There's a monster at the end of this book

Seven years ago, the first lecture in my introduction to mechanics course at MIT begged the question, "Why can't monsters exist on Earth?"  And so Professor Franz-Josef Ulm introduced the concept of dimensional analysis to a roomful of insouciant freshmen.  Time. Mass. Length.  Through dimensional analysis we learned why one could not expect to simply scale up a grasshopper and expect a giant grasshopper to be able to walk around-its design simply couldn't handle it, and could only exist at its own specific size.  Grow it any larger, and it would collapse unto itself.

Three years of time (12% of my life span!) have now passed by in two cities that revolve around the automobile, and in that time I've come to recognize that the same principle can be held for cities.  In what way?  Primarily, transportation.  And I can assure you, there is a monster at the end of this book.

Growing up in a suburb of Boston, I became accustomed to the ability to bike to the town bus stop, take that bus to the town center, and hop on a Commuter Rail into town.  If I wanted to stretch my legs a bit, I could simply bike the entire way into the town center.  As long as I could walk, I could in theory get from my family's house on the circle to anywhere I wanted, overseas included.  Driver's license not required.  As long as I wore a helmet, even if I were to collide with someone else, we'd both probably walk away with no more than a few broken limbs.  The chances that I would be run over and killed or kill someone else either while riding my iron horse or going for a run (I swear if I really wanted to run I could) were next to 0-because such collisions were and are within the human scale.  Our bodies are designed to be able to handle such collisions and cannot on their own (absent falling off a cliff) exceed their design specifications.

Increase this scale to that of automobiles, however, and things change.  One must be physically able to drive a car, more or less of a certain age, and with certain levels of education as to the risks and impacts.  These automobiles exist outside of the human scale, and thus are forced above on elevated highways or buried down below in tunnels.  Collide with one of these things and you're lucky if you wake up the next day.  Allow them to take over a city and you begin to drive (yes) people out.  There's nothing pleasant about going for a stroll next to a four lane road where a sea of vehicles divides the stores on either side.  In fact, I would argue that any situation in which jaywalking cannot safely exist is unpleasant and inappropriate for an urban environment.

But why is this?  At their core, automobiles are larger, faster, and heavier than humans.  They're louder, less nimble, and often counterproductive (you don't have to schedule so many workouts when you've already spent thirty minutes a day or so riding a bicycle).  Automobiles, therefore, exist outside the human dimension. They are monsters.

Cities can be daunting.  They can be overwhelming.  But they can be within the human scale if they are designed for humans-not for automobiles.  Cars have their place-long distance travel, transporting heavy things, sharing a ride when more than one person is going to the same place.  But because cars move through an area faster than the occupants can explore it, they create a destination-based mentality, encourage isolation, and discourage urban exploration.  They can save time-I consistently see metro estimates taking about 75% more time than driving would take (unless you're stuck in traffic or looking for a place to park).  They can also waste time-when you could've been getting some exercise instead and now have to make up for it with extra workouts.

So the answer to that question is yes, monsters can exist on Earth.  But not without appropriate intervention in order to ensure that a city's primary stakeholders are people and not cars.

Everything Costs the Same

Over the past five years, the number of regions of the country in which I have lived and number of global regions which I have visited has increased at an exponential pace.  Commencement ended, and I commenced my move from the historical and geographical center of the Western world to a city of undeniable economic prowess. In the interim, I found myself in a somewhat attractive if sterile city, then an incredibly beautiful city to which I only prefer Boston's history and geographic location (and I will argue public education as well), and subsequently would find myself in a city lost in its own reverie.

