New Years Resolution or whatnot

1. Stop bitting and peeling my nails

2. Enjoy life: started following football Sundays again since break started. Watching the Pats game while noming on wings and fries makes me feel like a kid again, but it's a nice change for a while.

3. Run a quarter marathon: originally my goal was to go for a half marathon by seeing as I haven't ran in a long time, that might not be a feasible goal. So for now, striving a quarter marathon... by the end of this summer.

4. Be more tolerant of my mom, and her bible ramblings.

5. Be more organized. I made a google calendar this morning as a start :)

6. Make new friends, keep in touch with old ones: text greetings spammed my phone after Christmas morning and New Years and it's nice to know that friends haven't forgot about you. Thinking back, I haven't done as much as I should have to keep in touch with people, but this will change next semester :)

7. Not fall on my butt so much the next time I go skating.

8. Stop eating three dinners a day.

9. Go somewhere outside of Pittsburgh for spring break.

10. Self-perfection: as the Odyssey assignment says: perfect what you're good at rather than focus on what you suck at. I just finished my cultivated self assignment this morning. The assignment was to gather stories from your friends of instances where you exemplifying your best traits. From the stories I got, the consensus was that I'm caring, selfless, logical, focused, dedicated to work, cheerful, reflective, dedicated to service, and curious, so I guess I better work on perfecting these traits.

11. Survive.

11 resolutions for 2011, let's see how this works out.

Haircut fail

since i don't feel like typing the whole story..

[12/21/10 6:57:00 PM] Amy : thanks
[12/21/10 6:57:05 PM] Amy : i was trying to save my hair
[12/21/10 6:57:11 PM] Amy : i got a perm today
[12/21/10 6:57:18 PM] Amy : but they permed my whole head
[12/21/10 6:57:21 PM] Amy : even my bangs
[12/21/10 6:57:28 PM] Amy : and now it looks like i have an afro
[12/21/10 6:57:42 PM] Amy : so i was looking at videos on how to straighten hair
[12/21/10 6:57:51 PM] Amy : and i just tried it
[12/21/10 6:57:55 PM] Amy : but i dont think it works
[12/21/10 6:57:57 PM] Amy : :(
[12/21/10 6:58:03 PM] Amy : so im stuck with the afro
[12/21/10 6:58:05 PM] Ayris: o_o
[12/21/10 6:58:06 PM] Ayris: lol?
[12/21/10 6:58:17 PM] Amy : oh thanks
[12/21/10 6:58:34 PM] Ayris: D:
[12/21/10 6:58:36 PM] Ayris: well
[12/21/10 6:58:37 PM] Ayris: sorry
[12/21/10 6:58:39 PM] Ayris: it's sort of funny



tried flat ironing the bangs again today



It's a little bit more tamed now. :)


This was at the top of my news feed on when i got on facebook today
I just had sex, and it felt so good...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQlIhraqL7o

If I were rich...

I would probably find myself in the streets of Miami wasting away my days. It's a horrific thought, sure, but in all likely cases, that would be what happens since I can't be trusted with too much luxury. I was just thinking about what I'd do if I had suddenly won the lottery one day and became a millionaire. Either money would corrupt me or I would lose it all overnight just as easily as I lose my wallet. Yesterday, Jessica (the girl from London) and I were talking about her life as the daughter of a billionaire. She has vacationed in every continent except for Africa and South America, had dinners with the president of China, seen Paris Hilton while shopping in New York, she owns three houses all in different countries, and probably has enough money to feed an entire city, but she doesn't seem at all comfortable talking about the benefits of being rich. The two things she did stress was her brother's clubbing obsession and her father's habit of smoking 3 packs of cigarette per day. I wonder if all the rich had some flaws. It would make sense that rich people are more susceptible to bad habits since they're not under financial stress and so they don't have the need to stay professional or sober or well-educated or whatever, and it's just so much easier (not healthier, but easier) to live life like its the 20s. So yeah, back to what i was saying about wasting my life away in Miami. We visited Miami 3 years ago? And the only thing I remember from there was all the drunk people coming out of clubs at 7 in the morning and i think if i were rich, i would eventually end up in one of these places cuz of my lack of will to stay in school/work for admission into medical school/whatever track id thought id be going into.
Speaking of school, grades came out yesterday.... 3.69qpa and A's in all core courses. I think not sleeping for the entire finals week has paid off. My only regret is not leaving time to study for data structures and going into that final with a caffeine high thinking id ace it without knowing anything we learned over the last month. Also, I would really like the idea of installing shower rooms in the library for the poor kids who need a place to cram for finals but don't want to walk back to their dorms at 5 in the morning. Jessica told me that in London, they have 3 weeks of break to cram for finals and alot of people live in the library for those 3 weeks with their sleeping bags and toothbrushes and it's so much more convenient for them to do so because they have shower rooms. A school like CMU were all the students are tortured by academics would really benefit from something like that.

