it ain't my birthday but i got my name on the cake.

Whaaaaaat this weekend was so ridiculous. I am still sleep deprived because of it.

Friday was the NO PANTS PARTAY. I had one of my emotional freakouts (argh) but dang! It was fun. I need to post pictures but I'm too tired to do that now - I'll have to do a pure picture update later. Besides, Kamna has all the good ones, as always.

Anyway, more house parties shall be thrown. We got several compliments on how fun it was, but I also had someone tell me that "everyone at that party got really sick or threw up." Well...maybe our next party will be moderation themed. NOT

Then Saturday Amber came into town. hi skuuuuuuuuuuuu! We caught up on the gossips over dinner. It's so nice to be able to walk a block to the square. Then we went to Tom and Jathin's House party. It was a zoo. If that many people had come to our place, our carpet would have been ruined for sure. Amber got tired early and went home, and Kamna and I tried to meet some first years. Then we decided it was a lost cause so we danced to "I'm on a boat" with Johnny in the living room....three person dance party? Because "I'm on a boat" did not attract any other awesome people, we knew for sure that it was a lost cause and decided to leave. (jk, jk) (not really.) Then we came home, heated up leftovers, and sat around chatting with Amber until 4am. Whoops. Did I mention that I was barely alive this whole day? I did not escape the plague of my own party.

And did we take a nice relaxing Sunday off? Oh no. Apparently Virgin Mobile throws a summer freefest every year, and it is actually literally free as in it costs zero dollars, so of course we went to Merriweather Post Pavilion, of Animal Collective album name fame, and saw soooooo many shows. And Red Bull parashooters, one of which was Richard Branson, all landing on the roof of the stage and spraying champagne everywhere. That man has fun. Anyway, we saw Jet, The Bravery, a little of The National, Weezer, half of Girl Talk, and most of Franz Ferdinand. The acoustics were great at the main pavilion stage. Weezer was a freaking blast. It was like seeing the last 10 years of my life flash by...while dancing like a crazy person. At Girl Talk, I wanted to be on stage, but at Weezer, it didn't matter. It felt more personal. It also felt like I should be playing Rock Band. Say it ain't soooooooooooo...

Then, tonight, Kamna's mom made us delicious Indian food and showed us acupuncture. The food was sooooo good. Nom nom nom. She's even taking us to class tomorrow! I think that means we don't have to leave as early. Woo hoo.

Other things happened over the weekend. Like Brandon leaving for Greenland. =(. I talked to him today, though, and he's made it as far as Denmark. Eek! I'm so nervous about his trip. It's too cold there for Texans.

On top of all this, I'm supposed to be studying. Right. Loading dose = concentration * volume of distribution / bioavailability. OH DANG did I retain something?? See parents, I do study. Sometimes. Maybe.

oh AND I stabbed myself in the eye on Saturday night with mascara, and I now have pink eye. WIN

snuggie

oh yes.

technology fail = life fail

We have a beautiful new building for class at Hopkins. It looks like the medical school of the future. However, it does not operate like the medical school of the future. Somehow they didn't think to test the videotaping technology, so my day yesterday went something like this:

9:30am: wake up. extremely pleased that i am still at home.
10am: dressed and ready to watch the first two lectures on my laptop
10:05am: suddenly very concerned about the absence of posted lectures
10:10am: gchatting with everyone online to figure out what's going on
10:15am: extremely frustrated that my stay-at-home plan is failing me
10:30am: go to safeway, buy brown sugar and vanilla
11am: bake a million cookies

Seriously. In my anger I baked soooooo many cookies. At least I didn't completely waste the day?

This is what it looks like if you actually go to class:

And that's the view I'll be seeing until they get their act together with the videotaping.

On the upside, living in my new house has been better than I could have hoped for. I will dedicate a post to my lovely house this weekend, after our first house party! It will be epic.

last days in Htown

Last Saturday Dad and Becky threw a barbeque! There was SO MUCH food. And the whole family was in town, which was so nice. It's super convienient to all live in the same state. I like that we don't have to leave Texas for visits.

