Lemons can make more than lemonade.

A quick update since it's been so long:

I've been unusually busy with grad school and the work-study position I recently started, but somehow, I've found a way to strike a balance between academics, work, and a semi-existent social life (at least when my schedule permits). Currently, I'm also reading T.R. Reid's newest book, The Healing of America: A Global Quest for Better, Cheaper, and Fairer Health Care, which is a perfect complement to the Frontline documentary that PBS featured a little over a year ago. You can watch the full program, Sick Around the World, on their website.

Points of note during the past week or so include going to hear my grad school department chair, Kenneth Thorpe, present a brief in which he discussed the most latest amendments to the health care reform bill (click here for a pdf of the briefing); and partaking in a few Emory Homecoming activities during the past week (e.g., the entertaining styling of comedian, and now actor, Aziz Ansari).

Given some recent discussions I've had with colleagues and my desire to further develop my ongoing interests in public health, health care, and research, I've begun to seriously consider the merits of a future in science writing. I think handling unforeseen changes in professional aspirations and overcoming never-before encountered adversity is part of growing up, whether you actually have a handle on any of it or not. It's part of recognizing that adulthood, despite its much sought-after privileges and supposedly lessened limitations, also comes with the rude awakenings of reality: that pursuing what you love calls not only for a resilient resolve but commitment, responsibility, and practicality.

As the saying goes, "When life hands you lemons, make lemonade." But if lemons are opportunities in disguise, who's to say you can't set your sights on the best of the best? I'd rather shoot for something that might bring more fulfillment in the long run, and my experiences this year are starting to show me that you can do a lot more with the lemons you're dealt if you're willing to think outside the box (or the cutting board, in the case of this analogy).
Correction appended (10/3/2009): When I first made this post a few days ago, I incorrectly stated that I was interested in science journalism and not science writing. While the two professions are similar, there is a distinction: all journalists are writers, but all writers are not journalists. To quote Michael Kenward, a previous editor of New Scientist, "Science writing is about explaining complex ideas that nobody wants to keep secret; science journalism is about explaining things that everyone can understand but that some might prefer to keep buried."

*Information on science writing from "So You Want To Be A Science Writer?" by Natasha Loder, Science and Technology Correspondent for The Economist (Spring 2002). You can download the full text (pdf) on the Association of British Science Writers' website.

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It's simple, really.

With grad school classes currently in full-swing and work starting soon, I haven't had many free moments to really "live" in my apartment - to cook a "real" meal (one that doesn't just entail microwaving or heating a package) or to properly entertain friends (unless it involves just sitting around on a random assortment of furniture & talking until the boredom becomes too much).

But now, I finally have cookware and grown-up, dishwasher-safe dishes (as opposed to the flimsy, brightly-colored dorm dishes I used to eat on) and more reasons to shed the college-student habits of my former life. And that's where my fascination with RealSimple.com comes in. (Admittedly, I bummed these cooking supplies and dishes from my older brother's house - with his permission, of course - but that's besides the point.)

My favorite source for handfuls of deliciousness & life finesse.

Some of my top picks from the site:

• 24 Great Snacks
• 28 Uses for Everyday Items
• What's the Worst that Could Happen?
  

And the best part is, you don't need to have boatloads of free time or the culinary skill of Martha Stewart to successfully implement most of the showcased ideas.

On a somewhat-related but completely personal note, I recently discovered that I am (and probably have been, for some time) allergic to peanuts, which is disappointing on a number of levels. I've known the fact that allergies can develop later in adulthood for years, especially since I developed a tree nut allergy in college. But, in part due to my false sense of invincibility and mostly due to my unfaltering love for eating anything and everything with peanut butter, I always hoped, that when it came to peanuts, I would be an outlier (<-- read Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell if you ever get a chance - it's filled with inspirational take-home points about success and society, but it's written in a refreshingly non-traditional way).

