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[30 Oct 2008|01:08am] |
i'm rapidly coming up at that magical age where the momma bird kicks the little birdies out of the nest. fly or die.
trying to get everything done is so difficult, solely because it keeps reminding me of how independent i'll actually be.
it's not just about finding my own place. it's about finding a job that pays more than $10/hr, about finding health insurance, a car, gas, food, about the end of being coddled and the beginning of true responsibility.
it's about taking the first steps into a world where, no, you can't do anything you want, and you can't be whatever you want to be. the opportunities that will be present will be much different from anything i've ever known before.
i've decided to stay in my lab this summer, making $9.50/hr (barely enough to survive... $550 for rent and bills, 170$ for food, $150 for insurance, perhaps $60 for gas... money'll be tight) and taking EMT-basic (basic paramedic) classes. hopefully i'll be able to find an EMT job after the course, and HOPEFULLY i'll be able to go to med school after that.
but there's the scary part. if i don't go to medical school, then i'll have a year of EMT work under the belt, and then what?
i've thought about nursing, but getting the pre-reqs for that could be difficult too. how do i take human anatomy and physiology courses when i've graduated from university? do i have to pay the $10K tuition to take the last 3 courses i'll need?
i wish that i could be a freshman and do it all again, correctly. but, i can't, so i have to look to the future. nursing seems like it'd be good.
by the way, the future says that there's a halloween bike race (night of the living tread) tomorrow at wheeler park, 6pm, $5 entry fee.
if i wanna enter, i'll have to tune my bike and gear after school tomorrow. shit.
i haven't ridden in a month.
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[21 Aug 2008|02:27pm] |
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| new sprint record |
[14 Jul 2008|05:22pm] |
32.8 mph!!!
i could probably set a higher speed, but i didn't want to change gears while boxed in by minivans.
my legs feel like jello. 23 miles at ~22 mph for most of the ride = death.
i got a sweet water bottle.
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[13 Jul 2008|08:59am] |
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Iran condemns McCain for cigarette joke
TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran has condemned U.S. Republican presidential candidate John McCain for joking about killing Iranians with cigarettes and said it showed his "warmongering" foreign policy attitude, media said on Sunday. McCain, who once sang in jest about bombing Iran, on Tuesday reacted to a report of rising U.S. cigarette exports to the Islamic Republic by saying it may be "a way of killing 'em." Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini said: "McCain's crude remark on the indiscriminate killing of the Iranian nation not only testifies to his disturbed state of mind, but also to his warmongering approach to foreign policy." In a statement quoted by the website of Iran's state Press TV satellite station, Hosseini added: "We condemn such jokes and believe them to be inappropriate for a U.S. presidential candidate. It is most evident that jokes about genocide will not be tolerated by Iranians or Americans."
edit:
California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said in an interview aired Sunday that he would be open to the idea of serving as energy czar in a Barack Obama administration. Regardless of whether he takes that particular job, Schwarzenegger, a Republican, added on ABC’s “This Week” that he’s now committed to continuing public service even after he leaves Sacramento. Schwarzenegger endorsed John McCain at the end of January, and McCain has appeared with “the Governator” to praise his efforts to deal with climate change. A Schwarzenegger appointment would add even more star power to a hypothetical Obama administration, and would allow Obama to make an appointment from across the aisle that would not upset his core supporters. i love how the terminator has more sense than professional politicians, and, is less of a partisan douchebag.
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[11 May 2008|08:02pm] |
tour de france 2007 prologue - london. 4.9 mile individual time trial. fabian cancellara. watch his sweet high speed cornering skills. so smooth. so tight. so hot.
plus, his gearing is so high that it about doubles my gearing. to give an idea of what that means, if i was pedalling a tricycle with pedals connected to the front wheel, i would be pedalling one with a 5 foot diameter front wheel. he'd be wrestling with a 10 foot diameter monster.
on a related note, i have clipless pedals + shoes.
i haven't slammed into the ground yet.
and, i got my red bellwether jersey.
cycling gear really, really makes a difference. i took a quick hop last night on my street. things are smooth...
