printed and archived all the blog entries for the past year or so up to yesterday and pasted them in my regular diary book. while doing that, was thinking maybe i should move the blog to a more popular hosting service, like blogger or xangar, at least one that uses xml so i can make a real time update window in my homepage. however when i finished archiving, decided it's not necessary. as long as the blogdrive is alive and working fine with data storage, i should be satisfied with this blog. as i have said once before, this blog is intended to be a text recording of my day to day thoughts.

continuation of diet plan--
6/30/06
morning
strawberry jam and italian bread, 4 slices (finished the 1lb pack of bread brought on tuesday)
1 yogurt

night
got late because of experiments so just a bowl of cheerio and wafers with milk. 1/2 pack of strawberry, 1 yogurt

7/1/06
morning
2 peaches

night
finally cooked curry (golden curry chuukara from S&B), intended for 5 servings--
3 onions
4 potatoes
4 carrots
1lb lamb meat
got one serving, ate with rice
also had 1 cup icecream !!!hey some one stole one icecream from the freezer downstairs! the container was almost full when i last put it back, and now it's only 1/3 full!!! :-(

today--
morning
1 cup cereal, got this trial pack of eggo and swirl from kellogg's, with milk
1 peach,
1yogurt

my colleagues (i.e. post docs and grad students in my lab) were laughing about an article on web md or netscape encyclopedia or one of those places the other day. it's on cytoskeletal dynamics in neuronal growth cones, which is our speciality. apparantly the article was written by someone not as expert as we are. although most of the facts sort of made sense, the diction did not follow the convention of this field, and the over all description was vague. "they probably hired a writer to do this, or jusr a random bio grad student" speculated my colleagues.
what may appear to be impressive and professional in the genral public's eye is a piece of laugh dough in the eyes of the real professionals. such is the tragedy of a science writer. you are never good enough as a scientist in any field, and everytime you write something, you have to read the jargon filled publications and try to summarize it in a way readable to the public while pretending that you understood everything you wrote, but in reality, your head still feels dizzy as if in 5 miles of fog. after hearing what my colleague thought, i decided not to become a science writer any more, that's a real half bottle full career.
why i thought of this, was that i was thinking about taking a few more undergrad classes as a med student. and this reminded me of the journalism seminar which on the syllabus requires everyone to have some thing to contribute to the class, which as an example, the professor wrote "such as being a med student and resident at yale new haven hospital." and journalism reminded me that once upon a time i was thinking about being a science writer. then i recalled the above mentioned happening.

last night's dinner--
stir fry of chicken liver/gizzards/hearts and onion
1 yogurt
5 slices of italian bread

this morning--
2 peaches
4 slices of italian bread with strawberry jam
1 cup of milk

afternoon--
grapes

tonight--
leftover stir fry from yesterday with 2 packs of instant noodles, pickles
1/2 pack of strawberry

went to gym today!

hajime!
stumbled upon cheng yan yit's diet diary the other day. she lost 100 pounds in 1 year, so impressive will power! that's about 10 pounds a month. so set it to my goal, lose 10 pound by the end of july.

will record what i eat everyday so i can keep track of the calorie intake.
yesterday--
morning: 1 cup cheerio + non fat milk
night: 6 slices of italian bread, salad (~6 leaves of lettuce, 4 strawberries, 1 carrot, 2 hard boiled eggs, nonfat ceaser dressing), 1 pack of strawberries, 1 cup icecream

today--
morning: 4 slices of italian bread + strawberry jam, 1 cup milk, 1 cup yogurt
afternoon: 1 branch of grapes
night: not yet -- if have time will cook curry?

will also go to exercise at least 3 times a week. went to the harkness gym for the first time on monday. exercise routine was-- 200 jump ropes, 20 sit ups, run 1 mile, walk 1 mile, stretch, 200 jump ropes. according to exercise instructors, jump roping is good for getting rid of the fat on the legs Xo so does biking, maybe will try bike a few miles next time :)

