Saturday, January 07, 2006

11: Back

I am back.

Scrolling: Laptop fan, humidifier purr, hard disk murmur but no music

I submitted my UCLA application yesterday. I am finally done with applications. Now I have to wait. If I don't get any interview calls, life will be easy. If I get any interview calls, I will have to match my socks with my clothes and pluck my eyebrows. If I get dinged after going through all that, life will again be easy. If I don't, ah! Life will be really hard.

While working on my applications, a number of times I would just wander in random directions. The essay questions are so hard that even Google doesn't have answers. Trying to concoct answers long enough to come close to 90% of the word limit, I kept going off track. For example, when I was answering the "Why UCLA" question, first I got sensible reasons like "proximity to the pacific coast highway", but as time went by, all that came to my mind was "why a tie?"

Why a tie? That's something Google has answers to. 226 answers. Wait, I take my words back. Google does have 9420 answers to "Why UCLA". Why didn't I see this 16 page answer before? The professor puts the answer to the question on her website and I still fail the test. Then I complain.

Anyway, back to ties. I read the first answer Google came up with. It didn't convince me. Sometimes I think a tie makes sense, after all, it's an accessory, like a nose ring, or a highlight, like a tattoo or a statement, like the word "Mom" shaved on a person's head. But it's really not. It's made of fabric. So it has to have a purpose. Everything else made of fabric has a purpose - shirt, skirt, pants, jacket, shorts. I talked about this with my neighbor and she added that caps are made of fabric too. They do have a purpose though - you can put the initials of the bschool you went to or are currently attending, right smack on the cap in big letters on the front, the full name on the back, and the logo on the right and left. They also hide bald spots, shade your face from the sun and stares (or son and stairs? heh, that's cool), save other people from getting a taste of your hair in their food, enable you to play frisbee if you don't have a frisbee, protect you from bird droppings and last but not the least, work well as a begging bowl.

Writing bschool essays has paid off. After writing reasons for why I chose to do better in subject A and not in subject B in 7th grade, why I went to college instead of auditioning for roles in Tarantino films, why I decided to be in charge of procuring donuts at work and why the long term goal in my career is to retire (how long is long?), I can now answer any "Why X?"

But I still don't get it, why a tie?