Simply Be Present

This is a translation of the e-mail I wrote to my mother after spending over $800 online on things for my room:

Mommy,

I spent a lot of money, but don’t worry cause I should have enough left to pay you the tickets (speeding tickets, etc) and save up some when I receive my money. =D
Here’s a list of what I bought.

From orientalfurniture.com:
3 tatami mats
1 of these – 4′ by 2′
1 scroll – 2′ by ~6′
1 black lamp

From overstock.com:
1 comforter set, very nice, chocolate color
1 set of bed sheets – Ivory
1 set of pillows

For Bella [my cat]:
1 scratch-post, expensive [she better love it]
1 de-shedding-brush [so I don't have to clean as much]

That’s all I bought — now I won’t eat for a month, haha.

-Omar

So that’s how I managed to spend a lot of money, before even getting it. I’m pretty happy with everything I’ve received so far though, and I’m excited for the things I’ll be getting next week. The bed sheets, the pillows, and the art, is all great. I’m in love.

-Omar

I left Cambridge last Monday at ~8am, slept on both planes I took to Puerto Rico (I was sitting next to a man, and I don’t talk to men on airplanes, they’re boring), and then shopped all afternoon/night with my mom and my grandmother. I finally made it home by 2am after not having really slept the night before. I went to bed at around 3ish am  and woke up at around 3ish pm. I spent my afternoon eating, talking and reading “Memoirs of a Geisha” and last night I decided to go to bed at around 2pm. I intended to start shifting back a little my sleeping schedule and try to reach that point at which I had a ‘normal’ sleeping schedule. 

In two days at home, I had slept almost 1 day off! Now that’s what I call productivity. 23 hours of sleep in two days… that would normally take me 3-4 days to achieve at MIT. 

So anyways, let’s talk about Christmas. At home the tradition we have is go to my grandmother’s house to celebrate Christmas on Christmas eve. We exchange gifts, do a ‘secret santa’ among the older ones (people ~16-70 years old) and spend some time together making fun of each other or whatever else makes us happy. Today people made fun of my beautiful mother because of a few extra pounds she has (or so they claim!), and my mom at some point cried!

Well, don’t get upset just yet, it wasn’t a ‘really crying’ kind of thing. If you’ve spent a few years with my mother you’d know that crying is her hobby. It’s just something she does. It’s not like she has to be sad or anything to cry, sometimes she just  decides to cry because… it’s time to cry. As a teenager my mother wanted to be an actress. She settled for a career in marketing, but subconsciously decided to make her life a permanent act, the world being her huge stage. She goes through life using her marvelous acting skills to achieve anything she wants, or sometimes she uses them for no particular reason. Out of all her marvelous skills, crying is one of her favorite things. She’s really good at it. If you’ve ever seen someone crying whose face turns completely red, eyes are red and watery, and you think they must have been crying horribly for at least an hour… that’s not the case with my mother. My mom can get there in 1 minute for no reason. Five seconds if there’s a reason. I kid you not. 

Traditionally after spending the night at my grandma’s we come back home and go to bed, and in the morning (as early as we wake up once the sun is out) we run to see where Santa put the gifts so we can open them and celebrate Christmas. As a kid I always wanted to just stay up all night so I could get my gifts as soon as I heard Santa. Sadly that never worked, I always fell asleep at some point before Santa decided to come to my house.

I guess that after having slept 23 hours in two days, my body is congratulating me by making me stay awake all night on Christmas morning waiting for Santa! Except that now everyone in my house knows that Santa is my mother and she already put the gifts under the tree and said: “we’re not opening them ’til the morning”. 

Why thank you. Now I should go cry too. 

Here is my mommy making a sad face during/after crying today.

I used to say I’m a teacher, but that implies that students actually learned. Now I just say I’m a lecturer.

The real highlights of my recent life are mostly taekwondo related. Within the past three weeks we had two INCTL tournaments, one hosted by our team at MIT, while the second one was hosted by Cornell University. The season has so far been be very challenging, since all teams are training to the best of their abilities and giving it their all in the ring. That’s what makes it exciting at the same time.

That being said, our team won the tournament we hosted, while Cornell University’s team won their own tournament. After both tournaments, however, the overall standings of the league favor MIT by 32 points (Cornell is second with 1011 cumulative points).

