Facing Doubt

“When I was twelve I closed my eyes and pictured what it would be like when I am thirty, and this is exactly what I saw: still good friends with the guys I grew up with; a beautiful girlfriend I want to spend my life with; a stable job.” Zach Braff’s character said in the beginning of the movie The Last Kiss (he was JD in Scrubs). If you have to live as an adult, this is how it should to be, right? He paused and couldn’t answer that question, “I just have been thinking about life lately and everything seems pretty planned out…and no more surprises.” As he turns 30, everything begins to seem…so “final”.

As I was watching the movie with 2pac in my room, inside of my head went KABOOM! I freaked out. I don’t want to be like that! 20 years later wondering why didn’t I do something exciting with my life?!

Going into 2007, I know exactly what I have to do, but I have never been more uncertain about everything than at this juncture of my life. 2006 was full of exhilarating moments, some happier than others, but all breathtaking nonetheless. The scholarship, spring break in Miami, summer in Greece, the tormenting MCAT, turning 21, and then grand finale in China. Everything was a swirl and I was swept off of my feet! Coming back from abroad, I thought I was going to get ready for 2007 with so much enthusiasm as I do each year. I am usually really happy around New Year’s but this year I am stricken with anguish. It’s sad to think that Miami, Greece and China were THE adventures of my lifetime, THE risks I’ve taken, THE young and wild things I’ve done. Now they are over, I am back to working on a mapped out life, no more happy-go-lucky days. I know once I start med school, I’d be tied down to it like it owns me. I am feeling what Zach Braff’s character is feeling: everything seems so final. Why am I doing this? Why am I making such a huge commitment? Everybody else is still out there figuring things out, free as a bird, and falling in love with whatever road they are on at the moment. Is med school worth the while? I had a glimpse of what it feels like to live free-spiritedly, now I don’t want to go back to a life of mundane work. How depressing! I am not done with having fun yet!

WAIT A MINUTE! R-e-w-i-n-d! Let’s go through 2006 again. How hard have I worked for those things? Hah! I can’t even count the months. It’s just that all of my efforts paid off in 2006. It took double and triple the number of hours of work to earn those carefree ones. New Year’s resolution? I sure will bury my head in work five days a week but damn right I am going to have a grand time on the weekends! It’s time to do things that my older and wiser self in 5 years would probably say, “Hell, I don’t know if I can do that again!?” Like surviving nightlife of Miami under the influence of benadryl, going to Greece right before MCAT and going to Propaganda within 6 hours of landing in Beijing. I am still determined to go to med school, but who says I can’t work hard and play harder?

I continue have many doubts in my head, about myself, about my future and about the world. But taking it one step at a time, it isn't so bad. What’s the next stop? Wherever my imagination takes me. Happiness is a way of travel, not destination, right? A million travel ideas are already running through my head, starting with New Year’s Eve in the Big Apple! So all you wild ones out there, join me and have a blast in 2007!

p.s. The Last Kiss starring Zach Braff and Rachel Bilson was a good movie with such an awesome soundtrack! (Snow Patrol Chocolate, Coldplay Warning Sign, Cary Brothers Ride, Ray LaMontagne Hold You in My Arms, last but the best, Schuyler Fisk Paperweight :-). For some random reason I am hooked on soft rock music now.

Getting Home

I am finally home! It was definitely not an easy trip home. I had two oversized luggage, each of which were charged 250RMB. Canada is stupid enough that I had to go through both Canadian and U.S. customs and immigration in Toronto. So I had to pick up both luggage and drag them around in the airport. And I couldn’t pay someone to push them for 10RMB like I did in Beijing airport. I am not spoiled, they are just really heavy. I spent three sad hours hugging my computer and sitting on the floor of Toronto airport (I had to plug the computer into the wall). The only warm thing next to me was a cup of coffee. I looked through all my China pictures and talked to people online. I almost turned into a puddle of tears. Here is a little excerpt of what I wrote at the airport:

“I am stuck in the Toronto Airport for another two hours. It’s just stupidity beyond belief to have to go through U.S. customs in Canada. The lines were out of the lobby! They are dumb and just got dumber! I really want to go home, but I am stuck here. This is the pinnacle of the incredible feeling of torn I have welled up inside of me from the last three days. There are so many things waiting for me in the states. However, I am also unbelievably attached to many things in China. The tuck-a-war between the desire to leave and the urge to stay has generated so much heat that I wish I can explode and split into two pieces. I try to think about how I was in August when I was sitting in this exact same airport, waiting for a flight to Beijing. When I landed in Beijing I didn’t know what to expect apart from to look for a person holding an IES sign. I let my mind take flight, fly back to the past four months, fly back to Bei Wai, Urumqi, Kashgar, Dunhuang, Xiahe, Xi’an, Pingyao, Hangzhou, and Shanghai. What a gorgeous ride!”

