tltr

One of my cousins and I like to bicker a lot. Most of our interactions consist of mocking each other for fun though unfortunately, I think he has a lot more embarrassing stories to make fun of me with.

I don't remember exactly what we were texting about - maybe discussing which laptop I should buy to replace my old one or the crazy price increases in external hard drives after some Thailand floods hit manufacturers hard - but at one point, I must have text/ranted.

His response: "tltr"

At first, I was like did he sit on his phone and texted me by accident?

Then, pathetically, I went to google what tltr stood for just in case it was one of those newfangled text speech.

It was. Urban Dictionary revealed tltr = "too long to read".

Stupid cousin.

My response: "sorry you're illiterate."

And that's how part of Adel's text conversation with her brother, Adam, came about.

Other sparkling texts I've exchanged with cousin:

Him: can i come over bored
Me: you can come hang with bro. cramming until dinner tonight.
Him: u should just wing it
Me: I wing you!
Him: Wing isn't a verb
Me: You just used it as a verb. Ohhh winged.

Random Food Photo to bring flavor to this post:

One good thing about cousin though is he can be a really handy garbage disposal. We were at a Japanese food buffet and I, overestimating my gut, ordered one too many rolls. And the thing is the rolls look better in picture than in reality. They had mixed in some fried tempura batter in with the fish in the center, but something about the oil was really heavy and tasted horrible. I couldn't stomach it and was literally breaking out into a sweat, getting a tad nauseous. I felt especially bad because cousin was treating and I expected to just pay the extra fee myself for not finishing the rolls.

However, cousin finished his plates and simply reached out for mine after I ate all the raw fish lying on top of the rolls like sashimi. Even though the remaining rolls were really bad, he still claimed he could finish it all, saying it was no problem at all. And he did. By breaking it down, grain by grain, separating the mass of pink fried concoction in the center, and forcing all of it down. It was simultaneously hilarious and touching because I thought it was so cool of him to just shovel it down for me, taste buds of steel.

So yeah, I suppose he's one of my favorite cousins.

Even though he's still an illiterate fool who should really stop making fun of me.

Essence of Sushi Rolls

I not so recently got a smartphone since my old phone was ancient and had been begging for retirement for a while now. Whenever someone used to ask me for my number, I had to follow it up with a warning: "You can call me, but my battery life dies after roughly fifteen minutes of chatting unless I stay plugged in to a wall. I'd prefer emails if you don't mind."

Once, someone responded with a "That's okay. I can always text you.", followed by a ;). 

Me, Very Not Amused: "I do not have a text plan. Please do not text me. Ever."

So my phone was pretty much useless except for emergency calls and setting alarms.

After a week of using my new phone with an unlimited text and data plan ... I do not know how I had ever survived without it.

Now, I can access directions or text friends for help anywhere so I don't have to get lost so easily. I can take photos and videos and just email them to myself instead of tediously plugging a camera into my laptop for uploading. I can waste time on colorful free Android apps. I can google anything right on the spot. I now have modern technology. I am connected to the world.

Except I still refuse to sync phone with facebook and twitter. I don't really go on facebook much because I can so easily lose hours just stalking  perusing people's photos. And after trying out twitter for a bit way back when a friend first convinced me to, I realized that I was a major twitterfail since it was such a reaffirmation of how boring my daily life is hahaha - why am I laughing? :( Also, I didn't like how some acquaintances from real life managed to find me on twitter when I didn't expect them to so I couldn't exactly tweet about writing anymore without getting questions. Writing life's still mostly a secret and I prefer to keep it that way.

Back to the glory of my new phone: the most important part of this new technology update is that I realized that I can snap so many pics on the go now and start inserting some proper images to break up my rambling posts. How exciting.

Except I am such an amateur point and shoot. Not even an adequate amateur actually, I'm the type who goes "Ooh, let's try an artistic angle." then "Ah, crap, angle captured my messy messes in the background." then "Eh, oh well, realistic art, tra la la!"

Example:

Brother made sushi rolls from some vinegared rice, seaweed, avocado, crab sticks, etc. the other day.   

Me: "I shall take very nice pictures now!"
Bro: "Why?"
Me: "Because I want to. So stop eating for a moment."