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More restaurant reviews:

Pittsburgh:

Uncle Sams:best subs ever
Aladdins: decent if you're into mediterranean
Bangkok Balcony: portions are too small but delicious
Pamela's: great breakfast place
Rose Tea Cafe: comparable to bangkok
Quaker Steak and Lube: only go if you're going with Graham/someone who will devour wings like they're animals.
Primanti Brothers: bleh. personally, i don't like the idea of stuffing fries inside burgers
Eat Unique: interesting
Szechuan Express: yay for cheap Asian food!
Sushi boat: okay
Korea Garden: decent but expensive
Little Asia: their pad thai does not taste like pad thai
Star of India: bleh. comparable to... Taste of India...
Qdoba:okay
Dave and Andy's: must go eat their ice cream... so good!!!


Boston:

Not Your Average Joe's:is really not your average joe's: great food. Their bread is delicious.

Beer Works: i like the decorations/atmosphere, best steak ever, go there if you're in the mood for pigging out, not good for vegetarians. all the beer is freshly brewed from the restaurant

girl from london

So a few days ago my mom called me and told me on a short notice that a girl from London will be coming to live with us for a few days over winter break. No details were given, I had no idea who she was or why she'll be living with us and at that time I was too burnt out from finals to bother asking for the details. Anyways, her flight was supposed to arrive at midnight yesterday, a few hours right after I get back from the mellon, but her first flight got delayed and she missed her connecting flight, so we ended up having to pick her up this morning. Apparently, this girl had been awake from at least 48 hours due to traveling and jetlag, but even then, she was full of energy and ready to soak in all the excitements of Boston. As a result, my mom and I ended up shopping with her for 7 hours today. Over the course of our hanging out today I learned a lot more about her background. She's a recent graduate from the London School of Economics and her hometown is in Hong Kong. Her father is an investor, hence she's visiting U.S. in her father's behalf to talk to my mom about developing an area nearby here that used to be a golf course. Her mother passed away to cancer and ever since then her father as been looking for cancer research company to invest in and after finding out about my dad's research he wanted to connect with my dad as well, but since he has been super busy lately, the daughter as been dispatched to us to spend a weekend here on the account of her having a week long vacation after school ended. Aside from the business talk, she's a very outspoken and friendly person with a ridiculous passion in shopping.

Claims from Our Shopping trip:

Her:
4 pairs of boots from UGG ~$400
1 mini wallet with a "moneyclip"? $150
3 dresses from BCBG ~$300
2 coats ~$300
1 dressy shirt ~???

Me:
1 sweater $19.99
1 dress $49.99
1 cinnamon pretzel $1.50

Mom:
1 sweater for my daddy $40

A comment on the wallet: that thing is smaller than my palm and it looks just like any other ordinary wallet except its thinner and it has a clip that you can attach your cash to. She found it inside one of those glass display cases and the first thing she said was "woahh I need one of these, and it's so cheap! Only 150 dollars!" I can't imagine how rich she is... O_o

I asked her about the prices in London and she said that everything is more expensive, but then again the stores she go to are probably only meant to be for billionaires. The tradeoff is, the tuition for London School of Economics is only 15000 pounds per year for international students. And apparently, their vacation time add up to 6 months per year. What the heck CMU?

Oh yeah, when my mom first told me she's an Asian girl from London, I thought she would look and sound a bit like this

http://www.youtube.com/user/cutiemish#p/u/15/aE7RIdelhCU

but it turned out that her English accent isn't British and she's not child-like at all. Instead, imagine a 23 year old Meryl Streep with a mixed South African/Chinese accent.

Tomorrow will be day two of shopping and then we'll visit the Harvard campus because she wanted to get a taste of the Ivy League. After that, my break officially starts with reading 100+ pages of publications about machine learning and pancreatic cancer, starting the assignment for Odyssey and applying to internships. Next week, all the Boston students are coming back from finals so I'll be pigging out at a friend's house and watching a movie during the weekend. Fun stuff! Yay for break!

