Thoughts from Ann Arbor

In no particular order:

"There is a lot of neon along I-94."
"This grocery store has so many preservatives."
"Since when did girls wear tube dresses to Charley's? In my day we saved 'dressing up' for Rick's."
"Do I pick up a Michigan accent when I'm back here?"
"I'm glad I went to college in the era when dressing up meant black pants and a tank top."
"Is that a typo or is beer really that cheap?"
"Since when did Really Hot Guy From High School become Super Hot Guy From Wharton?"
"There are a lot of white people here."
"French fries and ranch: a trend that should spread west."
"No, really. I can count 26 people from where I'm standing and three are not white."
"Conor O'Neils: still undeserving of its prime spot on Main Street."
"NYPD pizza: still amazing."
"If I had to guess, I'd predict that NYPD chicken rolls are less delicious prior to 3am. Good thing I will probably never find out."
"Michiganders really do drive better than Californians."
"Was 30 degrees always this cold?"
"I miss mile marker signs on the freeways."

"So many people in crew neck sweatshirts, mom jeans and sneakers. Male and female."
"So many strip malls."
"Pizza and ranch: also worth spreading."
"Freeways here are dark. And have very few lanes."
"I picked good friends in high school and college. Still blows me away."
"There are a lot of billboards on I-94 for injury lawyers,"

Happy Holiday

About a month ago, I got this in the mail:

Unfortunately, I did not heed the urgency of Atlas Pen & Pencil Corp's envelope and once again Pi Day has snuck up on me before I even realized it. But thanks to the nerdy blogs I read and even nerdier company I keep, next yet I will be prepared with an arsenal of Pi Day-related fun. Here, for your celebratory enjoyment:

This is so freaking cool. Is it worth the time to cut out all those apple and pie crust slices? Probably.

Thanks to this useful allocation of government time and money, I now know what "squaring the circle" means. Dear State of Indiana: do not try to legislate mathematics because it is above the law. Or, more accurately, mathematics is the law.

My students were super-excited that they are going to graduate in very important year, Pi Day-speaking. For the only time in any of their lives, it is their senior year of high school when we will get to have a completely legitimate Pi Day on 3.14.15. Some were more excited than maybe they should have been.

Finally, in case you forgot to celebrate today, fear not. There are many more mathematical holidays yet to be turned into Hallmark occasions and/or crappy math lessons. Some seem to be taken a little more seriously than others.

Happy 'Sorry Your Math Teacher Didn't Serve You Baked Goods (Mostly Because She Wants You To Learn The Correct Spelling Of The Greek Letter)' Day!

Royal Wedding, California Style

So this post is a little late, but there's never a bad time to re-hype the Royal Wedding, right?

I'm not going to lie: I woke up at 2am to watch the Royal Wedding live. It was our last day of classes, so why not go through the day with a little less sleep than usual? Maura and I talked it over and decided that it was definitely worthwhile, especially given that it will probably be a good 30+ years before an event like this happens again. Since neither Maura nor I actually has a TV that gets reception, we decided to watch at school streaming from the Royal YouTube Channel. We were joined by our 60-year old registrar and one of the Spanish teachers. Absolutely worth it.

Given that this was an all-day affair in England, we had to match the festivities here on the other side of the pond. Even people who weren't cool enough to get up in the wee hours were still excited for our own quasi-wedding. I dressed in my British finest. Below, the whole wedding party. Melissa, the biology teacher, is actually wearing someone's old wedding gown.

Obviously, royalty needs a court jester.

I tried to dress in my British finest, but I just couldn't top Lisa's fascinator. Her friend is a milliner, so this is the real deal. I am currently deciding if I would actually spend the money for one of these. Given how much I enjoyed wearing a tiara and/or flowered sun hat all day, it might be worth the investment. I have "accidentally" left the hat at school and sometimes "have" to wear it if it's taking up space on my desk. How much better would my life be if I could just slap on a fascinator when I was in a bad mood?

All these years I thought I would attend Prince William's wedding as the bride (my 5-year old self understood that our birthdays being four days apart guaranteed destiny), but I'm pretty happy with the way things turned out instead.

I Resolve to Not Make New Year's Resolution

True, I'm not making any per se, but there are always things that I tell myself I am going to do or want to start doing more regularly.

If I were to make a New Year's resolution, I would definitely inspire myself with one of these amazing designs from something call the "To Resolve Project."

http://motherlanddesign.blogspot.com/

http://www.fuelyourcreativity.com/to-resolve-project-phenomenal-new-years-resolution-inspiration/

I'm having trouble finding all the submissions compiled in one place, but they're definitely worth looking through. Any maybe setting as your desktop background just in case you need an aesthetically pleasing reminder of what you promised yourself you'd do.

