Words of Wisdom

UCLA is a pretty big school that could probably pull in some notable talent for graduation speakers. Yet, it does not give out honorary degrees and prefers to utilize alumni as speakers. While the school has some pretty amazing alumni, it certainly narrows the pool.

Last year's main graduation speaker was Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and at the Political Science Department Graduation we had former Mayor Richard Riordan. I decided not to go to the main graduation for several reasons, but I don't regret it because 1) Villaraigosa gave the same speech about "coming through the back door and coming out the front door" that I've already heard a million times and 2) I heard the student speaker was terrible. As for Riordan's speech, it was so incomprehensible that I felt bad for him.

When I heard that they got Kareem Abdul-Jabbar this year as the main speaker, I was extermely jealous. And after my friend David sent me this article about Kareem's speech, I was even more envious. The article said that Abdul-Jabbar's funny speech also advised graduates to pursue careers that will bring them both joy and improve the lives of others. (In addition to being 'the most prolific scorer in basketball history, Abdul-Jabbar also wrote books that promoted the lives of forgotten people of color and spent time coaching an Indian reservation basketball team.)

Instead of sleazy sounding lines about coming in through the backdoor (as you can tell, I don't care for our current mayor), these are the memorable lines that graduation speeches are supposed to have:

"I'm not claiming that you have to sell all your worldly possessions, wander the globe in rags, and, worse, cancel HBO . . . You should embrace and celebrate your pleasures. But also prove that you are worthy of being successful by making yourself significant." -Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

Middle Easting

Middle East issues have never been my particular area of interest. However, since my office does a lot of work with terrorism, habeas corpus, extrodinary rendition, etc., I thought I should read up more on the issues in the region.

The news that immediately caught my eye yesterday was the Fatah v. Hamas fighting. With images of masked men with huge guns taking over government offices, it makes partisanship in the United States look...well, nonexistent.

Wanting to get some general context to this situation in layman terms, I went to Wikipedia. Now I always take information on wikipedia with a grain of salt because I know anyone can edit pages, but I've never seen anything like this:

Fortuantely I took a screen shot of it because the edit was promptly removed by wikipedia in five minutes. While it was probably a joke, issues in that region seem to be so crazy that you really never know.

Travel Wish List

My parents are headed to Portugal and France tomorrow for 2 weeks to attend a conference and visit random family. I am very jealous.

I know that I've been very fortunate to travel to so many amazing places already. However, it's easy to be envious when I'm stuck in a freezing cold office during the week and in the library working on my comment on the weekend. Instead of pouting, I'm going to make my wish list of places that I've never been to before but want to visit. Maybe it will motivate me to work hard and get a job to finance my travel bug. From West to East (kind of).

• Portugal/Spain
• Greece
• Morroco
• South Africa
• Camaroon
• Kenya
  
• Thailand
• India
• Malaysia
• Indonesia
• Fiji
• Samoa
• French Polynesia
  
• Brazil
• Argentina
• Costa Rica
• Cuba
• Carribean Islands
  

Some are your "stock" countries that everyone wants to go to, some are a little more random. And this by no means an exclusive list; given the opportunity, I would visit pretty much any country. Even Russia, even if the country as a whole scares me a little.

Office Memos

Today we got an email memo notifying all of the staff that there was a fly invasion in our building, maintenance has been notified of the issue by several staff members, the maintenance will troubleshoot this issue, and we will get status updates on the fly situation.

Ok, maybe it wasn't an invasion, but there were a lot of flies buzzing around our nice downtown building. More importantly, the fact that we got a "memo" about it made me suddenly feel like I was in "Office Space." Therefore in homage of my new life in the 9-5 office grind, here are my own memos:

To: Mr. Coffee
Re: Life Support

I apologize for abandoning you for tea these past few years, but thank you for taking me back. Simply smelling the espresso roast this morning perked me up. I finally had the energy to make it through the day; I may be coming back for more.

