- exit 2009 -
Yesterday, my mum made 油飯 (I helped wash the rice, chop more garlic, and... taste test? =P). We also baked sweet potatoes; apparently I wrapped them in foil too nicely, so taking the foil off after they'd baked was quite a nightmare of a job. =(
Other than that, I've pretty much been spending my days in front of the computer debugging and refining my program. CAPE still fails to connect to the server, so I've been doing everything in the Python editor. (For useless information, one of the command prompts was past 17k when I closed it; my current one's at 5007.). I've also been listening to my music incessantly (I got into the habit of using it as a method of filtering out ambient noise), so I've been searching for a newer selection music. I came across 林俊傑's [第幾個100天] the other day (the 'crazy' piano playing is a little o_O, but otherwise it's a nice song). I have to say, he's been on my list of favorite (Asian) singers for a looong time now. While we're at it, another song?
For to us a child is born,
to us a son is given,
and the government will be on his shoulders.
And he will be called
Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,
Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
[Isaiah 9:6]
[John 1:9] The true light that gives light to every man was coming into the world.
My parents and I spent the afternoon making 饅頭 (mantous) and 花卷 (huajuans) stuffed with dried cranberries, (golden) raisins, sunflower seeds, and walnuts. Healthy, no? The previous day, they also made some (salty and red bean) nian gao while I was hanging out with some HS friends. I've decided, I rather prefer Chinese baked/steamed goods over any kind of cookies or American bread. Yummm! Being home is wonderful. =)!
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Note the homemade (cranberry walnut and red bean) bread and (red bean) bao zi. :D Yum!
I also contributed to my mother's cooking yesterday by mincing the garlic. She told me that my garlic was too uniform and too small to be realistic for a (future) mum.
Other than that, I haven't been doing much at home. I quite like it though it's very neat and simple-looking. Some might call it rather austere or even empty (seeing as how they judged the apartment when only I lived there), but it's still cozy enough. :P
A sampling. Pretty much mirrors every single room of our house except the storage areas. :P
Today, I went to Alice's, where Ruch, Alice, and I decorated her Christmas tree. It's so bright and shiny and reflect-y. I like shiny, reflect-y things. =)
I ended up finishing Narnia in six days. It was quite an enjoyable experience, though I'm not too sure whether I'll repeat it anytime soon (kind of similar to how I enjoyed Lord of the Rings, Silmarillion, etc. a lot while reading them... but don't know if I can bear to read them all again). I remember skimming random parts of the first six but had no recollection of the seventh, which - unfortunately - was also my least favorite. I think I still hold by my initial sampling of the Narnia books in that I enjoyed the 2nd ("The Horse and His Boy") and the 5th ("The Voyage of the Dawn Treader") the most. Other than that, they're definitely some of the most (Christian) allegory-loaded books I've read in awhile (then again, 99% of my reading in the past four years have been textbooks and countless research papers): still, rather enjoyable and sweet in many parts because of the hope to which they allude.
I also visited the highschool today with Alice, Ruchi, and JP; we managed to find both physics teachers, Haverkos and Gutekunst (who now has a 15 mo. old girl named Olivia who is beyond adorable!; we also learned that Gmail offers more storage space than the school computers – or something to that effect =P); and both english teachers, Smith (who still remembered that I made tiny ridiculous origami back then as well) and Wolfe (who seemed to have no recollection of me – though, unfortunately, I had to be reminded by Alice of her name as well [obviously we didn't leave very deep impressions on each other]); among other teachers. It felt quite strange walking through the halls from four years earlier (I think we very momentarily forgot how the physics wing worked and had to orient ourselves). It was also kind of strange to see how the students still looked so... young and how (forgive me) older/worn the teachers looked. Kind of reminds one how, of course, life moves on regardless of whether you're there or not to witness it.
I have this penguin plushie that's been sitting next to my laptop for the past week; it looks like it's rather lopsided and has had a rather (permanent) bad fur day, but I find it rather cute. =) [Yes, that was random].
My dad is, even as I speak, doing his (almost) daily routine of swiffing the floor and various appliances about the room. No wonder our house is so spotless (compared to, say, our apartment). And yet, he exclaims, "哎喲, so much dust!"
Grades came out today. My cumulative GPA experienced a jump of almost 0.1 today. I haven't achieved such a term GPA since spring of sophomore year. :P
God's grace is amazing.
In other news, my parents have acquired several new contraptions within the house since I last came home. Last time, it was the wonderful flat screen TV (that I'm attempted to make use of more these days); this time, there's a new "high-efficiency" washer that never fails to amuse my dad (according to my mum, he can stand there for the entire almost hour just watching it) as well as a fancy mixer that's inspired my mother to make a whole bunch of bao zi's as well as bread. In fact, I had very yummy homemade red bean buns this morning for breakfast and the end slices of a cranberry-walnut bread as well as red bean bread for after-dinner snacks. Mmm, yum. :D
In yet other news, I also managed to watch/listen to Two Towers while folding laundry and (attempting to work on) programming. I've decided that I very much prefer watching the Extended Editions: they give more complete pictures. I like details. And I love LotR. =)
It's been a fairly crazy quarter what with taking 6 classes (only 5.5 credits): 1 typical upper level BME class in which we sliced open a mice ... but only in one lab (and there's photographic evidence on Facebook =P); 1 BME design class in which my wonderful Bilirubin monitor team managed to compile an 88-paged final report (the main body was 57 or so pages), 1 MatSci class about conducting polymers in which I relived little bits of Orgo memories (but wasn't nearly as bad), 1 research lab in which we would sometimes spend up to (or past) 30 minutes trying to resuspend the nanodiamonds, 1 Chinese class in which there were only 6 students, and 1 Design class in which I wanted to - but never hand the time to - make a model of MOE.
