Elston’s Blog

After listening extensively to a wide selection of Bollywood hits from the 2000s (which regrettably means I missed out on the earlier great works of A. R. Rahman), I have concluded that Bollywood music is far superior to Hollywood music. Although I do not understand a single word of the Tamil, Punjabi, or Hindi, I can appreciate the beats and mixes. Bhool Bhulaiyaa, for example, has an extremely complex and catchy intro.

Probably the best and most interesting thing about Bollywood music is the use of traditional Indian instruments, such as the sitar, wood flute, and various types of drums. I’m also pretty sure that a Bollywood musical would be far superior to a regular Hollywood musical, only partially because it would involve grossly enlarged numbers of dancers, i.e. at least 150 per scene.

If you haven’t tried really listening to Bollywood music, I suggest starting with the non-Bollywood Slumdog Millionaire soundtrack and then progressing into true Bollywood music.

Seeing as I am a second semester high school senior, I am obligated to fill out various forms and write various essays for various scholarships. This involves my giving out to random, supposedly and hopefully honest organizations personal information, such as my address and phone number. Of course, I’m highly suspicious of anybody with this type of information, because it can quickly lead to fraud (each additional source exponentially increases the probability), and no one likes to see spam or fraud.

Chances are, being Asian and middle-class, I won’t receive any scholarships anyway. But at least I get writing practice.

Today I was filling out a scholarship application for Presidential Scholars, and noticed that the site is horribly designed. The post-submission screen flashes for about three seconds before switching back to the application status page; anything possibly useful/essential that could have been gleaned from that page is forever lost. Also, the essay prompts had a character count; unfortunately, using a line break is apparently equivalent to an infinite number of characters. And it’s not that the site couldn’t do it; for the main essay the formatting worked not perfectly, but better.

This brings me to my main point: government should be as limited as possible, and the more there is privatized, the better. Government is inherently inefficient, and has no market forces working upon it to force an increase in efficiency or the quality of product. Therefore, everything stagnates and is of mediocre quality, just like online application form for Presidential Scholars.

My dad about finalized the arrangments for a possible teaching position in Shanghai this summer. I would teach SAT and do college admissions counseling, for about 120 yuan an hour. In total, if I stayed two months, I’d probably make about $3000, generously calculated.

On the other hand, I could make less money but stay here. I would thus be able to fulfill my desire of learning ballroom dance, and being able to practice cello. Could I carry a cello to China? Or perhaps I could rent one there…hm.

So the dilemma: China vs. Here. I guess I’m not going to actually hang out with my friends that much anyway, although I would like to jam with some of my musically-inclined ones.

Oh, what to do?

So I’ve decided that after many years of piano, I’m going to put that instrument aside and switch instead to cello. Why? No particular reason, but it sounds cool and isn’t as stereotypical as guitar or electric bass or something, and violin for some reason seems to stress the neck.

Then I hit up eBay, Amazon, and Craigslist, and found that for about $400, nothing good could be found. It seems that the poorest of all professionals, the musician, must shell out thousands upon thousands for a halfway decent instrument. A nice cello is about $5000. My grand piano was only $10,000!

Probably, I’m going to purchase a $300 one, and perhaps have a luthier work on it a little.  Which will set me back another $100. And new strings, of course - another $50. Then a book, $40. I’m broke.

Anybody want to lend me one?

While I was writing about language today, the intersection between English and music, I noticed that humans all think in terms of language. I think in English. But how would I think if I didn’t know any language at all? Would I even have thoughts? Or would I simply act on impulse and reflex?

Before humans developed language, how did they live? Or perhaps all modern humans were given some form of rudimentary knowledge of language; as Chomsky posits, humans are born with an innate knowledge of the basic forms of grammar.

So I received a FREE pair of 3-D glasses from one of my friends today; it was from Coraline, and reminded me of last year when our group of friends all wore the ghetto 3-D’s, with one red and one blue lens.

We wore them generally all day outside of class, and sometimes random shirts and colors would become crazy in appearance. The best part was when you took them off and your vision remained distorted and incorrectly colored for about five minutes afterward. Good times.

Interestingly, I just ordered a pack of 3 more 3D glasses. How fun.

So my friend and I visited a donut shop for breakfast this morning, before class, and it made me realize how difficult of a business a donut shop is. They probably open around 5:30 or so, to serve the early-risers, which means that they themselves have to start work before 5.

And I don’t think that the profit margins are that large either; a donut is about $0.85, and subtracting the cost of materials and overhead, there’s probabably a $0.25 or less margin of profit on it. Which means that they have to sell a lot of donuts in order to keep their business running, which I guess they somehow do. This particular one, Lov N’ Donuts, has been in business for over a year, which generally marks the make-or-break point for small businesses.

I think that the greatest profits are probably made from thoughtful people who buy drinks from them; Yasamin bought an ice tea Snapple for double what she could have at Costco or somewhere else.

Yet donuts, I think, form an essential part of the American psyche. Besides being unhealthy in every way possible and a definite precursor to developing Type II diabetes, donuts are a form of quick and cheap fulfillment. Quintessentially American.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tara-stiles/help-im-addicted-to-faceb_b_166726.html

After reading the article at the above link, and comparing my own behavorial patterns against the “10 warning signs that you may be addicted to Facebook, I have concluded that I, despite spending sometimes all my 20 waking-hours logged onto Facebook, am not an addict.

However, I do: update my status more than twice a day (2), with the excuse that I simply have many different things to do; click on someone’s profile more than once a day even if they haven’t messaged or tagged me in a photo (5a), which qualifies me as a Facebook stalker; and  checked my page while reading the artice (7).

This is only 3/10, which I do not believe qualifies me as an addict. Nonetheless, I undoubtedly spend many unproductive hours sitting on Facebook, albeit mainly while engaged in other activities requiring the use of a computer.

Yet I feel that Stiles’s approach to determining one’s Facebook addiction is insufficient, and should factor in total number of hours spent a week, as well as number of comments posted a week.

Food: 3.5/5

Price: 4/5

Service: 3/5

Ambiance: 2/5

Overall: 3.8/5

This restaurant specializes in dumplings, fried buns, potstickers, wonton soups, and goodies of similar ilk. Going with family and friends, we tried a variety of different dishes, of course ordering their usual specialties.

Like many Chinese restaurants in the San Gabriel-Alhambra-Rosemead-Temple City-places reachable by either Atlantic Blvd. or Garvey Ave., this place is relatively small, especially when judged by American standards. There are a lot of people, and the bustle is almost reminiscent of mainland China itself. This restaurant had in fact just opened, and thus was spotless and modern, something lacking from many Chinese restaurants.

One of the coolest things about this place was an open, glass-enclosed viewing center where patrons could watch the dough for the various dishes be made.

The food itself was relatively good, although their Shanghai-style chow mein was a bit lacking, especially in soy sauce. Also, their potstickers seemed to have borrowed the dough from the fried pork buns, when in fact potsticker dough should be thinner and less leavened, if those are the right words to use.

Service was decent, but again, the surroundings were a bit crowded. For price, most dishes were about $4.50, about what you’d expect in a Chinese restaurant.

I would return to this restaurant.