where the heart is

I’m back! After being abroad for almost 7 months, it feels surreal to be back in my old room, and comforting to walk around the streets and realize that after circling around for so long, I’ve returned to familiar sights and sounds and smells. And yet, it’s no longer summer, and autumn has come and gone away. I’ve come home to holiday lights. To red Starbucks cups. To busy streets with busy strangers wrapped tightly in scarves and wool coats. Yes, things have changed, but they are still the same.

The mystery and intrigue of the outside world will continue to tempt my vagabond tendencies. But as my plane swooped above green fields and city buildings against the blue sky, and as I hold on to my navy blue passport and the packet of airplane peanuts I’ve long since given up on trying to open, the only sounds I heard were the words from Michael Buble’s “Home” on my iPod, the only thing on my mind was how happy I am to be home.

Another aeroplane
Another sunny place
I’m lucky I know
But I want to go home

I’ve had my run
Baby, I’m done
I’ve got to go home

It will all be alright
I’ll be home tonight
I’m coming back home

who is John Galt?

In a few days will be the 50th anniversary of Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, a book that, in a nutshell, pretty much changed the past several years of my life.

For fellow Ayn Rand fans… This is John Galt Speaking.

My copy of the book, complete with highlights, scribbles, and dog-eared pages, go with me where ever I go. To celebrate this day, here are some selected quotes from this incredible peace of art.

“For centuries, the battle of morality was fought between those who claimed that your life belongs to God and those who claimed that it belongs to your neighbors between those who preached that the good is self-sacrifice for the sake of ghosts in heaven and those who preached that the good is self-sacrifice for the sake of incompetents on earth. And no one came to say that your life belongs to you and that the good is to live it.”

“She was twelve years old when she told Eddie Willers that she would run the railroad when they grew up. She was fifteen when it occurred to her for the first time that women did not run railroads and that people might object. To hell with that, she thought—and never worried about it again.”

“An inventor is a man who asks ‘Why?’ of the universe and lets nothing stand between the answer and his mind.”

“Contradictions do not exist. Whenever you think that you are facing a contradiction, check your premises. You will find that one of them is wrong.”

“The good, say the mystics of spirit, is God, a being whose only definition is that he is beyond man’s power to conceive- a definition that invalidates man’s consciousness and nullifies his concepts of existence. Man’s mind, say the mystics of spirit, must be subordinated to the will of God. Man’s standard of value, say the mystics of spirit, is the pleasure of God, whose standards are beyond man’s power of comprehension and must be accepted on faith. The purpose of man’s life.is to become an abject zombie who serves a purpose he does not know, for reasons he is not to question.”

“Did you really think that we want those laws to be observed? …We want them broken… We’re after power and we mean it… There’s no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren’t enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What’s there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed nor enforced nor objectively interpreted – and you create a nation of law-breakers – and then you cash in on guilt.”

“It is not advisable, James, to venture unsolicited opinions. You should spare yourself the embarrassing discovery of their exact value to your listener.”

“I swear by my life and my love of it that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.”

“An error made on your own is safer than ten truths accepted on faith, because the first leaves you the means to correct it, but the second destroys your capacity to distinguish truth from error.”

“Love is our response to our highest values”

Randy Pausch

Can you find a role model in someone you’ve never met before and never heard of until about a day ago?

I was randomly led to watching a speech given by Randy Pausch, a computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon who has been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and has realistically about several months more to live. It’s a long speech, over an hour and split across 10 different segments on Youtube, but is one of the most inspirational ‘lectures’ I’ve heard for a while, with very little of the sappiness that might be expected. I mean, he starts the lecture with -

“If I don’t seem as depressed or morose as I should be, sorry to disappoint you.”

The speech goes on to show how he has gone to accomplish his childhood dreams. He has one of these personalities that is slightly geeky and extremely down-to-earth friendly, which absorbs the audience in a light-hearted way, given the situation.

My favorite quote from him: “Brick walls are there for a reason – they let us prove how badly we want something.” Yes, like these mind-numbing application essays that make me want to tear out my hair and throw my laptop down several flights of stairs.

Anyway, the speech did effect me quite a bit. The way Randy went about living his life and his attitude about things around him were quite inspirational. I sat there for a while afterwards, thinking about where my life is at this point, where I want it to go, and whether I want it to go where I am going.

It’s good to have these opportunities to reevaluate your priorities every once in a while.

Ahmedinejad’s visit to New York

Just because I’m living on the other side of the world doesn’t mean I don’t keep up with news from home. In fact, I become even more diligent to make sure I am caught up with all the happenings. It’s like that in New York; time is warped there. You can’t never guess how much can happen within the span of a few months. Such as, closings of a few much loved restaurants and establishments. Such as, news that a recent ex has just been engaged. But nevermind all of that; today’s news about Ahmedinejad speaking at Columbia trumps them all!

