goodbye hem-onc

i've noticed myself giving the thumbs up to people lately. like instead of waving hello or goodbye, i just give them the thumbs up. or when i agree with somebody, i say "cool," "yup," or "sure", while simultaneously shoving my thumb in their face. this is really dorky, and needs to stop. so this blog is going to be a personal contract with myself (one of the tactics i used when i decided to downgrade to social smoker). so... to me, from me: no more thumb-upping.

also, today was my last day working for the hem-onc division (i'll be working till the end of the week but for a different division). i didn't have any responsibilities today other than a meeting with my supervisor, bidding farewell (not a goodbye-forever farewell... more like an amorphous, send-me-a-postcard, good-luck-in-your-future-endeavors, business eitquette pleasantry), and one last time donating my blood as the control for a clinical experiment. so while passing the time, i decided to read the science section of the NY Times (warning: deep thoughts ahead).

archaelogists discovered that there was a culture of Indians in the Andes mountains that had a completely different spatial perception of time from our own society. conceptually, they considered the future to be "behind" them and the past to be "ahead" of them. their reasoning: since you already know the past, then it must be in front of you so you can see it. but since the future is unknown, it must be at your back, since you can't see it. interesting... but i wonder what this must have meant for them psychologically. if the past is ahead and the future is behind, does this mean that as a society they thought more about their past instead of their future? unlike our own society (which is obsessed with the future, planning ahead, and crazy fortune telling schemes), maybe to this culture the past was something you constantly faced... something that should be constantly examined and re-examined; while the future was something to turn your back on and accept as something you simply walk blindly into... and as a result, did they have more or less mental health problems?

ok, it's obviously been a long day at work. enough philosophizing... time for capoeira.