Glo

Fall Travel Madness?!

2008-12-25T17:20:00.003-05:00

Going to medical school interviews, attending scientific conferences, visiting friends, watching crew races, and going home for the holidays had me hopping around all across the country this past fall. On top of that, I was still enrolled as a full-time college student. I can now say, without exaggeration (but to borrow a line from my favorite flash animated Frenchman), that "I am le tired!!!" Here's what went down over the past 4 months--and what happened in its wake.

Left for Baltimore 8/26
Retreat #1 8/27-8/29
Retreat #2 9/2-9/3
Nashville, TN 9/4-9/5
(meanwhile school started on 9/4...)
Biophysics retreat 9/12-9/13
Norcal 9/18-9/21
San Diego, CA 9/21-9/22
Hanover, NH 9/24-9/25
New Haven, CT 9/25-9/26
Boston, MA 9/28-9/29
Carbondale, IL 10/4-10/7
Holmdel, NJ 10/11-10/12
NYC 10/13
Philadelphia, PA 10/23-10/26
Ann Arbor, MI 11/13-11/14
Norcal 11/21-11/30
NYC 12/11
Returned to Norcal 12/16
LA 12/19

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TRAVEL SUMMARY

Total air mileage: enough for 2 free round-trip tickets
Total costs (in US$): enough for a new arm and leg (in Korean won)
Most significant sacrifice: sleep
Least significant sacrifice: skipping tons of class
Water bottles confiscated: 2
Times "randomly searched" at security: 0 (Asian girls have a natural immunity... cuteness! ^_^! teehee)
Times a Middle Easterner in front of me "randomly searched": 2 (sigh...)
Delayed flights: >5
Favorite airport amenity: free wifi
Least favorite airport amenity: boingo wireless wifi
New friendships: 50
New friends I plan to stay in contact with: 0.5
Sanity: fragilely intact
Final thoughts: would do it all over again

I Are a Lightweight!

2008-05-18T23:08:00.005-05:00

So yesterday, I went wine tasting in Napa Valley with my parents.

[NOTE: Napa Valley is in Northern California and is north of the San Francisco Bay (San Jose/Cupertino, where I'm from, is on the south side). There are several well known wineries in the Napa area. Napa is a famous wine-producing area and is, without exaggeration, the Bordeaux of the United States.]

Ironically, it was because I was with my parents that I drank with less self-constraint than usual because I know my folks have my back. Napa Valley in a nutshell: private wine tasting tour + parents in tow = all-you-can-drink for yours truly!

We arrived at the Beringer Vineyard winery and started chugging tasting at 11 AM. By noontime, after an hour of double fisting delicate swirling and sipping, I felt pretty good.

At some point, I had a conversation that went something like this:

Me: I'm tired...
Parents: ???
Me: ???
Parents: ... Are you drunk?
Me: ???

Best. Buzz. Ever.

I'll Have Two Orders of Chicken Breasts...

2008-04-20T11:32:00.005-05:00

So last night I dreamt about celebrating my birthday at Hooters, which reminded me of the time I ate at Hooters with my family when I was like 12. Try to picture a dorky Asian family with two pre-pubescent kids chowing at a Hooters. You can't tell me that's not awkward.

On a related note, it was totally my idea. And I <3 my family.

Real CNN.com Front Page Stories (the 2/19/08 edition)

2008-02-19T19:04:00.006-05:00

"Hungry moose go yard-to-yard for food"
"Pink 'Hello Kitty' gun shoots real bullets"
"Lindsay Lohan nude pics emulate Monroe's"

Dear CNN:

.... Are you for real? Hungry moose? Pink 'Hello Kitty' guns? Lindsay Lohan nude? I don't visit CNN.com to read about this kind of crap--that's what that one site by that Perez dude is for.

I'm sure that in your own defense, you'd have some lame excuse about how today is a slow news day... but regardless, a front page story about hungry moose is a ridiculous new low, even for you guys. You folks at CNN really need to stop passing off this entertainment b.s. as legit news if you want to salvage your reputability as a premier (hah) news source. Does anyone there still care?

Sincerely,
Me

P.S. I'm switching to BBC as my browser homepage and so should you.
P.P.S. While you're at it, consider running this headline: "Glo gets munchies, raids neighbor's fridge; neighbor 'sue's (pun intended)".... I came up with this one myself! Go me.

