Freedom of movement

I can hardly believe this. After their trouncing in the March 8th election you would think Barisan politicians would try harder to not be total megalomaniacs. Apparently they don't think so:

Ministry wants women going abroad alone to get family consent

KUALA KLAWANG: Local women intending to travel abroad alone may need family consent in a bid to prevent them from being used as “drug mules” by international syndicates.

Foreign Minister Datuk Seri Dr Rais Yatim said a proposal to this effect would be made soon to the Cabinet, following several incidents where women were used to smuggle drugs overseas.

Out of 119 cases of Malaysian women hauled up before foreign courts, 90% were linked to drugs, he said.

“Last night, my ministry, together with the Home Ministry, have jointly forwarded a report to the Cabinet on the matter.

“Both ministries agreed that factors like family, religion, immigration laws and preventive measures need to be considered before a Malaysian woman goes abroad alone,” Rais told reporters after officiating at the Malaysian Silambam Association's Jelebu branch here yesterday.

On the proposed requirement for family consent, he said it would enable the woman's family to monitor her departure and serve as a preventive measure against her being duped by international drug syndicates. – Bernama

And here's the BBC story about it, making our government sound like clowns as usual, not that that's difficult.

Fuck you, Rais Yatim, until you bleed to death from your stinking asshole. People like you would have us become Saudi Arabia where women are virtual slaves, apparently.

My original goal for this blog was to write mostly about science and science fiction and a bit about my personal life, ignoring politics entirely, but it's slipped this year. So many things to be excited about, so many things outrage.

Hot tub

Last night we had the Grad Christian Fellowship's women's retreat in New Glarus, which is a cute little fake Swiss town. I'm sure they had real Swiss immigrants back when it started in the 1850s, but now it's a tourist trap.

The two speakers were the Assistant Dean of Diversity and a sociology prof, who'd known each other for about two years professionally, but were each extremely surprised to find out that the other was Christian when we invited them to come and talk. Sociology and Asst. Dean of Diversity...go figure. I think in some fields - surprisingly, not the life sciences - announcing that you belong to an organized religion is like coming out of the closet.

The Chalet Landhaus is really nice but also awfully expensive, which is why the women's retreat is in February (off-season). But it's made of wood, has well-heated rooms, etc., plus a Jacuzzi. Someone commented that "if I had one of these in my house, I would be so relaxed." Well, there's a reason we don't have Jacuzzis in our houses:

Grad students aren't supposed to relax.

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One thing that Dr Turley mentioned was that she'd grown up poor (as had Dr Sanchez) and she'd been taught to hate rich people. (Look at the 5th item on her publication list, by the way.) I definitely didn't grow up poor, but our family was more or less lower-middle-class, and I wasn't taught to hate rich people but to look down on them - not explicitly, obviously, as my dad's a pastor, but you pick up on comments about spoilt kids, corrupt politicians, pampered housewives, nepotism, etc.

It drove me nuts to hear my Bengali friend, whose family in Dhaka had servants and drivers, insist that they weren't rich. It drives me nuts to hear my boyfriend, whose family has 4 cars total and whose parents own their own very nice house, insist that they're not rich. Not by relative neighbourhood or USA standards, maybe, but by the standards I grew up with they look like close to millionaires.

It's becoming very uncomfortable to me to realize that with the level of education I'm going to end up with, and the type of job that I'm probably going to have, I will be joining the ranks of the "rich people". I don't want to have to deal with investments and stocks and all that bullshit, and if there are any children in my future, I have an absolute horror of them growing up to be privileged brats. Maybe I can pull a John Wesley and give most of it away to continue living at the frugal-but-far-from-desperate lower-middle-class level that I'm used to.

Steve won't like it though. He wants his own aeroplane. We'll have to hash something out.

Gata Positioning System

For a while I've had an idea of using Google Maps to map out my cat's range, based on where people have called me from to say "Is your cat lost?" but I didn't get around to it for a while. We have 5 data points so far.

Given how bloody cold it is, she's not going outside on her own for a while, obviously, but I'll start again in the spring.

