I once heard one of those groaner jokes that went like this:

What did the priest say to the student who lost his 10 page paper after a power outage?

Jesus Saves!

We’ve all heard this before, but I am here to urge you to listen to this advice before you lose everything you have.

If you’re like me, you love your media collection. You might spend hours making playlists, organizing your photo library, and uploading funny pictures to facebook. Over the years, the music and photos I’ve accumulated have taken up the vast majority of my computer’s memory space, making it inconveniently slow. But when I started to store video files, my computer, (named Darling), just crashed.  I recently decided that enough was enough.  I decided to get tech-saavy and bought a 500GB portable external harddrive (named Kiki – after Kiki’s Delivery Service), and moved all of my multi-media. I also used Kiki to back up everything on Darling.

The only thing is I never backed up all the media that I had moved onto the harddrive (dumb mistake number one). The technical ogre that I am, and too stressed out by the 12 page paper that I had only just started and needed to finish that night, I forgot to safely eject the harddrive before taking my laptop away (number two). The next time I started iphoto, all of my pictures were completely gone! Years worth of thousands of pictures, of which some older ones were uploaded online but the newest ones had not yet been stored anywhere else.

I know that I probably shouldn’t tether my life experiences to those pictures, but I still feel like my entire past has been lifted from underneath my feet, that all twenty years have suddenly been robbed from my memory.

Please learn from my misfortune:

• always take the extra ten seconds to eject your disks safely
• back up your harddrive, and your external harddrives
• periodically upload all pictures online just in case (plus it gives you an excuse to procrastinate on facebook)
• don’t be too dependent on technology (I usually tend to distrust it). develop pictures that you really care about.

I stayed up all night last night writing a 12 page paper, and now I have another paper that I’m supposed to write due at 9:15 tomorrow. I haven’t started, but feel too upset and preoccupied to start. What’s one night and one essay compared to an entire life, gone?

2/2/3

Update: OMG I just randomly tried something and I found my photos! I love myself!  I can’t believe I figured it out all by myself! I feel like a little three year old who just learned some easy task, and now thinks she is the smartest person in the world (In fact lots of three year olds are probably better at using technology than I am). All you computer people out there are probably rolling your eyes and thinking that it was such a easy problem. (Heh <== most technologically inept person in the world right here). I am going to run around my house telling everyone about how proud they should be of me! Now I have the energy boost to finish that paper!

7/2/3 Biggest mood swing ever

Update: Finished the paper at 3am. Finally, some SLEEP!

In case this has happens to you, I will post below a detailed description of how to solve it. Don’t read ahead unless really interested —-

The problem: What happened was that iphoto was still running while I removed the hard drive, so the next time iphoto opened and pointed to the library file, it just opened a blank library. Even though my library file was unharmed and still contained all my pictures, the iphoto program was accessing it inaccurately. The problem was compounded by the fact that I use time machine, so I had multiple copies of the iphoto library stored on the external hard drive and in the end couldn’t decipher which was the correct one. Also, I moved various iphotos to and from the trash so often that everything was mixed up.

The solution: I used a program called Grand Perspective to scan my computer and show graphically what files were taking up how much space. I saw large squares representing several different iphoto libraries, but one of them was much larger than the rest. (In case you don’t know, iphoto library is a file that brings all your photos together, it is not a folder with separate jpeg files for each photo). When I opened them, however, all of them came up blank. How can a blank iphoto library have two different sizes? I was convinced that the large one was the culprit. It was storing all my photos but redirecting to a more recent library upon opening. What did the trick was to copy the library to my comuter, eject the hard drive (so that whatever library iphoto was referencing was not accessible), open up iphoto, and manually select the desired library. It worked!

Wow. I feel like Sherlock Holmes.

This post is inspired by this NYT article

The US and other countries are seeking to spend millions of dollars on swine flu, a threat which has a death toll of 1 in the US and ~100 worldwide. The panic surrounding swine flu has caused numerous organizations to label it an ‘emergency’. Yet where is the political mobilization and alarm surrounding other killers? This year, 13,000 dead from ordinary flu, and 14 from guns in school. 25 dead in Mexico versus 6,000 dead from illegal drug trafficking in Mexico. Where is the state of emergency for these ‘chronic’ threats? One may argue that we don’t have the resources to respond to all these threats, but our response to swine flu clearly shows that we do but just don’t care enough. It’s a shame that we have grown so immune (pun intended) to these killers. The article brings up Dick Cheny’s 2002 proposal to vaccinate the entire country against smallpox, arguing that Iraq may have bioweapons and use smallpox against the US. Luckily, he was not successful, especially because of the thousands of deaths that would have resulted and the lack of evidence of bioweapons in Iraq. The swine flu threat really reminds me of the War on Terror and other discussions on threat construction.

