Mount St. Helens, 30 years on
Posted by Smitha | Filed under geology, memories
Today’s the 30th anniversary of the eruption that has gotten me hooked on geology for life. I would be remiss if I didn’t at least mention it somewhere more permanent than Facebook.
These facts are well-known, but restating them doesn’t hurt. After a long period of dormancy, Mount St. Helens began showing signs of reawakening in March of 1980. In the weeks leading up to the major eruption, there had been emissions of ash and steam and occasional lava flows (the Cascade volcanoes are not the kind to have viscous lava flows the way the Hawaiian ones do), and magma started pushing its way up underneath the north face at a rate of 1.5 meters per day, creating a massive 450-foot bulge high up on the north face of the volcano.
At exactly 8:32 AM Pacific time on the 18th of May, 1980*, an earthquake occurred directly below this massive bulge. It all gave way and the largest landslide in recorded history occurred as the north face tumbled down, propelled in part by the forces under the volcano. Once the north side started giving way, a lateral blast of over 600 miles per hour exploded across the land to the north.
USGS volcanologist David Johnston had stepped in at the last minute for volcanologist Harry Glicken to keep watch on MSH’s north side on the 18th. At precisely 8:32, the Cascade Volcano Observatory received a radio transmission from Johnston: “Vancouver, Vancouver, this is it!” He would have been directly in the path of the blast, and his body was never recovered. (In a cruel turn of events, Glicken himself was killed in a pyroclastic flow, along with 40 others (including famed volcanologists/volcanophotographers Maurice and Katia Krafft), in a major eruption of Unzen-dake in Nagasaki Prefecture, Japan in 1991.)
All told, the eruption killed 57 people, nearly all of whom were outside the prescribed “red zone.” It leveled over 200 miles of forest and sent ash hundreds of miles away. It continued to erupt over the next few months before finally quieting until a few years ago, when it began to reawaken in 2004–though with none of the ferocity of the 1980 eruption–and has been classified as active ever since.
*I’d seen sources when I was younger cite it at 8:29 or 8:30. I held out hope that it was actually 8:29, since that’s my birthday.
It was thanks to a children’s book by Patricia Lauber–Volcano: The Eruption and Healing of Mount St. Helens–that I discovered volcanoes and volcanology. I stumbled across it in the library of my elementary school and have no way of knowing exactly how many times I read and reread it, but one thing was certain: I was hooked. The more I learned, the more fascinated I became (and fearful at times; during my silliest moments in the 6th grade, I remember having nightmares of being caught in an eruption at Mt. Vesuvius near Naples, Italy, and wondering if the hill my parents lived on was a volcano in disguise).
We made it through our first year!
Posted by Smitha | Filed under school
(photo courtesy of Juliana.)
Random thought of the day
Posted by Smitha | Filed under personal, school
It is a very surreal feeling to have the president of a large division of a company worth $6 billion annually call you twice in a day. And not only that, but to have him call because he wanted to make sure that he had adequately answered your interview questions for a project you’re working on, and that you had enough material to work with.
This gentleman is the CEO of the North American operations of a Japanese engineering and manufacturing company, and he has been incredibly gracious in helping me with my Global Communication project, both through sending long e-mails and chatting over the phone. I’m really honored that he’s freed up so much time to answer my questions via e-mail and the phone, and he’s been completely relaxed and approachable. I really wish more CEOs remembered that their livelihoods ultimately revolve around people. The world would be a much happier place.
Man, maybe I should just ditch this blog–I’ve done such a poor job of staying on top of things. Maybe things will be better this summer, when I have an internship and a more regular schedule! Who knows?
Anyway, life’s crazy but I feel like I’m over one hump and have a day to breathe before jumping headfirst into tackling the next. I just completed my last official class of the semester, but we still have a ton of work to do for a major presentation next week for Studio (that we’re presenting both here at Carnegie Mellon and at the Chicago offices of Motorola, one of our corporate sponsors), and I have three papers due on Monday.
After Chicago, it’s time to prepare for Philadelphia–I’m moving in a few weeks for the summer to do an internship there.
I got 6 hours of sleep last night and 4 the night before–off to get some coffee and some lunch, and chill the afternoon away.
