hi there
My name's Rio, and I'm a Swarthmore College sophomore, an Engineering and Linguistics double major and volunteer firefighter. I design websites and print media professionally, emphasizing the need for simplicity, compatibility and ease-of-use. I have also done freelance translations from English to French and from Japanese to English.
My own journeys:
Digenis
Jason Kottke
Alternet
Language Log
Tom Coates
Jason Santa Maria
On Morals
Tuesday, November 14
Winter’s bleakness seems to offer no respite for the weary, and though the White Witch has yet to make her presence known, it certainly is the case that one can hardly feel upbeat and excited about things with such gloominess prevailing.
I have to decide what I want to take next semester for courses. I’m considering taking Communication Systems (AM, FM, analog and digital systems), Linear Physical Systems Analysis, Data Structure and Algorithms, Syntax and Differential Equations, though personally if feels overloaded on the science side in addition to having a 17-hour/week course load.
‘And how many hours a day did you do lessons?’ said Alice, in a hurry to change the subject.
‘Ten hours the first day,’ said the Mock Turtle: ‘nine the next, and so on.’
‘What a curious plan!’ exclaimed Alice.
‘That’s the reason they’re called lessons,’ the Gryphon remarked: ‘because they lessen from day to day.’
On another tangent, a friend and I were talking about the subjective nature of morals (arising from the discussion on why older people tend to be Republicans– that it was because they grew up in an environment where ideals and morals were more important that they are now), to which the Duchess from Alice in Wonderland offers the following:
‘Tut, tut, child!’ said the Duchess. ‘Everything’s got a moral, if only you can find it.’
But is there really something that should be gleaned from everything we do? Logically one would suppose that there is a reason for everything we do, and a reason for which we don’t do something else. But how can it be that people cannot agree upon a set of ‘rules’ as it were that would put everyonne on a level playing field, so that there would be no disagreement on why someone does something?
Like abortion, for example?
Fly away south
Tuesday, November 7
The sparrow was there for a good few days. For a moment as I stood by the staircase leading up to the second floor, looking out the window, I thought that he was resting, his head buried as though fighting the wind that tormented the trees and caused the windows to howl and shriek. But he did not move.
Some relatively disappointing grades from returned quizzes and assignments (to be added upon later in the week, no doubt) were balanced out by the fact that my good trapeze artist/daredevil friend Jamie had taken upon himself to fulfill my request to bury the sparrow who had expired on the cement window-blocks that stand outside our main science library. I had intended it to be a mere request, wondering what he might think to consider climbing upon cement blocks (like such) stacked up to about a story or two to pick up a dead bird and bury it at the behest of someone else. There were no windows that could be opened from indoors, and the blocks would be hard to navigate, but the sight of a dead bird as fall made way to winter was just too disappointing to see.
I sent him an email late last week and got a response in no time thereafter: enlevé et enterré. Literally, “taken and buried”. I thought he had misinterpreted my query, since it seemed to me impossible that he could have done it in so little time. But apparently he had, for the bird is no longer there. Where he was buried, I know not. But had it been true that he had missed the flight south, I am sure he could have found no better.
The poor little Swallow grew colder and colder, but he would not leave the Prince, he loved him too well. He picked up crumbs outside the baker’s door when the baker was not looking and tried to keep himself warm by flapping his wings.
15 miles
Saturday, November 4
I went on a 15 mile bike run into Marple Township this morning, testing the limits of my refurbished mountain bike on the pockmarked pavements, sudden twists and turns, and the general craziness of biking on roads. Biking has become a late hobby of mine, and I’ve enjoyed it in particular because it allows me, without any financial excess, to travel to places within reasonable distance and find interesting things that, on motor vehicles or otherwise, would be beyond me. It’s perhaps the reason why I like to go alone, because then I’m not restricted to the necessity of having a goal or a final destination. I stop when it suits me.
I guess it might be true that some consider me to be a kind of a loner, though I like to think that it’s only one side of the multi-faceted coin that we all as humans are. It gets tiring to have to cater or at least to worry/think about others after a while, selfish as that may sound. It’s nice to have the opportunity where you needn’t worry about obligations of any sort, manners of any sort, goals of any sort. It’s a pocket of time that I get to lose myself in enjoying the world outside the bubble I have to inevitably immerse myself in from Monday to Friday.
ahoy
Thursday, November 2
Clearly my attempt at putting off any sort of updating on this website and blog of mine has failed, as I was sitting in the library, itching to write a few thoughts of mine, to splurge, divulge and get carried away by syllables and sounds and keystrokes. Life has been so hectic, so terrifying, so impossible to appreciate under the burden of everyday assignments, readings, tests, and the like. Such is college life. I can only hope that anything beyond will not force me to abandon the time I can spend basking in the beauty of everything else besides.