Another side of the article was prejudice.The pork industry  is frustrated at their losses due to ignorance of how swine flu cannot be spread via pork, and now they want to call it ‘Mexican Flu’. It is infuriating to me how some people only care about prejudice when it is directed at them. In order to not perpetuate the myth that pork carries swine flu, let’s peg it on another carrier – Mexicans! Despite the fact that if you have not been to Mexico, you are not likely to be in contact with the virus, swine flu has fueled bigotry against an already marginalized minority group. Employers refuse to hire Mexican workers, and customers are avoiding Mexican restaurants. I can already see how it might turn into a biological argument about how the Mexican gene pool makes them susceptible to disease, harkening back to the days of eugenics. I think its funny how we talk of employment equality and lack of prejudice, but as soon as a pandemic hits, we go back on our word. I guess it takes a pandemic to expose the bigotry of our society that we usually cover up.

Swine flu has made its way into Oxford

I had heard stories and seen pictures of the energy, excitement, and fun of May Day traditions. In Oxford, the choir sings on the top of Magdalen tower at six am, followed by Morris Dancing on the streets below. Traditionally, students jump off of Magdalen bridge, but the bridge has been closed off.  Staking out a place on the Magdalen lawn, a lawn on which 364 days of the year it is forbidden to step on, I waited eagerly for six. I heard that it was impossible to get anywhere near the tower, and was feeling special that we got lawn seats. People came dressed in a wide variety of costume, from tuxedos to colorful suits to traditional English garb, and I even saw someone dressed as a sandwich. How could this be anything other than great?

I started my adventure at 10pm the night before. I went to King’s Arms, the local pub on Holywell St where I learned the wonderful British tradition of ‘pennying’. If you slip a penny into someone’s drink while their hand is on the cup, they have to chug the entire remainder of the drink. I had a Cloudy Apple Cider, which really just tasted like beer and not much like cider, and since I am one of those types who slowly sip at their drink, of course I had a full glass when my friend so discreetly reached her arm across the table and pennyed me. I started drinking, and halfway through I guess people expected me to stop but I kept going. After I finished, everyone was so surprised and commended me on my chugging ability, saying that I put all the girls there to shame. I didn’t even realize that I was exceptional – I just did what I always do when Chinese government officials take me to dinner; force myself to drink even through I don’t like the drink at all.

At midnight I went to Babyface, a pub/dance club. For those of you who have ever been clubbing in the states or China, you’ll be disappointed if you go come to Britain. The DJs are horrible, the songs undanceable (and unbearable even outside of club settings), the transitions are awkward, and the British are not the best dancers. If you come to Britain, find your nightlife elsewhere.

At five thirty in the morning I started the May Day festivities. This was it, I had stayed up all night in anticipation of this.

When the church bells rang six, the choir began to sing. For five minutes. Then everyone went home.

How anticlimactic.

Confused about what Magdalen Tower or Morris Dancing is? Watch this video of my May Day!

4/4/3 My phone fell in the toilet + I had three nightmares last night. First, my little brother died; second, my other little brother died; third, I got back together with my ex-boyfriend. It’s funny how it seems like those are parallel levels of frightfulness.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TA0NYJEUTfQ[/youtube]

I once said that my life was so messed up, I wish I had a little green elf sitting on my shoulder telling me what to do. Well I have one friend who is the closest thing I’ve got to that little green elf. The night before I left for England, I was chatting on the phone with him and asked him what he thought my goals for Oxford should be. He said:

1. Hook up with at least three people
2. Make at least ten friendly acquaintances and get to know one person very well
3. Do as many activities as possible

Seeing as how I am studying at Oxford, but not a registered Oxford student, don’t get to take any classes with Oxford students, and live in a house with Stanford students, it’s going to be very hard to reach out socially. But I’m determined that at the end of this term, even if I haven’t made any friends, you won’t be able to say that I didn’t try.