It was a busy quarter in terms of school and commitments; ironically (or not so ironically), it's also been one of the most enjoyable quarters I've experienced at Northwestern thus far. Seeing all my wonderful BME friends basically 24/7 (in terms of class times and even outside – in non-academic situations, too, when we're not moaning and groaning over work!), seeing the new freshmen flood into the church, seeing the two groups meld together over food and fun. Praise God! =)
[Haha, earlier, my mother came by, saw the box of Narnia books that I'm borrowing from a friend (who was appalled that I'd never read them in book form), and asked whether it was books or dvds. Upon hearing that it was books, she then asked slyly, "Are you busy? Do you have time?" "To do what?" "I've got these Charles Dickens... dvds, and you should watch them for me." XP It's still hard/hilarious for me to process my mother's suggestions that I go watch TV/dvds – such a change from high school when TVs were a mystery to our family (or, rather, we hardly ever watched it).]
Speaking of which, I am back home in Cincinnati, where the house is perpetually cold, but one's socks will never turn black or even the slightest shade of grey/brown. I plan on doing my programming work workaholically amidst other things – spending time with parents, friends, books, dvds, my pillow/bed, you name it. =P This had better be an awesome break. =)
You. Always filled with a genuinely crazy, sometimes gleeful, but truly happy laugh; a frightful amount of spontaneity and energy: sometimes your excitement reminds me of Totoro when he's handed an umbrella for the first time. Your stories never cease to amaze me as they demonstrate how much God has been and is working through you and in your life.
You. An older sister who constantly makes me laugh because of your silliness, my silliness, and the silliness of those around us. You remind me of myself at times because of our quirks; yet somehow we have crazy different tastes over designs, swirls, lines... In spite of all the responsibilities placed upon you in addition to study and work, you still reflect such a joyful, caring spirit; your laugh always makes me smile, and I really look up to you.
You. Whose car I've driven not too few times, who drives me around not too few times, who is doing so much for the work of God in so many areas - not just on the stage but off. Who sometimes sits there in amusement when the group goes off on its countless tangents yet always takes command and directs it back to God in the end.
You. Who I've finally gotten to know better this year, especially when we end up spending almost entire days together. Your sweetness and spontaneous inspirations for baked goods (南瓜年糕) never fail to amuse and amaze me; I love how we're both in love with Pixar. =)
You. Almost drive me insane with your hyperness and ability to produce noise. Because of you, I've experienced what it feels like to have an obnoxious little brother whom I can boss around. And, yet, you take responsibility seriously when necessary.
You. The one who never sleeps and, thus, 問好s me at all random hours of the day; your hands bless countless scores of people (or should I say, their mouths?). It's been a blessing to see how God is growing you these past few years.
You. An older brother in Christ who – regardless of how busy or stressed you are – constantly offers not only help and advice about the real world but always has hilarious (and usually random) comments and "hand-clapping" up your sleeve to cheer people up.
You. One who never fails to amuse and confuse me with your crazy thoughts and streams of thought (that I can never follow), especially at later hours of the night; yet, amidst all those "..."-filled conversations, you can still impart little reminder lessons, convincing me to stand up for myself when necessary.
You. Who remained calm and cool (at least on the surface =P) when others were scared out of their wits. It was absolutely amazing seeing how you opened yourself up to people lately. Seeing you strive to step out of your comfort zone is really inspiring... and cute when others try to hug you.
You. Remind me of myself in so many ways. And yet, in so many ways, you surpass me. It really encourages me to see how you have taken your role with such a humble heart, relying on God for the strength and wisdom to help lead a group.
You. Incredibly sweet and kind – always seeing where things need to be done and completing them even before anyone's noticed; even as a freshman, you've been such a blessing to those around you in your hospitality and love.
You. Despite our constant insults to one another, never ceases to amaze me in your kindness and reluctance to be a bother to others (Don't be afraid to!). Your little jokes also never cease to amaze those around you – either because they're so bad... or just because you really know how to cheer people up, regardless of how silly/head-smack-worthy the jokes are. =)
You. A fellow classmate/partner-in-crime who has been in basically almost the same classes for the past year and, thus, can share in all moans and groans about class conflicts and the ridiculous amount of work. Despite it all, we always manage to pull through; you definitely have helped me so many times to remain focused on my work.
You. One who always laughs at my failures (in good nature, I hope, i.e. when I miss the trash) and ogles at my word count every time there's a class assignment due. Your ability to juggle so many responsibilities and commitments (and not get them confused) never ceases to amaze me.
You. Whose sleeping and eating schedule I will never understand, yet always manages to get things done just as quickly (if not more quickly) than I do. Sometimes, you remind me that what I perceive as worthy of perfectionism really isn't worth it in the end; at other times, you take on the arduous task of revising and tying up the loose ends that I otherwise dislike doing.
