To hell with resumes and professionalism and all that jazz.

i sometimes wish things were sign up, throw you in, sink or swim.

i worked on a goddamn resume about 4 hours today that isn't even for a job.

i feel like a crass rube some days and am proud of it.

edit: 5 drafts later and the god forsaken thing is done. DONE.

So I asked a friend of a friend, who is working toward a PhD in linguistics:
"So what is it you think you've been doing to get you to where you are?"

He promptly replied:
"Well, at the risk of being pompus, I did exactly what was asked of me."

This was an uncharacteristcally serious answer from a characteristically silly man. At the time, it sounded very shall we say, zen. Isn't that what school is? They tell you to study, they tell you to do home work, you do it right, you succeed. I guess it makes sense in a creepy big brother kind of way.

About an hour later, a thought smacked me upside the head. in the words of one of my buddies from a chem class, "Sir, you are full of shit". You were never asked to be exceptional. You were never asked to choose linguistics. You were never asked to go to school across the country from your home town. Nobody ever sets out a nice little detailed plan for you if you tell them that you want to become a professor. Ambition drove you to find out for yourself what you had to do, and you only found out for certain if something worked out. That little something your peers (like me) didn't have, even if they were willing to work hard.

Never have I seen an advisor's office give a delineated flow chart on 'how to succeed'. They give you little lists, of well here's where to start. Or well, these are some things that might help you. Never is it do A, B, C and then definitely you will achieve D. Even syllabi from classes in college were never quite so specific. Exam one is half your grade. Okay, study the material that exam one covers. Oh, by the way, exam one doesn't actually contain questions pertaining to some of the material so you will waste time studying it, but Iwon'ttellyouwhatisnotonthetest kthnxbye. The last time I remember something so concrete was one class in college where the majority of the class was hella failing, and the professor was under pressure to pass a certain percentage. "i will have X questions on Y" etc. etc. he practically told us all the questions we would have to answer. of course, it was still hard as hell so not everyone got perfect score. yet everyone did better. we knew what was to be asked of us.

it used to be like that when we were little. math tests looked exactly like two pages of math homework, essays were graded on strict criteria. When an A meant you did exactly what they asked of you, and an F meant you didn't follow any direction whatsoever. i wish life, the universe and everything came with an instruction set. where every possible ending you might want had specific, detailed instructions, which they hand to you as you walk in the door. So you weren't in an unending easter egg hunt for sets of tried and true instruction sets.

I guess we're way past that age, or it never really was that simple. I write this because I'm doing this application thing feeling like an absolute idiot. instructions for things scattered the hell over everywhere that i didn't know about or didn't think to look for or was told cryptically once about. and sadly enough, a ton of them are still vague or oddly specified. i'm of the mind that any ole dumbass (this one included) would do a lot better if there were told quite specifically what we ought to do to succeed at anything or everything.

yes. i'm acting like a baby and require a certain amount of hand holding. even at my best moments i've never really been a go getter.

maybe that's why i'm stuck here. out here. in a stupid, self made limbo.

so i've been reading the literature on how i'm supposed to apply to medschool (i am quite possibly fuckd, btw. more on this later) and i say to myself: "OKAY. FINE. i'll just open an app and start with the goddamn easy shit. like my name etc...". So i go to make an account on the AMCAS website and it goes all effing psychotic when i try to access their system.

here's where it gets annoying. i go and check up on the system specs, make sure my browser is up to snuff. well, looks like my java is a little old. FINE. i go to update it and apparently i need to do shit. *sigh

so i wasted like 2 hours working on it. with no avail. still says i'm running the older version on firefox. so now i decided to update to goddamn firefox 3.5.

I had a surreal experience this morning. I woke up and got ready to go to the library, but first printed out my confirmation email for my MCAT this friday. Then I decided, I should check this place out on the google maps street-view thinger. Hmm, I thought to myself that looks kinda like my old Doctor's office. (This was the doctor who kinda pointed me in the way of learning about my allergies and whatnot. this is important later.) Driving down San Tomas expressway, something felt eerily familiar as I took a left onto Moorpark.