Thoughts of happier times kept me sane. When I finally landed in Boston, I was surprised to see stars in the sky. I forgot they existed. I sat down in front of Dunkin Donuts and waited for my parents. Two tall blonde girls walked by with popped-collar double-layered Abercrombie polos. They turned around to stand in line at Dunkin. Their asses were huge. BAM! Reality hits. I am BACK in America! You rarely see people that tall AND that bootylicious in China.

Another hit of reality---reverse culture shock. Most people don’t understand why some of their friends and family might get tired hearing their stories abroad. I am the opposite. I find it exhausting to explain everything. The first full day I’ve been back home, there is already friction with my father. We are not talking as of now. He kept asking me “What have you learned in Beijing? If you haven’t learned anything, it’s a waste of time and money!” I just got really annoyed and defensive. The amount I have learned is more than a simple conversation. I am tired and sad and I am not ready to talk about it. I need time to sit down with myself and digest it. I know what he wants to hear: China is a fast developing country, it has so much potential, we should care about the poor people in China, pollution is a problem, you need guanxi in China…blah blah blah. I already gave him those answers when he came to visit in October. He sure was very pleased to find that I have concerns larger than myself and partying. I can’t bring myself to tell him that what I have experienced is more important than those vague concepts. The happiness in finding people who share common interests; the surprise in traveling with strangers who will become my friends; the frustrations in trying to understand others who might not understand me; the difficulties in accepting the fact that I might not see some of those faces ever again. So what, if this experience won’t turn me into a Sun Yat-san or Che Guevara, I know it has been my own rite of passage. Oh well, you walk this life alone.

Last Flower on the Branch

It’s like the last flower on the branch, a sign that a season is coming to an end, good times have passed.

The smell of chuanr lingers on me now. I still have the taste of Tsingdao at the tip of my tongue. I will be on my flight back to Boston soon. I run my fingers through the silk dress, and grip tight my Beijing travel book. I am going to miss you, miss Beijing and miss these, like a child misses the summer time at the beach. The wildness of bars and clubs in Sanlitun, the sweet time near the Houhai lake, the richness of history on the streets, and the abundance of art everywhere, they outweigh the air pollution and the jammed traffic. The trees have, suddenly lost all the leaves. Tell me it’s real, these four months that flew by. Pictures of us are put up around the building, but we won’t walk down this hallway shoulder to shoulder ever again. The badminton rackets rest alone in the corner, waiting for the next group of kids just like us to pick them up. You have packed all the things you bought on multiple shopping sprees in the Silk Market. I have thrown away the maps that used to hang in my room. Remember how we used to run down to get grapefruit late at night! Remember the 16-yr-old boy that sold us bubble tea! Remember the Tube Station Cafe in the back alley where we studied for every exam! Remember how we’d go on our weekend explorations of Beijing still hung over from the night before!

I wish I could stay here a little bit longer. But it’s time to leave now. I have found my cozy niche here. I am reluctant to leave you, leave Beijing and leave these, like I can’t get out of my warm blanket on a frosty winter morning. It’s hard to pick it up and go, especially if you can’t pack all the wonderful things and people into your suitcases. Taking Susan to the airport was the hardest thing. I didn’t cry at the luncheon on Thursday. I didn’t cry when we had our last dinner together on Friday. But when Susan was about to step through customs, she turned around to wave at me. Her glasses were all misty and her face was all wet. Tears just flooded down my cheeks and I couldn’t stop it all through the hour-long bus ride back to the dorm. I don’t even think I cried this much for high school graduation. People were leaving one by one back in the dorm. Hugs and kisses and more tears. We came from afar and met here, now we are going our separate ways. I am not the same person as when I came. Now I have you and some more amazing memories. When will our lives ever intersect again? Even if we do meet, it’s never going to be a casual “hi” and a get-together over chuanr and Tsingdao.

If we get to see tomorrow
I hope it's worth all the wait
It's so hard to say goodbye to yesterday.

And I'll take with me the memories
To be my sunshine after the rain
It's so hard to say goodbye to yesterday.

And for y’all who’s staying for a full year and more, here’s a few lines from Black Eyed Peas’ Fly Away:

You take, me from me
With you, forever but darling I see
The world, is who you belong to not me
So I set you free

Switch it up, Switch it up,
Go hop on that bus
Don't need to blow the horn I'll be tough, Hey!