You. Stress out about classes a lot; yet, because you stress out about it, I know I can always rely on you to remind me what's (supposed to be) happening in class; your ability to even vaguely understand the workings of such a chaotic class is a real gift.
You. Always grinning the second you meet eye contact, or else making some funny face that nevertheless still brings a smile to the faces of those around.
You. A sister in Christ who truly cares for others, cares to keep up-to-date with them, keep them accountable. Your happy smiles and bounciness, no doubt, cheers and energizes those around you.
You. Who I have many opportunities to interact with, yet rarely do since we're always so busy. Yet, spending time and talking with you about random things always turns out to be truly fun and amusing yet deep (usually).
God - because by your grace have I met so many of these people and been blessed through them.
"And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him." Col 3.17
Happy Thanksgiving, all!
The past few weekends, I've spent an amazing amount of time on what I consider "socialising" ... ironically, with a lot of food involved – It started with having TimLin, Anna, Grace, and Helen (Twang came over later too) over for an after-Sunday Celebration lunch; followed by a Sunday breakfast w/ the Tim's and Chang again the following week (during which TLin scared Chang - the video is on Facebook); another spontaneous brunch with TimLin, Anna, and Joy last Saturday (where there were artery-clogging sausages and bacon, yuck! among other healthier choices); and yet another larger after-Sunday Celebration lunch with TimLin, Anna, David, Teddy, Byron, and Slu (Chrissy & TWang also visited, and everyone watched "Finding Nemo" and "The Incredibles" while waiting for the food... and afterwards... =P). This past weekend added a random but definitely delicious Iron Chef/Project Pumpkin on Friday with some senior friends, and finally... the Thanksgiving Outreach yesterday!
All in all, I would say it's been a real blessing hanging out with so many people - sometimes so spontaneously. I'm learning to accept and enjoy spontaneity. =)
Hungry? =) [Photo credit: JoyLee, TimLin, sc]
.Building Community. Ephesians 2:11-22.
.Being Thankful. Philippians 1:3-11.
I also ran into the yesterday's birthday girl, Sarah, decked out in nice clothes; we revisited one of my most favorite places in Tech - the Orgo lab - to dig through mounds upon mounds of papers. It brought back memories.
Late last night (or rather, very early today), I was also looking through my Google calendar - it extends all the way back to freshman year of college, so I can see all the details, including exams, projects, homeworks, ... Church being at 5:05 (and ACCESS at 7:07), 等等.
Oh memories. =)
I am... first and foremost, a sleepyhead who somehow manages to never get enough sleep, which I dearly love but not enough for it to be a priority. The oh-so-popular let's-blame-procrastination applies to my, my dad me in all respectuite the annoying twist: I hate starting things, ending things, and love putting off all things until the last minute; still, there is always the ever-present nag that the outcome must be up to my standards. In other words, I do believe I am a procrastinating perfectionist - something that leads to a rather destructive lifestyle. I am quite disciplined in 1) being productive (it bothers me excessively when an activity does not accomplish anything) and in 2) not caving into temptations or peer pressure, whether it be food, friends, or fun (hence my almost lack of a social life). In fact, at times it seems quite cruel and cold-hearted (my friends have a 0.2% success rate at convincing me) or even strange (never really ate candy or chocolate as a child, still don't really care to eat either now)... but it is still nice overall. And I can also then pat myself on the back for my self-control (just kidding). However, I can congratulate myself on being called strange and quirky: I am, after all, a child harboring crazy thoughts and ideas as well - enjoyment in butchering papers & reprimanding friends for grammatical errors, writing backwards for fun, being obsessed with handwriting and fonts, falling in love with imaginary languages (Tolkien's), devising different codes & symbols, conspiring with Physics in a plan to hoist a tree onto someone's roof.... I am a firm believer in the concept that pre-midnight bedtimes are much too early. So, ironically, here I sit extremely sleepy and full of grammatical errors, but avoiding procrastination and producing not satisfactory writing. I suppose I have pretty much just debunked half of my "I am"s. Oh well. In general, I would say I am an odd mix of paradoxes.
I'm so strange.
Other than that, the weather was amazing these past two days. Add on the fact that the trees are a gorgeous bunch now that their leaves are turning all sorts of warm color -- and you get some amazing fall weather! Unfortunately, yours truly keeps forgetting to bring around a camera so, alas, still no pretty fall pictures.
(I've noticed that I remark on the weather fairly often; I hope it's not an indication - as they say - of extreme boredom).
That was written on Wednesday (10/22), I believe. It is now Sunday, 10/25.
As I've mentioned before, I have this awesome ability to start an entry and never finish. Having big gaps between entries doesn't help it any bit. It's annoying how things rack up and you never have time to write it all down! (Hence the marvelousness of photos in telling just as much of a story – sometimes).
Since then I've experienced not too few randomness, including going to a friend's house to study for a midterm while they played Rockband and Guitar hero, and accumulated some notoriety for my quote, "I considered it. ... I considered it - possible." Someone also found my quote "If I fail as an engineer, maybe I'll just be a human typewriter" to be rather amusing. ... I try. =P
More specifically now, last weekend was also the HMCC Undergrad Retreat, which – aside from all the stress due to 390 presentations going until 6:30, really dark roads, a ridiculous GPS who took me through who-knows-where,and the usual infuriating Chicago traffic ಋ was a real blessing!! I'm learning to see blessings from other viewpoints (how vague) – as in, it's amazing to see how God works in other people, especially the freshmen. =) I'm so blessed/encouraged to see how much they've been responding to the messages and how open they are in sharing their stories. God's amazing power = ... awesome!
