So my mother says that the manager at Kroger's been asking them if they have grandchildren. And so the pressure begins, dammit. Ugh. At least Joephet can cook. But we lost the baby, or something.

So sadly there has been no confirmation on bogu, which has overshadowed even my new blog and project: the novel Jaundice starring some version of Lostin, perhaps.

New Hampshire was great, even if i didn't ever use a splitting maul. The rush was to make it back to practice in time, which I did, though I enjoyed myself and the countryside even though I now have a massive work deficit, more so than ever before, perhaps, since the year began. Thank goodness for sweet boyfriends and free iPods. The bonfire was towering and metaphorically appropriate in many ways. Something like that, at any rate.

So I been grumpy at work, but my kids have at least been very apologetic, constantly asking me if I'm okay, and remarking that I somehow look tired, a sort of bonus solicitousness.

Meanwhile, I proudly can present (technically one day late, I suppose):

Asianboi roundup

Alric is fast-approaching his second dearthday.

Joephet is my wifey.

Kenneth is still under-utilized.

Lostin is swamped still, but a seasonal disaffection only.

Panda has misplaced his wife.

Rob Chin has gone on his first date, and it wasn't with me.

So I've been having a good relationship with the elderly near-retirement queeny and proud of it (why do gay high school teachers past a certain age always feel obliged to drop such hints?) English teacher, who while more than twice my age has kept his balance and been a success beloved my students and teachers alike--but the more we become friends the more I feel the vast generational divide, which is not so much the class or the race issues, which are substantial in and of themselves, but is really I think a matter of anti-materialism and values and application, and fruitful self-deprecation. But these are not differences from me, and I guess I should try to act my age at least a little more once in a while, rather than the would-be retiree and veteran.

Last night at seminar was inspirational--I am now pushing myself to poop out a working draft of the textbook (though it doesn't look like I will be able to double-dip for it in terms of school grantwise) in the next month, ready for launch after Thanksgiving. Anyone with experience in software that makes it easier to incorporate carefully placed text and labels into regular text (TeX, perhaps?) would be excellent.

Ah, well, time for some wobbly guilt-suburi. I need to work harder.

So I am trying to figure out a backup plan for the novel that doesn't involve having some sort of interlocking co-condemnatory novels with Alric and Skarren, as there are too many issues of timing and pacing, and I have no working title beyond the seed of a year ago And There is Hope, but I don't know what depths of Asian-American issues I can adequately plumb in just a month, though in some ways there is a certain sort of structural appropriateness in the spectrum of ethnicities and careers and political leanings, and so on. This is the stuff that heavy-handed thematic nonsense is made of.

So this is white ludicrousness. Hairy-chests are monkey people.

So Joephet's buggy iBook lost the first iteration of this post. But then again, there's not much except a boatload of proposals plus a jaunt to New Hampshire this weekend to visit the Hargeys for some sort of bonfire, at the expense of a kendo practice, the second in a row, somehow, which is problematic as I'm sure that Skaren will have a great time mocking the futility of my suburi. Still, to get away even for a little bit away from the drudgery of the city is a good thing, and I suppose I will have an extra hour thanks to Daylight Savings Time, so I should be in decent form for Bigrock Sensei's rushed and barely intelligible (but predictable) routine. I don't know why I think in such terms.

Parents were fine enough, amazingly deferential especialmente cuando estaba hablando mi espanol terrible con demasiado confidencia, como siempre. Mi chino tambien se necesita mejorar, porque evidentamente hago rollas con mi lengua.

Besides that, I've been fine and energetic though back to improv'ing in my classroom, which is rather untoward.

So I am trying to figure out a way to save up a downpayment by the end of the schoolyear. Of course, if all goes well I will be able to travel to Japan in late June/early July. Then, with luck I will be able to go to a Rutgers program for the second half of the month and sublet my place for a month. Or something. Of course, if the aim is really to move out... The other possibility is a big buttload of per-session on the order of 40 hours a semester (the limit being a whopping 270, which is $9855 before taxes, how's that for BONUS, my finance bitches???). If that happens I should be set to begin my house-shopping soon enough. It's sad, these mercenary calculations, but they're what makes sense to me now.

So I have just ordered my first bogu.