Drunk Messages

Drunk dialing is scary, drunk IMing is even scarier, especially the ones that asks you, “Where’s my mother $#%& hot wings?” I hate it when I get weird questions and being called all kinds of names by the drunken waste of humanity whose brain was short-circuited by alcohol. You can hang up a drunk call, but you can’t stop drunk IM messages, they just keep popping up like horrible porn ads. The disadvantage of being abroad, especially 12 time zones away in China, is that when it’s bar time over in Btown, it’s work and study time here. Just when I desperately needed to finish a fifteen-page anthropology paper in four hours, I got interrupted by inquiries about spicy wings!! And did I say I hate being called names? One more item added to the things I look forward to doing when I get back to Btown: smack that person’s head. I am waiting for the apology. If I were drunk dialing, I would call 2pac, because her squeaky voice will make my facial laughing muscles go spastic.

Beijing could be addictive

“Beijing is addictive”, the sexy editor of That’s Beijing told us in a keynote speech for our study abroad program. Thirteen years ago he arrived in Beijing like us, young, ambitious and most importantly culture-shocked in a study abroad program. Now, his baby-face remained despite efforts to disguise it with mustache, but he has become the top-shot for the chic and hip magazine that every expat in Beijing reads. He spoke of riding bicycles to the first McDonald’s and his old office that used to run in a dingy dark room. He has Beijing figured out, both the bars that only foreigners frequent and the tea houses that Beijingers love to go. After all he climbed to the editor’s chair by free-lancing for expat entertaining magazines. In a crisp white shirt and with Chinese facial features, he might blend in with the rest of the white-collared office workers of Beijing. But somewhere in the harmoniously chaotic hair, in the soft and open tone, and in the speech that is organized on several pages but spoken so effortlessly, his Texas charm was like Redbull and vodka. This was a great energy boost to me, who being jetlagged and sick from the air pollution, was getting annoyed already. He reminds you to take a chill pill, enjoy it and immerse in the culture.

Innuendos and jokes aside (which were many and made the audience laugh and seemed to dissolve the generation gap), he brought up the tides of development in Beijing. In the decade that he has been here, Beijing built a whole New York City full of skyscrapers and transformed muddy roads to intertwining highways. Beijing is more than colorful and eventful, it is sensory overload. In this city that has as many antiquities as Starbucks, there is always something optimistically new because it is still growing feverishly and has yet to acquire the cynicism of sophistication. A bizarre architectural design may be immediately shot down in a different city for not conforming to building zone policy or disrupting the city landscape. Here in Beijing, the highways are lined with high-rise buildings that look like experiment labs of various European architectural schools. Many foreigners are riding the waves and trying to take advantage of the unrefined if not almost nonexistent regulations. I thought he finished his speech splendidly by noting that this is a city of 15 million humanity, not a social experiment.

Feel the flutter!

I am back in the states for another nine days! A lot of things have to happen, like the MCAT, getting drunk at a post-MCAT party, finishing the Greek paper, editing the documentary, and saying goodbyes to everybody. I should really be studying right now, but reading K’s blog today made me miss writing random sentences that do not need to defend an argument. I am sort of glad MCAT is this Saturday. I don’t think I can take this pressure any longer! Where have gone the days when you don’t need to take tests!

I am going to continue my grim existence within the walls of the library tomorrow. I actually don’t mind the dead silence except when people sit unnecessarily and uncomfortably close. Out of this library so big and so empty, jeez, pick another seat! Even when it’s really quiet, I don’t feel peace at all. My mind is going over a million and one things per second. I gotta do this, I gotta do that. I can hear my thoughts echo on the fourth floor, screaming for this MCAT mind game to finish. The anticipation for the China trip is fluttering in my stomach, amplifying the excitement a hundred, a thousand times over.

Ready to go

Sunblock, check. Passport, check. Geiá sas for hello, Antío for goodbye, Krasí for wine, and To tyrí for cheese. I believe I am all set to go. Stuffed everything into a suitecase and still trying to make the 40lb limit. Christina Aguilera's Cruz best describes the mixed emotions. One of my favorite songs!! However it doesn't do justice to the butterflies, so playing Black Eyed Peas' Fly Away, a faster song, right afterwards supplements just about the right amount of exhiliration. :-P

I'm leaving today
Living it, leaving it to change
Slowly drifting into a peaceful breeze
Tongue tied, twisted are all my memories
Celebrating a fantasy come true
Packing all my bags finally on the move
I'm leaving today
I'm living it, leaving it to change
As I'm driving I'm captured by the view
Of so much beauty, the road becomes my muse
The heat is rising and my head soars through the wind
Cool, calm, collective is a child that's lost within
I'm leaving today
I'm living it, I'm leaving it to change
But somehow I'm missing
I think I really miss it one day
Turn down the radio
And I'm feeling like I've never felt before
Turn down the memories of yesteryears and broken dreams
I'm free, finally free
Slowly drifting into a peaceful breeze
I'm leaving today
I'm living it, leaving it to
But somehow I miss it
I think I really miss it one day

Friends

I think we have redefined the start of weekend to be noon on Friday.

