Where are the snakes when you need them??

So, you know what isn't going to be allowed on planes? (aside from snakes. We knew about the snakes.)

Water.

The latest word on the street is the Transportation Security Administration has banned liquids on planes. First of all, all selfish reasons aside, this is just a dumb idea. The air on planes is really, really dry. People are going to get sick if they can't drink water on planes. And unless the flight attendants are kept going continuously up and down the aisles to refill beverages, those little tiny plastic cups just aren't going to cut it.

Aside from dehydration being unhealthy, here are some other side effects of people like me not being allowed to bring their Nalgenes on board:

1) Sinus problems, of which I have many, are aggravated by dehydration. That, plus the dry cabin air, is going to make for some really sad landings after 15 hours in the air.

2) Headaches are also not improved by lack of water. I get headaches, particularly when I don't get enough sleep. I can't sleep on planes. No sleep + no water = very unhappy person upon landing in Hong Kong.

3) It just comes down to mathematical analysis:
The first thing you learn when you go backpacking is that the first sign of dehydration is crankiness.

Cathay Pacific uses Boeing 747's to fly from L.A. to Hong Kong.

Given that first-class passengers better not ever be cranky, lest they appear ungrateful, that still leaves up to 324 (if the flight is full) cranky economy class passengers on a nearly 15-hour flight.

That's 4860 passenger-hours of crankiness.

That is equivalent to 202.5 DAYS of crankiness.

Granted, this is a very simplistic analysis, as crankiness will probably not stay at a constant level througout the flight: it will increase geometrically overall, with a slight dip during and immediately after sleep hours. If crankiness can be banked, though, the extreme crankiness just before landing will more or less balance out the low crankiness levels mid-flight, creating a more or less constant level crankiness (probably at around 32%). I have illustrated this in an over-simplified (and rather optimistic, given how cranky I usually am on plane flights) chart - click, for a larger image:


This calculation also fails to account for the fact that a cranky baby is way more persuasive than a quietly cranky, well-behaved adult. However, I think we can overlook this fact for two reasons: one, that babies won't be more cranky than usual because formula is allowed on planes, and two, 15 hours of suppressed adult crankiness has potential for more explosively violent oubursts than a baby, whose outbursts are consistently explosive and therefore not powerful.

So, to summarize: one trans-Pacific flight without water can fuel the cranky machine for over 6 months.

One might think this is a terrorist plot to create national unrest.

So as not to succumb to said terrorist plot, I am accepting all suggestions for protest, including (but not limited to):
- filling a carry-on bag with tins of baby formula and distributing them to the passengers
- sending 4860 empty frowny-faced water bottles to the TSA
- snakes. Because dammit, if I can't have my water, I want my snakes.

The Pride of the Midwest

So I just got back from a get-together with my New York friends, who were fun and pretty much the same, which is reassuring. But it was eventful for two reasons:
First, on our way out of the (very tasty) Yaffa Cafe on St. Mark's Place, we got caught in a torrential downpour and totally soaked. So the rest of the evening was spent in very cold and wet jeans.

But more entertaining, we went to see a concert of a couple of bands from Skidmore, where one of my friends goes to school. The opener was a couple of guys from Bloomington Indiana who proceeded to make me very ashamed to go to school in the Midwest. (Yeah, I know Minnesota is NOT the same as Indiana, but tell that to a bunch of girls who've never lived outside New York!) This was a white rap duo who took themselves TOTALLY seriously. They wore - and I am not making any of this up - jean jackets with the collars turned up. They rapped off their new album entitled "Enforce the Yin Yang." And one of their songs contained the following lyrics:

Shit, Grandma, these pies is fo' real;
These strawberry rhubarb fuckers best be knowin' the deal.

I kid you not.

just plain Lost

I was just checking to see if anyone had commented on my blog, which they haven't cause they're SLACKERS, and I realized, given the title of Monday's post, I should mention that I have fallen into the abyss of no return that is known as "Lost."

To explain: one thing about recovering from surgery is that you sit around a lot. (Not that you particularly want to do anything else.) And one thing about being in the family of someone recovering from surgery is that when they want to watch compellingly suspenseful and addictive TV shows on DVD with no commercials, there is really no good reason to say no. Thus my father and I have just finished the first DVD of Season 1 and are moving on to DVD #2 momentarily.

But lest you think I am just twiddling my thumbs! let me assure you that this is the backdrop for some wildly productive studying of Chinese. Although now if you were to ask me how to write the character for the verb "hurt" I may just draw a picture of an undefined and very menacing jungle beast.

I'm sure the kind residents of Kunming will understand.

I'm really good at drawing jungle beasts.

Lost in the Shuffle

I just read Rachel's blog, and it reminded me of all these wonderful things that I'd forgotten to post about because of all the suicide-birthday-leaving Northfield-surgery drama of the past week. So to briefly fill in (and sorry, I'm just stealing all your ideas Rachel):

Last Sunday, before the bad news hit, Rachel and Julie and I went for an afternoon of shopping in the Cities, followed by delicious Tibetan food - they make this thing called a Shara, if I remember the name right, that's like a lassi only thinner and with cinnamon instead of mango. And amazing. And then we went to a Futureheads concert at a very nice venue which was way more civilized than any concert I've been to in New York - lots of dancing and fun, but much less rowdy drunkenness and sticky floors. The Futureheads, as Rachel says, are like a cross between The Clash, Franz Ferdinand, and The New Pornographers, and if that means nothing to you, think cute British pop-punk. To sum up, one of the most fun concerts I've ever been to. Which makes me sad, in a way, because since I heard about my friend's death about 15 minutes after we got back from the concert, I totally blanked out the whole evening and would've totally forgotten about it if Rachel hadn't posted about it just now. So thanks!