never quite thought of adam cheng as a singer, except for his zai xia mang tian xing which i've liked since when i was 9. well maybe because he's only released one album in mandarin and i did not grow up watching his tvb wuxia dramas. this all changed last weekend when i got in hand the dvds of his 2005 gar chuun wu hiuo concert. for the first time, realized a lot of the tunes i nantonaku was familiar with was actually adam cheng's songs. and for the first time paid attention to the lyrics and found them to be impressive. (sasuga uncle wong zan's words)
also impressed by how well he can sing! much much better compared to andy lau's 2004 vision tour where andy was out of breath the whole time (dancing too hard?). adam was more settled, calm, although of course he also incorporated a lot of dancing, but those were more elegant and slow moving dances. his voice was very smooth and reached far away, even for the highest tunes. occasionally at odd angles, i could see the evidence of his aging, i mean, face it, he was already 58 in 2005, although his styling and apparance in a whole still resembled choir lau heung of 30 years ago. as he also admits himself, adam cheng is not good at dancing. he was always half a beat lagging behind his backup singers in the hip hop arrangement of ti siu yam yun. but i admire his effort and really liked the beat of that song -- despite the sluggish dancing, his singing in hip hop style was pretty good. another song i newly discovered in the cocert was yam sing (drinking victory), very cheerful and energizing, and the korean drum was just fabulous.
so since then my objective for these few days has been to learn adam cheng's songs, from book&sword, to wong dei zi sun, to siu han fong wun etc etc. would love to actually see him singing at the red stadium some day :)

ストレートで好き嫌いがハッキリしているあなた。裏表がなく、 男女限らず友達からの信頼も厚いはず。でも、男性のことをちょっといいなと思っても、「私は女のコっぽくないし」「友達のままでいるのがいちばんいい」 と、自分の中で勝手に恋の可能性を狭めてしまっている傾向が。それではせっかく恋愛対象として見ていた男性も、離れてしまいます。相手の内面を見て、深い 人間関係を築いていけることが、あなたの素晴らしい魅力。あとは、自分を抑えず、恋に一歩踏み出す勇気を持ってみて。“かわいい女”はすぐそこです。

・ラッキーアイテム　マニキュア
・ラッキーカラー　ピンク

so ieba, i was wearing pink today!

for the usual tom-boy me, there are one or two days every week when i decide to become a women. this consists of actually think before i put on clothes so they match, wear belts, high heels, hats and other accesories, use a handbag or purse, and put on make up. it's about feeling like tsubnoi chinatsu (from shomuni). it's about feeling really tall when i walk, and enjoying other people's back gazes. so this is what i did today, dress up as a woman, for the arts and ideas festival. even though i am getting used to walking in 3in heels, it's still a pain when the distance i need to walk is 10 blocks and for the rest of the day i happened to be standing up all the time. it's especially bad on the new haven green, as the heel sinks into the grass. as a result, i get a pair of green and muddy heels when the day's finished. didn't want to walk the 10 blocks back any more, so called for the shuttle. the girl who answered the phone was probably a newbie, she got me a security escort (like a patrol car) instead. well, it all works as long as it can get me back to harkness.  

it's probably a poisson curve. events likes to come in clusters.

mommy and dad came for my graduation on the weekend of may 20 and behold that sunday we get a call from second uncle that my grandpa has passed away. dad, being the filial son that he is, has been calling grandpa's house every friday evening to give his greetings and as how the old couple been doing. no exception that friday either. he called as soon as he has arrived in new haven. grandpa answered the phone. he was doing fine, although the chronical diseases (those that tend to bother older people, like heart disease, diabetes etc) has not stopped bothering him. this was saturday morning in shenyang. then that evening, he died. accroding to second uncle, he was watchign tv and just stopped moving. according to third aunt's husband, uncle was not with grandpa at that time. he got a phone from grandpa, saying, oh son come home for tonight, i need to talk to you. when he got there, grandpa was not moving. he took out some emergency medication to pop in his mouth, but he wasn't opening his mouth. this medicine has worked for three previous heart attacks. but guess three is already too many for it to work. they gothim to the hospital, already too late. well he was 84, everyone in the family is trying to comfort themselves by saying that's a longevity.

they tried to reach father for a whole day before they got to my cell phone. because both my parents were out in new haven, when they called my house, no one answered. then they had to call third uncle on my mom's side, who reached third aunt on my mom's side, who called my cell. it was kind of a harsh reversal of situations for us, since we were all happy for my graduation. as it turns out, dad had to fly back right after commencement on monday. mommy and i also wanted to go back with him, but the plain ticket was too expensive, since we wanted to buy for the next day. also i had to start working because of my boss's grant deadline on july 1. grandpa's funeral was scheduled on that friday, which was juma and supposed to be good luck for entering heave. we didn't have doubt that he would go to heaven, because he's been really pious all his life. many political figures and other sorts of big shots of the province was supposed to show up.

