Korean Marriages

My dad got to talking tonight about how he and my mom married. It was in South Korea, after they met in Japan. My brother wanted to know if there was a large ceremony; nope. He wanted to know if there was a ceremony, period; nope. This was a marriage by paperwork. Sounds exciting, no?

While Koreans do have traditional weddings, my mom and dad opted out. They went through what really makes you married (proof besides to each other), and visited a...ward? I can't recall the term now, but analogous to a courthouse. They then began a seven-station trek.

Their journey was spawned by the way Koreans marry. In America, all you need to do to get hitched is get a certificate. That's the initial, and potentially sole, record of the relationship between a couple. There's no telling if either person was before married, or even currently married, on record. There is -no- centralized record system that'd be necessary to determine that. Hence, bigamy is incredibly easy in the 'States.

In South Korea, however, there is a much stronger sense of family, besides culturally: Up until recently (a decade or three ago, maybe less), this was the process: I'm going to describe it as man-woman, because I don't have a clue if the Korean culture allows for same-sex marriage. Put simply, the woman would remove herself from her family tree.

The link to her family would not be lost, of course. The rest of her life would simply be spent in the family of her husband, tree and all. This family-record system is a centralized item in the government, so a family tree is simple to query.

Recently, there was a push for men to move themselves to their wife's tree, and that happens now at the choice of the couple.

I don't know what the process is like for two Koreans to marry, but for an American to marry a Korean, as my dad did my mom, the process is arduous. Seven different forms have to be filled out, each at their own buildings. This was the wedding my parents had. The ending was a surprise for them, though.

The process started at courthouse 1, and then ran off to six other buildings to have my mom's tree trimmed. They finally returned to the first courthouse, their forms filled out. The administrator took the forms, and sanctified them with a remark.

"You know, you were married three stops back."

The Daylight Test

Today, I observed the seat of my jeans as they lay on my bed. I also observed my bed. The area where I observed the two overlapped.

I held the jeans up to the window, to see how much sky blue would shine through the denim blue. The results were brightly dismal.

Alas.

Referential XML: Gnats on Mats

For those who understand relational databases and XML data storage: This is an exercise, and plight, in understanding primary-foreign keys in the former translating to IDs and IDREFs in the latter.

Actually, the plight isn't in translating the actual keys to ids; the difficulty I'm experiencing is making use of the relationships between the IDREFs and the IDs to which they refer. The difficulty is in using the Microsoft XMLDOM to develop the right XPath expressions. For the example, say we have this following pair of tables:

This small database represents a set of three welcome mats (primary key: Mat), with six flies (primary key: Gnat) hanging around around all of them. An XML representation of this data is kept here. The key structure is preserved via attributes; however, there is no actual enforcement on the keys as of yet. Or at least, there may not be; I'm not entirely sure if I wrote its associated Schema correctly.

The whole goal of this exercise was to see if the structure of the relational database above was preserved in its XML representation, and hopefully without having to define the id and mat attributes as IDs and IDREFs (that would mean defining a DTD or Schema for the whole document, and doing that right takes a bloody lot of effort for these two puny tables). I managed to get a solution, though I'm not happiest with it. It is a solution, in that it works: Try out the following.

There are buttons, the mat draws the correct values from the XML, what more could I want? Well. For one, I'd like to not do this:

var xpath_root_to_gnat = "/root/table2/gnat[@id='g" + gnatNum + "']";
var xpath_gnat_to_mat;

xpath_gnat_to_mat = "id(./@mat)";
    //Before adding the inline XML scheme, the variable matNode would be null
    //after trying to set it with this XPath; where the heck does the id()
    //function go?  It returns a node object, so shouldn't it go here?
    
xpath_gnat_to_mat = "//mat[@id = " + xpath_root_to_gnat + "/@mat]";
    //This works, but wasn't exactly what I had in mind.

var gnatNode = xml.selectSingleNode(xpath_root_to_gnat);
var matNode = gnatNode.selectSingleNode(xpath_gnat_to_mat);

I'm glad that XPath lets me throw complete paths into the square-bracket tests; but, as the first comment reads, I'd really like to make use of the id() function rather than rely on what I think may be inefficient tree traversal. While there are only nine items in the frontier of this tree, I'm looking for code I can apply to trees with frontier of nigh twelve thousand.

I recently ordered some Kays: XSLT and XPath. If I can find a solution in there, viable for JavaScript and VBScript instead of just XSLT, I'll post a follow-up. I welcome any knowledge or advice in the meanwhile.