Very Random Life Update

2008-01-24T01:26:00.001-05:00

Remember xanga, the really popular blogging site that EVERYONE used back in the day (I'm talking middle school/high school, early 2000's)?

I just came across an old account I made with Debra and can't stop LOLing. It's so ridiculous. The site was an inside joke between the two of us where we spoofed how Asian girls typed on AIM or on their blogs (e.g. haRoOO!!! wUtZzz uPZ?!) and Asian girl screennames (i.e. random combinations of words like "sweet," "angel," "baby," "cutie," etc).

Remember when life used to be fun? I miss those days.

We were so lame: http://www.xanga.com/LiLsEkSyaZnChYnKKyOoTeAnGeLBbY

I guess I just want to draw attention to the url of that xanga site. The site itself is missing a lot of its old charm (i.e. the pictures are all gone, and some entries are deleted). I can't edit it either cuz I forgot the password. I could swear it was something like "luvchinafob" or something equally awesome though.

***************************************

Last week I went to get my hair re-straightened and trimmed. The straightening went fine (except that it took 5 hours! and that the chemicals smelled! and despite having washed my hair several times since, I think I can still smell the chemicals if I tried really hard). After the straightening was done, I had to get my hair trimmed. I hadn't gotten a hair cut in awhile so my hair was kind of long. It definitely went more than halfway down my back. My mom likes the long hair, so she's like, you should keep it long. And so I'm like, okay sure. So I told the person who was doing my hair to cut two inches off the bottom, and no more than that, because I want to keep my hair long.

And guess what? She cut off a full five inches. wth? I guess five is the new two?

"Stand back little girl...."

2007-10-13T21:10:00.001-05:00

"...and be careful, or else one of the surgical techs might run into you."
-OR nurse

Last week I watched a live, open heart surgery. It was awesome.

There were a bunch of people in the operating room (OR) for this one patient: 3 nurses, 1 anesthesiologist, 3 surgical techs, and 1 surgeon. All of them were laid back and cool. There was country playing in the background.

Trays of surgical instruments were wheeled in and machines were turned on. As soon as the head surgeon gave the go-ahead, the surgical techs began carving away at the patient. And by carving, I mean actually carving. The tech working on the chest area used a scalpel to make a long incision through skin right above the area where the heart is. Then he used something similar to a soldering tool (basically like a hot burning knife) to refine the incision. I was right up next to the action, and could smell the burning flesh really well. Once the incision was perfected, the tech used what was essentially a power saw to slice the patient's sternum in half, which allowed the ribcage to be opened up. There was blood everywhere at this point. After more cutting and clearing, the heart was in plain view... surprisingly, the heart was beige-ish in color?!?! Confused. Thought they were supposed to be red.

So at this point, the surgeon came in and did his thing. His team hooked up the patient to the heart-lung machine so that they could induce the heart to stop beating while they worked on it. Then the surgeon put a graft of a blood vessel onto the patient's blocked coronary artery to divert blood flow such that it would no longer be obstructed. The grafting involved a lot of stitching between blood vessels and the heart.

After that the surgical team took the patient off the heart-lung machine and sewed up his totally exposed chest. The entire procedure took only 3 hours to complete.

I was pretty tired at the end of this, and mind you all I did was watch. The surgical team finished cleaning up the OR and went off to start on another case. They are amazing.

***************************************************

So watching the surgery was cool. What else is new...

This semester's almost half over. I'm taking an intermediate physics course about wave phenomena, which covers Fourier analysis. On the one hand, it is ridiculously cool to learn about teh physical theories behind how X-ray crystallography works, but the course is also frustrating because it is so damn hard. If you took General Physics and thought that was hard, well... that course has nothing on this one. Overall though, I am glad I'm taking it. I must be a masochist. I'm also taking a Theatre & Film course taught by John Astin (he was Gomez in the original Addams Family, and he is father of Sean Astin, who starred in Rudy *best sports movie ever* and was in LOTR). My other courses are okay/interesting as well.

So, the weather is finally cooling down and I am already looking forward to the snow! Note to self this winter: DO NOT skateboard in the snow and/or anything similarly stupid and risk re-fracturing the bum ankle. You know better (or do you?)

