Fortune Cookies: Therapy in a Box

I feel like I have to express my thoughts on something almost unnatural that I must share with the world. For the longest time, whenever I receive fortune cookies, the messages in them somehow relates to my life. To be honest, I don’t know if I should call it a blessing, a curse, or I may just be over-thinking. Regardless, the randomness of the fortunes I receive are almost too accurate for my liking. For example, I work in a job that requires me to maintain a professional but friendly appearance whenever I approach customers. A lot of them were friendly, understood that delivery of goods and services isn’t going to be fast enough because I have to deal with a lot of customers. Sometimes, some customers are not patient and are very particular on how service should be run. If left unattended for too long, I would end up getting yelled at or at worse, not making enough sales. 

Two days ago, I ordered my usual Kung Pao Chicken and Vegetable Fried rice and was greeted by three fortune cookies. Each one is a gem waiting to be held:

•  Integrity is the essence of everything successful.

I was told often and time again that I have potential to be much more successful but I have to apply myself. The problem is how do I do that? How can others see that I am intelligent, business savvy, and creative? I have way too many talents to pick one to succeed on, so my dream on being successful one day feels like a difficult task to do.

•   Avoid taking unnecessary gambles.

This one is vague enough to apply to everyone who gets that message. I didn’t think much of it, but soon I realized that I have been following that message before I got it. I learned how to be patient, learned to pick one’s own battles and be graceful when things don’t work out. After all, if you put everything at risk, you lose everything. I nearly did that and learned it the hard way. I am glad I still follow that rule.

•   It is best to act with confidence, no matter how little right you have to it.

This message bothered me for a bit…what is it supposed to mean? What does a little piece of paper with random words of wisdom be so intuitive? Maybe it is my luck, but I am still wondering what the phrase is supposed to tell me. Should I be confident 100% of the time or be confident when I know I am in the right? I’m pretty much over-thinking things that may mean nothing…

Either way, this is just a snippet of my private life and don’t assume it is all I do. My life is much more interesting than that and it would be 1000 pages if I make a detailed story of my life.  There are some things I like to keep private, and there are other things I want to rant about. I’ll keep this short because I am having trouble seeing with my contacts getting blurry. Signing out.

Goodnight Heights

My time is getting closer to move to the West Coast and I feel that a part of me will always be from New York City. No matter how much has changed, I still look back and remember the times I had growing up there. I am delegating this post a la Goodnight Moon. So here it is:

Goodnight Heights
Goodnight hood
Goodnight crackheads and prostitutes at the corner
And the dealers, too
Goodnight PS 189
Goodnight IS 143
Goodnight HS Media and Communications
And Columbia U.
Goodnight Bodegas
Goodnight Boutiques
Goodnight 181 shopping spree
And Macy's too
Goodnight Crime
And goodnight catcalls
Goodnight killings
And wannabe gangsters
Goodnight poverty
That I don't want to live through again
Goodnight drama
Goodnight Summer noise
Goodnight angry New Yorkers
Goodnight Traffic Jams
Goodnight Times Square
And your clubs too
Goodnight Subway
Goodnight Bums
Goodnight Central Parks
And goodnight dog crap, not going to miss you
Goodnight roaches
Goodnight horse coaches
Goodnight Grafitti
Goodnight Hipsters
And those Crusters
Goodnight Village
Goodnight good food,
I will miss New York
Just not the ghetto.

IQ and EQ Fail

The past few weeks I took on the challenge to create an equation that can measure the social relationship between two people in accordance to IQ and EQ. I failed. This is meant to be a joke and the math equation is made up for comedy purposes. This is what I have done so far.

We all know about IQ (Intelligence Quotient) used to measure Intelligence, but what does it mean for everyone else? It is believed that people with high IQs tend to have low EQ (Emotional Quotient), whereas people with high EQ tend to have average or below IQ. To make it simpler people with high IQs tend to rationalize their emotions that can be viewed as anti social, apathetic or even uncaring to a person who is naturally outgoing. Of course there are so many variables to this. Not everyone with high IQ is an uncaring soul and not everyone with average IQ are outgoing popular folks. Here is the equation I created that doesn't make freaking sense but fun to do.

