Funny YouTube video

Check out this video... it's one of the funnier things I've seen that looks at the "issue" of asian girls dating white guys. Acting is terrible, some of the jokes are cliche and hokey, but it hits some really good points.

"You know why the white guys get the asian girls? Because it's Friday night... and we're playing DDR."

HAH. Brought to my by my asian female friends (who by the way are all dating asian guys).

I don't get the GRE

There needs to be some serious recentering done with the GRE. I got my score report back today; observe:

Quantitative: 800/800, 94th percentile
Analytical Writing: 6/6, 96th percentile
Verbal: 730/800, 99th percentile.

So sure, those are all good scores, but what the hell? I get perfect on two sections and that's only around 95th percentile? The fact that many engineers I know consider anything less than perfect on math as a "bad" score clearly means that the test is too easy. Getting perfect should be extremely difficult, or else it's a useless test. And what's up with my verbal score? Usually, 99th percentile means mostly perfect, but I scored 70 points below a perfect score! To me, this means that the test is too hard, since it seems like barely anyone is scoring above 700.

Whatever, I'm not complaining. I heard that GRE scores are barely considered, and as long as you're above a threshold no one cares what you get. And at least it's not the MCAT, where the highest score is 45, but barely anyone gets over a 40.

Tofu House

I went to Tofu House in Palo Alto (on El Camino Real, next to Fuki Sushi) for the second time tonight, and I have to say that it's becoming one of my favorite places to eat. They have really good Korean tofu soup, bimbimbap (sizzling rice dish), and decent barbecue. I like how everything comes to your table either sizzling or boiling, in a cauldron-like bowl (supposedly made of stone?) with a raw egg that you stir around in it that gets all cooked and mixed with everything. Totally exciting... you all should come with me!



And how awesome is their sign?!?! With the chef soybean guy??!?!

Matt's room

Matt lives in Suites this year, and they got these really high ceilings (like, at least 16 feet high). They all built lofts in their rooms, and they're pretty cool...

I'm being bad about blogging. But basically: I like class. I have no morning class. I'm working on secondaries. (whew!)

Here's me & Sweetie Pea in Matt's room. You can see the bottom of his loft.

Ahem

I have pictures, and things to say that aren't whiny... but for now I'll settle on saying that my new over-the-door shoe caddy is amazing and expect a bigger post later.

Bad year to live in Roble again

Today I showed up at Roble to move in, and my beautiful, cozy room that I had picked out in in-house draw had been taken away from me. Unfortunately, the remodel meant that the disability room next door had its sink and closet taken out to make it wheelchair accessible, so the guy who drew disability into there (who needed a sink) got my room, and I got moved into his room.

I've probably never been so upset in my life.

I have no sink, no closet (and no mirror). Just enough space to move my wheelchair into the-----OH WAIT I DON'T HAVE AN EFFING WHEELCHAIR.

One of the most important reasons why I picked Roble was because of the sinks in the rooms. Plus, since the rooms are supposed to have sinks, the bathroom (which is on the other end of the hall--ohhhh so convenient) only has one sink, with no counter, and a small mirror. I have to share my toothbrushing/contact lens facilities with people who wash their hands after taking a crap. I am pissed off.
Aurgh--this is a terrible year for Roble. First they had to reshuffle a ton of people and cram two people into the singles. And then they assigned a disability room to someone whose disability necessitated something that the room specifically didn't have--which was taken out because it was a disability room. It's all really messed up, and I can't help but feel like I got royally shafted in the process.

AIM

Even though I'm always signed on to IM, I haven't messaged anyone or responded to a message for like, months. So that's why I haven't been responding. If you want a real response, call or e-mail me.

Oh, and I'm in Monterey right now. I got like, four and a half hours of sleep last night because of band run/packing, so I got super fade-y at the poster session and went back to my room early and fell asleep. And now I think I'm going to work in my room, and be antisocial.

Band run!