Happy May Day! Check back tomorrow for picture of Morris Dancing!

What do you say to someone you will never see again? I only had the few minutes it would take for the elevator to come to the tenth floor of the hospital to think. There was part of me that wanted to cry and hug her and never let go, and another part of me that wanted to curse at the injustice of it all. But I swallowed both parts with excruciating effort, because you see, my grandmother didn’t know that she was dying of gall bladder cancer.

A long-time sufferer of gallstones, my grandmother consistently rejected our pleas to undergo surgery. Instead, she spent years trying various traditional Chinese medicine regimens that got her nowhere. Eventually, the pain forced her to give in. When the surgeons opened her body, they found a tumor that had already spread to other organs in her body. The surgeons discussed the situation with my grandfather, and my mother and her siblings. They decided not to tell my grandmother.

She is only sixty-nine. I don’t know who her killer is, whether it is the tumor or the stubborn faith in Traditional Chinese Medicine. The doctors say she has about a month left to live. Every morning and night she receives nutrients through an IV because she is too weak to ingest food. Every day her body is weaker, her hair thinner. She often lays in bed moaning because of the pain, but she refuses to take painkillers — she believes that pain is the body’s way of communicating to her. My parents call her stubborn; I call her strong.

We haven’t told her, and we never will. But she knows. She knows that her time is running out. When we visited her parents’ grave I overheard her praying while kowtowing. She said to herself, “Mother, father, I will be joining you soon”.

So there we were, in front of the elevator, my grandmother, my grandfather, and me; all aware of the fact that it was the last time we would all be together, but suffocated by the necessity to pretend that it wasn’t.

She removed the gold ring from her middle finger and slid it onto my hand.

I said, “Waipo, I will come to see you again and when you are better I will take you to America.”
“Yes, Waipo will get better.” She smiled reassuringly.

The elevator doors opened. I exerted all the energy in my facial muscles to force a smile as I waved goodbye. As soon as the doors closed, the tears fell.

—- To spread support and awareness for cancer, I started a poll fundraiser. Answer the question: how has your life been affected by cancer? either in the comments or on twitter, and I will donate 10 cents for every response received by tomorrow to the American Cancer Association in the name of my grandmother. I will also synthesize the responses and post them for all to read.

Me with my grandmother this summer

My grandmother during Spring Break, well into the disease

I’ve been in England for about two weeks now, and unfortunately have not had the best experience with the British from the start. I had been warned that the British generally are not as outwardly friendly as Americans, and I’ve heard that British complain about the insincerity of American chipperness. But I didn’t expect to encounter just plain rudeness.

I’ll provide below a few snapshots of the people I have encountered. A caveat: these are only my observations after a very limited exposure to Britain. I’m sure that I will be able to meet lots of nice people here that will turn my view of the Brits around.

Restaurant service: One of my favorite hobbies is restaurant and cafe hopping, so even though I’ve only been in England a short time, I’ve visited quite a fair number of the eateries in Oxford. In general, the service is sub-par, probably because there is no tip. While I don’t mind lackadaisical service, I must say that I’ve encountered a much higher frequency of rude service in the UK than in the US. The service is mostly marked by impatience; the waiters hurry you through the entire process (ordering, paying) so that they can get new customers seated. Last night a large group of us went out for a birthday and the waiter asked us whether we wanted the food all together or starters first. While we had some internal table discussion (that admittedly might’ve taken longer than usual), the waiter told us, “please make up your mind”. There was only one other table in the otherwise empty restaurant. But I can’t make a completely negative judgment against them, because the Indian food was delicious and they gave us free desert.

Customs and Immigration (from an earlier post): I arrived in England to the warm welcome of the customs agent lecturing me:

- Why are you coming to the UK?

- I’m studying here

- When did you start to study here?

- I am just starting now

- Then you don’t say ‘I am studying here. That means that you already started and are continuing. You should say, ‘I will be studying here’

I didn’t realize this was immigration and grammar control.

