california is ridiculous. where else do you get 55 degree, cloud-free skies in the dead of winter? one word: california. i love it here.
my telephone discussion with mater wu veered towards where i am going to apply for my phd. she wants me to go to harvard. it's close to home, it's where brother wu will be studying, and if all goes as it has, my scores and grades are more than well above the average of past acceptees.
last but not least, there is the the sacrosanct infallibility of the institution that many asians have come to admire and experience. there is something almost ecclesiastical about that institution, as it has come to represent the academic stronghold of this nation. people hold it in an almost holy regard.
i pondered. and then it struck me.
i don't want to go there.
i don't really give a monkey's fig anymore about the name of the institution i attend. and i don't care if it makes me seem badass. i want to be someplace where i'll be happy, where there'll be beaches to meander upon, woods to walk within, and a climate that suits my disposition. and it's not going to be in cambridge, mass purely for the name. i think i want to stay around here. the grind of the east coast, the frigidity of the people, the rush will all annihilate me. if i go back there, after being here, it'll kill me. especially for a 6 year phd. nah.. i'm gonna stay round here. afterall, i'm a californian now.
a week from today, my bone marrow donation procedure flies. i'll enter the hospital at 5:45 am with my two friends, undergo triaging, get put under, have my hip bone drilled a few times, and then emerge in the early afternoon. based on my condition, i may be kept overnight for observation, or i will be released into the care of my friends. i'm hoping for the former.
today, the recipient begins her incubation period and the chemotherapy. by the time next thursday arrives, all the bone marrow cells, red blood cells and white blood cells in her body will be completley innihilated. i have no reason to be scared. i'm healthy and alive. and yet i'm starting to get frightened. i've never really been in hospitals, except for a few experiences that left me in tears and everytime i go to ucsf, and i see those patients, i want to turn away. it kills me.
okay. so i admit it. i'm scared and being selfish. i don't want to hurt for days afterwards. i don't want to slip into the blackness knowing that i'll emerge three hours later in delirium. i don't want to cry if i find out my bone marrow doesn't work for her.
but i do want my friends to visit me. i'll be immobile at home for a while, tired, and weak. nothing would make me happier than to see you all. so if you want to come visit, tina will have my cell phone during the weekend. call her and come by. i'd appreciate it.
sigh..... paris me manque toujours... les baguettes, les paninis, les beaux hommes aux yeux gris...
i frequently mention goonley in my blawg, not because he should be construed as being someone important or cool, but because i spent three weeks in europe with him. and when you end up spending that much time with a person in a place that holds a great deal of significance to you, you tend to remember a good lot o' memories.
like the time momo got mad at the peach lady in beijing. he thought she was cheating him out of a few cents and he ran off ranting. i'm not sure if he actually threw the peach at her, but i remember him throwing a peach down into her cart. or the time i called my other ceti partner "effeminate" and his face turned bright purple. or the black market software seller i befriended near tsing hua. she asked me to return and find her, and to this day i hope i can. she was almost a grandmother to me. or when ebu washed my clothing in costa rica after i got thrown off the horse and landed in cow poo. or the italian couple i ended up speaking to in french about china. or the south american couple we met in rome as we munched over pizza. the list goes on.
i guess the reason i am mentioning this is because i often read through my own entries, and find that there are consistent sightings of certain people in my stories. most of these people were not ones i thought i'd keep in touch with, and most of them have pulled through for me when i least expected it. i've been blessed that way, i suppose.
so as my surgery nears its date of next thursday and i feel myself getting progressively more nervous, i find that i'm not alone in this. i'm scared to go under, i'm scared to be in the hospital alone, i'm scared to wake up to find myself without someone. but that's not going to happen. i'm going to have my closest friends with me when i go under, and when i wake up. and when i spend the weekend after sick, immobile, and tired, there'll be people i love there, too. perhaps to listen to things i wouldn't have disclosed unless i was drugged up, to laugh at my babbling, or perhaps to feed me.