I went on band run! I was hanging out with Matt in his new room in Suites (which, by the way, I have pictures of--he built this really really nice loft in his room.. just need to get the pictures off my camera) and we heard shouting and the band playing. So we ran outside and saw everyone in the FroSoCo courtyard. We followed the band to Lag, but then I had to go tutor (and explain to Manuel what "band run" is, and why there were mostly naked people running around). Later, I met up with the band run folks again in the new Stanford Stadium. The stadium is SO nice, although it doesn't have that rickety, campy feel that it used to. Then we went to newly renovated Roble, and I saw my future room, which is awesomely big, single, and has a sink.... mmm, sink in the room: you have NO idea how nice that is if you don't have contact lenses.
Now it's 2:00 am and I need to pack... blah. The rest of this week I'm going to be in Monterey for another conference. This one won't be as nice, because I don't think there will be wireless in the lecture room (so I'll ACTUALLY have to listen, boohoo). The conference ends on Friday morning, and my parents/Katherine are going to pick me up so we can spend a day in Monterey/Carmel. This is sort of sad, but we're going to this scone place in Carmel (The Tuck Box) because I saw it on a Food Network show.

Alright, I better get to bed because I have to leave relatively early tomorrow morning. Can't wait until the school year because I have NO MORNING CLASSES. Imagine that.

Gory murder, two-page autobiography, twelve-hour fast

Matt and I saw The Black Dahlia on Saturday, and it was annoyingly disappointing. The book by James Elroy is very good (although it's pretty trashy), so I was surprised at the low Rotten Tomatoes rating (about 30%, with a ridiculous 13% for the cream of the crop) and thought, "well, how bad could it be?"
It was bad.
Boring at times, convoluted, confusing plot that left in about half of the book's story lines but didn't explain them enough, and a ton of really creepy, disturbing images. Overall it was decent fun, and I don't know if there's anything else out there that I'd want to see right now, but it's too bad it didn't live up to the book. (Or stand up on its own-Matt hadn't read the book, and he disliked it more than I did, because he couldn't follow the plot).

In other news, I'm still writing my two-page autobiography for my UCSD application. Tons of fun that. And tonight/tomorrow I have to go through a twelve-hour fast because I have to get blood tests done. In my mind this is just adding insult to injury: not only do I have to get blood drawn, but I also have to starve. The hospital's only saving grace is that it's close to TJ Maxx and Marshalls, and I'm definitely hitting up those establishments after my traumatic hospital experience (and maybe stopping by the Taco Bell to end that fast).

The summer's ending...

How sad. Although I'm sort of excited about school starting. Matt just moved into Suites today (he has a business program so he's going in a week early), and in a week I'll be moved in too. But first I have to go to two days of work, have fun in Monterey... and pack.

Here's a mostly decided schedule of classes for the fall (for those of you who care, or are too bored to stop reading).

ME 284A: Cardiovascular Bioengineering (very cool. and supposedly not that hard.)
SBio 228: Computational Structural Biology (some online course that fulfills a requirement.)
SpanLang 121M: Spanish for medical students (I'm verrrrry psyched about this. go Spanish!)
CS 272: Introduction to Biomedical Informatics Research Methodology (WIM. not so thrilling, but should be cool anyways.)

This *should* be a relatively light courseload, since the spanish class only meets once a week, for two hours. So, I decided to also apply for a position interpreting at Arbor Free Clinic! This will fit awesomely with my spanish class.
Tutoring with Manuel is not looking so rosy: he changed buildings, so now he has to take his lunch break from 11 to 12 am (for random but very valid reasons). Now I have to decide if I'm dedicated enough to tutor at this time...

Hotarational

Matt's parents are in town for a few days, on their way down to the Monterey Jazz Festival. Last night I had dinner with Matt and his parents, and when they couldn't decide where to eat dinner I was like, "Duh, let's eat at Hotaru!", which of course everyone agreed to. I lurrrrve the Nabeyaki udon at Hotaru; I haven't gotten anything else there the past 10 times I've gone. It's so exciting how it comes out in a little cauldron, and the soup seems to take the grease away from the tempura shrimp.
If you've never had a Nabeyaki udon, it's hot udon noodles with vegetables (usually napa cabbage, spinach, carrots, mushrooms), chicken, fish cake, an egg, and topped with tempura shrimp. The thing that's so exciting about it is that the soup is so hot it cooks everything else in the bowl. The chicken and eggs are put in raw, so you can take them out when you think they're cooked enough, and I've had some of the most perfect soft boiled eggs this way. This is what it looks like, although at Hotaru the noodles don't look so dismal:

Also, Matt's mom (who just got back from Iceland, Sweden, and Finland), got me a funny pillowcase with Moomintrolls on it! They're this weird Finnish children's book series which I happened to have read a little when I was in middle school (we had this thing called Junior Great Books, and we read a few stories from them).



