fall quarter 09 update

school has gotten really busy this quarter with a lot more labwork to do. i never used to have to stay long nights in the lab or take labwork home to do, but now i'm finding myself in the lab at 9 or 10pm, and i actually bring waxing stuff home to do... at least i can watch house md while i do it =] so ridiculous... i started watching house this quarter from season 1... and i'm currently in the middle of season 5, almost caught up to the current season (6). totally loving how house is such a bastard sometimes, but at the same time i hate him for his insensitivity haha

yogurtland has been having this promotional thing with tokidoki. they have these cool cups with tokidoki designs and spoons to match. as a result, i have a small collection of yogurtland spoons now haha

i need to go back after the 24th to collect the other 2 spoon designs XD i entered the sweepstakes http://www.tokidoki.it/yogurtland hopefully i can win free yogurt for a year :D haha

since my last posting, i have learned how to give injections intraorally bwahhaha~ my hand was shaking for the first few i gave, but after getting used to it and getting over the anxiety, it really didn't seem like that big of a deal. i mean, after all, it'll be something that i'll do on an almost daily basis in the future when i start practicing. i think the best part of it was when i inadvertently injected some of the anesthetic into steph's bloodstream :D the epinephrine in the anesthetic made her have a rush for about 30 seconds... it was kind of cool, aside from the fact that if she had some kind of heart problem i could've killed her ^^;;

this quarter we also learned how to cast our own restorations in gold, which we had to buy ourselves (~$850 >< ). the whole process is actually pretty tedious; we have to make a wax pattern of the restoration, invest it in stone, melt out the wax, and then shoot molten gold into the investment mold. after we take it out, we have to reshape it, polish it, and then cement it onto our prep. each step takes a pretty long time, and it's easy to mess up and have to start over... luckily i only had to do that once =] i'll put pics up when i take some. update: here are some pics~ that's about... i dunno... $200 worth of gold?

on veteran's day, we went to redondo beach and gardena to eat good food :D at redondo we had live uni from quality seafood fresh fish market... which was not that great... we were constantly getting attacked by birds, the uni was too salty from all the seawater, and i think it gave me stomach problems... afterwards we went to sanuki no sato, probably my favorite udon place heheh =] it was just as good as always, but their chicken still sucks... dry and somewhat bland from being boiled too long i think... haha oh well... i have yet to find a better bowl of udon elsewhere.

this weekend was mildly frustrating... i left for the health fair in sylmar at around 7:30, and arrived to find absolutely nobody at the site... so me and dr. spolsky ended up sitting in the car waiting for some kind of information from the people running the fair, which finally came an hour later, telling us they had rescheduled the health fair to some time in january == i guess i'm not that pissed about it. it's just that, if i had known, i would have probably had 2 (or 3) more drinks the night before =] oh well ^^;;

music:
sakamoto ryuichi - merry christmas, mr. lawrence
the whole time i thought utada just came up with a randomly weird title for her song, but now i know that it was based on this song written by sakamoto ryuichi as the soundtrack to a movie by the same name. i love his instrumental music.. his melodies just flow, and while they're simple, they convey pretty deep feelings. i recommend his album titled 1996 =]

lady gaga - bad romance
did you know that her chinese name is 女神卡卡?? lol anyway, i wasn't really into her stuff until recently. she's quite amazing, in a weird kind of way. her live performances are highly entertaining (i recommend her 2009 mtv vma performance) and she is a really good singer live. i really don't know why she tries to make herself so ugly though; she actually looks pretty decent in the bad romance video when she uses a lot less makeup and shorter lashes. oh well, whatever floats her boat i guess.

ugh i am old now :(

夏の終わり

it's been a while since my last update... really, aside from school, i don't think i've been doing all that much.

sitting at home now, i realize how much better i like living on my own... i don't know if it's the fact that it's so hot and i can't just turn on the a/c 24/7 like i do at school, or if it's the fact that i feel guilty if i go out past say 10pm, or if it's because my dad keeps on telling me to fix his computers or clean my room... but i just feel so much more relaxed at my apartment in LA ^^;; maybe it's my friends in LA that make the difference... but they're disappearing one by one too :( kimoon has gone off to boston, which is good for him, since he was able to get into a master's program, and good for me because i think i'll be able to eat out less (and lose some weight) now that he's gone haha. but i guess that means no more random midnight outings to yogurtland or k-town... also, miki has left us for taiwan, so one of my mahjong-based sources of income has disappeared =[ but i guess that means i won't be forced to watch any more scary movies anytime soon bwahaha

speaking of movies, i've been watching a bunch of them lately... since last time i updated, i've seen inglourious basterds, district 9, couple's retreat, funny people, bruno, 500 days of summer, orphan, up, transformers 2, pelham 123. out of these, the one i regret watching the most would have to be bruno. it was nowhere near as funny as borat, nor was it really all that tasteful. following that would be orphan, since that just scared the sh*t out of me... i am never gonna adopt kids. ever..