Quality time spent in the quad with 2pac. Then we went all the way to Cambridge and ate lunch at La Creperie. It must have been 100 degrees in the sun. I swear I can hear my hair sizzling. To make matters worse 2pac led us down the wrong path (I should know not to trust her directions) and we walked around in a big circle. But the French crepe was soooooo worth it, especially the Chocolate Tropical. The six of us crammed in the tiny weenie room, soaked up the AC before we had to face the heat again.

Hours later we came back to this side of the river on Newbury Street, roaming aimlessly in Urban Outfitters which was supposed to have a sale but sadly didn’t. Somehow we ended up in the quad again, found more members of our little gang (except K who was all the way in Atlanta). Some hilarious and incriminating pictures were taken, that involved R on top of 2pac, and you have to see it to believe it. We laughed so hard I thought I heard echoes from the surrounding buildings. Little kisses, little hugs, big kisses, big hugs, little kisses, big hugs (hysterical part from Nacho Libre) were exchanged as we said our goodbyes and parted ways for the summer.

2pac and I had to make it to dinner in Chinatown at 6pm. It was 5:30pm and we looked at each other and just knew we couldn’t resist shopping around in Downtown. Dinner at Penang turned into a “One Thousand and One Nights” marathon of drunken and stupid anecdotes. Somehow I think my reputation got damaged by 2pac’s amazing storytelling ability, they are so much more embarrassing when she tells it.

My beef noodle was especially greasy, thank god there was bubble tea to cleanse the system after dinner (not that bubble tea is any lese calorie-rich). We sat peacefully in Boston commons until a group of retired Canadians with matching red poka dot shirts fluttered in front of us and asked for pictures. They further harassed us by pinning us with the Canadian flag.

Much shopping and packing to do, but I spent hours at Bertucci’s instead. Then the rest of the weekend was a blur.

Sometimes you are so happy living in the moment you thought you could go on like this forever. Sometimes this moment is just like any other moment, for no reason you just enjoy it with an extra ounce of delight. I wonder how we are going to be in five, ten years. If we are going to live like the TV show “Friends”, twenty-something young professionals in the big city. If someone is going to divorce three times like Ross, or marry among our friends like Chandler and Monica, or sleep with half of New York City like Joey, or make it from a waitress to Ralph Lauren like Rachel, or simply living in her unique way as always like Phoebe. (Ok, I am “Friends”-obsessive). Look at this picture of them, just enjoying each other's company. Good times and definitely more to come.

Special Edition

I know I am supposed to update this thing once a week, but this is special "thank you" edition.

"When I count my blessings...I count you twice. "

Decorating Sense

I found myself flipping through IKEA catalog and watching Trading Spaces again. I know, I am a big dork. I love that stuff! Cushioned swivel chair, or Spanish blue tiles, or elaborate carvings on the window frame, or glass pendulant lamps, they are exciting. I literarilly think my brain receives extra stimulus from color, shape, texture and patterns. I would totally love a movie (ex Hero) just because the visual or aural effects were amazing. Once I took a psych analysis, I am an abstract holistic person, meaning I have strong preferences for symbols over prose, theories over experience, top-down hiearchy over chronicle sequence. That also explains why my thoughts are all over the place, and I may have random responses to your questions and I don’t follow you exactly sometimes because some bizarre interpretation formed in my head. I think most of my friends would testify to that.

I would’ve went to to study interior design I think, if it weren’t for my dad’s ultimatum, “I ain’t paying tuition for you to play with paintbrushes!” So I am stuck with biochemistry. I guess I have to reconcile with DNA and proteins, which to my small comfort also have form, mass and shape, and occassionaly colors depending how expensive the book is.

There are very few outlets for creativity. My room at home is off the limit, so I have put much effort into my dorm room. I must’ve rearranged the furnitures ten times in the tiny cubicle of mine back in Kennedy Hall. I was very pround of the Tuscan iron magazine holder and the simplistic picture of daisies I digged out of a fundraising sale at that art studio on St. Stephens Street. Most people seemed to also like the work I have done with the old poster of a rose and four pieces of foam board. Most people, that is, except my mother, who thought it looked hideously bright. She thinks bright colors in the bedroom disturbs sleeping. I still went on with my little decorating sense. Ann laughed at my idea of tucking the drawer between the wall and the bed, but I did get more space, enough for the armchair.