Me: "Damn, the plate is all sticky and dirty."
Bro: "I will eat now."
Me: "Here, clean this up. Get these -"
Bro: *chomp*

Me: "Noo! I told you to clean up the plate, get all those little grains of rice!
Bro: *chewing on a piece* "I thought you wanted the rolls lined up at a slant so I ate that piece for you."
Me: "I didn't say that."
Bro: "There's a slant now."

 

Me: "I'm hungry. I don't care anymore. Behold, mountain of pink in the background!"
Bro: "You know you can just clear off that plastic bag from the table -"
Me: "Pink mountain, arise!"

Happy Valentine's Day!

Happy Valentine's Day!

My friend baked cookies and cupcakes for class:

See the ones with heart shaped icing? They're specially indicated for her closest friends, her "crew". Naturally, I got one of those hearts haha. Since it was a red velvet, she saved me a second funfetti one. This is why we're so close. She feeds me and I get fed. (Yes, technically, this may appear to be more of a parasitic relationship than mutual symbiosis, but let's not tell her that.)

The school also had a candygram thing going on today and I received two from some generous classmates. Ah, this is truly what Valentine's Day is about: baked goods and sweets.

Finished off with some dinner plans after class and ... seriously, this day is all about food for me.

Hope everyone had a wonderful Valentine's Day with your loved ones too! :)

Where Are The Sheep?

Catching the view from the Top of the Rock with a friend a couple of weeks ago:

Me: "Hey, the map points that out as the Sheep Meadow."

Him: "Yeah? Oh, so those blobs must be sheep!"

Me: "Hmm ... no, I think those are people ..."

Him: "But they're not moving."

Me: "Sunbathers?"

Him: "They seem like they're all the same color though. They're all ... brown."

Me: "Brown sheep?"

Him: "Maybe."

Me: "More like tanned people, I think."

Him: "Alright, hold on, let me look this up on my phone and we'll settle this once and for all."

Him: *fiddles with phone*

Me: *fiddles with map*

Me: "Oh, hey, look here, the map also says sheep grazed there until 1934. Hmm, what year are we in again?"

Him: "Yeah, well, wiki says ... okay, fine. You can wipe that smirk off your face now."

Other recent happenings: My cousin's first born was born - it's a girl! I had to bring my notes and hunch over to cram for my neuropsych final at her one month banquet, but she's absolutely adorablicious. And the food was great. I also went out to celebrate a friend's birthday and we had Venezuelan food. Guacamole and arepas with pork brisket, yum. My other cousin coincidentally had his birthday around the same time and we feasted on pasta and tiramisu for dinner. (My life revolves around food.) His sister later surprised him with an iPad! Dude, she should be my sister haha.

Yet another friend's birthday is coming up so we just went out last night and tried Ukrainian food for dinner, where friends claimed I took my time pondering over the menu just to have an excuse to repeat borscht a gazillion times. Well, borscht turned out to be pretty yummy. So were the pierogies. The stuffed cabbage ... not so much. We also demolished a whole cheesecake topped with berries. Restaurant rejected our surprise cake from outside so we made do with just forks from a nearby cafe and sat in the outside seating. There is something strangely satisfying though about just forking into a cake, civilized pieces be damned. (Indeed, my life revolves around food.)

Otherwise, life has been pretty boring ever since I got back to school. The workload has been seriously picking up its pace. I just had a subject board exam last week and more weekly exams lined up for this month (clinical epi, systemic path, pathophys, and so forth). Sighs.

I am about 9 pages in for TM Chapter 29 so please bear with me. Hopefully, I can squeeze in some writing time one of these days and finish this once and for all. Thanks for understanding, everyone.

Family Vacation & Parmesan Ice Cream?

My family's heading off to California in a few hours for my cousin's wedding. Yay!

Bad news is I'm not going. No. I'm stuck at home. Studying. Yay.

So they spent last night packing and preparing and they were all busily trying on clothes for the wedding, comparing outfits and ties and shoes ... so I went and tried on some of my pretty dresses too. Whee, let me dream.

Dad snorted when he found me in front of the mirror.

Mom was blunter. "Fool, what are you trying on stuff for? You're not even going."

