Archive for the 'personal' Category

Coming to America

June 29, 2010
Coming to America with Eddie Murphy (1988)

I don't have a crown, and I'm not looking for a wife, but I'm still coming.

Next month is the MIT Pi Reunion in Las Vegas, so I’ve decided to go back to America.  Since I have to leave China for a day on July 10 anyway (because of my visa), I’m just going to fly to Boston on July 10 and stay in the US until the reunion is over on August 2.  In addition to Boston and Las Vegas, I’m also going to visit Ohio and San Francisco.

I already have a number of people I have to see in each city, but I’m not out of time yet.  If you’d like to get together, send me an email or leave a comment here.  I’m really looking forward to this trip and the chance to see all my good friends again.  The last five months have been exciting in China, but I know I must have missed out on a lot back in the States.

Here’s my detailed itinerary:

  1. Saturday, July 10 8:30pm – arrive in Boston
  2. Tuesday, July 20 noon – arrive in Stow
  3. Sunday, July 25 11am – arrive in San Jose
  4. Thursday, July 29 8am – arrive in Las Vegas
  5. Monday, August 2 10am – depart Las Vegas for China

Finding Deodorant in Beijing

June 23, 2010

Tonight, Judy and I were standing outside the pharmacy at 10pm when a foreign man walked up and asked if I spoke English.  Of course, I do, so we started talking.  Turns out he wanted to know where to buy deodorant.  (Judy thinks he had a date lined up.)

Luckily for him, I had faced the difficult task of buying deodorant in China myself and knew exactly where to go.  When I moved to China, I didn’t bring any, either.  I figured that it was inexpensive enough that I’d use whatever space it might take up for other more valuable things, and I’d buy some when I got here.  However, I didn’t realize that Chinese men do not use stick deodorant and that it would take me three weeks to find any.

Just in case anyone out there is searching the internet for an answer to this question, let me tell you where it is.  The first place I found some was at April Gourmet grocery store.  It’s close to Gongti West Road (工体西路), at the first intersection north of Gonti North Road.  If you’re walking north, take a right on that first intersection and go about 200m.  It will be on your right with a red and green sign.  The deodorant is only available behind the checkout counter, so you have to ask them for it.  They have two kinds – Axe deodorant and Axe antiperspirant.  Here is a page about them with a map on Google.

The other place to go is K.H.Sam’s.  They have more selection, but I can’t remember exactly what brands, since I didn’t buy any there.  To find it, go to the right side of the first floor in the back.  They are also located on Gongti West Road.  To find them, go across the street from Gongti West Gate (near Pavilion bar) and walk south about 400m.  They’ll be on your left just after the G3 club.  I can’t find a map for them on Google.

Good luck to all – Beijing is hot in the summer, so I hope this keeps you smelling fresh.

Exciting new running site

August 2, 2009

Those of you who run a lot and those of us that want to go running a lot but don’t have inspiration may be interested in my sister Erin‘s new blog. She’s writing up a lot of Boston running tours with historical information about the places you will run by. She’s also doing the same thing for San Francisco, where she lives now.

Eventually, I believe the idea is to turn them into podcasts that you can listen to as you run at 7-8 minutes per mile.

Anyway, I’m excited for her and thought I’d help her spread the news. Feel free to tell any of your friends in Boston or San Francisco to check out cityruntours.com.

更多中文

September 11, 2008

今天我要再用中文写日记。

昨天我工作一年了。  很长吗?我听说这是很段的时间工作。  但是这也是我最长的时间只作一个计划。  在大学我的计划都是三个月的。  虽然这是很长的我有时候觉得我不太孳。  我觉得这个感情是因为工作总是有别的问题。  我做完一个问题就开始别的。  很有意思的感情。  我想一个“feeling of completion”。

hmm有别的吗?  有。  今天晚上我看了我的姐姐的履历表。  我体认了我喜欢读履历表。  上大学的时候我做这么多面试所以我也想一想我的履历表。  用LaTeX写。  我觉得我现在知道很多履历表的东西。  要是你想我帮你,当然可以。

今天我也看了我的同事的blog。Lis是一个公司的作家所以她的日记很好。  名字是A Millenial Speaks。  我建议这个。

明天我要写很多中文的电脑工具。  我现在用了很多。

再见!

生活在哪里?