Look how much Annabelle has grown! I feel like she just got here yesterday.

And so cute too.

My friends came to the BBQ as well. Shiner has a new beer called Smokehouse? It was good, and it was jawesome to see them. I hope everyone stays in Houston for the time being, it makes it a lot easier to catch up when I'm back. Guys, plz to modify your life plans around what's convienient for me. Although we were missing some people like Saunders & Tim. Lame! Tim said the rollercoasters he was riding were more fun than the BBQ, but this must be a lie. Also, he had not tried the boudin.

Anyway I spent that night downtown with friends, and then came back on Sunday for two days of errands and shopping and family time. Tuesday night we went to an Astros game! Hooray!

Unfortunately, the stros lost. This seems to be their thing lately. (lately?)

Blarg. The last two days before I left, I was sorta miserable. It's hard for me to come home and leave again. I get really nostalgic and weh weh weh. I just did not want to come back to school. Plus, I just got an email that they are going to start taking more attendence. WTF. I liked how it was!! I would write what my toast was at the end-of-first-year party was, but my father has warned me against slacker-type talk on my blog for fear of future job sneaks. Hey, job sneaks? I watched all the lectures online anywayz so back off.

This weekend I'm in Princeton/New York. Brandon is somewhere creating anerobic media while I update my blog. I pretty much live on the internet? His professor just walked into the office and said, "you're not Brandon!" Whoops.

I'm adding pictures for sad children to my webcomic list on the right. You should read it because it is extremely sad/funny, which is one of my favorite types of humor. A softer world falls under that heading as well.

I would consider this blog a total success if I could just get 1 more person hooked on webcomics. Bwahaha.

Quote from "rusty"* Briggs

"Obama throws like a girl. You know what Bush did really well? He could throw a first pitch. Remember after 9/11? He went to Yankee stadium and threw a strike. That's about all he did well."

*that's for you, James

memory

I had a great time this weekend. I wish I had taken a few pictures of everybody together. Ah, well.

I have a few very sense-based memories, and sometimes I'll smell something or feel something and I'm suddenly thrown right back into how I felt at that moment. Really hot, relentless sun beating down reminds me of walking to play tennis with Tim. Not playing the tennis, walking to the court. I'm half zoned out, half listening to Tim talk, spinning my racket and thinking about playing the game, half thinking about a sandwich since we always walked past jimmy john's to get there, thinking a little bit about what we'll be doing later but mostly just feeling the sun and the racket. Not wanting to be anywhere else or doing anything but exactly what I was doing.

I think that's pretty much my personal definition of happiness. Not wanting to be anywhere else or doing anything else. I really liked this article in the New York Times because he says it a thousand times more elegantly than I could:

"I suspect there is something inherently misguided and self-defeating and hopeless about any deliberate campaign to achieve happiness. Perhaps the reason we so often experience happiness only in hindsight, and that chasing it is such a fool’s errand, is that happiness isn’t a goal in itself but is only an aftereffect. It’s the consequence of having lived in the way that we’re supposed to — by which I don’t mean ethically correctly so much as just consciously, fully engaged in the business of living."

Emphasis mine. Anyway, I've been happy here (in Texas) and I guess what I've got to do is get a little more engaged in Baltimore. Avert my vision.

the beat is biology but what is the song?

sometimes i wonder how other people experience the world relative to how i experience it. actually, i wonder about that a lot. 

here is a petty example (really, really petty): can other people estimate time as well as i can? today i had a timer set for 20 minutes and i decided to get up after 10 and i checked and the time i got up was 9:48 on the timer, and that's pretty damn good. and i wasn't always this good with time, either. i remember one year when i basically discovered that i was very good at judging discrete chunks of time. maybe that's what helps me be on time to stuff so often. i have a very good sense of what time it is, how long something will take, and when i should leave for the next thing. maybe other people do not have this sense, or maybe they just do not care. ANYWAY enough with boring time talk. if only it were time-travel, instead.

