So, I am up like, “early.” I put “early” in quotes because this entry is being written at 11:56am, but that’s AM as in BEFORE noon. In any case, I woke up “early” this morning at 9am. This is considered early because I also went to sleep around 5am, as has unfortunately become my norm this summer.

Anyway, while you might think that I would be too tired to function, I have actually been surprisingly productive thus far. Firstly, I actually read all of my Friday webcomics, Slashdot, and Digg in like a half hour. Then I ate breakfast. Next, I finally finished my thank you notes for graduation money, and now I am blogging! Okay… so perhaps I should have written “productive.”

In any case, they are interesting subject to consider: our conceptions of early and late. Just as I earlier mentioned the subjectivity of interesting and routine, I think it is also illustrative to consider the different way we perceive this. There are the very real differences of time zones, for example—a fact we sometimes forget. For example, my friend Karen had told me that, bored at work, she might see fit to text me from her (ZOMG) new phone. Kind of bored and remembering that she had work at 4, I texted her around 4:50 wondering where these promised messages were. To which, of course, she replied “Chill out! I just got to work and I’m early!.” That’s when I was like “right … time zones”.

Of course, even time zones aren’t truly definitive. It has been said, for example, that while, by all reports MIT lies in the Eastern time zone, many of its students actually function on Hawaiin time (of course, it could be worse). Of course, some MIT students have given up on normal timezones completely. I speak, of course, of Random Standard Time; to quote a now removed edit from Wikipedia:

“Random Standard Time,” [is] a special timezone in effect only within Random Hall, used to avoid the inconvenience of dealing with day changes at midnight when most residents are awake. Random Standard Time uses 24 hour notation with a 6 hour offset, such that midnight becomes 2400h and 1 am of the following day becomes 2500h of the same day, which continues until 2959h when it rolls over to 0600h the following day.

See.. you (might have) learned something!

Anyway, its an interesting concept. What defines time? I don’t know, according to Einstein, it’s something that changes with velocity; according to RENT, it is best measured not in daylights, nor sunsets, nor midnights, nor cups of coffe, but, in fact, in love; according to others it is actually a cube! Maybe someone taking the “Time of Your Life” seminar can fill me in, but in the meantime, it is a fascinating thing to contemplate.

Its all about perception, I suppose. There are those with very odd perceptions, like Clive Wearing or the fictional Leonard of Memento, or Merlin in White’s Once and Future King, but in genereal we accept the concept that some people may experience things oddly. Truly, though, we have no assurance that the rest of us “normal” people are actually experiencing it the same.

I must say, my mind has certainly been in a bit of a strange place. As my time here dwindles to just 16 days or so, I find myself hanging out much more with my friends than there was time to in the school year and probably more than I have in former summers. I am becoming much closer friends with some of these people at the most inconvenient of times, and I fear this is because, in some sense, I don’t fully recognize the fact that I will actually be gone soon. Maybe it is simply a gut reaction, digging in as I find myself pulled by circumstance in another direction (albeit a direction I have wanted for a long time), but is certainly causing more than its share of confusion in me and others.

With the people whom I could hardly get closer, my family, things seem buisness as usual, but I suppose it is a bit of a facade. I know that it certainly is confusing to me that I won’t live here, that for 4 months this will not be where I return, and in a way, it will never truly be my home again. And its scary .. but also invigorating.

At this point possibilities at MIT and beyond seem endless, but at the same time the possibilities here are quickly coming to an end. And I’m in the middle. :-/

Anyway, if you made it this far, thanks for reading. ^_^

~Donald