Return to School

Teacher 1: What time is it? 

Teacher 2: 10:15

Teacher 1: Weird, it feels like it's 12:15. Because I've already been up for 2 hours. 

Coming back from breaks might be the worst thing about being a teacher. 

Merry Christmas from the Pressminarayanan Household

To you and yours from me and mine:

(Sorry, this was last year's Christmas card that I forgot to put up). Note that the Christmas sweaters are imported from Michigan. You just can't find that level of sequined detail out West.

And this year's card: Sarah and I at the Foster City Tree Lighting Ceremony. This was a big one, folks--the first year that they lit a real tree instead of tree-shaped lights out on the lagoon. Personally I liked the lagoon trees better because they were so representative of the FC, but I guess that budget cuts and/or the illusion of "going green" are reasonable excuses to go with the live tree. BTW, it wasn't actually that cold nor is it actual snow (it's California after all), but don't we look so much more festive in cold-weather gear?

Here's to another lovely Christmas with my California families, both blood and surrogate. Just as exciting, here's to the end of another Christmas season and the return of parking lot sanity. 

Gift Ideas

Just in case you're having trouble figuring out what to get for that special someone (i.e. me):

http://theorymine.co.uk

Spirit Week 2010

Pictures, as promised. First, crazy hair day. It's hard to see well in these pictures, but my quasi-mohawk/stegosaurus impersonation was quite the hit. The flowers were a last-minute addition in the morning that I'm glad to have made. There were only two problems: first, by the end of the day I had a terrible headache, which I eventually realized was from having my hair pulled so tightly for 9 hours. Second, I had to meet with a parent in the afternoon, which I was prepared for by choosing a hairstyle that could be undone (unlike my colleague Lisa, as you can see below). But in all the rush of after-school meetings, there was no time to turn myself into someone who you'd trust with your child so the whole meeting was kind of awkward. I hope that the kid explained to his mom that his teachers don't usually look like that.

Now on to the really good ones: Halloween. I am extremely proud to be part of a math department that came up with such phenomenal costumes. As I have chronicled, math costumes are not easy to come up with. There was some serious costume competition from the English department where all the women dressed as different Lady Gagas and the one man was "Alejandro," but I think our department wins on (1) creativity, (2) bad humor, (3) incorporation of academic content. Let's be honest: our department is by far the most fun and it's no coincidence that we often have the highest happy hour turnout and usually dominate faculty team-building competitions. Halloween is just reflective of our awesomeness.

I'll let you guess the bad math jokes. Zoom in to see if the math I'm wearing gives you a hint. 

To narrow it down, here are a few of the things that my students (incorrectly) guessed:
- The Monopoly guy
- A mathematician
- Calculus
- Pythagoras (clearly I did not convey very well that he was from ancient Greece)
- "Jersey Shore" (relevant, but still misses the mark)

Below is the rest math department. Don't bother guessing on Kieran, the tall guy in the middle (he doesn't get into the math department bonding with the rest of us) or Mark, the one on the far left (he didn't seem to understand until Friday morning that the rest of us were in math-related costumes). The rest are brilliant.

 
Here are your mathematical hints:
- Julian (2nd from the left): inverse of e^x
- Maura (sunglasses in the middle): the reason why correlation does not necessarily imply causation
- Trevor (standing next to me): (r, theta)

See below for answers:












From left to right:
- Mark (doesn't count as a legitimate math costume): "math-magician"
- Julian: Natural log
- Maura: Lurking variable (there is a better picture somewhere where she is lurking in the corner while the rest of us take a group picture)
- Kieran (5,000 points if you got this one right): Mr. Johnson, our school's physics teacher
- Trevor: Polar coordinates
- Me: Tangent (a Tan Gent)

I love Halloween. Except that the scariest thing alway seems to be how little math people know.

Happy Birthday America

When I went back to Michigan in June, my very wonderful, very Californian roommate requested that I bring back something that represents Middle America. I don't like to brag, but if there were a rubric for awesome gifts from the midwest, I would be in the "exceeds standard" column.

It all started when we were in Lowell, MI. That should give you an appropriate context (even if you have never heard of Lowell--my point exactly). On the day we were setting up for Maggie's wedding we had to run out to get some clips for the tablecloths. And where would one go in West Michigan for any and all shopping needs? Obviously Meijer (a place I very dearly and non-ironically miss since leaving Michigan). While Jenny and Emily went to find the things we'd actually come for, Becky and I scouted out potential middle America gifts.