What's up ahead
-staying in Baltimore for Thanksgiving
-12/18: last final, leave for Cali that afternoon!
-Japan and Taiwan with the fam over christmas break
-possible SoCal trip in January?
-1/25: return to Baltimore

mid-summer update

2007-07-21T11:56:00.000-05:00

Actual CNN homepage headline: "Polyps removed from Bush's colon"

TMI TMI TMI!!!!!

...and plus, who actually cares?

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Anywho, summer has been interesting.

Went to Germany and France right after spring semester finals. Lots of fun (and ridiculously good beer).

I'm at Hopkins for the summer doing lab stuff. Dabbled a little in X-ray crystallography, and managed to solve a crystal structure *does a little dance*. It wasn't too difficult since I had a model of a similar protein to build off of, but it was still cool nonetheless. I spend a lot of time scratching my head trying to understand everything that goes on, and that's the beauty of labwork. I am such a geek.

I am excited for the Warped Tour next week, and then going home in August!

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Also, I recently discovered www.bash.org and... omg my life is now over. that has got to be the funniest geek humor site ever.

Back at The Hop.

2007-01-21T21:24:00.000-05:00

Winter break at home was awesome. I <3 eating, chilling, my family and my dog!! Going to Reno (snow) and LA (beaches) was cool too. So was catching up with people...

There were a lot of people surfing at 9 AM at Santa Monica Beach.

Phil at Santa Monica Beach. Someone wrote 'penis' on his chair. And it case you didn't know where it was... he's pointing at it...

Malibu is gorgeous. Even in the middle of winter.

So I got back to Baltimore last Wednesday to give myself plenty of time to settle in and play before school starts tomorrow. I visited DC/Georgetown on Thursday, and went snowboarding on Friday.

Snowboaring noobs:

Yours truly.

Dave.

Highlights of the snowboarding trip:
-Butt sore-age
-Knee bruises
-Shin bruises??!?! god knows why
-"Pennsylvania radio sucks" (agreed.)
-Cracker Barrel!!! Southern, home-style comfort food restaurant chain. Had it for the first time and it's good. I can't believe I didn't even know this restaurant existed.

So, I'm back at THE HOP and ready for school to start (so I can get out of here for Spring Break. Cali, bitches!!! No wait... I live there.)

And last but not least.... FINALLY, there is snow in Baltimore!!!! This is the view from my desk :o)

T Minus 10 Days....

2006-12-09T19:06:00.000-05:00

3 final exams to take and I am ready to be shipped home for Christmas! I am currently in the library not studying for finals because I am distracted and feeling sort of ADD... which is bad... but I'll be okay.

Anyway, last night a friend of mine hooked me up with a bottle of 190 Proof Everclear. This morning I looked up mixed drink recipes for Everclear online and I found out that it was illegal to sell 190 Proof Everclear in several states, including California!!! HAHAHA Maryland owns.

Things I am looking forward to:
-biochem final on monday
-biomolecular dynamics final on thursday
-orgo final the following monday
-flying home at the crack of dawn the day after the orgo final
-chilling at home
-roadtripping to socal in january
-flying back to school a week early on 1/16
-snowboarding in pennsylvania 1/18-19?
-nyc day trip?
-SPRING SEMESTER STARTS 1/22/07 WOOOOT
-and much much later... europe with the suitemates and co the week after spring semester finals! =D

Meanwhile, time to "study" and continue thinking happy thoughts...

"Pelosi Vows to Clean House"

2006-11-27T14:50:00.000-05:00

That was an actual headline I saw on CNN's homepage just now. Very clever.... who's the man behind this??

It's Possible to Make Shakespeare Fun

2006-09-11T21:01:00.000-05:00

http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/flash/romjul.php

So I'm taking a writing course this semester on Othello, and I'm reading the first few scenes of that Shakespeare play and then I randomly remember when I read Romeo & Juliet my freshman year of high school and a classmate told me about this hilarious flash movie called the "l33t version of romeo + juliet".... Anyway, I just watched it again... and it was hilarious!!! (disclaimer: it's only funny if you are familiar with Shakespeare's version of Romeo & Juliet) It's kind of sad that I still find that amusing, but if you don't, then you are most def a un-l33t n00b and I kindly request that you go back in time to 1985 and stay there.

p.s. that is one of the very few flash movies i've ever watched, i swear :) okay, homestarrunner is kind of funny too.