It's so much harder to let go of things when you know exactly what you're missing out on. The same goes from people. Tonight, I'll make sure to take 5 for everyone and everything that I miss about them.*

*The links in the last sentence will probably only make sense to a select few readers.

Money can't buy happiness, but it can buy a lot of other cool stuff.

(See update at the end.)

Between bi-monthly recaps of the Daily Show, daily readings of the most popular articles in the NY Times, and keeping up with random blog updates on a week-to-week basis, I've actually managed to be relatively productive these past few days, and not just at my desk (although, it is nice and I did assemble it all by myself).

My $24.99 desk from Wal-Mart

It's not just my time that I've learned to budget more carefully, though - I've begun to find better ways to budget my money, too. And I feel the least I can do is pass the insight onto everyone else.

It all started a few weeks ago, when I started reading up on all the Money-Saving Tips that U.S. World & News Report compiled months, if not years, ago. Now that I have more expenses, less disposable income, and more reasons to save, I figured it wouldn't hurt to do some financial research.

Then came a brilliant encounter with P&G eSaver, an amazingly sustainable way to download coupons onto your grocery store card. I've always pictured coupon-clippers as frugal, stay-at-home supermoms or retired elderly couples who spend their days gardening and playing bridge, but now I've found a way to maintain my street cred and save a few bucks every time I go shopping, simply by the click of my mouse.

P&G eSaver (a.k.a., my new favorite financial find)

Tonight, though, was the icing on the money cake. I ended up reading an old article in the NY Times - partly by happenstance and partly by my conscious decision to read articles in the "Your Money" column - "Financial Advice for Recent Graduates". What caught my attention was not so much the words of wisdom that the advice-givers spewed in response to the specific questions about financial planning, but the fact that one of the advisors, 26-year-old Ramit Sethi, had a blog called I Will Teach You To Be Rich. I mean, what kind of person would not want to read a blog with that kind of name?

Apparently, his blog gets about 250,000 unique readers a month, so there's a pretty good possibility that I'm one of the last twenty-somethings in America to find out about it - but that doesn't mean I'm any less excited to stock up on all the financial tips that the site has to offer (even if I am about a year or so late). It's definitely earned a permanent spot on my Blogger Reading List.

Best quote of the NY Times article? Ramit Sethi's one-liner: Rich people plan for things before they need them, while others are caught treading water when something bad happens. Not sure if that's exactly true, given that I know a lot of rich people who don't know the first thing about financial planning (or life-planning, in general) - but it got me thinking that maybe, those who plan properly simply have a much better chance at becoming rich. Perhaps, careful planning begets financial success, and that, in turn, is the positive reinforcement that propels an individual to continue their conscientious behaviors.

Time to turn my thermostat up three degrees and save $10 this month! (Check out the "Power fiction & facts" list by clicking on the thermostat link - who knew a gas and electric company could be simultaneously informative and witty?)

Update: To be completely honest, the two aforementioned tips in this post (using P&G eSaver once every month or so and turning my thermostat/AC up a few degrees) are actually the only two changes I'm making to be more prudent with my money. Not that this is anything novel, but I'd like to think that small changes make big differences (kind of like with this UK public health program I read about after seeing the Michael Moore documentary, SiCKO). Not to mention, Malcolm Gladwell completely agrees with me, so that has to mean something. (The Tipping Point is what enlightened me during countless rides on the métro and solo meals in cafés when I was in Paris this summer - I highly recommend reading it, if you haven't already).

Reverse cultural shock.

Five or so weeks in Paris can completely change your outlook on life in the States - like I wrote once before, the real cultural shock hits after you get home from a foreign country. The following are observations in point:

Paris is a city where...
... people spend more hours on the important things in life: eating and enjoying their meals with friends, relaxing in parks and at neighborhood cafés, and walking instead of driving to purchase warm baguettes and pains au chocolat that are baked fresh daily from the local boulangerie.