And there in the women's clothing section we say a display shining like a beacon of freedom. $4.99 patriotic tees! So many slogans! So much red! So much white! So much blue! SO much camouflage! It was a veritable wonderland of everything that is right with America. I carefully selected two to bring back to California. Sarah and I of course modeled them at the Cupertino fireworks on the 4th of July.


[In case the picture is too small to read, the wolf tee says "Protect the American Way". The kittens are "American Heart & Soul." So pretty.]

My only regret: I did not purchase the t-shirt that featured a potted plant on a windowsill and the caption "Butterflies - An American Tradition." I will probably spend the rest of my life searching for it.

Happy birthday, USA.

Best/Worst Assessment Ever

My roommate came up with a pretty ingenious costume for me this year. See if you can guess what it is (sorry, I didn't take any pictures):
I wore an outfit that was all pastel (green plain bermuda shorts and a pink sweater vest), my hair in pigtails with ribbons, and freckles on my face. On the front of my sweater was a big sideways "V". On the back I had a sign that said "<90degrees".

Get it? I was a cute angle! Hahahaha. Okay, not that funny, but appropriate for a geometry teacher. Nowhere near as good at the statistics teacher who came as a Mean Girl (entry in her Burn Book: "Didn't find y-hat"). As expected, some kids thought my costume was funny and most rolled their eyes. However, there was one reaction--that many had--that I didn't expect.

Kid: "Ms. L, what are you?"
Me: "Guess"
Kid: "Ummmm... a little kid? A nerd?"
Me: "What's on my shirt?"
Kid: "Tape?"
Me: "Yeah, what shape is it?"
Kid: "A 7?"
Me (turns around): "See if this helps?"
Kid: "Ninety... Oh! You're a right angle!"
Me (turns back around): "Does this look like a right angle? I am an angle, but what kind?"
Kid: "I don't know. It says 90 degrees on your sign"
Me: "Look again. It doesn't just say 90 degrees"
Kid: "Yes it does. You're a right angle."
Me (to myself): "I'm not a right angle, but apparently I am the worst geometry teacher ever."

So I learned that about half my kids do not know what an acute angle is and/or do not know how to read greater than/less than signs. This is a problem. I'm okay with them not getting the pun, but seriously, you think that's a right angle? Whatever it is that I think I'm teaching is clearly not sticking. Scariest Halloween ever. I will be forever haunted by the terror of our nation's poor math education.

Happy Birthday, America

For the 4th of July, Sarah and I went over to the San Jose America festival and caught the fireworks in the park near the Steingruebl pad. Most importantly, I got to try out the fireworks setting on my camera:













Don't you love that we celebrate our independence by mimicking the explosions of war?

Dayenu

Given my heritage that traces to India and the Mayflower, Passover is obviously a very important tradition to me. All my travels meant that I haven't gotten a chance to celebrate in a few years, so it was really important to me to attend a seder this year. But why attend when you can host? I spoke with 1.5 Jewish friends out here, and STEP Seder 2008 was quickly born.

I have been very spoiled in my seder experiences to always have ridiculously delicious food. Not wanting to break this tradition, I obviously turned to my Japanese surrogate mother for help. She lovingly typed up all her recipes and scanned in the haggadah. Now it was up to me to see if I could recreate the magic.

I fully subscribe to the motto of "Go big or go home," so I took on the gefilte fish and matzo ball soup, while my co-hosts Danny and Sarah made the brisket and harroset, respectively.

Okay, so I didn't make the gefilte fish from scratch. Maybe next year. In Jerusalem.


Gefilte fish loaf deemed "delicious" by real Jews.


Matzo ball soup deemed "delicious" by many, deemed "as close as I'll probably get to Mayumi's" by me.


Danny decides if this is how the brisket is supposed to look (the answer is yes).


I give at least 60% of the credit for the AMAZING brisket to Danny's mom, who coached from Chicago.


And from there the event spiraled into a frenzy.

Beginning about 36 hours before showtime, I was on the phone with Sarah and Danny pretty much nonstop. "Um, four more people just responded to the evite." "Is anyone else going to bring food? Will we have enough?" "You don't happen to have a roasting pan big enough for eight pounds of brisket..." "Okay, now two more people want to come." "We only have four chairs." "Does anyone have a working printer for the haggadah?" "Are you kidding me? How are you going to add your name to the evite list an hour before it starts?"

