How to make a phone call

The first step in making a phone call is putting the call on your schedule. Some people might do it immediately, but you can't risk calling at the wrong time. Maybe you haven't gotten enough sleep or you are in a bad mood or something. You also have to wait for a time when the person will be at work, decreasing the likelihood that he will answer. Maybe if you give it some thought, you can get what you want without a phone call. Really a phone call would never be necessary if not for the stupidity of others. Wait a few weeks or months.

At long last, when it's the right time, find the strength to look up the number. Then, go to the bathroom. Consider your shampoo collection. Which shampoo should you use next? The "rosemary mint" from the New Orleans hotel, the "aloe vera" from Wisconsin, or the "sugared citrus" from Minneapolis? The rosemary mint looks most expensive, but Minneapolis is clearly better than New Orleans.

If you decide you like the rosemary mint best, should you use it last, so that you have the pleasure of anticipating the best? Save the best for last, as they say. Or should you use it first, because you might die before you use them all? Seize the day, they also say. You wouldn't want to die without taking advantage of the best shampoo available to you. You will probably find this decision impossible, but spend some time on it anyway.

When you have lost interest in the shampoo, put the number into your phone. Stare at it, conscious you could still turn back. Then press the call button. Count the rings, forgetting to breathe. If it rings at least five times, it'll probably go to voicemail. It does. You will have planned out precisely what to say on the voicemail in advance, so this is the easy part.

Hang up, and get as much satisfaction as you can out of crossing out the to-do list item. Then it will occur to you that getting a return call is a real risk. Remember how the person's voicemail message said "I will call you back"— so decisive. You're screwed.

Try to distract yourself with an easier task. But how can you concentrate when the phone could ring at any moment? It sits beside you, like a viper ready to strike. You have made a phone call, but it made nothing better. Someday, you will have to talk to a stranger.

Gattaca

What a terrible movie. It's like the fantasy of a 10-year-old crying over the fact that his brother is taller than he is. So, here's this fascinating dystopian society, with deep-rooted class inequality, which raises many interesting political, moral and technological questions. The movie notices none of them. The only thing the audience is asked to care about is whether the hero gets to do his dream job. Is there a larger implication here? Will he try to fight injustice or help others? Nope. He just wants to be an astronaut because space is cool.

No one in the underclass besides the hero gets a name. They are all faceless, uniform men. There is only one woman in the movie--the blonde. No, I don't remember her name, why should I. Her job is to be a sex object and tell the hero that she likes him more even though his brother is taller. Their first sex scene occurs immediately after she has, in horror, watched him beat up a cop in order to avoid being questioned about a murder which she, and the audience, have strong reason to believe he committed to pursue his childish spaceman fantasy. This is below the moral level of a fairytale--and not just because the hero murdered an innocent man. At least in a fairytale, you have to give the beggar some of your bread before she'll do magic for you. Here, the hero gets special favors from a dozen other characters while narcissistically pursuing his dream with complete disregard for every other person besides himself. Disgusting.

An upside to sleep deprivation?

I've spent the past week complaining about the effect sleep deprivation has on my mood, concentration ability, IQ, energy, and memory--but now I think there may be an upside. I am more creative. I suppose some of the aforementioned factors--fatigue, lack of focus and IQ--weaken my usual obsessive grip on What Needs to be Done and my rigid ideas about What Ought Not to be Done. As a result, I've been less productive and done things like eat French fries and take the elevator rather than the stairs--but I also find my mind expanding. I think more, rather than constantly seeking something on the agenda to do. New ideas are occurring to me. Suddenly I have half a dozen blog posts to write.

Life tracking after school

Activity	Average time spent per week (hours: minutes)
Sleeping	8.08 (per day)
Reading	17.10
Homework	15.50
Class	15.15
Getting ready	10.13
Exercise	9.28
Socializing with significant other	7.13
Internet	6.45
Lunch talks	6.15
Food	5.43
Socializing with others	4.30
Watching movies	4.08
Errands	2.55
Cleaning and organizing	2.40
Travel by bus or car	1.57
Walking	1.15
Relaxation	0:25
Hedonism	0:23
Wasted time	0:13

 Compared to when I was working, there has been an increase in time spent

• sleeping
• exercising
• working
• internet
• getting ready

While there has been a decrease in time spent

• reading
• socializing with my significant other
• watching movies
• wasted time
• travel by bus or walking
• errands
• cleaning
  
  No change in time spent
• socializing with others
• cooking and eating
• hedonism
• relaxation

There's been a dramatic increase in working time, from 20 hours to 31 hours. A dramatic (but unsurprising) decrease in travel time from 6 1/2 hours to 3 hours. Time spent on errands decreased from 6.23 to 2.55.