so i guess when people tell me that they think i'm so brave for doing this, eh, it's not really just me. it's for all my friends who've been supportive and have helped me do this. because without them, and without my family, i wouldn't have had the courage to do it at all.
just a shout out to my girls tina and jenny! happy birthday again to you girls =).
last night, we all rolled into wish, a bar on folsom, to wish the two a good birthday. unfortunately, my stomach has been acting up and i wasn't able to drink with the two. they seemed to make up for whatever alcohol i didn't have.
the funny part about the whole party was that the male-female ratio, for the first time ever since i've arrived in sf, was definitely in the favor of the females. i've heard many men complain about this, but i've never witnessed it until last night. i'd say that there were 6 - 7 men for every girl in the room. good for me, bad for the guys that i brought.
in any case, one of the female attendees and i ended up talking about relationships and what it was like dating in the city when lo and behold her friend (a member of the Y chromosome group) came walking over. uh, hello!
right. when i recovered from the oxygen deprivation in my head, i realized that there is something *extremely* attractive about men who can speak french fluently and who have a slight french accent in their english. the way they say "camembert" makes you drool. and it makes you want to kneel down and scream, "take me. you can have me!"
anyhow. i just felt like saying that. j'adore les hommes francais.
monkey for me.
poo on ber-ke-lee
for cancelling my class o' psychology.
happy year of the monkey!
all us rams are sad because our year is over. and what a great year it was. i moved. i finally got into school. i got a tan. what more could i want?
anyhow, the class at berkeley got cancelled. blasphemous!
pommeranian has called forth the literary muse:
p: hey
p: write in your blog
p: i command you
i didn't realize that my writing was so popular. perhaps i have become a vocal advocate for the angst of those in their twenties around the world. i speak my arbitrary thoughts. some people commiserate. some people tell me i'm cheesy and that i ought to tend to more important issues. whatever their opinions, i enjoy writing. it was a talent lost during my years at mit.
so the update on my life is thus: i'm going to take a biological psychology class at berkeley. i'm pretty excited about this, because i'm very fascinated in cognitive neuroscience, and because it might provide me a door through which to participate in berkeley's cutting edge research. it also means i'll get to see some friends more frequently. it does mean, however, that i'm dangerously nearing something i've left untouched for many years: medicine. i'll be studying endocrinology, the nervous systems, psychosomatic reactions. all stuff related to biology. if i keep going down this path, i might just have to apply to medical school after i get my phd. bad bad bad. i shouldn't tempt the preciousss....
i warned them not to give me alcohol. and they did not heed. last night, a few of us went to a bar in soma. i tagged along, more than happy to see shahma and mhao. but before we arrived, i warned warren-g and cohene to refrain from offering me alcohol. my blood tests had left me short of breath and easily tired. and i was not in the mood to exhibit callous behavior.
they didn't pay attention to my request. one drink later, i was falling all over the place. before my memory failed, i remember warren-g and shahma carrying me around. balance did not operate in my vocabulary. 20 minutes later, i was vomiting in the bathroom. 4 hours later, i had sobered up a bit, but i was still feeling dizzy. i have never heard such profanity emerging from my mouth. i woke this morning, completely hungover, went to brunch, and then slept until 3.
who knew that one drink could wreak such vile havoc on me? i haven't felt that sick since the time goonley and christophe and i finished off 3 bottles of wine between the three of us. and so i have made the decision. no alcohol before the bone marrow procedure. i'm going to stay clean.
and so tonight it was much milder. roomies and i had a girl's night out which consisted of food, tv, tons of giggling, and chatting. girly talk that i always felt i missed at mit, as all my friends were male. it's the first time i've ever really had a girl group with whom i meet regularly and with whom i can gossip and gush. it's nice. we discussed relationships. love. if it really exists. the most idealistic of us still believes there is a perfect guy. she's managed to emerge from her 24 years unscathed by cynicism and bitterness. i admire her for that. the rest of us, still hope, to varying degrees and have either abdicated our dreams or have modified that which we cling to.
