Concavities and Venn Diagrams

Concavities!

I'm subbing in for the Calc teacher at Maths School on 02-Feb and 09-Feb. He wants me to cover Concavity. As soon as I finish with a proof of concavity, I'll post it up here.

For now, you get this Venn Diagram as I ponder over Necessary and Sufficient. ...Again. Augh!



I'm not sure who else got taught this way, but I was taught that the rectangle (in this example) is "The Universe", so label accordingly! Put a title on The Universe! Label things that aren't in the circles!


Mm, tired.

--Charissa

Margaret Cho and Me

Margaret Cho

I've been watching some of Margaret Cho's performances on YouTube lately.

I think Margaret Cho is my hero now.

I was watching "I'm the One That I Want", and so much of it resonated within me. Expectations, Asian mother, bisexuality, low self-esteem, more expectations, uncertain identity...

(Aside: I find the way YouTube displays "Related Videos" on the side of a video to be terribly annoying in the way it truncates the title, so if you're looking for "Part 7/10", it usually gets cut off. So, I've made quick tables for myself and others to use!)

"I'm the One That I Want" (YouTube)
Part 1	Part 2	Part 3	Part 4	Part 5A, 5B
Part 6	Part 7	Part 8	Part 9	Part 10

"Assassin" (YouTube)
Part 1	Part 2	Part 3	Part 4
Part 5	Part 6	Part 7	Part 8

Me

I'm finding myself lost again. I had my best friend come over last week (or so). It was...good, but also frightening. We still have this thing, where we just know what the other is saying, or is trying or wanting to say, even if the other is stuck on the word or whatever. And we still have the ability to surprise eachother--we tell jokes, which are maybe five words long, and the other can't stop laughing!

At the same time, he'll be moving to either Hartford or Miami for school, which is sad and... I don't know what the word is.

In my graduating year, I wanted to be an Acoustical Engineer. I was actually considering going to Hartford for my education, too.

I'm not sure what happened, though.

And that... sort of scares me. I'm not sure what happened.


I was chatting online with an old classmate from high school. She's into some of that "New Age" stuff, like homeopathy, and has pretty radical but forward ideas.

We talked--inevitably, about me, because I'm such a windbag sometimes. I'd said something about having no motivation, and she said that lack of motivation comes from repressing what you want. And this struck me as true.

The unfortunate side of this, is that I am a First Generation Canadian, and my parents have "Old World" expectations of me:
- go to University
- become a "professional" (ie: letters behind my name, a job that requires an expensive education; eg: doctor, lawyer...)
- support them until they die

Aside from these, are more implied and less action-oriented:
- marry a nice man; having kids would be very nice (my two older brothers are not married)
- have a license, drive a car
- don't be fat
- be pretty
- be proper (polite, etc)
- achieve things that have documentation (eg: awards, certificates, grants, scholarships...)

Reminds me of something Margaret Cho said in ITOTIW. A reporter had asked her whether or not it was true that she had been made to lose weight, to play the part of herself, on her own television show.

Sometimes I feel I'm being pressured to [do this] because it's "who/how I should be".

I should be assertive. Sure, no problem with that one.
I should be world-wise. Ennh, maybe, sometimes, maybe.
I should not get upset over other people's problems. Uhh...
I should not trust people. Okay, shut up.

Sometimes I wonder what it means to live as a Christian. Sure I know why I can call myself Christian--that's on a personal level. What do Christians "look like"?

This is one of the reasons I don't want to be "wise in the ways of the world". Whenever I feel that way, I also feel... out-of-character and as though I don't fit or belong that way or belong in that "worldly" world.

I'm very mental. ...By which I mean, things happen in my mind more than anywhere else. This is why I love doing math problems or proofs--I see through to the other side, and while I'm doing it, I'm writing down a physical record of it.

But because I'm very mentally active, that is the first thing I try to shut up when I'm trying to relax or calm myself down. Thus, I rarely get anything finished. Thinking gets me excited, sometimes upset. I'm pretty passionate in that Scorpio way.

I feel--sometimes I just have to hate. Not so much that "it's okay to hate", but "it is natural to hate things". And my first reaction to this is always, "No, hate is bad!" However, I find, that as soon as I allow myself to be angry, I'm no longer angry.




This post has carried on pretty long and I should sleep. I wanted to upload Strip Calc v. 2c, but it'll have to wait, I guess
--Charissa

Beeswax

Months upon months ago, some buddies and I went for lunch or something, and ended up walking through the various stores on this very bohemian part of town. While they looked at jewellery and clothes, I found myself picking up a pamphlet on beeswax candles. Ever since then, I've wanted a beeswax candle. It was only recently, having gotten my room back and wanting to light candles, that I actually got one.