And to elaborate on our last couple of days of aikido training, they made me really happy for a couple of reasons - aside from ending on a strong note, with a good class in the Cities and a big mess of birthday breakfalls, they made me realize what a very good group of people I'd been training with all summer. And not to give the boys short shrift, because the two of them were awesome, but I was really happy that it was just the three of us girls on my birthday, being super tough and pushing ourselves. It was a great girl-power kind of moment and I felt very lucky to have had it. Aikido (at least Yoshokai aikido, I don't know much about the other styles) is one of the more gender-balanced martial arts out there, probably because it relies less on strength and size, but still, martial arts can be very male-heavy if only thanks to the mental connections between men and fighting. And I have had to deal with a guy who was kind of a jerk to me because (I hypothesize) of his insecurities about being the same rank as a woman. So it just feels really nice to know that you're in a group of people who don't feel like they need to prove anything to anyone but themselves, regardless of gender. The five of us had a really amazing summer of training, reinforced by our visits to the Kobukan, which reassured us that Carleton is not an anomaly - aikido really does attract genuinely good, kind human beings. (The jerk I had to deal with stopped training early spring term; I think something about the art fits well with certain types of people, and they just happen to be good ones!)

What else did Rachel mention that I missed? I cut three heads of hair this past week (very successfully, I might add). And the birthday party was a resounding success, with hordes of people and drunkenness (read: totally wasted) and revelling, with none of the icky side effects like vomit or hangovers or massive cleanup efforts.

Oh, and I got my plane tickets to China in the mail today, which means I'm actually going to China! This is terrifying. There are FIVE plane tickets in there (NY->LA, LA->Hong Kong, Hong Kong->Kunming; and then the return trips: Beijing->Hong Kong, Hong Kong->NY) for a total of about 42.5 hours on airplanes. Not to mention layovers. Not to mention the fact that SIT hasn't told us any of those minor details like where we're going to live in Kunming. Not to mention the fact that I don't know any of the people on the program, and my last "study abroad" experience, a summer program in Switzerland after 11th grade, involved:
- 3 drunk/chauvinistic Southerners (the one redeeming side to this was the long, slurred discussion of the beauty of our derrières),
- a girl who was "secretly" cutting herself, and
- a girl who was simultaneously quitting smoking, drug use, and promiscuity.

So basically there's a lot that's up in the air (sorry, sorry) about this trip. It's exciting, yes. And so is bungee jumping. Or shooting yourself out of a cannon.

Back in the Big Apple

So I’m back in New York after almost two short months in Northfield. It’s been a great summer (funny how somehow it feels like the summer is over, since the next couple of weeks are very preoccupied with going abroad).

Things I have gotten out of being in Northfield:
- two holes in my dogi (the thick white aikido pajamas)
- abs that come out of hiding if you catch them at the right moment (hence the oft-quoted-in-Northfield, “No, my abs are not a closet!”)
- new friends, most notably my house-mate (bonding over Bollywood and "Project Runway") and my co-birthday partier and June hotel (bonding over "Sex and the City"). How well trashy TV brings us together.
- mad cooking skills, especially if they involve vegetables, rice, and coconut milk
- a new appreciation for how quickly toddlers learn new things
- excitement about a new adventure

Things I have not gotten out of being in Northfield:
- male company. OK, this isn't strictly true, and NO, it's not what you're thinking! But I was having this conversation about a week ago with Rachel about how, even though all this girl time has been awesome, we kind of missed watching boys play video games (and the accompanying "distracting boys from playing video games"). And now we can pretend I never made that comment in a public forum.
- money. Working 28 hours a week is great, especially when rent and food are cheap. Unfortunately, paying for a new car radio (see “Minnesota hoodlums” post) is not. Sigh.

Anyway, my dad got his prostate surgery today, and I’m happy to report that all went smoothly. I saw him in the recovery room, and he was pale and dopey but doing fine. I’m very proud of both my parents, actually. I think my mom was more anxious than she let on, and given the circumstances both of them have been super-sane. And since it turned out well, I feel entirely justified about not being too freaked about the whole thing. And props to Memorial Sloane Kettering for being the poshest hospital ever. It’s all new and shiny, and while that may be all a big marketing ploy, it worked – I felt like he was in good hands. The worst part of the whole experience, I thought, was seeing some of the kids in the elevators. You don’t want to see an eight-year-old hooked up to an IV. It’s not right.

And, so as not to end this post on a sour note, one awesome thing about being home is that I’m divesting of all this old stuff I don’t use any more – clothes, books, shoes, posters, etc. So the mess on my floor from being too lazy to do a good job at unpacking is totally justified by the four bags of stuff that I’m giving away... right?