Tuesday, February 21, 2012

Monday, February 20, 2012

this morning, with her, having coffee

"this morning, with her, having coffee"- johnny cash's idea of paradise

Here are some things around my apartment. I was thinking about paradise yesterday and realized that in my apartment with the morning light (assuming it is morningtime because I went to bed and woke up again, and not because I am still up studying from the night before) with a cup of tea is paradise to me. And under a cozy blanket. I've never been a huge beach person, but I would accept one of those right now too. But more perfect would be a cabin surrounded by the mountains and slightly chilly spring air. Just some daydreaming in between Genetics and Neuroanatomy.

Saturday, February 18, 2012

a beautiful woman

Qualities I would add for a beautiful woman: dedicated, brave, unwavering, curious, upstanding, conscientious, authentic, staunch, graceful, honest, kind.

Thursday, February 16, 2012

lifetime of adventures

This is from Post Secret, where people send in their secrets on a postcard. I used to read this site every week when they updated on Sunday but fell out of the habit a few years ago. I'm glad I checked back in because this week is Valentine's-related secrets. This one was my favorite.

Wednesday, February 15, 2012

Bein' Quirky with Zooey Deschenel

edit: Sorry for the Verizon commercial- I was trying to link this, but I apparently don't know how to link Hulu videos. Additionally, didn't know how to spell "octopus." I realized/was forced by Saad that what was previously the title of this post should be taken down so as to not ruin the video for anyone who may be watching it... you know, all 4 of you who read this blog. This should work now.


 
Zooey Deschenel

with these words here, with you over there

Happy Valentine's Day! I'm slow on the uptake (it's 2 AM on February 15). I'm not going to lie about this embarrassing fact, but I love Valentine's Day. Single, dating, married (this one has not happened to me), whatever. It's a day to celebrate all kinds of relationships. That should be every day. It's easy to forget, though, so I think it's okay to be reminded how much we should appreciate love. I kind of want to make an epic toast like "Here's to being the best we can be," but then I realized that would not make sense at all in relation to what I just said and also that would be the worst toast ever. So here's to red and white tulips showing up at your door.

Tuesday, February 7, 2012

regina spektor, guns, germs, and steel

listening to:


reading:

beneath the stars came fallin' on our heads, but they're just old light, they're just old light

Back in December, I made a few Christmas cards. I was only planning on making one, but then my mom asked me to make three for family members and I traded a card for my brother washing my dishes. Really. I did that. I just realized I completely forgot to take a picture of the only one without snowmen on it, but perhaps it reflects the nature of my accidental obsession with these snowmen. It's almost Valentine's day so it's time to be entirely too late with another set of cards.

for a time i rest in the grace of the world, and i am free


"I want to taste and glory in each day, and never be afraid to experience pain; and never shut myself up in a numb core of nonfeeling, or stop questioning and criticizing life and take the easy way out. To learn and think: to think and live; to live and learn: this always, with new insight, new understanding, and new love."

-Sylvia Plath

Putting on this (un-ironed, oops) white coat for the first time was a good moment for me. The ceremony is a symbolic one and doesn't mean much in actuality, since at that point, school hadn't even started yet. But it was the beginning of all our paths toward becoming doctors. It has definitely been a difficult one, but one that is helping me figure out what is important to me every day. One that is teaching me how to be a better version of myself. One that is teaching me balance. One that is teaching me that sleep can be substituted by less time-sucking measures such as caffeine (and have that plan quickly thwarted by a huge time-sucker known as the Internet). And most of all, one that is giving me something to live and learn about all the time.

Monday, February 6, 2012

the ultimate love letter

I mentioned last week that I had completed one of the items on my Bucket List to send out a really good package. I think "Ultimate" might've been the word I used, but I'm hoping that's just a phase I was going through because I entitled its contents the "Ultimate Love Letter" as well. I wanted to make a scrapbook that I eventually decided was not unlike a love letter in its mushiness. And thus was born this idea. I took pictures in case it got lost in the mail (upon which I would be subsequently crushed). I've been wanting to share projects on here lately, so here goes.