i think my favorite of these would be district 9~ i went into it totally expecting it to be like a straight-up action flick, but it ended up being this pseudo-documentary, and it was pretty intense; it definitely made me think about the ugly side of human nature... while i guess i can understand being mean to the stupid aliens that cause trouble, wikus, the main guy in the movie, was quite a meanie to the alien who was trying to help him. i hope i am not that mean to anyone who's that nice to me... ^^;; i stayed pretty focused throughout the whole movie, which doesn't usually happen because i think i have adhd or something like that.

i also watched a bunch of movies at home: coraline, lemony snicket's a tale of unfortunate events, howl's moving castle, and ghost town. i liked all of these... maybe because the first three are for kids, and the last one is about a cranky dentist (kinda like my dad..... haha). i think i've probably seen more movies in the last few months than i have in the last couple years combined haha

school this quarter went pretty well, i think. i am still awaiting grades, but for the ones that have been released, i have passed them all =] we did some pretty cool stuff this quarter... one of the things i found kinda fun was pindexing. basically, we cut preparations for different types of indirect restorations (crowns, onlays, inlays, and the like) and then made a cast of it. then we mount it up and then cut it up into little removable sections. the whole process takes hours, and it's pretty meticulous, but it sure beats studying lol.. i still have to clean up the cast and apply the die spacer, but the tedious parts are done =]

i'm pretty sure that it's an asian thing not to use dishwashers as anything but a dish rack, so i think it's pretty understandable that i am not exactly very good at using one. seeing that the floor of my dishwasher was getting dusty from just being there without being used for about a year, i figured i'd run it with a little dishwashing machine detergent (i'd learned my lesson from last time, when i used the ultra concentrated dishwashing detergent instead of the special type for the machine...). after months of dust building up, the little cover to the cup that holds the detergent for the second round wouldn't close... and i didn't find out until after i had already put in all the detergent for both rinses, so i thought, what the heck, it's dishwashing machine soap, it should be ok...

*sigh* dishwashers hate me.

i went to try out this one place with mike in little tokyo called wakasaya. they serve donburi (stuff, mostly sushi, in rice bowls). their menu is quite attractive, everything looks so fresh and huge in their pictures, and the prices were acceptable. i guess it wasn't as good as it looked in the pictures; it was definitely not that big, and there was quite a bit of rice for the amount of fish they gave. in my opinion, akasaka is much more worth it, even though there's no way you could finish one of those bowls in one sitting haha..

anyway, what made wakasaya memorable is that in the middle of our meal a fight broke out between this one fat guy and one of the waiters. i didn't see it personally, but apparently the fat guy just started beating up the waiter out of the blue. i wasn't really sure what an appropriate course of action would be, so i just continued eating my bowl haha... (it was the same way at in-n-out when a fight broke out in front of me... some guy even got hit across the back with a chair o_O;; i just stood there waiting for my number to be called haha) i dunno, what would you do? haha..

the table of girls next to us just got up and left, and a bunch of other people just paid and left too. honestly, the thought had crossed my mind to just leave without paying, because i really don't think they'd do anything about it haha, but mike wanted to watch the fight so we stayed. in the end, the waiter was bleeding from the nose and the fat guy had his blood all over his arm. they took their fight outside, and after that i have no idea what happened...

me and mike, being the fatties that we are, decided a bowl of sushi was not enough, so we went to orochon to top it off. service was horrible... some chubby dirty looking white dude took our order, and when he gave us our food he totally messed up which one was spicy and which one wasn't, and his thumb was definitely swimming in the soup as he gave us our ramen... just another reason why shinsengumi is the best ramen place period. =] (and yes, it is better than daikokuya :P)

i only played mahjong once recently... my last time playing with miki for a while... it was pretty intense~ i had lost everything ($30) at one point, but i managed to make back enough to only lose $1.50 in the end XD
we just need to find a replacement for miki now...