Check this out, you can click on the points to see the descriptions I wrote! The labels are the dates she was found there.
View Larger Map

NOTE TO ANY CREEPY PEOPLE WHO ARE THINKING OF USING THIS TO STALK ME: My window has a security device on it that I can set to prevent the sash from being opened more than 4 inches, just enough for the cat to squeeze through. There's no way a human could get in.

As to the post title, "gata" means female cat in Spanish. Mi gatita es princesa. ^_^

Superflat Kitty

So last week when I went to Massachusetts to visit my sister in college, I took 1 day to go to Boston to see an old friend. Also to see Boston, since I'd never been there before, and had been told by several people that I'd like it. I did. 24 hours wasn't enough by FAR.

We went to the Museum of Fine Arts and I was very excited to see this: OMGOMGOMGOMG TAKASHI MURAKAMI SUPERFLAT!!!!!
(I had to do the Japanese thing and hold up the "V" sign. This painting is "If the Double Helix Wakes Up..." )

And next to it OMGWTFBBQ CHIHO AOSHIMA I DIE NOW.
(Moral of the story: If your boyfriend says he wants to eat your beloved goldfish, ditch the jerk or lose an eye.)

Long story...back in college I worked in the library part-time during the school year, and full-time during the summer after my freshman year. One of the summer jobs was inventory, going up and down the stacks with a list of call numbers, to make sure that every single book was there. It would have been boring if I wasn't a voracious reader...which on the other hand meant that I was highly inefficient at the task.

I ended up browsing a lot in the art section (the "N"s in the Library of Congress system). Even though I love the visual arts, I'm usually too lazy to seek out artwork to look at, so I got bogged down there. I discovered a Japanese artist called Takashi Murakami who paints really weird surreal, cartoony stuff in bright colours that I can't tear my eyes from, and also some strangely funny/cute but obscene statues.

The statues are just too weird for me but I really like the 2D art. In fact, it's extra 2D because Murakami's labelled his style "Superflat". According to him, Japanese art, including the ukiyo-e prints from the 19th century, tends to have a quality that makes elements at all depths look like they're smushed together. There is perspective but things in the distance are perfectly sharp, they don't fade away.

Anyway, I was browing the net for pictures of his stuff idly one day when I ran across pictures by one of his proteges, Chiho Aoshima. I love her pictures even more - sweet young girls with bewildered eyes in dreamlike, sometimes nightmarish, situations, drawn in organic curves, and strange cities of the same dreamworld where buildings with faces blink at each other nestled among giant trees.

So anyway, I'm really happy I got to see Murakami and Aoshima works "for real" (even though Aoshima's prints are drawn on computer, obviously seeing them on a 15-inch monitor is quite different from a full-sized poster).

One of her prints has been my desktop wallpaper for most of the past year. Which one, I ain't sayin' nuthin'. ;)

Transit again

Haha, I love self-service kiosks and the technophobes who stand aside waiting for human service while I breeze through...t

Whole Foods is a stupid elitist hippy store, but at least they have good salads. Hope it was still ok after 6 hours off the shelf.

Should have been in Williamstown yesterday. Pea-soup fog cancelled all flights into Madison. Went home and slept, played with kitty some more. Deja vu same flight numbers today.

Needed this poor lolbear, what a good laugh.

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang

This is me, firing an Uzi in automatic mode:

(The gun belongs to Steve's cousin Michael, who DOES have a permit for it. I wish Steve could have caught the look on his face as he comes up behind me, convinced that the skinny little girl holding his expensive gun is going to topple over backward. We watched this video about five times just to laugh at how funny I look.)

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It's been an exhausting week. I was taking the Emerging Techniques in Protein and Genetic Engineering course at the BTCI, which was great but ran from 8:30am to 7pm every day, plus emailing 2 scientists I've never met (emailing strangers makes me nervous as hell) and trying to rewrite my Master's research proposal.

Then today (Saturday) I learned how to shoot. Steve's dad and cousin, who are both gun nuts (Michael until recently owned a gun shop) said I did a good job. More photos later, featuring more of the Uzi, an AK-47, an M-17, a Ruger .22, and an old .22 pump-action. I'm a happy kitty. ^_^