It’s deep in the darkness of night right now, but in the quietness I imagine and hope to describe with some level of art the beauty of the trees and the campus as it becomes wrapped and envelopped in the wonderful rich, dark colors of fall. Whatwith an early cold season, nature is slowly but reluctanly leaving lifeless artifacts on the pavements, like scattering sand being whipped over cliffs on a windy day. There is no rush, and yet there’s something about it that changes before one can fully realize…
Flying To and Fro
Friday, September 1
The familiar greasy odor of McDonalds greets me as I step among the idling crowd at the United Airways terminal at O’Hare International. The people opt instead to line up for a chili fast food- with two hours left I might have to drop by later. Listening to Fort Minor, I wait for my connecting flight that will take me back eastward.
Security was noticeably lighter than in France, where they went through a tiered security process from before checking in to getting to the gate. Come to think of it however, the boarding process hasn’t changed since the earlier times before terrorism became a byword of the population: there’s always the screening, the security questions and the checking of passports. Everything has just become much more tedious and detailed. Though I greatly feared the need to pickup luggage and check everything in again at O’Hare, the process was suprisingly easy and smooth: all checking in luggage involved was dropping off one’s cart at a place where airport people picked it up and put it on a concourse. Though I don’t consider myself as an impatient person, I have a very low tolerance level when it comes to airports.
21:53 local time, 3:53 Paris time: U.S. Airways didn’t put my suitcase on the flight that I was on, and therefore I am waiting here in the lobby, alone, hoping that the next flight that comes in from Chicago has my suitcase and backpack with it. I met up with another Swattie by chance but she left, leaving me with a sense of utter boredom. It’s that rather frustrating, ego-centric feeling that you get when you’re looking for something, rejoicing when someone else suffers the same fate, but then the other person finds what they were looking for, leaving you to sallow in your search.
And I thought this was going to be a smooth, routine, uneventful flight. Bah.
Paranoia
Tuesday, August 29
The world has just become slightly darker.
Partly to blame is the fact that once again, fear is being used as a manipulative tool to orient the mindless crowds into believing that drastic measures have to be taken to avoid terror on an unimaginable scale.
US President George W Bush’s popularity got a five per cent shot in the arm after the arrest in Britain of the suspects in the terror plot to blow up US-bound passenger planes, a USA Today/Gallup Poll said on Tuesday.
And pray tell what else he might’ve bungled? It never ceases to amaze me how the masses can associate two entirely different things and construct something that amounts to neither one.
Today’s bad English target: WAVY-TV, a NBC affiliate in Hampton Roads, Virginia. A seemingly acceptable news article called “Plane diverted to Bristol, Tenn. after note found on board” contains the following howling errors, and therefore should be put into the category of “I suffer from the inability to copy Associate Press reports correctly”
None of the approximately 55 people aboard U-S Airways Flight 3441 was injured, and but no bomb was immediately found. […] She says the F-B-I, T-S-A and local law enforcement are investigating.
Talk about bad copying.
I fly back to college tomorrow. A sigh escapes my lips.
Future Words, part 1
Saturday, August 26
If there ever exists such a thing as a time capsule — the sort you put trinkets inside a thick box and bury it in your garden in hopes of finding it in the distant future — created only by words, allow this to be something I’ve endeavored to create, a letter to the future so that I don’t make the mistakes that others have, that I realize the shortcomings of others in the present day so that in the future those will not be repeated.
To the future me-
I guess you’ll remember the day that I wrote this, back when I was in Paris, already having completed my first year of college and anticipating the next, in the company of those who seem intellectually stimulated and interesting to talk to and be around. I don’t know what you’re thinking now, but let me sort of put things in a more direct way:
I don’t know if you’re a father yet, but if you are, by golly congrats. I bet you remember those moments while you grew up — even now dad’s fond of reminding me that the first 20 years of one’s life is long, because each year is part of just a small portion of the whole; but when you get old, each year is rather inconsequential to the entirety- remember ??????????????? But there’s one thing I want you to remember: allow your kids a bit of freedom within the realm of responsibility. It’s not fair — and I hope you’d agree on me with this — to submit your child to the necessity of judging those they hang around with simply because their first impressions don’t agree with what you’d consider inacceptable. Of course you can’t just say whatever and ignore dreadful consequences, but there’s always that amount of responsibility and trust that you can give him/her that, as long as it’s not betrayed, will give you both the freedom you want.
I don’t like going through what I am right now, and that’s certain. Some people just find it too hard to rebel, to ignore or rebuff a parent’s hard cold stare or a sign of disappointment; if you can, remember to never ever hold a grudge against someone for too long, please? I know it’s not a habit of yours already, as much as you hate it, but people change over the course of years and I really don’t know how you are.
Anyhow, until the next time comes around,
Me
