So these figures are from Hunter, but you get the idea:

Assistant Professor: $35,031 - $61,111
Associate Professor: $45,651 - $73,028
Full Professor: $56,664 - $87,757

Maybe Rob Chin had the right idea after all.

So this is now ridiculous--I feel as though this job fell upon me from on high--it is cherry indeed, with a report-time of 0915, and no classes to begin until 1030, this means that I can actually go and work out each morning at the gym before hitting the books, and I have only 3 classes four times a week, albeit at 70 minutes, which is probably an ideal intermediate time between double-periods and the standard 45 minutes. In short, it's a schedule only a teacher would have thought of, and indeed they did...

The only discomfort was being forced to translate some long-ass speech in English into my broken kitchen-Chinese. Who knows what "respect" is? I had to settle for "polite" (you li mao). It's time to bone up on the teacher-Chinese, which should be amusing indeed.

So it's a good thing that people are wrong when they think I teach at a bratty diplomatkid school, because of incidents such as these:

Two identical-looking Siberianoid Chinese girls walk in late, similarly baretted and all. They asked to identify themselves and mumble something vaguely identically unintelligible.

Teacher says to girl in headscarf, "Oh! So you're so-and-so's relative... I thought you looked familiar."

Also, no one likes the Poles.

So it's been a goodly run these past few days, the highlightings including a visit to Alric's neighborhood during more daylight hours--it's surprisingly bluer-collar than Astoria, and a crowded Kenka trip with Rob Chin on Friday, where I learned that Rob Chin Sr. does not actually approve of his children imbibing, which makes me wonder if that makes the ethanols he pushed upon me a matter then of me being either subhuman or subChinese. Or something like that. Rob Chin is becoming reconciled to his job, as I've pointed out to him that realistically he can't really expect to be doign anything more worthwhile with his life at this point. There's nothing wrong with switching careers every once in a while, after all, and a pungent unhappiness with your work situation is still the best goad to strugglesome change.

As far as pungency goes, I took the entire dairy thing a bit too far yesterday with a whole pizza with stinky cheeses, plus yogurt and icecream and so on: I had to pass out for several hours from the heat and the cheesemold.

Tomorrow I go to work and will meet some of my new students, and remeet my colleagues, and hopefully make a good-sized dent in this new curriculum I will be trying to implement, or whatnot. It's too early to tell, but I'm energized for once, and fully intending to go to bed within the next half hour, a world record...

So I have missed a few days because I have not had the time to just sit down--so first

Asianboi Roundup

Alric is buff. Or buffer. I mean, I would still bet on Skaren in an armwrestling match, but he's been lifting and it shows. He's in a contented place, which is not New Hampshire.

Joephet is studying. He's highlighting as we speak, no doubt. He's been diligent since the semester started Monday, so much so we've had to rearrange our sleeping arrangements, as I need to keep better hours.

Kenneth is buffing up his resume. He's going to all right, he's going to work with the all-white.

Lostin is back to school. Already he's in it, but it's not a bad thing, though he still lacks good Chinese role-models.

Rob Chin is cruising along these days. If he were a hawk, his favorite food, he claims, would be pussy.

So last night I happened to run into my math coach by the Greek seafood restaurant near where the tall waiter has stalked Joephet and indeed one drunken night (the same night I went to his place at 3 am, couldn't budge him and had to go home--on a schoolnight) walked Joephet home. It was pleasant to see him and to meet his geeky but adorable Slavic sons and his Slavic wife. I used to have a Slavic fetish, but of course they tend to balloon at some unspecified age, but Russian is still a great language to learn.

The days have been going well, even if I am still frustrated by the didactic procedural fixities of some of my colleagues. It's a tall order, but I don't have all that much choice in the end, somehow, and it's been encouraging to be exposed to the good stuff out there: I have tended too much to focus on reinventing rather than reengineering, and will be posting someplace the activities I have planned: makes me want to create an edirectory of my lesson and unit plans, as I suspect that even the new future colleagues at my new school might not exactly be yet in the twenty-first century pedagogically or even mathematically.

