In many ways, my Stanford experience has been one where my thoughts and atitudes towards things of life have come full circle.
One of those areas has been dances. In high school, I used to be totally anti-dance. Then, once I got to Stanford, for some inexplicable reason, I totally was gung-ho about going to all the dances. Maybe it was just me trying to break out of a artificially-constructed notion that I had led a "sheltered" lifestyle in high school... whatever that meant! I even asked a girl out to the Viennese Ball. =P Of course, this was freshman year, during my... um, shall we say, wild years.
Now, after taking Social Dance I this past quarter, my feelings now could be best described as ambivalent.
The reason is simple: I just can't dance.
Even though the Bible tells us otherwise, I am bitter about it, and when I see people like Will Chen, Dave Hong, Keith Lee, etc bust out those moves, I become just frustrated. I realize that I shouldn't be expending this emotional energy, because I don't get phazed knowing that there are people who are better in CS that I am, for example, but I just get mad at myself for my own inability to have dance moves sink in, mentally and kinesthetically. Sometimes I feel I have a curse just like Jim Carey in Liar, Liar, where he is physcially inable to lie in any way, shape or form: in my case, it's the inability to dance coherently and smoothly in any way, shape or form. What's wrong with my body?!?!
Because of this, in dance class, even though there certainly were a very good number of girls and guys that I knew, I actually tried to avoid girls that I knew, opting instead to dance with "random" girls whom to me were complete strangers.
I figured that if I didn't know them, they wouldn't know me, and certainly wouldn't remember me after class. Of course, that probably wasn't the best attitude to have -- now I find I do remember them when I see them (at least their faces, but not their names). Furthermore, I suspect that that rememberence is mutual, so I often feel tense when I see them. Oh well.
So anyways, one of my biggest worries now is Viennese Ball. My rational side, says, no, don't go to only make a fool of yourself. But my sentimental side says not to miss out with this time with friends -- especially it being senior year and all!
Last year, I vowed that if four certain people went, I would go as well. Expressed in tbe language of symbolic logic:
KL & PL & DC & DH => MW
where KL, PL, DC, DH, and MW symbolize predicates Keith, Paul, Danny, Dave Hong, and Mark Wang respectively go to Viennese Ball. (Yeah, that's something I do mentally often: try to sanitize throny issues like these by thinking of them as just another CS problem.)
Of course, last year, only Danny ended up going, and I wasn't particularly excited about going anyways. But the fact that this is for most people I know their last year, just looms tall over me like some dark appraition, always lurking in my thoughts.
I would at least like to have the possibility of going to Viennese Ball, and since we know that Dave Hong is out of the picture for this year, we have to remove him -- otherwise we have a unsatisfible expression. Then again, obviously Keith Lee and Danny Chai are givens for Viennese Ball attendence. So, the above equation can be basically simplified to:
PL => MW
That is, if Paul Lee goes, then I will go.
That of course, as every student of logic knows, does not imply
~PL => ~MW
I mean, I could very well let my emotions just overcome me, Kisoo or no Kisoo, and take the Viennese plunge.
OK, so if I do decide to go to Viennese, that just opens up another dilemma: who will be the one that I go with?
I will be frank: There isn't really any girl at Stanford that I feel overwhelmingly comfortable enough going with with no hesitation. [Of course, there's always Val Hsieh... =) Then again, last year Georgie was a pretty good sport -- taking a licking and just keeping on ticking. I on the other hand tend to be extremely self concious, and as a result, become embrassed easily. This was most apprent in dance class, where often times, Richard Powers would come up to me one on one and correct some egregiously wrong mistake that I made, and boy, did I feel tense. Now to feel that way with a girl, surrounded by my peers...]
[It should also be noted, however, that I am NOT bitter because I have no special someone that I could automatically go with. I have become anti-dating (as in the sense of romantic involvement w/o committment, not "dating" as in casually going to a dance), thanks to the encouragement of several awesome brothers, and Joshua Harris.]
Anyways, I propose we solve that problem of "who" and also, provide some incentive to really overcome one's dancing phobias by combining the randomness and tenseness of Screw Your Sib with the elegance and class of Viennese Ball, and really ratchet up the stakes for people to bring on their very best!
That's right, baby: Blind dates and setups for Viennese.
If you end up having a horrible SYS experience, you blow, what, maybe $40 at most? But with Viennese, you kiss bye bye to several hundred dollars potentially! And boy, your date probably WILL remember you however the night goes! So the pressure WILL be on for you to have the best social experience possible to maximize your return on investment!
All this would be optional, of course. But hey, for the vast majority at Stanford not already constricted (I think that verb is pretty apt, in some cases) by any special relationship, why not spice up the experience? After all, SYS shouldn't be the only time of year for some "screwing".
Admittedly, I've only had one true blind date experience which I'd much rather forget -- SYS sophomore year, with someone in the class of 1998 who I won't name. I didn't know her AT ALL, not even by name, in any case. It did have its bright spots. For instance, I first met Chee-Chee Hsu during that event, the most incredible dancing machine I have seen, ever. And most of it stemmed from a failure to realize that there are TWO Hong Kong Flower Lounge restaurants in the Peninsula, and NOTHING specifically related to my date. But, in a way, I'm still reeling over the trauma of it all.
Just like they say the success of the US in the Gulf War was a "vindication" to its collective psyche for the morass of Vietnam, here's hoping that a blind Viennese date will "vindicate" that SYS experience for me.
Bring it on! ==> mwang@cs.stanford.edu