Oh shits, it WAS my old doc's office across the street from the testing center. I pulled into the office's parking lot and had myself a look around. Maybe, if the doc was in, I could chat him up and say 'holy shit man, you're the reason i wanna be a doctor! YOUR OFFICE IS NEXT TO MY MCAT TESTING PLACE.' To my disappointment, the office was replaced by some dentist with a badly done sign proclaiming "NO SOLICIT". I walked around a little bit more, thinking of where my folks used to park when they took me to the doctor's.

Most of the visit to the center was uneventful. Found a coffee joint in the building, found the bathrooms, found the test center on the 2nd floor. As I was driving out of the complex, I had to pull forward at the stop sign so I could see around the office park sign. Lo and behold, the title of my old doctor's medical group was on the sign. They had just moved across the street. Oh, damn. I was mildly creeped out and excited at the same time.

Request: please provide test stress reduction or confidence techniques.

I take the MCAT in a few weeks.

i made dinner tonight, and quite satisfied with the results. salmon burgers w/ mushrooms n' onion. topped with baby spinach and mustard. wrapped in romaine lettuce. possibly i may make this for the alleged pot-luck i've been trying to organize.

the burger stuff
1/4 onion, diced.
3, 6oz? cans of chopped, boneless, skinless salmon (probably will work with tuna instead.)
flax bran (yeah. its all i had on hand.)
2 eggs
2 slices of bread

the fixins.
1 can of mushrooms
olive oil
salt. pepper.
soy sauce (you know. 'cause i'm asian. you racists)
french's yellow mustard (because i'm a goddamn american. eff yeah.)
baby spinach

tear up bread, mix with chopped salmon, beaten eggs, and 1/2 of the diced onions (i may add minced garlic or garlic salt at this point next time). press into patties and dust with flax bran on both sides.
fry with olive oil over medium high heat. flip once. (i was thinking about keeping it covered so the vapors steam it, but i dunno).

sautee mushrooms and the rest of the onions with olive oil and soy sauce. season with salt and pepper. set aside to top burgers.

place burger on leafy end of the lettuce. fix as desired. fold the stem end over. eat like a mothertrucking burger.

without the mustard, they were kind of bland, but my folks like that. maybe lemon pepper in the mix, or chopped celery and chili powder? room for improvement. i half used a recipe for this, half pulled it out from behind my back. so i guess if i used the actual recipe it would be better.

when was the last i regularly posted?
i have lots of time on my hands, i guess i should. i guess i haven't been in a bloggy mood lately. bloggity blog blog.

this summer is going to be chock full of activity. there's a bunch of shits i should also be moving on, like volunteer work, CPR classes and information gathering. wah. productivity should increase.

k bye journal.

well. apparently that tiny update was too 'lame'. XD so now i will passive aggressively post about every single tiny bit of life. including the chunky parts that contain the supreme annoyance of living at home after a 4.5 year absence.

Brunch at Hobees with people was fun. especially running around the park afterwards. playgrounds for miniature people are more fun (and you seem less creepy at my age) if you go there with friends. next time we should bring a frisbee. or some other similar juvenile game prop.

Tuesday, watching Hot Fuzz with carriebean, suz, marco and emily was nice. I was in a crumbly mood since i didn't have a chance to take my driver's test. which is a whole nother bag of crap in itself, which i will get to later. anyway, i made pork chops for dinner that kind of was a little fail, so i didn't have any of carrie's delicious-looking clam and anchovy pasta sauce. Apparently I'm not the only one who is naturally messy in the kitchen. I guess the musky flavor of anchovies (which i'm allergic to, hence the not partaking) would mix well with the sweet/sourness of a onion and tomato sauce. During the course of the evening i proposed a POT LUCK event. where everybody brings something they personally cooked. ahhahaa. marco seemed appalled at the idea. it was good to get out, see portion(s) of the old gang. My lady made an 'executive decision' and made me go, because i was having a crappy day.