and i think that just about sums up the highlights of my life over the last few months

cool stuff on the web:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJrGYpYx8CQ a string quartet plays video game music; it's pretty well done, and the people acting out the games on the side are pretty entertaining to watch too.

http://lab.andre-michelle.com/tonematrix make your own tune~ basically, click on the boxes to make it play a certain tone at a certain time. the tones are all chosen so that they won't really clash, and you can make a pretty cool repeating melody this way

http://armorgames.com/play/3527/gemcraft-chapter-0 Gemcraft!! i played the first one years ago...this new one is insanely long and very well done. it's basically a tower defense game, where you upgrade gems and place them in towers to attack the monsters. different gems have different attributes. i've been working on it for at least a month, still only like halfway done haha. and no, i don't know why i'm so obsessed with gem-based games (the other one being bejeweled...)

summer~

It's been a while since I last updated i guess... i can't believe it's june already. the cold weather isn't helping me think it's summer either. first year of dental school has ended... it went by so fast haha... another sign that i'm getting old :(

i had one really eventful weekend last month where i went to the dental school commencement ceremony, music of china class concert, and miki's art show =]

on saturday morning, the commencement was pretty cool~ they had it in Royce and it was packed, surprisingly. it was pretty crazy... there were people who flew in from all over the world like africa just to see it ^^ (those people even dressed in their traditional attire... crazy headdresses and stuff) according to vivian, the dean gave the same speech last year, with the same corny jokes hehe

leaving commencement took a while because everyone wanted to take a picture with everyone.... and then when we finally got to the parking lot, we found tickets on everyone's cars who parked in that lot... even though they told us that we could park there when we showed them our permit as we entered... ucla parking enforcement is evil ==

saturday night i went to watch the music of china concert... it was nice seeing people i haven't seen in a while.. but i have to admit, i think they don't sound as good anymore... must be because i'm not playing XD (just kidding ^^;;) or maybe it's because professor li recycles all the songs that we played before years ago, so it doesn't really sound all that interesting to me anymore...

sunday! i think i just bummed around the whole morning before going to miki's art show at night. she made some pretty cool stuff =] her glass chess set that she got like a gazillion cuts from... was like the centerpiece of the show almost haha. you could definitely tell she put a lot of work into it; though i don't think anyone will be using that chess set anytime soon... unless they want to get all cut up too haha... there was some other pretty cool stuff at the show too, and some really weird stuff as well... after checking out the whole show, we went to dennys where i proceeded to pig out and study for a while... since i hadn't done any of that all weekend haha

this last month at school.. the only kinda cool thing we did was the saliva lab for our cariology (study of dental caries aka cavities) class... we did things like measure the pH of our saliva, measure how much saliva we produce and how fast we produce it... so if you're wondering, the pic on the left is how much saliva i produced in 5 minutes. tmi? i know haha ask me if i care =P

i think i improved a lot recently on my teeth-drilling skills. i thought i was actually pretty decent before.... but then my dad showed me his preps from way back when he was in school and it just put me to shame lol... his looked like.... machine made.. his pulpal floors were so flat and he had no burn marks and ughh... just too perfect == but then again, he did make those preps after having gone through dental school in taiwan... so maybe i'm not that bad after all ^^. anyway, i took a few pointers from him and now my preps are actually not half bad =] i will put some pics of these up when i remember to take photos of them...

one thing i'm looking forward to is google wave~ it looks like it'd be really fun, and it definitely looks like another productivity killer to me lol.. i would be on it alll the time ^^;; for more info watch the video.. yea it's an hour+ long, but it's pretty interesting, watching the things it can do.

some of the dumb things i've done this quarter just made me think of how much a genius i was when i was little... so the dumbest thing by far i did this quarter has got to be when i was getting one of my cavity preps checked off... the instructor started working on it a little bit and then he told me to blow it out to clean it up... he was blocking the air/water syringe the way he was sitting and i was like wtf how am i supposed to blow it out?! and he says "go on, blow it!" and i was like o_O;; so i just started blowing air out of my mouth lol.. only then does he tell me to use the air/water syringe from the bench behind me ==

contrast that to my intelligence in like... first grade or something... we had a spelling test, and one of the words was fruit. i didn't know if u was before i or if i was before u..... but what i did know was that i was wearing fruit of the loom underwear lol so i just turned around and looked at the label of my underwear... and aced the test of course haha

yea i know, i'm weird =]