What I've come to conclude is that, to me anyway, everything costs the same.  I'm not talking about the traditional idea of purchasing power parity.  I'm talking holistically about the idea that the money one spends on a home is not exclusively confined to one's "property," but the overall environs in which one lives, perhaps a "cost per unit city," whereby one might proffer the material possession of a two car garage in exchange for access to Picadilly Circus. When I bought my condo, I bought not only the floors on which I put my bed, but the city into which I step each morning.  I bought the subway that takes me to my favorite coffeeshop.  I bought a tiny piece of the local culture, of the history and the proximity to destinations such as Japan.  I bought the reality that I am finally again living close to a place with some semblance of beaux arts in spots that could almost pass for a New York block to a foreigner.  I bought the distressed masonry.  For better or for worse, I bought the public school system. I didn't buy a condo; I bought a piece of Los Angeles.

No amount of money I could have spent in Houston would allow me to exit my door in the morning and find halcyon introspection.  The cost of living is not lower; houses are cheaper. One must differentiate. And there's really nothing wrong with that.  Every city exists to serve a purpose (well, except Las Vegas), and I'm not saying everything has to be one way or another.  But current cost of living indices are too simple and outdated to be useful, and should really not be used as a valid tool.  Really.

Let Me Give You Some Advice

It is that time of the year again when you'll find many "adults" coming out of the woodwork offering their opinions on what to do, how to do it, when to do it, and where to do it.  Specifically, I mean, where to go for college, and what to do for work.  If you read some of the comments individuals post online, it is clear that many individuals simply don't get it-there is little purpose in giving "advice" when unprompted.  Furthermore, there is a difference between offering "advice" and offering "insight."

Some of the worst comments I see on "college choice" articles go something like this:

1) The economic argument

"I went to school X for Y dollars.  My friend went to Z for A dollars.  We now make $$$ so clearly it made no difference/I was right/they were right."

2) The experience argument

"At school X, there is much more activity/ethnic diversity/economic diversity/research into some topic than at school Z, and this needs to be accounted for."

3) The ranking argument

"Everyone picks schools based on ranking.  That is all wrong and it is all a game."
"You need to choose a well-known, highly-ranked school.  That decision is more stable and secure."

When people offer up these arguments, they forget that the people listening (or pretending to listen) may want to be nothing like them.  I am living my life the way I choose because it works for me, and that includes allowing myself to indulge my hedonistic whims (hedonism being defined as accepting the inner emotions rather than trying to control them).  The things I have done/am doing/will do work for me.  It doesn't mean that they would work for other people, nor am I so presumptuous to think so.

I guess I will give some advice-the things that interest you, pursue them.  If it doesn't work, it doesn't work, and even so you still learned something (and ideally aren't beholden, e.g. through debt, from doing something else).  If it does work, all the better.  But just make sure when you do a cost/benefit analysis, you include all the factors that matter to you.  Simple.

Edit:  Thanks to Yuki for adding this:

"Be careful whose advice you buy, but be patient with those who supply it. Advice is a form of nostalgia. Dispensing it is a way of fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts and recycling it for more than it's worth." -Mary Schmich

Older and Possibly, Ostensibly, Wiser

Warning: Comments below may be seen as degrading, ignorant, or offensive.

Sometimes it takes writing an entire novel before you begin to understanding, or at least ponder, the lives of others.  My grandmother lost her husband to cancer before I was born-that is over 25 years ago.  Which means she will be spending something like four decades of her life without the man she (ostensibly) loved.  What does that feel like?

I think that now, having just finished the first draft of a novel I hope to someday publish, perhaps I have subconsciously been asking these questions for a long time, and explains why I somehow wrote various aspects of her life into my story, and am repeating some of her actions myself.  What makes her so enigmatic is that I'm not even close enough to her, nor do I know enough Taishan, to ask how she feels, and what she is thinking, if it ever comes back to her in a rush as she goes to bed at night, and does she still open the front door at night sometimes and look out hoping he will be there.  Does it just fade into the background, a piece of her that is always there? Do things her children do remind her of him?