:(

I shall smuggle my way into their carry-on tonight.

Random tidbit, I'm a fan of Jane Austen so during one of my moments of boredom/procrastination, I was randomly researching the Regency era and happened upon an episode of this British food/culture show: The Supersizers Go Regency.



The Supersizers Go ... have many episodes showing various periods of British History (i.e. the Elizabethan, the Victorian, the Twenties Eras), but I happened upon the Regency episode first. Basically, it takes the concept from the movie, Super Size Me, which was about Morgan Spurlock eating nothing but McDonalds for a month and then checking the effects on his health afterward (horrific). Well, this show features restaurant critic Giles Coren and comedian Sue Perkins as they spend a week "in" a certain era, including dressing, eating and participating in the various pursuits (including a ball and how to "capture a husband") of that time period, before they conclude with a health check up to study the overall effects on their body. It's interesting - a lil bit of humor, health, cooking and historical info all at once.

And some of the food options ... cheese with maggots, parmesan ice cream ... heh.

This is Part 1 of the The Supersizers Go Regency episode. If you're interested, you should be able to check out the rest on youtube.

Brunch

I went out for brunch with a group of friends this morning - the earliest I've woken in days since vacation started! All of us were bleary-eyed.

I had a cup of cappuccino first - big mistake. Getting caffeine on an empty stomach made me absolutely nauseous.

Then I brilliantly downed a glass of mimosa. Me = Lightweight = Weaksauce. (Who'd ever heard of getting tipsy at brunch over one mimosa?! I swear my tolerance doesn't build up; it wilts with each alcohol venue I go out to.)

But I didn't even get buzzed. Nope, I skipped the high and went straight to queasy, kill me now, ugh.

By the time our food came, I didn't even want to look at my eggs benedict. I got them with salmon gravlax and they made me even more nauseous.

I was so afraid I was going to hurl, I stopped drinking and sat there, taking breathers between bites because I, like all good Asian children, have been taught not to waste food.

Friends kept chatting until one of them noticed my face. "Are you okay?"

They had heard about my party debacle the other night so they leapt into action, quickly moving away my mimosa while ushering in water and more coffee (ugh).

Then friend tried to pull out a tissue, knocked over her glass of mimosa, which karate-chopped MY glass. I reached out to rescue it and tried to set my glass back upright only to find that it had somehow ... shrunk. Uh, where'd the stem go?

Second friend picked up the broken off stem of the champagne glass and I stared at it, bewildered. I moved my glass, hovering over the stem base and for a half second, I wondered if I should set my glass on top of the stem and it could somehow magically stand, melded back together like puzzle pieces. (It was the alcohol speaking.)

Fortunately, the waitress was really nice about it and all she said during clean-up duty was, "Would you like another drink?"

"I think we're good."

I think it sobered me up and I felt much better afterward. The coconut pie there was really good.

Let Them Eat Cake

I had the weirdest dream ever, but it wasn't all that unpleasant.

I was thrown back to this Pride and Prejudice type of setting and I sat in this stuffy gold gown with my sister(? I don't have a sister in real life) next to me and this tall, broad-shouldered guy with dark hair to my right who never looked at me directly, but I knew - just knew he was the Darcy type. Across our dinner table were two girls who were also sisters, one dark-haired and one blonde. My dream self recognized that the dark-haired one was the meaner one while the blonde was the prettier, somewhat nicer girl.

Then things went silly from there.

Waiter took our orders - and we could place orders for special BREAD. (I blame this on yesterday night's search for brunch food. I'm going out for brunch next Sunday with some friends and I made myself hungry looking at menupages. So many muffins, challah toast and bialys, ooh.)

Anyway, so we placed our orders, but when our special BREAD came, silly me had no clue which one was which. There was a longer challah looking type with onions (which was supposed to be mine) which I started to cut open and .... stuff with gravalax but my sister quickly warned me "That's not yours!" (Stupid sister!), so I grabbed the blonde girl's rounder, smaller bread instead and, er, dropped back the other bread into the basket, gravalax included.

Guilt guilt. I buttered the blonde girl's soft bread and was chewing it when Darcytype tilted his head left in my direction and whispered ... something. I forget, but it was something that made me realize "Oh shit! Wrong bread!" and made me feel even guiltier for dropping back my bread into the basket since even though I didn't bite into it, it's not quite nice to have your fingers all over someone's bread.

