A friend reminded me a few days ago it's been forever since I've written. Things have been busy - I graduated, went on vacation for a bit, started a new job, moved to a new house, and more, but (thankfully) it's starting to settle down again.
And I'm starting to get into a routine. As you might guess, that new job I mentioned entails a new commute. It seemed like a hellish change at first - my previous commute was all of a six minute walk. Counting elevator time and waiting at stoplights, I would leave my apartment at exactly 8:52am to get to work by 9. These days, not only do I have to be in by 8:30, but I have to leave my place nearly an hour earlier to get there on time. There’s a half-hour metro ride on the dreaded red line (wmata.com says it’s 20 minutes, but we all know better), and from there, a 20-minute walk to my building. Notice I say it seemed hellish at first. Now, strangely enough, I’m starting to like it, and the route itself is becoming autopilot. I’m actually able to take time to smell the roses, as they say. Or in this case, watch my fellow commuters (and unfortunately, smell some of them, too. Not quite so rosy. Please guys, when it’s 99 degrees outside, either shower or don’t sit next to me).
Which brings me to today. I thought it was just an ordinary Tuesday morning as I slipped on my iPod, started blasting the Taylor Swift, and began walking in time to it, feeling like the main character in a dance movie montage (c’mon, you know you do it too). But the characters I encountered, and the fact that I actually paid attention to them, made it just a little less ordinary. It all started with my decision to act like a Rockville local – when in fact I basically know nothing but the route to and from my office, and from my office to Panera – and take the shortcut path behind the hedge that cuts approximately two seconds off my travel time. As it happened, this decision probably added five seconds today as I nearly got bowled over by the guy running to the metro.
I should explain something here. I don’t know why, but the sight of adults in business clothes running always makes me laugh. Particularly when they’re carrying a briefcase, when there’s no apparent deadline (today’s guy was nowhere near the signs saying when the next train was), when they’re not doing that cutesy/annoying skipping thing that women in heels do, but full-on sprinting. This guy fit all three of those. But I have to give him credit – my sudden appearance in his direct path did not faze the guy one bit.
Little did I know this would not be my first near-collision of the day. It seemed today was a big day for Rockville-ans to take the metro (don’t you all have cars?) and they were all so eager to get into the spirit that they started obeying the metro escalator rules a whole block before the station. To be specific, they were walking on the left side of the sidewalk like it was their job. Correct me if I’m wrong, but since we drive on the right side of the road, we walk on the right side of the sidewalk, right? The result of all this was multiple surprised looks at me as I jumped onto the grass to avoid being hit. I know you’re excited, guys, but you’re not on the escalator yet!
Anyway, I made it past that obstacle course and it seemed like my fellow pedestrians had calmed down. But it was a morning of misconceptions. I’d just turned off of Rockville Pike when I encountered part two of running men in business clothes. Like most sequels, this guy totally outdid his predecessor. Not only did he have the bag and no obvious deadline, he was wearing a suit (a suit!) and running across the middle of Old Georgetown Road. As anyone who’s ever walked with me knows, I have nothing against jaywalking. In fact, I embrace it; it’s my little way of rebelling. But across a four-lane road during rush hour? That takes guts.
After making sure my suited friend survived his little sprint, I continued down Old Georgetown when I had my first run-in with a driver. It was bound to happen; unlike DC, this area is ruled by cars. Which the driver I was about to cross in front of (at the cross walk – I know where I can and can’t jaywalk) was well aware of and clearly wanted to make sure I knew, too. She was a mild-mannered motherly type emerging out of a shopping center parking lot, so I thought I was safe. Not so. I take one step off the sidewalk and she whips her head around, looks at me deer-in-headlights style, steps on the accelerator, and zooms off in front of me. You think I’m exaggerating? I wish I was.
I continued along my usual path, which for the next several minutes was pretty uneventful, until I hit Executive Boulevard. Like a Silicon Valley office park (seriously, it’s like I’m back in California everytime I go to work), this street has driveways leading to each building complex about every hundred feet. Thanks to crosswalks and the somewhat bewildering fact that hardly anyone seems to actually turn into these driveways, it’s generally pretty safe. Although, like California, you have your usual set of people who don’t signal when they turn, what makes things a little more suspenseful in this part of town is that rare breed of people who do the opposite: they signal but don’t turn.
