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In light of my Euro trip, I’m getting antsy, so here I am blogging about my new suitcase and lost passport. Please, September 20th, come faster, else I start blogging about what shoes I will be wearing the day I leave!

Newest blog posts on my travel blog:

• New Check-In Suitcase!
• Tips in Finding Lost Items

Radiolab’s newest podcast is on words:

“It’s almost impossible to imagine a world without words. But in this hour of Radiolab, we try to do just that. We speak to a woman who taught a 27-year-old man the first words of his life, and we hear a firsthand account of what it feels like to have the language center of your brain wiped out by a stroke. Plus: a group of children invent an entirely new language in Nicaragua in the 1970s.”

Listen to the podcast here. And check out another Radiolab-inspired video by Will Hoffman and Daniel Mercadante below. What would this video be without the knowledge of words and language?

There are some nights I can’t sleep. I’ll be staying up on my laptop just browsing the internet, learning random stuff. One night I learned that Hans Christian Anderson was a bisexual who annoyed Charles Dickens.

Tourette’s Without Drugs

I’ve never taken medication for Tourette’s. I don’t know how I’ve been able to deal and hide it from people as much as I do, but I guess there really is power in self will. But I still have bad phases that give me spasms, muscle aches, and insomnia. Last night, I was looking up articles and studies about various diets for people with Tourette’s syndrome. I’ve heard of others with Tourette’s having vegan or vegetarian diets to help lessen their symptoms. Of course, everywhere I read that I shouldn’t be drinking coffee. Sadness. I know it was that one small iced black coffee I had a couple days ago that had me twitching my shoulder like crazy for days. But it was good cold coffee on a beautiful warm day in LA.

As for all the diets I came across, I agreed with what I read on TourettesWithoutDrugs.com. It sounds like the healthy diet that I’ve heard over and over again. After skimming through the site, I think I will make a few changes to my vegetarian diet. I’ve always allowed fish and fish flavors in food, but for a while now I haven’t been buying fish myself or going out for sushi. I think I’ll start adding fish again to my diet, cut out soy, and eat more greens and brown rice. Always up for experimenting if it will help my symptoms!

Tim Howard

Speaking of Tourette’s, I never knew until last night that Tim Howard, goalkeeper for the US team that recently played in this year’s 2010 World Cup, has Tourette’s syndrome! Check out this interview with Tim Howard on 60 Minutes:

I love that Howard corrects people by telling them that he doesn’t “suffer” from the syndrome and isn’t “disabled”, really common misconceptions.

CAPD

Around 2 or 3 in the morning in my search for articles on the diets, I came across a HUGE, mindblowing (to me) self revelation. It’s not easy to explain this, but had I known about CAPD years ago, it would’ve changed many things, including the way I study and work.

I’ll try to be brief. As far as I could remember, I always had some kind of strange hearing problem. But I just thought that I wasn’t a good listener, that my ears were lazy or something because I could hear sounds totally fine. It was just that sometimes I would hear someone talk and I still wouldn’t be able to understand what they said. It really isn’t that bad, but I started noticing it more in the past year, especially when I’m given directions. I noticed it when I worked on Little Fockers (the first big production I worked on) and had to get used to wearing and communicating on a walkie. Sometimes I’d close my other ear with a finger, turn up the volume very high, and I would still not be able to understand what someone wanted me to do.

It baffled me when I’m somewhere where it’s really loud, like a bar with loud music, and people have conversations. When I’m in a loud place, I cannot… understand… one… word… anyone… says. I can hear them, but I would either make them repeat themselves until they give up or I’d just smile, nod, and assume I understood. So I never really enjoy going out to places like clubs.

