i've decided to go on vacation from my blog for a while. if it so behooves me, i might even take it down.
of rcp.
today, i'm going to talk about obsessions.
they're a very common thing amongst many of my overeducated friends. they've all gotten where they are because they're overwhelmingly passionate about a cause, a creation, a goal. some are obsessed with the cure, rightfully so. others are obsessed with food, even more rightfully so.
i'm obsessed with no shortage of things.
for 6 years i had an obsession for boba. it was a hard battle. i'd drag myself down to the "grease pit" on hanover street in boston for some boba in snow, rain and heat. i tried all different flavors, different types of rainbow colored boba, the big ones, the little ones. boba from taiwan. boba from boston, new york, boba from mountainview's castro street. one time, a college buddy and i sat on a bench and checked out cars while we drank our bobas. it was a fond memory. we even made it from scratch.
i've developed an intolerance for boba. i can't eat it anymore, and so my obsession moved on to other things. i have a terrible habit of listening to songs over and over and over again, until people get so annoyed they command me not to control the stereo anymore, or until they come in and yell at me to change the song. those obsessions, though annoying, thankfully last only a few days. i went through a spinning obsession. i'd go three times a week and spin so hard i couldn't sit at my desk job upright for a few days. that was a masochistic obsession, although it did give me kick ass calves.
then there was the 11 hour swing marathon in october. yah that was an obsession.
lately my obsession has been medicine. i can't get it out of my mind. this week in phoenix, i've managed to watch discovery health and tlc for about 6 hours each day. during that time, i watch reality shows on residency life (yes i know it's edited), surgeries, reality e.r. shows. i find myself completely fixated as they babble on about coronary bypasses, severed arteries, as blood spurts everywhere, as the people scramble around in marooned-stained scrubs. i want to be there. in the thick of things, intebating, reviving, cutting, splicing.
this obsession is dangerous. i easily can obtain endless quantities of boba. or mp3 players conveniently repeat when i click them to do so. but medicine is another story. it's 7 years of preparation, and 2 years before that to even get into that preparation. i picked a sick obsession this time.
yah baby.
good news abound for taiwan.
as far as i am concerned, lien chan can take it and shove it. people don't want you in office, you turd! he's the most corrupt and selfish politician ever. he lost years ago and he rightfully lost again. people who are voting him into office don't realize the fate to which they would be condemning taiwan.
oooh. them fighting words.
phoenix at night smells like the temples in taiwan. i stood outside on my friends balcony last night for 30 minutes and sniffed the air. people walking by below were a little surprised to see a small asian girl sniffing the air like a dog. okay. so it was weird.
but it smells so good and so familiar. like hot sand cooling off in the evening air, musky incense that soaks into your clothing. mmm.
with the national elections nearing, people in taiwan are a little jittery. but i never expected this to happen.
the native taiwanese love chen sui bien. his wife was paralyzed by a bullet in an assassination attempt organized by his foes. they say every night, he carries her to bed himself and tends to her. she is always by his side in her wheelchair, a testament to the sacrifices the two of them, as well as many other mavericks, have made for his people. despite investigations, the kuomingtang-controlled police never caught the culprits. then, chen was later jailed. everyone knows the story of the poor rural, farm boy who speaks mandarin with a lopsided accent, and who has fought with passion, integrity and honesty to lead his people back to independence.
my friend in phoenix is a native taiwanese. his father and mine attended ntu together and have been friends for more than 30 years. he knows what it means to be taiwanese, as his parents are the "hardcore" taiwanese and raised him thusly. we were discussing the elections a few days ago, when i mentioned to him that i wasn't sure what it would mean for taiwan to be an independent, sovereign nation. afterall, culture isn't necessarily specific to the language, which is also spoken in fujian, and a legal declaration doesn't mean that taiwan will reclaim its heritage.
he nearly bit my head off. and then when he was done, he nearly bit my head off again.
perhaps rightly so. i've lived so comfortably in the states that i've forgotten why people fight for independence, and what heritage means. and then i read something like this and i'm reminded that freedom, whether it means being able to speak taiwanese in school or being able to know that you aren't a nation ruled by the kuomingtang or china, always comes at a high price and is worth the struggle. the right to know and be who you really are is a fight that transcends the language spoken or the a legal title.