Our Life Group finally has a name: Tetris! Quite amusingly, P. Jimmy even mentioned it on Friday to go along with his sermon about community in how "[...] in [Jesus] the whole building is joined together and rises up to become a holy temple in the Lord." (cf. Eph 2:11-22). Pretty awesome. Go community!
The members of Tetris who went to UG Retreat.
I also rewatched Lion King with some friends yesterday night. I never realised how deep it was in addition to hilariously amusing. Ahhh, Disney.
All the Earth will declare, that Your love is everywhere.
It's been awhile since I've updated. Taking six classes of 5.5 credits, one of which is a Solidworks design class (which is somewhat fun if you don't make dumb mistakes, which I frequently do), another of which is a Materials Science 395 class in Conducting Polymers (what in the world was I thinking when I chose this class?), and the others .. the typical Biomedical Engineering courses. It's an interesting combination with a different kind of stressful, to say the least.
In other news, the weather has gone completely crazy. It is consistently in the 50's now with instances such as sun in the morning and then - mysteriously - rain and wind by night; or else, it's just completely wet and droopy. It's as if the English weather has decided to migrate a couple thousand of miles and found itself a new home in the area of Evanston. It's actually quite depressing because I clearly remember October still being quite a nice month usually in terms of weather and pretty fall foilage. At this rate, all the leaves will be still-green-but-on-the-ground... which is just perfectly lame in my opinion.
It's also funny to note that I used to consider 50's as being decently warm; but, now that I look back, I believe it's because I've been... conditioned to believe that 50's is weather-heaven – after 3-4 months of true coldness in the single/below-zero Chicago winter weather. Unfortunately, I haven't had that in awhile, so my brain is still conditioned to believe that 80's are comfortable and anything below is just 'unusual.'
Ah, the mysteries of life. ... Well, not really. :P
I saw so many people at Norris throughout the course of yesterday. It was kind of weird seeing friends interact with other friends since I never really see them outside of the usual situations (i.e. church, class). It was nice. =)
More updates will come after the photos get sorted. (I have 681+ to sort, excluding my parents' which might double the count.)
Once again, I am sitting cross-legged but with one elbow on the knee (and the other... in the air?) in a certain Comfort Inn in a small kind of town "across the river" from the city of Quebec. As in the previous entry, it's very nicely completed with four extremely large and fat pillows (that deflate delightly much when you punch them and slowly reinflate after) for each of the tall queen-sized bed (my feet can't touch the ground when I sit on the edge...), a flatscreen TV (Samsung once again), a tiny fridge, a microwave (that doesn't smell like butter), and among the other things – two of those sofa chair with a table, and a really nice office chair (which my daddy is occupying currently). And we can't forget to mention the "high-speed internet" that is actually fairly high speed (at least compared to the last and even our home internet). There's the added bonus that it's fairly spacious compared to any of the previous hotels at which we've stayed, and I'm even tempted to play with my yo-yo (that has never been mentioned on the online version but is currently sitting in my HD at home) here because the ceilings are at least 2 feet higher than our basement and, thus, allows more throwing space. Too bad it's somewhere on the car, and I'm too lazy to fetch it. :P
As for now, I am currently sitting cross-legged with elbows on the bed in a certain Comfort Inn in Toronto, Canada. It's surprisingly nice, completed with four extremely fat pillows for each queen-sized bed (of which there are 2 in this room), a fairly large (... at least to my eyes – I'm really bad at estimation, but I would guess – at least a 32-36") flatscreen TV, a decent fridge, a butter-smelling microwave, among other things. (Wow, I've really lost my train of thought by now). Besides that, all we've done today is drive ~480 miles over the course of 9 hours (including 2 stops somewhere in the middle); and, apparently, tomorrow is another driving-filled day. It never ceases to amaze me how my dad can withstand driving so many hours within a day (though I did help drive for at least an hour somewhere in the middle). Yay, roadtrips! The last crazy-amount-of-driving trip I went on was probably two years ago when my parents and I managed to rack up ~4000 km in our Europe-tripping-by-car. I doubt/hope we won't break that limit anytime soon.
As always upon return home, I've dug up yet another childhood toy (previous things included K'nex, UNO cards, bouncy balls, etc.): this time it's the Chinese yo-yo's from 10+ years ago. I've been playing with it in our basement as it remains the only area of our house still carpeted (besides the stairs), but I keep accidentally hitting the ceiling when I toss it in the air. Thankfully, the ceiling's been good and hasn't rained down anything too shocking. Actually, everytime I hit it, I'm reminded of that scene in "Ratatouille" when the old lady accidentally brings down her entire ceiling and the rat colony while trying to shoot Remy and Emile. Hopefully that'll be one Pixar situation that never comes true.
