Beginnings and endings

This Wednesday marked my last day at ABC English. It was harder than expected, as mothers came (and have been coming) forward with presents. Some of these marked my first ever gifts of clothes for the symbiote. ("It's the size of a large steak now!" says my OB/GYN, and I smile, but deep inside I think, "Mmmh, steak. Yum." I don't want to think about it that way!!! More on symbiote later, because I am SURE everyone is panting or drooling to hear. ... ha.)

I spent Wednesday evening and Tuesday, too, in a state akin to shock. Separation alarms are ringing in the corridors of my mind, and unplugging myself from this chapter, midway through the page turn, (how many more metaphors can I mix in? here is one more!)- had me feeling like I was free-falling, and my wings hadn't quite figured out how to flap right yet.

I resolved to do nothing all day on Thursday. And I achieved that. Almost. Guilty at still lounging in pajamas at four pm, I took a shower, then put laundry away. One should not swear to not be productive, for I paid for this burst of guilt-inspired productivity by breaking the lid on our best teapot, after tripping over a cord with both arms full of folded clothes, covering the floor in half-consumed tea. I suggested to Tim that perhaps we should make a point of pouring tea over the rest of the carpeting in here before inspection day, just to make sure it is the same uniform shade of taupe.

But with a little time to unwind comes a certain relief. This is the best thing. Leaving my kids behind is difficult-- I never told them I was going-- and I am going to write up a nice letter in Japanese, I think, to give to all the parents and children, something that conveys my mind to them. But I heard back from IU this week, and they suggest I take the graduate colloquy course this fall. It puts me into my cohort, and will serve as a necessary basis for much to follow. It also only meets one day a week--rock on. I then, of course, made the mistake tonight of looking at all the other course offerings this fall. I think I have spent the last hour yelling foul that I can't go full-on this fall semester. Dare I try six credits? I -want- to, but I somehow doubt that such a thing is WISE. I haven't tried explaining to anyone at IU yet that I also want to try and hook up with the music department, and take a course in classical Japanese, along with some more modern Japanese. And brush up my Spanish. Seeking opportunities to do some of these things will have to wait until we are back, but I know it will become a lot more complicated after the arrival in person of the symbiote. Now is the time to act!! Quickly, before things become more complicated!!! Post-move is going to be a lot of reading on bilingual education, I think, and finding resources in the Bloomington area.

So, I waited to share symbiote news. Um. Not much. Creature started moving around in a way that I could feel a few weeks ago. It doesn't keep me up at night, yet. There is a certain alien fascination to it, though, to lie quietly as I wake up and feel it do the "I want breakfast" dance, or to lie down flat, and suddenly realize my stomach has taken on pointy contours. What the heck is it DOING!? We make an idealized personality for ourselves in our brains, and nothing can prepare us for actual arrival. I read Remember Sascha? by Ray Bradbury today; a certain insight there. I was hoping this past Monday's appointment would reveal the mystery sex of the creature... but no luck. The doctor said, "Uhh... not sure. Next time, maybe."

We have to start the irritating process of naming. Something I have looked forward to since I was a child. I name all things very seriously, but there is a part of me that feels like I shouldn't commit to something as serious as a name until I get to know the creature I am naming. Not that I expect to have a mystical mother's intuition upon seeing the creature's face, but... naming someone when I have very little idea of their personality or nature, seems... wrong, somehow. But maybe since it will share OUR natures, whatever we choose to mark our child with for all eternity or until their 18th birthday drives them to the local court house in giddy relief from long humiliation... will reflect us and it, too.

Decisions, loopholes, and misgivings

We have both decided that Indiana University is where we are going to be flinging ourselves to. Mostly. The offer of a full ride plus living stipend from Carnegie Mellon was probably the hardest reward I have ever had to look at... and defer. Yes. Sadly, that is the only loophole we have if things go horribly wrong. I will not be able to start classes at IU this fall, but if Tim has some sort of awful experiences in the computer/bio sciences, well... if by January we know for certain that we should not be at IU, then... we can arrange another crosscountry move.

IU was supposed to be our first choice. But the more contact I had with the department at University of Oregon, the more I liked them. I had to plan out a tentative course of study and contact professors, all of whom I exchanged multiple emails with, and who were all very helpful and laid-back. Plus they have a later start date--which is good for people expecting to be recovering from childbirth most of September. But Tim didn't make it into their computer science department--nobody was interested in studying what he wanted to study. (A bonus, I suppose, that you can have something more specific to say to potential programs. But not this time.) I suppose my extensive contact with Oregon made it easy to envision myself there, eager to meet professors in person who I had only had email contact with. Writing the letter to them telling them I couldn't come was difficult. I didn't expect to have tears rolling down my cheeks as I hit "send."

People at IU have been helpful. I have gotten some responses from professors to my questions. But on the whole (and maybe this can be entirely accounted for by the sheer size of the department), my overall impression of IU at the moment, no matter how good their program, is that it is snobbish, in the horrible way that certain humanities believe they can be. This leaves me with deep, deep misgivings that I will not fit into the program. I sincerely hope this is not the case.

