A Perfect Dova Day

Beautiful, cranky Dova tries to ruin another photo.  At least her hair is brushed.

Over Thanksgiving break, Dova had a cold, and I had one of the rare opportunities to care for her during the day.  I took her to her room for a nap but she was too excited to sleep. So we had a conversation about how we are alike.  Sometimes, she is so foreign to me in her looks, personality and interests, I often wonder where she came from.  It is incredibly easy to count of the ways Adam and I are alike.  We both love math, card games (cribbage has been our nightly ritual), board games (the Oranges are mine in Monopoly), jigsaw puzzles, video games and Harry Potter.  We think and look alike and have similar traits like stage fright and a minimal need for sleep.  He has great timing and exactness in music and an incredible ear for pitch.

But when it comes to Dova, sometimes I am hard pressed to come up with a list of similarities.  She loves clothes and all things pink, purple and girly.  She is comfortable performing and is well-spoken.  Her eyes are big, beautiful and light brown (and weren't even brown when she was born!).  Her hair is fine with beautiful highlights, where mine is thick and dark like Adam’s.  She is talented in music, but has trouble with rhythms and still can’t read a single note (then again she is six-years-old).  And let's not mention the "I lost it!" and "I broke it!" gene.  Everything in the Where Did our Genes Go Wrong post from 2007 still holds true today.

So our list of similarities was a compilation of odds and ends.  We have the same ears.  They are identical, it is almost uncanny.  We both love to eat and try new foods.  We are both incredibly stubborn.  Hmm, ears, eating and stubbornness.  Hardly enough to say we are mother and daughter.  But we still love each other completely.

Last Saturday, we had the usual difficult times with Dova.  She flipped out during intermission at a performance of The Nutcracker because she wasn’t dressed up like the other kids.  I had asked her to wear a dress and tights before we left but she adamantly refused.  And knowing that it is never worth fighting with her incredible stubbornness, we let her go in jeans.  When she saw that all the other girls were dressed up their Sunday best, she started yelling at me for not bringing her dress and tights with us so she could change.  I tried to explain that I was respecting HER wishes not to get dressed up.  She just lost it more and said I should have forced her to wear a dress.  You can’t win with this girl.

So imagine my surprise when Sunday turned out completely different.  In the morning, I put on my treasured Baryshnikov Nutcracker vinyl LP on the stereo and we danced around the living room together.  She is a beautiful free spirit when she dances and I soaked up her radiance.  She had wanted to get together with her friend that day, but I wanted to take her to an MIT alumnae potluck at my old dorm.  She whined and pleaded, but she finally agreed when I told her there would be balloon animals and juggling. 

Dova insisted on dressing up for the party even though I thought it was probably casual dress.  She made me dress up as well and even agreed to take a mother daughter holiday portrait. 



When we attend parties, Dova usually shuns away from other kids, preferring to Velcro herself to me and hang out with the adults. She is not unusually shy, she is just extremely discriminating as to who she befriends, sometimes to the point of being intolerant of other kids, much to our dismay.  She is very well-spoken and comfortable with adults, so we generally let her hang with us.  But sometimes I wish she could run around and have a good time with other kids like her brother easily does.

At this party, there were plenty of other kids her age, but once again, she started out glued to my side.  She had no interest in learning how to juggle with the other kids.  At least it was easy to pile a variety of food from the potluck onto her plate.  But slowly, the other kids started to play with her.  An 8yo girl asked to play Connect Four with her.  I’ve never actually seen Dova play Connect Four, so I was a bit worried that she would be completely trounced.  Nearly 7yo Dova who doesn’t really like games against the 8yo daughter of a MIT Aero-Astronautical Engineer turned patent lawyer.  Yikes!



But she held her own and won about half the games.  In fact she tricked the other girl twice with the same move!  Wow, I was impressed.  Once Dova was warmed up, we proceeded to the balloon animals.  Some kids made their own creations.  Then I started realizing that these kids were quite intelligent.  Scary smart in fact.  Look at this abstract frame this 9yo (class of '23) made.



Wow, incredibly creative!  I took my hand at creating some animals, and once I started I couldn’t stop (over-achieving Asian gene took over).  I even made a new creation, the bee with a stinger.  I was trying to make a flower, but ran out of balloon after two petals.  Dova and her new friend ran around with balloon animal bees and had a blast.



