August 26, 2003

Two Monks

Two monks were walking down the street after a heavy rain that left the streets quite muddy. They came upon a a lady of very easy virtue vainly attempting to find a dry path across the road without soiling her kimono.

One monk, more compassionate than the other, picked up the woman and carried her across the street, setting her down on the other side of the road. He returned to his companion and they continued down the road for some minutes until the second monk chided the first with the remark, "You really shouldn't have done that."

"Done what?"

"Why, you contaminated yourself by touching that impure woman."

"Oh, are you still carrying her? I put her down on the other side of the street."

In The Zen

Posted at 08:00 PM | Permanent link

The parable of Ernie and Bert

The parable of Ernie and Bert and the painting of the cow eating grass

8. Ernie and Bert were at home. Ernie was standing before a blank canvas wearing a smock and a beret and holding a palette and a paintbrush, as though painting. 9. Bert approached Ernie and asked Ernie what he was doing. 10. "I am finishing a painting," he replied. 11. "But what have you painted? I see nothing," said Bert. 12. Said Ernie: "It is a picture of a cow eating grass." 13. "Where is the grass?" asked Bert, pointing at the blank white canvas, 14. to which replied Ernie, "The cow ate it." 15. "And where is the cow?" asked Bert. To which Ernie replied 16. "Why would the cow hang around if there is no more grass?"

Sesame 6:8-16

In The Zen

Posted at 03:49 PM | Permanent link

August 13, 2003

Can't sleep

It's Tuesday night and I don't feel like sleeping.

This past weekend was a riot for reasons that will be left as an exercise to the reader.

After I got finished telling half of IBM that I would kick their ass (at the same time nonetheless), the rest of the weekend was fairly tame.

I did quite a fair amount of reading. Finished Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. I enjoyed it a great deal, probably even moreso than the first book. Given that these books flow quite nicelly, I think that they will make for good down time during the next semester. I'm looking forward to the third book in that regard. For now, though I think that I want something a little bit more challenging to sink my teeth into. I'm planning on rounding out the summer with Gulliver's Travels because, as I said before, I have been meaning to read that forever, then probably onto somethine more philosophical in nature.

In other areas of note, Sunday, I made a trip out to the North Carolina Museum of Art. It's not nearly as big, nor as prestigious as the Cleveland Museum of Art, but they still have a nice collection nonetheless. Could I get used to living in this area? Absolutely. I wish that I would have been able to make it out to the North Carolina Symphony sometime this summer, but I guess that's just something that I'll have to save for when I come back :)

Starting to feel like I'm really going to miss this place and all of the people down here. Last night was my last night of Wing Chun. It was cool talking to Sifu after the fact and looking back on the day that I first rolled into that place.

"To me learning Wing Chun is like dating a girl. You don't know what you get
until you are knee deep in the relationship."
--Sifu James Widmar

I know what I've got. Slightly tougher cookie dough now, huh? I'll be back. See you in six months, Sifu.

At the same time, though, I am looking back to getting back the the scene at the Cleve, and catching up with the crew there.

In General

Posted at 01:21 AM | Permanent link

August 05, 2003

Life and the Triangle

Last Sunday afternoon, I decided to pay a visit to the Sarah P. Duke Gardens in Durham. That place is awesome - plenty of nice places to walk or to sit and read and ponder about Darwin's theory of evolution. It's also free.

Lately I've been finding quite a few gems like that in the Triangle. You just have to know where to look.

While I was in the area, I decided to scope out Duke's campus, as that was something that I wanted to do before I left town. The verdict: The chapel and the area immediately around the chapel are fucking *amazing*. The architecture there is absolutely beautiful. However, other than that I wasn't all that impressed with the campus as a whole. Outside of the chapel area, it seemed more like a series of isolated buildings with parking lots than an actual campus. I think that it would be a good place to go for grad school, but probably not for undergrad.

After my tour of the three major universities in the Triangle, I still think that I like UNC's the best overall.

In other news, I finished reading Solaris. I really liked it a lot. Initially, at parts I thought that it dragged a bit with long fictional scientific explainations of made-up formations in the Ocean, however after finishing the enire book, I see why those parts were necessary to the theme of Science contrasted with love and the human emotion. I especially liked the last chapter a lot. I think that it framed the whole book very well. Highly recommended.

I have started reading the second Harry Potter book: The Chamber of Secrets, and it has really pulled me in so far.

Ahh... less than two weeks remain of my stay down here.

In General

Posted at 10:57 PM | Permanent link

August 03, 2003

This past week

Bars I've been to in the past week:

The East End Martini Bar (Chapel Hill)
Stool Pigeon (Raleigh)
Hibernian (Raleigh)
Vivo (Raleigh)
Bluz (RTP)
O'Malley's (Raleigh)
Goodfellas (Chapel Hill)
Woody's (Chapel Hill)

Wow!

Martinis, WebSphere, Irish Car Bombs, Defects, Beer, Foosball, IBM, Cheeseburgers, and Kung Fu. My goodness it was an excellent week!

Posted at 12:20 PM | Permanent link