Week 5
Starting Off
It’s only fair to start off this week with flying on Sunday and to link this song by Owl City called “Hello, Seattle” on Spotify.
Traveling
Traveling was, shall we say, crazy! I ended up missing the 10am flight due to a multitude of factors including alarms not going off, my late packing, the lack of people (specifically women as they match by gender for the thorough pat-down) available to pat me down and do the swabbing they do when they can’t scan you at the airport, and arriving at the gate 12-13 minutes ahead of the flight instead of 15 minutes and being told I couldn’t board (probably because I need some help with my backpack and checking in my wheelchair at the gate after I transfer to crutches?), though they let someone who did not need assistance board still. In the end, I thankfully was able to fly out at 5pm after being placed on a waitlist!
After getting to Seattle, my sister and her boyfriend (who were visiting) met me at the baggage claim, and we took the light rail to my dorm. The following day, I moved to a different room with an accessible shower. It was interesting to experience so many transit methods as a wheelchair user after weeks of reading about transportation equity!
The Rest of the Week
I met with my advisor on Friday and she did several things! Firstly, when we realized I didn’t have a keycard she made them find one that apparently had been made several months ago for me without anyone knowing and had the support staff add access to the graduate student lounge because it is on the floor of my lab (which I also saw!! It looks like what the Enabling Technology lab seemed to look like when I peeked through the window at UNC, only bigger; and there are multiple other HCI and other labs on the same floor!). Now I get to work and have lunch with other students (and there is a spectacular view of the Washington bay, chairs I can perch on like the ones between Kris’s office and the kitchen in front of a kitchen, and even coffee/hot cocoa that Dr. Caspi said I could drink! On the coffee side, I’m mostly interested in the hot water in case I make oatmeal though).
Secondly, after I shared my specific progress on the literature review (slower this week, but there were attributes related to study focus and population size I went back and added for the articles I had gone through so far), Dr. Caspi learned about the suspicious person and offered to let me borrow her cooking utensils instead (as apparently her kitchen has been having a remodel), which I am very grateful for. While I still have to tilt the saucepan a little to see the bottom, I can reach the stove/sink in my dorm kitchen easily, and so I cooked something on the stove (from start to finish) for the very first time!!
It was a soup with dumplings (pre-made because making them from scratch would have taken too long; it also helps add sodium), napa cabbage, baby carrots, some diced potatoes, ginger (sauteed with the garlic in butter in place of oil since buying a big amount of vegetable oil didn’t make sense) and some cilantro. I followed my Dad’s instructions as a basis (saute garlic on medium low for a few minutes, add onions and saute on medium high until they are brown, add meat/vegetables and simmer) and followed my mom’s suggestion to add shrimp sauce from some takeout at the very end (as I didn’t have any salt or bouillon or soy sauce) but made my own recipe based on what produce was cheapest and what made sense to pair together and for later mixing with ulam (the Tagalog word for the part of a meal that is not veggies or rice, usually meat).
Returning to research, all of my labmates are really friendly. They are generally either full-time employees or grad students. I got to meet two of them in person this week (Rati and Sam) and we were able to have some casual conversation during lunch. As the summer quarter of UW kicks up, I’ve found that while each person has a research focus, we collaborate and there is a sense that (in Rati’s words) “we are in this together,” something especially felt in-person.
One thing of note about the UW campus is that it’s quite diverse. I already consider UNC to be extremely diverse; but I was going through UW’s student union and (situated among artwork with Caucasian, African American, indigenous, and Hispanic people represented) there was an artwork about the Asian American experience that even mentioned Filipinos and was situated above posters regarding disability in higher education. The history of Asian Americans and of the disability rights movement was never really taught much in my K-12 experience, and it was common for me to be one of few Asian (let alone disabled) people at school, so in a way, I felt seen as I saw those identities juxtaposed on the same wall.
My medical supplies eventually did arrive but I was stressed about them at first as they couldn’t be tracked and the airline was not communicative about where it was. My parents are heroes for persistently fielding the unhelpful customer service on the boxes they checked, shouldering on to the airport despite no guarantee of the boxes being there, and finding the supplies. If they hadn’t been found, I would have had to fly back home today or yesterday.
As alluded to earlier, I attended a church today 5 blocks north of where I live! I’m not certain about it yet, but I am still praying about it (and about everything), and it seems biblically based. I stayed after to talk with people for an hour, and they were really nice. There are people of all ages. They were also sending off a woman who’s doing her master’s (in divinity I think?) in Israel and gave me some tangerines. They made sure I could get in and out as the accessible entrance was through a gate that’s usually locked for security reasons.