My personal contribution? Being there to spar heavy guys. Some of them slightly heavier than me, others… simply massive. One of the guys I lost to was so massive I thought I was sparring the Great Wall, except that it moved.

My two last matches at the Cornell tournament taught me two important lessons:

1) Trust your training, challenges that might have defeated you in the past are within reach now.
2) There are bigger challenges to face that you should keep training for.

I’m looking forward to keep training and improve my taekwondo overall. There is definitely something unique about taekwondo, and it’s not worth it to even attempt to describe the feeling.

I heard about edufire through this blog post by koichi at tofugu.com. I created an edufire account and finally today I decided to ‘browse’ the videos there. The very first one I clicked at is such a disaster that I felt compelled to write about it. Here’s the link.

“You might know… how to say you like something…” [long awkward pause] “but today…” [insert more random awkward pauses every other word].

I found the video to be too slow paced when speaking English, which doesn’t really make sense unless you assume that you’re teaching Japanese in English to people that don’t understand English well, in which case you just fail anyway.

Now that didn’t bother me too much [I'm lying, I almost killed someone during that first minute], but then the worst part came around. At around 1:03 he says: “Now, are you ready?”; I was thrilled, so excited I could barely keep my excitement hidden, but then it happened.

He tried to say: “コーヒーがすきです” [Koohii ga suki desu] which does express that the person likes coffee, but the way it came out of his mouth was more like ‘kooHII ga SUki DESU‘ (with stress on the CAPS parts) and my brain melted instantaneously. I cried a little bit inside when I heard that, ran to the bathroom and let cold water run over my head until I couldn’t remember what had happened, then I revisited the video and died inside just a little bit more. Bella (my cat) was pretty pissed after having to listen to it twice.

And the reason I’m describing this in detail? Just so you know how bad his pronunciation was. I’m not saying this to criticize him since I still find that the video is good at teaching the sentence structure it intends to teach [although it doesn't explain it], but I do want to discourage people from simply watching such videos and going out repeating things the same way. There are many people out there that have learned Japanese without a tutor/teacher and their pronunciation is far from correct, and in such cases it would be unwise for you to learn from them.

Use EduFire,I do think is a very good tool, but do take your time to find good videos and tutors. There are plenty, but as you can see, it can also go wrong.

If you want to watch another bad video from the same guy, there are others. As I said, the pronunciations in pretty much every sentence he said in Japanese is wrong. If you want to compare the differences in his pronunciation with correct Japanese pronunciation, just listen to some of Koichi’s videos like this one which I like. You can notice that the way the language sounds is very different from what you were hearing before in these two videos.

-Omar

Happiness depends upon ourselves.
Aristotle (384 BC – 322 BC)

This new academic year I’ve managed to not only change the classes I’m taking, but also my living situation, the roles and responsibilities I have with different people/organizations, among others.  All of these things, however, seem to be enjoyable. I can’t complain about my classes yet, and I’ve been able to attend Taekwondo practice regularly so far.

My view on this semester is quite optimistic, and for some reason it feels like I can probably stay optimistic throughout the term. I’m hoping that this is not just the regular optimism that I normally feel at the start of the semester, which is pretty much a fake excitement due to how I expect things to be, and once I realize what the semester is all about… it’s all lost. Sort of like when people meet or start dating someone new. If I approach my classes as first dates (something in which I have not much experience…), here are my impressions from the first few dates:

7.03 ‘Genetics’ – Although my preconceptions of its kind and what I know about it tells me that this might work out, my impression so far is that this is going to be one really hard relationship to sustain for the semester. The plus side, is quite independent and requires little time commitment, it feels like what people would define as an ‘open-relationship’. The bad: that small time we spend together, is plainly painful. Immensely boring and with a horrible sense of humor, this one is definitely not going to make my day any better. Tomorrow I’ll meet for the first time with the ‘teacher assistant’ and hopefully this one can make it all work out by adding a good twist to all this.

10.302 ‘Transport Processes’ – This actually comes in two flavors, both which are quite interesting, funny and unique in some sense. Although it promises to be a very time consuming one (I think this one wants to be exclusive), I feel like it will be one of the most rewarding and fulfilling relationships of the term.