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| WOOT WOOT |
[18 Apr 2008|01:23pm] |
okay.
so, i woke up this morning and was a little bit tired. nothing special.
nice weather outside. biked to the eye doctor in light traffic. it was great.
bennett's optometry was, to say the least, awesome. it was actually fun being there, and when they left me in the waiting room after getting contacts to let them settle for a little bit, i was grinning like the cheshire cat. amazing.
i can see everything. they're trial lenses so the prescription isn't perfect, and my astigmatism is low so they didn't want to try and correct it so it's a tiny bit fuzzy, and i have a slight headache (but that's normal for new lenses), but it's awesome. i'm retardedly happy.
HAPPY!
and then, when i went outside with one of the doctors to go down the block to their 2nd building which houses specialized eye imaging equipment, i saw some emo guy and girl taking pictures of my locked up bike with an analog SLR. woot. bike pr0n.
oh yeah, bennett has this weird machine that estimates your eye prescription in about 2 seconds... it's crazy. from what i gather, it aims an image at your eye and plays with the focus until it can detect the correct refraction? not sure. it was crazy and awesome and shortened the actual doctor-finding-your-prescription-with-the-creepy-binocular-thing portion to about 3 minutes.
i highly recommend bennett.
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[17 Apr 2008|08:39pm] |
my ride today (~6.5 miles):
enter in maps.google.com, directions, 121 north division ann arbor, and then this:
N Division St @42.286830, -83.743410 to:Wall St @42.288960, -83.737914 to:Canal St @42.286863, -83.734241 to:Bonisteel Blvd @42.290123, -83.718620 to:Murfin Ave @42.293667, -83.718969 to:E Medical Center Dr @42.285315, -83.729556 to:Washington Heights @42.280539, -83.727761 to:Observatory St @42.278350, -83.731090 to:Geddes Ave @42.277465, -83.732393 to:N University Ave @42.277810, -83.734796 to:N University Ave @42.278506, -83.735728 to:N University Ave @42.278567, -83.740372 to:E Washington St @42.280274, -83.741508 to:125 N Division St, Ann Arbor, Washtenaw, Michigan 48104, United States
it was... hard. made it out to about geddes when i felt really hot, so i wiped my forehead with my glove.
wait... what? the glove was dry.
i grabbed my arm. dry.
i grabbed my armpit. bone dry.
damn. didn't have my nalgene on me. good thing i was going home anyway.
when i got home, i downed two mugs of water, and within about 2 minutes sweat poured out of me like nobody's business.
hooray biology!
also, brian randomly came by and brought me.. MY NALGENE! WOOT! thought i lost it to a hobo.
fixed jenny's bike, adjusted the brakes, and then waxed/polished her ride. it surprised me... i thought it was just a matte light blue finish bike, but turns out that at one point, it was a metallic baby blue schwinn world. car wax is awesome stuff; should look into a bottle of turtle ice wax.
ON THE OTHER HAND I GOT MY REFUND
[i thought the eggbeater MXRs i returned got lost in the mail, but no. also, nashbar, performance, and pricepoint are all having huge sales this week. i need to buy things... and i have a $10 gift card for amazon.com. hrm. do i buy fenders or a kryptonite lock?]
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[05 Apr 2008|10:49pm] |
hot (Allen H's bike, pulled off facebook).
'03 specialized s-works e5 aerotech with specialized tri-spoke carbon wheels. selle italia SLR 135 saddle.
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[02 Mar 2008|04:40pm] |
::flail flail flail flail flail flail...::
:/
X*
X<
:|
8O
:*
XC
XE
:O
:[
XOOOOOOOOOOO
<3
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[06 Jan 2008|12:04am] |
juno is the greatest movie ever made.
i love every bit of dialogue, the most profound swearing i've ever heard.
i love every bit of folksy soundtrack.
i love the copious amounts of flannel and plaid.
i love it.
edit:
without realizing, i found myself chugging straight from a family-sized jug of grapefruit juice.
juno is life.
