Happimess

My professor for my Pakistan course is Dr. Barnett. He's the only teacher of Pakistani history in the United States, and has been for like 27 years. He's strange, in a good way. He's clearly extremely smart, very stoic, and humorous. His tone is somewhat monotonous and detached, but still lively somehow. Today he was talking about how he doesn't get seasick and how he's just kind of lucky, but he imagines all the rocking this way: "I just pretend that I'm a baby, and I'm in my mother's uterus, and I'm safe, in a liquid environment... and I get free meals. ...I went too far, didn't I..."

He's also an expert witness for defendents from the ICE, which I think is Immigration and Customs. He has a guy right now who's a brown-skinned Muslim, married a Jewish woman, and has a misdemeanor on his record (Three Strikes, as he said). So my teacher is writing an affidavit to try to get him asylum in the US. He says that if he goes back to Pakistan, he's got a target on his chest (Jewish wife) and a target on his back (wrong form of Islam), and he'd pretty much be killed immediately. He had to send the document to the law firm in five-page chunks because that's all he can do from SAS.

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Take a number between 2 and 9. Multiply it by 9 and add together the digits. If 1=A, 2=B, and so on, keep in mind the letter that goes with the number you just got. Take the first country that comes to mind starting with that letter. Name the first animal that comes to mind that starts with the second letter of that country. What color is that animal?

Grey elephant from Denmark.

Our teacher in Global Studies did this today. If you do it honestly you pretty much always get grey elephant in Denmark, but some people knew it was coming so they got yellow jaguars in Djibouti.

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They told us to set our clocks back today at lunch, so we did it immediately. There was a seminar tonight at 2000. I found out at about 2020 that we weren't supposed to set our clocks back until midnight, so I ran up there with my friend Kristina. We sat in with a group of people who'd just done an inclusion/exclusion experiment. A bunch of them sat around talking for a while afterward, and Zach came too. He was probably looking to play piano, but ended up writing an email on the side of the floor instead.

After everyone else left, I stayed behind to play piano. After one or two songs, I saw a guy walk out of the back room (where only staff can go), sit down, and take a picture or two of me with a nice DSLR camera. He was wearing a red collared shirt. I played Mr. Brightside and when I was done he came to talk to me. His name is Henry and he's the videographer for our voyage. This is the first time he's done this job, which he says involves a ton of editing, but he does get paid to go around the world. He also did a Semester at Sea sometime when he was a student himself.

I left a few songs after that to go to the piano bar and just talk to Kristina, who said she'd be going there to do some work. She was writing some emails and we talked a bit, and eventually a bunch more kids came to join us. At some point Toby went to the piano, and Kristina yelled at him for not playing, but he said he was shy and forgot the song he was going to play. A girl sitting in a group adjacent to ours played the Jaws theme in a really really low octave. I said, "I'll play something but you all have to sing along.... if you know Mr. Brightsides...?" And the people sitting with me said Sure!/Okay, though Kristina did say, "No, I have a horrible voice..." I played it and sang it, and some people stopped to listen as they were walking by, which was pretty cool. They'll probably talk to me about it if they see me around sometime, or if I sit next to them in class, which I guess will be nice as an ice breaker instead of the normal questions. People clapped when I was done. People did that once at PSU, but they stopped when they found out it was a regular occurence. Maybe I should keep it rare. I don't know. I do try to play in The Union as much as I can.

The bartenders are three ladies, one is Spanish, one is Asian, and one looks eastern European or maybe French. They stopped me as I was walking out and asked me what my name was tonight. I didn't get the question, so I just said my name was Jeff, and they said I had to change it, and we agreed on Justin. They said I was talented and asked if I knew some of their favorite artists. The European one asked for Arson (I think), one asked for Evanescence (which I have played before, kinda), and one asked for Neo, which I didn't know. They also mentioned Umbrella and Chris Brown. I think I can figure out Umbrella, but I don't know any Chris Brown. The one said that she would bring a flash drive with some Arson on it, and I said I'd try to figure some out for her. She said it would make her cry if I could. I think it's possible - we'll see.

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My computer is acting a little funny. It'll say that I have full battery - six hours worth - and then like fifteen minutes later it'll say that I only have 15 minutes left and need to save immediately. And this is after a long charge. I don't know what's going on... Hopefully I'll figure it out or it'll stop happening. It's been okay for this writing.

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We took a circuitous route to Hawaii to avoid a storm. Apparently we moved pretty quickly to get out of its way, and we were ahead of schedule, so we slowed down and that means we had to pull in the stabilizers. It's been much rockier today, although I don't feel seasick at all. I think I have my sea legs. But at dinner, I was sitting across from my friends Margalit and Aleeza, and on a particularly rough swell, the silverware container behind them just came crashing down. Margalit looked absolutely terrified and screamed fairly loudly, but they didn't get hurt at all. We ended up just laughing at it, and the cafeteria workers cleaned it up. One of them was bending over humorously close to Margalit so she pretended to spank him, but didn't actually do it.

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I'm sitting in on an 8AM linguistics class tomorrow just to have an excuse to wake up for breakfast...

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If you are Sonali: Sorry I never got back to your last FB message… go for it! Listen away! I’d be interested to hear what you say later.

If you are Hortense: Sorry I didn’t respond to your email yet! >.< I promise I will soonly!

Peace out.