Beeswax is amazing!

Most obviously, I love the honey smell in my room. Also, I like playing with fire and burning my fingertips; and I do feel different. Maybe it's the negative ions sticking to the positive ions and falling to the ground, cleaning my air. I'm not sure. It feels very inspirational--I mean, for a candle.

I got these Pheylonian Phloat'rs from a gift shop. I was upset they didn't have any pillars, but these are nice, too. I have one floating in a rice bowl right now.

At the advice from a shopkeeper, I looked in the phone book for "Religious Goods", because they often carry beeswax candles in all shapes and sizes! This one place has three inch diameter pillars, which is what I'll probably get in March (when I have money to spare).

Also interesting from Pheylonian is bee pollen. I just might try that out when I have money!


That's all for now. I'm trying to finish up "Stip Calc" version 2c. Sigh.
--Charissa

Interviewing

Work

The market research gig is pretty great. I got my first racist comments on Sunday, and that was a little disheartening. For me and most of my generation (who got the "stereotypes are bad and false!" lectures in grade school), it's always a shock to see that the stereotypical people do in fact exist.

Also, one of my supervisors, let's call him Don; we like to chat! It's great! And I told him I'm queer today! He seemed shocked; but he also defended himself with the, "Well, we're not supposed to ask" blurb. Hehe.

I've been telling him a lot about my parents, lately, it seems. Don had actually monitored me on that particularly bad survey, where, instead of just hanging up, decided to stick around and finish the entire survey, which is normally five minutes, in 15 minutes.

I ended up telling Don about stuff:

Last year, my other supervisor wanted me trained on this specific type of customer satisfaction survey ("c-sat" for short), but it meant that I had to be put on other c-sats first. Unfortunately, several things were going against me.

First, you have to understand, that c-sats are usually completed with people who don't necessarily like surveys. They're just completing it because you're representating a company they use or like or at least, deal with or own something from. So they don't understand the "unwritten" rules (they're actually written, on this end) that go with saying, "Okay, I'll do your survey."

One question went something like, "So, how did you find out about [company]?" The fellow on the other end said, "Yellow pages." The next question was, "And how did you find the phone number for [company]?" He hung up profanely.

Second, earlier that day, my father had said something pretty stupid and careless and it would have been abusive had he said it on purpose, but I just can't tell if he's that dense, or if he actually realizes what he's saying. It was something along the lines of, "I love you, even if you're not in school", or more basicaly, "I love you, even though you're flawed!" Gee, thanks. And I guess I take those things pretty badly. I hate being called worthless. I'm tearing up even now, with at least one year's distance, just writing this all.

Anyway, I had to leave work crying that day.

Eventually, I got trained on the specific c-sats that is one of our biggest clients. I'm pretty good at it! Just, on Sunday, I got my first two racist fellows.

First guy couldn't understand what I was saying. We were calling into the States--the deep south, too! He couldn't understand me. Just before he hung up, I chould hear him say, "God damn foreigns!"

Wow.

Next guy stuck around for fifteen minutes. He made me spell out my name, the name of the company I work for, and then asked me--get this--"Where were you born?"

"Canada," I told him, rather forcibly. "Ca-na-da." Do you know where that is? It's up. Up. North. There. Yeah. Good for you!

Apparently, he (let's call him Billy) had called [company]'s call centre, and had gotten a fellow with a strong accent. And Billy just needed a number from the accented fellow, so that was all Billy understood, and it was all Billy needed. But Billy's biggest concern was that [company], which is a good ol' American company was putting call centres in this, that and the other country. Why should a good ol' American company have call centres located in other countries?

I was quite tempted to tell Billy that there are people who live in America who have accents. And I really wanted to suggest to Billy that, "Hey, maybe it would've been better had no foreigners come to America at all!" But I don't think he would have understood that.

Ah well.

Well, Don had monitored that call, and we chatted, and I talked about my parents and stuff.


Past experiences with supervisors

On my first actual day of work, I was supervised by, let's call him Bob. This was summer of 2006, I should add.

Well, Bob introduced himself to me, since I was new, and, for some reason, suddenly asked how old I was.

"Seventeen," I told him.

"Oh," he said. Then, "When do you turn eighteen."

Uhh.... Well, I told him my birthday, and then he made some comment about Scorpios being passionate. I think I just excused myself from any further conversation.


[post abandonned, unfinished]