Flow; Frets

Only once in the past four years, outside of really unenjoyable classes, have I been bored for anything close to an hour. It was the day after I graduated from Evergreen, the morning after; from about eleven to noon, I tried chipping the heads off of the massive collections of RSS items growing in my neglected Thunderbird feeds¹. I felt, however, completely unbound at the time, neural net paper aside. I got bored. I kinda freaked out; I was going on two years of fairly nonstop action at the time.

I almost got bored again tonight; I have plenty to do, but I was just feeling disconnected. So, I started on The Reading List, and picked up Flow, the Psychology of Optimal Experience, by the psychologist of unpronouncable nomination. (I spent a good two minutes trying to get the "halyi" of "Csikszentmihalyi" down. Still don't got it.) The book made me happy of what I did during my last two years of school, those two that I spent sleeping something like 5 hours a night. (And, uh, that I remember so well...lots of blogging those days, for poor memory's sake.)

I've just read ten pages so far, but the purpose of the book is clear. It will detail the state of mind known as Flow, which everybody has experienced: Flow is, in a cheap simplification, zen in motion. Flow is doing something, a familiar activity, and having the mind just harmonize on what's going on – the feeling is of graceful speed, of mastery, of purpose in continuing. Most important to flow is that it comes from the most active involvement, like a wondrous spawn of habit.

I believe I was happy, maybe "flowing," when I was doing SPSCC and Oly High at the same time. The people were pleasant; the work was bountiful, but not too hard piecewise; and my mind was firing on all six pistons 'round the clock. Those were good days; they sucked and rocked, ebbing like the tides of suckology and elation, but I think them well-lived in hindsight.

They won't be the last good days, either. The next year or two (maybe three?) look to be as busy, but I'll have to work at the biggest piece of my time. I hit a few SAS bugs at LGAN that slowed down my momentum on a project sufficiently that I forgot today what the design of the project was. I need to remind myself Monday morning. Meanwhile, I have the material pleasure of not working on a laptop optimized for Windows 98 anymore, instead having an old but still beefy development machine. And, I'm hitting moments of ping pong zen – er, I guess they'd be "Flow," now, huh? – and I'm actually playing fairly even matches against Pete – feeling the game and all. I've lost every match against him so far, but l had (except for one today) rarely less than nine points in each².

Work could be a fret; the psychology of spending 40 hours a week at something, and knowing there have to be at least 40 hours a week spent there, is significantly different from academia. I'm happy that I'm still learning programming as work proceeds. You may see some notes pop up soon (on SAS and XML, mainly, and maybe dumb JavaScript tricks if I stumble across them). I'll keep those labeled as "Tech Journals," though, since I know some peoples' noses threaten bleeding, or head implosions or the like on such impending topics as "Referential XML." (And this is before I find a decent way to write MathML on the Mac, and thus start publishing more "Math Journals.")

I definitely feel rambly. I think my writing, and similarly my social skills, may be in slight need of some tuning. I met somebody through dancing; she happens to be the same one who asked me to Tolo...when...ah, then. (Also, I was proxy-pranked on April 1; somebody pranked her with the fake dance and she didn't realize it, passing the prank on to me on April Fool's.) Well, we swapped numbers about a month ago, then I did Pippin and couldn't see her except for one night that she came, and then she headed off on a two-week trip. We got some good dancing in Wednesday, though. Now it's a frenetic game of arranging nights to see one another. I'm trying.

I'm conscious of my neck around her. For those of you familiar with Goblet of Fire, it's the same as when Harry "Realized just how stupid his arms must have looked swinging by his sides all the time" (loose quote), around the time his mind realized the concept of a Lady Friend. There's an angle of my neck that makes me feel incredibly and awkwardly slouchy, but the muscular shift to a more ...natural? upright? position just looks like an odd strain. As helpless as Harry figuring out what to do with the arms. It's an appropriate level of dorkiness to feel, I think, for a fresh relationship. It has thus far left me halty in the conversation department, though...that's what I hope to fix soon.

I just hope I don't try what turned out to be an awkward-feeling conversation I had with Shigs and Elise today at lunch. I read an article, "Profits of Fear," by the man who invented the neutron bomb (posted on Boing Boing. I found the article fascinating, but didn't convey all the interesting parts at lunch, instead probably coming away sounding like an advocate for the bomb. Eh, that could've gone better, but oh well, I doubt I've repulsed Elise or Shigs.

Ok, last rambling shock-cut: Olympia Symphony audition next Thursday. Some of the music is hard, because it's quite fast and quiet (faeries of Midsummer Night's Dream). I hope donating blood tomorrow will encourage me to take the material a bit slower than I've frantically tried. I have some comfort in knowing either outcome of the audition would be fine for me. If I make it, then good music lies ahead for the year. If I don't, then I may have time to read, or at least more to tutor and spend time with Ashley (she who I've just tied with Tolo so far).