Closure

There's always that tiny bittersweet feeling that accompanies the end of each chapter of our life. Our team just gave the team project presentation today and that is officially the end of Lab I. I had fun, despite the frequent frustration we've had with the experiment. I'll surely miss the smell of ether and of course, the post-lab dinners with the group. Chinese is officially done as well, and it is weird to think that next semester there will be no more morning coffees with A.Chen and sleeping in Chinese class. There is no more tutoring with the East Liberty kids since I will have no time to tutor next semester but instead have my life consumed by 251 and research. I'll miss the kids: D'Ambrose, Dom, M., Heaven, Mykya and the hyperactive Christian and I'm only naming these people because they are the people I'd never want to forget but I know I'll forget at some point and cry over the fact that I have terrible recollection of names. But anyways, I wish the best for them and hope that they'll all stay in school, and of course, Mr. Brown who always teased me for being a Pats fan and for looking like my Asian counterpart, Jiwon, whom sadly I still haven't meet. Perhaps someday when I'm old, I'll write a book about all of them because each and everyone of them at East Liberty are such memorable people and as cliche as this sounds, they deserve to have their stories told.

Yesterday, I got a text from someone I haven't heard from in a long time, in a way it did mark the end of something that would have otherwise continued to be on standstill. I don't really know whether I'd rather prefer closure than uncertainty. Looking back, there are so many things that could have gone differently and so many things that could have been made clearer. I remember Vivian's philosophical argument about what matters is not how things ends but it is about getting rid of any misunderstanding of events leading up to the ending. It's tragic that I don't have the capacity to think like Vivian. I guess for me, the fun is in the mystery of not knowing, and trying to stick an eye into every nitty gritty well of someone's life ruins the fun. Also, it doesn't help that I'm a shy person and isn't bold enough to have done things differently.

I guess what I'm trying to say is, I've figured out something that's tragically wrong with me. The more I get to know someone, the more boring they become, and of course people can say the same about me. But, as they say, the only way to get to know a person really well is to interact with them on a day to day basis... but by seeing someone too often you're exposing yourself to the danger of getting bored of that person, or vice versa, the other person gets bored of you. So should there be a need to limit the amount of time you spend with any particular person? Or would it be better to solely interact with strangers so the conversations never gets old? That's really sad to think about. There's always rare exceptions to this, the image elderly couples holding hands for example... that's a picture I'll always be envious of.

That's it for the post. I don't know why I tend to blog about such depressing things. Maybe there's a stronger need to put depressing things into writing whereas happier memories are only worthy of a mental acknowledgment. But that's it, once last post before drowning myself in textbooks. Let the finals studying commence.

procrastination

The weekend before breaks is always stressful but somehow I am not even a bit concerned about the two tests tomorrow and lab report Tuesday. This weekend was supposed to be devoted entirely to biochem, but uh, fun got in the way? Friday night was my little's AUO concert. Going to a classical concert for the first time in years just reminded me of how much I hated concerts. The one thing that always bothered me about classical pieces was that the songs always tend to drag on longer than usual. At certain times in the song, as the tempo gets faster and stronger, you start experiencing that heavy anticipation of the ending, but every one of those anticipated endings are always followed up by another set of chord progression which I guess is the introduction to the next part of the piece. Fifteen minutes later, they are still playing the same song. Anyways, that 2 hour concert seemed more like 5 hours. It was an interesting experience though. The audiences were mostly elderly people and the site of an elderly couple going to an orchestral concert is just such a precious thing, not something a normal college student would see everyday.
After the concert was Harry Potter. I cannot even call myself a real Harry Potter fan since the only book I've read was the last one, but it is easy to fall into the Harry Potter craze especially at CMU. The movie itself is decent. When did Ron become all jacked? It is weird to associate his goofy and childish face with that muscular figure, but that's alright, I'm still very much in love with him. After the movie, Soo and I went to Nancy's place for some drinks. Everyone there was Korean except me. And I don't know why I thought it was a good idea to fill up the awkwardness of not being able to speak Korean by drinking more alcohol. So, half of my Saturday was spent trying to recover from a hangover and less than 3 hours of sleep on top of studying for biochem. Saturday afternoon, Xuexia invited me to origami club and Edmund taught us how to make a dragon!