I know I am going to be obssessed whenever and however I get a mansion of my own, where I don’t have to worry about getting billed for nailing things into the wall, or the heater baking my three succulent plants to death in the winter.

Never Let Me Go

A weekend of fun, and apparently I have no memory of certain parts of it, but feeling really good after all that craziness. Once in a while you need a little laugh-your-head-off and shout-your-lungs-out refreshment.

Finished Kazuo Ishiguro’s “Never Let Me Go”. I couldn’t put it down. I always loved his other book “Remains of the Day” but this one is even better. Cried myself a river at the end, but I am one of those morbid creatures that prefer Gothic sad stories.

The place is England, the time is 1990s. Kathy, Tommy and Ruth had been best friends since infancy. They shared an amazing childhood together. There were intense drama and good humor in their little clique of friends and between rival groups. They were competitive at sports, struggled in art classes, and obsessed endlessly about sex. Now that they are older and have gone on different paths, the thing that still holds them together is no more than the belief that the only way to change their tragic destiny is to prove a couple is truly in love, but there are three of them. As they reminisce and discover more about their mysterious upbringing in the exclusive boarding school, they came to realize that the belief they have held so dear is false. Nothing can change their fate, not even true love.

Now a little bit about the setting, which is fictional. It distinguishes the book from a chick-flick. It’s actually a science fiction with a futuristic tone but set in the past. Kathy, Tommy and Ruth are actually three among thousands of cloned babies that have been brought up for the sole purpose of donating vital organs to cure diseases such as cancer and dementia. Since WWII, the world has come to depend on these cloned babies to provide organs, and because so many people’s lives depended on the donation program, the whole society justifies it by believing the clones are just test tube creatures without souls. These cloned babies have been told and accepted their fate, because the conditions in which they were kept alive merely to provide organs were so horrible they have no desire to live anyway.

What’s special about Kathy, Tommy and Ruth is that they grew up in Hailsham, which is a boarding school that used to be part of a humanist movement to prove that these cloned babies do have souls and that they are human (not unlike the Civil Rights Movement). They were provided the best education and care. The first part of the book mainly described the wonderful childhood they all shared without alluding to the fact that they are any different than you and me. In fact, they had been sheltered, kept away from the truth of their fate. They knew they had to go through a life of donating organs, but they always believed that you can get out of it by proving that you are really in love. That belief held them together, but it was shattered as they came to find out in the real world. The second part of the book is in elegiac suspense as they put the pieces to the puzzle together.

In the end, Tommy said to Kathy, “And these two people in the water, trying to hold onto each other, holding on as hard as they can, but in the end it’s just too much. The current’s too strong. They’ve got to let go, drift apart. That’s how I think it is with us. It’s a shame, because we’ve loved each other all our lives. But in the end, we can’t stay together forever.”

The not-letting-go sentiment is multifold. On one level, it’s holding on to people and things we love. On the second level, it’s hanging on to feelings and beliefs. And at a bigger picture, it’s the society keeping grip on its morals and ethics. If you are preserving something that you know in your heart could not remain, what will fill that empty spot once it’s gone? Isn’t it enough to have memories of how it used to be? What exactly is lost, when you come to find out you will never have something you thought you were able to obtain? Blissful expectancy or deceptive ignorance?

Lucky 12

Feeling extremely lucky today.

Received the loooonnng-waited Federal Tax Return check. I had lost the original one as well as any hope of ever getting that money. But it arrived just in time for much needed cash relief. Ca-ching! Ca-ching! Now I am gonna spend it in Greece, on buying wine. Sinfully delicious!

It was one of the very few days that I got home before my mom so I opened the mailbox. It was full of goodies: the check, a postcard from AZ with my head shot taped to a Japanese Macaques pic (what a shocker!!), and a curious monkey notepad from the fabulous Las Vegas (the instructed usage is for ease of jotting down numbers). Gracias!!

Love the hardway

watched "Love the Hardway" with Adrian Brody for the million and tenth time!