OH! almost forgot to rant about the current retard in charge of taiwan. sigh.... mr ma, being the suck-up to beijing that he is.. says that we should use simplified characters, like the ones they use in china. yet at the same time he also says "It is also our hope that the standard [traditional] characters can be listed as World Heritage by the United Nations one day". wtf? giving off mixed signals as usual... sigh... blah ok done.

april/may!

recently i haven't done much aside from school... i've been staying in ackerman a lot to study...

oh, pictures of the remodeled cooperage, by special request of superstraight


they're still not done with the rec room though. i'll take a pic of it when they finish.

aside from all the studying, this last week has been fun ^^

first off, i played mahjong again today, won $15 ^^;; not quite enough to cover dinner at boston cafe, but it was like 2 or 3 meals in one, since i have this huge box of fried rice sitting in my fridge now... the food there is so good<3

other than that, i didn't get much done today, since i woke up at like noon, after going to a club last night.. == i haven't been to a club in like 6 years, and i still don't dance haha... it was fun though, drinking and meeting up with friends and friends of friends ^^

yesterday, we had our poster presentations for our periodontics course... luckily we had dr alvarez grading us, otherwise i feel like we would've gotten like a 40/100 haha... at least our poster was pretty :P we decided to dress up for the presentations this time... since last time almost everyone else did, and my group looked pretty slobby wearing our scrubs ^^;;

after the poster presentations, we went to beverly hills to this place called paulette's for their macarons.... they're really pretty, but a little too sweet for my tastes.they have all kinds of flavors like... jasmine tea, pistachio, caramel, coffee, vanilla, raspberry, and like 10 others. it was sort of like eating... cake frosting with cookie dough haha... too sweet... and at 1.60 per macaron, it's also too expensive for me == haha

after that, we went to this restaurant/lounge place in the avenue of the stars building called CraftBar. they serve small tapas-style dishes i guess, but they have a restaurant too. this too was a little overpriced in my opinion, but, it was pretty good XD

the area the restaurant was located in is reallyyyy nice ^^ it kind of reminded me of roppongi, modern, classy, and somewhat artsy. i guess basically it's like a 有錢人的地方...u can check out more pics of friday's outings here: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2495750&id=2500017&l=a05bde168d

sigh... it's only the 9th of the month, and i've spent $234.01 on food... i guess i'm gonna be dieting/eating cheap the rest of this month....

some cool stuff i found on the web:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmkLlVzUBn4 wolf and pig! this guy made an animation out of still photos... he took like 1300 photos or something and made a stop motion animation all around his house or something. very cool ^^

http://charlesandmarie.com/lifestyle-gems/quintessentials/epicurean-delights/details/product/hot-cold-mug/?tstmp=1204749073 this cup is pretty cool too~ it changes color and text depending on its the temperature of its contents =D i wanna get it.. but i need to cut down on my spending ><

http://www.luisandclark.com/violin.php i wanna buy this too!!! but it'll have to wait till i start making money :( haha i haven't played in sooo longgg......

http://bubblecalendar.com/2009p-int.htm this too haha... a calendar with bubble wrap.... one bubble for each day that passes by~ who cares if the year is half over! haha i feel like i would unconsciously pop them all by accident if i got it though ^^;;;

anyway, なんとなく我現在心情很好~ though it might change after i find out how i did on my final... lol... if i didn't pass this time... then i really have to have no life

april's fool

this month is off to a great start~

not ==

it's just first week and there was not a night i slept before 2am... granted that's partially due to discovering the stupid bejeweled app on facebook, (btw, i don't seem to have any competition at all in bejeweled... can anyone beat my score? XD) i really did study though... as part of my "no-more-failing" initiative, i even did some studying on the weekend of first week~ hopefully all this nerdiness will pay off haha..

at least school is fun this quarter though.. the hours are longer, but they're mostly lab classes ^^ meaning i dont' have to study-study as much heheh, but still... with something like 8 classes and 3 labs, it's pretty intense~ i made my first impressions the other day~ they're pretty fun to do, but a little messy haha

oh, and thanks to gossip-girl splee, we found out that our bench instructor, who is extremely social and pretty funny, was sued for insurance fraud in '96 haha