In other news, I'm slowly acquainting myself with the Evanston/Chicago area as I've been driving around a bit more lately: picking up Carolyn at Union station, driving TimLin around to grocery shop, driving/going with Tim & Char to Devon (which ended up being a real blessing of a day even though it was crazy), driving Joey home (the way back was quite an adventure), and now driving to UIC. I can also now semi-safely say that I have experienced a snippet of the glories of Chicago traffic. In short, I left Evanston around 4pm, arrived at UIC by 5:10pm (w/o-traffic ETA: 4:30), and arrived back home by 6:30pm (~5pm). In that span of time, I could have driven from Cincinnati to Columbus – or a little less than halfway to/back Chicago/Cincinnati. The cause: an accident on I-90/94W around Ohio St/Ontario St (~mile 50) in the expressway. The E-bound traffic was backed up all the way to mile 41, resulting in a calculated 12mph for a good 30 minutes. So... moral of the story: drive safely, be patient, please don't cause or oogle at accidents and pray for those who were in the crash.
- Added a Pixar shirt to my clothes collection; from a friend who recently toured the Cali studio and hopes to work there someday soon (pray!).
- Obtained a new laptop battery that can last up to five hours quite comfortably; yay, I have a battery again (finally)!
- Discovered that the three-year warranty on my Thinkpad involves free labor & parts and on-site service; thus,
- Gotten my laptop fan replaced (within a day of requesting the service!): it is now whirring happily and gloriously quietly, woo!
- Attended the second wedding within our church for the summer: that of our life group leaders from last year! o_O / =)
- Driven to/around downtown Chicago (and survived!) to pick up the third roomie at Union Station.
- Relearned mah-jong after not having been exposed to since junior high (wow, so long ago).
- Become slightly more proficient in both Python and Photoshop as I have...
- Continued to be, as alway, slightly workaholic with the various work(s).
- ... among other things
Lab work's been progressing for the last 3 weeks, thus requiring me to reawaken the slightly dormant scientific/mathematical part of my brain in the areas of calculating serial dilutions (you would imagine that I should be decent at this after 3 years of lab experience) and ensuring that I mix thoroughly but not mix up the thousands of solutions I've been making (okay, for real, maybe only in the lower hundreds). However, I have a slight break now since SLu's still gone (in Taiwan, hmph), and they've temporarily run out of tasks for me. Apparently I finish work a bit faster than they anticipate — possibly due to the work ethic I established last summer at the Tso lab. Speaking of which, I have to confess that I rather miss working with live animals (albeit only mice and rats). Working with nanoparticles and melamine isn't nearly as exciting, especially when the color changes don't turn out looking quite right; sadly, one cannot attribute the weird results to the fact that one is working with live animals anymore. =P Oh wait, I just remembered, I should be writing a protocol for the NP/melamine procedure, whoops.
The courseware programming work has also finally truly begun after a month of preliminary meetings and introduction to BME371 and the strange programming world of CAPE with a mix of Python. It's slightly unfortunate that I'm so used to HTML, JavaScript, and MATLAB because I keep missing little syntax details for Python (especially those blasted random colons at the end of the function def line: those tend to cost me a lot of wasted time. However, I must thank my brother a million times over (and some more), since he's patient enough to listen to all my complaints — all the while persistently insisting that Python is a cool language. He's a sweet kid — no, adult. He's going to be four-and-twenty in two days (July 31st)!
Hm, that was only two portions of my brain, but I'm already tired of summarizing my summer as of late. Suffice it to say, this past weekend, I've made lots of moachi with the combined Life Group on Friday to bless the working adults and newcomers, made two more intersecting tetraheda models, reestablished my Dutch Blitz abilities and hung out with some missions people as they returned (and then left). Currently, I should be working on / ripping apart someone else's personal statement, and then more HMCC multimedia stuff, and then more programming... and then (the last =\...) Life Group! And that, my friends, should be the end of another summer day.
I've also caught some kind of sickness. However, I'm extremely thankful that it's during the summer and not the school year.
Onward! 1 Thess 4:11-12
Wow, what a long description/greeting. And now to tend to other tasks. Oh, the busyness of life. Enjoy!
It's amazing to see how much I have (or haven't) grown in the past six years. I look back on my earliest entries and wonder, "What in the world... I was so unrefined...;" on my later (but not recent) entries and marvel, "wow, I certainly had a lot to say..." (especially those from the summertime when I'm in England/Europe and not-quite bored out of my mind). I also found many of my hidden treasures splashed across the three websites I used to use (Geocities and two Webs); it's been wonderful finding them and reading through the ridiculousness.
Overall, the process of ripping down and building up is quite a nostalgic trip. Hopefully my greatly updated website will be worth it in the end. =)
As a result, I spent most of today working on a new website design/layout; I rather like it even though it's definitely not as cheerful and cute as the current one. (fyi: this layout, "Forever Friends," is actually going to be celebrating it's third birthday if I haven't made the change by the 25th of July -- goodness, that's old.) My brother's granted me a sub domain on (one of) his website(s), so I hope to make the move over there sometime relatively soon. =) I'm excited but not entirely sure whether I'll scoot my entire thing over or just link everything back to here (yes, laziness).
韭菜餅. Mmm. =)
I've realised, in addition to being busy, I like taking on challenges -- or rather, mental challenges that aren't impossible: programming, making ridiculous geometric origami (I kind of find roses and stars boring now =( ...), editing (read: tearing) essays, etc. However! I am also learning to relax a bit more this summer. What with (essentially) no work for all of June since the end of school, I had to actually find ways to amuse myself in a non-academic way. Let's just say... I didn't take the full scope of the opportunity, but I've had quite my share of hanging out (even though it's probably not considered that much in others' eyes). I'm finally slowly learning how to tolerate hang-outs that are indecisive in where to go (though, this past Sunday, it was basically just from one food place to another to yet another, etc.) and even enjoying them. ... Haha, wow, that sounds so lame.