This is what they look like: the "Moomin" are the purply things that look like hippos. My pillowcase has a moomin, the evil looking little girl, and the guy in green on it. Matt's mom said she was looking for a stuffed Moomin, but no one seemed to have one. I think the pillowcase is really cute anyways.

Hop on Pop

I loved Hop on Pop when I was little. It's full of ridiculous characters doing really stupid things, and the looks on their faces is priceless. The other day, I brought it to my English lesson with Manuel, and I was totally suprised to see how much he liked it. I mean, lots of people have told me that Dr. Seuss books are one of the best for learning to read-even for adults-but Manuel is like... old, and serious.
The book was pretty awesome, though. I like how it has silly situations and nice drawings to engage young readers, but it has a ton of repetition and continually uses the same, simple words in different contexts to really hammer them in.

GRE

I took the GRE general test at Thomson Prometric in South San Francisco. The facilities were really nice-right on the bay next to a yacht club! I finished early so I went walking along the water, and it was pretty relaxing.
The test was without issue (730 verbal, 800 quantitative-no complaints here..although I feel so *unspecial* about the perfect math because ALL the grad students in my lab were like "yeah, I was perfect on math too"). Three tiny gripes:

(1) The girl sitting next to me sighed loudly every five minutes. I didn't want to brave the greasy headphones to block out the sound... eventually it stopped distracting me. Lots of knuckle-crackers in the room also.

(2) I got the SAME IMPOSSIBLE word in two DIFFERENT problems! Once I had to find the antonym of it, and the other time it was used in an analogy. With all the tough vocab words that exist, they shouldn't have to resort to using the same one twice. I'm just a little annoyed because I had to guess on both of them, which could possibly have lowered my score by 20 points or so.

(3) When I was finished, the computer asked me if I wanted to cancel my test or report (see) my scores. After clicking "report", I then had to click it again when the computer asked me if I was sure, and AGAIN when the computer asked me if I was REALLY sure! I was expecting them to pop up the first time I clicked "report" and had braced myself, but by the third click I was a quivering, emotional mess.

So, another grad school milestone passed... now I have to figure out how to report the damn things.

There is a twenty degree difference between outside and inside

Why are office buildings always so fricking cold? The place I sit in to do research (which is a computer lab, so we don't need to keep living things at a specific temperature or anything) is always around 60 to 65 degrees. Outside it's a gorgeous 75 degrees, going to get up to 80--however, on days I work I have to wear a sweater, and sometimes a jacket. Hmph, my summer clothes are all going to waste.

Matt decides he likes the cat

Matt never had furry pets growing up... his dad had a parrot, who was really cool and interactive but not a cuddly, cutesy sort of pet. I don't think he fully "got" why people keep pets like dogs or cats, and I think he was sort of grossed out by the shedding. However, a little while ago, Matt started paying more attention to my cat; he would walk up to him and say hi, then sit next to him and pet him. He even started picking him up! The other day I asked him why he liked the cat all of a sudden and Matt said, "I didn't know he was so soft." Now he wants to touch the orange cat, although that one's not so tame (or soft).
Ha, figures.

Memory leak!

Does anyone else have a D-link wireless adaptor? AirCFG is some application that comes with it, and it has serious memory leak issues. At start up it'll run at 2,000 or 3,000 K but after about a day it'll be at 30,000! I always go into my task manager and kill it, but sometimes I'll forget and suddenly my computer will start lagging because AirCFG is taking up 100,000 K or something ridiculous like that.
I don't even have problems like this with my freeware... grrr.

EDIT:
Wow, just noticed that this is the one-year anniversary of this blog, and I chose to write about a DORKY MEMORY LEAK.
I was also going to write a post about a Marc Jacobs clutch that I would stab a small child for (but scrapped that because people already think I'm violent enough). I guess that pretty much sums me up?

Wow, adults really suck

For med school, I needed five recommendation letters (four of them were from professors), and I'm probably going to ask for a sixth. I asked for all these letters in early June, and as of last Thursday, two of them had not been turned in. AURGH! This after I had harassed one of the people for like, two weeks before. The thing that really makes me mad is that I like all these people, and I had to be constantly popping up in their offices for about two weeks, and I hope they don't think I'm irritating now.
Anyways. Hopefully it'll all be sorted out soon. Because my earliest application is due on the 22nd, and that's not giving me too much time...

