I don’t want to be tired all the time.

I don’t want to be constantly catching up.

I don’t want to always make excuses to other people.

I  don’t want to be me.

I took a nap today, setting the alarm for thirty minutes before my 4:00 meeting. I reached for my phone, assuming I had plenty of time since I hadn’t heard my alarm yet. Fuck. A digital 4:10 and the image of my supervisor stared me down, yelling at me for being late again, asking me what was wrong with my life.

I wish I could say this were an isolated incident, but it’s not. It’s a lifestyle. Last minute emails to my adviser, explaining why I hadn’t finished my thesis draft yet. Flaking on my friends because I had double-booked myself. Canceling appointments, relying on the fact that I was still ‘too sick’ recovering from swine flu.

There are many reasons why I haven’t written anything in two months on my blog. One of them is that I didn’t feel like I needed it. Things were going well in my life, for an extended period of time. I was a senior, I was socializing with friends, I was acing all of my classes. Then I realized that this feeling of being on top of things was just an unstable equilibrium, and any small series of events, like having someone with a panic attack yell at me, like my car breaking down, or like having swine flu and missing a week of classes, will tip me over the edge. And I don’t want to be that person anymore.

It ends today. (Or at least I will try). Even if I only reach that unstable equilibrium again, I just need to climb out of this rut.

No more..

• complaining about my life
• staying up late to get ahead in work
• taking naps during the day
• missing my alarms (set multiple alarms)
• bumming around and feeling guilty about it
• feeling bad for myself

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!

Recently I found myself mooching off the charity of my friends until I found a place of my own to stay. I stayed with one friend one night, another the next three, and another the last three. This hot potato of playing guest, followed by hosting a guest for one week, led me to thinking about the nuances of hosting a guest and being a guest.

We’ve all experienced how stressful it is to host a guest. Well-meaning extensions of friendship quickly turn sour when boundaries are crossed, or when a guest overstays his or her welcome. I’ve heard complaints about everything from financial incursions to physical space taken up, but the most stressful part of hosting, for me, is the emotional burden of needing to keep my guest entertained. One time my freshman year of college, I had three friends visit me two weeks apart. I ended up taking a friend to the same attractions in San Francisco three times. And no matter how much they insist that I should finish my homework and not worry about them, I still feel bad doing work. Don’t get me wrong, I love my friends dearly; in fact, probably there in lies the root of my problem: I’m not ok with just acting as a guesthouse for my friends.

I’m generally on the other side of the relationship, whether it is bumming on my friends’ dorm room floors, visiting relatives, or staying with the friend of a friend. And for all you who generally host your friends more than is reciprocated, let me tell you that, being a guest is stressful too! As a guest, I constantly feel like I am overburdening my hosts, on top the emotional instability from not having a place of my own. Even if I help with the chores, keep my clothes in a neat little suitcase,  make friends with my host’s housemates, and offer to help pay for gas, I am still aware of the undue stress I add to my host.

Hosts tend to complain about guests, but you gotta give ‘em a break, because guests get stressed too! It seems like if both parties are experiencing stress, there must be some way to resolve the issue. Until a solution is found, I’ve come up with a solution of my own. Lots of books and websites will tell you rules about being a good guest/host, but it all boils down to one simple maxim: avoid hosting and being a guest as much as possible.

This is the 4th chapter in the series about The Migrant Worker.

What kind of 30+ man makes friends with 20 year old girls? I felt pretty dejected after I realized the cute policeman was already married. So dejected, in fact, that I decided to take revenge by asking to dinner the Migrant Worker whose calls I had been avoiding all week. Needless to say, he accepted immediately.

He picked me up on his yellow Annie’s delivery bicycle after work. At 11pm, I would’ve thought most places had closed, but he took me to a part of Beijing that I had never encountered. The people who frequented this night market were those who got off work after most people had gone to bed, mostly young men like him who had come to Beijing in search of work. They only had a chance to eat dinner at midnight and play a few games of pool afterwards. The smell immediately caught my attention; it was a mixture of the glistening sweat on their bare backs after a long day’s work, and vegetables fried in peanut sauce. Although that sounds gross, it was the most down to earth scent I can remember.

