actions, not words.

Today was a pretty good day. I got up around 10:00 and headed on a brunch trip with two other staff and four kids. The brunch was pretty good, and then I spent some time in a piano room with some kids playing pieces from musicals. From there, I hung out with a bunch of the kids for a while in and around W20 before buying things for the event tonight. The event tonight went very well, and I enjoyed my part of the work as well as the kids' responses. No further detail will be provided, but it was late, and after that I had some meetings, bedcheck, dinner, and some talking and hanging out with other staff and students. It was kind of fun, although now I am sleepy and wondering when the other staff on the floor above me will actually go to sleep. Only time will tell, I suppose. I guess it's finally time to reflect on Presidential Scholars stuff . I went into Presidential Scholars not expecting much—the best of the best from some of these states felt like it would result in some...

Today was a long and relatively mediocre day, although it improved over time. After yesterday's blog, I packed and headed to the airport, having beaten the 24 hour mark for the first time. At this point, I started drifting in and out of consciousness, and this continued at the airport after security. At one point, I blacked out until around 9 AM. This was concerning because my flight was scheduled for around 8:30, and I panicked and headed to the desk only to find that my flight had been delayed. I sat around and waited for the delay to pass, sleeping for brief periods here and there until around 10, where delays continued, then eventually jumped and the flight was canceled. This immediately dashed any hope I had had about making it to camp in time to see some classes, but I re-booked onto a flight for later in the day, via LaGuardia. (I also threw up once during these interactions due to lack of food, which was really great.) These flights were also delayed due to weather, but, ...

So, the time has arrived. I stand on the precipice of a tumultuous time—travel tomorrow, the day after, and the 23rd and 25th; RSI business in-between and afterwards; NRP shenanigans for a brief, sleep-limited two days; so on, and so forth. Part of me—ok, most of me—is afraid to dive. Despite this, the inexorable march of time pushes me towards the cliff, so there is no choice but to jump—preferably of my own accord, in as graceful a manner as possible. With all that in mind, today was a relatively decent day. Given that I had intended to sleep well, it was, of course, no surprise to find out that I did not sleep until around 2:30 AM, which was quite a journey. Part of it was simple insomnia, driven by excessive sleep. Another part of it was the release of our RSI room assignments, where my group got extremely lucky in having mostly  singles. Every room has a view of the river, too, so that'll be nice. Two days and I'll be there. Less than 48 hours, and I'll be on a plane...

Today was a good day. My sleep cycle was not totally screwed, surprisingly enough, and after the RSI hangout (which, after some technical issues, went actually surprisingly well) I managed to sleep all the way to 7:30. I began copying my MIT schedule into Evernote, which was interesting enough, before we left for one of the best breakfasts I’ve had yet. (In fact, across a lifetime, this ranks probably in the top ten, if not the top five.) From there, we went to visit some relatives (a great-aunt and uncle) in the hospital (thankfully, they are fine and almost fully recovered), which was interesting enough. For example, observing the English translations of Chinese portions of the hospital led to quite a few discoveries, such as the fact that the ‘ICU’ is also called the ‘ICU’ here in China. The conversation had was also quite interesting for a variety of reasons, as it moved from AI to the Cultural Revolution to the days when everybody was “young” to academics to One Be...

This section was written starting at 5:41 PM Pacific Daylight Time/8:41 AM China Standard Time, in a Boeing 787 going 550+ miles per hour at 36000 feet. We are currently three hours into this flight, and I have finally reached the point where I am bored enough to begin writing this blog post, which is honestly kind of impressive. There are still seven hours left in this flight, which is kind of awful, but I refuse to let myself sleep, since it’ll probably help me with the jet lag to stay awake from here until evening in China. I allowed myself to sleep for a very brief period at the beginning of the flight, and then woke up somewhere around an hour (or two?) ago. So far, we’ve had a drinks service (I got tea, which is probably the single best feature of international flights), a meal that came far too close to our previous one (although I did eat most of it), and then a second drinks service, where my Chinese was pronounced too softly and misheard as orange juice instead of te...