Do you have the heart to save a fallen angel?
Can you see his indifferent face in the crowd of a thousand happy little souls? Do you know not to ask him why he looks so miserable but just to embrace him anyway? Have you the patience to wait up for him when he is out there taking out his rage against the world on a rampage? Are you courageous enough to accompany him to hell and bring him back with you? And most importantly, how strong is your faith, you belief that he is an angel, fallen from the sky, instead of a devil risen from hell? And that with your love, he can let go of the past, get out of his shell and warm up to you. Why do you think you are doing this? Are you playing his savior to satisfy your own conscience?

anime

It was quite an interesting experience at the anime convention at Hynes on Friday. I got dragged into helping out at one of the dealer booths, so I was selling cute stuffed anime characters and DVDs for an hour. They are ridiculously expensive, $32 bucks for a tiny bag or $20 for a wrist band, and I didn’t see anybody hesitate to pull money out of their wallet, and the entrance ticket to the convention was 25 bucks! Them rich anime-freaks. There were indeed many freakish individuals. Tons of people dressed up as anime characters, I mean it was Halloween all over again and better. They were really OBSESSED with anime, they’ve got to own everything related to their favorite anime and they want to live and breathe it. Kimonos, pink octopus, 6-ft giant plastic sword, skin painted white, and silver-dyed hair etc. Most of the time I was trying very hard not to stare. Thank god my friend’s uncle, the owner of the booth, was a very talkative person. He gave me a couple tricks about bluffing as a salesperson if you have no idea what you are selling. And he made me wear a fluffy cat hat to increase sales, chuckles. I used to be an anime fan but have gotten rid of the addiction. The good old times when I used to be in love with Slam Dunk, H2, and Sailor Moon. Whew, that seems like a light year ago.

The Da Vinci Code

Went to see The Da Vinci Code yesterday. Despite the chaotic experience of not having my phone and my fabulous friend was stuck in traffic for half an hour, I enjoyed the movie. Went in with really low expectations because I thought the book, although exquisitely suspenseful, was not very impressive linguistics wise. I was surprised it actually translated into a very good movie when the camera replaced the prose. Knowing the ending didn’t ruin the movie either, because I remembered only pieces of the convoluted plot from reading the book two years ago. Tom Hanks’ hair was a minus, but Audrey Taotou‘s cute French accent was a plus. The albino Silas was very well played by Paul Bettany (he had a less grotesque but absolutely handsome leading role in Wimbledon).

When we got outside the theatre, there was a row of nuns and priests holding signs that included, “DO NOT MOCK MY GOD”. They were all in black, a very sharp contrast against green grass and blue sky in front of the theatre. Somehow my mind had a flashback to the bloodshed of the crusade and the dark secrecy of the Vatican.

A hundred percent reason

This is ten percent luck, twenty percent skill

Fifteen percent concentrated power of will

Five percent pleasure, fifty percent pain

And a hundred percent reason to remember the name!

~Fort Minor, Rember the Name

I can foresee hard work ahead for this summer: looking out the glass windows of the 4th floor of Snell Library while everybody else would be enjoying the golden sunshine and cloudless blue sky. The current gloomy weather and unstoppable rain only added thick layers to the feeling of imprisonment. MCAT in 58 days (minus the days in Greece cuz hell I ain’t gonna study there), until then, I want to put a lot of things, drama and gossip, fracas and temptations, into a box and lock them up in the back of my mind. I found that one box didn’t fit, so I found one, two, three more boxes until I am free of distractions and can focus a hundred percent. Hopefully I will remember to come out of this phase of seclusion and apathy. I don’t want to be another one of those insensitive pre-meds. But for now, excuse my nonchalant inattention.

That guy who literarily walked from CA to NY in 13 months, he wore out 15 pairs of sneakers. He started out a divorcee, around 400lbs and severely depressed. At the end, he was still divorced, still overweight at 300lbs, and it’s no guarantee depression will go away. Is his life better in anyway? There certainly will be no miracle or metamorphosis, he still has to deal with all that inescapable crap he had at home. What’s the point?

It’s a lie to say my mom is forcing me to do this because she thinks I would be happier to just graduate and get married (chuckles to that). Also a lie to say that I am doing this because I know I can. I really don’t know if I can do it, a month and a half of self-imposed discipline. It’s untrue to say that I love taking on the challenge. Who wouldn’t like for pies to fall out of the sky? At the bottom of it, I am scared and afraid of failure. Where is the courage, the stamina, the willpower to get me through this Puritan-like summer? I guess that would be the point of it, or a reason for any difficult undertaking: to find the source of “drive”.

Moving Home

Finally moved back home again.

When I first moved to campus in 2003, I took all my photo albums, mini-stuff animals and CD collections to school. As time goes on, I found out I can live perfectly fine without looking at my prom pictures everyday. In the course of 3 years and after several move-ins and move-outs, I have thrown away a lot of things and moved most of my childhood and teenage memorabilia home. I have also accumulated new books, pictures and wardrobe. When I got home, I had so much to unpack that I had to move some of the things in my room down to the basement. I replenished my shelf: “Romeo and Juliet” and “To Kill a Mockingbird” are replaced by “The Dream of Scipio” and “The Da Vinci Code”. My high school yearbook was traded for the scrapbook from the Miami spring break. My entire “Seventeen” collection had to make way for “Cosmopolitan” and “Vogue”. I looked at my drawer and complained to my mother that its rainbow color is too childish and not fitting for an adult. She rebuffed, “you were kicking and crying for me to buy it before”.