During dinner, I asked him how much money he made, not considered a rude question in China. About 200$ a month was the answer.While he stepped outside for a moment, I quickly paid for the meal: only about 3$. Coming back inside, he finished eating and called out for the check. When I explained that I already covered it, he was enraged that I didn’t let him pay for the meal. He worked for his money, whereas he didn’t want me to use money that my parents gave me on him. This was the portrait of the honest worker that I had been searching for.

He sent me home on his bike at 2am; he pedaled while I stood on the bars behind him, holding his shoulders to keep from falling backwards. The quiet of the sleeping city accompanied by the bleakness of the dark gave me an eerie feeling; I thought Beijing never slept. Crossing the highway, we passed by three other guys on their bikes, and he gave out a loud whistle. I heard three whistles back.

Laying down on my couch, I thought back about all that had happened that night. Even though I had lived and visited China countless times, I had never known this side of China before. I couldn’t sleep, and spent all night texting him until 7am when I told him to come over and we fell asleep on my couch.

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!

This is the next chapter in my project of archiving all of my memories about you so that I can finally be free of the past. Continued from previous post.

When I was younger, I said “I love you” all the time. I threw those three words around like birdseed, usually following the words, “Thank you so much!”. Once, my dad suddenly kicked me off the computer while I was about to send off an email to a classmate thanking him for his help, and he saw that I had finished with the forbidden three words.  Needless to say, he sternly lectured me about how eighth graders cannot possibly know what love means.

In my junior year of high school, I still hadn’t changed that much. I was at my house doing some last minute prepping with my debate partner for a tournament the next day, when my printer broke down. Not knowing what to do, I got online (back when people still used AIM and before the days of gchat). Using my classically middle school screen name with all its XX’s, azn, and baby’s, I scanned my buddy list to see who could help. Even though I had just met you the day before at Chinese school, I double clicked your screen name – you seemed like a computer-savvy guy despite all your ghetto pretenses. As my buddy icon flashed in the lower right corner, proudly declaring  “Italians are Hot”, you patiently walked me through various fixes, probably thinking to yourself that I was the biggest ditz ever. Even though we couldn’t get it working again, I was so grateful that you would take an hour out of your time to help me, that I told you,

me: Thank you, I love you so much!

short pause

you: lol

me: what, is my love unrequited?

long pause

you: we’ll see

Perhaps you weren’t the greatest person at recognizing hyperbole followed by sarcasm, but you took me seriously. Three days later, I saw in my chat screen:

you: so.. do you want to talk about what you said a few days ago?

I had no idea what you were talking about, so you said to forget it. But we didn’t forget it, did we? Because all of a sudden we started hanging out and talking (and flirting) all of the time. It’s like, with that conversation, a little birdie popped the idea that perhaps something romantic could happen between us. Later, well into our relationship, we both confessed that if I hadn’t said I love you, and if you hadn’t misunderstood me, we would probably never get to know how great we are together.

You didn’t really tell me that you loved me much, because you claimed that I should just know. Even though I might have overdone it with my flippancy, sometimes I think that saying I love you too much is better than too little.

mood: 5 can’t. fall. asleep…

physical tired: 5 why am I such an insomniac?

spiritual tired: 3 GRE coming up

Starting a business is hard. I started a local business my senior year in high school, which began as a one room operation with me, one other teacher,  and eight students. After four years, I have extended an offer to join the operation to many others, including a partnership offer to my younger brother. I thought everything was for the best; I could distribute the responsibility while mentoring my brother in this unique work experience.  Since I was going away to college, I needed people who were still in the area to continue the work.

However, things did not turn out as expected. My brother decided that I no longer had any right to make decisions since I was never around. He neglected my repeated advice and request for updates about the organization. He took everything in his own hands and refused to allow me any responsibility.

As a result, the organization regressed. Enrollment fell to less than half the previous year, and profits dropped from on the order of 5,000 to negative; that’s right, we didn’t even break even.

I suggested some changes, but after a furious email debate, it was evident that my brother and I had different visions of what the mission of the organization should be, and where the organization should go. Any normal professional disagreement would normally be settled through a bureaucratic process or civil discussion, but my brother and I just resorted to how we handle disagreements at home: name-calling and shouting. It got personal when he started crying about how he had always looked up to me and how I had abused him.

The result of the disagreement? I stepped down from the organization, handed over full responsibility to my brother, and, for the meantime anyway, have blocked all emails and chats from him.

You can fire those who work for you, you can break partnerships up, but you can’t sever your family.