Where Fun Goes to Die...

2006-09-06T21:28:00.001-05:00

Blazing with Vik and strangers in some stranger's apartment after the Beta party on Monday night was the highlight of my past week..... which is kind of sad. I feel dumber already.

I can't believe classes start tomorrow, welcome week was hella fun. But hey, who says biochemistry and orgo aren't fun. We will make it fun.

Me = Pwnt

2006-07-30T16:52:00.001-05:00

I just got my first ever jury summons from the CA Superior Court. Welcome to the adult world, Gloria.

I Just Wanna Live While I'm Alive (It's My Life)

2006-06-24T18:43:00.001-05:00

Since it's been brought to my attention that I've been somewhat ambiguous about what exactly I am doing this summer here at the lovely Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, I shall let the world know.

A typical weekday:

7:15 AM wake up
7:16 AM get out of bed
7:20 AM finish using the bathroom
7:30 AM "make" breakfast (i.e. pour cereal into a bowl. add milk.)
7:31 AM eat said breakfast
7:32 AM turn on CNN/MSNBC, eat and watch TV simultaneously
7:50 AM refill cereal (it always runs out before the milk, ALWAYS)
8:00 AM enjoy the last bits of Lucky Charm-y goodness
8:05 AM think about what to wear
8:05.01 AM get dressed
8:10 AM check email
8:15 AM prepare a PB+J sandwich for lunch
8:20 AM pack the snacks I am in the mood for that day
8:25 AM leave my apartment, ready to take on the day
8:30 AM arrive at the biophysics lab in Jenkins Hall
8:35 AM drop my stuff off on my desk, begin doing lab stuff
(lab stuff consists of a lot of different things that I won't really get into here... it is amazing is all I have to say. the grad students are awesome, especially the one I interact with most directly... and the lab members use experimental technology such as x-ray crystallography, nmr, atf, and etc to study protein structure and techniques such as PCR, mutagenesis, etc to make the proteins to study. basically it's only been four weeks and I've already learned a ton)
11:30 AM leave the lab for my Linear Algebra class
11:35 AM arrive at my Linear Algebra class at Ames Hall
11:40 AM in class, eat the lunch I packed this morning
12:00 PM take the daily quiz for the class
12:20 PM time's up for the quiz
12:21 PM lecture begins
1:30 PM short break in class, get coffee at Jazzman's
1:45 PM class resumes
2:30 PM class lets out
2:35 PM return to the lab
2:40 PM resume doing lab stuff
5-6:00 PM call it a day at the lab
6:00 PM return to my apartment
6:05 PM "make" dinner (i.e. microwave a frozen meal) or head to Subway for a finer dining option

I am so boring.

Greetings from Baltimore (hon!)

2006-06-15T18:51:00.000-05:00

Seeing this 2x2 matrix in my Linear Algebra class makes me want to dance. Well, if not dance, then bust out singing to ABBA's "Dancing Queen." The class needs some excitement. Don't get me wrong, the professor is great, the material is interesting and challenging, but all that packed into two and a half hour lectures 4 days a week... it's a bit much. The class needs a little... how do you say... "YOOOOOU can dance, yoooou can jiiive, having the time of your life... see that girl, watch that scene, dig in the dancing queeeeen..."

So I Figured Out the Meaning of Life...

2006-06-10T22:59:00.001-05:00

I turned on the shower this morning and waited a short while, like usual, for the water to warm up. Wanting to get the shower over with as quickly as possible, I stepped in impatiently and stood to the side for a moment. The water shooting out of the showerhead was still ice cold, but being the impatient person that I am, I decided to just go ahead and start rinsing off, counting on the water to warm up anytime within the next few seconds to compensate for that short period of chilliness. BRrrrrr. After 3 seconds the water still showed no signs of heating up, and since I was now drenched in cold water I now decided to speed through my shower. Rinse, lather, and... don't repeat. I finished showering in record time. And then I reached over and tried to turn off the hot water, but the knob wouldn't budge. durrrr........ so it turns out I completely forgot to turn on the hot water to begin with.

