Philosophy

My odd, not-so-relaxing, winter break:

Saturday: Shopping with the boy.
We braved the bitter cold and wind for unbeatable prices at the outlets. Tons of people. Lots of dogs. Lots of smiles. Lots of laughs. Lots of pictures! Lots of fun. Timed just right so we could make our 7 o'clock reservation at a restaurant downtown. Yummy noodles. Did you know that you need a minimum of 4 people to go lazer tagging? Completely lame. No laser tagging for the two of us. But lots of Planet Earth!

Sunday: IKEAAAAAA.
After having a mini-panic attack, brought on by incorrect directions given by my mother resulting in claustrophobic me driving straight into the heart of downtown New Haven (hate driving in cities with a scared passion), the boy and I happily explored all the wonders IKEA has to offer, with our coffee beverages in hand. Then back home for hot pot and beer - what a meal. Plus shots of baijou. Yum.

Monday: Guitar Hero-mania.
The boy left, along with much of my sanity. Played Guitar Hero World Tour for a good couple of hours. Almost got through Sweet Home Alabama. Determined not to do any work. Realized that not bringing my physics book home was a major mistake.

Tuesday: Glee fail.
After working for a good part of my waking hours and eating through a large pile of frozen food, I was excited to take a break and watch Glee, which I thought was at 9. Unfortunately, it was at 8. My parents laughed at me. More time to work on my organic chem labs, I suppose.

Wednesday: Why is everything expired?
So, I wanted to make alfredo sauce to go with my pasta, but it expired in 2009. I wanted to make brownies with chocolate chips and peanut butter chips, but the brownie mix also expired in 2009. Good thing there are about a million brownie/cake mixes in this house. Brownies were a success! Definitely need to be consumed with milk though.

Today: Roller Coaster Tycoon 3
Somehow, whenever I come home for break, I end up playing my old Roller Coaster Tycoon on the PC at home. So today I decided to download the game for mac. Cue the extreme decrease in productivity. Apparently in the new game, if you don't pay your staff enough (i.e. handymen, mechanics, etc.) they'll get really unhappy and ultimately quit. You can counteract this by increasing wages, disciplining your staff, or just firing them. I decided to do the latter, and just kept a steady cycle of staff. Ah well. Currently working on my bitch of a biology report rewrite. My TA thinks that bracketing all the figures and tables, with uninformative arrows is actually really clear and constructive criticism. Yep, yep, definitely see what you're saying there.

Sleepwalking

At the start of the semester, I decided to pack in as much non-studying related fun as I could, often spending my nights watching some obscure TV show, or playing Cooking Mama. Since the work load in the first couple of weeks is relatively light, I got by doing minimal work, and maximizing my free time during the day so my work load was manageable and not I-take-three-science-classes scary. However, it's all coming back to bite me in the ass. Karma, I suppose. This week may be one of the worst weeks ever, and it's only Tuesday. The amount of things that I had to do kept piling up, and after taking inventory, deep breathing was necessary to not have a complete break down. Full blown stress hit me hard and fast, to the point where it's hard to think. And yet, I almost have no motivation to do any of it. It's all things that I don't want to do, or are too intimidating to think about. I have 11 applications to complete in less than a week. I have two exams on the same day, along with a "creative" biology lab presentation, followed by two physics labs and an orgo lab report due the next day. I have more applications than I have fingers, and less sleep than I have toes. Every little thing becomes blown out of proportion and "fuck" is a common word in my daily vocabulary, as evidenced by swearing profusely at messed up fly eyes for two hours. It's overwhelming. I just want to curl up against a warm body and let the outside world disappear for just a bit. In those moments, everything is okay, and there are strong arms to protect me. But sometimes, this crappy messed up world invades and destroys that too. I need to toughen up and take on the obstacles face to face. I'm not going down without a fight.

Hollaback Girl

I have become hopelessly addicted to Bananagrams. It's actually a little sad how quickly, and how intense this addiction set in. I've played it before in person, seen the clever yellow banana-shaped bag of tiles hanging in stores and Walmarts, but it wasn't until a friend introduced me to the Facebook application version of the game did I become just so totally obsessed. The game gives you a choice of playing online with other people, or playing by yourself. I mostly played solo for a bit, since people I knew were never online, but then I realized that it doesn't really matter who you are playing against, just that you beat them. My computer is now set perpetually on mute so I don't have to deal with the stereotypically tropical and beachy music the game puts in the background, and I crave for some extra minutes of free time in my now busier days when I used to just sit here in boredom literally all afternoon. In essence, Bananagrams has taken over my life. There is just something about it, the thrill of playing against the clock, trying to form words faster than other people, the satisfaction of using a difficult letter like K, J, or X in a really awesome word, the rush to click the pile of tiles to "peel," and the overbearing need to win. Each time, it seems like I am so close, and if I just clicked a little faster, or had a real mouse instead of this dinky trackpad, I would have declared "BANANAS!" and have won the game. But someone else declares bananas, and I just HAVE to play again because I was so close to winning. On top of it, each game takes only three or four minutes, so I feel like I can afford to play again. "Just one more game, just one more game," I keep telling myself. And before you know it, two hours have passed by while I was frantically hunched over the computer. Bananagrams, what have you done?