Dova was fine when I left her to try my hand at juggling.  I’ve always been fascinated with juggling and own sets of balls, rings, clubs and scarves.  But I never took the time to learn and practice.  That day, I finally learned that I needed to start with two balls, not three, alternating the starting hand.  And then I needed to tandem juggle with someone else to get used to juggling from one side at a time.  We got up to 14 throws.  And only after I have the balls down, can I then try the clubs.  And I need to start with one club and two balls (“if you don’t mind the connotation”), not three clubs all at once.  Once again, over-achieving tendencies have prevented me from learning this hobby.



When I saw these juggling balls neatly lined up on the floor by one of the kids, I immediately thought of Adam, who has been organizing and lining up his toys since he was a baby.

It was incredible to see Dova so comfortable with other new kids.  And then I realized why.  She was just like them.  She is also scary smart, way ahead in school.  We try not to emphasize this with her because we don’t want her to feel superior, although we do express pride in her accomplishments.  She is clearly super intelligent and she felt right at home with these other precocious kids.  In fact, she was Just. Like. Me.  I also felt at home and incredibly energized to be around fellow alum:  smart, accomplished, and funny women. 

Afterward I took her around my dorm and showed her my room with the incredible view of Boston.  I felt an incredible bond with her as we walked the halls and the streets around MIT, knowing without a shadow of a doubt that she was my daughter.  It was a perfect Dova day.

Little Girl, Big MIT

When Adam was 6 years old, I sent him for a day of kid's activities at MIT for my 20th reunion.  I didn't attend myself because Dova was only 3 years old and I didn't want to get full days of babysitting.  It turns out that MIT reunions are quite family friendly and have many family friendly activities even for young ones.  I remember thinking that Adam was such a big kid at 6 years old and it was time to start brainwashing him into thinking that MIT was the best and only place to attend college. He loved it of course and has followed hook, line, and sinker into thinking that he should be going to MIT.  This year, I had the opportunity to meet up with a friend having his 25th reunion, so I brought Dova along.  She looked so little against the big architecture of the ‘tute.

 

Dova outside of Lobby 7 under a massive column.

 

Under the windows to the entrance of Lobby 7.

  

Against a vast wall.

In the infinite corridor (3rd floor).

Even though she is the same age as when I first brought Adam to MIT, I still think of her as a baby.  Apparently she is no longer running around at my knees, but she is getting quite tall!  Here we are on the third floor of Lobby 7 against the top of one of the columns.

   

And according to plan, she has also been brainwashed into thinking that she too should be going to MIT.  Excellent!

Geeky MIT Shirts

If you want the ultimate in geeky shirts, visit the MIT Coop.  There are limited versions at their webstore, so unfortunately you have to hoof it to their store in Cambridge, Massachusetts (the Student Center one to be exact).  Here's a selection of shirts:



The first shirt says, "The universe exploded out of nothingness 14 billion years ago and all I got was 100 trillion interconnected cells, a self-aware consciousness, and this lousy t-shirt!"



First shirt is MIT in equations (OMG I am a geek):

m = E/c² - you all know this one, just do the algebra to put the c² on the other side.
i = √-1 - imaginary number
T = PV/nR - ideal gas law (I am a mechanical engineer after all, and it is the ONLY equation I remember).

Second shirt:

i: Get Rational
pi: Get Real

You wanna know what's my problem?

Here's my problem:

If we are R light-years from a Kerr-Newman Black Hole with charge Q, angular momentum S, and mass M, and the line element for space-time in the vicinity of a Black Hole is:

ds² = -dt² + dr² + r² (dθ² + sin² θdφ²)

And if we know that the constants of the motion are:

[Pretty please, don't make me type those equations, my head may explode]

Then how long it is before our Solar System is sucked into the Black Hole?

So what's your problem?

OK, I have to say that I'm not worthy of my MIT degree.  I have no idea what this is saying!



Ditto for this shirt.

Sure, when I was an MIT student, I wore a shirt that read:

And God said:

And there was light!

But one day after the exam covering Maxwell's equations, I totally lost all knowledge of it. My absolute favorite MIT shirt was SPAMIT.



Stupid people at MIT! Now, that's something I can wear proudly.


