World Cafe

Today, the College of Education diversity committee, after weeks of planning, organized its first World Cafe to discuss the diversity climate/culture of the college and ultimately what each person is willing to do to make a change. I think the World Cafe is an interesting conversational process. Here’s one sticky quote: Comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.

Amazon packages

I’ve been receiving many amazon packages lately. Today, I came home to 4 packages and one of them even contained a Nikon p5000 camera. Lots of boxes for recycling. At the moment, I’m testing out the xtrememac ipod radio. After I’ve read the quick start manual and charged the battery, I’ll fiddle around with the camera. There’s also thirteen new books of assorted subjects. I wonder if I could read through all of them before handing them over to the real owner. Exciting times!

UPDATES: OK, after talking to my dad, I realized the paragraph above needs clarification. The boxes were stuff that Victor bought from Amazon, shipped to me, to be couriered in person to him in Malaysia. I’m just trial testing all the gadgets, with his permission, of course! Yeah, according to my advisor, I sometimes write as if people can read my mind

The onslaught of pollen

In my few years here, I’ve never given much thought to pollen or spring time allergy. This spring however I’m beginning to feel the onslaught of pollen. All these trees and plants pollinating at the same time, spreading pollen everywhere. My car, which I have yet to wash (I cannot believe I’m my dad’s daughter!), is now covered in a thin layer of yellowish-greenish pollen. I also wake up sneezing, my eyes feel puffy, and I just feel like there’s a lot of microscopic things bothering me.

Tricky issue

When I first arrived here, student health insurance was about $500/year, now it is $999/year. Technology fee was $100/semester then, now it’s $150/semester. I don’t know what gas prices were back then, but this week gas prices has gone up close to $3/gallon and it cost me about $40 to fill up the tank. A first class mail stamp was 37 cents then, now it’s 41 cents. The rent has gone up. Even the price of a half gallon bottle of orange juice has gone up about $1. But student stipend has remained the same.

During the research forum this Friday, a group of us, doc students, will bring up this issue to the faculty. It feels risky, but the chair of the dept did tell us to bring up issues that we are not satisfied with. And this is one big issue that’s bugging most of us. As a “submissive” Asian student, I sometimes feel it’s more comfortable to just continue struggling, because I feel I don’t have anything to negotiate with, it’s like I’m at their mercy when it comes to money, among other things. But then after being here for 4 years, I should have at least assimilated some of the american assertiveness or demandingness. Even if we don’t get a raise, at least we make the professors aware of our financial difficulties. We have to give it a try.