JETAA Pittsburgh
Posted by Smitha | Filed under japan
As part of my efforts to make sure I have a life while in grad school, I started looking for JET Programme alum contacts in Pittsburgh around the time I moved here last year. After some online correspondences where we started talking about reinstating the long-dormant JET Alumni Association sub-chapter in Pittsburgh (“sub-chapter,” not “chapter,” because it falls under the NYC chapter, which spans New York and Pennsylvania), several of us finally met at an information session for the JET Programme hosted by the University of Pittsburgh. It was there that we started talking about finally making this thing official.
So four of us appointed ourselves officers (I’m vice president and eventual webmaster, but these titles are really formalities), and met over dinner late last year to start discussing possible plans for stuff…and then we got really, really busy.
But finally we threw together a basic icebreaker event at a local cafe and notified the ~20 JET alums we’d tracked down around Pittsburgh. In total, including 3 officers, 7 alums and a few spouses/fiances (representing Hokkaido, Honshu [Tohoku, Kanto, Chugoku, and Kansai], and Shikoku) came out tonight. It was a huge success – I think everyone had a pretty good time, and we’re now looking forward to enjoying the beautiful nature under the sakura trees with a hanami (a cherry-blossom-time picnic) and potluck in a couple of weeks. ;)
JETAA Pittsburgh is officially off the ground, and I couldn’t be more thrilled.
Bad business practices
Posted by Smitha | Filed under commentary, daily life, japan, school, web
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!
Scenic Writing: 61c
Posted by Smitha | Filed under assignments, school
I was on the fence about posting these, but oh well, what the heck, right? This is a scenic writing assignment – we’re supposed to describe a scene in such a way that an impartial reader can immerse him/herself in it easily, and without imposing our own opinions onto it.
(Well, “these” = “this” – this is the 3rd paper I’ve written for this course so far, and it’s the best one of the lot and my favorite so far. The others require some revision, but eventually I’ll put those here as well.)
Some names have been changed and some circumstances have been tweaked (this combines a couple of different visits to this cafe), but this is mostly factually accurate. Including the music, incidentally; I’m kind of amazed I was able to identify the majority of it.
61c
The warm, sunny glow emanating from the foggy windows of the 61c Cafe stands out against the chilly, blustery weather. It feels cheerful and enticing, and a number of people succumb to it on this winter’s evening. Even on a weeknight and well into the evening hours, a steady stream of people continue to come and go. Some stop in for a hot drink before going on their way again, while others settle in for a while, to get work done or relax in pleasant company. Books, laptops, and drink glasses are stacked and positioned strategically to make the most out of the small amounts of table space. Backpacks, purses, and shoulder bags occupy empty chairs around the patrons, as the floor is almost uniformly dingy and damp, thanks to the weather outside.
Realization
Posted by Smitha | Filed under geology
It’s taken me many years–and many hours spent reading books, websites, and blogs about volcanology and the earth sciences–but I’ve finally realized that Dante’s Peak is a really awful movie.
That is all.
Going through my RSS archives
Posted by Smitha | Filed under Uncategorized
Ha, so I never actually posted my work here, but in the last few weeks I redesigned my portfolio and posted some of my better pieces there. Check it out!
I’m finding myself relying more on Google Reader to keep up with everything, so I’ve added a list of my shared items to the right-hand pane. Amusingly, they do tie in with the “design, music, and science” tagline…there could be more music in there, though. (There can always be more music.)
So we had 3 days off the week before last, due to record snowfall in western Pennsylvania. There’s still snow everywhere, with more on the way, but they’ve at least finally been able to clear the primary and secondary roadways; some of the sidewalks (especially on my walk to school, conveniently enough) are still covered in slush, but that’s where my $30 Target boots have saved the day.
Anyway, last week was pretty intense, in part because of that and because of the huge career/networking/internship fair we had the preceding week (I had five interviews on Friday the 12th, as well as one earlier in the week). This past week, I had a presentation, two papers, lots of readings, and just General Fun Stuff to deal with. But it’s done now, and I can take a deep breath before jumping into the next huge pile of work (and rehearsals, as we have a concert Friday!) that awaits me.
Some fun stuff I’ve come across (a.k.a. going through my list of starred posts in Google Reader)…
Clients from Hell – for designers to commiserate (and for most non-designers to cringe in sympathy).
