Author Archives: Millie

Maury will never read this

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So, I think posting this here is safe.

He is adamant on not exchanging gifts this year, but I don’t care.

Being in a long distance relationship means there’s a little treasure trove of data: cities, countries, and continents visisted; hours and miles traveled; days spent together; etc. So, I’m currently compiling a spreadsheet with this data and using various formulas and pivot tables to find some patterns or just raw totals to design an infographic. And by infographic, I imagine that’ll it be a watercolor bar graph. It looks really good in my head — how it’ll actually turn out is unclear.

A preview of the totals: 33,592 and 27,477.3 miles traveled by him and me, respectively, and about 78 and 65 hours in travel time.

For the record, he is not amused. “This is a cute distortion of data — we didn’t exactly travel this far only to see each other.” Not verbatim. Hahaha.

*Illustration above is from Jessica Durrant’s beautiful portfolio of watercolors!

Hardcovers

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“Don’t you ever read small and light paperback books?”

I think I’ve found one of the answers to the battle between deciding reading seemingly “static” books and keeping up on current news: Read hardcover books.

Baudelaire & public privacy

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Whether in a crowded 19th-century French arcade, or an Internet café in Beijing, or a subway car, or home, existing in modern social space is being engaged in the weird, counterintuitive practice of having a private life in public because it is so difficult to have a private life in private. Modern cities promised an alternative to the social loneliness of rural life, promised to make people less isolated from each other. Cities — along with their products and technologies — would bring small communities of families together, out of the countryside and into the marketplace. Communities would become societies.

[Source]

This site is supposedly back

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Human(s) curating content is back! Anyway, I think a good way to restart is to showcase what some of my friends are doing because nothing’s a better motivator than your friends being way cooler than you:

Nicole is currently interning at The New Republic (in DC! With me!), doing all sorts of neat things. Follow her here: nicolenguyen.com and twitter.com/itsnicolenguyen.

Hayes just started his new blog, At Water’s Edge, on foreign affairs and domestic policies/politics, with IR theory in the mix. But really, it’s an elaboration of his tweets, which are also fantastic. Also, he writes headlines like these: “Venezuela is basically the Lady Gaga of the United Nations” and “Syria Business: Syria’s FM Blames Everyone but Al-Assad for Syria’s Problems.”

Alex, my DC boyfriend, is always feeding me delicious Spats and pieces on NYTimes trend stories and Jon Hamm on The Atlantic Wire. Follow him online unless you’re lucky enough to have weekly date nights with him at MeiWah.

Seth just drove cross country from LA to Manchester, New Hampshire because well, Southern New Hampshire University was smart enough to woo him away from UCLA to work on their digital marketing. Follow him on Twitter, or his casually updated blog on media.

Andrew Roush is teasing with a relaunch of Reply Magazine and I have no idea when that’ll happen, so in the meantime, follow his angsty tweets about Thomas Friedman. He’s best during GOP debates though.

To be continued.

On autobiographies

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An autobiography is only to be trusted when it reveals something disgraceful. A man who gives a good account of himself is probably lying, since any life when viewed from the inside is simply a series of defeats. —George Orwell

That said, you can also view my untrustworthy autobiography at millietran.com — a domain named after yourself is basically a 21st century autobiography, right? My series of defeats will be recorded here though.

PS. James Fallows is following me on Twitter. Amazing! Why?
PPS. Hi, Jen :^)

An Update of Sorts

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My entire domain was hacked awhile back, but yesterday I finally spent some quality time with FTP, raw access logs and creative !p@5$w0RdS&, so I think my site should be back in order for now. I’ve missed having a blog because I don’t feel like I’m imposing my great sense of humor and self-serving life updates on anyone. I am mostly kidding about the great sense of humor thing, though someone DID tell me I was rather humorous the other day and I nearly proposed to him. Anyway, I know at least three people read this so I’m updating for you!

Continue reading →

Music to get through the Hump

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“How Long Do I Have to Wait For You?” — Sharon Jones & The Dap Kings
“If I Ever Feel Better” — Phoenix
“Slippin’” — Quadron
“You’ve Got the Love” — Florence + The Machine
“My Last (feat. Chris Brown)” — Big Sean
“The Show Goes On” — Lupe Fiasco

I’d say the theme of these songs dithers between “You kick ass” to “Don’t give up [because you are (obtaining your) B.A.*]”
*Bad Ass or Bachelors of Arts

Conquests of Today

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Today was a strange day, of extremely exciting moments and feelings of defeat. No one likes a defeatist, so I’ll talk about my conquests instead — in a nice list format for easy reading, in chronological order:

1. I asked for help from my friends. Difficult for me. They turned me down. I still love them.
2. I asked a stranger for help. Easier. They didn’t help very much. But I thank them anyway.
3. Defied gender stereotypes and carried my own car battery out of Pep Boys. No thanks, boys.
4. With help from Edwin, the Rochester I-Can-Fix-Everything-God, I replaced my car battery.
5. I REACHED MY FUNDRAISING GOAL. $1010 of 1000 in ~1 month.
6. I AM AN LA MARATHON SUPERSTAR. This just means I get a t-shirt and to be on their website.