LXXXV : Another Halloween

I actually tried to dress up for Halloween... yesterday. Yesterday was a long, fun 21-hour day! Woke up at 6am and went to sleep at 3am. :) It was tiringly awesome. I gave 19 flu shots and 7 cholesterol readings, and got mistaken for being Korean all the time. But everyone was so nice and the elderly were adorable with their fears of the results ("ohh, that is too high...," "that is no good," "oh no... I will return to exercising then) and, of course, receiving the shot ("I am scared..!" "heh... ha ha... *looks away*" "I don't want to show my naked body. *begins taking off shirt*" because his sleeve wouldn't roll up enough, but I showed him to a screen so he could hide behind it). I love serving the community like this, but how possible would it be to have health fairs for the public outside of school?

Afterward, I went to a Halloween party at Jess' place. The first thing I see when I walk into the house is Peter's shirtless body in the kitchen. Do all guys who work out love showing their naked body around? I guess that's why they work out. :P Because it was a Halloween party, we had to dress up. I tried to find the brightest colors I had in my wardrobe because I wanted to try a Harajuku-y look, but gave up on that idea. I just like solid colors too much. I ended up going with a black, gothic dark color with some bright yellow mixed in. But what I really had fun with was the make-up. It's like ART ON THE FACE! So fun! Jess was Tina from Glee, but the blue temporary hair dye didn't work so well.

We made dinner (more like I watched) and I had three delicious bowls of home-made spaghetti. So delicious~ and Jess found a recipe for butter baked biscuits (?) similar to the ones at Red Lobster. It was a success!! So fluffy and delicious, though it tasted different from Red Lobster's scrumptious and delicate biscuits. So good. We watched "Edward Scissorhands" and it was surprisingly funny and good, though sad. Johnny Depp was already so good at that time!

There were afterparties elsewhere, and the guests left Jess' around midnight. I went to celebrate Joy's bday finally with a whole bunch of Pharm friends. We karaoked in Ktown all the way until 2am. My mind was sleeping already by the time I got there, and I couldn't get into the mode. Basically, I sat quietly a lot of the time (and it didn't help that I don't know the recent popular songs that they kept picking). It was great to hang out with the people outside of campus and class. So tiring, but what an awesome day.

Happy Halloween. 2010.

LXXXIV : 10.28.10 randomness

The mornings have been chilly, much like the Bay Area, which I'm supposed to be used to, but I still have to force myself awake, out of bed, and to class in the cold, 55F morning. I just realized that even though the morning is cold, my car remains dry as if there were no morning dew. I go to class and miss out on the day's gradual warming. When I get out of class at noon, there has been a 30 degree weather change and it's 88 or so when I get into my car for the drive home. Can the weather be any more stranger here? This year? It's the end of October! Halloween! It should be getting and remaining cold. Though I do enjoy the sun.

On another note, my hair is long enough to tie back in a (tiny) ponytail without having random loose strands all over the place! I went to play badminton with the team on Sunday, and even with all the bobby-pins all over, I still had loose strands flailing around. It's warm enough right now that I tied my hair back and I was surprised that in just a week's time, my hair is just long enough to be put up! I'm on my way to growing it long again. Not yet sure how long though.

I'm really liking short, dangley earrings. Maybe this will be the winter when I get my ears pierced. But my ear lobes keep getting clots or something. Not sure if these small lumps will affect piercing my ear though...

So much time to myself~ what should I do?

LXXXIII : Catching Up

Interesting, or strange, that there are certain people you wouldn't mind calling up randomly to have a conversation about anything with, but there are others you just wouldn't talk to them about some topics. What I find strange is, in my mind, I consider them all really good friends. I can talk to them easily; I want to see them; if I have something to tell them, I want to text them or leave a random message; I want to hear from them, anything; I want to listen to their life. But there are individuals I want to be open about anything with, and there are individuals I end up not saying everything on my mind to.

These aren't the people whom a "hi" and smile, and maybe a short conversation, would suffice. These aren't the people whom I'd talk to just to [attempt to] make a conversation with.

These are the people I genuinely get excited and hyped up to meet if there is a chance. These are the people I smile widely and squeal (to myself if I can suppress it enough) when I get a correspondence from, whether it's a letter, a text, a wall message, an e-mail, or a call.

Yet even among these precious people to me, I hold back. Why is that?