I find my self not used to certain things at home, despite all the love I have for my parents and our home. I got burnt washing my hand, so used to the slow-to-warm faucet at school and I forgot at home “hot” means “hot”. I forgot my parents go to sleep by 11pm and wake up 7am that I get yelled at for staying up until 2am. I am going to miss my dorm room, although while I was in the dorm I missed my house tremendously. I am going to miss playing loud music in the shower, eating ice cream for dinner and most of all staying out late.

When do we start calling “home” our “parents’ house”? Normally I guess people start when they have a family of their own. Is it “unfilial”, as Chinese people call it, to want to leave “home” and be independent?

End of the semester

My suitemates finally took down the Christmas tree and the snowflakes, not because the holiday season is over long long ago but because they have to move out. The bunch of smiley faces that used to squat in the room next to mine said their goodbyes and apologized for their late night madness. The resident that cooked up storms in the basement kitchen gave us a really fancy box of tea.

The official ending to the spring semester was marked by a very long and hectic move-out process. I had to go up and down to check out residents and their rooms for 6 hours on both Thursday and Friday, and 4 hours Saturday morning. The entire Hemenway was blocked by cars of parents that the ghettofabulous police had to come and shout over loudspeaker, “MOVE YO CAR!” There is no room to walk in the building either. At one point I saw my life flash in front of my eyes when a parent walking up the stairs in front of me almost dropped a box of kitchen wares. I wonder if there had been knives in the box.

12pm on Saturday we had the whole building emptied. “Emptied” and I really mean it, by pushing the procrastinators, harassing the pack-as-he-go movers, or threatening to sue the rich kid that said, “I don’t want them anymore, can’t I just leave them all here?” The RD wanted a ghost building by 12pm and we didn’t want to be stuck checking out residents all day on such a sunny Saturday either. This girl was nowhere to be found at 11:45am and a lot of her stuff were unpacked. We were told to stuff everything into five trash bags and take them out of the building. Of course it was followed by intense drama when she came back. Emotions as well as profanity flew high but my RD is an amazing smooth talker and actually got her to apologize. I’d like to think I have learned a few things from my RD, at least by passive diffusion.

When the last resident returned his keys, I am technically relieved of my RA responsibilities although I will still have free meals and ID access for another ten days. No more house arrest of duty nights and mind-eating boredom of proctor shifts. I really think I enjoyed this semester despite all the unfortunate things that included: dealing with bloody broken fingers of a resident very late one night; calming down the girl that obtained a court restraining order against her roommate who jokingly threatened to kill her; talking to the girl who bawled her eyes out 2am in the morning; and listening to the entire history of the troubled family of an 18-year-old. Now no more of that. When they all moved out in one piece, both physically and emotionally, it is as much as a burden off my shoulders as a dance that finished nicely. I am responsible for only my own body and behavior and not the whole building. I feel like dancing.

The photos

Photography, a journey through strange and familiar moments.

Olivia Parker's Pods of Chance. A row of peapods, alike in structure but alive in their variation, is fascinating. A row of plastic floweres identical in their structure but dead in their sameness has little appeal, unless their had been chewed by a dog, varied, altered by living energy.

Le baiser de l'hôtel de ville "Kiss by the Hotel de Ville" by Robert Doisneau. A picture is worth a thousand words. In this case it is iconistic and the whole world romanticizes the French manners of living based on this picture.

Some pictures don't need a purpose other than to make you smile.

Some pictures are political, like this one that won Horst Faas a 1965 Pulitzer Prize. The most terrible war pictures EVER. The father, although to no avail, pleads for a witness to his grief. The corporal, the only hatless one, provokes reactions in the rest of the soldiers with his relatively compassionate gesture. Maybe he also has a child, same age as the dead one in the father's hands. The little cottage in the background seems so lifeless and hopeless.

What is illusion anyways.

