— tapioca world tour

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Don’t have a career plan. Have a list of things you want to do in life, and then do them. I have several of these lists, but they keep changing…rather, they keep expanding. Although I have succeeded in living abroad and publishing a book chapter and some academic/tech papers and articles, I still need to publish a book of poetry (1998 goal) and make a big budget coming-of-age film (2010 goal) and learn two other languages fluently (1999 goal) and start a business (2008 goal) and finish/launch a new mobile app (2008 goal) and buy several apartments in select cities throughout the world (lifelong goal) and have or adopt a child (1999 goal). I also love Gaiman’s suggestion that if you don’t think you can do something, imagine you are someone who CAN do that thing and then act like they would. I adopted that strategy long ago, and the times I’ve actually followed it, good things have always happened.

Enjoy:



mcette, originally uploaded by pazonada.

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Though he thought I was asleep in the sun, I was not. I was lucid.

For a long time I watched his ship departing

until the flag at the stern vanished, eaten by the gray horizon.

Then the gulls came, then the stars. I began to live between visions

of reunion and the truth shifting like tides against the dunes.

Under a tent of yaupons I built a hut of driftwood, using sea oats

for a threshold and the emptied halves of mollusk shells for the roof.

Butterflies traversed the shore. When I held the ocean’s shell

to my ear we were one

vessel speaking to another vessel

about the rapture of the void.

Oh hello, I didn’t see you there.

I have not written, you know, WORDS on this blog for a while. Apologies. I have been busy making a mobile app poetry game, which is SUPER FUN and yet a very involved process. I will post more about it once we deploy (September, hopefully). All you loyal VC readers (ha!) can reach me any time via Skype to offer to fund what will be a lucrative mobile industry startup launched by MOI, through which we will gain professional and commercial success and eventually be bought out for a 500% gain after four years.

In the meantime, I spent a great fun weekend in Prague, visiting my longtime roommate/friend BB who, after four years, is packing up soon to move to our nation’s capital. Hadn’t been to Prague in 13 years. We did yoga and made jewelry and walked down this road with mansions where all the ambassadors from other countries live. Their lawns are immaculate and some of them have statues or intricate plaques with cool logos (I’m looking at YOU, Saudi Arabia!). All have cameras. No one was on the street, maybe because it was very hot. A great time.

My team members at the lab are all on their way to Austin to give talks about gestural interfaces at CHI, so I spent the day talking about the irrevocably failed Irish economy over lunch with my we-could-be-related no-really-we-very-well-might-be I-know-nothing-about-my-father’s-side-so-anything’s-possible Irish colleague, S., and then helping rewrite all the English text of my Indian colleague R.’s v2 augmented reality mobile app and then discussing this other AR mobile app conceived by my Iranian colleague. I really enjoy working amongst other expats — smart, motivated technologists and computational linguists and psychologists and engineers and audio/visual experts. It’s quite inspiring. Am I the only woman research scientist? you ask. Very nearly, yes. One of a handful. Welcome to 1962. Oops, I mean 2012. Funny how long social progress takes.

I have a bit of travel coming up starting next week. This is exciting and I’ll talk about it later. Berlin is growing on me (the gorgeous blooming trees and pollution-less air and plethora of bakeries and parks certainly help; the xenophobia and low salaries don’t), but it’ll still be nice to cross the ocean for a millisecond.

Happy early Cinco de Mayo!