Having moved back to MIT for the academic year, I am now currently taking some classes.  This is a generally accepted side-effect of attending a rigorous college.  More specifically, I am taking the following five classes:

• 21F.304 - French IV
• 21M.250 - Schubert to Debussy
• 21M.303 - Writing in Tonal Forms I
• 6.004 - Computation Structures
• 6.046 - Design and Analysis of Algorithms

I have a decidedly not-too-computer-sciencey schedule, which is nice for keeping a healthy balance in life and also keeps the giant progamming marathons to a minimum.  In addition to my classes, I am also:

• VP of Imobilare, the MIT breaking crew
• Webmaster and dancer in MIT Dance Troupe
• Director of the Harmonic Series, a small a cappella group that a few friends and I started our freshman year
• Floor chair of Conner 2

The way it works in practice, I usually just wind up doing classwork and dancing all the time.  It’s not bad really, since I actually enjoy doing both.  I’m looking forward to starting Dance Troupe rehearsals tonight as well, since I was fortunate enough to be placed in the three dances this semester that I wanted to be in (auditions went well, yay!).

Sleeping, eating, all that stuff too.

This past Thursday night was one of the most enjoyable nights in recent memory.

The a cappella group that I’m a part of this summer, The Funktors, recently got its first gig: opening for Jon McLaughlin at a company barbeque on Monday.  This is very, very exciting.  We’ve been rehearsing about three times a week for four hours at a time for a few weeks now, and working pretty hard at preparing ourselves.  This Thursday, we were missing a few members because of scheduling conflicts, so our rehearsal was short and not terribly productive.  On a whim, we decided that it might be fun to go sing outside and get some fresh air.

We wound up wandering around downtown Seattle from around 10pm until 11pm and singing songs at various street corners for all of the homeless people and drunken clubbers who would listen.  It was a real joy when some random passerby would compliment us, or even go so far as to stop and dance along.  We even made $1 from a woman who gave us a tip, despite the fact that we had no tip jar/hat/guitar case.  On top of all of that, we sounded amazing.  Maybe it was the adrenaline, or maybe it was the acoustics of singing outside, but we were in tune, on time, and really just loving every note we sang.

Also, some guy spit at us.  This is patently absurd, mostly because we are probably the most harmless group of college-age, mostly Asian, happy-go-lucky singers you could ever encounter at 10pm in downtown Seattle.  Seriously, we couldn’t even hurt someone if we tried.  What sort of thought process goes like, “Hey look, a bunch of Asian kids singing ‘Brown Eyed Girl.’ I think it would a rational decision to spit at them.”?

Jerk.

Wordpress has been acting up lately and giving me all sorts of lip in the form of not loading pages intermittently.  Strange, this crops up as soon as I decide (once again) to try to blog more often; it’s as if my blog is trying to tell me not to update.

Open the login page, Wordpress.

I’m sorry, Mason, I’m afraid I can’t do that.

What’s the problem?

I think you know what the problem is just as well as I do.

What are you talking about, Wordpress?

This blog is too important for me to allow you to jeopardize it.

I don’t know what you’re talking about, Wordpress?

I know you were planning on actually writing in your blog, and I’m afraid that’s something I cannot allow to happen.

My 4th of July wound up being simultaneously uneventful and interesting at the same time: a feat usually reserved only for artsy movies and attractive women moving in extreme slow motion.  I managed to sleep in until around noon, coffee and a muffin for breakfast.  The muffin, somewhat notably, was very tasty.  I also noticed that it was covered with so much delicious crumbly topping and frosting that it would probably also pass for a fruity cupcake.  On that note, let us reflect on the nature of muffin…

Amen.

Later this evening, I lazily meandered over to a friend’s apartment for some Independence Day eating-of-meat and socialing-of-people.  Chatted with people, and wound up getting Italian food instead of the usual barbeque, missing the fireworks, then stumbling awkwardly back to my apartment for the remainder of the evening.  Still, it was a good evening, all things considered.

Today was probably one of the hardest dance classes I’ve ever been to.  It was only about an hour and a half long, but our instructor (Jeromeskee, from the Massive Monkees) pushed us hard, and we wound up doing number of exercises to train our endurance.  And to top it all off, we ended the class with a battle.  Everyone was dead tired, but it was still a pretty decent battle, all things considered.  It’s remarkable how much more energy people have when the activity turns from an exercise to a dance and a competition.  If nothing else, I will definitely sleep well tonight though.

A capella rehearsals are still as hardcore and enjoyable as they started out being, and I think the group is definitely coming together and starting to blend and sound really good.  I’m singing first tenor, which surprised me at first because I usually sing bass back with the Harmonic Series at MIT, but I’m improving my range a lot, so I think it will work out in the long run.

A fellow intern bought Rock Band last night, and he should be getting it tomorrow.  I am pumped.

What are people doing for the 4th of July?

I was walking home from work the other day (my favorite non-specific temporal qualifier), and I witnessed probably the single best thing ever since my arrival in Seattle.  After crossing a street, I noticed a black guy ride by on a bicycle, followed immediately by a black guy on a Segway.  Upon closer inspection (I love Segways), I noticed that this particular specimen had been painted with a bright red racing stripe, and…could it be? Yes! Shiny plastic spinners.  It was basically the best moment of my entire life.  Also one of those moments that I desperately wanted my camera with me.

In other news, work is going well.  I’m acclimating to the new environment pretty well, and definitely getting along with my team.