Here are a few memorable quotes from the event, accumulated from various news sources:

“The truth is, the Holocaust is the most-documented event in human history. Will you cease this outrage?” – Bollinger

“Frankly, and in all candor, I doubt that you will have the intellectual courage to answer these questions. I do expect you to exhibit the fanatical mind-set that characterizes everything you say and do.” – Bollinger’s closing

“Given that the Holocaust is a present reality of our time, why is there not sufficient research that can approach the topic from different perspectives?” – Ahmadinejad

“I know there’s time limits, but I need time,” he snaps. “A lot of time was taken from me!” – Ahmedinejad

“We are a peaceful loving nation. We love all nations!” – Ahmedinejad

“I think you could answer that with a simple word, Yes or No.” – Bollinger when asking about Ahmedinejad’s plans to ’squash’ Israel.

“In Iran we don’t have homosexuals like in your country. We don’t have homosexuals. In Iran we do not have this phenomenon, I don’t know who told you that we have it.” — Ahmedinejad

“From this platform I invite Columbia faculty members and students to come to Iran and speak with professors and students. You’re officially invited.” – Ahmedinejad

“To those who believe that this event should never have happened, that it is inappropriate for the university to conduct such an event, I want to say that I understand your perspective and respect it as reasonable It is an experiment, as all life is an experiment. This is the right thing to do and indeed, it is required by the existing norms of free speech, of Columbia University and of academic institutions.” – Bollinger

a career woman’s closet

Hmm. Here are some interesting findings linking a woman’s wardrobe and her career, from Psychology Today:

 

• “We are less judgmental of women who wear provocative clothing if they’re doing low-status jobs…However, when people are shown a photo of a woman in sexy clothes and told she is a business manager, they say she seems less intelligent and less competent than suit-wearing execs.
• Women who wear excessive makeup are seen as trying too hard, says Sherry Maysonave, a career coach and author of Casual Power. But studies show people of both sexes rate women who forgo makeup as less committed to their jobs.
• Few workers are likely to set a badly dressed colleague straight. In fact, competitive female coworkers often relish a rival’s wardrobe faux pas, says Debra Benton, author of How to Think Like a CEO.
• Even brainy women aren’t above a little titillation. A survey of female M.B.A.’s found half had worn revealing clothing, sent risque emails or told male coworkers they look “hot” to garner favor. But such strategies tend to backfire: Studies show nonflirtatious workers earn 25 percent more and receive an average of three promotions while their brazen counterparts only earned two.
• Both sexes perceive women with long, straight, blond hair as being sexy and those with short, highlighted hairstyles as smart and confident, but not sexy, finds Marianne LaFrance, a Yale psychologist. “More hair equals more femininity, but also less intelligence,” she says. Likewise, high-maintenance hair makes others suspicious about a woman’s competence.
• When male executives are asked what holds top women back in the workplace, appearing too masculine is always in the top five, says Benton. Most men think women should be business-like, but should not try to join the boys’ club.

I think I fail on several fronts – I don’t wear make-up at work, and I avoid extremely feminine office attire. I think the “how you dress affects how you act” concept applies to me; I notice that when I’m wearing a skirt, pink, or anything frilly, I feel like I’m acting too ‘girly.’ Plus, I’ve always felt more comfortable in shirts, blazers, and dress pants. This is especially the case here in this country, where the few women I see in the offices are secretaries, and as a culture, they come to work daily adorned in makeup, jewelry, and brightly colored fabric. In the beginning, I felt pressured to conform with the ‘local dress’ and actually bought a few pieces. But I felt ridiculous in them, and also felt inappropriate, especially given my managerial position amongst this sea of corporate males. So I went back to my power-suits, and guess what? Being in a suit rocks.

it’s been 6 years

“I would give the greatest sunset in the world for one sight of New York’s skyline. Particularly when one can’t see the details. Just the shapes. The shapes and the thought that made them. The sky over New York and the will of man made visible. What other religion do we need? And then people tell me about pilgrimages to some dank pesthole in a jungle where they go to do homage to a crumbling temple, to a leering stone monster with a pot belly, created by some leprous savage. Is it beauty and genius they want to see? Do they seek a sense of the sublime? Let them come to New York, stand on the shore of the Hudson, look and kneel. When I see the city from my window – no, I don’t feel how small I am – but I feel that if a war came to threaten this, I would throw myself into space, over the city, and protect these buildings with my body.”

Ayn Rand must have loved those towers.

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A long video clip – of images and sounds we don’t want to see but should not ever forget.