And this is the altered mindset I'm in these days--reading Freudenthal on the train I felt like I was reading useful Wittgenstein, these pseudo-didactic but actually liberating margin-jagged wanderings through ordinary language, predating my current tendencies by nearly two decades at least. So it's good to know there's amrket for this stuff, somehow.

So here is a Guamanian joke:

What helps Mr. Camacho with his curls?

A Leevin conditioner.



Ummm.. just another day at math-workshop business, giggling silently at the unavoidable Germanic slippages or the alternate Argentinian professor, whose accent is surely more Gallic than Latin. Already I'm into these routines and these hours, and I have been more excitedly recently than in memory, as if again with a fresh start, somehow, and a career to really build, even if some aspects are beginning to look rather bleaker.

My diet has also improved, though I think yesterday I had about 6 servings of dairy: two slices of pizza (2), a yogurt-milk-whey protein concoction (a cup of each) (3), and a glass of whole milk after dinner. By this reckoning, I have, as my brother would say, had enough milk for a pregnant woman. Today I'm essentially on the same pace, and the hunger pains which dog me are acceptable, in that they represent not so much starvation as a subsistence diet. Ideally, I'd feel as hungry as I did in New Hampshire: always hungry (tensies, elevensies, etc) because always working.

So as I return for the first time in just about two months to a math ed setting, I am reminded of the gaps that I will hafta bridge now that I have settled upon some sort of math-leadership role. The gap is between the experienced and the inexperienced, the largely black female Caribbean contingent and the younger more American-educated and flexible set of which I am one. Most people were under five years' experience or well over 15. And these differences show when problems are given to be solved: while I am much more patient than I was fresh and brash out of college two years ago--by far--I am still less patient with adults than with children, perhaps because my particular colleagues tend to have pedantic tendencies I find distasteful, though that is probably how I come off anyway to more of my friends than I would like to admit. Still, the furtive adrenaline rushes of discovery are welcome, and I find myself able to rein myself in while also much more confident than I ever was.

Incidentally, Paul Hamm should fucking give up the medal. I mean, if you're that good, you'll win (for real this time) in four years again. It's sad, really, this nationalist fervor.

So I have actually legitimate cause for not blogging--I went down to Jersey to go see my brother and Lostin before they both headed off from the summer, witnessing once more the shell of a university, though a shell very much lived in with stagnant pasta water and other forms of dark bacteria besides which Lostin in his shirtlessness decided to clean on behalf of his retard Physics REU compatriots. I myself had been forced to finish a liter of Asahi before I could leave my brother's temporary digs, and this I did within about twenty minutes. For the rest of the time, I coasted drunk, not needing to amp it up, while periodically calling Joephet at the Beer Garden and teasing him with Lostin's shapely tonedness. I was a high-energy wave-particle and I was inspired to get organized for the new year, including not in the least, trying to swing a bucolic misadventure kirka Labor Day, unless that would interfere somehow with Alric's existing plans.

The rest of yesterday was wandering around Manhattan in search of shoes and accessories, to little fruition, as it's the wrong week for sales for back-to-school, and I'm actually biding my time until the sale-tax-holiday, as that shit adds up. It's sad, really, these piddling percentages.

In any case, tomorrow I'm back in the saddle and glad: Joephet too.

So it has been a busy busy day, as I have been back and forth from home to Manhattan twice already, all in search of registration at the Graduate Center, where I discovered there is no such thing as a free multidisciplinary seminar in urban mathematics education. Lunch, however, is discounted. So I had to run back to get my info for using part of my AmeriCorps money, and then back, and I would have made it before the Bursar (what an archaic word, though not as bad as "Ombudsman," which I once misspelled on a spelling bee) closed even in that rush had I not stopped off to drop off Joephet's laundry to Joephet. So I'm sitting around now, marvelling that I've gotten a 3.73% return on my investments since 6 August 2004. Now that is rather nice, and a beginning, as I must admit that I stayed up all night last night reading Rich Dad, Poor Dad. I would have done Alric proud, and was briefly inspired to take a Real Estate Saleperson Licensing Course, which would be a tax-credit of 20% up to $2000, which is a rather nice way of getting out of taxes, though only with post-tax income. In any case, I'm $950 poorer but soon will be able to not-mooch off the Graduate Center, and it's just a long march from here.