Maybe decision making is always hard, having to cut yourself off from potential paths. I don't know. I do know that excitement and disappointment are present in equal measure.

Experiences on the Way to the Pool

I'm swimming at the Hikone Aquatic Center on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I'd probably swim more, but the rest of the days the center is used for school practices. It has been really good for me to get out into the community. There are sometimes when normal life completely consumes you; envelopes you in the wonderful gauze of regularity. Even if your life may seem "exotic" to others, the everyday is everywhere. Sometimes the weirdest experiences can shock you out of that gauze and into clarity and recognition.

I always walk to the pool around the castle moat. Kate and I were out just the other day, and they have started to set up for Hanami. There are food booths out and some people are already out looking at some of the flowers that have started to poke out. On my walk a gentleman was coming toward me at an intersection (Intersec, making lines meet for centuries). He caught site of me and slammed on his brakes causing a tremendous squeal. Even though we both going the same direction, he refused to come closer than 15 yards. This must have been tortuous for him, as I was walking and he was on a bike. Every time he would get too close, the brakes and squeal. I would say that he was trying to alert me that he was coming, but he was coming to a complete stop, as I said, about 15 yards away each time. What a way to demonstrate to someone else their otherness, that they don't belong.

Contrast that with the conversation I had with another gentleman after swimming. He was interested in where I came from, what I was doing in Japan, where I had learned to swim. We had a fairly informal chat for 10 minutes in both Japanese and English. And so you have the dichotomy of otherness, sometimes it is repellent, other times it is an attractor. We have to leave with both, and choose which experiences are more valuable, those that set us apart negatively or those where genuine interest allows connections to be made. We must also remember these lessons for our own life. How can we reach out to "others," to make those connections and bring them to us and bring ourselves to them.

I've been busy with, you know, things.

Well, I've been busy with course work and making trying to help make decisions that affect our future, but I still have some time for creativity. Bruce Schneier, a person I look up to as, dare I say it, a security professional (I'll say it, but I've been getting way too excited to move out security and into different aspects of computer science to really consider myself a security professional. Technically, I have been paid for my research on covert channels, so that does make me a professional, I guess). He has a well balanced view of realistic problems of security, that and I'm a big fan of his cryptowork. One of the papers I'm currently working on is heavily based on his paper on secure audit logs. Anyway, he's posted, what appears to be, a fun contest. He is suggesting that people come up with extremely low probability, but still feasible, terrorist attacks. As he calls them, Movie-plot attacks. You can follow the link at the bottom to get the full scoop. For those friends of ours that read this blog, if you are interested in working together, let me know, if we're lucky, there is a movie deal in the works.

It is in this spirit I announce the (possibly First) Movie-Plot Threat Contest. Entrants are invited to submit the most unlikely, yet still plausible, terrorist attack scenarios they can come up with.

Your goal: cause terror. Make the American people notice. Inflict lasting damage on the U.S. economy. Change the political landscape, or the culture. The more grandiose the goal, the better.

Assume an attacker profile on the order of 9/11: 20 to 30 unskilled people, and about $500,000 with which to buy skills, equipment, etc.

...

Judging will be by me, swayed by popular acclaim in the blog comments section. The prize will be an autographed copy of Beyond Fear. And if I can swing it, a phone call with a real live movie producer.

Entries close at the end of the month -- April 30 -- so Crypto-Gram readers can also play.

This is not an April Fool's joke, although it's in the spirit of the season. The purpose of this contest is absurd humor, but I hope it also makes a point. Terrorism is a real threat, but we're not any safer through security measures that require us to correctly guess what the terrorists are going to do next.

Link

I think I would change it to 20 to 30 semi-skilled people, but it's just a meaningless quibble.

In other news, we've made decisions and we're off to Indiana University, me to study cognitive science and bioinformatics and Kate to study folklore. I'm looking forward to it very much, one might say I'm giddy about it. I'm finishing up my Master's in computer security at JMU currently, but I have always planned it as a stepping stone for bigger things. I'm not going to say I'm starting anything, it is just a continuation of learning, but "I love it when a plan comes together." -- Col. John "Hannibal" Smith

So now I have to finish up my classes, which, at least for this semester have been disappointing, but once again, my focus is elsewhere, like preparing to defend my thesis when I get back to the states (aforementioned work on covert channels).

I usually don't post about the music I'm listening to, but, in this instance, I feel I should mention Threnody Ensemble. The music is quite gripping, to me at least (problems with music, likes are subjective). This can be a bad thing when you are listening to it while trying to study, but Copland would say that if you are only listening to music in the background, you can never get the narrative, nor should expect to be able to understand it. When I have the time to sit and listen their music always seems to have some surprise in it, but I discovered, probably a little over a month ago, that they have some of their sheet music at their site. I think that is pretty swell. I just wish they'd release another CD and update their website.

Well, I need to sleep while my computer does work for me.