where in the spectrum do i stand? sigh. it's hard to look back at myself and remember the naivete i used to possess, compared to the practical pessimism i do now. so i guess i have a new year's resolution. i'm going to fight hard to not give up on the idea of romanticism and love. sure, all that gushy stuff in movies is fabricated. somebody with too much time on their hands dreamed it into fruition. but the truth is that it couldn't have been created without the possibility of it being true and without the possibility of people buying into its validity. and among those people, i will be one.
thanks to my good friend goonley, i have arrived at my new home. be prepared for the deluge of random thoughts i am about to unleash upon ye all.
gauge 18 needle
i forgot to mention that i went to the hospital yesterday for my bone marrow check up. turns out that it's going to fly. i'm in perfect health! the whole thing, which included blood tests, chest x ray, ekg, etc., was pretty painless. all in all, it took 6 hours. now i don't mind blood tests. i'm actually fasicnated by medicine and needles. i usually watch the surgery show on tlc (maybe i should have gone med school?), and i love reading biology books for fun. trips to doctors are a feasting ground for my personal knowledge.
but yesterday's blood drawing was not fun. the hospital was to take 1 unit of my own blood (300 c.c.s) for my own autologous blood donation after the bone marrow procedure. this was in addition to the 150 c.c.'s they had already drawn. the problem was, that the needle they used almost made me bawl. i usually use a gauge 25 needle, which is tiny. you can barely see it. when she drew out the gauge 18 needle, my hands and feet turned cold. and then there was the news that it was going to take me 45 minutes to get one unit. which it did. i sat in the chair, clenching that damn rubber squeezy thing for 45 minutes. my blood simply did not want to flow. and while they moved the needles to and fro, i sometimes lost sensation in my hand. after they were done, i stood up and fell back. it was the oddest sensation. i cabbed it home to be sure, and then discovered that, after climbing two flights of stairs, i was out of breath and dizzy. my heart was pounding so loudly in my ears that i was sure i was faring no better than edgar allen poe's poor chap. and then i collapsed in the couch and sat for 6 hours.
so despite this dramatization, which it most definitely is, the whole experience only served to reinforce what i'm doing. my donor is going through far worse things than i did yesterday. she's indubitably had more blood drawn and given than i ever will, and climbing a flight of stairs for her probably feels the just as bad as it did for me yesterday. so despite some people advising me not to do it, i know that i'm doing the right thing. let's just hope it works.
the scent of san francisco
when goonley and i first visited san francisco, almost three years ago, we parked in haight and walked to my friend's apartment in the sunset. i remember thinking that there was a smell to the city, perhaps best described as a mixture of the sea, evergreen trees, and misty rain. when i was seeing sf boy and used to come visit, i would fondly take note of that smell when i woke each morning. it was part of what made sf so intoxicating to me.
the past few months, i've grown accustomed to the nuances of the city by the bay. everything had become so integral a part of my daily routine that i forgot how much i loved the little things here. but i went home for a month for the holidays, and when i arrived at my apartment yesterday, i suddenly took note of the air. it was the same earthy, sea salt-ridden smell i had forgotten. and when driving through the marina tonight, i took a look at the bay and suddenly realized again how fortunate i am to be living in such an amazing city. for a second, i felt as if i beheld the purest form of appreciation for life. it was sort of a momentary enlightenment.
this place just makes me happy.
those nasty hobbitses...
at the end of the 3.5 hour adventure that completed the tolkien saga, i felt as if i was ready to lurch into a heart attack. my hands were sweaty, i was exhausted from repeated tear dropping, and i experienced a palpable sadness that the journey was over. the fellowship had disbanded, and were never to see one another again. i felt the most miserable. i was never to see my beloved legolas again. i love that blond elf.
in any case, my stay on the east coast is coming to a sad end. i look forward to having my space again, work to complete, questions to answer, and roads on which to run. mmm.... sf.