Tiffany's favorite movies EVAR

Seeing highlights from the Golden Globes has made me a little nostalgic so I thought I would compile some of my all time favorite movies EVER for your entertainment. It's worth noting that most of these movies also happen to have great soundtracks(the true way to my heart), which I currently listen to on a fairly regular basis. A lot of these movies have stood the test of time and I still enjoy them now as I did when they first came out.

So without further ado....

1) The Parent Trap(1998) 

This is without a doubt one of my favorite movies of all time and will probably remain on this list until I die. I loved this film so much that I made my best friend make up a handshake up with me. In addition to making me really want to go off to summer camp, it also made me want to go to London really really bad. And not only was this my first introduction to the wonderful Nat King Cole(in addition to the Beatles), it also documents a time before LiLo went off the deep end and was actually kind of good at acting. I was however incredibly confused when first told that there was only one Lindsey Lohan. Mind. Blown.

2) Howl's Moving Castle(2004)
As of right now, this is still my favorite Studio Ghibli film and has been since I first saw it in middle school. A love story, magic and a brooding hero? What's not to love? (side note: it's completely ok plot wise that Sophie has to fix Howl because he is missing his heart. Literally. So don't pull any feminazi jargon on me). I really can't say enough about how beautiful the visuals really are...everything is done by hand so it's really like you're watching a moving painting. Not to mention that the score(compliments of Joe Hisaishi) is absolutely beautiful. Also, Howl may or may not have been my first anime crush.


3) Ever After: A Cinderella Story(1998)

"And while Cinderella and her prince did live happily ever after, the point, gentlemen, is that they lived."

Before Once Upon A Time and every other fairytale re-interpretation, there was Ever After, the re-telling of the Cinderella story where "Cinderella"'s bad ass aristocratic great grand daughter tells off the Grimm Brothers and sets the record straight. Angelica Houston was absolutely brilliant as the evil stepmother and Leonardo DaVinci was freaking hilarious. I still drool over the costumes because not only are they gorgeous, I was also starting to watch the original Disney movies around this time as well. Needless to say this is far superior in every way to the cartoon. Not to mention I also now happen to enjoy the chants of the Fransican monks but that's a post for another day.

4) Uptown Girls(2003)

I was more or less Rae(the little girl)'s age when this movie came out so needless to say I sympathized with her a little more than I did with the wild child, whimsical disorderly "adult". What's interesting though is that this story is kind of a coming of age for both characters: a reminder that being a kid is ok and that you can still be a dreamer when you're supposed to be a responsible adult.

5) Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone(2001)

Still my absolute favorite Harry Potter movie to  date. Even though I saw this before I read the books, I still consider it one of the most honest representations of the Harry Potter world. Also, no one that we love dies(Quirrel and Nicholas Flamel don't count) and everything is still new and...well, magical. We were being introduced into magical London at the same time Harry was and even though I love the rich, dark backstory behind the rest of the Harry Potter stories, it's kind of nice to watch this again and really see quidditch and friendships and school without the dark looming cloud of misery that is Voldemort.

6) Shrek(2001) (the rest of the movies are pretty cool too)

Being only 8 when these first came out, the fart and earwax jokes were funny but there are always a lot more subtleties that come through when you rewatch "children's" movies as you age, primarily of the sexual nature but also other pop culture references. As you can see, I clearly have a thing for fairytales but this movie is absolutely hilarious even as it parodies everything about them that I love and it gets funnier every time I watch it.

7) My Big Fat Greek Wedding(2002)

This was when I realized that there are families out there that are crazier than mine. Also, it was the moment I decided that I am absolutely going to be responsible for everyone's dresses on my wedding day lest I become a snow beast. And yes, while the movie's humor is predominantly wedding centric because the cultural clash and fighting about invitations and dietary restrictions is funny, let's not forget that this all came about because Toula decided that she didn't like where her life was at and she decided to do something about it. Talk about Women Who Will.

A Post About Narwhals

I chose to write about narwhals because when I first heard about them I honestly thought they were fake. And continued to think so for a little while after(for longer than I'm willing to admit). So I wish to enlighten you a bit about these incredible creatures, the unicorns of the sea.

Narwhals(also known as Monodon monoceros) enhabit the waters near the Arctic Circle. A majority of the narwhals are concentrated off the coast of Canada. The incredibly long horn (where the monoceros part of the name comes from) is actually a tooth that protrudes from the jaws of male narwhals which is a characteristic for sexual selection. They mainly dine on squid and different types of fish.

The narwhal population is estimated to be between 45,000 and 50,000 individuals. This may sound like a lot but in fact, narwhals are a near threatened species and may become extinct fairly soon. Narwhals mate during the spring(March-May) and only produce one calf per litter. However, narwhals are capable of living up until the ripe age of 50 years. Also worth noting, females can only mate once every 3 years so it's no surprise that the population is starting to dwindle.