i had a wart frozen yesterday and it's way, way more difficult to function without a left thumb than i thought. i can't open doors, wash my hair, hold my phone, type, or do a thousand other little things (ok, i can type just fine) because of the stupid thumb. i am highly displeased. i thought this would be an easier process. 

today i sunbathed without burning myself. this....this is cause for celebration. i am built to burn. that sounds cooler than it is. 

tonight we go dancing and i am SO EXCITED. all i want is a waltz. 

put on my blue suede shoes and i boarded the plane

I heard that song twice today. I also happen to secretly love that song, so I was super pleased. Way to go, day. (Also: suede is really hard to spell. I tried "suade" first.)

So it turns out thinking that I was maybe ready to go back to school was a load of BS. I do not want to go back to school. I like it here. The weather is ridiculous. My iphone is saying it's 97 degrees outside. I just ate a popsicle...sitting indoors. Yesssss.

Since I have been home I have

+slip and slided down a large hill, and flashed people not one but two ways
+been downtown 3 times (WTF??)
+hung out w/ the gatos & puppies
+had delicious beers
+seen voxtrot!
+had good food with the fam
+had more good food
+to clarify i have had mexican food, american chinese food, beef, and turkey. mmmm turkey, how did i live without you for 2 months?
+gotten an iphone (too hip for sku)
+seen people from the far away past
+and the much more recent past

Aaaand I can't think of a single bad thing about being here. Two stepping tomorrow? Texas Exes happy hour on Thursday? BBQ on Saturday? Yes plz.

I probably won't make it up to Austin, and that is sad, but it seems like most of the people I want to see are here. Howwww convienient for me.

delay due to TYPHOON reason

and that is why I'm still sitting in Taipei waiting for my flight at 12:14 am. (The above was written on a sign for EVA airlines. I wish I had my camera for documentation.)

Soooo I just tried to purchase food/water, but I have no Taiwanese money, no money exchangers are open, they don't take AmEx, and I don't want to use my Visa $25 gift card in case the phones in LA don't take AmEx either. Yar. I felt like a hobo, getting all this food and then being unable to pay. I also have all these baht just sitting around, now. I was rushed so quickly through Bangkok that I literally only stopped to pee. I did not even sit down in the waiting area.

I do not know where my next gate is. My ticket says one thing and the monitor says nothing. So I'm just waiting for a loudspeaker annoucement, wishing I had some liquid.

I must be tired, because this post is coming out more pathetically than it should. I got here. I will make my original flight to LA, despite the fact that it is delayed by 3 or so hours. I will still make my flight to Houston on Saturday - and that's the important part.

Good things:
+I got an aisle seat on the flight to Bangkok (I did have to pay for it, though...)
+and an emergency exit seat on the next, which meant limitless legroom! and they had movies too. and they fed me, and i felt like i had never been so hugnry in my life. like i said, in bangkok i had exactly 0 minutes to do anything
+ i have this sweet bag that's my carry-on that says "HAPPY VIRUS" on it. it's so cool that a security chick commented on it. yep, i have officially become asian.

....i've about run out.

Weird thing: I found out about this typhoon by reading a blog this morning in Chiang Mai. Tom's ex-roommate teaches English in Taiwan, and I saw her post, and I was like OH NO. I checked the Taiwan airport, but they said all my flights were on time, so I was like ??? Of course I get there and my noon flight is delayed until 10pm. The internets, both informative and not.

Before I forget, I had a real medical school moment - the first I've had in a long while - when we were talking about how much we skipped class/slept through it and I mentioned that in one of my classes in college a friend finally turned to me and asked me why I even came, since when I did show up I just ate a sandwich and then fell asleep. I told my friends the class was really interesting though, and they wanted to know which class, and I said "tumor biology! Cancer is really cool, actually." And I got a few sets of rolled eyes and an outright laugh. I forgot who I was with! It made me simaltaneously nostalgic for med sku and glad I've been away for a while. Haha.