Speaking of which: I had an appointment for a driver's license test Tuesday @ 11:30. i was ready. my pop, who was taking me, was not. He didn't know where he stuffed his vehicle registration in the car, and only had hella old proof of insurance papers. the damned people at the DMV needed them, and wouldn't let me take my test if i didn't have both to show. So we went to the godforsaken insurance office, got my dad's insurance agent to print out a new proof of insurance thing. by the time that we had finished that and got back to the DMV it was 12:30, i was standing in line for another 20 odd minutes and the bureaucrats wouldn't take me. or listen to my story. i guess i should have plead my case when i got there instead of just trying to obtain the crap and come back later. i suppose its kind of my fault seeing i didn't double check that my aging pater familias had everything in order, but jeez. he's supposed to have that crap in the car by law. and he wasn't even apologetic about the whole business. I was rather disappointed and wanted to be a four-wheeled punk, pick up emily and appear at carrie's... but twas not to be. i was pretty crushed and wanted to wallow at home instead, but Emily wouldn't let me.

Living at home with the family after such a while is. challenging. like some of my other friends who ended up returning to their parents' houses, i'm clashing regularly with my parental unit. i'm trying my darnedest to be a good son, cooperate and above all be patient, but my folks have been exercising their special ability to aggrivate me. the cherry on top is my mom challenging me to 'not get angry for a week' (which i utterly failed at) because i will need bedside manner that i've been deemed *not* to have.

raise your hand if you've seen me pissed at you?
i think i'm a pretty patient guy. enough about that.

Being back here in the bay area does have perks. the ability to spend time with emily is very nice. goodness knows how appreciative i am of the fact i can have her over for dinner, stroll around the mall with her occasionally, or just mull around doing nothing. although i don't feel the need to yell her name from the rooftops, she makes me happy in a mellow, poke some toast into a steaming cup of coffee kind of way. instead of a bounce off the wall, do cartwheels in grass kind of way. i wish we could spend more time together. she's still got school, i'm actually trying to get started studying for the MCAT before my utterly expensive class starts... blah blah blah.

OKAY.
now. i think that's enough blogging for a thursday night, don't you.
HA. HA. and HA.

one tiramisu
spaghetti from scratch
"hunters' chicken"
red death curry
sautéed shrimp and zucchini
cioppino(x2)
pizza
bread-bowled pasta
3 flavor noodle soup + sesame pancake + sauteed green beans
chili
a batch of meringues
burrito
meatloaf
lamb stew
salty soyu chicken+veggies
"muffins"
almond gelatin dessert

and assorted other things as well, its may 18th.

some days i wonder, how close am i to getting in over my head?

who knows. had a very nice day today. i'm sure it'll all work out fine, and i'll be a laughing old man in 20 yrs.

so my brother's girlfriend sent me a silly little link that i scoffed at when i saw the page. but then, well. you'll get the picture in a minute.

about a little coffee shop with 'a lot of rules'. oh, man. this sounds kind of ridiculous. what kind of proprietor would do such a thing?? am i right? normally, if i wasn't bored i'd just thumb it up on stumble upon and move on.

but no. i yelp that shit. lo and behold, effing mixed reviews. ratings: 31 five stars to 5 one star (and people wishing they could put 0 stars). my curiosity is morbidly piqued. i read some of the reviews and they proclaim the owner is some old insane guy, and the whole place has good coffee, but damn is that old guy cranky. also, they try to squeeze every dime from you. see: notsofree wifi (comes w/ a 3$ min purchase for the 1st hour. 2.50 for the 2nd hour, and 5 after that).