So I have decided to jump on the white-bujii bandwagon (I'm assuming) and participate in NaNoWriMo. I would start planning now but that would be cheating. It's only 50,000 words, after all. And if not now, when?

December??

So this post will be rather long as I've missed a few due to my busyness. Friday, though, was unremarkable, staying late to finish anecdotal report cards and pulling grades out of thin air, just because. That did not go over that well, though I suppose that even though I was with Joephet and Bark Missada we did not merit serenading from the off-key mariachis, though the Grudge I found worth my $10, which took us to 2am at least, which was ballsy because...

the next day I had a test, nothing special, just a teacher cert thing. But the thing with that is that it was at St. John's and wouldn't you know it, it was a Queens weekend--the N got stuck outside Queensboro, the 7 decided it was too good for Roosevelt Avenue, so I ended up in Flushing catching the Q44 (past Joephet's middle school of a law school) to Union Tpke followed by the Q46 flipward, making it by a mere 2 minutes. And of course I spent more time in transit than in the testing room, almost half again as much. Still, that I made kendo and snuck in a Joephet snuggle made the busing worthwhile enough, and I think Sensei wasn't watching us because he suggested that we look into bogu. Sunday practice would bring another little kid, this one a halfie of the usual sort, but at least he's not some fat white kid. We'll see how long he lasts--and now we have a spectrum from talkative bebogued niplet all the way to chubby-and-silent marshmallow wrapped in a blue tortilla chip with much-scolded undershirt. Of course Riceriver Sensei the younger (who is unbearably cute) says that when he was younger there used to be an entire cohort of kendokiddies. Wonder what they're up to now.

Speaking of imperialist miscegenation, Lostin and I are currently negotiating a running tug-of-war gamble. We have set the value of every Asian-man/white-woman couple we see on the street at $1 for normalization purposes (teehee). We are currently taking bids for the value to be assigned to every Asian-woman/white-man couple we see on the street. I have suggested $0.05, but Lostin claims this is not sporting. Suggestions? We want to make it interesting, though we think that the white-man will outperform the S&P500.

Speaking of shrewd business practices, I have been thinking about rounding quite a bit. So when they calculate the number of shares you have bought they divide of course the purchase price (a whole dollar amount at least $50) by the daily closing NAV (Net-Asset-Value), and then round to the nearest mil (one-thousandth, or one-tenth of one cent), and in practice this would mean that since the roundings-up and the roundings-down about average out you get what you deserve. But it is a cute application of number theory that lets you maximize this rounding error. Let P=purchase price in dollars. Let N=closing net-asset value in cents. Then, the number of shares in a real world would be 100P/N. But this is rounded, which can be done by taking 100000P/N and examining the decimal part. That is to say, the decimal part will be R/N where R is the remainder upon dividing 100000P by N. So the theoretical best that we could do would be to approximate ceiling((N+1)/2) and then calculate P, which will be some answer modulo N. This just amounts to calculating the inverse of 10 modulo N (assuming coprimality!). And then doing a lot of multiplying, fast. This is optimal, but owing to the fact that sadly most of the time N is at least a three-digit number optimizing might well mean buying a shitload of shares you don't really need.

This sort of application excites me way too much, even when I realize that the (strict) maximum gain from such a transaction would be 0.5 mil shares, which for a NAV in the neighborhood of $10 is only around half a cent. It's probably better to just wait for the NAV to go down. So, kiddies, study your number theory!

So I don't know, but I feel I ought to check out this one-bed coop in Jackson heights which is only going for $99k, which is certainly affordable on a teacher's salary, I suppose, even if it's rather not as good as the one in my neighborhood, which is sadly $40k more.

So today was a good-ish day, though I've not been doing as many formal lesson plans as I used to, and my rather offensive-smelling hyper-eager subcontinental student duly informed me that an informal survey of other students revealed that I am actually a horrible horrible teacher--100% of his poll pool in fact! I blame not myself but his own inability to succeed quite as much at my more qualitative tasks. The envelope, at least is big enough, as some would say.