I don't believe that there is such a thing as getting over someone you love.  Once you've loved someone, you will always feel something for them.  Even if you hate them, it is because you did in fact love them, as we can only truly hate those we've ever loved.  And a part of us never stops loving someone that we've truly loved.  While we're on that topic, I don't know if there can be such a thing as unrequited love (in relationships). It seems to me, and I could be wrong, that unrequited love is simply an infatuation or reverence, yearning and affection.  In a sense it means we are objectifying the person, keeping them as a possession.  Which I suppose concerns me, because it suggests that I have never truly loved someone.

(Can love be explained through economics? I've been told long-distance relationships are challenging, and don't work, but the true answer to that is that in the end, there was some valuation that can be summed up as one or both individuals in the relationship as having decided the other individual wasn't worth it to them for them to put in the effort to make it work.  Don't make the excuse that you had to let go of someone because you love them-either try harder or just admit to yourself the truth and get over it.  If you truly loved them, you would try harder and it would feel effortless).

But then, what exactly is love?  I beginning to think that feeling of love, that chemical or biological response we suddenly feel, is the same for everyone.  What differs is what causes us to feel it.  I don't know what it is in our nature that causes us to seek someone out.  Sometimes for me I suppose it is to feel more real, to have a cause for which to fight, or a person for whom to be courageous.  The action of loving someone with no inhibitions is itself an act of courage-we can only love as much as we are willing to be hurt, because when we love someone, we make our hearts fully vulnerable to them, and should we lose them, we hurt in proportion to the amount we loved them.

I go back and forth between thinking love should be easy and love should not be cheap.  It is something that must be unique and fought for, it must be tested and it has to overcome.  Love to me is passionate, visceral and hedonistic rather than practical and stoic.  I do think it should feel effortless to love someone, because if we love them the effort shouldn't feel like a burden.  Once it does, we have either fallen out of love or have stopped appreciating them. Look, Dan Savage, love cannot be casual-people used to be (and on occasion still are) executed for loving the wrong person.  We should all at least expect a bit more of one another in relationships by comparison, or don't call what you have by that name.

Having been burned, I've been told my feelings are not unique.  Which is fine with me-in fact it is great.   Because we aren't alone in these feelings.  And I guess I may sound really simple or self-absorbed by rambling on about these things, but my intent is to convey the idea that no one should ever hesitate to share such emotions.  Rather than end on such a negative note, I can say that I have been quite ignorant of these feelings my entire life, and inconsiderate or degrading towards others, and it took me to finally going through a heartbreak myself to have some level of compassion or understanding.  Being in the throes of love is the most incredible thing I have ever felt, and I sincerely hope to feel that way for someone again.

Logic Fail

I had to make it. It was only logical.

Memorie

During college I went through this phase where I panicked over a lack of time to express artistic creativity. I'm not trying to imply that MIT lacks art, in fact on the contrary it is the technical focus of the school that gives the art it and its students produce such a unique perspective. But as for my own pursuits, I found myself wanting for an aesthetic outlet. Because it can be done very quickly, I turned to photography. Whereas a single painting, drawing, sculpture, or any other piece of art takes great lengths of time and investment to complete and results in one fixed perspective, photography allowed me the flexibility to rapidly change how I recorded what I saw, and apply different perspectives to it, whether based on camera angle, positioning, depth of field, shutter speed, contrast, etc. And then there was experimentation with different subjects.

It was when I finally decided to catalog my photographs, most of which were still burned on cds from when I had my first digital camera back in 2001 or 2002, that I realized something-looking back on almost all of my "artistic" shots, I felt near apathy. The only ones that mattered to me were the ones that were simply shots of family and friends. Ultimately, it seemed as though any creative shot felt somewhat anonymous or too produced. If I wanted to create an impression, I would paint it. But photographs for me are about being able to record things as they were, the good and the bad, not as I wanted them to be.

Ultimately I think then that I will keep searching for other creative outlets. Writing has always been a hobby of mine and lately I am rediscovering that, along with discovering that so many of my friends also have been writing various works in their spare time. Literature, whether being read or written, can be such an escape, especially when it is fiction. It allows us to create entire new worlds, with any number of messages and ethical issues that can be brought up by a pen and paper. But writing, like painting, is very time-consuming. So what's next?