I also noticed this problem again in the last couple shows I worked on. It’s pretty regular that the director will call an impromptu camera meeting on the floor, where he would give instructions to the operators for the next setup. I’ve tried standing close to him, even putting my hands behind my ears to point them toward his voice, and reading lips. I would never be able to process what he was saying even though I could hear him clearly, so eventually when those camera meetings were called, I’d work on something else or stand to the side and then ask my camera operator what would be going on. Maybe it’s different when it’s one on one. Sometimes I wished that when I was given directions to do something that I could write down what they were saying, as if that would make me understand better. A lot of the times I would just repeat what they said until I got it, and I guess making my brain hear something again makes it clearer for me.

Anyways, so last night I came across information about CAPD (Central Auditory Processing Disorder). It’s not a hearing disorder, but for me, it’s a component of having a speech impediment. I can’t believe, even knowing about stuttering and having stuttered for years, that I never knew about CAPD.

But it makes sense. Even before learning about CAPD, I assumed that my inability to understand people sometimes was somehow related to stuttering. I knew that stuttering was a result of how my brain hears my own voice. Of course, I hear my voice just fine, but there’s a certain disconnect in the brain that causes this impediment. After being left confused a lot of times as to why everyone had good “focused” ears, I figured that because the brain misunderstands my own voice, it must probably do the same for others’ voices.

I guess it’s a really good thing that I didn’t know about CAPD before because then I wouldn’t be making excuses. And always trying harder to “focus” my ears have helped, I think. But it’s a huge relief and comfort to know that there is a name for it and I’m not crazy or dumb. It explains why I don’t like loud noises (not even music loud when I’m by myself), going out to clubs, talking on the telephone (I hated those jobs), and so on and so on. Now I just wonder what it would be like to understand people “normally”, and learning languages better. Just more questions to add to my list.

I’ll stop there. Thought I’d share that in case others in the same situation as me come across this and learn something about themselves they never knew before. Also had to share it somewhere because this is huge for me.

I still have a bit of time before I have to start moving things out of my house into a new apartment. But I’m becoming antsy in the wait so have been using that energy to look up a lot of furniture and design sites for color themes and the cheapest ways to furnish and decorate.

My mind has been going off now thinking about different room themes. Well, it’s a one-bedroom apartment so there aren’t a lot of rooms. But one idea that came to mind was to decorate the corner of the living room separately, where I’ll have my “office”. Maybe an Edison theme?

Ever since I walked into The Edison, a speakeasy in downtown LA, I thought it was a great idea for a theme. You have the old black-and-white and painted films, the edison light bulbs and hanging pendants, and not to mention a lot to play with the inventor and cinematic traits.

Paint the corner wall in brown, red, and copper tones.

Put up a photo or poster of Thomas Edison or an Edison Phonograph.

Hang some pendant industrial-looking lights from the ceiling with edison bulbs and copper cords.

Feel creative and productive as you go mad at work with this rectangular dark wood desk with hutch and old bank-style office chair.

And that’s just one idea .

So been looking for a change, searching around online for a new blog theme, tried a couple. Here is one I’m using called LightWord. We’ll see how much I like it .

I found this pretty interesting. I was randomly searching for random photos of affordable home design and came across two that caught my eye. The above photo caught my eye because of the tunnel-like open air layout and its sustainability. But then I saw the one below:

What these two have in common is the unfinished-wood style. But after seeing the second photo, the first one looks a bit too unfinished. All the sections blend into each other. With the second photo, it is still simple and modern, but just seems more appealing with the white walls, blue countertop, even that orange-red bowl.

If you click on the second photo, you’ll see more photos where they continue the wood/orange/white/blue palette theme. With the first, the only contrast is with the mossy green, but it doesn’t seem contrasty enough with the wood.

Just found that interesting, that focusing on a complex layout can compromise the right color scheme.

DEAR FACEBOOK,

I am not much of a complainer. At least I didn’t care much when the News Feed came about, or when regional communities mixed in with the college networks.

But I have a few concerns now. And because there seems to be no email or way of direct contact offered through Facebook.com, I am forced to “fan” the Facebook page to get a comment through (which I’ve already done) and resort to this blog.