"The Los Angeles dentist recently pled guilty to eight counts of health-care fraud, and was sentenced July 15 to three years probation and 10 months of electronically monitored home detention, according to the U.S. Attorney's office. He was also ordered to pay restitution and had his license revoked by the state Board of Dental Examiners."

i guess it's safe to say he won't be teaching our ethics course...

so those of you who know me know that i keep tabs of (almost) all my expenses in excel like so:
and i've noticed changes in my spending habits from 2007...

first of all, i've been spending a lot less on food... in the first quarter of 2007 i spent an average of $408.26 on food, but in 2009 i spent $304.67... also, you can see that i've been spending a lot less on entertainment and car/gas, but more on school... i guess what you can draw from this is that i now am more studious, have less fun, eat less, and walk more.

one thing that bothers me, though, is that my "other" category seems to have increased... i don't like that because i don't know what i spend it on, since it has everything from the 1.5tb hard drive i got to the listerine toothpaste i use... oh well.

speaking of expenses, this is quite funny, in a wow-that-kind-of-sucks-for-you kind of way http://consumerist.com/5198894/worst-april-fools-ever-online-brokerage-zecco-pretends-to-give-away-millions-panics-when-people-start-spending dumb customers, dumber company, even dumber april fool's joke..

after i found fmylife.com, i found other funny sites too: mymomisafob.com and mydadisafob.com, which chronicle stories of fob parents and the fobby things they do.... so funny :P

and finally, i decided to be a good son and get a haircut since my dad's been badgering me about my hair being too long... it's really short now compared to what it was before, but still, the first thing he said when he saw me was, "when are you going to get a haircut".... i saw him the day after i cut my hair.... i'm growing it out again -_-;;

spring break~

yay it's spring break XD

so... i guess i'm making it a tradition to get f**ed up after my last final each quarter..... sigh.. haha... so this time i went to lounge dna (at the back of a restaurant called fisherman's wharf) where my friend miji works as a bartender~ i feel like my tolerance for alcohol has decreased by a lot :( i only had 4 mixed drinks + 1 shot and i was gone lol.. thankfully this time i had my good friends miki and miji to take care of me while i was incapacitated (sorry for making a mess XD). i'm sure it wasn't that bad though... miji tells me that apparently 我那個晚上邊吐邊擦地板... lol... i'm so dumb ^^ they had their fun too though... somewhere out there are pictures of them + marker + me passed out.... i'm sure you can figure out what happened then haha...

last time this happened, i was alcohol free for at least a week.. this time, i came home the next night only to drink with my dad and aunt, then the following night with my dad and uncle and cousins, and then the following night with more relatives.... so bad.. haha.. whatevers

it's break time and i'm catching up on the whole quarter's worth of drama bwahhaha~ i finished メイちゃんの執事 [Mei-chan no Shitsuji] which is about this girl, from this poor family, whose parents die and then she finds out that she's actually the heiress to like the biggest corporation in japan or something, so she has to attend this super elite rich school where everyone has their own butlers and stuff... yea... it's really farcical haha but i don't care~ it's entertaining enough. ^^ one thing that annoys me about it is how ugly the evil girl is... she's supposed to be like the perfect, highest ranking girl in the school, but she's just... so... sinisterly ugly haha...

i still need to finish 神の雫 [Kami no Shizuku] and i kind of want to watch キイナ [Kiina] and ヴォイス [Voice]... i'm never gonna have time for them during school.. they're an hour each episode haha, i can only spare time for shows like big bang theory, so i will be busy watching drama these next few days XD

i have no idea what to eat when i'm at home... there's never any chips or other yummy junk food at home... :( except for this! bwahhaha i haven't had this is in so long~ if u havent' had it before, u must have some! they're called "mug noodle" u know, like cup noodles~ but in bite sized form haha
they have these little dog and panda shaped chikuwa (fish cake) things in them too XD... too bad they're only like.... 3 bites each :( but i guess that's what makes them so appealing~ it always leaves me wanting more ^^

i've been trying to learn how to use adobe flash cs4 to make presentations, kind of like the one our school gave us to study for the kidney, but it's kind of sad.. i couldn't even figure out how to get it to go past the title screen lol... everything's so complicated nowadays, especially with this action script crap... it's basically like c++...... bleh... so i kinda gave up on that haha.. i think i can do basic small flash animation type things though.. they don't seem too bad... but if anyone has any tips on flash, feel free to share them with me~ :P

