Interview with an arcanology

[astra_nomer]

The five question interview meme. Which means you can ask me for five questions of your own to answer in the comments.

Questions from arcanology:

1. What should an individual male academic do in order to make the academic career less male-biased?

See very long-winded answer here.

2. Has Unclenomer yet torn something up that lead you to question his sanity?

Up until now, I would have said "no." But this bathroom project is coming close. Don't ask him about bathtubs just now.

3. Could you be trusted with the Glance of Death?

I think so. I am nice to a fault. When I get angry at someone, I tend to grit my teeth and be really nice and do my best to hide the fact that I'm angry. Then again, if the person would be dead before they realized I was angry with them, hmm...

4. What is the ideal length of time to farm out your kids to someone else?

Do you mean hours per day? Days per week? Weeks per year? Years per decade?

Well, my ideal is exactly what we've been doing, of course! The kids spend about 8 hours a day, 5 days a week in school/child care. I am willing to ship them off to DH's parents for about a week a year. However, I am not willing to leave them in my parents' hands for more than a day at a time. This has as much to do with their physical/medical state as their mental/emotional state, actually. And I would be perfectly happy to have them live at home (as opposed to boarding school, for instance) until they go to college. Of course, I say that now, when they are still cute little tykes rather than raging hormonal adolescents.

5. In what way do you fear that you are becoming just like your parents?

Actually, I think I'm doing a good job, mostly. I find myself taking an inordinate amount of pride in their academic accomplishments, but I'm trying real hard not to push them too much. I have a tendency to want to overschedule them (sports! violin! art classes!), but DH is working hard to fight that tendency. I find myself being short-tempered more often than I like, and that's when I fear I'm becoming my parents the most. But in terms of being an overbearing stereotypical Asian parent, I'd say I'm doing pretty well at that part.

Comments

[capsicumanuum.livejournal.com]

May I have questions?

[astra-nomer.livejournal.com]

1. Congratulations on your recent engagement! What plans have you and M made for your wedding so far?

2. You've lived in an awful lot of places. Which is your favorite? Least favorite?

3. You sometimes talk about having practiced Muslim rituals in the past, but you are now an Epsicopalian. Tell me about your spiritual journey, and how you ended up where you are now.

4. If you could choose either flying or invisibility for a superpower, which one would it be? Would you adopt an alter-ego and fight for Truth, Justice and the American Way, or would you keep it low key?

5. (stolen from shumashi) What's something about you I ought to know, but probably don't?

[capsicumanuum.livejournal.com]

I'll reply here for now, because my computer is being wonky and won't let me make new posts. When I get it sorted out I'll repost in my journal :)

1) Well, we know we're going to be married in our church in Cambridge, and are probably going to have a winter wedding in January-ish. We really want to get our wedding planned and paid for as quickly as possible while my parents are still distracted by my sister's wedding plans, in order to avoid interference from that quarter :) We're interviewing caterers and things now.

2) Favorite? That's hard, because I like alot of the places I've lived. In terms of greater metropolitan areas, I think I'd say Boston. In terms of the comfort of individual apartments, the place I had in Kyoto was fantastic. Least favorite was Shreveport Louisiana, hands down.

3) I grew up sort of pseudo-Muslim. We took a great deal of pride in being Ismaili, and celebrated the holidays, and sort of kind of followed Islamic law, or at least, those parts of Islamic law that my father agreed with. But we lived in places that didn't have much of a Muslim community at all, much less a place of worship for the very non-mainstream denomination my family belongs to, so we didn't go to weekly prayer services. I first realized that I wanted a regular spiritual component to my life when I was twelve or so. My parents had sent us to a Catholic school, because public schools in southern Mississippi, not so great, and I realized I was really yearning for a connection to God. Of course, I felt enormously guilty for enjoying Catholic Mass and the Rosary, because dude, we're Muslim. Then we moved, and I went to public school, and I started trying to follow Islamic practices more closely, but Dad didn't really see it as his job to provide religious instruction, as that's traditionally the mother's role in Pakistan. And Mom, of course, had no idea. So I sort of muddled along and joined in with Dad for the big festivals.

Then I hit high school, and developed a taste for reading philosophy and then having very pretentious Serious Conversations about it :). I went through an objectivist phase, and a communist phase, and all sorts of phases. At one point I really was quite taken with Immanuel Kant also, but in retrospect, I think that's just because it made me seem smart, because Kant's writings are fricking impossible to understand. Anyway, a very dear friend of mine started inviting me to her youth group, and the more I heard about the Gospel, the more I wanted to know more. I read some books, read the Gospel (although not the whole Bible), and eventually came to the conclusion that Christianity inherently felt more true than any other religion or philosophy I encountered. That fall I came to MIT, joined up with a pentacostal group on campus, and got baptized. In the seven years since them, I've read more books, both by modern religion writers and ancient church fathers and theologians. The more I've read, the more I've come to believe that the mainstream evangelical movement is in many regards abiblical. Not that they are anti-biblical or unChristian in any way, but that many of the practices and conventions in evangelical churches are cultural and not at all mandated by Scripture. At the same time, I developed an increasing respect for the historic traditions of the church. I could never be Catholic, because I find that the Catholic church has just as many abiblical innovations as modern Protestantdom. The Anglican communion was a nice healthy compromise, with respect for the old traditions, but including the best parts of the Protestant revolution. I was Confirmed in the Episcopal church in Easter of 2006, and am happy where I am now.

[capsicumanuum.livejournal.com]

4) I think for my answer to make sense, I need to answer the two parts to this question in reverse. I would definitely use my superpower to fight for Truth and Justice (though not so much the American Way), although I would want to avoid attention. So no alter-ego with a flashy red cape. Fighting for Truth and Justice is great and all, but I really don't want a figurative bullseye on my back to attract an archnemesis with superpowers of their own :) So, while flying would be really awesome, I think invisibility would be more useful for secretly apprehending criminals and collecting evidence and such.

5) I occasionally fantasize about what the world would be like if I were President of the USA. I actually suck at politics, and don't think I have the talent to actually win an election, but sometimes I think it might be possible if I attached myself to the coattails of a politically inclined friend of mine and got picked as a running mate.