Hosted by Cecily and Honey Mommy

PSF - Visiting My Old Dorm Room

On one of my days off to teach Hands on Small Business, I took the opportunity to wander through my old haunts at MIT. There have been quite a few changes since I graduated in 1987, but the nostalgia factor was still high. I lived in a dorm along the Charles River, and I always knew that it had the best view that I would ever experience in my lifetime. From my sophomore year on, I picked rooms on the top floor with this view.



I would watch the cars go through the underpass of Memorial Drive under Massachusetts Avenue all night instead of doing my problem sets.



I walked by my old room which I spent two years in.



Graduating in 2010? Wait, I lived in this room before this girl was even born! Way to feel really old.

The mailboxes were the same, but the front door and front desk were completely renovated. The only thing remaining was the old clock on the wall.



It looked completely different from when I worked the desk which was under the clock. Queue the way-back machine...



It's definitely not 1987 anymore!


Hosted by Cecily

TMT - Back in 26-100 with MIT Mommy

Although I live not to far away in Massachusetts, I rarely get the opportunity to visit my alma mater, MIT. The real MIT Mommy came by to visit last month, and I longed to walk the hallowed hallways again. After a nice lunch at Legal Seafoods in Kendall Square, we first headed to the new and unusual Stata Center, which we both had not seen and longed for the familiar creaky floors of the old Building 20.

We tried to take a photo of ourselves in the round reflective surfaces that cut across the structure.

Obviously this is a little to obscure to be the obligatory blog friend shot. And what is that strange headless version of me standing next to myself???

So we took to leaving our mark on the blackboards.

But how many people would see that? We suddenly thought of a better idea. Why don't we write on the blackboards of 26-100, the largest lecture hall where MIT undergrads have most of their freshman and sophomore classes? I was a freshman in this very lecture hall in 1983. And true to form, it has not changed a bit. MIT Mommy brought some chalk along just in case we needed it (she's a smart one!).

Here she is drawing the gear head kid that appears on her logo. She can even draw! I tried and tried to draw a hippie flower next to my blog name but failed. They kept looking like amoebas. We wrote in the blackboards in the dark to avoid attracting attention, but that didn’t make for good photos. Then she figured out how to turn on the lights from the console in front of the blackboard. She’s a genius, I tell you! She even put up her post the DAY AFTER we met. Prompt to boot!

But it was I who snagged someone wandering into the lecture hall to take pictures of us together. I’m good for something!

It was great to meet you, MIT Mommy!

Visit Tell Me Thursday for more secrets behind Wordless Wednesday.

WW - Writing on the walls

Visit by Wordless Wednesday or 5 Minutes for Mom for more participants.
Come back tomorrow for the story behind these photos for Tell Me Thursday.

Movies with MIT and my long lost twin brother

On my plane flights to and from Canada, I was lucky to have planes with on-demand movie screens built into the seat back. On the way up, I watched half of Iron Man. I was extremely curious about this movie because I recently learned that the fictional character Tony Stark graduated in my MIT class of 1987.


Image from Matt McGann's MIT Admission blog.

According to the Wikipedia bio:

Anthony Stark was born on Long Island, the son of Howard Stark, a wealthy industrialist and head of Stark Industries, and Maria Stark. Tony is a boy genius, entering MIT at the age of 15, and graduating at the top of his class.

Wait a minute! I'm from Long Island and entered MIT at the age of 16. Stark could be my long lost twin brother (OK, Irish twin)! Alas, in the movie he graduated at 17, which I find highly unlikely as even this girl genius needed the full four years to graduate. And no, that is not our class ring, as the profile of the MIT skyline was incorporated only in later years.

On the way back, I was looking forward to seeing the end of the movie, but it wasn't offered. So I did the next best thing and watched another movie about MIT, 21. The opening sequence of shots around the campus immediately took me back to the old days. But as soon as they went inside, it wasn't MIT at all. Or at least the MIT I remember. No 26-100 or 10-250 or all the old quaint classrooms with wooden pull-up desks in building 3 for Course 2. Just some generic college classrooms with Kevin Spacey as a professor.


Image Peter Iovino—Columbia Pictures from The Tech.

I only watched half of this movie as well, so now I gotta watch the rest of both movies. It was great to finally see my twin brother and catch a glimpse of MIT again.

October 7, 2008 - edited to add:
I recently read in my alumni magazine that some of the original members of the MIT blackjack team appear in the film including Jeffrey Ma, '94, who is the real-life basis for the character Ben Campbell (Jim Sturgess).