and then there's a shop website on the yelp page. here, is the first nugget of insight. apparently there's some sort of meta semi religious philosophy called 'Sufism', which it looks like the owner and his somewhat recently deceased father are believers in. odd. some of the ideas are somewhat reminiscent of post-upanishadic concept of self/universe duality i learned about in my Traditional India class.

anyway. sounds like the place is a really intensely mom-and-pop. with devotion to coffee (as well as other things). hell. the website says they roast half pounds of their own blend daily and serve 16 types of coffee on a given day. ridiculousness. i kinda wanna go try their coffee. them and Barefoot.

epicness of homecoming aside, there has been all sorts of ridiculousness.

a week has gone by, and i have done little to no unpacking. i really need to start... settling. seeing emily frequently is nice. very nice. i would like to actually get settled, started on my future. there is much to do. plenty of time, but as always, i should get moving on things, but i would like to square away things with my family, possibly a job, a solid working plan, you know. the works.

everything for me now is a kinda plan. *sigh*
i'll resolve things in due time. get on track. always do.

also. firefly is pretty damn good. hilarious. snarky. my kinda thing.

i meant for this to be a longer entry, but ah... i haven't been one for words lately.
tis all well and good. i will be, soon enough.

finally sitting down to write a propah entry and i'm too tired. so i leave you with a summary:

reminders to self:
'greg needs a sportsbra'
power outage on campus
packing
gordon's sandy vag
dinner w/ the lady and my folks


(11:04:28 AM) bluesaino6: i was pretty drunkassed last night
(11:05:16 AM) bluesaino6: after i called you i had another beer and was hella drunk.
(11:07:40 AM) bluesaino6: highlights of antics: billiards games in I did horribly, beer pong at which i lost horribly, samus poking my face saying "he's so red! if i poke him i bet he'll be white.", and fucking matsumoto setting off fireworks in the street.
(11:08:42 AM) bluesaino6: i kicked the stragglers out at 12, cleaned a bit and crashed on the couch.
(11:11:18 AM) bluesaino6: woke up at 4:30. cleaned some more and went to work.

now, its f'in naptime.
when i become awakes there will be more fun to do. whee fun.

At any given moment, are you doing what you care most about?

i'm about to go to sleep, since i have work early tomorrow. and so i'm catching up on my internets and

this is kind of a wow.
http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/15131

so i read that story a while back before they got to the 3rd update. and then forgot about it, kind of disappointed.

now i re-stumbled (read pressed the stumble! button and it appeared) the site and was like omg. the photos! but again was disappointed, because the site was down.

its gonna stay in my routine internets check till i see them. i feel morbidly fascinated by the thing.

i am having nightmares i generally don't remember that are freaking me out.
i am not dying.
i am not seriously ill.
i am not having uncontrollable tremors at random times.

to explain the last one better:
when i'm doing really fine motor control stuff its been oddly harder to be steady my hands. so they kind of waver a little. nothing so dramatic as i friggin drop a pair of forceps or find write or crap like that. if you asked me to pick up a single grain of rice with chopsticks i could pbbly do it, just with a bit more effort than it would normally take me. silliness. i just attempted that, did it okay, i guess.

i mean, with the animal stuff, i'm usually mildly nervous already, so i guess this weirdness kind of exacerbated it. generally i get the feeling from sammy and val's comments i made my steadiness issue sound zounds more serious than i think it is. i reread what i wrote this morning and it sounds a bit more drama-ed up than how it sounds in my head. probably because i was still a little freaked from my nightmare when i wrote it. seriously, i think its due to some stress i can't really articulate or something. i'm going to see a doctor about it. i think i take pretty decent care of myself overall.

the end.

http://bartning.newsvine.com/_news/2007/12/20/1176823-telephone-milestone-att-terminates-popcorn-time-information-service

AT&T, i know i hadn't really tried to use it recently, but this is bullshit. DON'T BE THAT GUY.

okay, i'm pretty bad about updating because i'm frickin' busy as all hell, but i woke up early and this should be recorded in case it ends up being a problem later.