i was surprised at myself, the kind of "passe le simple" or "heirs to the past" type of emotion i was anticipating did not come up in my mind. more accurately, i didn't quite know how to react to grandpa's death, maybe because i have never experienced death before. all the should-be emotions i have observed in theaters and read in books seemed really fake, if i was to force myself to act that way. isn't that weird? i was asking more logical and rational questions, like where will he be buried etc... anyway, maybe when a chance comes i will write about this more, the third person in my family that i have lost during the years abroad, and the first one who i actually had some emotional attachment to.

but i titled this blog important dates, because with grandpa's death, i though i should remember the date and go back to china in the future to give incense.

5/20 grandpa's day of death

along with two other dates in my life so far--
6/18 day i left china
1/24 day i came to the us

met several people, some for the first time, some again since the interview trails, at the revisits. was assigned the same room in the hotel with my nominal twin at columbia, which was exciting because of the kyuusekkin chance! being the cute girl that she is, qw soon attracted many admirers on the trip. particularly a guy who i thought was from a all gril's college in connecticut (which turned out to be my mistake in memory, the college and his real college's names had the initial letter in common -- corrected by jyw) was sticking on to her all around, making my subject of human watching for the day. the school treated us very well, taking hellen to the first broadway play for instance. the play was set in nyc back in the time when a month's rent was only $75, and when a college educated woman did nothing but stayed at home while the guy went out being a lawyer. i fell asleep for a little bit in the middle part when the mother in law got really drunk somehow and hocked up with a homeless guy in the attic of that $75 apartment. the yale revisit was not as enthusiastic, which i did not surprise because of a forewarning from my PI. but the secretary was nice enough to arrange 6 faculty interviews for me and i actually learned some interesting staff from their research talks. the first years took the recruits to dinner for miya's sushi all you can eat but because i was pulling two all nighters in a roll to finish some end of the semester stuff before, i fell asleep during the dinner. just remembered that the girl sitting to my left was a vegie and the girl to my right was married to a rhode island state trooper. prof h-k at brown was just so nice, i mean so nice. i would love to work with her, but unfortunately i can't choose the program just based on one person. i still would love to work with her through some ways in the future though.

so hu's here. when finally the enthusiasm for him to be here had seemed to subsided after 8 months of wait when he cancelled his initial plan to visit yale for the sake of harricane katrina.

the seating was more restrcited, much more than when clinton came. by inivitation only, and of course i was not invited. have no complains. i don't necesarily think his talk will be very inspiring anyway. but stil he's the boss of china so i guess people do want to go, like back in the day when any common peasants would wanted to take a glance at the graceful face of the dragon, too bad he's not a dragon.

anyway, more annoying than the police blocking off 3x4 blocks of downtown new haven and forcing me to walk around the green and whitney ave to go to science hill is the protesters that line the periphery pf the blocked off streets. mostly FLG people. they are so annoying! i don't understand why they have to be so political. if you want to do the damn exercise and be healthy whatever, just do it at home. i'm sure the communist would not have banned you/put you in concentration camps if you did not go to tiananmen square and lined up there. i thinkthe FLGers just want something more than be healthy and the right to exercise. what is it? create chaose? overturn the CP government? what good would it do to them anyway? or is it a refugee status in a more prosperous country like the US? but US is not necessarily more prosperous than china nowadays. what the heck.

this is almost comical-- mingled with the protester were more pro-hu people welcoming him. they would broadcast super patriotic communist songs (like the falg of victory flies high, we love our mother country blah blah) as if to kill out the prostestors counting the crime of CP in megaphones. and abunch of cantonese immigrants, probably each goes several generations back, there, all wearing a red cap with the characters "cantonese copatriots association" printed on it. reminds me of the scene celebrating establishment of PRC in nyc china town from the newspaper i had to translate for jenn.

suppsoedly an old family friend is here today. wonder if she came to protest or welcome or just to have fun. it's like a carnival, of sort.