September 9, 2008

我从中国回来波士顿了。  先我觉得我得生化比较不一样。  每个东西很不一样-我有新的石室友,有的朋友们搬家走了,有的朋友们搬家到了,我知道我非常喜欢中国了。  现在我觉得我点点忘了这个感情。  每天我工作吃饭睡觉。 忙点。  我非常不要忘我的感情。  有一天我一定要住在一个外国可是现在我也觉得住在波士顿在VistaPrint工作对我生活比较好。  有的人可以说我太responsible了(怎么说?我的字典不能帮我。)我希望有好的生活所以现在我需要工作储蓄。感叹。

有一天

小吃

January 13, 2008

Mmm, dim sum is so good. Yesterday, I tried to get a bunch of friends to agree to go to dim sum this morning. It sort of worked. None of the people from work came (maybe it was the company party yesterday? But seriously, I was up at 8:30 and had to wait so long before going out…), but I still got to see Sally, Jaime, and 영희. We went to China Pearl again, and as usual, I tried to order for us in Chinese. It was tough, because I haven’t been practicing much lately – Chinese class doesn’t start again until February. So, I think I was out of practice listening to people speak.

Actually, the hardest part of going to dim sum with this particular group of friends is that the servers always speak to Sally first, and when she’s on the other side of the table, I probably couldn’t hear what they were saying, even if it was English.

Erin likes eating dim sum with me for two reasons: 1. Apparently hearing me speak Chinese is funny. 2. MIT people have interesting conversations. Today we couldn’t help spilling the tea quite a few times, so we talked about how to improve the conventional teapot. I was initially in favor of a mechanical redesign, but by the end of the meal, Sally had convinced me that new, hydrophobic materials were the answer to our dilemma…

Global Warming Board Game

January 7, 2008

So this IAP, there’s a session about creating an educational board game about global warming.  I don’t really know what that means, and I probably won’t be able to find out, because the sessions are 2-5 during the day; right when I work.  Nevertheless, I love board games and couldn’t help but start to think about how to turn the game-theory aspects of the global warming problem into a fun board game (because if I’m not in the class, why worry about educational when it could be just fun?). Read the rest of this entry »

Dancing for Engineers

January 6, 2008

Now here’s a topic I’ve been thinking about for a while. I started going to salsa dancing lessons fairly regularly this fall, but am having a hard time remembering the long sequences of complex moves that I learn in the MIT lessons (which are great, by the way). Even when I can remember them, it’s hard to do them on the dance floor with a girl who doesn’t also know what is coming, while staying on the beat, etc. etc. So, at some point this fall, I thought to myself that there must be a better way to learn enough sequences of moves not to bore a good follower to tears. Read the rest of this entry »

Wow, another post!

January 6, 2008

So, I’ve been thinking about this blog since New Year’s – Nicola told me that I need to write down my travel horror stories for everyone to read…  However, the story is so long that I’ve been putting it off (and I’m going to continue to put it off for a while more; right now it’s way too late).

Now that I’m here, though, I noticed that I really haven’t written in an incredibly long time; I thought I wrote more than that.  Anyway, I guess history proves that I can’t promise anything on here – so, no promises of posts, etc.  You get what you get.

I have had a few thoughts of things I could write about, though, so I think I’ll write another short post tonight before I go to sleep (I hate mixing topics, so I’m not going to put it in this one).

The Results Are In – makeyourownjeans.com

August 23, 2007

UPDATE – May 30, 2010 – anti-spam reaction

In the almost three years since I wrote this post, it’s constantly been either the first or second most popular page on my whole blog.  I haven’t ordered from makeyourownjeans.com again, though I still wear their jeans almost every day.  The shirts eventually wore out and I had better ones, so they’re long gone.

However, I’ve been getting more and more annoyed with their sketchy business practices, and I can therefore no longer endorse them.  They’ve tried to spam this page with positive comments numerous times, they used my pictures below without my permission, and just today I searched Google for ‘blog.mpdaugherty.com’ and found out they’ve been using my review when spamming other websites.  The last one is the last straw for me, because not only do I have no control over it, but it also hurts my reputation.  I would never add comment spam to someone’s blog or website, and I don’t want them (or Google) to think I do.  If you’ve come here through one of those links, I apologize.

On the other hand, if you really just want to read the review I wrote so long ago, go ahead.  It’s unedited below.

—-  Original Post —-

My Tailored Shirt

A while ago, I wrote about makeyourownjeans.com, a website that sells custom-made clothing, that I thought might be the answer to the tall (or short) person’s dilemma. It’s been a long time, but on August 6, I finally went ahead and placed an order with them for two items – a pair of jeans, and a formal shirt.

Read the rest of this entry »