. I lament that stereo systems have become obsolete, and that I now have to shell out money for a home theater system to get the best possible sound when I don’t even own a TV!)

In terms of these “new-fangled” apps, I’m definitely digging my heels in. I know SXSW Interactive this year revolved around Twitter in terms of meeting up with folks, and since I left straight for Osaka from Austin, I couldn’t bring my laptop with me and missed out entirely on that aspect of the conference…and if I go again next year, I might sign up just to take advantage of that way to network…but only for that.

And whatever new websites I develop, I definitely won’t be giving any of them cutesy names.