Fairly harmless other than sometimes making me wait unnecessarily, these people fascinate me. I just can’t figure out the motivation. I’ve gone through several possibilities. Maybe it’s left over from a curvy road or an earlier turn, but that doesn’t really apply when the road is stick-straight and has been for quite some time. Maybe they hit it accidentally during a rousing session of driver’s-seat aerobics, but wouldn’t you notice the sudden clicking, or I don’t know, the fact that your hand hit something? Maybe they’re just overachievers, all prepared five hundred feet before the actual turn. That one’s a possibility, I suppose. Unlike the ones who don’t signal at all, these guys definitely aren’t lazy; they’re actively doing something they don’t need to do and gain no benefit from doing. Maybe it’s like my jaywalking, just their little way of doing something they’re not supposed to do before beginning a long day at work. After all, drivers need to rebel once in a while, too, don’t they?
Showing posts with label people. Show all posts
Showing posts with label people. Show all posts
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
gchattiquette
Isn't it funny how a website or piece of software can acquire a personality? I came across this article a while back that discussed the different types of kids - back then, it was mostly kids - who used Facebook and MySpace. The past couple of years, I've seen the same sort of thing happen with instant messaging applications. AIM's the one you keep since you've had it since middle school, Skype's the one you downloaded when your close friends started studying abroad, and gchat's the one that's sort of legit, the one you can sneakily use at work. Because hey, I was just checking my email! It's not my fault my friend decided to IM me.
Not that I would ever do such a thing, of course...
However, there's one pesky (but sometimes, so convenient) thing about gchat with great potential for awkwardness. You know what I'm talking about. That option that for most of us came with the default settings, which Gmail phrases as "Automatically allow people I communicate with often to chat with me and see when I'm online." Combined with another default setting, this one called "Show in chat list: Most popular", this means that exchanging emails with someone can put them in your chat list, and you on theirs. The kicker? If your usage of gchat is uneven, or if your friends are always online and theirs aren't, you might not even know it. It's fine in a lot of situations, like when a friendship develops naturally or you don't want to be so obvious as to "want to be able to chat with" a crush. But when that person is the random guy who bought your couch on Craigslist or the HR contact at the company you want to work for, this may not be the greatest thing.
Which brings me to my story. A couple of weeks ago, Michelle Obama came to speak to the employees of the federal agency where I work. After standing in line for an hour and in the room for another hour, and seeing her for an (oh so worth it) fifteen minutes, I came back to my office cube ready to share the excitement and discuss what she wore and what she said (yes, in that order. This is Michelle O. we're talking about, after all). Naturally, I changed my gchat status to "I saw Michelle Obama today!" In the flurry of IMs that followed in the next few hours - it was the most popular I'd been in ages - I noticed a couple of interesting things:
Not that I would ever do such a thing, of course...
However, there's one pesky (but sometimes, so convenient) thing about gchat with great potential for awkwardness. You know what I'm talking about. That option that for most of us came with the default settings, which Gmail phrases as "Automatically allow people I communicate with often to chat with me and see when I'm online." Combined with another default setting, this one called "Show in chat list: Most popular", this means that exchanging emails with someone can put them in your chat list, and you on theirs. The kicker? If your usage of gchat is uneven, or if your friends are always online and theirs aren't, you might not even know it. It's fine in a lot of situations, like when a friendship develops naturally or you don't want to be so obvious as to "want to be able to chat with" a crush. But when that person is the random guy who bought your couch on Craigslist or the HR contact at the company you want to work for, this may not be the greatest thing.
Which brings me to my story. A couple of weeks ago, Michelle Obama came to speak to the employees of the federal agency where I work. After standing in line for an hour and in the room for another hour, and seeing her for an (oh so worth it) fifteen minutes, I came back to my office cube ready to share the excitement and discuss what she wore and what she said (yes, in that order. This is Michelle O. we're talking about, after all). Naturally, I changed my gchat status to "I saw Michelle Obama today!" In the flurry of IMs that followed in the next few hours - it was the most popular I'd been in ages - I noticed a couple of interesting things:
- First of all, the chat list unevenness I referred to earlier came up. One group of my friends, when planning an event, tends to send out mass emails and "reply all" with anything they have to say. As a result, though I hardly know some of them, I have exchanged a number of emails with all of them. Their IMs asking about Michelle were what first alerted me to the fact that I can show up on someone's chat list without that person showing up on mine. I wondered how many previous status messages they had seen, mentally going through what I may have unknowingly revealed in the past few days.