i'm not the kind of guy to have a nervous breakdown and go to pieces.
but something is up with me lately.

for the past week and a half i've kind of been having sleeping issues and other weird disconcerting(ww?) stuff happening to me.
the last few days especially, my sleeping patterns have been all friggin weird. not that i sleep sporadically or barely at all... I've been waking up at random early (okay, not so early for some) morning hours (read: 5:20, 7:12, 6:38 and 8:15 am) and being freaked out by some sort of nightmare, or just kind of generically panicked. maybe its what i'm eating before i go to bed (i've been eating odd nonconventional dinners somewhat late in the evening) or that i'm stressed, or that i just recovered/am recovering from a really long stretch of being sick. (on and off through all january, and twoish weeks in february) yet these sorts of things have happened before with no crazy shit.

a couple of days ago i woke up at some god awful hour when it was pitch black outside. the day before had been just generically long and abusive but since i've had worse. i sat up in bed all just mildly freaked out about nothing at all. i guess a better way to put it is general despair with no real reason attached. yeah i don't know.

wednesday, I woke up hella early and generically freaked. water from the glass i leave bedside tasted horrible. I later drank from the same cup and it tasted fine. i went back to sleep and woke up later than i had planned, grumpy and unrested.

today i woke up from a really dumb but despair filled dream.
so fyi, i want to be a doctor, and for that sort of thing there's the bit where you have to get into a medical school. getting into medical school takes stellar grades, awesome academic stuff, letters of rec all that jazz... However, my grades are kinda mediocre for this kind of thing, (3.2ish, pbbly 3.3 by the time i'm done) and i have a worried feeling about MCAT crap, which i haven't started preparing for in earnest yet. basically i'm banking on a terrific MCAT score (somewhat possible) and a couple of awesome letters of recommendation to get me in somewhere. its kind of a reach. but i can dream, can't i?

anyway. that's relevant because this was my dream: i went to talk to my professor who i've been working my butt off for. also, she and her husband kind of think i'm awesome/love me for no particular reason. anywho. i went to ask her for a letter of recommendation, and per usual, she was stressed and busy and somewhat strung out. I said okay, i know you're busy but this is kind of important to you know, my future. in classic martha (oh, that's my prof's name) fashion, she says oh, yeah definitely, for sure i'll write you a great one but i'm busy so you know it'll take time. the dream fast forwards a couple of days? and martha calls me into her office and tells me she has a draft of it for me to read. i take a look at it on her laptop and it is two paragraphs. one, short two sentences and the other a somewhat longer one. no capitalization, and no real formatting either. the paragraphs weren't indented. i look at this, not even able to read the entirety of it and see its a steaming, pitiful little pile of shit in literary form. i've seen martha write emails... hell i've written emails to myself that look better than that. she stops helping her husband for a second and looks over to me expectantly.
"well, what do you think sai?"
well, i thought i was about to cry. thats when i woke up, 45 mins before my alarm.

i dont usually remember my dreams, and with this whole episode i haven't been, mostly. this one was just distressing and stuff. i know my professor will write me a good one (possibly a novel expounding my virtues), and if i get in anywhere i will pretty much owe her the rest of my life. ie i have no f'ing idea why i would worry about such a thing.

and then there's the shaking.
i'm a pretty steady-handed guy, and sometimes i need to be. i've been working in animal research for the past 8 months and sometimes perform minor surgery, injections, and lots of generic lab work of working with very small volumes of solution (the smallest i've ever pipetted is half a microliter). last week I was about to perform an injection of anesthetic to a mouse before minor surgery and my hand was shaking. this is kind of a critical part because you jab the poor guys with a needle that is big relative to their body size, and in a part of their body that can cause a lot of damage if its botched. for all you inquiring minds, its an intraparateneal injection. the point was, i was holding the little guy and i'm calm, getting ready to give him the shot and my hand started shaking. not like. seizure shaking, but like when ppl get hella old and just shake generically. anywho. i muscled through it, steadied my hand through concentrating like a mofo and got it done. the mouse was fine, btw, and the surgery was a success. she's hanging out in a cage all to herself. like a health spa compared to where she was housed before.