another quarter done... almost ^^;;

it's tuesday of finals week and the harder finals have passed. whether or not i passed is another story though lol... so after running on like 2-3 hours of sleep i came back from my final today and tried to nap, but couldn't :( *sigh* 慘... so here i am blogging XD

recently i've been listening to a lot more of my old-style taiwanese and japanese music... and i wanted to find some more, so i did a search for 台語 on youtube, and the first hit that comes up is... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uzIOdYPCzGA haha so funny :P

a few weeks ago, daylight saving time started... it was the middle of the night and i thought it was weird when my computer clock suddenly said 3:30 when i, only moments before, recalled seeing it at 2 something... i totally forgot about changing the clocks so i was like wtf is going on... :( sleep deprived...

lately, i've been looking at www.fmylife.com...... some of them are quite dirty lol, but they're pretty funny. 人家真的很ㄙㄨㄟ.... i must've spent half a day looking through all 100+ pages of that site. this one too: failblog.org haha why is it so amusing when other people encounter misfortune? i dunno either.. it just is XD

神の雫 kami no shizuku! my latest drama obsession... about the son of a famous wine critic who has to battle it out with this other famous wine critic over his father's inheritance. makes me want to drink 0=) i wonder if people can really taste all the subtleties in wine like they do... i'm sure it's a little over the top with their reactions... at least it's not like.. yakitate japan style reactions haha... but the sound the wine critic makes is so annoying -__-;; sounds so retarded.

hrmm besides that, nothing really interesting has happened lately, so i'll just leave you with a picture of my little study area i set up after i decided not to go to the library... i felt like i was getting sick, and wu's lecture on viruses just made me want to stay away from crowded indoor places. so yea, i end up studying just like the sticker on my computer does ^^;;and yes, that is soy sauce on my desk haha

人生って何？

皆さんご無沙汰しております。。。

things have been pretty busy lately... この前から色々な事があって、何か、wtf am i doing with my life と考えさせました。

まず、一人のいとこがジサツで亡くなりました。it's the kind of thing that you'd never expect would happen, much less to someone you know... 雖然我不是跟他很熟,我越想那件事越難過...
so, as a result, 学校でも人生でも今より頑張りたいと決めました。

改變自己 pt I
俺はいったい何やってるの？歯学生として、my foremost responsibilities should be to study... 所以我為了這個考試,超認真的讀.
since, as you know, i don't really like to study... but i like to write things out, so i took it upon myself to make notes for my systems lectures leading up to the midterm, so that i would somehow get the information through my head before i took the exam ^^ i filled a whole book with just the lecture material from the first week.... you can see volume 2 of the notes behind the open pages of volume 1 XD needless to say i wasn't able to finish all the lectures before the exam, since i started making my notes like the week before the test haha
but i must say i feel much better about that test than i think would have had i not made the notes =P

改變自己 pt II
so after studying systems, and learning all about heart diseases, atherosclerosis, myocardial infarctions, and other causes and reasons for heart failure, i have to admit i was feeling a little guilty about treating my body so badly haha... so i ran turtle rock (ok more like ran for 5 mins and then walked the remainder of the way) twice. i'm also doing exercises in my room too, and eating slightly more healthfully... hopefully it will pay off... but i have a feeling i'll probably get over it and start going back to my bad habits soon enough lol

anyway, due to 表弟的事, my cousins came over. it's funny, cuz even though one's a grad student and the other is an undergrad, they're in the same chinese class at school, so they just share their answers when they do their homework haha... they were doing their homework at my house that weekend, and it reminded me of the times when i was in chinese school as a little kid. most of the time i'd just copy whatever my mom wrote out for me, but somehow, for this essay i'm pretty sure i actually wrote it myself... or maybe my dad helped me lol

in case you can't see it clearly:
『媽媽的頭髮
　　　媽媽的頭髮是黑色
　的，也有一點白的。她
　的頭髮不是那麼長。我
　媽媽的頭髮很亂七八糟
　因為我的弟弟愛玩她的
　頭髮。但是我的媽媽還
　是世界上最好的媽媽。』

if i actually was able to do that all on my own back then, i'd have to say i'm pretty impressed haha