Most of the predictions I made about my schedule before going back to school were true, with the exception that, while I thought internet and "getting ready" or transitional time would decrease, the former actually increased by about an hour, while the latter doubled! There are some real possibilities for improvement here. For instance, when I get home from class, it's common for an hour or two to disappear in what I've been calling transitional time, but much of which is wasted.

Probably the biggest surprise is that, after moving in with my fiance, time spent focused on him actually decreased by about two hours. Guess that's a function of not having weekends anymore.

Life tracking

During two recent weeks, I recorded what I did with my time. I find this fascinating and hope you will too.

I took notes every hour, which means this is more of a big-picture view. For instance, if I spent an hour training a new person at work, that is counted as an hour of work and not as socializing, even though I spent some time chatting with her about non-work topics. And the lunch eaten in front of my computer is counted as Internet time, not food. I would also suspect that the “wasted time” category would be a lot bigger if I were examining my time at the five-minute level.

Activity	Average time spent per week: Hours.minutes
Sleeping	53.45 or 7.41 per day
Reading	23.33
Working	19.42
Socializing with significant other	9.30
Socializing with others	7.15
Watching movies or TV	6.30
Travel by Metro, car or walking	6.25
Exercise	6.25
Errands	6.23
Food	6.00
Internet	5.55
Getting ready	5.13
Cleaning/showering	3.25
Computer science class	2.15
Driving practice	1.15
Wasted time	1.15
Hedonism (leisure activities not otherwise specified)	0:45
Napping/relaxation	0:30

Overall, I wouldn’t have thought I spent so much time sleeping and socializing. Very pleased that I read more than I work. I was also pleasantly surprised to see that the wasted time/hedonism category was kept pretty low.

The working category looks low because a) these were slow weeks for the company and I got more time off than usual and b) I excluded everything one might normally think of as part of the work day that fell under another category, like traveling from job to job, chatting with coworkers, or surfing the Internet while waiting for work to appear.

Watching movies and travel were almost always done multitasking; listening to podcasts while I walk or folding laundry, planning, or sewing while a movie plays. The exercise number dropped radically from 10 hours on Week 1 to 2.5 hours on Week 2, reflecting the fact that my gym membership ended.

Seems like there is a lot of leeway in my schedule. In my future life in Chicago, commuting and "getting ready" time will be down, and I could cut way down on movies and Internet and moderately down on reading without any pain.

Loudness and class

This morning, as I left my apartment, I paused at the sound of raised voices downstairs. Three of my neighbors were yelling at each other. I couldn’t understand what they were saying, but they certainly seemed angry. I was afraid that they would get violent and the police would be called (as has happened before) and I didn’t want to get in the middle of things, so I lingered for a few seconds before going downstairs.

...Then, getting bored, I figured it would probably be okay and went downstairs anyway. As I got closer, I could hear what they were saying. The phrase “home fries and cheese eggs” was used. I realized that, far from arguing with each other, they were actually just making friendly small talk about breakfast foods and the weather and such. I had completely misinterpreted the feeling tone of their conversation–because the tone of voice they considered appropriate for friendly small talk was so loud that I would never use it unless in a state of extreme anger or fear.

Now, I am an unusually quiet person. It’s difficult for me to raise my voice even when I have a good reason to do so. So this is an introversion/extroversion thing, but I also think there’s a class difference here. In general, upper-class people perceive clearer differences between the private and public spheres; they can afford to buy a great deal of privacy. Lower-class people have less spacious and comfortable homes and are less able to afford third places such as bars, restaurants or coffee shops; their private conversations are forced out into the public sphere. Hence the hanging out on the street corner/front porch/sidewalk behavior that upper-class people find hard to understand. Hence also, I would hypothesize, louder voices, even when close proximity makes loudness unnecessary.
                                   
This must lead to lesser understanding between classes (or races). If I can misunderstand people of a different class without even hearing a word, what do I fail to understand in a real conversation? And they must be misunderstanding me too–for instance, I’ve known several people who assume that a confident person will naturally be loud, so a quiet person must be sad or intimidated. Every word an upper-class person says may come out as slightly less aggressive than intended.