First thing I noticed:

I started getting friend requests. Before, I did not allow the “Add Friend” button on my profile, nor did I let anyone see my photo or info or even find me in search. Now, the only choices I have are to allow “Everyone” to be able to friend me or “Friends of Friends”. Facebook, please note that just because someone is friends with a friend of mine does not mean that person is my friend. Yes, there are the block/ignore options, but were you not aware of the awkward situations this could bring up? Of course, friends of friends I could be more likely to run into. And no offense to them, I just like my Facebook to be private since it is very personal, but now I need to explain in person why their request was rejected. I could never be like that, and thus maybe I will just add everyone or let all these friend requests linger in my “Requests” section on the homepage.

Second thing:

Oh, clever Facebook, how you have tricked us. We used to think that that box at the top where we type in something was a “status”. But no, it is simply a “post”, or the “Publisher”. And now you define the News Feed, Wall, Comments, and Posts to all be the same thing. So when we see the option in our Settings about who can see our “Posts” (and the choices are Everyone, Friends of Friends, or Friends Only), then I think, yes, Friends Only. But wait, now in their News Feed are floods of comments I have made. They go to my profile and see “Recent Activity”, who I’m talking to and what I “liked”. These are all things we used to be able to take off before. Facebook, your solution? “Simply click on the ‘Remove’ button to take it off your wall.” Why can we not do this with comments that appear in News Feed? Also, the “Remove” button does not appear for sometimes up to a day later. So I wait, and wait, and wait some more, and then yay, I can finally take it off. Go, Facebook.

Third:

Your help section sucks. You offer help discussion pages, but guess what? We are only talking with other Facebook members complaining about the same things. Who is helping us?! Your search also fails to mention anything about the older Facebook settings, so if we try to search and find out why something isn’t there anymore, you provide 90 results, all of which have nothing to do with what we searched for. And good job on hiding from the community by not offering any emails, contact forms, or suggestion boxes. Why do we need to “fan” Facebook so we feel we can get some sort of message to you? What are you hiding behind?

So this can go on and on. Friends lists?! Those take forever to make and who would ever want to put their “friends” in “lists”? FYI, I still don’t know the difference between News Feed and Live Feed! Sure, you probably have all the money and power to do whatever you want. Forget what the users are screaming about. And sure, everyone will still keep using Facebook. I know I need to as long as everyone else is still using it. But do you really want to keep on with something only to have everyone hate you?

In Response To: RadioLab’s “Helicopter Boy” podcast, 11/03/2009

Today, I caught up on the last two episodes of RadioLab (a WNYC podcast).

It’s been fundraising time and RadioLab produced a short and sweet podcast using a story from one of their listeners called, “Helicopter Boy” as an incentive to remind listeners why they should donate and what their money supports.

The thing is, the radio stations are right. If you love listening to something everyday, why not contribute to it?

In the beginning of this year, I was very optimistic, more than I have ever been before. My friends and I said, “2009, this is going to be a great year.” I don’t know why, maybe because it’s the first year without any school for me!

Anyways, I went through the whole stress of job searching and struggling to pay bills and all. It’s still not easy, never easy, but I still think that it’s good to support things like radio stations, non-profits, local communities, and so on. I’m starting off this holiday season by setting aside $20 right now and choosing four different organizations or people I’d like to support. It’s not even about the amount you give that counts; just get in the habit of it.

First stop for my $5 is RadioLab. I’m picturing this money going toward a coffee each for RadioLab hosts, Jad and Robert.

Give a little bit to start the holidays off on the right foot!

Click here to listen to the podcast, “Helicopter Boy”. If you’ve wasted precious hours of your life following Balloon Boy, make up for it by hearing this story of a real inventive young boy.

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UPDATE: Hehe, just came across this! Check out RadioLab’s Ramen Challenge!

“My glasses are a little foggy”: http://blogs.wnyc.org/radiolab/2009/10/23/the-ramen-challenge/