Public pledge of self-regulation for careful altering of world news and memories.

Is freedom a word we only associate with people who aren't in a visually perceivable cage or under the dominance of a homicidal tyrant?

Dear Goverment of China,

You piss me off. This declaration might potentially get me in a lot of trouble, especially with my friends, but I have reached the point where I must say something about the long-standing madness you call governance else my head will explode. I agree you run a populous country and that calls for decisions that might not please everyone. I will even overlook the fact that you are currently claiming stake on territory that is rightfully ours, but such behavior on your part is neither new nor unexpected. However, you not allowing the freedom of press is something that infuriates me as much as Tibet(s) infuriate you. You alter your geography textbooks, tweak the news and propagate/justify the idea of imprisoning 70 year olds for having an opinion. You are well on your way to becoming a superpower, but you will never be on par with US of A. With your closed minds and open thwarting of free press, you will never be as benevolent as America has been to the people of the world. You will never be able to welcome with open arms other cultures like they have. I know you think it is not necessary, but no country makes progress without allying with other cultures. You must learn to admit your flaws and fix them.
Fear is a formidable weapon to wield but it will always be weaker than patriotism. Learn China, learn. For you can go much further than where you currently aim to be.

Love
Deepu

P.S. This might be funny for some.

Existential angst

Dear Psychopaths on Long Island that are trying to kill me, please let me live to see my first Glycobiology poster. I would prefer if you chose the window between after the conference and before my birthday so I can go when I am twenty-four. If not then, then please after Christmas because I like ridiculing the commercialized conundrum they call celebrations, moreover Santa probably will bring me something nice since I've been fantastic this year.
Yours,
Still standing grad (a.k.a. standing still grad)

We recently met up with an old friend, Devin, who reminded us ever so subtly that we have still not mentioned him in this space. This is fresh off the keyboard after we managed to escape his death grip on our necks. (Why we are referring to ourselves in the plural is still not known, but it might have something to do with the fact that we are pretending to be British these days). Now that the aforementioned mentioning is done, we shall proceed to more important matters. It has come to our attention that we have been perceived as an uncaring, unsharing, unyielding type person. While that maybe partly true depending on the perceiver, let us make clear a few things.

We are not responsible for sharing things that we were supposed to receive but did not and hence had to go foraging for ourselves. If absolutely demanded of, we shall part with as little as can possibly qualify as sharing. We shall not participate in the tomfoolery of applying different types of make-up on the same person and qualifying them as two people. We have previously observed your (in)competence with numbers and hence even simple addition by you shall be deeply doubted. You have made us aware that you think of social websites to be a time-sink (while unwarrantedly looking at our monitor screens nonetheless), our independently working experts have concluded that reproduction is the real time-sink.

We suppose that we must come up a fitting disclaimer lest we get into some sort of trouble. This is /not/ directed at any single person. Especially /not/ Righteous Obsequious Leech (or someone that has similar initials). Described behavior is /not/ loosely-based on people we know in real life.

Regards

Cadbury (Our British buddy)

Cadbury doesn't believe in colors or in music. Apologies.

ich bin berlinerin

Traveling is tricky business. If you have the time, you don't have the money and if you have the money then you don't have the time. If you have both, then you married well. Congratulations.

Berlin.
Do I like the place? Sure.
Do I love the place? Hmm...

It suffers from an identity crisis, I think. Maybe it is my Americanized view of how a capital should be or could be, but Berlin is half a historic site and half an impressive modern capital. There are tall buildings here and there, taller monuments (and a very tall TV tower which was my (0,0) when walking around the city). Washington D.C. made up its mind, it seems, to be a historic site. The city is clean cut, most buildings are constructed in mud-colored stones giving off a wise-with-age city feeling. Possibly because so much of Berlin was reconstructed to look like how it used to, the city seems like it lost some of its charm. The imperial government building, Reichstag, is complete with tall Romanesque columns, sea-green domes that I've now come to associate with Berlin monuments and a resplendent lawn. If this were Washington, the Reichstag would be surrounded by statues of important people or at the least be free of metallic clutter. Right behind the Reichstag is the huge metal sphere that looks like Atlas shrugged right on top of the building and the white crows (yes, white) of Berlin picked at it till it had enough holes to become a spherical sieve. There is no coherence, no flow in the design. To make matters worse, the Reichstag is adjacent to the Bundeskanzleramt (the Federal Chancellery building), heavily glass clad and cement reinforced into simple straight lines, which is a striking contrast to the rich textury walls of the parliament building. You can't help but walk away thinking "Hmm... if we could put the Reichstag waaaaay there... they would all look better."

After five days of internet-independent, I-trust-you-have-a-ticket-so-I-won't-check faith, classy jewelry, paid toilets with fantastic toilet paper, supremely good coffee, credit card unacceptability and perfect weather, I decided - Ich liebe Deutschland.

Color: Sea-green
Song: Resurrection fern (Iron and wine)

Prohibitively prohibitive

It must be made against the law for dentists, visa interview officers, housemates and tax consultants to be adorable. It just really messes things up.

Julio de cuarta

It has been brought to my attention that there are "innocent" people in the world. These people are quite ubiquitous it seems and these terrorist fellows seem to want to kill only them. What's that all about?

Every year I tell myself I will stay home the fourth of July and enjoy a relaxing evening. And every year I find myself making a three hour trip to see a twenty-minute jelly fish smoke trail party and complaining all the way back home about how much pollution this spectacle is causing. It is at this juncture, that the people I go see the fireworks with decide they won't ever come with me again (they are of course forced to change their minds later (Disclaimer: no inhumane methods are used in the coercing of these people to remain friends with me)). My opinion of the celebrations undergo minor changes every year and so does the crowd I watch the show with. This year, the main attraction was an eight(?) year old who would absolutely not let her father's head stray from the direction of the fireworks. She did have the unfair advantage of sitting on his shoulders and having neck-steering access, but nonetheless she was doing a good job of amusing us. She even started the oohing-aahing session when the new supercool cuboidal fireworks came on. Designing and testing of fireworks is an enviable job, even better than trying out video games and being head of the administration department. The girl reminded me of how much fun kids are as long as they are someone else's. 

That said, I'd like to rephrase my usual Independence day message - always wear comfortable shoes when you walk in New Jersey. 

Color: Blue (go Obama)

Song: Ulysses (Franz Ferdinand)