Ever since I moved into a house off campus three weeks ago, I’ve been learning how to cook. Honestly, I didn’t even know basics like how to heat oil or what a cookie sheet was. Learning from my roommate and working together to create meals has been a blast, and I’m surprised to say that I’ve  survived the past few weeks on variants of my home cooked pasta sauce based meals. Mmm both my stomach and my wallet are thanking me!

I’m not sure if this recipe has been invented yet, but I came up with it on accident and it turned out pretty good! So I’m going to share it here:

• place tortilla wrap on frying pan, and add all ingredients to only one half, like a quesadilla
• Add pasta sauce (not too much, or it will be too gooey)
• Add any vegetables/meat/cheese you like
• Fold tortilla half over
• Turn on medium heat and cook, flipping as needed, until insides get hot
• Turn on high heat so that tortilla cooks and is nice and crispy

Voila! Your very own Pizza Tortilla!

My computer after I sleepily stepped on it

Recently, I wrecked my mac by stepping on it, creating this inconvenient, however awesome looking, effect on my LCD screen.  Rather than pay 600$ for Apple to fix it in their store (at that rate, I would rather just buy a new computer), I decided to order a screen from www.Screentek.com and install it myself. Thinking that I would receive an entire screen, frame and all, and all I had to do was pop the original off and the new one on, I thought it should be a piece of cake.

That’s why I was surprised when I received a thin, black screen in the mail. When I realized that I was actually expected to disassemble the computer, my immediate reaction was to call my computer friend and ask him to help me. Well, my computer friend was busy with his girlfriend, so he lent me his tools and wished me luck.

First, remove the plastic frame

Computer without the frame

Next, unscrew the hinge

See? I can do it all by myself!

Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you: the inside of a mac

Tada!

The whole process took about two hours, and my computer is a bit more beat up than before, but I finally finished. I feel proud of myself, and apparently not a few guys are impressed as well. So hopefully my computer will stay unbroken.

Cat attack!

Unless the house cat gets to it first…

Meow!

Recently, I managed to make my computer look like this:

Beautiful, no?

Being the technological ogre that I am, I believed it my duty to share with others how I keep my computer in such good shape. Below are five scenarios that actually happened to me; imagine yourself in my shoes and you will be on your way to computer guru-ness in no time!

Five ways to keep your computer in ship shape:

1. You’re already 5 minutes late for class and the professor talks so fast that even if you furiously type you can never catch everything she says. You haphazardly pack the computer in your backpack and bike to class. When you return to your dorm, you’re so relieved and reflexively toss your backpack to the ground. Oops, looks like you forgot to place the laptop in its protecting sleeve.
2. You’re in the library writing your final paper when the “low battery” warning starts flashing. As you uncoil your adapter, you look around but the only plug is across the space between your desk and the wall meant for others to walk past. “Whatever,” you tell yourself, “they can walk around”. As you sip your coffee, you suddenly have to pee, and run towards the bathroom. Hear that? That’s the sound of you tripping over your cord and your laptop crashing to the floor.
3. It’s finals week, and you’ve got a major paper and tests to study for. You can’t afford to spend any time goofing around, even for dinner. You grab some grub from the dining hall and carry it back to your room. You also stockpile some extra for breakfast so that you don’t have to swipe your card twice. The next morning, you sleepily reach for your alarm and knock over your cranberry juice in the process… all over your keyboard.
4. This one is more about a phone than a computer, but – Once in a while, everyone experiences a crapper that just takes forever. Thinking this might take a while, naturally you will take out your iphone to stave off boredom. As you finally finish, you put your phone back in your jacket pocket, turn around and bend over to flush. Suddenly you hear a plop, just as you realize that your pocket got lighter.
5. This last one is the most recent. It’s 3 am and you’ve been trying to fall asleep for hours. Probably you’re too stressed out about the MCAT, so you take out your computer and decide to watch some TV shows to let off steam. Around 6 am, you start to get tired – too tired to walk and put your computer on the desk. It just so happens that the nightstand, which is within reach, is already covered by other stuff you were too lazy to put away under the same circumstances : hair things, books, pens, etc. You decide the only solution is to leave it on the ground by the bed, since you’ll just pick it up the next morning anyway. As you roll out of bed, you hear a crack and look down.

Follow all of this advice, and your computer will look just like mine! Guaranteed!

1. Color with felt tip markers
2. Play my favorite online game online
3. Catch up on favorite TV shows and Detective Conan manga
4. Take a shower and change into pj’s
5. Eat mint chocolate (esp Aero’s)
6. Listen to soundtracks from my favorite musicals (Les Mis, Wicked, Rent)
7.  Dance to my Ne-yo playlist on my bed when no one else is there.
8. Call my close friends and catch up over hour long conersations
9. Blog
10. Sleep!

My friend and I started a competition to do nice things together.

Here are the rules: We set a schedule of tasks and do them. The number in parenthesis is the number of days allotted. Harder tasks get more days. Every time you complete a task, you must document it by sending an email. If you fail a task then you have to come up with a new task to add to the list. Anyone who wants to join us is welcome to, simply post a comment on this blog on the day that you completed it! Oh – and if anyone can think of a better name for this game, please share!