Not to mention the most seder-threatening disaster of them all: The Great Matzo Shortage of 2008. I called about 15 different stores until a lovely woman at the Redwood City Lucky's told that me I was, well, lucky. So I made the drive and found the familiar sight of shelves with nothing but macaroons and a large empty space. I guess I probably should have been a bit more suspicious when the woman on the phone asked me if I was looking for "the kind in the jars."

As the clock ticked down to 7pm, nothing short of a Pesach miracle occurred and somehow it all came together. The guest list finally settled (and came with food!), a STEPpie who's originally from Palo Alto offered her family's table and chairs, and Sarah's parents, who had happened to buy a box of matzo three weeks earlier, supplied us with enough for the afikomen.

The table, ready to go.




Seder plate, complete with genuine lamb shank.



Seder table, now with guests.



Afikomen hunt. Danny (dad for the night) hid it in one of our textbooks--where else?





Kieran sports his prize for finding the afikomen, a remnant from our last ethnic holiday party.



It turned out to be one of my favourite STEP events we've had all year. It was the first seder for a lot of people, but everyone was eager to participate and learn. Of course it will never be the same without Mayumi's cooking, but it definitely made my spring feel complete.

Rememberance (of sorts)

Kiwi food is interesting. Some is good, and some is very British (take that as you will). Nonetheless, I miss it dearly (BTW, if someone can find me lolly cake in the US, I will pay you a not insignificant sum of money). I knew that this would happen, so I left New Zealand armed with the Edmond's cookbook, the quintessential Kiwi cookbook.

Unfortunately I've done a pretty bad job of doing much cooking at all this year, let alone cooking from Edmond's. But I couldn't pass up April 25th without digging it off my bookshelf and whipping up some ANZAC biscuits. So delicious.

My makeshift Godzone kitchen. Unfortunately I had to settle for "all-purpose" instead of "standard" flour, and "shredded" coconut instead of "dessicated." But note the electric kettle and coffee plunger in the background--I feel so Kiwi.


Into the oven


The finished product, of course with the Edmond's cookbook.


Oh, and I also paid homage to those lost at Gallipoli and in the nearly 100 years since. Much love to the ANZACs. And to the biscuits baked in their name.

A Very STEPpie Halloween

As if my whole life isn't consumed quite enough by Stanford and teaching, somehow my entire Halloween ended up being completely STEP-tastic. It was like all I could think about was STEP, STEP, and more STEP. Which, sadly, is pretty reflective of my actual thoughts.

It started with my non-school Halloween costume. The only thing I could think of that would be funny, creative, and easy was to dress up like our Director of Clinical Work, Ruth Ann. It won't be that funny for anyone who doesn't know her, but she's a ridiculously coordinated and classy dresser. When I found an Ann Taylor pantsuit at Goodwill, the deal was sealed.



And to give you an idea of what our director looks like, here's a picture with me, Ruth Ann, another STEPpie and a STEP staff member--all dressed up as Ruth Ann.



Obviously, to make it a proper Halloween, I had to engage in the tradition of pumpkin carving. We even went so far as to go pumpkin picking, but it turned out that the "pumpkin patch" was actually some pumpkin vines with large pumpkins (clearly from other plants) strewn about so you could feel like you were picking pumpkins without actually doing it.



It also turned out that the pumpkins at the patch were ridiculously expensive, so we went to Safeway instead.

I bet you can't tell from my design what I am totally consumed with all the time.





Here are some group shots of our pumpkins. I have to say, we're a pretty creative group.







And now, the costume I know you're all waiting for: my school costume. I did have a lot of trouble figuring out something good AND math-related. I'm an algebra tile (the x tile to be exact)!





I got a much better reaction than I expected. There was definitely a lot of eye-rolling from the kids, and a lot of questions about "What's your real costume?" I asked why they assumed I wouldn't wear this out with my friends. One kid thought I'd bought my costume. I asked what Halloween stores he goes to where they sell algebra tile costumes.

My favourite comment? While I was talking to one group, a kid who I had my back to (the red side) asked "Ms. L., why are you so negative?" Later (when I was yelling at him in the hall, of course), I told him something and he asked "Are you positive?" Of course my answer was yes.

Planning Ahead

Halloween is my second favourite holiday, and I couldn't be more excited about this year. To begin with, I missed it last year, so I need to compensate. Secondly, I will get to dress up for school, which is awesome. I've decided that for my school costume I want to be something math-related. I know it's super-dorky, but I am a math teacher after all. If I can't embrace the dorkiness (in an attempt to normalize it, of course), then this career path is not going to turn out well for me.