Sexy pink dragon --->





After origami was APHIO pre-thanksgiving dinner. The food was delicious. To recover from food coma, Sujin, Nancy and I went to Razzy and then got some exercise in through pingpong,ITG, and pool. That was when we bumped into Rahul and he reminded me to update my blog. So yeah, this post is for you dude. Just a little update on what's been happening with my life. And it's sad that we don't see each other anymore but I hope you're doing well.

bleh

Hell week is finally over. I have had maybe a total of about 5 hours of sleep within the last five days because, of course, CMU loves to torture their students the week before the long weekends. I bonded with my lab partners pulling off all nighters doing chem lab reports and studying for that god awful chem lab test, which I'm pretty sure I got rapped on nevertheless. The only good thing I got out of this past week is the technique of mastering how to survive on 1 hour micronaps and how to trick your brain to have self-induced caffeine highs. But aside from work overload, what really got me into this shitty mood has been because of the complicated mess of social interactions. That feeling of being trapped, knowing that possibility of forming a new relationship is completely open but not being able to start anew. I truly miss freshman year. We were all so careless and innocent and back then, meeting someone new is most exciting and wonderful feeling in the world. Now, that doesn't even matter anymore. The people I've met sophomore year are just as cool, but somehow I get that feeling of distance... knowing that they've had a whole year of college experience before meeting you. It seems most people have settled down into their niche by now, but I am part of many niches but never fully committed to a single one, and all the groups I'm partially a part of are only one dimensional: a group to gossip with, a group to study with, a group to party with, a group to eat food with, someone to steal blocks off of, someone to rant to, someone to get physical with, someone to be awkward with, someone to tease, but never someone with whom I can do all of the above. It's a frustrating feeling, but life isn't always perfect. And I guess most of this is my fault, for not keeping in touch with people and for letting schoolwork completely drain my soul.

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Other highlights:

-Relay For Life: This year's relay has been especially emotional because it brought back memories of the summer (part of the reason I decided to revisit and update this blog). During the summer while working at AVEO I got the chance to met my boss's two year old soon, who is suffering from a brain tumor. When I first met him I would have never imagined he had cancer because he is truly an adorable little child. Then, my boss told me about his condition. I cannot even vaguely imagine how hard it must be to face the prospect of knowing your two year old child may die of cancer. I do hope Ben and his family are doing well.

-Football Concessions: worked the cash register for the whole time. Holy cow. High school football games at ridiculous. So many people O_o.

-I've temporarily banned myself from facebook. It's been two only days but I'm already suffering from major facebook withdrawal syndrome. The password has been changed and now only Dylan knows what it is. Maybe I won't be so distracted now? We'll see how long this lasts.

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People are interesting. So I've decided to write about a few new interesting people I've met this year. This is a little sketchy I know, but I swear I don't/would never stalk any of these people...

girl from work: another sophomore here at CMU. She described her schedule to me while we were waiting on the bus back from work. Basically, her days start at 4am every weekday (crew) to 8pm at night (meetings+classes+work at admissions office) and then she does her homework after that AND she also has a job as a desk attendant (graveyard shift I think), AND she's in a sorority AND she's also a tutor at EECM AND she's a mentor at McGill. Yup, her life seems very busy.

boy from work: a brother at Delt, chubby face/built, very adorable, like a teddy bear, speaks Japanese. That's all.

favorite aphio pledge: bonded with her at Relay for Life, karaoke, and concessions. She acts drunk when she's sober.

other favorite aphio pledge: funny story... he showed up in our apartment at one time and I came into the apartment totally not anticipating this because I had no clue that he was friends with Adrian. Apparently he came over to smoke with Adrian. I must have acted really surprised or I just came off as a really traditional/ innocent person because he felt the need to personally have a conversation with me the next day and explaining how he's been battling drug addiction and wants to quit and would appreciate it if I don't tell the chapter. A pretty chill guy though, I think we became friends after that.

my little: worst little/big match possible. She's a hardcore Christian. Bleh.

new gay friend met from lab: why are gay people so... pretty? it's a shame that they are gay. Also, I wish I have a gay best friend.

another dude from lab I: has the habit of saying "totally", "this fella", and "for sure"... those are his favorite phrases. he is also very anal about making every solution accurate to the drop which bugs the hell out of me because I'm not a patient person.

umbrella boy: offered me his umbrella because it was pouring rain outside and I live far away from campus. Probably the nicest act a stranger would do for you, but because of him, I now have a cynical view on life.

boy from library who's also in ochem: you know there's something wrong with you when you're meeting new friends at 3 am in the morning on the antisocial floor of the library. Organic chemistry truly brings people together.

freshman buddy: freshman at CMU but also from my HS! And a bio major! It's only his second month here and CMU has successfully converted him into an insomniac. Also, he gives me his blocks/buys me coffee in the mornings --> favorite freshman :)