top left: scream!!
bottom left: sick pumpkin humor with a knife
right: healthy pumpkin, and bottom: vomiting pumpkin
 

 
happy halloween... my pumpkin's the one on the right, the "scream" pumpkin~
 

rain, rain, don't stay away
wash the dirt on my car away~

advent of fall

it's starting to feel like fall - turned on my house heater for the first time this season. it felt like a good night for a hot cocoa until I burned it while heating it on the stove.

alton brown had a great recipe: his looked really dark and creamy and yummy.

hot cocoa

2 cups powdered sugar
1 cup cocoa (Dutch-process preferred)
2 1/2 cups powdered milk
1 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons cornstarch
1 pinch cayenne pepper, or more to taste
Hot water

Combine all ingredients in a mixing bowl and incorporate evenly. In a small pot, heat 4 to 6 cups of water.

Fill your mug half full with the mixture and pour in hot water. Stir to combine. Seal the rest in an airtight container, keeps indefinitely in the pantry. This also works great with warm milk.

warning: do not burn

subway in seoul

20050408X31a
Originally uploaded by gychang.

i'm going to miss korea. my parents are officially moving out, so i can't stop by there every four to six months anymore. this subway scene is such a familiar scene.

midterm is over, one more presentation to go, and then i'm going to crash~

another saturday night

i haven't heard from my friends in a long time except calls came in a sudden flood last night. of course this always happens the weekend before my midterm and journal club presentation. my choices for tonight:

1. Studying for midterm: first year neuroscience grad students are meeting up for a potluck and "review". I have a feeling this is going to drag out for a very long time, talking about irrelevant "but interesting" details of neuroscience. blah. planning on leaving early.

2. Itzhak Perlman with Leonard Slatkin coming today: man, this is so tempting. I would totally go to this except tickets have been sold out a long time ago. Went to the box office in hopes that there would be a stray ticket anywhere, but no such luck. Kinda considering going to the show anyways to buy a ticket that's trying to be sold, but yeah... might be a good excuse to leave review session early.

3. Clubbing in San Francisco: with my med school friends who just finished their second rotations and are ready to party it up in SF.

4. Going to visit another friend visiting SF: meeting for a nice dinner, in order to ditch review session.

5. Studying on my own. How sad.

ack dunno what to do.

nike's women's marathon in SF

"Each participant to cross the finish line will receive a ... an official 2005 Finisher necklace designed by Tiffany & Co."

now that's a great marathon prize, almost enough to make me start running.

is it weird that the day after spinning class, the most sore muscle in my body was in my left shoulder? i think i was trying to help my legs by pulling myself up onto my arms. eek, it was tough but pretty cool, I think I'll go back. It's better than working out by myself (a cute teacher doesn't hurt).

N told me that our spinning teacher mentioned his ex-girlfriend once in class. i don't know which is more thought-provoking - the fact that he might be straight (a straight guy who sings along to aqua's "barbie girl"?? not sure if those exist), or the fact that he shares about his ex-girlfriend during spinning class.

missing sunny san diego already. see the food journal i had below? i worked off part of the pounds today by attending spinning class. our teacher was this cute young guy who promptly turned on, for our first song, aqua's "barbie doll" and sang along on his microphone. hehe it was fun, and a great workout.
 
 

my food journal
destination: san diego (nickname: a city that is truly a stereotype of itself)

spent the weekend in san diego, it was a much needed weekend away from home after all the craziness in lab. i seriously went down to eat - hit all my local favorites, except for thin. it was so beautiful, the weather was perfect up until the last night when I was there and I ended my trip with a local thai restaurant and some gelato next door. altho the food was amazing, i have to say the best part was meeting with all my friends. met up with one college friend whom i haven't seen since college, and another guy that I've known since high school. it seems that a lot of medical ppl end up in San Diego - drawn by the good medical system and the beautiful weather. definitely a city i'm considering. :)

ah, too many pictures, so check out my flickr.

 
"what to eat??"
 

 

white chocolate pineapple napoleon, at extraordinary desserts (more info on this fabulous place, below). note the gold foil on the flowers. 

 

quesadilla mercedes, at alfonso's, my dad's favorite restaurant while he was a medical student at ucsd. named mercedes after alfonso's wife, because "she's the best". 

 

devonshire cream pavlova, at extraordinary desserts, a definite stop in san diego every time we're there. owner went to cordon bleu, has the most wonderful concoctions, as you can see the two times i went during the two days i was in SD. :) 

 

beef carapaccio at arrivederci, an italian restaurant in hillcrest 

isaac mizrahi's cashmere is out...!

working like mad these days, mostly out of guilt that nothing's really working. I stayed at lab til about 1 am yesterday. it's a bit scary but I found that as long as I don't see a clock, I'm ok b/c I don't know how late it is.

san diego tomorrow, here I come! i can't wait~!!!!

paris part II: getting a date in paris

"Laura, being French, seems to understand the situation somewhat better than me. She explains that French women are very different from American woman and that they unusually put up several layers of defense so the Nicolases have to fight to get then down in order to finally get her to agree to give him her phone number. In France, guys just don't waltz up to a girl and ask for her number because they will most likely get rejected. French girls make guys work for it.

Is Laura saying that LA girls are easy? I'm not easy. I'm desperate. There is a distinct difference."
-kirsten guenther

paris

i would love to work in paris for a short while. can i do that? the medical profession is a little odd compared to other professions, so not sure if i can... sarah's friend writes for a travel magazine with the "american girl in paris"-view of the city. so interesting.

"It’s not that the French are rude. They simply demand a certain level of respect. There is an unspoken dress code of perfectly polished shoes, well-knit stockings and flawless skin. Contrary to popular belief, that the French don’t demand designer labels or Hermes scarves, it’s not how much you pay for it, it’s how you polish it.

The French demand that you say “Bonjour” before you ask them for something, “Excusez-moi” if you want directions, and “Pardonnez-moi” when you bump into them. Henry Higgins said in My Fair Lady that, “The French don’t care what they do actually, as long as they pronounce it properly.” The basic rules are: Don’t butcher the language, don’t butcher the dress code and go to a butcher for your beef."
-kirsten guenther

probably it's one city where they won't look at me weird if i wear eye shadow during the day, like in in this city or in lab. ;) i wonder if french scientists at the pasteur institute go dressed in donna karan?

two days of ice skating = sore

i'm so out of shape.

i discovered coupling on kqed!

junebug

"Junebug" is a great film because it is a true film. It humbles other films that claim to be about family secrets and eccentricities. It understands that families are complicated and their problems are not solved during a short visit, just in time for the film to end. Families and their problems go on and on, and they aren't solved, they're dealt with." -Roger Ebert

it was a really funny film, with moments of extreme awkwardness, tension, head-on train wrecks and barely missed catastrophes within a family. we saw it after roger ebert gave it an "A", and i felt like an indie film. we apparently missed "happy endings", which was another movie i wanted to see.

on another note, someone asked me how i was doing, and it struck me how no one's asked me that in forever. i totally crumbled. I'm doing better now tho.

taking today to regroup and to get my life together again (can i do it in a day??)

listening to the rent movie soundtrack - nice orchestration, and it's nice to listen to different musical renditions of the same old songs I've probably listened to thousands of times. rosario dawson is, as expected, a slight musical disappointment. What i didn't expect is that i think she also affects the singers around her. it sounds like they are trying to match her beat and her musicality, and it's dragging them down with her. but other than that, the original cast members are amazing, as always.

the cast of "rent: the movie" on the today show. L to R: adam pascal, tracie thoms, anthony rapp, wilson heredia, jesse martin, idina menzel, taye diggs, rosario dawson