Ok, just one more topic switch: I'm tutoring a junior at Capital High in precalculus. It should be a pleasant experience for both of us; he has had tutors since the 7th grade, and enjoys the personal experience of having them; and, he has had Honors Physics already (Capital does things a bit differently), so I don't honestly think my work is cut out for me. I mean, heck, our first session, I intend to show him Haskell code for the sake of teaching functional composition. Permutation Groups may be a better topic for that, but he's had some C++. Before Katie wags her finger, I'll promise to lay off the type theory and λ-calculus.

It will be a busy year. I didn't even note SOGO or the stat class I want to take, and this entry already became way too long. Well, I'm about to find out if I need pure theory to keep my "Flow" going or not. More on that in June.

1: Define massive as, currently: 141 unread Google Maps Mania posts, though I probably won't read those; 1,406 unread BoingBoing posts, half of which are usually interesting; 2,248 unread Slashdot posts, which take at least ten minutes per article to read through all the comments, well-written and otherwise; and 4,354 unread LiveJournal "Metaquotes," quick citations of ridiculous posts.

2: International Ping Pong rules, in brief: Players serve twice, then switch service; each serve results in a point. Game goes to at least one player at 11 points, but victory must be by 2. Ties at 10 start alternating service. Matches are won 2-out-of-3.

Tales from the Pit

Capitol Playhouse's Kids at Play program is doing Pippin this week. The show runs at 7:30 through Sunday (2 o'clock matinee Sunday), $12, at Black Hills High School. I'm in the pit for it, and am heartily enjoying myself. It's great seeing a show three nights in a row so far; may not be so after the seventh viewing, but it's all good now.

The rehearsals have gone on late enough to fairly well keep me from doing after-show activities thus far, including 1.99 missed dances and a populated bon fire at Ramona's house. Tuesday, I arrived for 1 dance at the Eagles, and hung out talking with a few people. Wednesday, I hit traffic so horrendous on I-5 that I averaged twenty-five minutes a mile. If I-5 were a rectum, I thought to myself at hour 0.8, I'd gladly take lubed dynamite to it right now. At least I got through two discs of Don't Know Much About the Bible. Ah, and I digress; bitterness for missing a dance because of traffic'll do that to you.

The late nights have been spent with a pit full of people I barely know. I'm familiar with Troy Fisher, because Aaron got the image of him and a juicer for my nuts tied into my mind. I haven't feared for the berries once this season, though; if he got ticked in seasons passed, he's gotten it down by now. The trombonist is the other guy I know, from SOGO; he and I are the only ones I see who do the Gramma Macarena in the pit, like Troy gleefully suggested to us. Audience participation, ladies and gentlemen.

This show has an odd level of audience involvement; it's almost like a meta-play at times. There are a few references to actors' talents; entrances of main characters are well-announced; and even the discombobulated story begins with a magic show that, somehow, is connected with Charlemagne and his son, Pippin. Somehow. In-play, there's also a healthy amount of sex for a youth production: Two scenes, a romp and a bedroom, the latter of which is refreshingly silly; and plenty of fishnet for some of the cast.

One day in rehearsal, Troy got a shock during the sex scene. The joke of the scene involves the, erm, gentleman...letting the ball roll out of the cannon, shall we say? This is symbolized with a large paper pillar, about as round as three or four paper-towel rolls, held by one of the cast's younger boys, breaking in the middle and flopping. They had to pause that rehearsal for a second and fix something after the flop. The kid who was holding the bent-over paper shaft, though, didn't really get what the scene was about (ah, youth), got bored, and started playing with the dangling end. That sure got Troy's attention ("Nooo! Don't do that! Oh no, I'm going to go to jail!").

And now, for something completely different. This is also the show that has the girls from France. Their mother's playing violin in the pit, and she's happy for them – though, the sword trick in the beginning involves the sisters, to her loving motherly (joking) despair. There's one French line, and neither of them get pushed down by a policeman like in Les Misérables last year.

One rehearsal, though, the sisters had climbed into their magic-show box, and had done some number of tricks. One of them thought vehemently that there was going to be another trick, but the other knew that the swords were coming soon. They couldn't agree, so a vigorous debate ensued. Or name-calling. Nobody at the rehearsal was really sure; it was loud, all right, but in French. Oh, I wish I could've seen that.

Here's to hoping they'll have a sisterly bickering fête again. Elle serait grande. Come on down, and hope with me! It's a fine show, and keeps everyone (pit included) happy and lively. It's not too often the pit and audience get to dance, ya know.