Volcano-on-volcano action – two neighboring volcanoes are erupting simultaneously on the Kamchatka peninsula in Russia. (It looks like three in the image, but the middle “plume” is simply a cloud.)
Birds on the Wires (YouTube video) – really lovely and inspirational scenery-inspired musical project. I saw a TV commercial recently that played with this idea, but I’m not sure which came first.
The funniest method I have ever seen to remember kanji radicals.
25 user experience videos that are worth your time – this is almost 2 months old now, but still a cool resource. I’ll admit that I took notice of it due to the very first talk by Jesse Games Garrett, and how he describes Beethoven as a user experience designer. Last semester, I gave a very similar presentation for my Presentation and Pitch Design course, describing John Williams as an information designer, well before I saw this talk. I guess I’m on the right track, then!
Sleeping kitties! My friend Anne posts adorable animal photo posts all the time. This made me feel so warm and cozy.
Artists take on He-Man and the Masters of the Universe – some great illustrations in here (with a couple of She-Ra throwbacks, too). Also a few months old.
Have a good afternoon!
Kicking off my second semester
Posted by Smitha | Filed under daily life, design, music, personal, school
Back again, back again…
Winter break was restful and nice. Three weeks in the metro Atlanta suburbs was perhaps a bit long, but it was great seeing my friends and family again. I didn’t get nearly as much done as I wanted to or should have–I did start on redesigning my professional portfolio, as well as ecomancer.net in general, so hopefully I can launch both of those before the end of the semester (the portfolio will have to be up by February, in anticipation of Confluence and the Creative Arts Opportunity Conference).
Speaking of which, now that I’ve attended all the classes I registered for initially, I’ve finally made my decisions about what to sign up for. Initial thoughts:
CPID seminar: should be very interesting and useful. It’s with the professor I spent a few hours with when I did my campus visit, the former head of the English department–my program is cross-listed between the Schools of Design and English–and beyond simply learning how to write about design, we’re learning how to design our written communication, to gear it for specific contexts and specific users. I definitely enjoy writing, and this should be really good for me.
Intermediate Japanese: will kick my ass. Good god. The class meets 4 times a week, they already assigned homework due Tuesday, there are quizzes and essays and research projects, we have to purchase a 300-page bundle of worksheets on sale at the bookstore…if I had the time to devote to it, it would be really, really good for me, especially since the professor seems really strict (far more so than anybody at Georgia Tech ever was) and demands a lot from the students. It’s geared more towards Japanese majors/minors, people who do have the ability to focus like that (which grad students cannot). Plus, it’s hard to be in a class with people who’ve learned Japanese for a while (at least 3 semesters, if not longer) and still say “annie-may” and “man-guh” (anime and manga, or Japanese animation and comics/graphic novels). I really had to fight not to wince out loud–my friends know I really campaigned hard (but nicely!) to get them all to say it properly, and this is a huge pet peeve of mine.
Design Studio: wow. This is our Major Effort of the year, which we all knew even in August, but the first day definitely reaffirmed that. This class has historically been sponsored by Microsoft to form semester-long teams that take part in their Design Challenge–we’re one of a small handful of universities they’ve selected for this–and the winning team (decided by a MS rep who comes to see the final presentations) presents their work at Microsoft’s Design Expo in the summer. This year, though, we have both Microsoft and Motorola sponsoring us, and the Mattress Factory, a local contemporary art museum, is keen on getting some students to work on something for them. The professor who taught the class in years past is actually working for Microsoft and is our corporate liaison; this year our instructors three CMU design alums who are all successful designers.
The theme for the Microsoft Design Challenge this year is Context: Service Meets Social. I’m trying to keep that in the back of my mind at all times.
Research Methods: should be interesting. I had some very brief experience with some of them during my last job, and it should be cool to learn more. This class is tied in with our studio–we’ll be learning methods and then applying them immediately to what we’re doing in studio. The professor is one of the two I TA’d for last semester, so I feel like I know him fairly well and we do get along, which is cool.