Jeff Ma '94, the inspiration for the main character in both the book and the movie, appears as a Las Vegas dealer, and Henry Houh '89 (who has five MIT degrees, including a PhD) plays a dealer in a card house in Boston's Chinatown. Albert M. Chan, SM '99, PhD '04, also makes a cameo appearance as a card dealer, and iRobot cofounder Colin Angle '89, SM '91, plays Professor Hanes, who calls out the winner of a robot competition.

The MIT Girl and Flashing Shirts

I was totally disappointed when Star Simpson, a sophomore at MIT, had the terrible judgment of walking into Boston's Logan airport with a home-rigged LED device in her sweatshirt. Thankfully she was only arrested and instead of being MIT's first Darwin Award recipient. Of course it didn't help that she performed this stunt in the city known to overreact whenever LEDs are involved as with the Aqua Teen Hunger Force bomb scare.

As I drown under the weight of holiday catalogs (go to CatalogChoice.org to opt out), I perused through Computer Gear and found not one, but FOUR shirts that they offer with flashing lights. The TSA will either have to ban these or get used to a lot of geeks strutting their stuff.

Here's one that is suspiciously similar to Star's shirt:


Here are some others:



Click on the images to get to the catalog pages. Buyer beware when going through airport security!

Thursday Thirteen #22 - Amazing MIT students

On the plane, I got a chance to catch up on the MIT Alumni Spectrum magazine, highlighting the work of MIT professors and students. I'm often amazed at the broad range of talents and ambitions of MIT students, which sometimes leaves me feeling a bit of an underachiever. But then I remember being a student and recalling that the vast majority of us were not superstars, but mere mortals and often very normal (OK, some people would argue about the normal part). In my class, James Worden was a superstar, having already won prizes for his solar electric car. In our 2.70 mechanical design class, we had to design a continuously variable transmission for his car. This caused students to resent his fame - like he needed our help! Anyway, these new crop of kids are amazing and now that I'm an adult, I have no problem highlighting their achievements to the world.

1. Nathan Ball invented a 20 pound battery powered rope ascender that can lift 250 pounds more than 600 feet into the air at up to 10 feet per second. Batman cool, and extremely useful for firefighters. Check out the video. He also is co-host Design Squad, a PBS show that I actually applied for (hmm, I guess TV wasn't for me!).
   
2. Zachary Bjornson-Hooper earned an award from the EPA for reporting that airline water was contaminated when he was 12 years old. He hypothesized that planes fly to Mexico and India, which have contaminated municipal water, then refill their tanks. He tested the water with a kit and the results were later verified by the EPA. The EPA then presented results to the U.S. Congress, which made it illegal for airlines to serve contaminated water.
3. Raja Bobbili taught an MIT class on poverty in developing countries that produced legislation for HIV/AIDS in Zambia and recently has been approved for the entire nation of Zambia.
4. Amos Winter is devoted to developing better wheelchairs for use in developing countries by developing a wheelchair in which you can comfortably travel six miles a day, and which can be sold in Africa for under $150.
5. Jason Katz-Brown - This Scrabble champ sees Scrabble as an endless mathematical problem and not as a word game as the casual player does. He is currently ranked 3rd in the National Scrabble Association (which is international despite the name). He also co-developed Quackle, an artificial intelligence version of Scrabble.
   
6. Nicki Lehrer founded the non-profit Children of Guayaquil to build a community center in Pascuales, Ecuador for street children with no food, clothing or education.
7. Sadik Antwi-Boampong recently established the first library in a poor town in Ghana. With no resources, he solicited donations of books and computers, and connected with a member of Parliament who volunteered to donate a run-down town council building to establish the library.
   
8. Angelica Weiner implemented a computer project for young women in Ecuador to teach them skills to land jobs. In the beginning, the girls struggled with the most basic skills, like switching on the computer, and opening and closing windows. By the end of the term, the students were touch typing, making PowerPoint presentations and Excel spreadsheets, and were closing computer windows with confidence.
9. Jainey Bavishi is working to establish a Gulf Coast funders' collaborative to support and strengthen community capacity in the region affected by Katrina and has traveled to New Orleans 12 times.
10. Emily Houston won 10 national target shooting championship titles and holds 20 national records, the highest score for her age ever recorded in the US. She plans to go to the Olympic trials in 2008.
11. Doria Holbrook is a national diving champ who hopes to qualify for the Olympic trials in 2008.
12. Carl Dietrich invented an aircraft that is a cross between a small car and an airplane. Several distributors are eager for a chance to sell the $148,000 aircraft which has already interested hundreds of customers and investors and it’s not even built.
13. Anthony Rizos launched his own railroad web site that was devoted to Amtrak train service at age 10. After attracting the attention of the Associated Press, USA Today, and CNBC the chief information officer of Amtrak offered him a job at age 13.

