I should have done organic

I went to a meeting this afternoon & noticed how many cute guys are in the chemistry department, which prompted me to think that I should have considered more carefully a career in organic synthesis. There's this one dude who I've seen around, he 's like 6 feet tall, blonde, blue-eyed & probably comes from Teutonic stock. I thought he was someone Basel sent over from Germany, but his last name is Swedish & I heard him speaking perfect English @ the meeting. He's a dead ringer for Brad Pitt. Must enjoy the eye-candy while it's around. Don't worry, I'm not serious about anybody. Most of these "guys" are middle-aged men & they're probably all married anyway.

November is shaping up to be a busy month. I've been rearranging my calendar to schedule interviews w/JHU (Johns Hopkins) & UCSF. Right now I have something going on every week in November:

Nov. 2: Interview @ UPenn
Nov. 5-9: Visiting my parents & interview @ UCSF
Nov. 17: Interview @ JHU
Nov. 19: The Game (between Harvard & Yale - This year it's at Yale. I'm meeting up w/my friend who I stayed with at Baylor, and maybe my old suitemate from college.)
Nov. 25: Stephanie Chung's wedding

I also booked a flight home for Christmas. I'm going to visit my sister in LA for 2 days before flying up with her to SF. I plan to rent a car to get to & from LAX, so hopefully we'll be able to do more stuff this time around (either that, or sit in LA traffic). At Jennie's wedding in August, Janice (who lives in Orange County) told me, "I don't know how your sister gets around LA without a car." The last time I was there, we took the bus to Santa Monica Pier and a taxi to the Getty museum. We might check out the museum of contemporary art & drive to the beach. My sister says Venice beach actually has canals, like its namesake. Oooh, I'm excited.

The book about Paul Farmer got me interested in anthropology, so now I'm reading a book called The Geography of Thought by Richard Nisbett, a psychologist at UMich. It's about the differences between the Eastern & Western mindsets. He presents a lot of historical & experimental evidence to show that East Asians tend to look at the big picture (context-oriented), while Westerners are more object-oriented. To East Asians, the world is a complex place where fortunes are constantly being reversed (what goes around comes around). The way to deal with such a world is to work together to effect change. Thus, the emphasis on achieving harmony with/in the group and society. Westerners tend to think more simplistically and focus on discerning the rules/laws that (they think) govern the world. As a result, they tend to be more independent-minded and appreciate originality, since every person is in charge of his/her own destiny. Asian Americans, not surprisingly, usually fall somewhere in between these two mindsets.

A quote from a recent article in the NYTimes reflects the different mentalities:

"Too many parents now are into positive reinforcement for everything," explained Dr. Abboud. "In America people are so scared about doing anything that might negatively impact their children that they applaud every little thing they do. In Asia they expect both effort and results."

Nisbett theorizes that Asians are more prone to reflection and self-improvement, because these are qualities that help them to get along better in the group. Failure prompts them to seek self-improvement. Westerners, on the other hand, value their individual, unique contribution to the world. Repeated failure will probably discourage them from trying further and cause them to focus on other areas of strength. Westerners respond to motivation when it boosts their self-esteem.