So strange.

LXXXII : Grossness

It's my midterm week right now, and I'm half done! Monday was Biochem and Drug Actions (basically Biochem) and today was Biological Systems (basically physio, anatomy, histology, whatever). Tomorrow is a rest day, and I finish off with Pharmaceutics on Thursday and Health Care Delivery on Friday. ahh. This is first time I've ever had four midterms in one week. Even during finals, I chose my classes (or got lucky) so that I would at least have a weekend in between finals. After yesterday's midterm, my head actually hurt. So much that I couldn't prepare for today's, but I guess luckily the midterm was at 5:30pm, so I had time to study. Anyway, I didn't want to complain about midterm week. I wanted to complain about something else.

We got ants. A load of them. I was thinking about taking a picture, but it's too gross and they go all the way from one side of the living room to the other side, just to get to our trashcan. They didn't come before this week. They came on Sunday and we managed to get them to leave by Monday. And then they're back again. I think they love yoplait yogurt because each time I've thrown it away, they've appeared. My roommate and I have found out that ants hate black pepper, vinegar, cinnamon, and Clorox wipes. But we haven't found out how to quickly kill them with the materials we have right now. If they don't disappear tomorrow (we put the source outside), we'll probably have to get ant spray. I'm hoping we won't have to resort to that because cleaning that up is a pain, and I hate the smell. One other factor that might contribute to this ant attack would be the weather. It's cold! and rainy! and the ants want to be warm and dry, with food. Well, it's just my speculation because the same thing happened some years ago back home during the winter. Ant attacks right before or during thunderstorms. I don't mind that they're nicely staying in a line, but it's so black and our carpet is pretty brown. So being able to see the ant trail distinctly on the carpet tells you how bad this attack is. Massive. It's so gross, but when I go to the living room, I can't help look at the moving blackness.

So gross.

LXXXI : Good Questions

After finishing my externship, we had a take-home final. More like homework, which I totally forgot about until today, when it was due. So, I quickly went home after the first pledge meeting and completed my final in 2 hours. It really took 2 hours. Why? The questions really made me think, and there were 16 of them. And while I was answering each one, I kept thinking, "these are good interview questions." They are also good questions to ask people and get to know them better. :) A few:

How do you define success?
Success is the feeling I get when I overcome some intangible barrier, such as memorizing a piano piece, and see the people around me smiling.

I've done this one before: What makes you happy?
Many small occurrences make me happy. For example, hugging clean, straight-from-the-dryer laundry, receiving a smile back from someone I walk passed, getting postal mail, and cooking for other people. Seeing other people happy makes me happy, too.


Why did you decide to study pharmacy?
Growing up, I was intrigued by Chinese medicine, especially when I wrote a report about the Chinese physician, Hua Tuo. He made his own medicine and walked around China, curing people of their illnesses, and he was the first Chinese surgeon. What appealed to me was how he dealt with the patients after his diagnoses and procedures—the herbs and mixtures he gave them. I entered undergrad as a pre-pharmacy student not really certain what exactly was pharmacy. The more I learned about modern pharmacy, however, the more I became interested in it as well as Chinese medicine.

Do you want to be a leader? If so, in what capacity do you want to lead?
I want to build trust and equality among the health professions, starting with the perception people have of pharmacists. I also want to develop ways for the concepts of Chinese and Western medicine to be combined to maximize therapeutic potential.

And lastly, something I haven't really been able to talk about to anyone else, but I'm starting to feel like I learned the most about life from it.
A crucible is a moment or event in your life that was extremely challenging and altered your perspective on life and leadership. What and when was your crucible?
I have always felt I was a late sprout. I was generally carefree all through elementary school and just went with the flow of things in life. In high school, I felt I was in charge of how happy I can be with my life, but I was lost as to how to go about doing that. Unfortunately, because I did not have a clear mindset of what I was looking for, I encountered an emotionally extremely challenging situation in undergrad, when someone I met had a clear vision of his principles, and it clashed with mine. Through this episode, I learned that I needed to be more firm with my own principles and that I cannot be accommodating all the time. Whenever I became firm, I felt uncaring, so I would back down again. As a result, what could have been solved in a few days dragged to a few weeks. From this moment, I learned that someone must be resolved and clear when it comes to one’s values and beliefs. Leaders, to persuade others to understand their principles, must be determined and, at times, resolute.