Another threat to the Narwhal population is the fact that their natural habitats are slowly becoming obsolete due to global warming, much like the polar bears and penguins.


...And really I'm not sure what else you really wanted to know about Narwhals.

Citations(because I'm a good scientist)
http://www.defenders.org/narwhal/basic-facts
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narwhal

Land of the Never Rising Sun(Thoughts from Places: Vancouver)

Didn't look like this while we were there

In recent years it has become a tradition of sorts to visit my extended family somewhere on the west coast. This year was no exception; I completed finals, packed my bags, packed them again and prepared to head over to Vancouver, BC, which is where a majority of my extended family resides. It's also where my parents spent their formative years and so we have been going back ever since I've been really young.

I have never really found airports to be stressful, mainly just the places where you wait for hours on end and it ultimately makes you tired more than anything else. But I would argue that this flight over from Boston to Denver ranks very high on my stressful airplane experiences list, second only to the time we ran out of fuel in the middle of a field in the middle of the night(not joking).

Denver International Airport is very long.

The weather in Chicago(whence our plane came) was apparently abysmal and thus that flight coming in was over an hour late. Which would normally not be a problem except we needed to make a connection in Denver, Colorado and we had a little bit over an hour between our originally scheduled arrival and our connecting flight. The short of it is that after sprinting 3/4ths of a mile in under 4 minutes(the fastest I have ever run anything, incidentally) and a gate agent that made me want to pull a Draco Malfoy(My father will hear about this!!!), my parents and I finally made it up to Canada.

There be beavers. 

Totem poles...

Having lived in the Northeast my entire life, Vancouver(which is in the Pacific Northwest) always seems kind of quirky interesting, not least of all because they have a zoo(?) in the middle of airport. The name also seems to invoke images of copious amounts of totem poles as well, which are things you will never find in Massachusetts. So that's always interesting.



My brother joined us shortly thereafter and then we went to a wedding(which seems to be a trend lately). Most of the time I spent eating or sleeping, two activities that had gone to the wayside as of late. Vancouver has excellent Asian food on which we all happily gorged and most of the time allotted to eating was spent in the company of my lovely family members. We had Hong Kong style banquets, congee, wonton and noodles, dim sum, sushi, bubble tea...basically ALL the Chinese food as seen below.

Food.

Food.

Food.

Honestly, I don't really know how I am going to go back to school food after being in Vancouver for 10 days; I've gotten so spoiled. I would say that we spent about 85% of our awake time eating but we did do some other things too. We saw the Trinity Holiday light contest which was really spectacular(albeit probably not too eco friendly). We did some shopping in the Asian malls(malls that have predominantly stores from Asia or catering to Asians). We went to Downtown Vancouver to see the Olympic torch as well as Queen Elizabeth Park to see the view.

Unfortunately for us the sun only shone for about 2 hours of our 10 day trip and most pictures that I've taken to suggest otherwise were likely digitally enhanced. We used to visit the city in the summer and spend more time outdoors and doing things but this is quite a challenge in the winter because it might be cloudy, raining, or snowing. So a lot of the time we stayed indoors. I started to chip away at reading Game of Thrones and played computer games to amuse myself since I lacked internet connection.

It occurred to me that the city feels differently to me now than it did when I was 4 or 5 years old. It's busier, more pressured, and dare I say more inhibited. That's not to say that one is superior to the other because I think I can appreciate being there much more today than I could before(especially now that I've consented to eating raw things). But it is also a reminder that nothing ever stays completely the same, a feeling I'm sure affected my parents who had lived there in the 1970s much more acutely than it did me. A bittersweet revelation. But as long as the dim sum continues to be good, I don't think we have much to complain about.

Inspired by the Vlogbrothers: A Curious Endeavor

I haven't written regularly in a really long time...before this semester to be precise.

I wanted to write for the longest time but I was stumped about what I would write about. Before, I kind of just wrote about the things I found interesting or things that were going on in my life. Essentially, I wrote about things that hopefully someone else would find interesting too. During this semester in particular though, I didn't think that people would really find what I'm doing all that interesting and so posts would probably go something like this:
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Hey guys! Here's a cell I was working with in Bio lab today...we poisoned it for fun!

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For this reason, I have concentrated more on my thoughts about other things(which I use broadly) rather than to write my thoughts about myself. Those types of entries are usually reserved for one of the numerous tomes on my desk(side note: it seems like there is something a lot more honest about the [physically] written word).

I've been getting kind of restless though so I wanted to come up with some kind of compromise: where I would still be able to come up with some kind of stance on something without necessarily having to mull over what would be interesting for hours on end.

