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Posted three hours before I turned 35


Almost 35

Originally uploaded by maximolly.

It’s my birthday! I am now 35 years old. This is freaking me out because I’ve forever left the 18-34 demographic. And when many of the people I celebrated with turn 35, I will be on my way to exiting the demographic for the 50-64!

We had a wonderful party at the Anchor in New Haven, complete with amazing cake. Today, Birke and I are doing a photo shoot together and then I’m going to write, write, write.

Really, I love birthdays. They’re unilateral: everybody gets one. I wasn’t drunk and wished everybody a happy birthday. (After all, you say “happy Thanksgiving” and “merry Christmas” and “happy holidays” — why should birthdays be unidirectional?) So happy birthday to you on my birthday.

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Andy and Carrie, my brother and new sister-in-law: married!

November is almost done. I’m almost 35. Ugh. Here are a few posts about what’s been up.

First, on November 4, 2006, my brother Andy married his longtime girlfriend Carrie. Andy and Carrie are the parents of Jack (almost 7) and Maddie, aka Mamie (age 2) and have been together for close to nine years. It was a wonderful, touching ceremony. Everybody looked great and had a great time. The ceremony was in St. Paul, Minnesota, at the Fort Snelling Chapel. Enrique came with me and has now officially met almost my entire family.

Andy-Carrie

On either side of that trip to Minneapolis, Enrique and I visited PhD programs. If it’s not been clear already, that’s what I hope comes next: starting a PhD program in architecture in the fall. Right before Halloween, we went to Cambridge to visit MIT and Harvard’s Graduate School of Design. Right after my brother’s wedding, we attended the Princeton Open House (and got to see our friends Joy and Sara, who graduated from our program in May 2006).

I’ll talk more in the next post about what I’ve been doing the last two weeks: research at the Centre for Canadian Architecture in Montreal. It may have to wait, though: we’re in downtown Montreal as I write this and we’re about to hop in the car to drive back to New Haven for Thanksgiving.

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Core77 posts about my mobile phone sharing in India research

When I was in San Francisco a few weeks ago, I gave a talk at Giant Ant and at Yahoo! Research Berkeley. I presented about my research on urban mobile phone sharing, conducted while at Microsoft Research India in Bangalore.

I’d had many discussions with Steve Portigal about his Bangalore experience in comparison to mine: his was rather negative; mine was overwhelmingly positive. He came to see my talk at Giant Ant and presented his notes on my talk on Core77. Thank you Steve!

As far as my research goes, it will be published in two papers. The first is with Jonathan Donner, Nimmi Rangaswamy and Carolyn Wei: we wrote about the mobile phone and middle class Indian domesticity. I’m the primary author of the second piece, with Jonathan as the secondary. It’s more specifically on mobile phone sharing and its relationship with space in urban India. If things go as planned, both should be published in early 2007.

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Mobile Modalities: Sharing Mobile Phones in Urban India

Next week and the week after, I’m going to be talking about the work I did at Microsoft Research India: an ethnographic study in Bangalore, India on mobile phone sharing and how it plays out in domestic and urban space. I’d love to see you there.

In New York, I’ll be speaking on Wednesday, September 27th at 7:15 p.m. at nycWireless. The details:

Bway.net

568 Broadway at Prince St, NE corner

Suite 404

New York, NY 10012

(lobby sign-in required)

In San Francisco, I’ll be speaking on October 3 at noon at Giant Ant Studio. RSVP is required: please email me or leave a comment if you’re interested in attending. Email is molly [at] girlwonder [dot] com. I’ll pass on further information at that point.

Let me know if you’re coming. I’d love to see you.