It’s important to define our words. I once dated a girl who told me three months after we first started seeing each other that she was still in “dating mode” and wanted to be “non-exclusive.” I thought about it and said okay. Well, first I sighed and said, “Excuse me. I have to go to the bathroom.” I thought we were on the same page.

We weren’t. We weren’t in the same ballpark. We weren’t even in the same fucking sport. I thought non-exclusive meant we could still date other people. Call me old-fashioned. For her, non-exclusivity meant she could go with me to a party, ignore me once we arrived, hit on all my male friends, get their numbers, sit on their laps and whisper, “Oh, your major is (insert whatever). That’s sooo sexy,” and hit on strangers in the street. Guy with greasy ponytail standing outside a sketchy bar? Fair game.

Many grownups who have long since graduated from school have told me that once you leave an academic environment and stop doing homework, you become worse at studying for exams. They’ve told me to take my GRE or GMAT or the dozens of other useless tests out there just to get them out of the way. I think they mean that once you get a job and join the rat race, you don’t really need to think anymore. Let’s face it, most jobs just don’t require that much thinking. If you’re doing groundbreaking research in string theory, I’m very happy for you. But I’m talking about the other 99.99% of the people on the planet. The first couple of months of a new job might be challenging because you’re learning the ropes, but after a while, your day-to-day tasks become mechanical and don’t require much more than a pulse.

I recently got off the phone with the debt collectors of the Federal Perkins loan I borrowed for college. I shudder when I think of debt collectors. Sure, developed countries’ attitudes and policies surrounding debt has improved a lot since Charles Dickens’ time when debtors were simply thrown into the slammer, but I still shudder.

Just came back from a 1.5 hour local hike. I love how the mountains and trails are so close that I can climb up to summits that overlook the entire town and come back in less than two hours. The weather is surprisingly mild during the day. Even though today’s cloudy, the temperature is around mid-forties. Of course, if you’re running up steep ridges in heavy hiking boots with a fleece on, it feels much warmer.

I’ve stayed in Boulder for almost a week now, enough time to get a sense of the town’s unique traits. Although Boulder is situated at 5,430 feet (1,655 m), the change in altitude from New York City’s sea level wasn’t drastic enough to make me feel anything. Here’s some more fast-facts about Boulder according to Wikipedia:

• Population in 2008: 94,268
• one of the most liberal cities in Colorado
• “a choice destination for hippies in the late 1960s” a 2007 estimate stated “median household income in Boulder is $50,209, and the median family income is $85,807” although this might be skewed by the student population of UC Boulder

During my stay in Boulder, Colorado, I’m living at a private residence that James and I found listed on Airbnb. It’s a nice house. I’m sitting at a bistro table eating organic golden potatoes I just cooked.

I originally had some reservations/apprehensions about the hostess with whom I’m staying. I thought that James and I would have the entire two-story suburban house to ourselves. I thought rich people who wanted some extra income from their Cape Cod beach-front vacation house in which they stayed for a month out of the entire year were the ones to put up listings. But after watching Airbnb’s about video I realize it’s perfectly fine for them to stay while they rent it out.

Communities have their own jargon just as geographic regions have their own vernacular. US midwesterners say “pop,” their east and west coast counterparts argue it’s “soda,” and southerners just call every carbonated beverage “coke” (trademark dilution be damned).

Communities imbue their adopted jargon with their values and mentality, and later on the jargon instills in its future speakers these very values and mentality through its connotations. The military brass has sitrep, ISAF, and CENTCOM. These terms sound martial and chain-of-command. The startup community vocabulary includes bootstrap, stealth, and pivot. Corporate America has key performance indicators, end of business (EOB), and workstream. These terms sound verbose and officious. They ostensibly mark progress but are often used to play accountability hot potato.

More corporate boilerplates.

Who is Cipher? I’ll tell you.

A month ago, during the January 26, 2011 blizzard in New York City I met up with a friend from college. We drank beer at an Upper East Side bar called Johnny Foxes and talked about how our lives had changed since graduation. After working for several years, my friend decided to apply for business school. I complained about how no one warned me that leaving an academic environment and entering the rat race meant the discontinued use of one’s brain. After an hour of catching up, my friend said, “It’s jarring to talk to you. It’s surreal.”

I’m reading a book on the history and prevalence of the golden ratio called The Golden Ratio by Mario Livio. It inspired me to write a javascript function that dynamically draws the golden rectangle on your computer screen. Mathematicians call the center of the rectangle the “eye of god.” Here’s the live page, and here’s the source:

Chua’s kids and the sign in the window no one noticed

Today I read the excerpt from Amy Chua’s book Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother that catapulted this nation into a long and unsatisfying discourse about parenting. Yes, I’m a little behind the times. Forgive me for not watching “Good Morning America.”

After reading the excerpt, I am in disbelief. Chua included in her list of things she never allowed her two daughters to do, “not be the No. 1 student in every subject except gym and drama.” She should be ashamed of herself. My children will be the No. 1 student in everything, including gym and drama. Not pushing my kids to be all they can be in every human endeavor means I don’t love them enough to believe in them.