Hide and Seek

Today has pretty much been full of nothingness. For the past week, I have been volunteering at a biology lab where my dad works. Should be interesting, but everyone just got back from vacation, or not yet back, so the amount of work to do in the lab is minimal. Especially since the majority of work in a biology lab is prep work. Yesterday was more interesting; I designed primers and circled viable cells in a 96 well plate. Today, there's literally nothing for me to do and the only thing on the agenda is to go see the mouse room. Since lunch, I've been clacking back and forth between my dad's old office and the lab to check and see if there is anyone in lab, but the door has been locked. The other two physicists with offices in the same complex here just kind of stare and me and wonder what the hell I'm doing or who I am, while the nosy secretaries give me dirty looks as my boots (with a minimal heel) create a racket down the hall. My dad says I could join a tap dance with these shoes. Sigh.

My break has amounted to a lot of nothingness, I feel. I've spent time with friends, traveled to different states and almost beat Guitar Hero World Tour, but the majority of my days have been filled with nonsense. This morning I spent two hours playing Bananagrams while exploring the dubstep world. Fascinating. I'm looking back on my optimistic set of goals for this break with a kind of distain and helplessness. I should be doing work, but I don't really want to. Home just isn't a conducive work environment. At this point, I'm almost looking forward to going back to school.

It's the new year, and I suppose I should make a few resolutions, though I never really see the point since anyone rarely follows or fulfills their over reaching, overarching goals. The solution: create smaller, funner resolutions. Here are a couple:
I vow, or will at least try my best, to complete at least one lab report a week 24 hours before it's due.
I vow, or will at least try my best, to catch up with Mad Men before the 5th season starts in August.
I vow, or will at least try my best, to make new friends, and keep old friends.
I vow, or will at least try my best, to become a wizard.

Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas

Christmas Eve dinner in the Chen household was done in true Asian fashion as we set up the table for a hot pot! There were two types of beef, two types of mushrooms, shrimp, lettuce, watercress, dumplings, meatballs, and noodles all dipped into a boiling pot of broth to be cooked to one's own preference. And each person made their own dipping sauce - mine was soy sauce, sesame oil, peanut butter and scallions. Delicious! Now I'm so full, sitting on the couch curled up in a warm blanket with my computer on my lap, watching National Treasure for the millionth time with the family. We know how to do Christmas Eve right.

Come On Eileen

Just chilling back at home after going to a pretty standard, non exciting Asian Christmas Party. It was the typical loud parents yelling and laughing in the living room, making plans for the next Asian Invasion summer trip to somewhere exotic and fun while the "kids" sat in the family room mostly bored out of their minds, chomping away at the plethora of food surrounding them. We paroosed YouTube, played cards, watched random TV shows, put up with parents' inquiries as to our studies and future plans, crowded around the one laptop someone smartly brought along, drank some (very) lightly alcoholic punch, and generally chit-chatted. Typical, boring, but filling. And thus begins the three day Asian Christmas Party delight. Somehow, Asians decided that Christmas is really about having large parties where it is much more fun for the parents than the kids and standard Chinese fare is served, but in festive snowman platters so it's holiday friendly. Sigh. In other news, I think I actually did fairly well this semester grades wise, so thank you Brandeis for that great Christmas present as grades are posted Christmas Eve.

How Far We've Come

It's an odd feeling to go from having everything to do to having absolutely nothing to do. Now that finals are finally over (thank god), I'm back at home lazing around, waking up as the sun goes down and having a plethora of TV shows, movies, and real TV to look forward too. Not to mention the yummy home cooked food and the amazing fluffiness of my own bed. It's a bit disoriented as I have no idea what to do anymore - the past few days have been so structured around my study schedule: get up at a certain time, study, maybe eat lunch, or if I'm behind just grab a snack on the way to the SCC and study for 6 more hours, then take a break for dinner, then studying until I can't function anymore. Now, I just have so much free time in front of me I hardly know what to do.

And the semester is actually over! Three semesters down, five to go. I'm almost halfway through my college career and everything is going entirely too fast. This past semester especially, I still remember...
- spending way too much awkward time on Wellington
- party hopping and walking up and down South Street
- bumping into old friends who became new friends
- finding the unexpected
- waking up on couches
- bootfacing it everywhere
- almost skinny dipping in the reservoir
- failed bonfires
- procrastinating suite charades
- playing Rock Band instead of going to the gym
- endless waiting for the BranVan
- avoiding douche #1, douche #2, and boring douche
- losing IDs all over the place
- watching the stars by the water and laughing on the playground,
- taking the pumpkin
- the unhealthiest days of my life as I struggled to write a midterm
- going on an adventure in the woods
- how I can't do bird calls for my life
- stalking pictures of sleeping people
- elaborate plans to hide from certain people
- PACHANGA (mostly...)
- ripping down posters all over the place
- teaching Snow White how to walk in heels
- practically living in Einstein's and off of Einstein's coffee
- the feeling of the ground being pulled from under me
- the way that Ziv looks like Legos
- late night studying insanity

And so much more! I've absolutely loved this semester, through the good and the bad times, the fun times and the not so fun times, the freebie weeks and the hell weeks, the late night partying and the late night studying, the laughing and the crying, the warm fall days and the frigid winter nights. My life was filled with so many good times with some of the best people. Now, I just get to reflect as I sit at home with my dog, watching an episode of the Sing Off (these people are crazy good!). I'm so glad to have this break from school, but I really can't wait for next semester!

In the meantime, to do over break:
- start/finish applications for research positions over the summer
- finish Mad Men season 2 (and maybe 3)
- learn how to play the saxophone again (it's been two years! major sadface)
- do something meaningful with DNA at the Weidaas lab
- figure out my schedule for next year
- SHOP!
- make sure Calcifer makes it to spring semester
- general shenanigans around Madtown