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[03 Dec 2007|01:46pm] |
in times of stress, i eat chips, pie, and clementines.
then i watch naruto.
yay konoha.
orochimaru wants to do unspeakables to itachi's little bro. ew.
http://www.vgcats.com/comics/?strip_id=243
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[20 May 2007|03:49pm] |
calmed. mostly.
the last two nights have been experiments in food (as usual), putting my life in somebody else's hands, and irrational, zombie-related fears.
friday night was a trip down to main street to try the prickly (and unbelievably expensive) pear [southwestern/mexicano food, with a sophisticated culinary-school feel], where i decided on black bean anaheim rellenos, which happen to be large, skinned peppers filled with a black bean mixture, covered in blue corn flour, and pan-fried. then covered in red 'mole,' whatever that is.
28 weeks later happened an hour or so after dinner at the quality 16, where the intro of the movie made everybody jump, and murderous thoughts were on the minds of more than the zombies as some twenty-something year-olds stole popcorn from a jittery group of kids who probably snuck into the movie anyway, and decided to retaliate by running around the darkened theater.
eventually, i just reached out and fished someone out of the aisle, eventually rolling their lifeless body down the stairs to the applause of the rest of the room.
no. not really.
hoo. t-shirts for everybody!
and yes, 28 weeks later is a zombie film. there are plot holes. last i knew, t-shirts weren't foolproof protection against poison gas.
but, the fact that they used poison gas to kill the zombie is imaginative enough that i don't care.
i enjoyed it.
a certain somebody.. ahem*.. [mike] thought it might've been too scary for enjoyment.
traveling back to home, jean decided to spend the night, too afraid to walk back to her own house lest the infected run down the street, in which case we'd be better off about anywhere other than either my apartment, or jean's, with it's massive ground level picture windows.
all three of us (mike, jean, moi) ended up staying up until 3 in the morning discussing potential zombie contingency plans, and we came up with these solutions.
1) mike and jean would grab some kitchen knives and flee in a car.
2) i would stay behind in the apartment and cry until the infected came and got me.
3) everybody dies.
4) china launches an anti-zombie/imperialist communist counter-attack on the infected. north korea attempts to help with its air force, but fails miserably after discovering that human-powered aircraft aren't very feasible.
5) iceland and taiwan escape relatively unscathed, but japan falls after game show hosts attempt to use the infected in the popular show "ninja warrior."
i made up number 5, but most of the rest were discussed.
the next day involved baking a cake for mike's birthday and watching a pokemon movie and mel gibson in signs.
the pokemon movie was way better than signs. hooray deoxys!
i can't name the pokemon anymore. maybe it's all for the best.
a warning: 28 weeks later has a few blair-witchy scenes where the camera swings around wildly / the action is seen from weird, weird angles (someone gets beat to death with a gun and the action is shown through the scope of the rifle. i thought it was cool anyway), but i liked blair witch.
ooo. blair witch.
i couldn't walk in the woods for a week after it.
is this what it's like to be grown-up?
why is it so boring?!
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| today. |
[11 May 2007|07:22pm] |
these events are completely true.
i got out of work early, so after spending the early afternoon sleeping, listening to utada talk about the flavors of life, and screaming random lyrics along with playing random guitar riffs, i decided to go set up an advising appointment with the biology department to declare myself as...
an MCDB. it comes.
molecular/cellular/developmental biology. woot.
this comes after a morning of screwing up experiments related to said molecular/cellular/developmental biology.
anyway. that's not the point.
by that time, i had unlocked my bike lock... six times.
it happened to fail me right after i declared, effectively stranding me out by mason hall, and making me seem like i was trying to steal a bike to everybody passing by.
embarrassing.
after doing some research online (two solutions: 1. buy bolt cutters / a dremel, save the receipt, return after use. 2. make a shim out of a pop can (little blade thing which you slip into the lock to mess it up)).