Atlanta is a city where...
... people waste a lot of hours on unimportant things and then rush through the rest of life: speeding through the drive-thru of fast-food establishments, grabbing artificially-sweet-calorie-filled custard danishes and cups of coffee to go, and then sitting in traffic while commuting to work in their cars.

Paris is a city where...
... if you're a woman and you exist, men hit on you on every street corner, metro stop, café, store front, etc., etc... and sometimes keep following you for blocks, until they get a chance to hit on you.

Atlanta is a city where...
...if you're a woman and you dress provocatively in public, men glance over but don't say anything at all, because saying something remotely offensive might constitute a sexual harassment lawsuit.

The three things that I miss most about Paris:

The métro

Despite its initially claustrophobic-inducing qualities, its lack of air conditioning, and its gritty-watch-where-you're-sitting atmosphere, it's an unbelievably efficient and all-around relaxing commute once you get the hang of things. Even at its most crowded, sardine-packed times, you get the sense that you're only truly Parisian if you can handle the everyday idiosyncrasies of the métro to navigate your way through the city.

The food

Simply put, it's fresh, it's French, and it's fantastic. Every meal I had seemed like the best meal I'd ever had - above is a picture of the amazing four-cheese pasta we had at a restaurant that we stumbled upon during our escapades in Montmartre.

The weather

Compared to the sweltering summer heat and humidity of Atlanta, summer in Paris was a haven of temperate afternoons and relatively cool evenings. Although the weather patterns were somewhat unpredictable and the rainstorms were often unexpected, at least the sun never burnt you to a crisp the moment you walked outside.

Paris isn't perpetually perfect, and Atlanta isn't absolutely abominable, but it'll just take awhile longer for me to really adjust to being back. Though, I think my Parisian perspectives on most of the aforementioned things will always influence my decisions here in the States.


In other miscellaneous news, Dr. Pauline Chen's latest article in the NY Times ("When Doctors Make Mistakes") propelled me to start researching public health practicums that focus on physician-in-training and patient outcomes. I remember reading her book, Final Exam, when it first came out about two years ago - it was incredibly honest and well-written, and I definitely recommend it to anyone who's considering medical school or any reader who just wants to better understand patient care from the physician perspective.

Fin.

La dernière semaine/The last week:

I meant to post updates on my last week awhile ago, but I got miserably sick as soon as I returned to the States - hence, here's the entry about my 5th and last week in Paris, finally, two weeks after the fact.

Some major highlights from the week include sitting on the sidewalk of Rue des Rosiers and eating "The World's Best Falafel" from Chez Hanna on Tuesday afternoon and celebrating the last day of neuroscience classes by having my last Parisian gelato (stratiacella et mangue) and then shopping for French books, presents, and clothes to take advantage of all the discounts during the Soldes (insane sales and bargains that all the stores throughout France have during a select period of the summer) on Thursday. Our entire group had a pretty fancy farewell dinner that same night, at Café Viaduc, where I indulged in my first burger made of foie gras and my last mousse au chocolat. Afterwards, a few of us spent one last night outside of our dorms at Cité Universitaire, laying in the grass and staring at the night sky, before getting busted by campus security for having alcohol on campus and lamenting the death of Michael Jackson - some things never change, whether you're in the Atlanta, Georgia or in Paris, France.

I spent Friday resting up for Saturday (Solidays concerts!) and finishing off the last things on my to-do list for Paris: finally finding a French version of the Unbearable Lightness of Being (La légèreté insupportable de l'être), spending hours reading the book and sipping the best and most authentic chocolat chaud in Paris (a sinfully rich, dark chocolate concoction with heaps of fresh whipped cream, known as "L'Africain") with my brunch omelette at the famed Café Angelina, and then relaxing at the Jardin du Luxembourg before having one last crêpe dinner at Rouge Pomme. If you click on the link for "L'Africain", you'll find a post about Café Angelina's hot chocolate, as well as the recipe for the drink, compliments of an Australian blogger who can actually be followed on Technorati!