I have been looking into sabbaticals too. If that works out well, I might be able to take one in five years to finish off the third year (and last!) year of my PhD.

And in the best news all summer, I'm told that with at least six teachers in my current region in excess in mathematics and an uncounted number of mendicant teaching fellows "trained" at Pace "University," my transfer is unofficially likely to be granted. Not out of any real favor to me, of course, but rather just because it's easier to be rid of me than to try and place me. It goes to show that with a little patience and without any bitch-slapping whatever, you can still get what you want. It's all what a bushi would do. Well, maybe a wajo.

So last night at the fiesta I somehow ended up in a contest with Rob Chin's baba at a dinner which Rob Chin himself was unable to attend. Yes, I had to put away that Tsingtao like it was no one's business and soon I was pinker than even Rob Chin's mother's shirt which was pink. But this was all in good fun, and I should try and climb on the largesse wagon more often. Of course, it is Joephet who has to end up paying for such things, as I rolled around his bed drunkenly, squeezing my non-driver ID card for no good reason, but at least he got some Gaeng Ped Gai out of it all. That and I crawled my way through six volumes of Lone Wolf and Cub, making it three cover-to-cover readings to date, which all makes me want to be doing more kendo, which I would be at right now, except even a 1830 start time sort of precludes my participation and Rob Chin's, and each implies each.

I was recovered enough in time to be disappointed at Paul Hamm's victory over the Koreans in gymnastics. I mean, his body might well be great, but he has a scrunched face and the voice of a munchkin. I am much amused at his ecstatic photos all splayed on the high bar plastered over the newspapers: it looks like he's ready to receive a gentleman caller. (Or: Alric, kirka 2002: "I just don't know what more I can show a girl [in bed]." Me: "What about the Passage to India?")

Today I have not accomplished much beyond spackling the underbelly of the stairs with some Greek approximation of cement, which was fine and fun, but drippy and a mess until I got a hang of it, that and painting the backsteps a dark grey energetically.

I also finally received word today from John Blum. I suppose I should play a game where I have y'all guess where he is on his international journey re: math education. Any guesses?

Northern Botswana.

So I am not sure why I have not been more concerned about the gradual decline in my blogging frequency--it's not as if I have been more productively engaged in much of anything.

Meanwhile, my first student has made the news, for hacking to death with a sword some party-crasher in Brooklyn. I feel vaguely as if I have failed--surely I should have taught proper sword-handling to my students.

No, it's just a pretty blah sort of phase anyway, caught between two lifestyles with no return for another year, and yet at the end of each summer I am confronted by this same restlessness and the sense that I've been missing out on something in my idleness, like realizing that there are little cutesy flash animations on Bloomberg which I was missing because I was using Firefox. Which still begs the question: why am I going to Bloomberg?

So I think I'm all clever, but that's not true, because I was trying to come up with clever tabloided titles re: Gov. McGreevey.

So I thought:

Gov. McGayvey makes surprise announcement
NJ Governor in bed with Israel
Governor invades Golan Heights
McGreevey Steps Out, Down
Top NJ Official Bows Out

I was, of course, proudest of

Alien vs. Predator

but looking on the inside of the Post, they beat me to that punch.

So I been working out, if not as regimentally as I should, but it feels like fake muscles, because they are not being earned through useful productive labor, like shoveling. Shoveling is a whole-body workout that is intense and rhythmical and sustainable longer than some of the dumb-bell things I'm doing now. It's also fascinating how Japanese shovels go the way. And no, I'm not merely confused by hoes: they go the other way, bringing the dirt toward, but probably with a more efficient scoop and range of motion.