both solutions kind of sucked, so i just ended up calling up ray, who actually called me the second before i finished selecting his name from the contacts list. creepy.
we ended up picking up large pliers and a hammer from his house.
we ended up going back to mason, forcing the lock to touch the ground (it's on a cable thing), and beating the crap out of it and tearing the insides apart with the pliers. pictures soon. now.
in an attempt to escape the stares of passerbys (by the way.. if you want a free bike, it's really easy to get one. beating the lock off took about one minute... if you have experience.. ahem*.. it'll probably be like, 20 seconds), i hopped on my bike and rode away, but, in my haste, completely forgetting to be thug and roll up my pant leg.
about 10 feet into my escape, my pant leg not only got caught in the chain, but it managed to pop the chain off the flywheels, and everything went to crap, and i spent five minutes on the grass putting my chain back on. when i got up, some girl passed me and snickered.
200 feet of riding later, the chain popped off again.
argh.
positives: i went and bought a sweet masterlock from village corner. i also got a sweet 28 weeks later advertisement from there for free.
i'm done.
kimchee & chocolate raspberry ice cream sautee soon.
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[10 May 2007|02:55pm] |
i'm going to start a food blog.
this'll probably last for about... as long as this post, and then sporadically afterwards.
5/10/07
PAN-SEARED SALMON WITH YOUNG BOK CHOY ON BROWN RICE MIXTURE
a salmon filet seasoned with garlic, pepper, salt, and rice wine. accompanied by tender young bok choy, lightly oiled, with chopped garlic. both served on top of a mixture of brown and white short-grained calrose rice.
it was pretty good. i'm proud of myself, even if my 'lightly oiled' bok choy was actually 'bok choy steamed with a single clove of garlic, because anthony is a moron. by the way, he didn't cut the bok choy into small pieces, so it was hard to eat because the pieces were humongous.'
at least the salmon was great. i took a filet, rubbed minced garlic, black pepper, and salt on it and let it soak in overnight. using a little oil in a pan, i cooked the non-skin side first, and added a healthy amount of rice wine to keep it moist, all on medium heat. cook until filet breaks into flakes when you push on it with the thin edge of a spatula. the filet shouldn't just "flake" though, it should provide moderate resistance.
next time (probably, unless i get lazy, which is extremely likely.. it'll be one of these):
pan-fried tofu with chili sauce
yu-xiang eggplant
hong sao beef (... i think)
boiled broccoli
kimchee/chocolate raspberry ice cream sandwich
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[04 May 2007|11:28pm] |
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today was a re-living of the fujianese and hakka ancestry.
the workday started with mowing the lawn.. simple enough.
except that the lawn had somehow grown to be 6-7 inches tall in the span of 5 days. with the size of our lawn... i had to stop the lawn mower (tractor, as they say at sears) about 10 times to dump the clippings, which was a horrendous task, since the grass was so thick and juicy (yes.. strangely juicy grass today) that it clogged up everything.
anyway.
later in the evening, post pork/jiu-cai dumping + soup + sashimi (more fish) dinner, and post lawn mowing (i didn't finish the first time around), my mom decided it was about time for the jiu-cai to be moved from one side of the garden to the other. and also time for the garden to be completely tilled and levelled. so, i was given a garden hoe, and ended up levelling the garden, watching my parents dig holes in the garden to displace dirt, re-levelling what they took out, transporting jiu-cai plants, playing with earthworms ("thick worms!", as my mother exclaimed in chinese. my father replied, "with the amount of compost we put in, any skinny worms are probably really good at staying skinny."), digging holes and planting jiu-cai with bare hands, noticing that we dug into an ants nest and noticing ants on said bare hands, filling up the holes where the jiu-cai used to be, re-levelling the now completely unlevelled garden, and then attempting to smooth everything out with a leaf rake, because my dad neglected to mention that we still have in our possession a garden rake.
and then we all had smoothies, since my mom is in love with them right now.