Conclusion: If you want warm water, make sure you turn it on. That is actually quite an important step in getting that said water and its importance should not be overlooked.

Also, this begs the question of what the best way to go about showering is? What do people usually do? Do you step into the shower while you wait for the water to heat up, or do you wait by the side? Do you stick your hand in there every so often to check the water temperature? Is there a norm for this?

Too bad no one ever talks about this kind of stuff (I wonder why... I seem to find it quite interesting) so I'll never know what you people do.

And that also goes for stuff like, which pant leg do you put on first? How many sheets of toilet paper do you use for each wipe? Do you have an order in which you brush your teeth? What kind of food makes you gaseous? How do you shave your legs? Do you ever mentally try to prevent yourself from sneezing when you feel a sneeze coming up? Are we, as human beings, really all that different? Does anyone else think about dumb rhetorical questions like these? If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around, does it make a sound? If so, how many decibels?

New York 5/21/06 to 5/24/06

2006-06-04T17:50:00.000-05:00

At the park next to Stuyvesant High School.

Times Square.

What's YOUR Root?

2006-06-02T19:57:00.001-05:00

I really like the movie "But I'm a Cheerleader." And also "The Royal Tenenbaums." Plus kooky/dumb movies like "Office Space" and "Zoolander" and "Eurotrip." At the moment I'm obsessed with "But I'm a Cheerleader" which features a hilarious performance by an out-of-drag RuPaul. Plus it has a bunch of other hilarious moments too, so all in all it's a fantastic movie (according to me).

The "But I'm a Cheerleader" soundtrack is superb as well. Listen to Tattle Tale's "Glass Vase Cello Case"... if that doesn't make your heart melt, I don't know what will...

Other songs I can't get enough of at the moment:

Neutral Milk Hotel "In the Aeroplane Over the Sea"
The Arcade Fire "Crown of Love"
Rachael Yamagata "Worn Me Down"
Tegan and Sara "So Jealous"
Ted Leo and the Pharmacists "Biomusicology"
Ben Folds and Rufus Wainwright "Careless Whisper"
... and everyone else's current favorite song, Daniel Powter "Bad Day"

I've been living on my own for about a week now (sort of... minus the 4 days Vicki slept over) and it's been fun!! I have to do my own cooking, cleaning, garbage disposing, and etc. The cooking has been alright... for the most part, most of my meals consisted of easy to make things like PB+J, mac and cheese, instant noodles, leftover Chinese fast food from Oriental Express... and those meals were wholesomely supplemented with snacks like pretzels, yogurt, crackers with dip, ice cream, poptarts, and etc. I did make french toast once, and I also cooked up a "real" entree for dinner a few nights ago featuring rice-a-roni topped with fried catfish and cooked broccoli (it was a collaborative effort). Unfortunately, I am still burnt out from that cooking experience and am still too lazy to cook up another real meal anytime soon. In the meantime, I will be living off my stash of frozen entrees, lean pockets, and instant noodles. And that is reason #223984 why I can't wait to go home! I may be 19, but I still like to be babied by the mother unit.

So this week I started doing research in a biophysics lab on campus. It's been interesting so far.... I wonder how this experience will play out!

Bang a Xanga

2006-05-25T18:19:00.001-05:00

Heyyy, so this is my first time using Blogger. I've used xanga since 7th grade and wrote in it occasionally, but I guess I recently decided it was time for me to switch to a less fruity online blog. Enter Blogger. Ta da. Wooteh.

I don't really know why I feel compelled to blog about my life online. For the most part, I keep a lot of things to myself, and I am naturally sort of a private, shy person. Unless you happen to know me, in which case you know that I am at times talkative and sometimes even goofy or bitchy or excessively sarcastic. A lot of stuff goes through my head at any given time, but my facial expression can be blank, which for some reason, a lot of people think looks mean?!? I don't mean to be mean. I am actually nice. haha. I guess the main reason I am keeping a journal is because it is a sort of catharsis for me to ramble about certain things. So you're thinking, glo, you're a lame-o, but it's okay, I know I am!! And also it's probably because my upbringing in California is so different from what I'm experiencing here in Baltimore, Maryland. I can't really say that one place is better than the other, because these two places are so different that they cannot be compared. I still love California to death, but being on the east coast is an interesting experience as well. I would highly recommend Californians to experience living on the east coast and vice versa. How else would you realize that no one outside Norcal uses "hella" every other sentence (or that people from Norcal actually say "hella" all the freakin time) or people from Boston say "wicked" and that milk pronounced "melk" sounds funny to some people and not others? Or how suburban houses on the east coast don't have fences, while those in California do? (That is a rough generalization). I guess one "purpose" of this blog is for me to talk about how my life here is different from before.