Lets go over the first image on the left. Let's say that both IQ and EQ are measured equally and take a person of a 117 IQ and 100 EQ. We then add 117 + 100 to create an IEQ of 217. By dividing IEQ with IQ and EQ then subtracting the values:

IQ / IEQ - EQ / IEQ = X
117/217 - 100/217 = .078

Now that we got .078 for X, we then can plot to where .078 stand on the scale. Base 1 is positive, Base 0 is average and Base -1 is negative correlation. So therefore, .078 is between Base 0 and Base 1 meaning that the person has both attributes of a person with good intelligence and a good personality. But what if we need to figure out how compatible people are within a social circle? Let's make a breakdown.

Think of intelligence as a bell curve, about 2.1% of people are MENSA smart, ~2.1%  legally dumb, ~13.6% below average, ~13.6% above average and ~ 68.3% average intelligence. The same can be done for measuring emotions with 2.1% sociopath, 2.1 very empathetic, 13.6% extrovert, 13.6% introvert, and 68.3% average (variation of both). These are much harder to measure because personal experiences can make a person more or less sociable to his/her environment. Now that we got that down, here is how my equation failed.

Let's say we begin to calculate Sue and Mark's social compatibility between each other. Sue has 115 IQ and 110 EQ while Mark has 117 IQ and 101 EQ. Let's calculate!

Sue: 115/225 - 110/225 = .022

Mark: 117/218 - 101/218 = .074

So Sue has an IEQ of .022 and Mark has an IEQ of .074, wait a minute. That means Mark is more sociable than Sue, what gives? Sue has 9 points more than Mark and their intelligence is almost equal, what happened? By just using the calculation of IEQ, you just can't say oh Mark is more sociable than Sue. This is the second step of the equation, we have to see the proportion of that in relation to their IEQ. For this we need to find the relation between two or more people.

IQ + EQ OF 2+ PEOPLE

p1 +p2 = P(of p1 and p2) - 100% = q

if result = q then,

p1 - q = x1, p2 - q = x2

With this I tried to find the values of X within a proportion, let's calculate Sue and Marks IEQs.

 .022 + .074 = .096 - 100% or 1 = .096 - 1 = .904

q = .904 then,

Sue: .022 - .904 = .684

Mark: .074 - .904 = .83

Now it looks like it makes sense, both Sue and Mark are closer to the base of 1. The proportions itself however are still too high, so I made the next step.

X1 - X2 = | SQRT X |

.684 - .83 = -0.146 = |SQRT -.146| = .382 

Now it looks better. With a base of 1 Sue and Mark has social compatibility of .382. This is seen as positive because 1 > .38 > 0 and thus they are seen as compatible within their social circle. This can only be done through people who are friends and not strangers. If this is done with strangers it would produce results of hilarity only found between Peter Griffin and Marge Simpson. It's just not going to work well, which is why I think it fails in that sense. Let's say Sue and Mark has that compatibility that is seen as above average but they are not dating nor live together. How so? The variables are endless: different interests, grew up together, dated before, live in different places, issues with work schedule, hygiene, eating habits, attraction, married to other people, etc. These are endless. This is the bs I came up with and I in no other way claim this to be fact.

This is a challenge I took and the equation I cam up with. So what does the IEQ have to do with it? Simple, in society, we see that the default person must be both smart enough and emotional enough to succeed in life. This isn't always the case. You can be the smartest person on the planet but when it comes to dealing with people, you can be people shy or only care for others who share your intelligence or interests. I am guilty of that but I do not claim as smart, I know enough and am interested in learning new things. I guess there will be a part 2 if I get a request to take up another challenge. 

Today's New Yorkers, not so tough anymore.

New York City just ain't what it used to be. In the 1980s and 1990s, being a New Yorker was considered a badge of honor that you survived the horrors of living there. The fact that you survived and became tougher means you can live anywhere in the US and say "I had it worse in NYC". Nowadays, it doesn't mean anything. Today, if you mention you are from NYC it means that you can afford to live there and that made me embarrassed. Why? I'll give you some reasons why NYC isn't so tough anymore.

5. Gentrification up the ante

 The Bronx in 1980s or Berlin post WWII? You decide.

A very clean building in Harlem.

Nothing kills the ethnic vibe more than white people moving in to what is known to be the culture center of anything. As soon as speculators decide that Harlem is awesome for cheap rent, big apartments and that "ethnic feel", hipsters would flood the gates open and are deluding themselves that they are one with their neighbors. Here's a hint, as soon as you act uppity, you get shot, no questions asked. It's already happening in Harlem, Chinatown and now Washington Heights. What's surprising is that white people usually do not last that long because when you move into the Heights, we do our best not to change that. We have only one high school in a 30 block radius, that's fucking sad right there.

These folks know what's up.