Meanwhile, the sisters across from us were oblivious and they kept chatting away, eating their entrees while I'm still gnawing at my bread, mouth dry. They finished their entrees and they didn't appear to notice or want the bread, but as the blonde girl turned her face, eyes all shining, to Darcytype across the table, he made a remark "Enjoyed the food?" which had this snarky undertone that I knew was directed at me.

Guilt overwhelmed me and I slammed my bread down onto my plate and leaned forward like a mad woman. "Excuse me! But I ate your bread!" Sounds ridiculous, I know, but in my dream, I was acting as if I was making a noble speech. "I didn't know this bread was yours and I'm sorry but I also sort of buttered/gravalaxed my old bread for you too." Pointed at the challah sandwiche with salmon in between.

The sisters stared at me, revolted. "Ew!" exclaimed the blonde girl. (Not very Pride and Prejudice, no?) "I can't believe you ate my bread!"

I started to stammer. Darcytype went silent and still next to me. I babbled, "I'm sorry - I - I'll make it up to you - how about - how about you have my dessert instead?" At this, while my upper torso's leaning forward to the girls in supplication, I felt Darcytype's shoulder brush against mine, leaning against me as if telling me "No. You don't have to do this."

I'm guessing this must be very good dessert.

The girls' eyes widened and they immediately agreed even though they were still pretending to huff and pout.

This must be incredible, mind-boggling dessert!

I sat back, forgotten, as the girls went back to chatting, and I felt absolutely miserable for trading my heavenly chocolate cake or something for a piece of stupid bread.

But when dessert came and the girl took my plate, Darcytype cleared his throat and subtly shifted his plate over in front of me.

I blinked. "Wh - what?"

His voice was gravelly as he finally glanced over at me. "I don't care for sweets."

Then he dropped his napkin into his seat as he got up and left our table.

. . . Weirdest dream ever! I rarely remember my dreams, but this is the weirdest dream of all time!

They say dreams tell something about you.

I guess mine says I'm a pig that prizes her dessert way too much.

That, and I should label my bread in the future.

Stephenie Meyer dreams of sparkling vampires and I get dreams about cake and bread. Thank you, muse.

Happy Holidays!

Elizabeth: "That's exactly right. I ate your bread!"
Darcy: "And I relinquished my cake to her. Problem?"

Birthdays

There are a lot of birthdays these days. First it was my cousin's birthday and the next day was a friend's 21st. This past Thursday, I didn't get home til around 1 in the morning because of the friend's birthday bash. He wanted to go to a bar and then a club and things didn't get started until 10pm. I left early.

Since I chose to go straight from school instead of commuting back home, I had quite some time to kill. I found myself wandering a Barnes & Noble, perusing four floors of books. For such a bad economy and all the doom and gloom surrounding the publishing industry, it was nice to see the bookstore packed. People had a hard time finding seats, especially since you're not supposed to sit in the aisles, blocking the shelves. I flipped through one of Tess Gerritsen's newest books and wandered through the YA section with all the books from Stephenie Meyer, Lauren Myracle, Melissa Marr, Sarah Dessen, etc. etc. I believe the staff picks featured Lauren Myracle's Bliss, Meyer's Twilight series (naturally), Judy Blundell's What I Saw And How I Lied, and of course, Suzanne Collin's The Hunger Games. I can't wait for the next book from Collins. The Hunger Games rocked my socks off.

There was an event going on around 7pm with Paul Simon though so that definitely helped pulled in a larger crowd.

After that, I met up with a friend for Korean food and Pinkberry (the newest oh so pink Pomegranate flavor! With pomegranate toppings! Chockful of antioxidants! Except I really can't taste the difference between it and the original.). And visited Sephora for more perfume and make-up goodness - we're addicts.

Finally, FINALLY, we met up with a bunch of people for the birthday events. Birthday boy danced his butt off and got all scandalous and we just plied each other with drinks.

Exhaustion.



Is this not the saddest yet funniest thing ever? :(

American Comfort Food

I've been eating too much outside. Or so my mother says. She thinks I'm going to eat my way into destitution and won't be able to pay for my med school expenses.