Hospital volunteer services: I mentioned before that I contacted doctors at the hospital to see if I could shadow them. A received a fair number of responses inviting me to join them, but saying that they would first have to file paperwork.  I received this email from volunteer services:

Dear Crystal
I have now received 10 emails form departments and doctors that you have asked for a placement
CAN YOU PLEASE STOP SENDING EMAILS TO DOCTORS

You have a placement with Dr. T__

If I receive any further emails from doctors regarding a placement I am sorry they will be ignored
I do not have an inordinate amount of time to keep emailing one person about work shadowing

Here is the response I would like to give:

Dear Obviously Professionally Frustrated,

I contacted many people at once because doctors actually are busy people and I know some of them would just ignore my email. Perhaps it’s not standard procedure at your hospital for people to approach doctors themselves (I guess you’re used to people coming through you first). But that does not excuse your rudeness and disrespect; everybody deserves some courtesy. Can we think back to first grade when we learned how to communicate? I don’t think yelling via email was one of the suggested methods.

Is this how you get a power kick, by asserting your authority in angry emails to lowly students? Or maybe you just like playing with the capslock. I would love to see you say this to my face. Volunteer services is supposed to be the face of the hospital to the public. I hope, for the sake of the hospital and the community, that you learn to improve your attitude (and to stop complaining about your very difficult and demanding job).

My actual response:

Dear Ms.,

I’m sorry if there is a protocol for arranging shadowing that I was not aware of. The hospital I work at asks us to contact doctors individually. I  contacted multiple people because I was hoping to have the opportunity to visit many different departments for one day/short term placements. I had contacted all the doctors before I received a response from Dr. T_.

I have not contacted and will not contact any more doctors. Please go ahead and ignore any new emails you receive concerning my placement. I appreciate your help with the arrangements and will return the paperwork to you as soon as I can.

Sincerely,

Crystal

Does anyone have experience in the UK and can offer some advice about interacting with the British? My sour view of British social interaction has completely ruined my mood and set the tone for the remainder of this trip. I desperately want to be able to write a post by the end of the term with three portraits of great people I’ve met here.

That was my friend’s response when I asked him how he was feeling. After hearing him out for a little bit, I suggested that he write about it and to publish it on my blog. I told him about how much blogging helped: to be able to write my feelings and thoughts down and share them with others, and then to receive words of comfort, support, and advice. Please read his thoughts below and share what you think.

Last year I broke up with my girlfriend of one and a half years. It was very much my fault, and I wanted to make it right. I could not believe I had let things get to the way things were. I needed to do something about it.

A lot of things kept me back. Jealousy, paranoia, the fear of losing someone were all present, especially since I was away from her for six months without having the slightest chance of meeting up. It was extremely difficult for me because of the potential to meet other guys (which she already had, prior to us breaking up). I just wanted things to be the way they were again.

I wanted her to love me again the way she had. Back then I would know that her interest was solely in me, that she would want to most of all hang out with me, and that she had the most fun with me. I have no problem with having other friends or anything, but at the end of the day I felt special. I miss that feeling. I miss having that. Will I ever be able to get that back?

I realize I probably don’t deserve any other chances, but I still do love her very much. I wish it were mutual. I really miss a lot of the things we’d do, even if they were silly like playing the Sims or Text Twist, or throwing pieces of fruit at each other, or some more crazy things like running around the halls chasing each other. I know that to her it was a different feeling breaking up than it was for me. For her it was more of a relief. Maybe she was right about me though. Maybe I haven’t changed and only care about myself.

I’ve been ignoring her because I can’t shake the feeling that I’ll never see her again and that nothing will ever happen again. But by thinking this, I’ve been ruining my chances. In less than a month I don’t know if I’ll ever see her again, but if I had done everything right starting from a year ago, maybe things wouldn’t be the way they are now. But it’s too late to look at the past. I’ve ruined everything. On top of all of this I keep caring about her hanging out with others and having fun. It’s no wonder she does though, seeing as I never ask her to hang out and don’t initiate any conversations online. Again, it’s because of the feelings that resurface when I do.

Should I even care anymore? Why do I care about the stupidest things? What should I do? I feel like I’m running out of time. I feel lost.

It is 12AM. After only sleeping three hours, a two hour rowing practice, and a formal dinner, I thought that I would go home and zonk out around 9pm. That’s what my body was telling me to do anyways. Three wasted hours of laying in bed later, I am still awake.

I retract any hypotheses I made earlier as to the cause of my current bout of insomnia. I know now that the inexplicable stress, stomach queasiness mistaken for hunger, muscle tension, can all be explained by one reason:

Subconsciously, I didn’t want to sleep because I was scared of having the same nightmare again.