The summer is the worst time to have if you are not used to the noise. I grew up there, I got used to it and face it noisy people are everywhere and in my opinion, American whites are the worst offenders (I'm looking at you college peers). So far the closest Starbucks is ten blocks away in Hudson Heights, where most Americans prefer to live, it's the cleaner, quieter, safer part of the Heights. Broadway is the border between Dominicans and Americans. They both live on hills and Broadway is the valley, don't believe me? Google it or better, visit there and I'll give you a personal tour for a slice of pizza and a can of soda.

4. Subways are safer now

In the 80s and 90s, the subways were the last place where you want to be past midnight. If Coming to America has taught us anything, the trains were covered in graffiti, smells like piss, no air conditioning and a very high chance of being robbed or killed or both.

Hi, may I shank you for your Nikes?

The cops at the time would not help you because god forbid they would end up dead too. It's a vicious cycle that stopped when Giuliani decided to clean up NYC for good. Now we have murals in bright colors, security cams, no more tokens, air conditioning is available, crime is low there, weirdos thrive there (that's for entertainment), and electronic signs telling us when the next train comes. NYC is a hub of transportation system that New Yorkers rely on and having a car was just not part of our requirement. If you did have a car, pray every night that no one would steal it for parts or worse, leave its corpse for you to see. Now you don't have to worry about that except in pockets where crime is still bad. I'm glad the subways are clean, well except for the piss smell.

Trouble has a way for finding you.

3. Gangs aren't as active as before.

Growing up, I remembered hearing news and warnings on how you can't wear yellow, blue or red because they belong to the Latin Kings, Crips and Bloods. There were fears that you would get beaten up, killed and even have your face decorated with box-cutters because a wannabe gang member wants to be initiated.

Don't worry officer, we're just wrestling.

 This is the reason why my schools had metal detectors and a dress code, to keep that off the school grounds and the school kids safe. We even had a student ID that we scanned onto a computer making sure that we are allowed to be in the school. This is before the TSA became a huge deal. This is how it was in my High School every day. As a result, I became used to it and became more frustrated at airports with their new naked body scanners. What else do we have to hide? Braces are now considered weapons? Spend a day in a NYC inner city High School and pull the same bull in the 90s. Try it, this will educate you. Oh, don't have a time machine? Consider yourself lucky. Today, gangs are still there but they are not as scary as they used to be or made out to be. Most of the hardcore members are either dead or in jail and the rest of the members just hang out and deal drugs.

Today, Sesame Street is run by the Muppet Princes.

2. Your mom works at 42nd Street.

If you had heard that term growing up and KNOW what it meant, congratulations, you are one of the real New Yorkers. If you don't and think it's something to be proud of, you need a swift kick in the butt by education. Times Square wasn't as pretty and clean back in the 80s and 90s. Time Square was one of the last places you want to be caught in unless you're homeless or a hooker. That's right a hooker.

Even Robin had to support himself in Times Square.

Times Square was that seedy place everyone remembers where strip clubs are around as much as Starbucks are today. If you are looking for a hooker to snort blow from her herpes ridden ass, this was the place to go, for shameful dirty sex. Giuliani got rid of all that and Disneyfied it to bring tourism to the city. Times Square is now the place where everyone wants to go and make it big, like Music industry and Fashion big. Last time I went there, there was a "gentleman's club" still hanging around behind the flashy streets of Times Square. That should be a nice clue to what it used to be.

Yep, still there.

1. New York Attitude

The infamous attitude the one thing all native New Yorkers have and can never be shaken off. It's the vibe, the feel, the atmosphere of "fuck you, you in my way" and the ever wonderful "tough shit, you're in NYC now". Now, it feels fake, no tough gimmicks, no hardened souls with a heart of gold. The New Yorkers today, who are mostly transplants from other places, act as if they are hot shit and are snobbish to boot. What happened? When you get rid of the toughness of the city, you take the very substance of what a New Yorker is known for. Make it cleaner and safer for richer individuals and make it the place for aspiring models, artists and musicians and you get an unhealthy haughty attitude that real New Yorkers want to punch their faces in.

Early stages of a New Yorker.

It's terrible, it's fake and being rich is not what NYC was all about. It was survival and has been since Ellis Island. The closest thing to a New York attitude is what you see in movies because it doesn't exist anymore, the pod people have replaced that with what you find on the corner of Teen Beat magazine (that still exists, right?).

We're there in spirit!