Here are the tasks for the next two weeks:

Friday: April 24 send a card to someone (cannot be a birthday card) (2)
Sunday April 26: give food to a friend (1)
Monday April 27: talk to someone about something they like to talk about. And you don’t. (2)
Wednesday April 29: leave someone a nice note (1)
Thursday April 30: give food to a homeless person (3)
Sunday May 3: eat at a new venue, (1)
Monday May 4: Ask someone out to coffee (2)
Wednesday May 6: cook a meal for someone (2)
Friday May 8: learn how to say hello in a new language (1)

This quarter I began a weekly tradition called ~Tea at Three~

A small group of friends (more of the – they are in my dorm so we are nice to eachother – type) and I began to make a point to leave our Sunday 3 o’clock to 4 slot open in our schedule so that we could drink tea, eat light snacks, and engage in random discussions. It’s something very unique to be able to have so many people consistently participate in any activity at Stanford. I don’t even attend my club meetings that religiously, but I would always make time for Tea, even during finals week. The topic ranged from our favorite quotes and books, to our life experiences, to philosophies about afterlife and love. Aside from the tasty snacks and well-timed study break, after ten tea sessions at the end of the quarter, the Tea gang had become some of my best friends at Stanford. We will be Tea-mates for life.

I will sorely miss ~Tea at Three~ while I am at Oxford. I finally fully experienced the feeling of friendship and genuine intellectual excitement that college is about. Isn’t it ironic how I had applied to Oxford because I felt so stranded at Stanford, only to be taken away at the moment when I felt like I most belonged?

Recipe to starting a successful ~Tea at Three~

Materials: hot water boiler, cups, various types of tea, assorted light snacks, something to serve as a table (preferably low – a box with a shawl thrown over it works quite well)

Location: Any room, although generally make the ambience quite peaceful, play relaxing and unobtrusive music, can move outside to enjoy nice weather. Rotating rooms is a good way to get to know others because they can show off their room and play their music.

1. Determine a group: very important! These people should be people who you do not know extremely well, but want to get to know better. It’s ok to have a close friend or two (we had roommates participate). Most of them lived in my dorm, because it is more convenient to get together casually. Keep the group small so you can get to know everyone and the conversations are deeper.
2. Determine a time: it should be a time when everyone is available, when generally there will not be meetings scheduled, and when people will not be working on last minute homework. Picking a good time is extremely important to minimize flakiness. It’s a bonus if it falls in a good study break time. We found that Sunday at 3pm worked extremely well. If you pick another time, well, you can come up with another smart name for your tea party.
3. Allocate responsibilities: Figure out who is responsible for what. Who has a hot water boiler? Who can bring what materials?
4. Reminder email: Send an email invitation the night before to give everyone a heads up. Use this chance to get creative! Use fancy stationary and include pictures of tea parties (iPhoto and Mac Mail are great). Write eloquently and pompously. Or, include a joke or something to think about for discussion. Sometimes I ran out of material and started to include pictures to have people guess the relevance; they usually were pictures of things that had happened on that date in history. Be creative!
5. Establish a quorum: Just kidding. But do wait for people to trickle in and expect people to be a few minutes late. Take this opportunity to boil water, pick out music, and chat with the early birds.
6. Check-in: Go around and let everyone briefly share how their week went (high points, low points, etc.). Also answer a check-in question that can range from the trivial (what is your favorite word) to the serious (explain the meaning of your name).
7. Spotlight: Focus on one individual. Have him or her tell her life story and share objects of importance (another incentive to host in your own room). Let people ask questions afterwards.
8. Themed discussion:Discuss a topic that you would never talk about otherwise. Like what you think maturity means, or what your favorite school experience was. These can be chosen in advance or offered on the spot. You can also pick special ones based on the day, for example our Valentines Day tea was focused on love.
9. Awkward glances all around: As people lose steam for discussion and run out of things to say, they will awkwardly start to look at each other in silence until someone pops up and says, “well, it’s four o’clock, gotta back to homework”. And that person will pop the bubble of enchantment that you have built around you that let you forget that you are in a world of books and school and deadlines, and you will fall into the pavement and realize that you have somehow come back to reality. And you will smile and hope that next Sunday will come soon.

Crystal’s First Grade Textbook:

I love procrastinators. I love movies. I love people who procrastinte by watching movies.

I love entrepreneurs. I love money. I love entrepreneurs who make money.

I love entrepreneurs who make money by procrastinating and watching movies.

The thing I love about Stanford is how amazingly smart, and amazingly lazy, people are. I resent everyone (parents, teachers, advisers, snobby know-it-alls, geeks who never leave the library even though they really need a shower) who says that laziness is not the way to success. That is why I am so in love with Hello Movies. Yeah, the interface looks nice, the service is useful (especially the database of free online movies), and the developers are hot (just kidding about that one..), but the real reason I love it is because it proves all those granny-glasses wearing crankies — who always seem to have one hand smugly stroking their chin and the other cramming that stick up my ass — wrong.

Why shouldn’t we get rich doing what we love to do. When its what we love, how can we call it working hard. Work becomes play, especially when  play means getting rich off of all your expertise from watching movies. Working hard has become a thing of the past, and the new wave of lazy entrepreneurs has come: from the web-saavy facebook app developers and bloggers to the down-to-earth garage band musicians. This economic situation especially has woken us all up to the fact that you can study and work for years to acquire your skills, only to get laid off; but people will always procrastinate.