Mandatory Quarantine

For the most part, I have been home-bound and isolated from the rest of society due to pink eye. The doctor said I'm highly contagious and should not return to work until Thursday. For a hardworking cheap chinese laborer like myself, three days away from work is a long ass time. Though I need the break so perhaps it's a blessing in disguise? Of course I worked remotely still. But calling into meetings wearing pajamas and without showering is somewhat gratifying to me. I think I enjoy working from home. I also learned that, if by any chance in the future or at Armageddon, I am detained and/or forced into mandatory quarantine or solitary confinement, I believe I can do it.

I entertained myself by baking cupcakes, watching back-to-back episodes of The Wire, gardening, flipping through magazines at Rite Aid, eating junk food, organizing my guestroom, napping, surfing channels and the internet for anything Blagojevich-related, reading about Michelle Obama. It is from reading her biography that I realize that Michelle and I have much in common. As if we are kindred spirits.

Both Michelle and I love Barack Obama. We are both public-interest minded lawyers. We both grew up in the South side of Chicago to working-class families. We both attended Whitney Young H.S. We both went to prestigious colleges. Michelle went to Princeton while I attended the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (it's ranked #2 in the nation for engineering...). Michelle's senior thesis is entitled, "Princeton-Educated Blacks and the Black Community". This was the controversial thesis that caused people to call her a "black militant" just because she critiqued the lack of support and services for black students at Princeton.

Reading about this reminded me of the final paper I wrote for my Asian American Jurisprudence class in law school. I wrote about how the interests of Asian Americans were subordinated by the interests of other ethnic minorities in a perceived (or actual) zero-sum game manipulated by The Man. I used the LA Riots and the cabdriver situation in NYC as examples. Although I still stand by my arguments, I would be horrified to have my law school paper scrutinized and misinterpreted by like everyone. Totally, completely horrified. I remember having to do an all-nighter to write that paper because I had procrastinated all year. I would hate people to judge me on a paper I wrote when I was cracked out at 23 years old. Poor Michelle had to defend herself for something she wrote for a class in college at the age of 21.

Ten years later, I wonder where my paper is... and could it destroy me or my credibility? I assume one physical copy is with Professor Kang while an electronic copy is on a floppy disk somewhere. Maybe it won't resurface when I get my appointment from Obama? Let's hope.

My next post? Perhaps similarities with Gov. Rod Blagojevich? He and I probably have more in common actually.

PAY TO PLAY, BITCH! No one rides for free.