So these mornings still drip with hope, or the promise of it: I somehow managed this morning to get up at 0730 in an attempt to begin normalizing my schedule, and on my way to the grocery store was filled with air and hope, probably just that early morning pre-sun air, of sleepiness not yet shaken off, and unmedicated by coffee, when the overcastness can still be mistaken for the early morning, and there is still plenty that can be done that day, somehow. For this I look forward to the new school year, to reclaim mornings...

So it's been a great lazy overcast August summer afternoon, but not too humid. I am getting tired of waiting for prospectuses in the mail, as they are slow or otherwise disappointing. So I've just been doing my lifting, checking the S&P500, and working on my slash fiction based on Harold and Kumar. Tentative title: Harold and Kumar Go Down on Each Other. Updates to follow.

So I just remembered--two years ago before Jon I moved out, we had bouts at Jedi Knight, in which I was named Wanker and he was named Alric's Sexdrive. Consequently, automated messages such as "Wanker has killed Alric's Sexdrive" and "Alric's Sexdrive is no more" and "Alric's Sexdrive has become one with the Force" ran furiously amok.

So guess who is at it again? I mean, how blind can you get? It's exactly this sort of unironic bullshit that makes me despair of ever uniting my Asian American brethren along progressive lines as part of a larger minority solidarity movement. We really think we can be white...

So I went and saw Collateral by myself because Joephet wasn't interested. Despite the lack of any real emotional connect with any of the characters, I admit I was impressed by Tom Cruise. I mean, only he could manage to kill more Asians in this movie than he did in The Last Samurai.

So I've missed a whole week if not more, and this is rather unprecedented, but probably because most of my computer-bound time has been consumed by worrying about the future and trying to settle all of the myriad details I know I won't have time for during the year. That, and I've been working on cleaning out two years' worth of closet-accumulation, which also has a great deal of college memorabilia I really no longer need in the least. So it's been a very Alric sort of week, I suppose, when looking at your portfolio exceeds looking at porn.

The good news is that I'll be able to keep chugging at the math ed research stuff this fall with Metro Math, and indeed the promise of a broader sociological perspective as well as more community-outreach efforts seem essential to my future efforts at running a school, and not into the ground. It's just a little scary to think that there are only two solid weeks of vacation left and then I start goin' back, though the kids won't arrive for well over a month yet. (in light of the new immigrant backgrounds of my students, I hope this isn't too literally true.)

So this was originally ready the 28th, but:

Asianboi roundup

Alric is nondescript though more definite on the future, still unclear as to whether or not his Finnish roots are adventitious or a big fat taproot.

Joephet is in a family way.

Kenneth is summering which is working, perhaps meaning that he's bizarro-Drew.

Kenta is wrapping up his MSW and may soon become a prominent pillar of gaysian New York society.

Lostin is useful, if to the new physics technologies that will one day save/destroy the world (save one part, destroy the balance).

Rob Chin is drowning.

So I've missed a few days, and this was at least partially intentional, as I needed to get out of the slump of waiting, and now with less than a month to go, I feel vaguely reenergized and have spent the morning putting my accounts in order, something I haven't done for about three or four years, not since my fiscally responsible publisherial days in college.

Yep, five years ago I was quite the little wanker--I put away a 5-year CD, back when the APY was a whopping 7.22%. I weep at where things now stand. This weekend say a roundabout roundup of most of the relevant Asians in my life, including Rob Chin's sister, even, as well as the improbably Sino-Indian collaboration of Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle which was most satisfactory despite rampant homophobia and not exactly a liberation from one's ethnic heritage, nor even DuBoisian multiple consciousness. Nor did the audience evidence any Sino-Indian collaboration.

The thrust is just my reanimation, though the clock is ticking on any New Hampshire trip at this point, though if Alric could be convinced...