In the meantime, enjoy a moment of humanity when snackman breaks up a fight in the 6 train: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Erlw-ODVZxU

References:
http://www.kunsthaus.org.mx/Dulce/10_robin_ing.htm
http://24flinching.com/word/headline/subway-lifeblood/
http://bushwickbk.com/2007/07/09/the-end-of-new-york-city/
http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2007/10/signs_of_the_times.html
And GIS.

Social Safari: A prelude

Update, I know, I know...I haven't updated much because life decided to kick me down and I had to finish my Thesis paper. Now I am back at home in NYC and haven't left my parent's home, why? It's because I have a daughter to take care of, and I am currently taking online classes with a helping of P90X to keep me active.

On top of that, I have been job searching. I am not the strongest candidate of the bunch, but I do need to get paid and the school loans are not forgiving! It's a wait and see approach for me, but hopefully I get something so I can finally start a career. I mean I'm 24 with a three year old, finishing university and not much else for me to do but sit on my ass while the gods play chess with my fate. I can't complain, I'm being optimistic here and everything else will be sugars and rainbows, right? Hey, a girl can dream...

This P90X thing I have heard for at least a year or two from friends and now I decided to get my potato couch body and start getting swole. I barely finished my first week and I am very sore, holy Batman! I rewarded myself with a helping of Blackadder and The Jersey Shore (set to Benny Hill's Yakety Sax). I only watch Jersey Shore for comedy reasons and with a background in Archaeology it helps. I just watch and make notes on the social complexity of the cast, the alpha male, competition for women, food, who is more juiced up and the ever important question, when will this horror end? It may be just a show like the Real World only as a small reflection of mainstream society. And don't get me started on Crusties, if you don't know who they are...think of hipsters dressed in dirt brown and the worst impersonation of a Hobo. I heard they're in the Village now, time to photo hunt.

Hello World 2.0

Hello web 2.0 and other instances of social networking! The world has changed since I stopped blogging. Well, these days blogging sounds like a dirty word and now everyone tweets or post their Facebook status online. There are times I look at what they have to say in the news feed but, other times I really don't want to know that you just showered today. That's the new Internet for you, the final frontier of social privacy. It won't take long for future employers to know who I am but it's a matter of time before they request Facebook for my information.

This is just a simple update of what I have done so far, I have been working on my Thesis the entire year and let's say the relationship has been on and off lately. There were times I want to cry and times where I just want to give my paper a hug and a kiss for progress. In the end I would have to make a choice between publishing without images or revoke publishing all together. I did present my project twice, one in a National Conference and another in my own University (I really do not want to discuss more on that). But, it feels like I may have to move on in a different career if I don't get into the profession after graduation. I can see it now..

"Your CV is impressive...Thesis publication? Outstanding!! Oh? What's this? GPA is average? Lackluster letters of recommendation? I'm sorry but we can't hire you..NEXT!"

Yes, that is how I see it, all the work I did to get academically noticed can get pass over because of my academic career. Enough of that, I must focus on the remainder of the semester and hope things go well.

Summer Update 1

This will be a long update since Spring Break so I will cut off the details. After a lengthy process I was able to have the field school paid by my school, but I owe the school back for it. Since I couldn't get a co-signer, that means I have to use my financial aid to pay it off...not the best option for me, but it has to be done I guess.

Also, I got accepted for my research topic in which I already used the first portion to pay for travel. I hope the second check comes back in time because if it does not, I will be truly upset and have no money when I arrive in Menorca (plus a looong wait). Here's hoping things run smoothly the next two weeks. On that topic I already ordered the Human Osteology Lab and Field Manual for cheap (used books). The Manual will be a great help to me and I will use that towards my research topic. I was given a list of items I can take with me which are:

• Camera
• Swimsuit
• Beach Towel
• slippers
• old clothes
• stationary: pens, pencils, paper, USB flash drives
• Laptops/netbooks
  
• money
• excavation gear: hat, gloves, knee pads
• other: toiletries, mosquito repellent, sunblock

So far I have everything I need except a beach towel, excavation gear and mosquito repellent/sunblock. Don't think I'll need the mosquito repellent because I attract them even if I have it on. :( Learned it the hard way in the Dominican Republic.

As I wait two more weeks until Spain, I am spending time with my daughter. She is becoming a handful and is attracted to my gadgets (netbook, iphone, etc). I gave her an old sidekick for her to play. It's too bad I can't use it in Europe (service for them is discontinued) otherwised I would've saved good money by purchasing only a SIM card and minutes for 15 Euros. The search goes on!