Oops, time to go! I'm actually in the NU medical library downtown right now. How interesting. It's quite nice.
- There's a reason why I avoid the kitchen. I took a pan out of the oven using an oven mitt for the right hand; unfortunately it was slipping, so I grabbed it with my left (bare) hand. I think I've gotten so used to almost-burning myself occasionally that I forget that burns are still possible. Thankfully, I only have a small blister / tender spot on my thumb.
- Neosporin works magic -- even if it's expired by 7 years (don't tell my parents that). The dents in my pinky are looking much better now and have sealed over decently; I'm just hoping that the skin will grow back because I do still have two mini-dents.
- Never keep anything in the fridge too long because you'll find colonies of green mold growing. And mold smells extremely nasty once it's thawed.
- So far I've folded 144 pieces of paper within the last 4 days. I'm debating folding/attempting the kusudama ball (30 units) again even though the process of putting it together is generally quite frustrating; however, the units are fun to make.
- I still possess perfect pitch even though my piano skills have degraded terribly.
In other news, the women's life group had a massive cooking-ness today, resulting in very many dishes (all with onions -- well, the cake figuratively) and many stuffed but happy girls.
Shoot, my sleeping schedule is so off now. To bed!
Other than that, I somehow really got into modular origami just yesterday night and made two "Five Intersecting Tetrahedra" today. Let's just say... it took me about 2 hours to assemble the pieces both times: the first time because it was new; the second because I wanted to see if I could do it without looking at any diagrams. Needless to say, I failed for the 3rd and 4th tetrahedra.
My pinky's slowly going numb. Eeks. (But it's probably because of my posture right now).
Challenger - "Count it All Joy" (James 1:2-5).
| Happy Independence Day! It's somewhat funny - when you think about it - how it's only a United States holiday. I remember asking my dad (rather dumbly and already half knowing the answer) whether the British celebrated it. Which reminds me, I never got to see the holiday lights in Newcastle, UK. Alas, the opportunity's gone though. I get rather nostalgic whenever I come across England/Europe pictures while flipping through my massive collection (according to Picasa, I now have approximately 26,600 photos). I forgot to mention yesterday: I've actually been craving green bean soup (Chinese 綠豆湯... not like American green beans); ironically, as soon as I got home yesterday, I found out ... my mother had made 4 biiiiiig tupperware full of the yummy stuff. Talk about awesome. =) |  |
Other than that, life has been rather boring and entirely unproductive since the start of summer. Senior week was nice as I hung out with members of Supernova & Free Radical more than I ever did during the school year. After the Mission Team left, however, I've just been making use of Charlotte's wonderful external monitor and doing various clean-ups on my computer while waiting for both of my professors to return from their vacations. Then, maybe, I'll actually know what to do.
Oh, and I'm in Cincinnati for the weekend! <3 home.
Ironically, ... today I have stayed up until this time because of a wonderful 'Roland's leaving for med school' celebration followed by the terrible realization that our due-at-12am (& submitted-at-12:21am) 31-paged BME paper had many formatting, spelling, and grammatical errors. So... yours truly has been working on this blasted paper since 1am (earnest -hopefully final- editing since 3:30am).
I should go finish. I had better have resubmitted it and be in bed and sound asleep by 6am. What a day.
Tonight's forecast: windy... freezing rain ... cold. Low -6C...
Tomorrow: partly cloudy... high around 24C.
[Edit]It's annoying how one forgotten HTML tag messes up everything. I wish webpages could detect the error and just fix it for me. Haha.
Actually,應該說"把我弄哭"; 這還比較准吧. Hmph.
In other news, I just wrote a 5462-word (18 pages SS including figures) lab report for BME307 over the course of ~48 hours. That beats my previous record (EA4 Lab, 16 pgs w/~4500 words, codes, and figures). Needless to say, I absolutely despise that class. Ironic thing is, I've basically been working on 307 stuff for an entire week straight now, starting with lab/experiments (Tu-W), a presentation (Th-F), and a report (Sat-Mon). And then... lab class again tomorrow. Talk about a pathetic life.
I've realised, I have a terrible time trying to understand Beijing accents.
In other words, everyone in our apartment has now managed to break something in our kitchen: one flatmate broke a glass pot lid (which exploded while cooking); another shattered a bowl; and I managed - how amusingly random - to accidentally shorten some plastic chopsticks.
In other news, I've been bumming quite a bit and eating a wonderful selection of food (by my standards).
<3 柚子, <3 油飯, <3 being home. <3 family & friends. They all make me smile =).
I should be writing my Chinese essay and studying Chinese like no other.
[edit] So distracting, but so so reminiscence-worthy. I love his music. Mm.[/edi]
I feel like every time I go through a successive stream of labs, problem sets and exams piled one after another, the neurons in my brain are dying a little faster, my self-esteem dropping logarithmically lower, and my unhappiness rising exponentially higher. Not permanently, but at least for a few days to a week after each experience; it also seems to take longer to recover each successive time. Physically, my brain hurts - not the sharp stabs in the head kind, but the dull ever-present ache kind. It's irritating, and sometimes (as it is now) it makes me feel like I need to throw up.