Written by a good friend and the author of “Why do I still care?” Comparing the two entries, it’s evident that he has learned a lot about himself – and offers advice that I need to learn as well.

Ever broken up and wished and hoped that someday you and your ex will get back together? You start to treat that him/her right, converse, and try to begin anew. However none of that matters if the same arguments that have occurred in the past continue to occur.

Even if everything seems amicable, old conflict will hold you back. You absolute have to move on in order to begin the healing process. You have to let go of the things that made you two argue in the first place. You have to be willing to forgive and must be more understanding and forgiving. Trust plays a huge role as well. However, even if you do everything right, the other person may find someone else. In that case, do not get angry, do not get mad, and do not be jealous. Congratulate your ex for finding someone else he/she cares about.

You cannot wait for the other person forever. In fact, you should not wait at all. You will only depress yourself and waste other opportunities that lie ahead. If you two were meant for each other, things will work themselves out. Being jealous will guarantee that things will not work out. It’s best to simply move on, enjoy life, and grow so that the next time you two encounter each other, you will be a much better person.

I’ve been stuck in such a cycle. I’ve moved on, I’m letting things go, but the arguments continue. There can be no way of getting back together if that keeps up. For several weeks now things were going uphill, and everything seems to be going great. And yet, the same stupid arguments have not let up. One day, a huge argument broke out which was basically the same as the arguments of the past, and continued the same old crap that had always kept the relationship back. It seems like something I cannot escape. To break the cycle either my ex or I have to change, and I cannot rely on my ex for that. I have full control over my own actions, and thus it is up to me.

If you’re stuck in such a cycle, remember that you have the power to change it, but it takes a lot of effort, and a lot of patience. You cannot expect immediate results, and it could take years. That’s what I’ll be doing, putting in more effort, and having a great deal more patience. I refuse to give up.

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!

I love my white board. This blog is (almost) just like an electronic version of my white board. Ok, so I can’t draw organic chemistry molecules quite as easily, and people can’t pass by and doodle penises on it, but it’s pretty good at helping me to solve problems. I come to my white space with a puzzle, and start writing whatever is on my mind. By the end, no matter how roundabout, I’ve come (at least closer) to some sort of conclusion.

Many writers think that writing has to be about the end. Of course, we’ve all been trained to write that way in school, and for good reason. A professor would look dubiously on a thesis that presented its arguments haphazardly, and only reached a conclusion in the last paragraph. But not all writing is thesis writing. There is value in the thinking process. We all go through the thinking process, but we just don’t always record it for others to see.

I must admit that I have also fallen susceptible to focusing only on the ends. Sometimes when I write a post, I think and pre-write for a long time until I actually figure out what to say, then I delete everything write everything again in a logical and organized way. But I must remind myself of the purpose of this blogs. I’m not trying to convince anybody of anything. I’m trying to figure out my life for myself and share something of value to one or two people along the way.

Oh, I just caught myself doing it. Scrolling up to check if my previous paragraphs made sense. I pledge from now on in this entry to never use the scroll up button.

I guess this could be a metaphor for my life. I’m constantly trying to present myself as the final, mature, product, but the truth is that my life is like this empty wordpress space, still being filled and worked and reworked. I shouldn’t be embarassed or ashamed to make mistakes, appear immature, come off as less than perfect, because to do so is to assume something that I am not.

Take for example, a mentor, anybody – your boss, your professor, a professional in your aspiring field. I work with a doctor who just seems to be perfect; perfect job, perfect husband; perfect life. All I see is the perfect product, but how did she get from A to B? How do I get from me to her? It’s so intimidating, but if someone showed me the imperfections that occurred in her career then it wouldn’t be so bad. We work so hard to hide our imperfections – but we shouldn’t, because others can gain something valuable from them.

In fact, that is the whole premise of this blog. I know that I have a lot that I need to improve on. This blog was initiated because I made mistakes. I know that some people will judge me. I suspect that one day, the material will be used against me (job interview, med/grad school admission). But I’ve tried to be as open and sincere about everything because I believe that someone, somewhere, can learn from my experience.

Wow, this post started off as an entry about whiteboards, and ended up as a discussion of imperfection. Forgive me if my mind seemed to wander, because it did.

mood 6/ physical tiredness 5 /spiritual tiredness 4 -Pretty good mood today because I got a lot done and I started talking to my ex again. However, it is 3 am and I still don’t know what I’m going to do with my life, not to say, tomorrow.