- Secondly, people have two distinct ways of responding to an interesting gstatus. They either refer to it explicitly, saying something like "you saw Michelle? I'm so jealous!"; or they take it as part of the context, saying something like "awesome!", which would make no sense if, say, my chat list was minimized (as it often is) and I forgot what it said (as I often do). To draw a Facebook parallel, it's the difference between writing on someone's wall in response to an interesting status, and commenting on it directly.
Monday, February 23, 2009
high school never ends
Bowling for Soup had it right. In their 2006 single “High School Never Ends”, the pop-punk band sang, “And you still don’t have the right look, and you don’t have the right friends, nothing changes but the faces, the names, and the trends…high school never ends.” Whether a person’s role in that social hierarchy can change is a question I’ll leave for another day, but I think we can all agree that several years out of high school, the hierarchy still exists.
You see it all the time. Instead of going to the office today, my division of about 12 people had a day-long retreat. It wasn’t quite as cheesy as it sounds – no trust falls or awkward icebreakers, thank goodness – but there was time for a little reflection and honesty. During a discussion of lessons learned this year, one of my coworkers said her biggest lesson was that she “just didn’t fit in.” As I’d gotten to know her over the previous months, I had sensed a frustration in her general demeanor and under-the-breath comments, but to hear it stated so candidly and in words a teenager might use made it much more real, and much more poignant. It wasn’t a matter of time, I knew. She’d worked there for years and felt that way; I’d worked there eight months and felt perfectly at home.
It’s just as apparent in our personal lives. Last year, one of my friends often confided in me about the group of students in her graduate program. Of the 20 or 25 students, there was a “core group” of about six or seven, and my friend began the program as one of them. They’d spend nights and weekends at each other’s apartments, and as my friend said with some hesitation, spent a good part of their conversations making fun of their classmates. As the year went on, she told me about how one girl got systematically excluded from the group. Whether it was consciously planned or unspoken, that girl gradually stopped being invited, her calls stopped being returned, and she eventually found other friends. Hearing the story, I felt like it was something out of Mean Girls, but these students were in their early twenties at least.
Sadly, but perhaps not too surprisingly, my friend was the next one to be pushed out of the group. I saw her spend several Friday and Saturday evenings choosing outfits but waiting for a phone call to be returned before changing into them – a phone call that many nights, never came. Like her classmate before her, she eventually decided to find others who appreciated her more.
But that insecurity never goes away, I realized. This past weekend, the core group seemed to change their mind about my friend, and invited her out with them for the first time in several months. She was genuinely excited about it – and she is not an excitable girl. I watched the same scene from last year play out again as she mused over what to wear and when to leave, and crossed my fingers that they’d be nice this time. Luckily, they were, but what struck me more than their sudden change of mind was her sudden change of mind. Once they wanted her back, last year’s inexplicable rejection seemed forgotten. I cautiously asked her about it, and she explained to me that while she did remember what happened, “with this group, it’s better to be in than out.”
It’s a pragmatic answer, yes, but there’s no way feelings don’t get involved. You could see it in my coworker’s avoidance of eye contact while she admitted to feeling left out, and in my friend’s disappointment in not being called back. And yet we persist in wanting to be part of these groups that reject us – why? And why do we blame ourselves for what is more likely the sum of group dynamics, chance, and self-preservation? I’m definitely guilty of it myself. When I get rejected from anything, be it a romantic prospect or a job interview, the first thing I do is wonder what I did wrong. The second thing I do is resolve to win the person over. It’s completely unhealthy, and we should be beyond it, and we know it.
Easier said than done, though, right?
You see it all the time. Instead of going to the office today, my division of about 12 people had a day-long retreat. It wasn’t quite as cheesy as it sounds – no trust falls or awkward icebreakers, thank goodness – but there was time for a little reflection and honesty. During a discussion of lessons learned this year, one of my coworkers said her biggest lesson was that she “just didn’t fit in.” As I’d gotten to know her over the previous months, I had sensed a frustration in her general demeanor and under-the-breath comments, but to hear it stated so candidly and in words a teenager might use made it much more real, and much more poignant. It wasn’t a matter of time, I knew. She’d worked there for years and felt that way; I’d worked there eight months and felt perfectly at home.