Insomnia

Very SEVERE insomnia today! Had a cup of coffee at 8pm, haven’t been able to sleep and it’s 4am already!!! My eyes don’t even blink and not even Biochem can put me to sleep. Watched “Love the hard way” starring the fabulous Adrian Brody for the millionth time. I got really bored and started cleaning my email accounts. I organized all the emails into folders and I have 4 email accounts. When I got to yahoo email, one of the emails from Seventeen.com intrigued me: “How do guys see you?” You just gotta love old email accounts that still have subscriptions to magazines from way back in the days. So I took the quiz and was very pissed off to find out that I am a “Goofy Party Gal”. Apparently I am too much all at once! Next thing you know I went into deep self scrutiny, or started writing a blog entry complaining about it. I think not being taken seriously can hurt but there is no need to be so stern all the time that someone needs to tell you to lighten up. It so happened that one day I was teasing someone about alcoholic drinks, and this person suddenly turned very solemn and said to me, “you should be aware of guys that buy you shots.” I was completely thrown off, like the temperature just dropped from 76 to 31. I must have missed a lesson or two growing up, because I seem to miss the signals for the change of gear. Where do we draw a line between joking around and meaningful conversations? Okay, time to go to sleep.
p.s. ( http://auth.seventeen.com/wrapper/funstuff/
quizzes/reallife/gsy/quiz_question1.epl)

Ever the same

Fall on me
Tell me everything you want me to be
Forever with you forever in me
Ever the same

Have you ever felt like there is a song you associate with a particular time in your life? There was a time when I had Usher & Alicia Keys’ “My Boo” on repeat; or a couple of months that I listened to Christina Aguilera’s “Beautiful” to fall asleep; or waaaayy back when I could remember every word to Celine Dion’s “My heart will go on”. Hearing an old favorite on the radio brought out memories so strong that I can almost smell the pizza shop that was always there when we played the song on repeat.

This year, for some reason, Rob Thomas’ “Ever the same” is on my repeat list, above “Check up on it”, or “SOS” or “So Sick”. I don’t even think many people like that song, but I have it on repeat.

We would stand in the wind
We were free like water
Flowing down
Under the warmth of the sun
Now it's cold and we're scared
And we've both been shaken
Hey, look at us
Man, this doesn't need to be the end

We are always scared of changes. It is in the midst of dramatic changes that we desperately hope important things, like family, friendship and dreams, will remain constant. “Ever the same”, how is that possible? Even diamonds degrade. But is a balance, a net equilibrium of dynamic exchanges possible? A really picky parent asked me a question when I gave campus tours to the accepted students on Welcoming Day, “How does Northeastern keep the unity of students when people go on different schedules?” I guess he was trying to get at how people stay in touch when Co-op and classes get in the way. Hello! There is a thing called “internet”, there is another thing called “cell phone”. You only see large congregations of freshman or high school kids migrating back and forth from dinning hall to the dorm, like march of penguins. Perhaps the tendency to do EVERYTHING together is lost, but hopefully there is a new understanding in spite of distances, time or thoughts unexpressed (or gossip unexchanged).

Fall on me
Tell me everything you want me to be

Just let me hold you while you're falling apart
Just let me hold you and we’ll both fall down

Is it hopeless or sanguine? No one can be EVERYTHING you want them to be. But the offer to be a better friend is sincere. Some other song goes, “Teach me right from wrong, and I will show you what I can be.”

To HJ

I always envisioned
you
in emerald green
a color is that is
as demure as jet black
but with a sense of humor
You have brilliant red's enthusiastic heart
but you always manage
to keep your composure
You share sky blue's grand romanticism
without masquerading
the honest truth
Airy and easy going
like floral white
you have your principles
and voice your opinions
You stand out in a crowd
only second to
lemon yellow
because you can live
perfectly fine
without the constant spotlight

Green is green
always at peace
with herself and the rest of the world

Something New

“We will arrive at Athens about 12pm on July 11th, and around 2pm, you would be standing in front of the Parthenon and marvel at the incredible 2500 year-old building”, Professor Katula went on to paint a mental picture of the great cultural monument for us. He planned the itinerary to the hours. There are arrangements for 80% of the time for the whole month there. Ironically he still told us “Greece Happens”, just go with the flow and prepare for impulsive travel plans.

It just hit me that all of it is going to happen for real. Pretty soon I’ll have to worry about stacking up sun block lotions (of course the kind I would not have an allergic reaction to) and exchanging dollars for Euros. I can’t wait to see the tiny streets lined with little cafes in which people drink tea for hours; the women in their sundresses and the men in linen pants; the beach and cliffs of the Mediterranean and Aegean Sea, and last but not least the grandeur of all the eroding antiquities.

The excitement of the Greece trip suddenly makes trivial the daily drama I have now. Why fight over little things? Why fret about plans for the weekend? There is really no time for worrying. I only have three and a half months of 2006 left for my family and friends. I am going to miss some of their birthdays, Halloween frenzy, and thanksgiving dinners. Now I will try to spend as much time as possible with the friends who had always been there.

The start of this blog is in response to something new in my life: a happy anticipation of the future. But looking into the future I began to appreciate the past and present, appreciate the people and things I already have.

Okay maybe the first post is a little emotional, but hey, it's the first post.