i'm kind of embarassed that i forgot my roots. especially because my research focuses on this and i know that having a cultural identity is a crucial part of being who we are. and especially because my grandparents and parents always raised me to be aware of our culture and to appreciate what it means to be taiwanese. so this is an aimless post, but i just wanted to say that i'm glad chen sui bien is out there fighting for what he believes. it makes up for people like me who sometimes allow ourselves to be too complacent to fight for what we love.
maybe my age is finally getting to me. around 9:30 pm on the days that i have classes, i find myself growing really weary. by the time 10 rolls around, my eyes are drooping. back in the ole' days, i could get up at 6 am at mit, run a few laps around the track, and stay up studying till 1 am. lather, rinse, and repeat and i'd be fine (except for the occasional breakdown at 4 am.) now, 9 hours+ of sleep and i'm still struggling to stay awake. what's with it?
now that i've recovered fully from my surgery, i decided to start working out. ran a few miles this weekend in the ggp, and then started doing pilates. i think my body just isn't used to the exertion. i was, afterall, a lazy slob for a month. i sat around watching dvds on my laptop and sleeping in. now i'm trying to go into overdrive.
4 research projects, master's thesis, classes, teaching, working out, and volunteering. i think i have a full plate.
i made the mistake of downloading the dirty dancing havana nights soundtrack this past weekend. yes, two hours after i saw the movie. i also downloaded the movie. i don't need to take a quiz to know that i have slightly obsessive-compulsive tendencies. oh well =). such is the way of being asian. and such is the love i possess for diego. good lord. i really am obsessed. but he's soooooooooo puuurrrfect, my new love diego. just the way he says "haaaaah-llo" is the sexiest thing alive. i mean, really, can YOU roll your "r's" and "l's" that way?
okay. i'm going to shut up and go to sleep.
tomorrow, i'm off to phoenix to spend a week with a friend. i'm looking forward to the hot weather, learning how to drive stick, back massages, and lots of sleep and cooking. friends are the best.
to my existence now.
long live wesley krusher!
i got kidnapped friday night to go see dirty dancing havana nights. yes, by a girl. all the way to the theatre, after i had consumed a mojito too quickly, and after we had taken a few surreptitious puffs from a cigarette, i kept asking, "are we really going to do this?" there was a bit of a lag in my head from all the substances swirling around there, but we really did go do it. the movie was punctuated by frequently ill-placed giggles erupting deep from within me. i'm just not sane when i drink.
the movie isn't as atrocious as the reviews described it to be. diego luna is my new hero. he's up there with my love, orlando.
i tell you, there's something in diego that makes him beautiful. maybe the way he shyly giggles, or how he dances, or how sweet and hopeful he was. i've always thought that personality wins over looks. and diego definitely exemplifies this. i want a diego to myself. then i could salsa and rumba with him into the early hours of the morn.
in any case, the movie reminded me of all these interests i've been neglecting. i've been so consumed with this medical school decision, things going on with friends around me, that i've forgotten to throw myself into my passions. two of them being singing and dancing.
dancing, of course, was one of my first loves. two years ballet, three years jazz, and countless salsa, meringue, and swing lessons. swing. i *love* swing. and singing. i realized this weekend that i hadn't opened myself up to sing in over two months! nuts. i found an a capella group in sf for women. i'm going to be auditioning, if they'll have me. i can't believe i was so foolish. you spend so much time chasing what you think is the one solution to happiness and you forget that it resides in many places. eduh!
this good weather has given me a bout of prolific energy.
today i fixed my stereo. i'd like to say that i'm feeling quite good. it broke a few weeks ago when someone misplaced a cd in it, thus throwing off the cd turnshelf. i took the thing apart, layer by layer, saw the beautiful mosfets and diodes, and employed the standard engineering "isolate the problem and tackle it" methodology.
and by jove, i did it. and i feel badass. i mean, reall really badass. don't mess with me when i have a screwdriver. i'm a scary woman.
i finally decided. i got so sick of myself not being able to make a decision. spending hours contemplating the pros and cons until my brain wanted to explode. i got sick of the time the thinking was taking, how consuming it was in personal and emotional energy and mostly, how lost it made me feel. and i think i hated how fatalistic i was being. it's just a stupid decision. make it, stick to it, and deal with the consequences later.
i'm not applying to medical school this year.
i'm going to take the gre psychs, spend this summer taking biology and chemistry classes at berkeley, ta'ing, do more research at ucsf and state, and then apply to a health psychology / behavioral medicine / medicinal psychology phd program. it's basically the theory of psychology applied to clinical practice in psychology. most of these programs involve a school of medicine.