It's amusing that at the dojo there is this consistent stream of one-timers who drop by when it just happens that Shrimp Sensei decides to ratchet up the training a notch. This increased, um, focus is usually in the form of one-breath exercises, such as men your way across the room, or continuous triple men. I'm glad to say after 21 practices I have cut down my problems to just flaccid fumikomi, too-tense shoulders, improper breathing, a too-loose tanden, not enough te-no-uchi, askew okuri-ashi, chicken-head on any strike, hidari-men that's a bit too shomen, a wobbly kote, too much ayumi-ashi on my kirikaeshi, hand-flipping as motodachi, a chudan-no-kamae that's often too high, a sumo-foot-lift-off-balance preceding the landing of the strike, and a do that could sterilize.

That, of course, is only what they've bothered to tell me so far.

So I have missed a number of days because I have been seeing Rob Chin almost nightly, mostly for random dinners in not-so-random Japanese classes and buried in the usual pile of classwork, though my kendo homework has been going all right by comparison. I am kind of looking forward to the new algebra unit, which will allow me to actually scale back a lot of the more progressive work I have been doing into something more procedural but still tool-oriented for discovery. Or something. My energy at least is up, even if the workload I have to contend with is still quite crushing indeed, with research papers and the other work that I need to do anyway--still, I find myself more centered than not. Certainly it's not as if my kendogi is going unwashed.

It's odd, though, this routine, but I suppose everything would be better were my Saturday not shot by the ATS-W. My long-range planning has gone to crap, I fear, but that's also OK, and it's depressing that Rob Chin will be able to eclipse my current net worth within much less than a year, and that he will surpass me entirely not long after that. So it goes, as it was pointed out I could be literally making ten times what I am now just by perpetuating capitalism (not that it needs my help).

So my previous posts have been lost, somehow, and I think they concerned mostly how kendo has been kicking my ass, and yet how upset I am that I will likely miss next Thursday practice because it is open school night. But this is the way it would need to be, at least sometimes. I just need to get back into the right groove and relax; Shrimp Sensei has at least been helpful, though attendance is down because it is now winter.

I meant as well to comment on how I was made to be part of the law, part of the enforcement, for the three Chinese girls who are deemed uncommunicative and lost, me translating into my own broken un-school Chinese even as the science teacher had to ask the English-teaching Korean-imperialist (who is, of course, not Korean) about the cultural norms, in which it was claimed that Red China is Confucian. And that is rather ridiculous, given that there aren't that many temples left, and Confucianism is hardly all that homogenous, from Zhu Xi to Wang Yang-ming. I don't know if I should further tolerate the imperialists who actually bother to become Orientalists. I guess some get more textual than others, is all.

Panda and Giraffe's menagerie are droll enough, though I must say that Joephet kicks all their asses hands down, even though he's surprisingly paper-cut prone. Now that we're on more of a weekend home, he's like an entire country house, without the pollen.

So my pocket watch finally came today, but there was no fob!

How ironic.

So it's great when kids make connections that you didn't think were possible, even if they all go a little crazy, and you end up being very crotchety.

I got my ass kicked at practice today--I feel like such a kohai. But the key is not to give up--it's only been a month, and I've been doing math, after all, for nearly 10 years now. So I'd be at least a sandan.

It was nice to get an email from Lostin today--I don't get enough good emails these days. Mostly they're demands from my mom for algebra curricula.

So it was heartening at first to see that the other teacher at my school doesn't teach "8 is 40% of what?" by direct translation (8=0.40 x ____), and yet after the writing of 8 ~ 40%, x ~ 100%, alack, the method was immediate cross multiplication, which is more generally meaningless. But still, it is at least a step up from the alternative, I suppose, even as I do my best to try and remain diplomatic and helpful, as I am upending my own ideas about what it is to be a teacher, albeit unsystematically and between keikos.

So Tuesdays really kick my ass which is odd because I don't teach under the afternoon, even though that's back-to-back, but perhaps I should keep in mind it is just ill-advised to give candy to kids at the beginning of a class. Still, they had fun in their own way, even if they didn't have the patience to count up to 130. It doesn't help that Tuesdays tend to be particularly tough practices, for whatever reason, and all this katate nonsense is really getting to me, I must admit, and me having left my wrist supporter at Joephet's embarassingly enough. Then again, I shouldn't have to feel any of this if I'm doing things right. But it was frustrating, surely, to have an off-night that was already so sweaty, and to get so many instructor comments about mistakes, though I'm sure those didn't pop up--they've been there all along, but now I'm post-fragile enough to hear how badly I'm doing. It's tricky, teaching with so many instructors in the room, and no single lesson plan, and thankfully no Regents exam.