on the side, i thought my new 1.5tb hard drive crapped out on me, giving me error 51's...... but replacing the usb cable that came with it seemed to fix the problem ^^ i have so much free space i don't know what to do with myself lol

oh! last weekend i went to this japanese restaurant called akasaka. it seemed a little out of place by itself in this mostly residential area. supposedly it used to be a single house, and then got converted into a restaurant. i got their chirashi bowl, which at $27 was quite pricey... the most expensive chirashi i've seen before this was like 18.. but i must admit, it is huge..... refer to pic :P i took the picture after giving the unagi away, but you can still see it's filled to the brim with sashimi XD
anyway, it was like two meals in one.... actually, it was two meals in one since i only ate half of it and then packed the rest, and ate it after i got home from mahjong <3 the next morning at 5am lol... speaking of mahjong, i got a 清一色 and a 混一色 the last time i played, banking $28 wahahhaha~ obviously they wanted revenge, so i played with them again... this time i only made $5... oh well ㄎㄎ

それじゃ、until next time~

犯太歲

*sigh* this year is supposedly 犯太歲 for oxes.... (myself included), meaning we're not supposed to be very lucky unless we go and appease the jupiter god or something... i'm feeling the bad luck already haha

first off, i failed one of my classes... well... i guess i saw that one coming lol... but i'd like to think it's because of 犯太歲... especially since i found out right after my bracelet with the buddhist beads snapped apart on me in class... :(
i decided to clean my desk the other day too (see~ so clean XD), i was enjoying a nice cold drink at my desk and i accidentally knocked the can onto my keyboard... i wasn't used to my desk being so clean, cuz usually i have to maneuver around all these obstacles to grab things on my desk, but it's too neat now... nothing to avoid, so i let my guard down and knocked my drink over =( that makes this the 3rd keyboard of mine that has been ruined by a beverage.. *sigh* at least that last one i've been using for about 6 years so it was about time anyway ^^;; i must say this new keyboard is nice~ the only things i don't like about it are how there aren't a windows key and a right mouse click key on the right side... all there is is a stupid fn key... and i don't like how they played with the design of the del key and made it so big... i guess i don't use insert that much besides in photoshop, but still i'd like to have it where it usually is... oh! and this keyboard is cool because it is backlit!! <3 probably not as useful as it would be on a laptop, since it's usually pretty bright in my room when i'm using my computer, but still... it's nice to have XD

anyway, i hope my luck will be better from now on, especially after i went to 安太歲 last weekend ^^ so far so good... i've passed all my other tests/midterms besides that one, and hopefully will continue to do so *crosses fingers*

wish all u other oxes good luck, since we, along with sheeps/goats, dragons, and dogs, managed to anger or annoy the tai sui for this year ^^;;;

study?

with two midterms and two finals next week, naturally it is time to blog =D

school this quarter doesn't seem quite as intimidating as it did last quarter for some reason... i just haven't felt the same pressure that i felt last quarter to study ^^;;; so here's a little insight into my life so far this year~

school - currently taking microbiology, oral radiology, foundations of pharmacology, cariology, behavioral science, quality assurance, conservative direct restorations, and overview of demography, epidemiology and statistics. microbiology and pharmacology are both 3 week courses which is good because it just means there less material to cram the night before =D unfortunately, the finals in those classes happen to coincide with the midterms in radiology and conservative direct restorations... and so, less than 5 days away from impending failure, i am here blogging XD

classes this quarter are quite interesting... the theory behind radiology (x-rays and stuff) has a lot of physics based stuff, so it's not too bad. in restorations, we finally get to drill teeth~ well.. fake ones... haha... it's harder than it looks. i'll show you my failures when i remember to take pictures of them ^^;; in cariology we learn about caries (the bacterial disease that causes cavities) and a bunch of interesting tidbits that are pretty cool~ for instance, did you know that if you're going to eat sweets, you should brush your teeth before eating them??? that's because when you brush your teeth, you remove the biofilm (the layer of bacteria) on the surface of the teeth and prevent the sugars you eat from being converted to acid, which demineralizes the teeth. according to the research, the sugars are converted to acid almost immediately and begin to demineralize the tooth, but without the bacteria, the sugars can't be processed and your teeth won't be demineralized. good to know, right?? =D