So about me, I'm from San Jose in northern California. I grew up in a suburban area right in the middle of Silicon Valley, just an hour southeast of San Francisco, in an area where companies like Google, Apple, HP, and etc have their headquarters. A lot of the people I know there have at least one family member working in high tech--yea, it kind of is a nerdy place. I had a pretty normal upbringing consisting of participation in lots of team sports, music lessons, family vacations, video games, summer camps, camping trips, and stuff like that. Typical suburban kid stuff, I think.

Fast forward to now... I just finished my freshman year of college a little over a week ago. First semester was okay, I got a feel for Johns Hopkins and the wonderful city of Baltimore (ha), didn't study but still passed all my classes anyway (for that first semester, our transcripts only show whether you passed or failed each class). So chill. That will probably end up being my favorite semester of college. This previous semester marked my transition into a full-time nerd. Gotta do what you gotta do.

On Wednesday I moved most of my stuff into the single bedroom apartment I am leasing for the summer. With help from Vik and Annie, it only took four trips going between the apartment and my dorm room. The apartment is a nice little place with its own bathroom and kitchen, and the best part is that it's got a really convenient location right across the street from the school library... it's closer to campus than my freshman year dorm.

So after the moving, I went on a weeklong trip to Rockville and New York City! I visited Annie's house in Rockville, Maryland (a suburb or Washington, DC) and stayed there for a few days. Basically we just shopped, walked around DC for a day, and ate a ton of food. So Rockville is pretty cool and that adventure was fun. Then Julie joined us as we took the shady Chinatown bus up to New York City to stay at Nina's house in Queens for a few nights. Basically, we spent most of our time shopping in Manhattan (midtown and downtown) while sightseeing on our way between retail stores. We went to Chinatown, Wall St, Ground Zero, the Empire State Building, 5th Avenue, Central Park, and some other places. The food was superb as well. The trip was really fun. Last night (Wednesday), Annie, Julie, and I left Manhattan and I got back to my apartment in Baltimore at around 11 pm. It was actually kind of scary taking a cab alone for 30 minutes from the bus stop back to Hopkins through the Baltimore ghetto at that hour, but I survived. I guess you haven't lived until you risk your life like that.

Today, Thursday, I spent the day settling into my apartment. My stuff was still in suitcases and boxes, and the apartment itself was left very bare when I got here, so I did some light cleaning. Then I went grocery shopping by myself for myself for the first time ever. I felt like I didn't really get much, but still managed to buy 55 bucks worth of food, all of which I carried in 4 heavy bags for a very long 15 minute walk back to the apartment. I spent the rest of the day unpacking my stuff and thinking of what else I need to buy in order to survive living on my own. It dawned on me at one point that I was doing things that mothers do..... holy crap, I am becoming domestic! What in the world! It was actually kind of gosh darn boring. I can't imagine what it's like to be a mom and have to take care of an entire family... *barf*.

I'm gonna bum around here for the next few days over Memorial Day weekend, and then my summer classes at Hopkins start next Tuesday the 30th and run until August 4th. I am flying back to San Jose on August 5th!!

FRESHMAN YEAR OF COLLEGE IN A NUTSHELL:
-I took a class, Intro to Fiction and Poetry, and hated it
-I was on the crew team! I rowed in the bow seat (port) in an 8 in a 5000M race... but the 4:30 AM practices were brutal (check this out: http://hopkinssports.cstv.com/sports/m-crew/recaps/101905aab.html find my name!)
-Friday nights were fun during first semester, got accustomed to a little game called beer pong
-Got to know the school library pretty well... incredibly well.
-Enjoyed Baltimore. The inner harbor, downtown, Towson Town Center.... Baltimore's not all bad