So here is a little game for the comments section.

What do you think the median household income is in the US (as of 2003)?

What do you think the first, second, third, and fourth quintiles for household income is in the US (again, 2003)?

What is the lower limit for the top 5% of households?

Footnote: The quintiles cut all of the data in numerical order into five equal pieces. That is, the first quintile is the (least) income such that 20% of all households earn no more than that. The second quintile is at the level so that 40% of all households do not exceed that amount. The third quintile represents 60% of all households, and all but 20% are below the fourth quintile (representing the maximum of 80%).

No cheating! This survey is just informal to see what people think. I will post some student answers soon.

So Rob Chin bailed on me tonight when I went to eat with Panda and Giraffe, but he had a great excuse, namely a date with Morgan (this being a metonymic Afro-epithet for this one girl...) at Kenka (me and the gaynip waiter both very jealous--and just last night he poked Rob in the back!), even though he will be forced to take an apartment rather early. No, Rob Chin is really growing up, and I'm proud. Let's just hope Morgan hasn't gotten that many oji-waza. ("nuki" doesn't mean what you think!)

So I didn't wear any underwear under my hakama today, and it felt a lot better. It's odd to go through so many senseis and styles. Overall, though, it's a very pleasant alternate form of life.

The next unit I am subjecting my students to is on taxation, with some eye to progressiveness and the mathematicalization of "fairness." This subject will be dicey, given the sensitivities to these issues of income, but then again, taxation without representation is still the order of the day.

So this is why I'm voting for Nader: Kerry is such a flip-flopper:

I have a plan that will help us go out and kill and find the terrorists, and I will not stop in our effort to hunt down and kill the terrorists.

Make up your mind! Are you killing then finding them? Or are you finding then killing them? You can't have it both ways!

So it doesn't help that in hanging out with the old school friends from last year, the white Filipina-marrying-pre-nup-requiring happy-jock was not only ridiculously pro-Bush but otherwise offensive. Still, it's odd to see those familiar faces and to know of retirements so early. I just don't appreciate demands for proof that over 3,000 have died in Afghanistan since the most recent American invasion.

In related news, I have purchased a pocket-watch. With luck, this will reduce my anti-bujii tirades.

I must say, I'm rather impressed by Kerry's performance. Skeletor without the Havoc Staff (there is a pun in there, someplace) (Skeletor, however, never killed any terrorists, and I'm pretty sure Jitsu (the evil bemohawked and goateed Asian analogue of Fisto) wasn't actually a southern Vietnamese collaborator).

My kids are too young and foreign to get Star Wars references. As well as references to Contra (down? up? left right? no... down up down up....)

So President Bush says that the decision to destroy life in order to save it (re: stem cell research) is one of the most difficult, and that we must catch and even (gasp!) kill terrorists who want to kill us first. So there is a simple solution--Muslim stem cell research! (If science can show that results translate).

Also, I could have sworn that Bush wants a strict construction worker on the Supreme Court.

So Judith Miller is in jail!!!!!! Better than Christmas!

So due to a slight strain from katate kirikaeshi, I am wearing a wrist brace, which has led to all sorts of questions, but it may well improve my technique as I am forced to use less force--the puzzling thing for outsiders is that it's my left wrist and I'm right handed.

The math is amazing right now--I have instant recall of topology I haven't done for years, and have done rather well in terms of "concretizing the abstract" though it has become clearer and clearer that I need to either wait for everyone to retire or figure out a way to educate and reform a math staff (just a math staff!) far older, set in their ways, and anti-progressive than I am. This task is staggering, towering, ridiculous.

But what can you do?

So today was good: minimal effort, maximum effect--my swings were more relaxed, and I focused more on movement and momentum and all that. And school was about the same. I am surprisingly pumped up these days.

So today was so great that I stayed at work until nearly 730 writing lucrative proposals. I have figured out a way to fund the initial writing of my textbook at the generous per session rate. At that rate I would be giving myself an effective 10% raise if only I were to work for 150 hours, which is certainly the time it takes to write a textbook. I will need to get on the side of shadow publishing, but given that we have easy access to a print shop, it might be one of those hatcher-esque things. If the project 10-lesson textbook is what I hope it to be (the method only deals with single-variable algebra), I could certainly market those for half again as much as cost, with half the proceeds going to charity. That's a 16% cut, which is pretty damn good when you think about it. The texts themselves should be super-cheap as an ideal supplement for students.