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To: Construction Workers Outside My Building
Re: Hours of Construction

Is it really necessary to start jackhammering at 6am? Especially when people have their windows open on summer nights to save money on air conditioning? Despite being a morning person, I do not like to be woken up that early by absurdly loud noises. Please start later.

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To: Mr. Express Distributor at Van Ness Metro
Re: Express, a Publication of the Washington Post

Thank you for your cheerful disposition as you hand out free copies of the Express each morning. Your greetings and jokes really brighten up my day, and I love to see people enjoying what they do. Furthermore, your publications also provide my roommate and I amusement as we read ridiculous horoscopes riding down the escalator to the metro.

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To: Building Maintenance
Re: Thermostat

I would greatly appreciate it if we did not have to keep the office at 30 degrees everyday. Despite using duct tape and GAO reports to cover the vents, and wearing a sweater everyday, I am still cold. The only one benefit is that I do not have to walk over to the kitchen to refridgerate my lunch.

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To: Flies
Re: Extermination

You might have won these past two days, but we will get you.

kpd

The Court Minority

When you come from a state that's pretty diverse...
A university where Asians are a plurality and whites are a minority...
A law school where there are more females than males...

It's a little weird when you realize that you're entering into a profession where being an Asian female makes you a double minority. I don't think about it a lot, in fact, most of the time I forget that I'm actually going to be a lawyer in general.

However, for my externship class, we had some reading on the barriers women face in the law field. In Newsweek, I also read that out of the 7 out of the 37 Supreme Court law clerks last year were women. Thank goodness it doubled this year, but there's still a long way to go both in terms of how women are treated and numbers. Ruth shouldn't have to sit on the Supreme Court alone.

But at least while she does sit on the high court as the only female voice, she represents the sisterhood well. (See her vocal dissents on pay discrimination in Ledbetter and dissent regarding partial birth abortion bans in Gonzales v. Cahart). I wish I were Ruth.

Signs that You Work in DC...

• You stand behind Newt Gingrich in line for lunch at Corner Bakery.
• In the 4 blocks between your office and the metro are about 10 sandwich places and 20 coffee shops.
  
• Everyone around you in the metro is reading the newspaper or a goverment report.
• Someone has spilled a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report on you in the metro.
• You use GAO reports to cover the air conditioning vents in your office.
  
• Your office is about 30 degrees cold when it's 90 degrees and humid outside.
• Seeing women wearing suits and tennis shoes doesn't faze you-- even though you think it would be smarter if they wore flipflops while carrying their heels like you.
  
• You get accosted by LaRouche supporters on your way to work. (This is also a sign that you're walking down Bruinwalk).
• You've been invited, or have attended, a happy hour on every day of the week.
  
• At said bars, you've seen the TVs tuned into CNN.
  
• The bartender probably makes more money than you, or if you're an intern you know that the bartender makes more than you since you compete to work for free.
  

And that pretty much sums up my first two weeks of work.

Iron Chef

My favorite law school activity is making up new recipes or trying ones that I find on AllRecipes or see on Food Network. I wanted an excuse to make lots of bite size recipes that I had been accumulating, so yesterday we had a birthday celebration/ summer siesta tapas-style party. To the left is just a portion of the food spread, and people who came also brought a lot of good food (apparently other law school students like to cook too). And yes, I did label everything, I'm Martha Stewart like that.

Through my culinary adventures, I've realized how amazing asian cooking and asian cooking techniques are. One of ravest reviews I got were from the steamed Cilantro and Chipotle Chicken wontons that Alex helped me make. On the assembly line...

Voila, Finish Product

Bamboo steamers are an amazing invention, and as oppose to deep frying the wontons, steamers cook all the wontons in a matter of minutes. It might just be new favorite cooking appliance, after the wok and George Foreman Grill.

[edit: I forgot to mention that my wonderful boyfriend Alex bought me the bamboo steamer. I love him even if I think his ulterior motive was for me to make him Asian food.]