21F.503 ‘Intermediate Japanese I’ - Basically a continuation of my long term relationship with the Japanese program at MIT, this course added a new twist to the monotony of our last year by making things more interesting but more time consuming at the same time. This one used to come in 3 different flavors, and you never knew which one you’d get that day, and now two of the previous flavors are not there anymore, but a new flavor arrived. Each flavor we call by a different name, adding the polite ‘sensei’ ending.

21F.592 ‘Introduction to Japanese Culture’ – I’m in love with this one, but as expected, this one has been very time consuming. Although I was promised that it was just like this at the beginning, while getting to know each other, I really wouldn’t leave this one no matter what. I’ll definitely stick to it, and enjoy, until the end.

Apart from classes, something that I must say is that I really like my apartment. Even if the floor is slanted, the location a bit farther than dorms, and I have to be here to receive UPS packages, I feel that the benefits are great. Trading a 40 Mbps internet connection for a simple DSL connection is something else I’ll accept to feel more ‘at home’. I feel like my room is really MINE, and it’s amazing; what a difference it makes to have furniture that I picked, and decorations that I love.

Something else that I’ve realized is how big of a role Taekwondo plays in my life. I feel like the more I keep practicing this martial art, the more I realize how much I want to keep practicing and improving at it. Every practice is challenging and fulfilling. I can’t imagine how different I would be, and therefore my life would be, had I not stumbled upon this group of people two years ago.

At this point, I’m organizing my life so that this term I can achieve two major goals while keeping a ‘healthy social life’, do well academically (both in classes and with my research project) and improve my taekwondo as much as possible. All other things I’m trying to pursue (photography, film, etc.) will be secondary to this.

-Omar

Monday night was the MIT finale of Campus Moviefest, event in which I participated with the video (dis)CONNECTED. This video was made over a weekend, and pretty much involved taking a whole bunch of photographs, and an hour or so of videotaping. The painful part was, of course, the editing, in which we* spent literally days in front of our computers.

I cropped hundreds of pictures that were taken in front of a green screen, while Jenny worked on the animations. René put most of the video together to create the final product. It was a pretty exciting (and intense) weekend; I stayed the whole weekend over at Rene’s place working on the video.

Now, back to the MIT finale. The way the finale works is that no one knows who’s going to win (so that everyone shows up). First they present the top 16 movies in no particular order (there were 47 submissions). Since our video is so… abstract in a sense, we weren’t sure how it was going to be reviewed by the judges. But, we were excited to see (dis)CONNECTED among the top 16!

After presenting the top 16 videos (all 5 minutes or shorter) there were some highlights of the other 31 movies and then the winners were announced.

AT&T picks to showcase in their mobile video platform:
Ultimate Origami Challenge and I think the other one was Lost and Found.

Best use of Mobile (Winner gets $100 AT&T gift cards for each member of the team)
(dis)CONNECTED !!!

Best Comedy (Winner gets an iPod Shuffle for each member of the team):
Miss Resiel’s Students ! (a movie made by a group of Puerto Rican students)

Best Drama (Same prize as Best Comedy):
(dis)CONNECTED !!!

Nominees for Best Picture:
Miss Resiel’s Students
Lost and Found
(dis)CONNECTED
Ultimate Origami Challenge
The Love of Lint

Winner of Best Picture:
Lost and Found (a very nice and professional video, you should check it out at OurStage.com)

So there you go! (dis)CONNECTED got two nice prizes and a nomination for best picture! We were very happy with the results since not many people like that kind of film. We loved it all the way though.

Thanks to all of you who watched the video.

-Omar

*”we” refers to myself, and the two other people who were there making the video at all times, René and Jenny.

For the people that don’t know, CROEM is the specialized in Science and Math high school that I currently attend. In order to attend CROEM, every student has to compete for 150 spots against many more applications. This sometimes makes students anxious. In this post I will answer some questions from a prospective student about the school. I hope that my answers are useful for her and any other student applying.

1. How is the school? How does it look like?
CROEM used to be a military base before it became a school in 1968. Most of the buildings are original, which means that you will notice the Military Style. The buildings aren’t that pretty, they are very practical. There are some students that don’t like the environment and by October they decide to get out of the school, but the majority will stay and keep studying because of the opportunities that are only found at CROEM in Puerto Rico.
You can know more about the school if you visit it! For this the only thing you have to do is arrange a visit with the school counselor. Just call 787-832-0854 and ask to talk with Mrs. Magaly Hernández, which is the school counselor. You can also e-mail me and I can personally arrange a visit for you with her. Just contact us! Groups visits are encouraged because when students come in groups we can give the whole group a more thorough tour and orientation at the school library. You can talk to your teachers so they arrange a group visit for you and your classmates. If that isn’t possible, you can always visit on your own and we’ll do the best in showing you all of the facilities.
I will post pictures later when I can. You can see some pictures taken at CROEM in my May 2005 entries.