That's How They Are

I remember as a child being raised to take offense when strangers would ask me questions that pertained to my ethnicity. "Where are you from?" and "Do you know karate?" were supposed to stir feelings of resentment and defensiveness, insinuating of course that I was somehow different from them. The implication of not asking such questions being of course that I was culturally the same and should not inspire such questions. It was best, it seemed to me, to treat everyone as though they were no different from myself, as though they were the same.

I grew up in a predominantly caucasian town, with a limited number of non-white students and even fewer immigrants (I think the percentages rounded to 0). Culturally speaking, it is probably fair to say that we were honestly quite homogenous in terms of our families and culture, our religions and traditions. If you were to assume certain things about others as being the same as yourself, you would have a high likelihood of being correct. We went to separate middle schools across town, and high school was finally a time when economic, if not cultural, diversity broadened a bit. It was actually during high school that I once made a comment that suggested I thought of myself as white on a certain level, although I will leave out what that comment was. It was not until college, however, did I find that a significant number of my friends of minority ethnicities or the children of immigrants or immigrants themselves (both my parents are Chinese-my father was born in Hong Kong but came over before he turned 7 and has never been back, so I don't really count him). And while there may have been some tendency "self-segregate," it was mainly due to shared experiences, perspectives, and certain traditions or nuances through which they felt camaraderie. And as I finally had more Asian friends than I had ever had in my life, I found myself thinking more and more of my own experiences and how they compared to theirs. I remember asking one of them why I would take such offense when people asked me about my heritage, and his response was that it was because I don't identify as Asian, and consequently felt defensive at the notion that anyone would expect me to.

Since coming to Houston however, I've noticed that it is more diverse (in my experience) than Boston, both economically and ethnically. And the approach to ethnicity is somewhat different here-as opposed to a seemingly manic approach to presuming everyone is the same, those I have encountered seem much more ready to assume that people are different. I've never heard so many people start talking to someone in another language based on their ethnicity, assuming of course that the individual speaks this language. Except the people I have seen do it have lived extensively overseas, and in many different nations. Assuming such things is not necessarily racist in the traditional sense, but there seems to be the same level of eagerness to embrace different cultures as there is eagerness to be polite to strangers. People are also in general much less afraid of not being politically correct.

So what this made me ask is whether it is more offensive to assume others are the same as you or to assume they are different. What is important to note, however, is that assuming people are different is one thing, but assuming that they are specifically different and have a culture to go along with their skin is another. It is a moot cause to decry prejudging others based on their skin color, because one way or another we all make judgments about others before we meet them. It's a natural part of human interactions.

But culture is not determined by skin color. I think therein lies the answer to my question. Forgetting suggesting that we should not assume anything about others in some ideal world, it seems to me perfectly fair to assume people are different-but not because of ethnicity.

Sometimes I feel disappointed in myself for not knowing more of my heritage. At the same time, I feel I should not have a heritage based on a birthright, but rather one decided based on my own preferences, whether that culture I prefer the most is Chinese, Finnish, Indian, or Greek (I don't like Chinese food-I love Mediterranean food, my philosophies on life probably lie somewhere between). I've said it before and I'll say it again: I personally don't believe in taking pride in anything that is a birthright, whether it has to do with the country one was born in, one's ethnicity, socioeconomic status, or anything else. But I believe in taking pride in one's own choices, one's own accomplishments. The choice to live in a specific nation, adopt a certain cultural style, or focus on one's own physical fitness. This can also mean pride in a birthright, for example pride in being born into a persecuted or marginalized group and overcoming these obstacles. But I digress.

The core of the argument lies in what assumptions we are making about other people. It's similar to the issue of whether there is such a thing as a positive stereotype. Ideally of course we wouldn't have to worry about such things. But since we do, they're interesting to ponder.