It also doesn't help that my sleep hasn't been very restful; my dreams are constantly either about school (I've dreamt about Chinese essays, transfer functions, MATLAB, 等等 within the past few days) or unpleasant experiences where I'm trying to run away and hide from a group of people out to get me (and they use weapons such as explosives, too).
Conclusion: I complain a lot; I take too many things for granted; I love my family & friends; I need God; and I wish my brain could be sent in somewhere, reformatted and/or replaced. ><
It's wonderful weather for the next few days; I wish I could enjoy God's creation more.
My laptop battery has died after ~3.5 years of use. It conveniently decided to commit suicide last week on Wednesday at about 4am in the morning as I was working on my second to last Systems Analysis problem set. My friend had just pulled out my power cord when the computer uttered a small -pop- and went blank. What an unexciting way to end one's life, dear battery; I hope you rest in peace (ouch, I just typed 'piece' at first) as you are now released from the service of my Thinkpad.
*I actually decided to go and count (because I'm just that OCD). Over the quarter, I managed to churn out ~18,493 words in the span of 8 lab reports; for your information, that's about 2312 words per lab (approximately 3 pages of single-spaced Calibri 10, fyi), which is greater than four times the word limit of typical college essays. Guess there's no way of running away from writing, eh?
I write so many useless details.
1. No snacking after 9pm, including anything but water.
2. No crocheting or any other trivial activity requiring fine-finger movement (origami).
3. At least 5-6 hours of sleep per night; possible exceptions for schoolwork.
4. Bible reading in the morning.
I just realised, it's been a very long while since I've put links to pictures in my entries. I guess I have this fear that whatever photo-sharing website I use will keep changing its link address, thus causing a lot of dead links (which is what happened after I was forced to switch from Yahoo Photos to flickr .... to Facebook, which decided to revise its organization method after I'd change x many links). So, it's probably better just to say: go here for all the pictures =P.
I really need to work on updating my website overall. A big portion of it is rather obsolete/outdated by now.
I received a wonderful package from my brother on Saturday. It contained an amusing new what-feels-more-like-a-toy and a delightful package of 太陽餅. 關於 the new toy, I spent a lot of my spare time (when I wasn't doing MMT things - which ended up devouring ~7 hours of that day) looking for ways to evade iTunes/ Apple's attempt to overtake the world; I think I found an answer through an iPod plugin for foobar (all the way, yeah!), but it still seemed to have a slight bug: the first time I tried to sync it, it stopped at 389 songs (out of 1000+), claiming that the disk was full. However, after a restoration/reset, it now contains 1400+ songs taking up 5.62 GB with >1 GB of free space left.
I have a lot of times now where I'm trying to express something, but what ends up coming out is a mixture of up to three different languages (English, Spanish, Chinese) within the same sentence. It's terribly amusing yet frustrating at the same time.
Goodness, I ramble a lot. And the second to last sentence of the previous paragraph had terrible, terrible grammar.
Ah, I just glanced down and saw the "uninteresting" post (1/27). I actually hit those magic keys again this morning and ended up freezing Explorer. I should really figure out what keys are; or just be more careful when I'm using all my keyboard shortcuts. It would save my computer (and me) a lot of trouble.
My roommates are singing Hakuna Matata. How proper as I have a massive Bio midterm in 21 hours and have yet to begin memorising glycolysis, TCA, ETC, or anything else.
They're cute. I'm so blessed to be surrounded by such cute people everywhere I go =).
God is faithful. God is good. All the time!
加油!
Dear brother, please don't get mad at me =(. Dear Sansa, please show up somewhere - preferably somewhere I can find you. ><
My brain's been a bit tired.
A V L I M F P W; D E; G S C N Q Y T; H L R. That's the order in which I learned the 20 most common amino acids. And now I shall go proceed to work my brain ever more.
"Evermore" by Hillsong is a nice song.
My mind is about to explode from an overdose of biology / bioregenerative engineering. They're very cool subjects, but there's way too much information to learn in too little time. So goes life. Jia yooooou!
[edit] I just hit some magical keys that opened up 55 windows. After manually closing 40+ of them, I decided to go look at Task Manager. This is what remained... 
Pretty amusing/interesting if you ask me.[/edit]
In other news, I did end up going to HMCC's Winter Retreat @ Gull Lake, Michigan this past weekend. Thank you to those who incessantly reminded me about signing up (which I did on Thursday evening @ 11PM or so) or to whom I agonized about my decision: Penny, Charlotte, Frank, Tim Wang, Hannah and Life Group members (Tim Lin, David Kim, etc). While I didn't have any crazy big revelations, it was still a wonderful experience being able to see so many people worshipping God together, being happy together, fellowshipping with one another.
"Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us. Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfector of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God" (Hebrews 12:1-2).
有一天我會讓你看到一個開心的我。
1. I actually ate salad today but, alas, with a fork instead of chopsticks; as predicted, I did have trouble trying to spear limp planar veggies like spinach (but not spinach).
2. I lost and recovered my cellphone at a public place within an hour. I left it in the East dining of Plex a little after 12pm; I went back around 12:50 to try and relocate it before Chinese class at 1pm. In all, it was a long story/wait and made me two minutes late. Nevertheless, praise God that there were kind enough souls to notice the lonely black phone on the ground.