MIT Dome goes green

I got this nice email today inviting me to a MIT Dome lighting event this Saturday evening:

Join MIT President Susan Hockfield on Saturday, June 9, when a new lighting system illuminates the iconic Great Dome of Building 10 at 10:30 pm. All local alumni, current students, and parents of current students are invited to attend this special event. For around the same amount of electricity needed to run two hair dryers, a total of 12 new fixtures will light the dome, the Roman numerals that spell out 1916 (the year the building opened), and the limestone facade of Building 10. The new lighting system incorporates energy-saving light-emitting diode (LED) fixtures and is made possible through the generosity of an anonymous donor. The donor also has provided funds to help pay for a 40-Kw solar photovoltaic array to be connected to MIT’s electrical grid. This new solar power system will ultimately provide three to four times the electrical energy consumed by the dome lighting. The free event, which comes at the conclusion of a full day of Tech Day activities that will bring 3,300 alumni and alumnae to campus, will feature light refreshments and music at the base of Killian Court. All in the MIT Community are welcome. To register, please go to...

That is brilliant (pun intended), using solar energy and energy-efficient LEDs to light the dome. I'm actually going to be at MIT that day for my 20th reunion (yes I'm that old), but in actuality I am only sending Adam to the Kid Tech activities and spending the day with Doug and Dova at museums in Boston. I couldn't get adequate babysitting coverage to attend the reunion in person so Adam will be the only one attending my reunion (brainwash early, brainwash often). He will be having a great time with Lego's and towers, two of his favorite pasttimes. Here are his program descriptions for the day:

L'eggo My Lego's

Forget that Ferrari and jump into the driver's seat of Lego Cars. Younger children build contraptions that propel their cars the furthest while older children design real motor-powered vehicles, as each group races for the gold.

Physically Possible?

Bridge the gap to the physically impossible with a bridge design and competition for all ages. Younger children also reach for the sky as they see who can build the tallest straw tower, while older children hone their design skills to create their very own Rube Goldberg machine.

Very cool! At least someone will be enjoying my reunion. Unfortunately, the kids will never make it to the dome lighting ceremony, but it should be a fun-packed day.

Technology Review: Outside the Norm

This article from Technology Review hit home. It talked about "underage" kids going to MIT, of which I was one. Here is a funny excerpt that left me ROFL:

Each year, a handful of "underage" teenagers are among MIT's incoming students. The university takes no initiative to court them, but anywhere from one to five, ranging in age from 14 to 16, join the MIT community annually. What do these wunderkinder look like, talk like, act like? Do they spend all night sweating bullets over their laptops, or do they just lounge around their dorms effortlessly completing multiple homework assignments at once? Do they play chess blindfolded? Can they go a whole night speaking only in palindromes?

First of all, I didn't realize that there were so few kids entering MIT who were young. When I started, I immediately met another 16-year-old in the first week, so I thought it was relatively common . If you are smart enough to go to college at 16, it may as well be the best, otherwise you really aren't smart enough (some kind of twisted logic there, no posers allowed). My encounter with this other 16-year-old went like this... I'm at a frat in Boston during Rush week at a party. This guy is trying to impress all the girls, saying he is 16 and he plays the piano, etc. He starts playing something lame, intermediate at best, all the while winking at the girls. He is really ticking me off the way he is trying to show off. Then I mention that I am 16 too and that I play the piano too. I'm not trying to show off or anything, but I wait for him to ask me to play. Then I play the 3rd movement of Beethoven's Appasionata Sonata and of course totally blow him out of the water. That shut him up for good. I'm not usually one to show off, but he just really ticked me off. These days I would just ignore people like that (i.e. don't have anything good up my sleeves to play).

The sad thing about these kids they interviewed in this article is that they all seem like such unhappy misfits in high school. I thought high school was a total bore, but I still had friends and had fun. I guess I was lucky to be young and "normal".