OKAY I should probably go find out where my stupid gate is. Ugh. I am tired. I am going to get on this plane, find some free water, and then pass out.

UPDATE it is 1:45 am and we still have not left. They did this really funny trick where they put D8 on the monitor and then were like PSYCH! your gate is totally D9. I wanted to destroy them. There was a mass exodus to D9. Where we are all now sitting and staring at each other. I know there's a plane here....what on earth are we waiting for??

PS The reason I am updating this so much is because I have no reading material left. None. The shops are closed. I'm not counting my anatomy board review book. I'm not.

oh nos

it's my last day. i just did some amazing packing. i should get a medal or something. you have no idea. apparently i bought an entire bag's worth of gifts. i don't even know who they're all for. i'll sort it out when i get home.

tonight we are having a party. at least i think we are. it will come together later, i'm sure. then tomorrow i will have one last mango/passionfruit smoothie and leave chiang mai. sadness! =(

i'm really sad today is my last day to drive my motorbike around. i only have this one picture of my motorbike:


it's not even me on it! it's elena, looking happy and terrified. haha.

and it is not nearly as cool as this picture of my friends in a moto gang:

too bad, once again, that my camera is gone. oh well.

this post should include a discussion of how crazy it is to drive here, but i don't have time! so maybe when i get home i will try to describe the insanity.

anyway i think i'm going to go drive around a bit one last time. get some lunch, go to the zoo, go to this place that sells cool teas....a good day. then come back, shower, and get ready for dinner/drinks tonight!

to face mask or not to face mask

Study: Face masks seem to protect against flu

At first when I saw this article, I freaked out. I've been telling some of the people I know here that there is no real point in wearing these masks as a preventative measure in public.

Even though EVERBODY here does it. It's scary. It creeps me out. It's like I'm in a horror movie and the other shoe's going to drop any second.

But then I read the article, and they're talking about people who already *have* the flu wearing the masks to prevent transmission. Well, that makes total and complete sense. And I am vindicated by this line:

"It's still not clear whether healthy people who wear face masks in public can prevent themselves from getting the flu."

The point is that yes, if someone is sick and coughing and you're in their immediate vicinity, it will help. And it will help prevent a coughing person from spreading fine virus-filled droplets that hang in the air and can be inhaled. But it's not really going to do much in wide open spaces, or even in movie theatres, if there's nobody sick around. It's more important to wash your hands. Viruses are tough little boogers and can stick around on surfaces for a while. You touch the surface, you touch your face...SWINEFLU2009.

Maybe all of this is just me trying to make myself feel better. I had an upper respiratory tract illness a few weeks ago, complete with cough, and people treated me as though I had the plague. I have never been self-conscious about coughing before, but I would get actual dirty looks if I had the gall to cough in public. One time, I was standing in line at the movie theatre for Harry Potter, and I coughed, and the guy behind us in line literally ran away from me. He left the line and bolted. Elena immediately doubled over laughing and as we looked over at the guy, he started laughing too. The paranoia - it's intense!

I look forward to coughing wherever I please when I return to the States.

tom wolfe = not my best friend

Here's the thing. I can't decide if I hate Tom Wolfe, hate his writing, hate his characters, or hate what he has to say about the world we live in.

I first read I am Charlotte Simmons. Blah! I really hated it. I hated it for two main reasons - I strongly dislike his prose. There is just something about it that drives me batty. He's hyperbolic all the time. He sounds so full of himself. And any time he comes near sex he makes me nauseous. I mean, "loamy loins"? Really? And his main character - ugh. Okay, I understand how a girl from a small town could show up at a large university and completely lose her moral compass. But she is just so utterly defeated that I ended up despising her. I guess what I'm saying is that she turns out to be very, very weak, which made me nauseous. Again.

