tea for two, for eight

Lovejoy's Tea Room, San Francisco

thankful

This is a picture I took at the Getty some time ago. This is what I'll leave behind for exactly one week of spring break. If you look really closely - and know what you're looking for - you can see UCLA right in the middle. Sometimes it shocks me how at home I feel here. Sometimes I feel like I'm cheating on San Francisco.

But I'm not choosing one over the other. I'm thankful that I have two homes while so many people in the world have none. I'm thankful that my last final and what to pack for spring break are the only things I have to worry about right now. I'm thankful that I can sit at my desk and let my hair air-dry as I list all the wonderful things in my life.

twenty-one

I turned 21 on February 3rd. Since then, I have eaten my weight in Korean BBQ, Chinese restaurant randoms, and Mediterranean pasta. I have had both ice cream and mango mousse cake. I have purchased three alcoholic drinks and have been carded once.

Birthday highlights:

- my boyfriend (unsuccessfully) surprising me by showing up after chem lab

- a date with Spago and Dine LA

- cake, margaritas, Apples to Apples, and crying through A Walk to Remember

- realizing that nothing can really top family, food, and spa treatments

I love my birthday. It's my second favorite day of the year (the first is Christmas because in a sparkly match between Christmas and my birthday, Christmas would win). I'm glad I enjoyed my birthday without thinking too much about the consequences of doing absolutely no work. I'm now realizing just how much I have to do this week, and the list is pretty scary: 2 midterms, 2 pre-labs, 2 post-labs, 2 CPR classes to teach, and 1 social event to plan. Which explains why I'm procrastiblogging.

work in progress

4:13am and I just finished my Philosophy of Political Thought paper... almost a full 9 hours before it's officially due. (I should really start taking my GEs more seriously.)

Philosophy is kind of funny. My TA helped me revise my paper and taught me how to "write philosophically." Essentially, we cut all of my sentences in half and crossed out all of the big words that I so carefully chose. I called this dumbing-down of my writing, but she called it philosophical writing. Either way, this paper was strangely difficult for me to write, but I'm happy with how it turned out. I wanted to post it here, but didn't want my plagiarism report to be 100% on turnitin.com. I should actually find out what exactly turnitin.com does because I've never really known.

Anyway, while learning how to write philosophically, I may have started to think philosophically. This paper got me thinking about freedom. About freedom and private property and homelessness and life in general. It made me thankful to have a home (two, actually, if you count my apartment) and thankful to be free to do things like take winter ski trips. Or rather, to not be unfree to do these things - because they are apparently different things. Still working on disambiguating the two.

But maybe that's the thing about philosophical writing. It's so simple that it's difficult, and so difficult in its simplicity that it makes you think about... things. It's a work in progress.

Birthday Wishlist

6 days until 21.

Here are a few things I'll be wishing really really hard for in the next six days:

1. To not have organic chem lab on my birthday. Staying on campus until 9:30pm is not something on my wishlist.

2. To take a really glamorous license picture at the DMV, so when I get carded (because I will until I'm 35) everyone will be jealous of how amazing I look in my picture.

3. That spring quarter will not exist. Life would be so great if after winter quarter ends, summer is waiting with open arms. (Hello, Paris? Oui, I've missed you too.)

4. To do well on the MCAT. Because, let's face it, spring quarter will exist.

What if we lived here?

1. depth, 2. Getty quad from upstairs window, 3. symbol of fertility,

4. cutest kid at the villa, 5. roommate reunion, 6. sleepies

Went back to the Getty Villa with some friends today. The place is magnificent. It's hard to imagine that it used to be a residence... must have been quite the babe magnet for Jean Paul, though I can't imagine he had much time for women given that he spent his life collecting art. (But I'm wrong. Just wiki-ed him and he apparently married and divorced five times and had six sons. So he was quite the busybee.)

We spent the day roaming his house and gardens, perusing fine art and enjoying the architecture of the building and its many fountains. It was hard to concentrate on the art because it was such a beautiful day, so I spent a good amount of time taking silly artsy pictures in the garden, learning the buttons on my new camera, soaking up the sunshine, and discussing the best way to steal a small child with my roommates from last year.

A few hours and a whole lot of walking later, we were all exhausted and ready to head home, as you can see in the above photo taken on the car ride home. Does anyone else get some strange enjoyment from taking pictures of sleeping friends? Just me?

Fams and Cams

My grandpa was/is a professional photographer (read: hella baller). Check out his old school SLR - a foreign object to most of us, but the only kind of camera he really knows how to use. He picked up my Canon T1i, looked at the display, and promptly handed it back. Then he called me a youngin' (in Chinese) and told me that technology is not his friend.

This is how I spent a good chunk of my day after Christmas - taking family portraits, drinking Asian tea, ogling my grandpa's camera and my uncle's lenses, and squeezing in some time for MCAT study. That's actually how I spend most family holidays (minus the MCAT study). This morning, we woke up early for dim sum before sending the fams back to LA. My grandma force fed me everything on the table in an attempt to fatten me up, something that also happens every holiday despite my protests.

I can't believe the holidays are coming to an end and the new year is just around the corner. I realized I didn't make new year's resolutions last year (hence an unproductive year?), so I should start making mine for 2011 now. Better start early before I forget... I have the working memory of a 92-year-old nowadays.