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[01 May 2007|01:26am] |
UPDATE.
DRIED SCALLIONS (you cong, as i've been calling them) ARE NOT DRIED SCALLIONS.
THEY'RE ACTUALLY FRIED SHALLOTS.
and they taste so freaking good. i had pork stir-fried with fried shallots and green onions on my xi-fan today.
...
there was other stuff too.
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| speaking through the noise. |
[27 Apr 2007|04:05am] |
i walked home alone today, all the way from geddes to south quad at two in the morning, with nothing except the shirt on my back and a cheap water bottle given to me by the honors college two years ago.
two. years. (and all i've got to show for it this semester is a 3.04. fuck).
the fog was thick.
it was a dark and stormy night.
people ran through the night in drunken stupor, and i was afraid. there were sounds everywhere, but i couldn't get visual on anything.
and of course, on the way out to geddes, jean and i managed to wander into the idea of zombies.
i was thinking, if i hear screaming, then cars crashing, followed by inhuman screeching, i'm just going to sit down and cry, because the zombies will be here, and i'll be trapped in my messed-up body (ccrb'ed it up for two days now... i can barely drag myself down the street), and they're going to try and eat me. and i'm just going to cry.
fog is such a tantalizingly menacing thing.
for such a bad cd, i can't stop listening to jenny owen youngs.
it's growing on me.
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[26 Apr 2007|02:53am] |
blurbage.
quick notes on the vienna teng show, opened by jenny owen youngs.
so.
the show starts in this amazingly intimate and magically ugly venue called the ark. there aren't any really good chairs, just these crappy plastic things. it's really, really crowded. the group i'm with looks out of place; we're surrounded by 30 - 40 year olds, and even a good amount of gray-haired elders. utterly confusing. i didn't think those kind of people like this kind of music.
the seats we take (general admission, had to shove past a fat guy for them) are right next to the stage and right behind vienna's piano.
opening the show is jenny owen youngs, a young woman with a taylor? guitar. perfectly up my alley, like 張懸 but white. really folksy, great guitar skills, lovely voice, complete with the frequency drops i love ever so much. her set was quick.. 15, 20 minutes?
vienna teng comes on, waving at our group with the words of "this is the last you'll see of my face," then turning around at her piano. there are four musicians total on stage, vienna, a cellist, a violinist, and a percussionist.
most amazing use of acoustic instruments ever, even if the percussion cheated with a loop on one song.
actually, the perc just impressed the hell out of me. he was using some crazy compact snare that was about an inch deep, one crash cymbal, two brushes, two yarn mallets, a beat-up old set of bells, some weird metal thing that made a feedback screech when used with a violin bow, an ibanez guitar, and a wooden crate, which was the most badass instrument of the night. he sat on the crate and just smacked at it, making both a rim knock noise and a nice kick bass noise. then, he just went all over and started playing the snare and cymbal and kicking the crate with his heel.
oh, and they all sang harmonies.
as we were leaving the oh-too-short show (vienna is way better life than on cd... sadly, jenny owen youngs is too.. her voice on the cd is so boring. none of the little flourishes and drops that i want), i saw alex wong (the perc) coming around, and, without anything meaningful to say, i looked at him and said,
"that was great, man."
woo. charisma.
anyway, he thanked me ("thanks man!"... exact words) and clapped me on the left shoulder.
i'm thoroughly impressed anyway. percussionist, guitarist, vocalist. ambient screech tube specialist. and he had cool hair. like yan from infernal affairs. and he had a pseudo-cowboy shirt.
forget school. i'm going to be him.
note to self: his band is called the animators. look it up.
jenny and this other girl i don't really know ended up getting vienna's autograph and a picture, but they had to share her, while i got my meeting all to myself. i win.
wanted to meet the jenny owen youngs person though, but they were nowhere to be found.
morning-after edt:
ack, dammit!
i am thoroughly.. unimpressed by the animators.
and jenny owen youngs cd.. while there are some good songs on it, a few are... ack.
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