This past Wednesday was a friend's birthday and we went to this American soul food southern comfort cuisine type of place. The decor was really nice with cute miniature salt and pepper shakers (those artistic types where you can probably shake out fifteen flakes and call for a refill) and round glasses holding candles on each table. As a group of twelve, I think we took over a quarter of the restaurant.

I had their Tres Macaroni and Cheese with turkey flavored collard greens and garlic mashed potatoes on the side. A friend got the restaurant's famous Chicken and Waffles dish with maple syrup. Don't knock it. Pieces of fried chicken dipped in maple syrup are oddly yummy.

I could practically feel my arteries clogging with each bite, but it was good. Friend's waffles came with strawberry butter. Gasp. It's like strawberry ice cream since its sweetness just melts in your mouth ... but it's butter. And will melt its way toward your arteries.

Halfway through the meal, friend and I swapped plates. We seem to always do this. He eats my food. I eat his. I think we get tired of working on our original food after a while. Thank goodness. I didn't think I could survive the Mac and Cheese.

Then another friend of mine split a homemade green apple sorbet with me. We nearly swooned.

Said friend with her deep, creative expression: "It tastes like I just bit into a real apple!"

Seriously though. It had pieces of apple peels in it!

Okay, now we just sound dorky.

Through Me Chapter 22

Through Me Chapter Twenty Two has been posted!

My cousins are here and they've brought me curry. I must say "Mmm" and rub my belly.

The things I do for free food.

I'm so dead for the upcoming exams. Not even funny. :(

Epidemiology = readings+calculations = incomprehension.

Mosquito Bite Allergy!

So sorry about the lack of updates over the weekend. I got caught up in too much food again haha.

I went for Shanghai food on Sunday. I absolutely adore xiao long bao, these dumplings that have soup along with the meat filling inside the thin wrapping. We had four orders with crab - extra tasty - and another one with just pork. We also got a scallion pancake, two pork chop noodle soups, and one Shanghai fried rice. The waiters must have gotten a bit annoyed with the way we kept waving them over to add another order. Lord knows the people sitting around us were giving us the weird "Did they not eat in two months?" look. My cousin, who's working in some big law firm that provides their employees with two great cafeterias and an even better pay, treated and I think we almost ate her out of her savings, poor girl. That's after she had to run out to the ATM too because the restaurant didn't accept credit cards. The rest of us had nearly demolished all the food by the time she came back and we had to reorder. We're shameless. But if you're surrounded by ravenous guys who didn't eat anything in the morning, it's difficult to prevent them from attacking you if you try to get in their way of piping hot food.

My cousin is an angel though, one of the rare types who makes friends everywhere she goes and laughs everything off. I've actually never seen her angry, come to think of it. She's a weird dork (our bros' words, not mine) who tries everything at least once (think bull testicles, public karaoke) and I suspect my dad favors her over me. :)

Me, on the other hand ... I got a mosquito bite that same day and had to go to work the day after. I'm very allergic to insect bites. As in, the bite got so swollen, it was the size of my palm and it looked yellowish in the middle like an aging bruise while rimmed with this fiery crimson color like I've been scalded. It's not itchy - it's painful. I tried to ice it down and the ice didn't even feel cold on it.

It was seriously inflamed and when I woke up, a putrid yellow blister had formed on its surface. I had to limp into work and I wasn't happy. Even though I didn't mention it and worked through the pain, my mentor picked up on the black, danger vibes I was emanating. When I'm unhappy or in pain (or actually! in the mornings, when I'm sleep deprived), I have a tendency to withdraw from others and stay quiet, as in if you ask me to do something, I'll do it and I'll either won't look at you or I'll give you a look and then glance away without an expression. If I know you better and you try to initiate small talk again, I might actually bite your head off. Think provoking an injured wolf.

My mentor was all "Awww" and offered to bring in antihistamine for me when I told her about it and then sent me to work, being sure to steer clear out of my way.

I was in so much pain, I had to call in a substitute to take my place for the night SAT class I was supposed to coach for high school kids. Sadness.