2. What courses are offered?
The courses offered are:
Sciences:
- Biology
- Microbiology*
- Human Anatomy*
- Genetics*
- Chemistry
- Biochemistry*
- Organic Chemistry*
- Environmental Chemistry*
- Physics
- UET (Uses of Energy into Transportation)
- Astronomy*
- Environmental Sciences*
- Earth Sciences*
Mathematics:
- Geometry
- Elemental Algebra
- Algebra and Trigonometry
- Pre-Calculus
- Calculus
- Integrated Math III
- Analytical Geometry*
- Linear Algebra*
- Mathematics Topics (Investigation and reasoning)*
- Statistics*
Social Studies:
- United States History
- Puerto Rico History
- Universal History
- Sociology*
- Puerto Rican Geography*
- Puerto Rican Government*
- Electoral Process*
- Criminology*
Languages:
- English 9^th, 10^th, 11^th, 12^th, and Advanced English
- Spanish 9^th, 10^th, 11^th, 12^th, and Advanced Spanish
- Online French (given online) *
Physical Education:
- Fitness*
- Volleyball*
- Softball*
- Basketball*
- Soccer*
Arts:
- Paint*
- Drawing*
- Sculpture*
- Manual Arts*
- Graphic Design*
- Engineering Pre-Graphics*
- Applied Arts*
Domestic Economy:(that’s like cooking and stuff!)
- Bakery*
- Cooking*
- Gourmet Cooking*
- Responsible Paternity*
- Some others!
Courses marked with an asterisk (*) are electives with are taken only for one semester and have a 1/2 credits value.
CROEM students have the opportunity of choosing their curriculums and the courses they want to take as long as they can fulfill the graduation requirements, which are the following:
Science:
Three of the following:
Biology, Chemistry, Physics and/or Environmental Sciences
Mathematics:
3 credits, including Geometry
Spanish:
3 credits
English:
3 credits
Social Studies:
3 credits including:
U.S. and P.R. History
Health:
1/2 credit
Arts:
1 credit
Physical Education:
1 credit
Domestic Economy (that’s like cooking and stuff)
1 credit including Paternal Responsibility

Students have to fulfill the requirements above to be able to graduate from High School; all of the students are oriented the first week about the different ways of fulfilling those requirements while still taking all of the courses they want to take. The requirements I posted above are the High School requirements, but if you come since 9^th grade you’ll have to add the following: Earth Sciences, one math credit, Spanish 9^th, English 9^th, Universal History, 1/2 credit in health, 1 credit in art, 1 credit in Physical Education and 1 credit in Domestic Economy. If you already have those courses from grades 7^th and 8^th then you might choose other courses. It is a requirement by CROEM standards that you take AT LEAST 9 credits per year, including 1/2 credits in art, 1/2 credits in Domestic Economy, 2 credits of Sciences and 2 credits of Math.

3. How are the rooms?
The rooms are big, I don’t know the exact measures but I do know that there is enough space. If you are a girl, you will have to share your room with 3 more girls (there are 4 girls per room). If you are a guy, you’ll have to share the room with 5 more guys (yup, six guys per room). At the beginning those numbers sounds too big! I mean, I was used to have my OWN room. But you’ll realize that having many roommates is a key part in your development as a CROEM student and you will probably not mind having 3 or 5 more persons in your room after you get to know them. Those roommates will probably become like your brothers/sisters.
There are 3 residences, two for the girls and one for the guys. Girls’ residences have 10 rooms each, and every two rooms share one bathroom. The guys’ residence has 12 rooms and only one HUGE community bathroom. The residences are cleaned by the students (us) every night and they stay clean most of the time.