Solidays concert program design

I won't go into too much detail about my experiences at Solidays on Saturday, but I think it'll suffice to say that I've never been surrounded by so much energy - the crowds (think Bonnaroo, but with even less regulations and thousands of Europeans), the musicians (5 stages of concerts at this immense camping festival venue in Parc Boulogne of Paris), and the cause (Solidarité for SIDA/AIDS awareness) definitely created an amazingly memorable atmosphere and a fantastic finish to my time in Paris. I didn't last long enough to hear Girl Talk perform at 4:30 a.m. the next morning, but Stephanie Mckay and La Phaze are just two of probably a dozen or so incredibly entertaining talents that I heard during my eventful afternoon/evening at Solidays.

A few of us in front of Fontaine St. Michel (at the beginning of the trip)

After reconvening with a few friends at the St. Michel fountain (ending the trip like it began) and being entertained by street performers/break dancers there, I had my last cup of Parisian chocolat chaud at a small café, right after midnight, and took the last métro back to Cité.

I don't have any brilliant phrases to succinctly sum up the time I spent in Paris, and I can't even begin to find the words to name all the things I loved and will miss now that I've left. What I do know is that I had an absolutely amazing five weeks in France and I'll definitely be going back again some time in the near future, maybe for a public health internship next summer or a graduate semester abroad. I miss Chipotle burritos, barbecue ribs with hot sauce (e.g., Fat Matt's), and Bruster's ice cream sundaes, among all the other random foods and food-related memories with friends that make America so awesome, and it'll be good to get back to those things once I recover from being sick. Happy 4th of July, everyone!

Get busy.

I've been doing so much lately that I haven't had a chance to post a quality blog update. So, here's something - it's not optimal, but, it's better than nothing.

My 21st birthday (June 20):

Le Bon Marché/La Grande Epicerie de Paris
(how I spent my birthday morning)

Spent the first part of my day at the amazing Bon Marché and La Grande Epicerie (the French equivalent of Whole Foods, with a huge selection of gourmet French pastries, desserts, and chocolates in addition), and met up with two people from my study abroad group for a low-key lunch at a nearby café. Afterwards, I explored yet another breath-taking French church (Chappelle Notre Dame de la Médaille Miraculeuse) and visited the Rodin Museum nearby (for free, of course, because students between the ages of 18-25 get free admission to museums in France). Between escaping the intermittent rain showers and making friends with two American college students to take my photo in front of "Le Penseur" (The Thinker) because my camera died on my way to Musée Rodin, it was a pretty decent day...

A picture of me in front of Auguste Rodin's "The Thinker"
(I'm wearing the birthday dress I bought in Paris!)

... but the evening and night were the crème-de-la-crème of my 21st. After stopping by Palais de Tokyo (again, to see the exhibits for free), I met up with a few others at Centre Pompidou to go to Le Soufflé for dinner. For dessert, I had the most amazing, melt-in-your-mouth chocolate soufflé with hot melted chocolate sauce on top. So much better than a regular old birthday cake with sticky frosting.

Earlier during the day, I read in a Parisian newspaper (the Direct Matin, given out daily and free-of-charge to everyone at and outside of métro stations) that there was a free, live concert to reign in the Fête de la Musique; so, without really knowing the exact location of the park where the performance was, my roommate and I headed out, hoping to stumble upon the concert by pure luck... The concert was supposed to start at 10 pm, and we didn't make it out till after 11, so we were pretty sure we would miss the best performances (e.g., Sean Paul and Kelly Rowland). But, fate must have been on our side, because after walking on mostly empty streets rather aimlessly for over almost half an hour, crossing a dimly lit bridge through a park, and transversing a rocky gravel path, we heard the first beats of "Get Busy" in the near distance. I won't go into the minute details, but minus hilariously heart-attack-inducing run-ins with two different French police officers, the concert and the sketchy walk back were the most fun I've ever had on a birthday.