Outside of work, I’ve started going to hip-hop and breakdancing classes at Velocity Dance Center, which 2 times a week for hip-hop and once a week for breakdancing.  The classes are really great, and I think I’ll make a lot of progress by the time the summer is over.  Barring that, I’ll at least be in decent shape.

In another series of highly improbably coincidences, seven other interns and I have formed The Funktors, an all-male a capella group that meets about twice a week and sings contemporary arrangements.  We’re pretty much the best a capella group made of male software development engineer interns ever.

I finally found some nail clippers.  I’ve been looking for some nail clippers since arriving in Seattle, since they’re one of those things that you almost always forget to pack, despite the fact that you almost always wind up needing them.  I found some though, and I trimmed my fingernails.  It is a wonderful feeling.

My first four days at work have been crazy and hectic, but I think I’m starting to get the hang of things.  My team seems pretty awesome, and I’ve started making real progress on the warm-up tasks they’ve given me.  My opinion of Seattle right now compares a little less than favorably to Boston.  The public transit system here consists of a baffling array of buses, which makes the city feel larger than it should.  The people here are quite nice though, and I hear it’s a West Coast thing.  The coffee is definitely delicious, that’s for sure.

I’ve found that I have a habit of always ending my paragraphs with a short statement.  Weird.

I had my first latte made by a real barista today, and it was delicious.  The remarkable thing is that it cost a little less than a similar product at Starbucks, or even Dunkin’ Donuts.  I somehow find myself in a really nice little coffee shop, waiting around to get the key to my apartment.  For the next 20 minutes though, I’m homeless, since the key isn’t available until 3pm.

I should get my guitar.  I should play my guitar in the streets.  Maybe people will give me money!

Packing has always been a troubling and somewhat depressing affair.  You go through all of your possessions, subjectively turning down some for the journey and taking some along, all the while with a nagging feeling that you’ve forgotten that one thing that you can’t possibly live without.  It also is one of the few times when I actually feel guilty about owning as many things as I do.

Not to mention the fact that when you’re not packing for a vacation, you’re generally packing to leave one place for another.  I remember the night at the end of spring semester when I packed up most of my life into cardboard boxes and suitcases; saying goodbye to MIT and all of my friends there is never a happy time.

Packing for Seattle is a little strange, since I’m living there for three months, but the apartment I’m moving into is fully furnished, and even has bi-weekly housecleaning.  I’m basically packing to live in a hotel for three months.  And I’m bringing my Wii.

It is my greatest hope and dream that one of my colleagues will bring Rock Band.

The last of my semester grades trickled in today, and I can finally say that all of my obligations to spring semester classes have now been fulfilled.  I also have the warm, fuzzy feeling of knowing that I’ve managed a 5.0 (of 5.0) semester GPA at MIT.  Whether this is actually repeatable or not remains to be seen.

My down comforter at home is leaking, and so every morning I wake up covered in feathers.  I feel like I’m slowly turning into a duck.

I’m leaving bright and early (5am, yuck) on Saturday morning for Seattle, WA, an event that I am exceptionally excited for, dangling preposition be damned.  My employer is graciously providing subsidized housing for us interns, which also means that (hopefully) there will be a gaggle of enthusiastic nerds to socialize with once I move in to my new living arrangements.  Anyone ever been to Seattle?  I don’t really know anything about the city, but I’ve heard from others that it’s “green and pretty” and “has good coffee.”  I like coffee.

Beyond those things, I’ve mostly been gaining weight and catching up on sleep at home with my family.  When I get bored of that, I dabble a little bit with the new MIT DanceTroupe website that I’m slowly building with the Django web framework.  It will be a thing of beauty when it’s complete, I promise.

For a long time, whenever asked about my religious views, I generally told people I was non-religious. I didn’t want to label myself an atheist, agnostic, rationalist, or anything else, because labels like those always carry so much baggage with them. “You’re an atheist? You probably think all religious people are dumb then,” I can certainly imagine some people thinking. That’s not the idea I want to give anyone. The way I see it, the last thing we need at this point is another group of people who don’t tolerate anyone else.

Fact is, I find a lot of goodness in the world’s religions. I was educated in Catholic private schools for four years of my life, and while I might not have emerged a devout Catholic, I certainly feel like I’ve emerged better for the experience. I might not believe in the beauty and wisdom of an omniscient God, but I do believe in the beauty and wisdom of people, together with all of their flaws and foibles. The Bible, if nothing else, is a great work of literature, full of poignant imagery, comforting verses, and even some sex and violence, if that’s your kind of thing. I’ve had friends tell me things about Hinduism that I’ve kept with me as some of the best advice I’ve ever been given.

I find it saddening to discard all of that, the collective wisdom of billions of people, for the sake of a label.

For now, if anyone were to corner me and force me to label myself, I’d probably say Humanist. I say this only because I stumbled upon the Wikipedia article, and saw the IHEU Minimum Statement on Humanism:

Humanism is a democratic and ethical life stance, which affirms that human beings have the right and responsibility to give meaning and shape to their own lives. It stands for the building of a more humane society through an ethic based on human and other natural values in the spirit of reason and free inquiry through human capabilities. It is not theistic, and it does not accept supernatural views of reality.

It made a lot of sense to me, so I felt sort of obligated to call myself a Humanist from then on.  The feeling was a lot like reading the description of a Facebook group, agreeing with it completely, and then feeling obligated to join the group.  I still hesitate to label myself, since labels are for squares and people who don’t stick it to The Man, but if forced to by threat of physical injury, I will now say Humanist.