for procedures and lab work since, i've had some similar problems. even just normal everyday life i find my hands slightly shaking at times. maybe its when i spilled a 20 oz pitcher of near-boiling water on my left hand a the saturday before it all began, but that only explains the one hand. the other is still kinda shaky too. yesterday and the day before wasn't so bad. it comes and goes. hopefully its not a sign of a more serious medical problem. i promise to actually get checked out if it doesn't go away by wednesday of next week.

i'd like to add:
certain (old)friends, comrades, and particular Important People have been very supportive and helpful during this freakout episode. i'm not going to go to pieces. i'll finish the quarter out just fine. oh. fyi i graduate this quarter. hoping to move home to my folks' somewhat after. i guess this kind of is a stressful time, but nothing on the order i haven't dealt with before.

last sunday the 15th, when it was storming i caught some gross cold. ever since i've been being half-assed at pretty much everything. now i'm skipping a second day of school and crawling into work in a few hours.

its not so much being really sick right now that's stopping me from doing anything, but being just generically drained. been sitting at home. sleeping. watching tv. sitting in front of various devil-boxes. barely mustering myself to dump soup in a bowl and stick it in the microwave to eat. i'd be sleeping right now if i didn't have work later. my fear being i'll pass out for far too long and roll into work late. which would be bad.

blur. sustenance. soup.

avoiding death.

dodging activity is somehow very a very lackluster activity.

long awesome weekend. ends abruptly.
coffee, cookies, haircut(s), and movies. told only in alphabetical order.
also, a lost power cord for Susan (my battleaxe of a thinkpad) is not under warranty.
D: will set me back on the order of 50 buckaroos.
until then Susan will be out of commission.
nooo.... i have a paper due next wednesday i canna start till friiidaaaay....

possibly, Mishe's old one may be somehow compatible.
god only knows if it'll make Susan's battery asplode.

i guess i'll ask around again.

ahahha. in the depths of my backpack the charger was lost. and now is found.

the end.

January was a hectic month. with a shitload of labwork, menacing amounts of stuff and never really getting a handle on it, yet somehow getting it done.

so there's this thing about when its 'your year' zodiac wise, that you should be 'careful' or something. when mi madre was all 'hey, son. its your year!' she sounded like it was a good thing. after a very hectic January i am optimistically cautious. being burnt out, trying to regroup in the wake of everything i feel quite unmotivated uninspired to be the guy who muster myself in the crap i need to do. there's no way around it, there's a bunch of shit i need to do for myself... on top of all sorts of commitments i've taken up.

I'm going to try and give myself a good kick in the seat of my pants quite soon. it is quite necessary.

I got interrogated as to who i was by an asian family at the immunology conference last last weekend. In the way that asian people of mid to late age do: what are you doing with your life, how are you doing in school... etc. In the process of questioning me they got it in their head that I was in graduate school running experiments and shits, taking graduate level classes AND working part time. "Wow, you're super!" was the asian mother's proclamation. of course, i am not. i just take 7 units undergrad course, do lab-bitch work on the side, and work part time (12-15 hrs a week). on average i have 9-13 hr days with intermittent breaks.

i mean, that's not that bad but i canna muster the will to do stuff i need to for my future or my general maintenance. like cooking, cleaning, laundry, Getting My Shit Together (ala a silly fountains of wayne song), or just buying groceries. all the while i see people have friends over to make pancakes for midmorning breakfast, having parties to recharge their batteries, lazily wasting away days asleep... taking drugs, etc. generally having the time of their life.

boot shall soon connect to rear end and get my ass in gear. that's what midwinter is for, i guess.