A week ago, my most recent ex-boyfriend appeared in my dreams. In my dream, he had a new girlfriend, who I not only met but had to become friends with. She constantly asked me if I was ok with their relationship. She was white, which brushed some of my social insecurities and innate feelings of inferiority when interacting with that racial group. That night was when my sleeping problems started. I went from sleeping at 10 and waking up at 6 to sleeping at 3 and waking up at 12. Last night I dreamed about him again.

I thought I was over him. I hadn’t given him the slightest thought for months. Why is he coming back to bother me now? I can’t afford to have this continue so early in the term. Does anyone have good suggestions? I’m going to try sleeping to music so I can think about other things.

6:56 AM England

I once heard someone describe jet lag as a blank slate, a new chance for your to set your sleeping schedule to what you want it to be. When I first arrived in England, I was going to bed at 10 and waking up at 6 every day. I figured, great! I don’t even need to deal with jet lag, I can just maintain this schedule.

When I go home from college, I often wake up after lunch time, sometimes even closer to dinner time, and stay out with friends until the early hours of the morning (around 7 am). My mom would tell me that I was not really an American because my natural schedule seemed to be consistent with China. That seemed perfect, considering I wanted to work in Asia after graduation.

Yet, it seems that no matter how often I switch time zones, whether I am in the US, China, or England, I will always be a night owl. I woke up today at 3pm, and still have not been able to sleep. I have the first rowing practice of the season at 12:30 followed by formal dinner, and the pressure of getting enough rest is making it even harder to sleep. Although insomnia is not new to me, it usually only happens around finals and comes with stress. Right now, I’m not experiencing much academic stress, but rather am experiencing a new kind of stress; a stress that comes with feeling uncertain and socially excluded.

The night hunger comes right when I think I might be able to ignore it if I fall asleep; a few hours of lying in bed with my stomach growling and keeping me awake until I finally give in and cook some soup. I also think that I am developing a tolerance for sleeping pills. I took a sleep aid, which I believe just has melatonin, around midnight, and did feel extremely tired. However I still could not fall asleep. Now I just have the queasy side effects but without the benefits of sleep.

Now my muscles are randomly spazzing. I think I might have no other choice than to stay up all day, go to my rowing practice, go to formal dinner, and pray that I have enough energy to make it through the day.

3/3/3

I found a great new way to run and I swear it works so well for me! I warmly welcome – no I blazing hotly welcome – you to try this out and tell me if it worked for you.

My biggest achilles heel when I run is my short attention span. When people advertise the draw of running (getting in touch with nature, getting time to think for yourself), those solitary and lengthy qualities of running are precisely what turn me away. After a quarter mile, even if I could run more I get so bored that I stop. I’ve tried running with a buddy, but even though your are very enthusiastic about that at first, eventually you don’t have the energy to coordinate your schedules and one of you drops out. I’ve tried running with music, and that gets boring too because you’re just passively listening (also my headphones keep falling out).

Now I have finally found a way to keep myself interested while running! When I was little my mom taught me a Chinese nursery rhyme:

One frog, one mouth, two eyes, four legs.

Two frogs, two mouths, four eyes, eight legs. and so on.

I started repeating that while running, timing the counts to my steps. Even though it was the most mechanical mental activity, it sustained my interest enough to keep my legs going after two laps. I realized that if I channeled this energy into memorizing something productive, then I could have a rather large repertoire by the end of the term.

I printed out the Gettysburg Address in huge font. Clutching it in my hand, I started jogging and reciting. Each time I took a step, I said one word.

Four.

Four score.

Four score and.

Four score and twenty.

After two laps (I usually run two laps around the meadow a day. Don’t ask me what distance that is, I’m guessing .75 miles?) I had managed to make it all the way to the end of the first sentence. I think I’ll finish the whole thing in about a month’s time. That might be painfully slow, but the exercise isn’t really about the memorization. It’s about the motivation to run. Now I really want to run so that I can continue playing this game, and while running I am motivated to keep in rhythm rather than slow down. Also, I bet that if I memorize the entire speech in this slow but paced manner, it will escape my mind much less easily than when I had to memorize it by rote in elementary school.

Maybe when I go back to America, I will be able to recite all the important speeches!