r e d.chilipepper

it's not a race to the top, sweetie...

bf and i went to yosemite this weekend. a good idea because i've been a headless chicken lately, a bad idea because i've become onset with a plethora of illnesses. stomach flu first (thanks, mikey), then inability to eat, hives, then food poisoning last night. nonetheless, i struggled immensely through a 6 hour hike that would have otherwise been easy, and although i kept telling him to go ahead, he gently reminded me that our hike together wasn't a race to see who could get there first.

huh.

prior to the last year (since losing the scholarship to cambridge), i'm not quite sure if i've ever felt that i'm not in a race. a race to get into graduate school, or to always be somewhere i'm not. i'm so used to eyeing what i don't have, not necessarily materialistically, but just symbolically, as what must be done next. in some twisted self psychoanalysis, i realized that even the things i do outside of work like running and spinning are so great to me because, in a way, it's getting yourself someplace, faster and harder. pacing? what's pacing? and although my friends keep reminding me that i need to enjoy the journey, the path along which i have come, a part of me always wants to look up at the final destination and calculate how much time i have left, or how much farther i have to go. or even more, if i'm holding anyone back.

i was at work today talking to a colleague who asked me, "what do you want to do?" it's about the right time for me to reapply to graduate programs. i told her i didn't know what i wanted to do and she implored me to pursue a MD/PhD. "it would be a terrible waste," she said, "if you didn't use your potential to go do something like be a doctor. you just have so much talent."

waste.

two years ago, if she had spoken to me, i would have agreed, emphatically.

but waste to me now means something different. a waste to me is all those stupid hours i spent in college not sleeping, just to prove to someone, myself, everyone else, but really no one, that i could stay up all night and learn what a mosfet did. waste was trying to prove that i was someone by getting into a big name school and big hot shot career, when all along i was someone without that. waste was thinking that i needed to get a phd in order to make a difference, when i wasn't making a difference with the person i saw everyday. and waste was all those hours spent thinking that being smaller, thinner, more chipper, more forgiving would make me a better person.

as a matter of fact, i distinctly think it's a waste of time if anyone spends more time berating themselves for who they are not, rather than accepting who they currently are. this is not to say that we shouldn't set goals. they're necessary to keep us changing, dynamic, happy, and to give us purpose. but they're not defining in what or who we are.

anyhow, i'm almost done standing on my soapbox...

i don't know why or how my perspective has changed so much in the past year. maybe failure forces you to admit your limitations and to seek happiness elsewhere. and maybe, if you are lucky, you find happiness resident in a place you completely overlooked, and it's a happiness that's far more satisfying and liberating than what you were seeking. and then the idea of going back to how you were just seems foreign. and even if those heights are obtainable, they're the farthest thing from your mind as being desirable.

strange how things change...

garrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

i'm in such a bad mood today. i'm going to kick you in the face today if you mess with me.

please:
if you are going to copy data over, don't just make the folder and not put anything in it.
and if you are going to copy data, please please please put the correct date on it. don't name it what it isn't.
and if you are going to record it as having been written, please don't say you have it if you don't.

i f*cking hate it when data is all over the place. it's an engineer's pet peeve.

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah.

processing is a f*cking thorn in my side.

oh, really?

i was just informed by a 16-year-old that today is actually SAD day - single's awareness day. huh.

and please, john@pistonshead.biz, whomever you are, please stop sending me emails at work advertising soft tab cialis and viagra. i'm sure they work wonders, but really, i don't want to get fired.

snow vs...

75 degree weather?

my daddy-o called me last night to indulge me on the details of snowfall at home: 25 inches in 12 hours.

insane.

then he asked me how the weather was in cali:
well dad, we moved me in 75 degree weather. after moving and sweating for a few hours, we had lunch on an outside patio, and sat under the sun and a light breeze. i'm probably gonna sit on my porch tonight with some drinks.

that's just demented weather. i ain't never movin' back home, poppa.

valentine's day: bla bla bla

note to bf: do not read this... :)

i've always been a naysayer of valentine's day. it sort of strikes me as a corporate sanctioned "love" day, when really, all they're trying to do is to get you to spend money on things you probably don't need. and what's with the flowers? bf and i were in the grocery store last night and they had a display of roses for 250 bucks. TWO HUNDRED FIFTY?! good god! those things die in a week!

so it led me to think of all the things i could do with 250. for example:
buy a futon. a new one, no less.
subject my greatest enemy to 4.5 brazilian bikini waxes. without advil, of course (muhahhahaha!!!).
eat indian or ramen or dumplings or bi bim bap every night for 25 days (ugh. i am getting sick thinking of this)
go to tahoe for a weekend of boarding. twice.
buy myself a mountain bike for that triathalon i'm doing, or supposedly doing.
fly halfway to paris..
by 3 pairs of shoes (i'm not a shoe person, though..)

the list goes on. whether it's due to my innate asian practicality or the fact that i haven't had a boyfriend on valentine's day for years, i've never really made a big deal out of it. let me note: i'm not anti-romantic, i just feel that i don't really need hallmark to tell me when to love or to care for someone else.

but now i'm sitting in lab and all the undergraduates and ras are talking about their valentine day plans, of which i have chosen to have none... they are absolutey insane! i never realized that guys did things like this : one bought m&ms and had a custom message printed on it. another friend of mine planned a wine valley trip. a few year's ago, a friend's dad bought his wife a rose for every month they had been together. other ideas: 2 lbs of free rose petals, 170 candles, bla bla blaaaaaa.

so i'm cool with not making a big deal of this holiday. but seriously, guys can bust it out if they need to. i'm just wondering what exactly some girls do to their boyfriends to turn them into love fools like that. it's almost a sick sort of a power...

i want to eat, damn it!

i've been saying a lot of "damn" lately. well there's a reason to, i assure you.

i want to eat. i want to be one of those gross, frothing at the mouth, voraciously hungry beasts who forage the earth, eating everything in sight, shoving food with reckless abandon into my mouth at cosmic speeds. i want to grow exponentially as i feast, only to horrify my unwilling victims with my gluttonous ways.

but, alas, i can't. i caught a stomach bug from mike, and have been remiss of my consuming ways.

grrrr... i want to eat but i can't. bleagh....

Pathway to...?

pacifica, or more so, the cph, has some bad*ss beaches. whenever i'm feeling a little overwhelmed, or underwhelmed by the mundane, i steal away a trip to one of those beaches. stinson by far is the biggest, but also the most crowded, but it provides a great view. rockaway beach near pacifica has an obstructed view, and it's also the most public. i prefer montara or greywell, which we discovered because of bf's sharp eye. i posted some picts from the trip. unfortunately, it's damn cold. reminder to self: wear more next time!