La Fête de la Musique (June 21):

Short and sweet, I rather serendipitously stumbled upon some really great musical talents and amateur performers throughout the course of the day (like Versión Originale and beat-boxer/rappers outside of Eglise Saint-Eustache), and then hit up the massively popular venue of Denfert-Rochereau to hear more popular French musicians like Alexis HK. It was really great discovering new local artists and just being part of such a huge, collective music event. Then had a late dinner with my roommate at Rouge Pomme, a restaurant near my dorm at Cité Universitaire, where the food was as delectable as the adorable French waiter.

The flyer for the Denfert-Rochereau concert

My cadeau/present to all you faithful readers: the link to the new Girl Talk album, for a pay-what-you-can price! Thought I'd share, since I'm a maven and not a connector (read Malcolm Gladwell's The Tipping Point and you'll understand)... and since I'm going to hear them perform tomorrow night in Paris, as part of the Solidays concert series (for AIDS awareness) this weekend!

Updates on week 5/the last week in Paris are soon to come... expect copious amounts of description on purchases for the annual Soldes d'été (when stores all over Paris offer amazing sales for shoppers) and summaries of the must-see/must-do things that I finished off of my Parisian wishlist.

Better later than never?

Over the past month or so, I've been reading V.S. Ramachandran's Phantoms In The Brain (along with about a dozen or so other books for my English and music classes), writing too many papers, tutoring more students than I can keep track of at the Writing Center, and stuffing in as much socializing as my stressful senior-year-second-semester schedule permits - it's still hard to believe that graduation is right around the corner.

What little free time I've had in between has been spent learning about blue people (in my course on ethics and the human genome) and preparing for Emory's 5th Annual Barenaked Voices A Cappella concert and Relay for Life this upcoming Friday night - two amazing events for two very different, but incredibly worthy causes. If you're interested, you can make a donation to the American Cancer Society (ACS) and help my team reach their goal at this site: Woodruff Against Cancer.

In other news, I'm getting my first-ever laptop this weekend. I'll be transitioning from my current desktop to a new MacBook by the end of the semester. It's made with arsenic-free glass, no brominated flame retardents, no mercury, and no PVC - I guess if I ever have to toss it out, at least my actions won't be environmentally-unfriendly (MacInTouch Review).

Oh, and awhile back, I cut off about 14 inches of my hair and donated it to Locks of Love. The morning I went to the salon, the weather changed from rain to sleet to snow as I sat in the salon chair. Crazy weather in the month of March, even according to Atlanta's standards.

I also officially (and definitively) decided that I'll be attending Rollins School of Public Health at Emory next fall, which means I'll be staying near Atlanta. Congrats to all the other Emory students who'll be staying here after graduation - whether it's for med school, grad school, work, or anything in between - and congrats to everyone else who's finalized plans elsewhere, too. Maybe we won't all be in the same place, but hopefully we'll see each other again down the road*. Better later than never, right?


*Last photo (of snow near Emory) taken by my friend, A. Rawat.

Three months of winter & wealth.

Fortune is a funny thing. The last fortune I received came on New Year's Eve, from a Chinese fortune cookie: "All the preparation you've done will finally be paying off!"

It's been about 3 months since then, give or take a few days; and each month, without fail, my fortune cookie fortune has come true.

Around the middle of January, I received the phone call that announced my acceptance to graduate school for next year; near the end of this month, I found out I was accepted to the study abroad program in Paris, France for the upcoming summer. Although, I'm not sure if an occurrence of equally fortuitous nature will present itself sometime in March.

So, I guess my fortune cookie fortune was right, but was it really fortune if I created all the outcomes myself? Everything that happened was a result of "all the preparation [I'd] done" and the hard work I've put in over the past few years. It seems as though we actually have the ability to alter our destinies - but, why, then, can't we always get things to turn out the way we want them to?

Jean-Dominique Bauby, a French journalist and previous editor-in-chief of French Elle, once wrote that it seemed as though his "whole life was nothing but a string of those small near misses: a race whose result we know beforehand but in which we fail to bet on the winner." Sometimes, the hand we're dealt is just that - near misses, but also serendipitously-seized opportunities.