It’s just as apparent in our personal lives. Last year, one of my friends often confided in me about the group of students in her graduate program. Of the 20 or 25 students, there was a “core group” of about six or seven, and my friend began the program as one of them. They’d spend nights and weekends at each other’s apartments, and as my friend said with some hesitation, spent a good part of their conversations making fun of their classmates. As the year went on, she told me about how one girl got systematically excluded from the group. Whether it was consciously planned or unspoken, that girl gradually stopped being invited, her calls stopped being returned, and she eventually found other friends. Hearing the story, I felt like it was something out of Mean Girls, but these students were in their early twenties at least.
Sadly, but perhaps not too surprisingly, my friend was the next one to be pushed out of the group. I saw her spend several Friday and Saturday evenings choosing outfits but waiting for a phone call to be returned before changing into them – a phone call that many nights, never came. Like her classmate before her, she eventually decided to find others who appreciated her more.
But that insecurity never goes away, I realized. This past weekend, the core group seemed to change their mind about my friend, and invited her out with them for the first time in several months. She was genuinely excited about it – and she is not an excitable girl. I watched the same scene from last year play out again as she mused over what to wear and when to leave, and crossed my fingers that they’d be nice this time. Luckily, they were, but what struck me more than their sudden change of mind was her sudden change of mind. Once they wanted her back, last year’s inexplicable rejection seemed forgotten. I cautiously asked her about it, and she explained to me that while she did remember what happened, “with this group, it’s better to be in than out.”
It’s a pragmatic answer, yes, but there’s no way feelings don’t get involved. You could see it in my coworker’s avoidance of eye contact while she admitted to feeling left out, and in my friend’s disappointment in not being called back. And yet we persist in wanting to be part of these groups that reject us – why? And why do we blame ourselves for what is more likely the sum of group dynamics, chance, and self-preservation? I’m definitely guilty of it myself. When I get rejected from anything, be it a romantic prospect or a job interview, the first thing I do is wonder what I did wrong. The second thing I do is resolve to win the person over. It’s completely unhealthy, and we should be beyond it, and we know it.
Easier said than done, though, right?
Monday, January 19, 2009
strictly an observer
Today is Martin Luther King Jr's birthday. May he rest in peace.
As someone who stood up openly for the rights of others, his legacy makes me think about my own way of dealing with injustices, from the big ones that shape people's entire lives to the little ones that make or break their day. When it comes to conflict, I tend to be an observer. When the stakes aren't high - and let's face it, in my fairly mundane life, they usually aren't - being an observer is way more fun. It's a lot easier to make snarky comments, egg on both sides, and note lapses in logic and consistency when you're an outsider. You're everyone's confidante and no one's enemy. You don't have to worry about it. It's a pretty good life.
Most of the time. As Penny Lane said in Almost Famous, "...never take it seriously. If you never take it seriously, you'll never get hurt. If you never get hurt, you'll always have fun." But on days like today, when we honor MLK and other symbols of today's safer, more equitable (though far from perfect) world, I wonder if forgetting the fun and letting yourself get hurt once in a while can be a good thing. I should give it a try.
As someone who stood up openly for the rights of others, his legacy makes me think about my own way of dealing with injustices, from the big ones that shape people's entire lives to the little ones that make or break their day. When it comes to conflict, I tend to be an observer. When the stakes aren't high - and let's face it, in my fairly mundane life, they usually aren't - being an observer is way more fun. It's a lot easier to make snarky comments, egg on both sides, and note lapses in logic and consistency when you're an outsider. You're everyone's confidante and no one's enemy. You don't have to worry about it. It's a pretty good life.
Most of the time. As Penny Lane said in Almost Famous, "...never take it seriously. If you never take it seriously, you'll never get hurt. If you never get hurt, you'll always have fun." But on days like today, when we honor MLK and other symbols of today's safer, more equitable (though far from perfect) world, I wonder if forgetting the fun and letting yourself get hurt once in a while can be a good thing. I should give it a try.