for school, we were required to purchase loupes, which are basically a pair of really expensive fugly glasses with magnifying lenses attached to the front. i finally got mine over winter break, but i hadn't gotten the prescription put in until now... because i am for all practical purposes nearly blind, i need to get special thinner lenses so they won't be like 3 inches thick... lenscrafters wanted like $400 for my lenses so i said no, and went to find some place in san gabriel that would do it for less... and i found....
"ICU Optometry" hahaha pure genius. i must've laughed about that name for a good minute =D

they had my glasses done for me for a mere $150 bwahhahha and now i can finally use them to help me see my fake teeth when i drill ^^

enough about school.. recently, in my ever-failing resolution to be somewhat healthy, i bought power pushups from costco =D they're hard to do... but i have managed to do up to about 80 of them in a day ^^;; i can feel muscles forming already, but i dunno how long this will keep up haha... with any luck i'll be better about it than i am about blogging :P

and since mike didn't want to risk getting me these instant noodles that have meat in them from taiwan... he delegated his friend to do the smuggling for him hahah. if you ever go to taiwan, you MUST eat these instant noodles... (the bag says 滿漢大餐麻辣鍋牛肉麵) they go for like 40nt in a bowl form at pretty much any 7-11 or family mart =D when he gave me the bag, i was salivating already hahah... i finally cooked one today... so good~~ the 花椒 numbing my tongue, the richness of the soup... chewiness of the noodles... ahhh.... writing this is making me salivate some more haha

and now i want to go to taiwan again :(

ok enough screwing around for today ^^;; time to get some studying done~

big bearrrrr

ps (pre-scriptum, in this case :P) i am gonna backdate this post too XD

so, to start out the new year, me and my siblings and serena and her sister and her friend and kimoon went to big bear for a whole 2 days of snowboarding fun =D

we had planned on meeting up with them at a local starbucks before heading out to big bear at 6:30... i should have forseen that they would not be getting their until after 7 :P anyway... we got there at around 10ish and after renting equipment and stuff we were on our happy way snowboarding by around 11.



before i continue, might i say, the last time i went snowboarding, i don't recall being too bad at it... which was totally the cause for my utter defeat by bear mountain this time... i was stupidly not afraid of going fast this time i snowboarded... and just zipped around (ok maybe not as fast as real snowboarders zip around but fast for me!) before finding out the hard way that i don't know how to stop... haha.. apparently i don't learn too fast either, since i must've fell like at least 50 times on my whole 3 or 4 runs down the mountain, in the process probably fracturing my wrist and messing up my knees haha ^^;;; that compounded with a bad headache, i was out of commission by 2 or 3pm and just went inside to bask in the warmth and take a nap.

anyway, kimoon is such a liar... he claimed to be just "ok" at skiing... people who are just ok don't ski down black double diamond slopes!!! -__-;; i should've known when you bought a season pass... sigh.. haha so, sorry kimoon for not being able to accompany you more than once down the bunny slope lol..

at night we stayed at this really nice 3 bedroom cabin at big bear frontier... and for dinner we had a feast! we got take out from that super luxurious place known as... kfc.. -_-;; so after dinner and some rock band (i can't believe you brought the wii, serena...) we went to sleep... the thermostat was wacky though... it was burning in the middle of the night, but freezing in the morning... so cold in fact, that serena's car wouldn't start! (yup... that's mercedes for you :P) the key wouldn't turn at all... and we tried turning it really hard... so they called someone to come help us, but they wouldn't be here for another hour, so i made two trips and we all had breakfast at dennys. i wasn't there when this happened, but apparently when the car person came, all he had to do was stick the key in and turn it... epic fail on our part haha but whatevers, all's well that ends well, right? ^^

so after a day of snowboarding (sans kimoon and myself, of course), we headed to the boiling crab for dinner... i've had take out from there before, but i didn't think it was that great, so this time i wanted to see if eating in would be any better. between the 8 of us, we had like 9 lbs of shrimp and crawfish and like 3 orders of fried catfish with fries... blehhh too much food haha

i have to admit, i was not that impressed by the food there, but i guess people go to places like that more for the atmosphere. and to capture completely disgusting photos of people like my brother after they have decimated a mountain of shrimps and crawfish. i am utterly speechless at the absolute nastiness of this person whom i refuse to acknowledge as my brother =D btw if you found a wallet on the 4th of January, 2009 in either big bear or the parking lot of boiling crab, please return it to my stupid little brother =)

well... i don't think i'll be snowboarding again anytime soon XD but it was fun. happy new year everyone~