January 2012
9 posts
Desiree
The Year of the Unicorn
We were lying on my bed on a lazy Friday afternoon in Berkeley, waiting for dinner to be called downstairs. It was May; my friend and I had turned in our final papers and bought our caps and gowns, which meant that these lazy afternoons were numbered. I didn’t like thinking about the end of things, because I didn’t really like taking risks. That’s...
Doreen
Sometimes I wonder what I would do without the Internet. Like if the Internet suddenly blacked out. What if all mobile phones disappeared? Or computers just gave out?
Then, I remind myself, these are pointless and passing thoughts. Why? The world is changed. Get used to it. Consumer technologies are in hand, all the time, anywhere. Sure, New York City’s subway system, with its despicable signal...
Noam (Israel)
Hey everybody, my name is Noam. I’m just like you, a regular 22-year-old Israeli guy who has just started his life. I play soccer and work for Tel Aviv’s City Hall. Besides that, I’m also a pizza boy, riding on a bike for you to get your delivery.
My story starts on December 25, 2011.
I had another delivery shift to complete, this time delivering Asian food. Everything was quiet and the time...
Shaimaa
I’m sitting at home, just outside of downtown Los Angeles in the neighborhood of Echo Park. I live in a 98 year old building that we think might have been a boarding house in the early 1900s. The floors creak and you can hear nearly every movement in the apartments above and below us at any given time during the day. The kids in the building run up and down the fire escape, families scrape...
Casey
I can feel the platitudes tense and gather, summoned from all directions by this title and topic I’ve chosen to try and write about. I’ll do my best to keep them at bay. Many of my friends and fellow students went on a study abroad program during college, and the words and phrases that return from these trips with my friends are remarkable for how similar they are to the last person to return,...
Desiree
At the risk of writing a story that could be filed appropriately under the category of “First World Problems,” I’ll go ahead and admit it: This week, I found myself feeling overwhelmed and alone.
It was suddenly clear that the two-month honeymoon period had ended, though it was still the same Tel Aviv and I could still safely say that I had fallen in love with my life here. Every day continues...
Erica
You do not need to be an accomplished physicist to know that it is possible to stop time. Anyone who has ever sat in a hospital waiting room knows this to be true. Minutes dripped like honey into the hot tea of hours, melting slowly into each other. As I stared at the clock on the wall for the countless time, I reminded myself that today time will take forever, and there was nothing I could...
Casey
I wrote an article for the magazine I was helping to found. It’s called Freepile, a magazine for residents of the Berkeley Student Cooperatives, a student housing organization. I decided to write a piece about a standard incident in the large house I had once lived in, Casa Zimbabwe, called CZ Inertia. Simply, when a group of residents try and gather to get away from that fortress on a hill,...
Afsaneh
I attended a conference today where the speaker was talking about a subject that most of the audience already knew enough about. But what made me sit and listen to her lecture was her passion for the subject matter.
I was amazed at how passionate she was. I was looking at her as she excitedly walked back and forth across the stage and kept asking whether anyone had any questions.
Then I...