if i get in, i'll go. and that will mean perhaps that i wasn't cut out for the rotations, the sacrifices, the relinquishing of myself.
if i don't, i'm going to take the mcats in april and start preparing for medical school applications. so i guess, like law school, i'm going to let fate run its course. so far it's done pretty well in saving me from things i didn't like.
every year i get a freak hair cut that lops off my shaggy black mane and gives me a boy cut. every 5 years or so, someone addresses me as "sir" when i happen to be sporting that cut. i don't think of myself as very masculine-looking, so why someone would think that i was a man just dumbfounds me.
today, i gave my blog a new look.
i hate code. html and css isn't even code but it's not written in sentences so i hate it. i was horrible at coding when i was in 3rd grade (basic fried me) and i was horrible at it in college and i'm still horrible at it. god did not create redchilipepper to write code. if the world was based on code and applications and programs that i wrote, well, we all would have died by now.
but with the beautiful weather we're getting here in sf, i couldn't stand to look at my old black and grey page. it seemed too morose given how lovely the weather is. but after 30 minutes, i've decided to stop. the page isn't done, it looks kinda weird and discombobulated, but whatever. it's fine for now.
bonus points if you can figure out how to add margin padding to the left of the menu and how to turn the "RED" in the title, well, red. i can't figure it out and these past 30 minutes of code are already making me think of college days in athena with rotting programmers who live there smelling up the place. boba is on me for whomever is clever enough to come up with the code to fix it.
'nuff computer speak for the pepper for well, another 2 years or so.
goonley gave me a logo! i'm special now. i'm in the group of "everyone." i now have an identity and a little picture to identify me. i'm rad. i'm hip. and the weather in sf is bodacious.
there's not much to write about today. when you go home to a meditation session, and lock yourself away for 3 days during which you can't really talk, and meditate for 5 hours a day, you sort of emerge feeling as if you were in a time warp. everything *slows* down.
so i just want to say that i love being taiwanese. i actually really miss the humidity, short, stocky, "jiew" guzzling people, night markets packed with sweaters bearing incoherent words and "o-ah mi sua" noodles and deep fried goodies, and the hectic ways of formosa. and any dissenting half-japs can be quiet.
another fiasco returning. my flight got delayed last night so i got up at 4:30 am est time to catch my 6 am flight. i'm half awake. planes don't like me.
in my delirium, i sort of remember the plane shaking from turbulence and the 4 year old in front of me saying, "we need backup captain, we need it now." and then him wailing for bananas. remind me. why do i want kids?
the elephants upstairs are at it again. today it sounds like a mixture of stomping and rolling on the ground. they are *so* weird.
i am amused at myself. i am in idiot.
just wanted to clarify if any of you had doubts, which i am sure you now don't.
i *nearly* missed my shuttle to the airport yesterday am. first i slept through the alarm. more like i turned it off. and then i had turned off my cell phone so i didn't hear them calling me. they buzzed the apartment 4 times. i got out of bed and stuck my head out of the front window screaming frantically, "i'm coming, i'm coming." turned around, stubbed my toe right into the dining room table.
no. it wasn't a bad dream.
then i got to the airport. an hour early. and i missed my flight. i was sitting 2 minutes away, about 10 feet in front of my gate and COMPLETELY missed my flight and their repeated calling of my name over the p.a. i was lucky enough to get put on another flight but then, it almost happened again while i was connected in chicago. they changed the gate on me and i barely made it to my flight.
i bet you all lament the day i was born. and then you read this and it makes you laugh and then you probably don't.
laugh.
i guess i was under the false impression that you're supposed to be more intelligent with age and time. or at least more responsible.
i think i'm going the other way. in the last 3 months, i've lost 4 pairs of gloves, got slammed with two late fees on bills, and managed to walk into two poles. they weren't moving, i was. my hip still hurts. and i have this HUGE bruise on my leg from kneeing my friends suv. those of you who know me know that i'm unusually anal retentive and picky about things. i like to stay on top of my stuff. i used to consider myself sharp. so where has the noggin' gone?
sigh. away. away.
happy march.
the rain finally broke today. i see the sun. my pants are dry. good things, good things.
if i had a penny for everytime my computer crashed or my ethernet card stopped working, i'd be a rich woman. maybe i should start one of those internet donation websites. i'd make a killing.
on another note, saw the american idol bloopers last night. damn it. shoulda' been there. if only i had known they had auditions in sf. now i'm too old.