The life of Bauby was, however, anything but completely fortuitous. After suffering a massive stroke at the age of 43, Bauby was "paralyzed from head to toe... his mind intact... imprisoned in his own body, unable to speak or move" (Bauby 4). Only by blinking his left eyelid could he communicate with others; this is how he dictated his entire memoir, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly.

Interestingly enough, Bauby's memoir was originally dictated and written in French, so it has cultural and linguistic significance for me, especially now that I'll be going to Paris this upcoming summer. The book has since been translated into a number of other languages - most notably into English, by Jeremy Leggatt - and its French film adaption was nominated for 4 Oscars in 2007. Bauby's writing not only allows readers to gain insight into the inner-workings of a patient with "Locked-In Syndrome", but also offers a significant amount of background on the French healthcare system and the layout of Paris. Perfect literary material to prepare me for my neuroscience classes, my Parisian trip, and whatever else fortune might have in store for me.


*Quotes from The Diving Bell and the Butterfly by Jean-Dominque Bauby; image is original artwork by yours truly.

Maybe it's written.

Tonight, I watched Slumdog Millionaire.*

I won't give away the ending or release any spoilers, but if you read any generic review about the movie, you'll soon learn that many critics have pegged it as "the best movie of 2008," a story that "lives up to its premise even at its most far-fetched, creating a beautifully realized and edited film" (Roeper, Ransom, Rotten Tomatoes). It's been nominated for 10 Oscars and 29 other awards, and it's won almost 50 other awards (IMDB). To top it off, Dev Patel, the actor who plays the lead character in the film, is only 18 years old - and he was starring in his first-ever movie role. His stellar acting skills even earned him a (playful) slap from Sharon Stone.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow once said, "Fame comes only when deserved, and then is as inevitable as destiny, for it is destiny." But if there's one thing that the writers and actors of Slumdog Millionaire have proved, it's that destiny isn't simply the result of inevitable, uncontrolled events. It's in your own hands, if you're willing to take the necessary risks and fight for it, against all odds.

I wonder if Dev Patel ever realized the caliber of recognition and fame that was in store for him, if he recognized that he'd already begun to build his destiny the moment he was cast in the role of Jamal in Slumdog Millionaire. M. Night Shyamalan has already picked him up for his next movie, Avatar: The Last Airbender, set to be released on July 2, 2010. Vikas Swarup, the author of Q&A (the novel that Slumdog Millionaire is loosely based upon), probably didn't expect his story to be adapted into a film and become an international sensation, either.

I'm not sure I would ever be able to survive in an area with a lifestyle as surreal and hardening as the ones that Indians have learned to endure and embrace, every day in the slums of cities like Kolkata and Mumbai. But, whatever I end up doing, I'd hope that my future work at least creates some semblance of an impact on a wider audience, however pale its scope may be in comparison to a Hollywood-Bollywood blockbuster. And, who knows, maybe my fame will come in the process, if deserved. Maybe it's written.


Or maybe I should just stop blogging and finish my readings for class.


*Kelli and Alec: So sorry for watching it without you; I promise I'll still see it again with both of you on Friday!

High, lighting too much.

I've taken so many practice exams in the past couple of days that my brain is now in default MCAT mode whenever I do anything. While reading an article in the NY Times tonight, I tried to use my mouse to "highlight" a specific sentence on the screen - until I realized I had just attempted to use a highlighting feature that exists only for passages on computer-based exams like the MCAT.

This begets the question, even outside the context of such a test, how much is too much? And what is it that makes us over-extend ourselves to begin with?

When a particularly tragic or difficult event happens in a person's life, one of the positive results (after going through the stages of denial and pain and depression and so forth - the "grief cycle", as Kubler-Ross calls it in her book, On Death and Dying) is gaining the drive to do more and to do better. Although it's ironic that the rationalization of something horrible ultimately leads to the motivation for something beneficial, at least initially negative situations do eventually propel us in a positive direction. And that's probably what matters most in the end.