But what to wear? I am completely stumped as to what would make a good costume. I don't want to dress up like a famous mathematician because (1) even if I tell people, they still won't know who I am and (2) that's not fun. I also want to avoid just writing a lot of numbers on a shirt and being pi/the fibonacci sequence/whatever, because that's not so much a costume as it is a t-shirt with numbers on it.

Suggestions, please!

Lessons from Waitangi

The most interesting part of my Waitangi Day experience to me actually happened after we’d left Waitangi and were stopped at The Warehouse (more or less a Kiwi equivalent to Kmart) to buy some dry clothes. We were browsing around the CDs when three women asked us if we knew where some Mariah Carey CD was. Their features could easily have passed for Maori, so they didn’t stick out until we heard their American accents. The women were from Native Americans from San Diego who had come all the way to New Zealand just to show support for other Pacific Rim indigenous peoples. Wow. I’d noticed an American flag in the hikoi (protest march), and was proud that some of my fellow countrymen/women were involved, but it didn’t occur to me that people might have come from the US just for that purpose. I wish I had gotten to talk to the women for longer to learn more about how they’d gotten connected to all this and what they do in the US.



This is no criticism of the women I met, considering that I know so little about them, but I found it interesting (and sort of disappointing) that American people of color were flying halfway around the world to support anti-colonization in other countries, yet it’s so difficult to put together multicultural coalitions in the United States. True, there is something unique connecting one indigenous group to another, but there are also a lot of things connecting American people of color together. Not to mention the obvious common goals around fighting racism and achieving equality.



You could argue that the women I met should be spending more time focused on the struggles faced by their own people—it’s not like Native Americans are faring too well. But I don’t doubt that these women are involved in their own communities, and more importantly, it’s more than possible to empower your own group while still being an ally to others. There’s no reason why it should be some sort of competition; it’s not like there is a limited amount of justice to go around. Success of, for example, Asian Americans does not have to come at the expense of Blacks, and vice versa. Divisions between people of color groups only serve to support and reinforce domination by the white power structure.

So although I did not make my journey to Waitangi with quite the same level of purpose as the San Diego women I met, I am still proud to have shown my support as a person of color. The effects of colonization that I experience may be different, but my understanding of the need to undo those effects is no less relevant.

Waitangi Day

Unfortunately, it seems that when I want to be in a particular location on a particular day (i.e. Gisborne for New Year’s Eve), New Zealand likes to make things difficult for me. Waitangi Day was on Tuesday, and ever since my boss Geneva offered to take me up to Waitangi for the day I’d been super excited about it. However, an overload at work coupled with some seriously bad weather devolved our plan from a fun little overnight trip into a three day solitary excursion to Kaitaia in a massive rainstorm (about 5 hours north of Auckland, as opposed to only 3 to Waitangi), with only about 2 hours actually spent at Waitangi.

Rather than give you background on Waitangi Day, I recommend reading the Wikipedia entry. Long story short, Waitangi Day celebrates/commemorates (depending on who you ask) the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi, which established joint rule of New Zealand by the Maori and England back in 1840. From what I could gather, the events at Waitangi (where the treaty was signed) are a cross between a carnival (lots of activities and food stalls), a jamboree (people camp out for a couple nights), a government spectacle (lots photo op appearances and patriotic speeches by politicians) and protest demonstration (see if you can find footage of when Queen Elizabeth visited and got stuff thrown at her). So obviously I wanted to go.

I was fortunate enough to go to Waitangi not really as a tourist, or at least as a tourist in disguise. Instead of just braving the activities myself, as I saw other tourists doing, I was fortunate to have an insider edge. My friend William, who is very involved in and well-connected to the Maori community, took me around and provided access to people and places that most tourists would not be able to approach.

A few entries ago, I wrote about how my race creates a different experience for me over here than if I were, for example, white. Like a lot of situations, both here and in the States, things would be easier if I were white. However, at all the Waitangi Day events, I couldn’t help but think about how being a person of colour was actually very much to my benefit. Not that William or any of the people I met would exclude a white person, but I was able to more easily slip in and out of interactions because I did not immediately stick out. I was introduced to some people as being an American, but people who I just said “kia ora” to and shook hands with may have been completely unaware just how much of an outsider I really was. Granted, my 6+ months of working in Maori health has taught me a lot of general protocol, but a white person who knows Maori protocol still sticks out more than a brown one.

There’s not that much to say about Waitangi Day, since the rain washed out a lot of the festivities and we didn’t stay for that long. Attendance was low, most of the tents/stalls closed down early, and the sea was so rough they had to cancel the wakas and the Navy salute. Fortunately, I still managed get some pictures of all the Tino Rangatiratanga flags.