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
oh so exotic
Last night, I was chatting with a friend about music, and he mentioned how he thought M.I.A. and the lead singer from CSS ("Music is My Hot Hot Sex" from that 2007 iPod commercial) were similar. I asked how - I love M.I.A.'s "Paper Planes" but that iPod commercial usually prompted me to either hit the mute button or brush my teeth, depending on the time of day - and he said they were both exotic female singers. A quick Wikipedia check showed me that one was Indian and the other was half-Japanese.
Being a second-generation Indian born and raised in Northern California, neither sounded all that exotic to me. But it happens all the time. I can't tell you the number of times I've been at a bar and some guy has excitedly said to me, "Are you Indian? I studied there for a year," or "I have an Indian friend," or something along those lines. And I never know how to react. I mean, really? Am I supposed to be impressed by that? Does it make it more likely that you'll make friends with another one, such as me? (Is friendship what you're really looking for, anyway?) Now if you said you had a movie star friend, you might have my attention. Don't get me wrong, I've read the Game, I know you're trying to make a connection, and I appreciate that. But a simple "hi" will do. This sort of thing is actually a turnoff.
It happens in other situations as well. Several years ago, I went to a picnic with my mom and little sister. We didn't really know anyone, and being at that funny early teenage age where we were too old to run around with the kids, my sister and I got roped into awkward small talk with a (well-intentioned, I'm sure) lady there. It ended up being half an hour of awed questions about our ethnicity peppered with random facts from her old history books. Like the bar guys, I'm sure she meant well and was just trying to be friendly, but there was plenty more to talk about. My sister and I are not boring people, and whatever happened to the old standby, "So what grade are you in?", anyway?
And it can have stronger consequences than annoying a potential new acquaintance. A friend of mine was dumped a few months back by a guy for whom, she was convinced, she was "his wild Asian oat." That theory hadn't occurred to me - I was more inclined to simply call him an all-around jerk, out of loyalty - but it made me wonder. If it was true, how far can the novelty of being exotic go? How far should it go? What happens when it wears off?
And what are the morals of this sort of novelty, anyway? I have to admit that I consciously seek out friends who are different from me; the novelty of their experiences, personality, and hobbies makes them interesting. Is my choosing them for those criteria any different than their choosing me for my ethnicity? In short, are there more and less appropriate reasons for choosing a friend, or do the ends justify the means?
Being a second-generation Indian born and raised in Northern California, neither sounded all that exotic to me. But it happens all the time. I can't tell you the number of times I've been at a bar and some guy has excitedly said to me, "Are you Indian? I studied there for a year," or "I have an Indian friend," or something along those lines. And I never know how to react. I mean, really? Am I supposed to be impressed by that? Does it make it more likely that you'll make friends with another one, such as me? (Is friendship what you're really looking for, anyway?) Now if you said you had a movie star friend, you might have my attention. Don't get me wrong, I've read the Game, I know you're trying to make a connection, and I appreciate that. But a simple "hi" will do. This sort of thing is actually a turnoff.
It happens in other situations as well. Several years ago, I went to a picnic with my mom and little sister. We didn't really know anyone, and being at that funny early teenage age where we were too old to run around with the kids, my sister and I got roped into awkward small talk with a (well-intentioned, I'm sure) lady there. It ended up being half an hour of awed questions about our ethnicity peppered with random facts from her old history books. Like the bar guys, I'm sure she meant well and was just trying to be friendly, but there was plenty more to talk about. My sister and I are not boring people, and whatever happened to the old standby, "So what grade are you in?", anyway?
And it can have stronger consequences than annoying a potential new acquaintance. A friend of mine was dumped a few months back by a guy for whom, she was convinced, she was "his wild Asian oat." That theory hadn't occurred to me - I was more inclined to simply call him an all-around jerk, out of loyalty - but it made me wonder. If it was true, how far can the novelty of being exotic go? How far should it go? What happens when it wears off?
And what are the morals of this sort of novelty, anyway? I have to admit that I consciously seek out friends who are different from me; the novelty of their experiences, personality, and hobbies makes them interesting. Is my choosing them for those criteria any different than their choosing me for my ethnicity? In short, are there more and less appropriate reasons for choosing a friend, or do the ends justify the means?
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