Further, Rob Chin and I made a kenka run, where I mistakenly toasted to cute waiters when said cute waiter was bending over behind my chair (to pick up a dropped chopstick). This adventure was the more amusing because we left for Italian Tomato, only to get a call from Kenneth, whereupon, rather than brave the oversweetbrown vagaries of the Curry Club returned immediately to kenka yet again for dessert and silliness.

Lastly, my students this past weekend were given a journal entry assignment of writing just questions. Any questions they wanted. I've not yet had the time to read them all yet, but so far, the two sparklingest gems (aside from the sheet of questions that was all like, "Where does wax come from?") have been: "Why does math sucks so much?" and "How long you in this county?"

So some Kendo humor

(By way of explanation, kiai is one of the key components in a valid strike, which by way of simulataneously timing should be the shouting of the body part struck, the landing of the foot on which there is stepping (e.g. fumikomi), and the strike itself. All three elements at the same time.)

Rob Chin and I have been thinking how lucky we are (Alric must needs agree) that dating is not more like Kendo in terms of kiai. For then, not only must you follow through (and turn around with proper zanshin), but you must also shout (and time) things such as "Lips"! "Sayu-cheek!" "Migi-testicle!", while having to worry about such counters as "Lips-suriage-cheek" (block lips lunge and counter immediately with strike to cheek) and various related oji-waza.

Good times.

So the problem with not blogging is that you have lots more to report when you do, and then you're behind, and that's not even counting

Asianboi Roundup

Alric is feeling better about his love-shyness... novel! He does seem like he is on the verge of some sort of breakthrough, while at the same time he is cocky enough to consider competing with me for the hand of Last, Best Hope.

Brother is now of legal drinking age, and is PRing, though they don't have Sinusoidal trophies quite yet.

Joephet has recovered from our abusive relationship--he has upgraded to an M.D.

Kenneth is interviewing with various whitey organizations. I suspect that they are probably still better than some dates they are on, though I doubt they have been touching his tremendous rack.

Lostin is still bitter. But, with possibly just one year left in college, it can only go uphill.

Others are in second-round interview for inclusion onto this list.

Rob Chin is trying to reduce the Asian poon trade deficit (His GDP--Gross Domestic Poon).

So yesterday was a journey spanning two states, at least--having been pleasantly surprised at the reasonableness of Macy's Cellar, my brother got a visit and yet more alcohol paraphernalia--what else do you get someone who doesn't have a TV or read? But, slapdash as the visit was, it was satisfactory from the hoagie point of view as well finding yet another dictionary to add to my collection, which now runs:

Lutz's Doublespeak
Quine's Quiddities
Pavic's Dictionary of the Khazars
Dictionary of Theories
Saul's The Doubter's Companion
Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary
Lambdin's Doublespeak Dictionary
Lutz's Doublespeak Defined
Flaubert's Dictionary of Accepted Ideas
Webster's Unafraid Dictionary
Bierce's Devil's Dictionary
Bierce and Buff's Devil's Dictionaries
Dalzell's The Slang of Sin
Barnes' Flaubert's Parrot
Cuddon's A Diciontary of Literary Terms (better than Abrams'!!)
The Year 3000 (a who's who of the future!)

I fear there must be more someplace, but the intention is simple--collect dictionaries that are not run of the mill, and actually express the secret ideology underpinning most works--a lexicographer, after all, is an empirical scientist, at best. Suggestions & donations are appreciated.

The rest of this week in teaching was satisfactorier than the first part--on Friday I felt as if I had a lesson worth teaching, actually, and I realized at some point in fruitful conversation with another teacher that any lesson worth attending had better not be fully videotapable, which is in marked contrast with Duke's give-everyone-an-iPod response...

Class last night was light, though it was hard not to laugh when I was in sonkyo and I heard a rip. I am now sitting around in boxers with an enormous vertical gash down the back. This wardrobe choice is somehow very Chinese.

So Asha is no longer with us, which I find sadder than the death of the Founder, but then again, she used to purr more at me, and lingered rather long. I am also no longer with Joephet, but that is rather old news. So it's upsetting, to think of what you can't go back to, in that way.