The bite's fading now, but I'm ashamed to admit that my temperament can be pretty much a ticking bomb sometimes. Don't be fooled by the quiet appearance.

* Picture source: wikipedia

Bro's Birthday

Today's my brother's birthday. We're both summer babies and we're really much the same. We don't particularly care what we do for our birthdays. Perhaps it runs in the family or something. Perhaps we're just mush people.

He's even more apathetic though. Every year, whenever we ask him what he wants to do for the day, he shrugs and then requests the same thing: pizza.

So we got him his pizza - with mushrooms, oh snap - in the afternoon. He went to work and after he came home, we went out for a small family dinner at a local Chinese restaurant.

Fried Fish with Tofu in Clay Pot

Somehow, our birthdays end up more like days of gorging. I suppose, as we get older, we lose all those birthday parties where we thrash the heck out of a pinata, devour slices of ice cream cake, toss around water balloons, hold bicycle races around the block. As they die down, our feelings regarding birthdays start to calm down.

That, or we start holding parties with sake bombs, Irish carbombs, blowjob shots, and way too much alcohol instead.

Haha, we may actually be better off giving into our mother instead, who always suggests that our birthdays were really her days of pain so why shouldn't we be honoring her and showering her with presents instead?

She has a point.

Maybe next year, we'll get her a pizza too.

Birthday

Sunday was my 21st birthday. Whoo.

I'm not much of a birthday person because I tend to get flustered under attention and I'm an extremely indecisive person, as in when people ask "So what do you want to do for your birthday?", I go "I dunno. What do you guys want to do?"

Usually we go back and forth with them protesting "But it's your birthday! You're an adult! Make a decision! We'll do what you want to do!" until they either give up or their cajoling turns into threats.

I think they think that I'm just being easygoing or I'm trying to be a good hostess or whatnot, when in actuality, damn it, I'm really not lying when I say I have no idea what I want to do. I'm not a good planner and I'm ashamed to admit that I like to be a follower; it's a helluva lot easier. I'm up for most things asides from strenuous exertion or bodily damage or roller coasters or waking up freakishly early. I have an insane fear of heights and things that involve plummeting down and yes, I do rank waking up early up there. I wake up early enough for school and work.

So thank goodness I have enough leaders amongst my family and friends.

The day before my birthday, my cousin showed up bearing cake and forced another friend to come with a present: BonChon Chicken a.k.a. heavenly Korean fried chicken. After sitting around watching South Park and those funny fake subbed Bollywood music videos aimlessly, we went to a karaoke place to crash my cousin's friend's party and then somehow, I found myself mumbling Barbie's words to "Barbie Girl" while like eight Kens belted out the rest. It was scarily hilarious - I've never met a bunch of guys so into girly songs like they were. Of course, I've also never seen anyone so into crooning out "Funky Town" - Alvin and the Chipmunks version - quite like my dear cousin either. Such passion.

On the day of my actual birthday, I actually made the decision for my friends to meet up and grab lunch at another Korean restaurant (my life revolves around Korean food, I can't explain my attraction to it). They bought this raspberry mousse/cheesecake from Veniero's which we had to eat with chopsticks, courtesy of our funny not in the good way waiters who also waltzed by later on, holding out a plate and gesturing, if we would mind giving them a slice. We really should have traded it for something. Like forks maybe.

Unfortunately, my skillful nonexistent planning soon led us walking around aimlessly amongst the stores after lunch. Naturally, of course, it started raining. A sunny downpour, if you can believe it.

The day after my birthday after work, my friends took me to a Thai place/bar, where they introduced me to the wonders of sake bombs. I think they just wanted to use me as an excuse to go drinking. Too bad I didn't get my food before we did the first one and the alcohol just went straight to my head. See Helen giggle uncontrollably as she burns her tongue on spicy Roadside Noodles.

After all that, there was just a whole lot of walking. Walking to the piers. Walking to the stores. Walking to the coffee place. Walking to the cupcakes place. Walkwalkwalk.

For some reason, I don't remember it being very strenuous, but once I got back home, there was definitely this burn in the back of my legs.

And hence concludes my 21st birthday. I hadn't really expected it to turn out this way, but this year was definitely a pleasant surprise. Fun. Whatever would I do without my leaders?