3. I sat in on a 2-hr lecture for a class I took last year - aka Sys Phys II (Cardiovascular / Respiratory). Wow, what a different atmosphere from last year. I did Chinese during that time and then almost dozed off near the end while trying to look at Biochem material.
4. I'm having a terrible time trying to re-establish my sleeping cycle of last quarter (sleep by 1-1:30am, up by 7am). I'm wondering whether it has to do with the fact that it is much colder these days, or if I just never had the time to recover mentally & physically from the previous quarter. Either way, I'm perpetually sleepy/tired these days. I've also already been asked/told twice that I look really tired/sick.
5. I feel like I'm being quashed under countless number of things: problem sets, readings, applications, decisions... responsibilities... decisions...
This entry sounds rather self-centered: all the points from above begin with "I." Actually, the entries these days just aren't very enlightening, are they? That being said, why do I bother to write them then? (Reader response: I'd like to ask the same question.)
What happened to living a God-centered life?
What happened to being a blessing to others?
"I got the joy, joy, joy, joy down in my heart (Where?) Down in my heart (Where?) Down in my heart. I got the joy, joy, joy, joy down in my heart (Where?) Down in my heart to stay!"
Sometimes I do miss being a kid; not in the sense that there were less responsibilities, but that there was more simple joy/wonderment in life.
I also like to eat cereal with chopsticks; it slows down the process and makes the food last longer (which, apparently, is better for your digestion - to which I would agree).
That is also why I don't like it if I'm only eating and doing nothing else (I've said this before); multitasking with eating as a task makes life more efficient.
That is my silly, random epiphany of late.
I think I may have forgotten to mention (or started writing an entry about it but closed the window before I'd finished)... on my last night in Cincinnati, I decided to open up my laptop for the first time in awhile. This time, I took off both the palm rest and the keyboard; as expected a lot of dust greeted me - what was supposed to be a shiny dark green looked more like fuzzy mold (okay, perhaps that's an overstatement). It was kind of fun poking around.
My sleeping schedule is falling apart; I went to bed at 3:45am yesterday: this is bad.
I also finally brought out my winter blankets yesterday night; previously I had still been using my summer/fall blankets: this at least is an improvement.
I am terribly behind in schoolwork: this is a sad, too-common predicament.
Indeed, what a needed reminder; there's not much one can do about the weather, so one must make use of all the typical winter gear: hat, scarf, gloves/mittens, etc. Except, I always tend to be in a hurry when I leave, so the most I grab is the scarf; or else, I'll forget that I actually grabbed my hat and/or handwarmers. That being said, today was cold.
The forecasts for the next 6 days for Evanston, IL all include "snow showers." Ironic how - as a kid - I used to be so excited at the prospect of snow; now, it's more like the opposite: The fact that my own two legs are my main mode of transportation these days (as opposed to cars with heaters) has quite changed my perspective on snow -- it is no longer just happy, fluffy white stuff; it is a happily taunting "Ready to be late?" challenge.
In other news, today was perhaps my most unproductive academic-wise day thus far (but then again, I am only barely one week into the quarter). After my two classes from today (Bioregenerative Engineering and Chinese), I spent the afternoon in the living room of our apartment, watching various VeggieTales Silly Songs on YouTube with Char. In addition to the 'School House Polka,' I also discovered a wonderful 'The Biscuit of Zazzamarandabo' and the very, very random 'Bellybutton' song. These (and Pixar movies) really make me want to switch to computer animation. Their projects always seem so cute and fun! (Meanwhile, I slave over... what? squiggles called Greek letters or lots of numbers -- not that I mind ... that much).
In other other news, I finally remembered and actually decided to work on my resume for real. ... Not fun. Basically I've been working on it since after dinner, and I'm still quite far from being finished. Boo. I always feel like it's a terrible task to try and organise what I did over 3 months at a lab; it's almost inevitable that I've forgotten the names of the techniques I've learned, or even... what I did... I do have quite a bad memory (which, I guess, is why it is nice when I happen to remember to write updates/entries so I can reference them later).
Wow, I just made my non-school writings sound like research material.
That, apparently, is how Stacy's mind thinks these days.
"... I need my kneaded biscuits plain!"
In other news, winter quarter has already started; hence, the return to frigid, snowy/icy aka miserable walking weather.
[Even as I write this, the thought that keeps running through my mind is, "Hm, what a way to start off the first entry of a new year."]
Classes this quarter seem... not as light as last quarter. Last quarter I got by with only a BME 305 lab even with 4 (which turned to 3) BME classes and OChem; this quarter, I have 2 BME + 1 Bio + 1 Chinese ... and labs in BME 306, 349, and Bio 210-2 . Chinese is amusing; it makes me notice how American our accents are.
I can now knit and crochet! They're quite fun activities except that I never know what I should make. Most of my works never make it to the end since I tend to pull them apart so many times: I like to experiment; instead of following patterns, I tend to just make whatever based off of my knowledge of stitches and such - it makes my works more, hm, unique(?).
So, I've realised: I've been so blessed (and cursed - in a way) to grow up in the household that I did. As a result, it helped develop much of my (I'd like to say) better characteristics/lifestyles; unfortunately, it has also helped me to develop too-high expectations for others. ... Actually, I have no idea where I'm going with this.
What a random, useless entry.
What a way to start 2009, eh?