So I came up with this: I want to do a series of blog posts about things that people most liked from the Vlogbrothers Youtube Channel. Why? Because I like them...? Because I find that even though I don't know them I still care what they think about certain things. I know it's kind of weird that the mediums are different but frankly the written word is exponentially easier for me to edit than the spoken word. I'm also not going to put any limits or make any false promises about how many I'm going to do because that's gimmicky and kind of defeats the purpose of doing this in the first place. Once I run out of topics that they've covered that I find interesting, I will inevitably stop and find something else. But for right now, I'm kind of excited about this...and I hope you are too.

insomnia.

I can't sleep. i should warn you that punctuation and spelling may suck in this post because i am attempting to do this from my phone and i havent the patience to try and capitalize letters. i feel so wired right now; hyperaware of people talking and moving all around me. i ought to be sleeping. or i ought to be working. instead i am lying here in bed alone with my thoughts.

today was a good day. most of my work that needed to get done got done and i even got some good news to boot. ive been thinking about where i've been at this time in the last few years. i was terrified and anxious to prove myself. i was stressed out of my mind. i was heartbroken and homesick. i wonder what this year will bring. maybe its because i am in an odd state of mind right now but i feel strangely hopefulthat all is not lost. and i cant help but want to hold onto that hope and run with it.

for once i am hopeful that it will truly be ok.

Why a Liberal Arts education is important

I wanted to take a brief return from my hiatus to talk about something that is very near and dear to my heart: a liberal arts education.

There are many different ideas floating out there about the best method of education and everyone wants to champion their own ideas. However, I believe that a liberal arts education(or at least the underlying mindset) is absolutely invaluable. In fact, I would go as far to say that it is crucial to succeeding.

There is a lot of hype surrounding the phrase so allow me to state it simply:
A liberal arts education requires that you learn as broadly and as deeply as possible.

I have recently heard from a number of people who were skeptical of it; why bother learning about things that seem to be impractical and have no application in the real world? Why not simply use the time you spent reading Chaucer and Milton to learn...oh I don't know...engineering or something of the sort.

To say that subjects like Philosophy, Art History, Political Science, Sociology and yes, even Biology have no basis in real world situations is the most close-minded and erroneous opinion I have heard to date.  

I have recently come to the conclusion that it is a fundamental part of the human condition to search for meaning in life, a certain type of truth. A liberal arts education enriches our understanding of the world in so many ways.

Every single action that we have, everything that makes us who we are as people is based off of centuries worth of history, art and language. Without intellectuals like Socrates and Aristotle, I highly doubt that you would even be able to process this blog post because you would not have the underlying logic to understand it. Without learning different languages we couldn't even begin to communicate with eachother and I imagine it would be akin to the barbaric tribes under the Roman Republic with each small sector of people going about their business but being completely isolated. There would be no mathematics because people would not have been able to standardize it in the first place. Literally everything that we know to be true was built on the basis of other minds and without these subjects we would not even be able to comprehend anything, really.

On a much more immediate level, having a background in many different subject gives you a very special and unique understanding of the world around us right now and has so many implications for the future. I can not even count the number of times that ideas from my Humanities classes have come up in my science classes. Without having a knowledge of different subjects, you would not be able to see connections between fields. It would be like trying to read a book with every other page torn out.

So while some may scoff at the idea of a liberal arts education, never forget that what you are doing is so incredibly important, Wendys. I really cannot think of anything more noble or more crucial than the pursuit of all forms of knowledge. While some other students may be able to be incredibly useful in a specific situation, you will be the enlightened thinkers who saw the connection in the first place.

Best of luck with exams,
T

Read it 1st: The Great Gatsby

Due to switching schools halfway through high school, I never was assigned this book to read for class. As such, I got to college and realized I was the only person this happened to so it immediately catapulted to the top of my "To Read" list.

I had really high hopes for the novel after hearing how John Green and Nerdfighteria loved this book. I finally got to reading it this summer and I have to say....

I wasn't that impressed.

I will say that the language was clear and concise; you could easily understand what the author meant to say, which I definitely appreciate(especially after tackling Beowulf). It was elegant and fairly well-written.

The modern versions...with more cheating.

I found the idea of portraying the rich youth engaging in lives of glamourous excess to be...banal. I think I've been desensitized by shows like Gossip Girl and the like. It seems like a lot of shows follow this line of thought: they drink, they party and in the end there's some kind of humanity left in these characters, a redeeming factor. They lead lives of leisure and they are bored out of their minds. They have everything, yet they have nothing of substance. They are eternally cursed by wanting things they cannot have and above all, happiness seems to elude them even though they have their material needs more than taken care of. I know that Gatsby came first so really, the 'current' media is copying Fitzgerald, not the other way around. But the storyline doesn't really do much for me. It doesn't grab my attention in the way that some of my favorite novels do.

I feel like this is one of those novels which one could easily discuss at length about the symbols and the different characters and such and if I had to read this for a class, I think I could probably do that convincingly since there seems to be enough material to discuss. I read the book fairly quickly so I'm sure there's a lot more than I gleaned from my first reading. However, as far as grabbing my attention though, this novel kind of struck out.