Two other totally unrelated things:
Matt had never seen the Monty Python Spam sketch, so I showed it to him and he loved it. The part where they show the viking ship really cracked us up.



Also, I saw a Macy's ad where this model was wearing god-awful Seven for All Mankind skinny jeans (with zippers on the bottom! God help us all!) and she looked FAT. That made me laugh. Anyone with the tiniest bit of thigh fat should stay away from this terribly unflattering trend. I refuse to touch the things.



"Oooh! Let's spend $170 so that our legs will look terrible! Wheee!"

Opinionated

I'm fed up with women who dress pretty well but wear ugly shoes. There is no excuse!!!

Also, I'm addicted to online crossword puzzles. I do about four a day, which doesn't sound like that much, but keep in mind that I'm working 8 hours a day and then doing med school applications in my spare time. And hating on people's shoes.

EDIT:
Let me add, I DO NOT mean high heels or even shoes that are bad for you! What I meant was that there are plenty of cute, inexpensive shoes like Keds, nice running shoes, all sorts of moccasin things (that are under $50) that it's annoying when someone spends $100 on ugly granny shoes. That's all. I think heels are stupid if you're just walking around.

Facebook needs to lie down and die

Facebook (myspace type network) is starting to make me annoyed. I'm on it so that people can see my phone number and screen name in case they really need to get ahold of me, and I have a few pictures on it, but other than that I've stopped caring about it. They just added a "feed" which tells you all of your friends' activities, like what they added to their profiles, who they've added as friends, what pictures they've added, etc, and it's just visual vomit. If I wanted to know all this information, I'd spend my loser life finding it out for myself. What's next? "Megan clicked at 4:45:00. Then she moved her mouse at 4:45:05. Then she clicked again. Then she clawed her eyes out because Facebook is retarded."
Dude, put yer basic contact info on it, and that's all.

Orange Kitten

We had an orange cat that lived outside (not really our cat, just a stray we feed), and a few months ago he brought a teeny orange kitten along with him. Now the orange kitten lives in our backyard and sleeps under our deck all day. If you go outside she'll follow you around. She's not totally keen on petting, but if you play with her or feed her you can do whatever you want.





Look at the cute orange spots and funny crooked tail! Her tail's always been like that, some raccoon probably took a big bite out of it or something.

Eeeeeeeh

Bah, I have to upload pictures for my lab presentation tomorrow, so this is why I'm updating.
If you haven't figured it out yet, I'm back from a nice vacation in San Diego, where I did zero work for a few days (and went to a conference for a few more, where I didn't do real work, but learned a lot and talked a lot) so now I'm feeling super unmotivated. San Diego was VERY fun, the conference (Automated Function Prediction) was interesting, plus it was nice to hang out with my labmates in a new place. Plus, I got to hang out with my sister Katherine! We went to the outlet stores (oooo Dooney and Bourke outlet...), the Wild Animal Park, and the flea market.

Random pictures:
My PI, postdoc, a grad student, my fellow undergrad, and I went running around Pacific Beach on Thursday night. There's a roller coaster there called the Giant Dipper, which Matt told me is exactly the same as one in Santa Cruz. Weird. I wonder which one is the copy. I didn't want to ride it, because I'm a sissy. Russ said it made him feel sick, so maybe it's better that I didn't.

Here's everyone on the ride:


And here's everyone being weird later on... they're in the bushes outside the roller coaster, if you can't tell.


Here's a shot of the wild animal park. I didn't get any really good pictures because I was mainly looking at the animals. I did get a shot of three awesome rhinos (there were a ton of rhinos, about 20 of them).


I also got this cute condor chick:

They sold it at the wild animal park and I thought it was sort of cute, but I didn't get it. Then, the next day at the flea market they had it for a dollar! Score! It's awesome and a lot more round in person.

The sausage tree! My sister talks about it more on her website (scroll down to bottom of page... and there are more pictures of it here).

Obviously we are excited about the tree. And are touching the sausage.

Also, I would like to point out that Matt cleaned my room for me yesterday. And dusted.

Lag in blogging

I feel totally apathetic, so don't expect me to upload pictures or post much anytime soon. Just really really busy with lab and studying and applications.