In the end, in my opinion, she's totally unlikeable, and, in my opinion, very one dimensional. I suppose the book is meant to "capture the college experience" but it's so, so bad. It doesn't even come close. Every character is a cliche. The dumb jock, the womanizing frat boy. Nothing special here at all. And it's so long! 676 pages of crap.

Obviously, I really disliked this book. Most reviewers did too.

Anyway I just read The Bonfire of the Vanities. I still hate his prose. The plot is better here - but probably only because he doesn't attempt a deep study of just one character. It's about Wall Street in the 80s, racial tensions, vanity & ego. He does well with vanity and ego, either because that's really what he considers to be his characters' major flaw, or because he is himself full of it. I gather that when it was published it was timely and well-received, a scathing upbraiding of the behind-the-scenes machinations of NYC. Turns out I still don't much care for his writing. Everyone's so predictable, unlikeable, again, weak.

So I shall not be reading any more of Mr. Wolfe's work. Not unless I decide to give The Right Stuff (about the Mercury 7 astronauts) a chance. It's nonfiction, so it could be better. And I do like astronauts.

And I do agree with him about at least one thing: NASA needs money. And to get money, it needs a visionary. Even here I find his prose grating, but when I got to the end I agreed with what he was saying and I suppose that is what counts.

it's the final countdowwwn

Yes! Youtube has a short clip of the snake announcer from the show we saw! Glory be.



So funny.

mae rim & my last sunday walking street.

Yesterday I played with four month old baby tigers! Pictures to come sometime in the next few months - they're on Adam's camera but he has no way to upload them until he gets back to the UK.
Anyway, they were so cute. They run floppily, like awkward teenagers. Like Simba in the Lion King even though (obviously) he was a lion, not a tiger.

Two of the babies were asleep but one was super playful and we spent the whole time playing tug of war with a stick with him. He made a funny growling noise from his throat while we were tussling. No squeaking like Leo and Buster, unfortunately.

However! I am still allergic to tigers! They are cats, after all. I itched the whole way home.

I saw a tiger taking a bath, too. Just chilling in a big pool of water. I also saw a full-size tiger peeing. Woah. Adam was all "oh, he's just dripping." Right.

Then we went to a snake show. Predictably, they threw a rope at me after talking about jumping snakes and predictably, I got the hell out of the way of the "snake." Sigh.

But by far the best part of the show was the ridiculous announcer dude. Adam and I were so tickled that we were giggling throughout the entire show. He had "the final countdown" on loop in the background, and would just mutter into the microphone things like "you can kiss snake. if you kiss snake, it kiss you! you can go to the DOCTOR!" in a rapid monotone. He must have said "you can go to the DOCTOR" 80 times. We could. not. stop. laughing. I'm not sure if Adam got a video in which you can hear him, but I really hope so.

In the back of the snake farm they had lots of cages with more snakes and for some reason lots of birds as well? One of the birds said hello to me in Thai. It scared the crap out of me. I thought it was some guy behind the cage, but no. It was this tiny bird. I guess it was a male, because it said "sawadee kop" (phonetic-ish spelling). Girls say kaaaaa. Yes, with that many a's.

Yes, I'm joking. I know that he person who trained the bird was male, not the bird itself. =p. Not joking about the kaaaaa that women do, though. At first I thought everyone was sort of mocking me? Or something? (self-centered reasoning, oh yes) But it turns out "kaaaah" is the polite ending to basically everything you say ever. I get emails from people in my office that say "Please return this key to me when you return United States kah." Okay kah.

Today Adam and I went to see Public Enemies before he left for a week to do work in some southern district. Since I leave on Friday, I won't see him again. Lame! But the movie was enjoyable. After that, since it was sunny, I rushed home to sunbathe. For a place that's so consistently warm, I've had trouble trying to even my tan lines out (it has a point - wearing a strapless dress to a wedding) because it's the rainy season and always slightly cloudy. Today was perfect. It was like Texas. I know I'm weird about loving insane heat. I know.

This post is getting too long. Tomorrow, left leg adventures and my last stroll down the walking street.