Stuff from November, 2010
This is the archive of tumbledry happenings that occurred on November, 2010.
This is the archive of tumbledry happenings that occurred on November, 2010.
Adrian Tan delivered an amazing combination of wisdom and wit to a graduating class in Singapore:
Do not waste the vast majority of your life doing something you hate so that you can spend the small remainder sliver of your life in modest comfort. You may never reach that end anyway.
Resist the temptation to get a job. Instead, play. Find something you enjoy doing. Do it. Over and over again. You will become good at it for two reasons: you like it, and you do it often. Soon, that will have value in itself.
Are you more interested in being right, or understanding?
Regarding trying new dental materials, Dr. Sorenson told me this one:
Be not the first by whom the new are tried
Nor yet the last to lay the old aside.
—Alexander Pope
“All the money in the world can’t buy your health,” he said.
Then, he and his wife gave away the $11.2 milion they had just won playing the lottery.
This quote from Radiohead’s frontman Thom Yorke about Street Spirit (Fade Out) confuses me. I’ve never listened to it before, now I can’t decide if I want to hear it, or to never listen:
I can’t believe we have fans that can deal emotionally with that song. That’s why I’m convinced that they don’t know what it’s about. It’s why we play it towards the end of our sets. It drains me, and it shakes me, and hurts like hell every time I play it, looking out at thousands of people cheering and smiling, oblivious to the tragedy of its meaning, like when you’re going to have your dog put down and it’s wagging its tail on the way there. That’s what they all look like, and it breaks my heart. I wish that song hadn’t picked us as its catalysts, and so I don’t claim it. It asks too much. I didn’t write that song.
Dear Everyone In The Library,
Terribly sorry for eating a giant, juicy, crispy Honeycrisp apple today. Noise pollution wasn’t a good enough reason to forgo such a delicious delight.
All the best in your continued academic pursuits,
Alex
In the past few weeks, I’ve had some very near misses with some very bad things.
(Almost) Bike Death
Seymour Avenue winds down a very steep hill as it approaches Franklin Avenue. At the intersection between the two, there’s a blind intersection controlled by a stoplight. In the winter, I come down this hill on my bike and turn left onto Franklin. 99% of the time, the light is red and I slow to a stop, but I’ve made it through on a couple of green lights in the past.
Having got that previous post of life-threaten(ed) melodrama out of my system, it’s now time to confront the epidemic of cheating in schools.
Cheating, 2008
I left out an important detail when I told the story of my impossible first semester at dental school. It goes like this: shortly after receiving the news on the 12th of November, 2008 that I was mere points from failing two critical classes, I was in the library cramming for a histology quiz on which I could not afford to lose any points. A classmate of mine approached me.