Making an effort, trying to improve - both are inherent markers of a logical, conscientious person. But, even the most practical individuals can become tunnel-visioned and so overly focused on a single task that everything else exists only in relation to that one cruciality.

The key, experts say, is to reach an optimal level of understanding and comfort, and then, to stop. Achieving this kind of balance is usually much easier said than done; and, coincidentally, it's precisely the fear of failure that causes us to completely over-exert ourselves, resulting in the very defeat we so desperately wanted to circumvent.

Pressure, reputation, expectations. Everyone has reasons for wanting more in life. While it's okay to not want to settle for anything less than the best, each person should be his or her own measure of perfection. Otherwise, we start trying too hard to do too much, for all the wrong reasons.

We have the ability to recover from unforeseeable adversity and bounce back with unimaginable resilience, but we falter the moment we assume our success is inextricably dependent on the often misguided judgments of others. Perhaps it's time to recognize that true limits only exist if and when we create them for ourselves.

It is a truth universally acknowledged...*

...that a single college Senior in possession of an excruciatingly slow home internet connection must be in want of some sort of entertainment during her time in Alabama for the holiday season.

So far, two weeks out of my four-week winter vacation have been filled with movie-watching with the 'rents (oldies, newbies, and James McAvoy-ies), sporadic runs past the homes of neighbors (and the McCain-Palin signs that are ever-present on their perfectly manicured lawns), science-y/med school-related book-reading, and random errands with my mom. And, recently, I had dinner with old friends from high school, at the iconic corner of "Good Food and Good Times". Still boggles my mind that so many of them are married already, though...

Today was a prime example of finding a happy medium between coexisting with the social nuances of Southerners and being individually productive. While most people from a city like Atlanta might get easily annoyed by how aimlessly (and badly) Mobilians drive or how it seems as though no one is ever in a rush to get anywhere, I think I've actually begun to find some solace in these seemingly frustrating realities of small town life. It's not that I've completely stopped paying attention (to the ignorant, uninformed, and close-minded individuals that continue to be permanent fixtures where my family resides); I've just started to not let unnecessary things bother me as much. Maybe I've become more patient, or maybe I'm just getting older. Whatever it is, I think it's a better expenditure of my time and energy to concentrate on what actually matters.

After taking my dad's Audi TT roadster for a joy ride (in all honesty, it was more of a slightly nerve-wrecking ride to brush up on stick-shift car-driving, and my dad was in the passenger's seat the entire time, making sure I didn't stall or crash his snazzy car), I spent approximately 4 hours in the West Regional Public library, studying B.S. about the male and female reproductive systems. [I especially like how B.S. is the abbreviation for the Biological Sciences portion of the MCAT, quite possibly the most clinically relevant section, but ironically named, nonetheless. The test-makers sure have a hilarious sense of humor.] Had it not been for the random, middle-aged man (supposedly a painter) who struck up a conversation about my "intriguingly photogenic facial structure" and my potentially promising future in modeling and art, it would have otherwise been a relatively uneventful afternoon of academia.

I'll take the 5-hour exam in about a month, on January 31st, 2009 - hopefully, this third time will be the charm, i.e., the first time I complete the test, and the last time I ever take the MCAT. Note to self and other aspiring pre-med students: the key to success is to a) not move the test date for a third time, and b) not punk out after the very first section/prematurely void your scores.

P.S. Kitty, if you read this, I took a look at your latest post and I was absolutely shocked to read about your gum-smuggling criminal activities. The Singaporean government is probably assembling a clandestine group of agents at this very moment, in hopes of tracking you down... Seriously, though, I'm glad you're having a nice time so far and adjusting to life in Singapore - it's definitely entertaining to hear about your everyday escapades!


*Quote adapted from Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice.