MIT Sport TKD Blog

HOME!

I got home on June 11^th, flew in at Zia International Airport in Dhaka at night which is Bangladesh’s capital and not my home. Home sweet home is Chittagong.  The first person I saw was Abba (Bengali for dad).  I put out my T-mobile phone card from my razor and inserted my local SIM card and dialed my father.  We talked through the glass coz I hadn’t been cleared through my immigration paperwork yet.  A year is a long time not to see abba.

I couldn’t rest very long at Chittagong.  Although I am home, I have a HUMONGOUS project to carry out. I am working, with a friend, to implement a youth leadership training program that incorporates three different types of kids in my hometown.  There are three schooling systems here: English (of which yours sincerely is a product of) a.k.a. rich, spoilt kids, (which yours sincerely is NOT), Bengali (the state language and state supported schools) more middle class, and Islamic madrassas (which focus a lot on Islamic/religious education).  There is great disconnect between peers of these three mediums.  We want to bring these kids together in the spirit of responsible leadership through community service.  The project was one of the winners of the Davis Peace Prize 2008 (

English kid: OMG! Doooddee, I just learnt this killer break dance move from Step Up2.

Bengali kid:  I must have perfect grades so that I can go to a good university to support my family.

Madrassa kid: I am sidelined because people think I am a ‘Islamic fundamentalist’.  I will get rejected from a top-brass job because I have a beard and wear the Islamic cap.

Disclaimer: I am grossly stereotyping and would probably get shot if any of the kids saw this blog!

I started work on this almost immediately after I got here.  We are working here with a partner organization.  So the rest of June and the WHOLE of July has been swallowed up in getting applicants for the program, screening applications, getting a venue, training facilitators, keeping track of thousands of dollars, making ten gazillions phone calls, answering ten gazillion phone calls, and basically going nuts.  But by the grace of God, the program has kicked and is running with AMAZING colors.  The kids are so enthusiastic, so positive, they have been bonding really well, and they really believe they can make a change in their community and country.  We went for a field trip to a local slum yesterday.  The kids have to design community service projects that cater to the need of the slum dwellers. Example: one group came up with the idea of directing a play with the children of the slum to demonstrate the dangers of illiteracy, so that families send their children to school.

Program will end on August 16^th with a huge graduation ceremony inshAllaah. The kids deserve it, they have been working their gluts off.  True my summer is being swallowed whole with backbreaking work, and I am actually looking forward to the time when I will be back on campus doing solid mechanics classes and annoying psets (aaahhh good times ;)))  But this will be an experience for me to remember for the rest of my life and it might have even changed the course of my life. 

P.S.  I am also guilty of treason.  I have returned to my karate club, and have been training there for the whole summer. BUT I have been practicing my TKD kicks on my kicking bag and on my karate-mates.  I made my club use the same warm-up drills like plyo jumps that we do at practice. There were a lot of groans when I made everyone do the plank for 40s!

P.P.S  The whole credit for this entry to THE Mary.  She threatened never to cut weight to make me spar heavy for the rest of my life. 

OHIOOOO everyone!

wow, how to begin…

blogging seems so strange now. i used to be really into the livejournal scene back in middle/high school (yeah, yeah… i was a teenybopper. but at least it’s a step up from xanga? ^^). thinking back on it, i poured some serious love and time into my little online buddy…

but then MIT happened. and the frequency/quality of my writing took a serious turn for the worse. imagine something like this xkcd comic, but instead of “my overall health” and “the day i realized i could cook bacon whenever i wanted,” it would be “any semblance of writing skill i might have had at some point in my life” and the graph would crash at “the day i came to mit.” >.<

in fact, reading over my poor, neglected blog is pretty painful. starting september 2005, half of the entries are cursing the terrible boston weather and the other half are apologies for not keeping my blog up to date.

but at the same time… OMG I WAS A HAPPY, CAREFREE, ENERGETIC FRESHMAN!!!

exhibit a: (from sept. 30, 2005… almost 3 years ago! O__o)

“Be a hearty New-Englander” –Sunny, my roommate

It was 49 degrees when I woke up today. Yesterday I almost got blown away by 40 mi/hr wind gusts. I’ve unpacked my scarves, joined the facebook group “Afraid of Freezing at MIT,” and washed out my thermos. And I can’t stop coughing.

But for some reason I feel just fine!

::tears::

what happennnneeddd…

it’s pretty interesting, though, to read back over reflections on freshman year (few and far between as they are). oh, freshman year… ::cue cloudiness and reminiscent music::… that was when i got dragged to my first TKD p.e. class by my roommate!

on that note, i really miss tkd… oh yeah, and all you guys too. ;D every time i get one of mary’s social emails, i feel sad and lonely… just kidding! kinda…

i’ve been trying to stay in shape here. i don’t have a car so i can’t get to a dojang for practice, but i’ve been running on a pretty consistent basis and doing some stretching/curriculum review… so hopefully getting back into the swing of things won’t be so hard come september.

ah! you may be wondering where i am (or who i am, for that matter… oh boy, i have a feeling this blog entry is not very coherent @__@). well, this is christine lee (supersecretcodename: flyingtotoro), and i’m in san jose, CA, working for a MEMS research division of qualcomm.

things here are pretty nice. i can’t complain about much. well, i take that back– i can. but i will spare you (for this entry, at least).

for the time being, let’s just say i’m enjoying the beautiful california weather and the copious amounts of delicious, sweet fresh fruit.

i’m also very lucky to have wonderful tkd friends who came to visit me 4th of july weekend… jenn huang, jackie, and john came by and we went galavanting around the bay area (will upload pictures soon). i’ve also met up with our alum instructor conor, who is doing quite well, it seems.

other than that, i’ve just been… watching copious amounts of food network, travel channel, and bravo (to make up for the lack of those channels at MIT) aaaand… NOT progressing on my many summer goals.

hopefully you all are being more productive than i am.

… i know i’ve said this already, but I REALLY MISS YOU ALL!

::sending happy thoughts::
–Clee

OHIO TOKYO!!! ^^

- here is my contribution… teehee

ps. i love summer!!!

hey guys!

i’m in japan right now, working at banyu (the japanese division of merck) in tsukuba. i’ll probably also be blogging at my real blog (snix313.wordpress.com), if you want to check it out.

the coolest thing about japan: heated toilet seats. not joking. they’re everywhere. in the airport, at work, in my department head’s house. you don’t really think about how much of a pain it is to sit on a cold toilet seat until you don’t have to anymore. there are also other toilet options, such as washing after you’re done? not really sure how that works…

my apartment is huge (by japanese standards). all of the people in company housing (interns included) have a decently-sized kitchen, bathroom, and pretty big bedroom (about the size of my bexley room). i’ll be posting pictures somewhere sometime.

my japanese sucks. no, really. but i know just enough to usually figure out general topics, even if i can’t actually understand what people are saying. my japanese most of the time consists of “hai, wakarimashita,” “sou desu ka?” and “sou ’su ne,” unless someone actually starts a conversation with me in japanese (i have this habit of speaking in whatever language people speak to me in - this is usually english); the rest of the MIT interns have much better japanese than me. :\

japan’s rainy season is this month, but the weather is still a lot better than boston weather. it rains maybe an average of 1-2 times a week, and it’s never windy and cold and crappy even when it rains.

i really miss tkd and you guys. one of my mentors said that there was a tkd club at tsukuba university, which is nearby, but i still haven’t actually contacted them yet. i’ve been beating up on other interns as a substitute for actual training. see you guys in ~2 months!

-snix

first day of practice!! or it would be, if i were in boston right now, i guess. =/ even though i’m not, everyone else’s excitement has been so contagious that i can’t help but get excited myself. so where am i that’s so great that i’m missing out on all the fun? back home having fun with all my old friends and family? someplace nice and sunny? (although jihye tells me anywhere is nice and sunny compared to boston this week) perhaps somewhere abroad, seeing new sights and meeting interesting people? alas. no, no, and no.

instead, i’m out in the suburbs of the beautiful state of minnesota, doing software work for a company that compiles legal resources for lawyers and attourneys. the apartment i’m living in is unfurnished (this means there’s no bed, chairs, desks, microwave, or anything else vaguely resembling furniture), but my roomate and i are still doing all right. we have this setup where we took a couple crates he had, and stuck a shelf (came straight out of the closet) on top, making a rudimentary table. i’m not gonna lie, it’s pretty sweet. imagine one of those boards that’s set up horizontally so that someone can break it with their head. yeah. it’s like that.

getting around here isn’t that easy either, because like a lot of suburbs, things are spread out, but it’s okay because everyone has a car. everyone except us, that is. my roomate went to wal-mart and got himself a bike for $65. that’s a pretty decent price for a bike, but i figured i could do better, so i went on craigslist, and if everything works out, i’m going to be buying a boys’ mountain bike for $15. we’ll see if that still holds true after i see the bike in real life, but right now my attitude is, hey, as long as it will roll for three months, that’s good enough for me.

the biggest (no, literally the biggest) attraction here in minnesota is the mall of america, one of the biggest malls in america. it’s so big that in the middle they have a full blown theme park, complete with roller coasters and rides, which recently got rebranded as “nickelodeon universe.” it’s actually the largest indoor amusement park in the country, too. as if that weren’t enough, there’s also the aquarium downstairs with over 450 kinds of sharks, which, incidentally, is the world’s largest underwater aquarium. go figure. does that even leave any room for the stores? why actually, yes it does! in fact, most of the more popular chains have several stores located in different parts of the mall. it’s pretty ridonkulous, if you really think about it.

well that’s all the news i have from minnesota. someone update us on how the practices are going! i miss everyone! hope your summers are going well!

-mark

PART I

I would like to explain the motivations behind the creation of this blog.

As the cohesive group we are, a big family we proudly call ourselves, some of our club members [Mary] are feeling uneasy, and completely lost, considering the prospect of a summer disconnected from some of their TKD buddies. Didn’t you feel the stress of having to say goodbye to other TKD folks knowing you won’t see some of them until the fall term? That’s what I thought, tragic. Well, don’t stress, for this blog is here to bring some hope to your lives and help you cope with the situation. The main purpose of the blog is to keep each other updated about our super interesting summer activities *so Mary can easily stalk all of us*. Sharing your summer experiences with Mary the rest of your TKD buddies is a honorable thing to do, and something we’re all looking forward to.

What can you possibly share in this blog? Anything you want. Let your imagination fly, and reach new limits, and once you find that special thing you would like everyone else in the club to know about, use your magnificent writing skills to tell us all about it, through this blog. Topics can range from your current internship or research project (we’re all very interested to hear about it, I swear), to how much ice cream you ate yesterday and how much you’ll have to kick in order to burn those extra calories. There is simply no limit in what you can talk about, just use your common sense and keep things clean.

Now, some of you might have used the WordPress platform before and will be all excited to jump right in and write a blog entry. For those of you who don’t know how to do it, these are the easy steps to follow to publish your entry:

1. Register for a new account.
2. Send me and Mark an e-mail so we can set your account as a contributor.
3. Once your account is set as contributor, Login to your account
   
4. Once logged-in click on Write to write your post. [you can just use the link in this line if you can't find the 'write' button once you're logged in]
5. After your done, click on Submit for Review [a very cute button to the right]
6. Send us another e-mail, and we’ll approve it unless you said mean things about my cat.
7. Done! Mary can now officially stalk you more effectively.

• note that after your first blog entry you only have to repeat steps 3-6 for your following entries! easy, huh?!

If you think all of this is simply too much work for you, given that you are already dedicating your life to lab or something, you can just write your post in an e-mail or word document and send it to me and I’ll publish it for you.

PART II - Here we get graphical

There is another thing I wanted to share with all of you. We wouldn’t be able to effectively stalk each other only through blog entries… right? How often have you found yourself looking through other people’s pictures on facebook just to see how much fun they were having? Right. We have also set up our own beautiful TKD gallery. The concept is easy and clean, everyone can post pictures of what they’ve been up to for the enjoyment of the rest of the club! These pictures can be, again, about anything you’re doing this summer. To access the galleries to the following:

1. Visit the Gallery site [http://MITSportTKD.com/gallery/]
2. Register! [An error screen might show up at the end, but your registration should have been received anyways, don't worry]
   
3. Send Mark and I an e-mail to notify of your registration [we need to approve the account]
4. Login
5. Follow the instructions to add photos to your gallery! You can add albums and photos to those albums.

• If you don’t know how to add photos let me know and I’ll help you.

That is all for now, we have two beautiful stalking tools up and running and I’m eager to see what you all have to share. I hope you all are having an exciting summer and I hope to see many blog entries and photos soon!

-Omar