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 ^^;;;