4. Which are the responsibilities with your roommates?
The most important thing is not to bother your roommates. Don’t be noisy if your roommate is trying to sleep or studying! There are residential teachers all the time. Those residential teachers are in each of the residences to make sure that the students behave properly and respect every other student. They are also there to inspect if the students have done their daily tasks.
Each room has to do a community task and a room task. Community task might include cleaning the residence halls, the study room, the outdoors (picking up some papers), and in the guys case the bathroom. Room tasks might include sweep, mop, clean the doors, or in the girls case the bathroom. Those task combined usually take no more than 30 minutes and are done from 8:30 pm – 9:00 pm.

5. Which activities are available in the school?
The school has a variety of activities including baseball, basketball, volleyball and even soccer teams. You can also play those sports with friends in the school facilities and other sports like chess and table tennis. The school also has a Gym available for all of the students. Some students also play different types of card games and board games.
The school also has different clubs that you might join since your first year including the Counseling Club, Chemistry Society, Future Medical Society, GLOBE (hosted by NASA), Literature and Art Association, Math Club, National Honor Society, Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers Jr. (first chapter founded in PR and the Caribbean!), and the Solar Team among others. You might find yourself joining a couple of these clubs since they have many different activities for its members. If you know about a club that is not here and want to make one, you just have to talk a teacher and start a new club. An example of this is the Literature and Art Association which is in its second year and was founded by a student and the Advanced Spanish professor.
There are also other activities that include the Prayer Circle. The Prayer Circle host meetings every Tuesday and Thursday for 1/2 hour during the launch period to praise God. It’s not affiliated with a certain religion and it has members of all the different Christian churches and the Catholic Church. It is a good time to relax and you can join them without asking! Just go to their meeting place when you feel like it.

6. Who are the professors? How are they?
CROEM teachers/professors are very qualified in the field they teach. CROEM faculty currently has 6 science, 5 math, 2 history, 2 Spanish, 2 English, 2 art, 1 health and 1 physical education teachers. There are approximately 150 students in the school, which means that the student-teacher rate is 7:1. This guarantees that most of the teachers you take classes with will know you by first and even last name.
Some of our teachers hold Master degrees and some of them are currently working on their Doctor degrees! The quality of the teachers is extremely superior to many of the other High Schools including Private Schools in Puerto Rico. It is thanks to those great teachers that CROEM High School is such a great institution for all of us. CROEM prepares you for college life as no other High School can. 14 out of about 60 students who took the PEAU test during the 2005 administration, which is commonly known as the College Board in Puerto Rico and is used for admission to universities in Puerto Rico, were among the Top 100 scores in the. Also ALL of the CROEM students have scores higher that the average scores in those tests.
Another important quality of CROEM teachers is that they are very supportive. They are there to help you and guide you in the process of adaptation to the new environment. Along with the school counselor and the social worker, the teachers makes it easier for you to get used to CROEM and will make you feel more confident of living by your own. Many students develop great relationships with teachers and teachers often become the student’s confident and even psychologists! It’s awesome having such a great teachers that really care about the students.

7. How is the schedule/program?
You will be in CROEM during the whole week. You will get to CROEM every Sunday from 4 to 7 pm and will go back to your house on Fridays after 12 in the midday. This can change if there are holidays during those weeks.
Now, about the class schedule you will take 9 classes minimum. Classes taken on Mondays and Wednesdays are 1:00 hour long, Tuesdays and Thursdays are 1:30 hours long and Fridays are 30 minutes long. Some classes have to be taken Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays OR Tuesdays and Thursdays, while others have to be taken every day of the week.
For example, science and math courses that are worth 1 credit are taken everyday, while every other class has to be taken Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays OR Tuesdays and Thursdays.

8. How are the test and interviews?
The admission tests are prepared and scored by the College Board office of Latin America and the Caribbean, which ensures the quality of the tests. You should not worry about those tests because they are reasoning tests. You might want to review the material of your math, Spanish and English courses but you shouldn’t try to study everything. My recommendation is that you review the material of those courses and then sleep a lot! The most important thing is to be very alert and awake during the tests because they are long and you will need lots of energy to complete them. But don’t stress about it, they are mostly used for seeing if you remember basic concepts of your courses, not advanced stuff.

You should not worry about the interviews. There were no interviews last year and I think this year there will be no interviews again. If there are interviews, you just have to be yourself in them and let the interviewer know why you are a great student and why you deserve to be in the school, but you don’t want to sound arrogant at the same time. Just be humble but point out your good things.

 

Thanks Anairy for your questions. Any other question you might have just ask, same for all of the other students that are considering CROEM for their High School studies!