Communicating in the Global Marketplace: I’m impressed with the class and the professor. Even from how she got to know the various students in the course and handled pronouncing their names (which can be quite touchy at times, but which she did with admirable grace), I could tell that she really knows her stuff, and the fact that several students cited enjoying working with her in previous classes as a reason for enrolling definitely helped. Our final project actually involves finding a group or company of some kind and doing some cross-cultural communication consulting work for them (which I’ve been very interested in doing from a design standpoint)–should be amazing, but I’m just concerned about the timing, because studio is going to be mad in March and April.
Rhetoric and Information Design: I’m glad I’m auditing this, for two reasons: it’ll lessen my crazy workload, while still letting me attend this class and reap what I think are going to be some great benefits. (Don’t get me wrong; I’ll still do all the readings and do the projects, but I do have the option of possibly doing the projects later if I get busy, and I will be taking advantage of that flexibility.)
I had the realization last semester that in order to be a good designer, one must be a strong and effective communicator–not just in selling your work (a lesson I totally learned during my last job, and tried to pass on to some of my students in the class I TA’d last term, who were baffled that we were so strict with them and didn’t see what relevance writing and communication has to design), but in making your work say something and make an effective statement or argument. As information designers, this is especially crucial to us, since we aren’t just making “pretty things”–we’re organizing and presenting information (which, as we established briefly today, is by definition more subjective than raw data, as we’re taking it and filtering it somewhat in order to understand it as we compose/construct our work).
Anyway, long story short: I’ve dropped Japanese, and am keeping the other five. (CPID Seminar, Studio, and Research Methods are all required anyway.) I was gutted about losing Japanese, but there’s a conversation session at the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh on the 2nd and 3rd Tuesday of each month, and I got permission from Miso, the very kind and understanding Ph.D who’s teaching R&ID, to duck out 10-15 minutes early to get there on time. I went tonight, and it was actually a lot of fun, quite informative, with a friendly and eager group of adult students–essentially a reversed eikaiwa. Plus, I have the textbooks and can definitely study on my own, whenever I have the time.
There’s also my TA-ship: this semester I’ll be assisting with facilities and tech support. My first major project is setting up for the three-hour thesis paper presentation the second-years are giving on the 22nd of January. The guy who had this post last year assures me that it’s no sweat, which is a relief. (Well, that is, unless something goes wrong, haha.) Anyway, our first meeting to discuss this and my other duties is later this week.
And my campus orchestra ensembles start up this weekend. I already know I won’t have the time to stick it out with the All University Orchestra for the whole semester, but I’m the only 1st violinist who’s played (most of) Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade before, so maybe I can help out for a short while. String Theory, though, I will be sticking with, and we have our next concert in about six weeks, with another one combined with the AUO in April.
Oh, and there’s the letterpress project I worked on last semester but never finished. (It’s okay–I was just graded on what I’d done, and the instructor had no problem with my needing extra time to complete it.) I really hope I can find the time to wrap that up in the next few weeks.
Something else nice: I have very convenient breaks in my schedule that allow me to go home midday and/or hit the campus gym. I’ll definitely need the stress relief (and the exercise–it’s quite cold and snowy here, which prevents me from walking to campus (or even sprinting up the block to catch the bus, as the sidewalks may not be salted) most days, and I could stand to lose a few pounds).
For now, though, I really should sleep, as the downside of my schedule is that our Seminar course meets at 8:30 AM on Monday and Wednesday. Ugh.
Please wish me luck this semester–even tomorrow, as that’s when we’ll receive our group assignments in studio, and when we’ll learn who among our classmates we’ll be working very closely with for the next four months. I feel a lot better about this than I did about last term, now that I know how the system works here. But we’ll see how it goes. I hope I’m up for the challenge.
Oh well
Posted by Smitha | Filed under daily life, personal
I really didn’t do a great job of documenting this semester. I wasn’t even really sure how to gear this blog, which didn’t help and which resulted in all those long and rambling entries. Next semester will be better, though.
It’s finally winter break. I was fortunate, in that I wasn’t ever truly stressed out–just busy, especially during this last month, and especially during the last week of classes and the week after. (And here I thought I’d have that whole week off. Ha!)
I’ll catch up on posting work–right now I’m working on redesigning my portfolio, which will include my better pieces from this term. Tomorrow I’m driving (or hoping to drive, provided the weather cooperates) to Cincinnati to visit my cousin and her newborn son for a couple of days. Happy holidays, everyone!