It was a huge mess, but also a lot of fun to use my hands and make something. I basically divided the book into two categories, "things I love about you" and "good or important moments." I used a black, smaller folder that I had saved at one point, probably thinking I could re-use it.
I liked it as a folder, but as I added more pages, I ended up having to cut it because it looked like it was exploding. As is hopefully not apparent from this blog, exploding/overflowing things seems to be a theme in my life. I've been trying to be flexible, rather than force something that's clearly not going to work... to work. (Another life theme) So it's become essentially two cardstock cover sheets. But I'm okay with that.

I also used pictures as their own pages and wrote on the picture or let it stand on its own as a "page." I really liked how that looked.

And here are some of the pages that had mostly words and paper. I did occasionally include pictures on the pages, but most of the pages were text. I blurred out the writing because while much of the book was light-hearted, ours is a deeply personal story to us.
Getting to send this and watching it be read over Skype was totally worth the broken hole puncher and exploded hole punches everywhere. I hope that we can keep adding to the book and adding to our memories in general.

Sunday, February 5, 2012

airplanes

One thing about me: I love airplanes. I took this picture of Chicago from my flight home from Miami the first time I went in March. I usually don't get to fly directly over the city, just because of where I had been flying in from (usually, westbound), but last year I flew south and east a lot, so this became a sight I got to see and love.

I could watch this video forever.


In Kaohsiung, Taiwan, my aunt and uncle's friends own this place that I can't even describe, except to say that you can sit outside the patio of a restaurant and watch airplanes take off and land. It's amazing.

bruschetta ideas

fruit bruschetta with goat cheese and herbs

This looks like the most amazing thing ever. I know if I were to attempt to make it, it would look like a blob, but I don't think that's going to stop me from trying.

Saturday, February 4, 2012

sweet stuff

In addition to the food trucks we tried last week, there were also some delicious sweet things. This past week, I must have been in a strange mood because I was having difficulty committing to the idea of eating an entire cupcake. And I mean, they're small. I had a few bites here and there but I did eat this Spice Me Up cupcake (Spiced sweet potato zucchini cake accompanied by brown butter butter cream) from Sweetie Cakes, and it was the best cupcake I'd ever had. They also had a Cookie Monster cupcake that I took a bite from. It was as delicious as it was cute. So that is a food truck I will be tracking down again.

Warning: there are about to be a bunch of pictures of people holding up pieces of a heart-shaped red velvet whoopie pie that Denise got from Sweet Ride.

if you let me, here's what i'll do... i'll take care of you


How excited she gets here is pretty awesome.

Friday, February 3, 2012

boldness has genius, power, and magic in it

I took this picture of the storefront of Two-Sided in Lakeview, Chicago.

"Seize this very minute; what you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it."

-Johann Wolfgang

Be bold- reminder for today and always.

Thursday, February 2, 2012

Duck N Roll and Get Curried Away

Here are the other two savory food trucks that I went to last week. Duck'N'Roll was my absolute favorite of all the ones we tried. Saad and I both had the Duck Gumbo. It was amazing. It was spicy and flavorful without being over-the-top. Perfect ingredients, which, according to the website, included duck, spicy turkey sausage, smoked beef sausage, jalapenos, corn, carrots, celery, onions, tomatoes. Nitin ordered the thai curry chicken bánh mì. I only had a bite, but it was a bite that packed quite a punch.
On Friday, we went to Get Curried Away. I really liked the chicken masala but didn't like the chickpeas as much. Saad thought just the opposite though. I love Indian food and am always looking to try different places so I can get a more holistic eating experience so this was great.
Next post.... the sweet food trucks.
This was a rogue food truck that wasn't supposed to be at our school that particular day, but came back... hopefully because it had great success the day before and not because it was confused. I think the idea of food trucks having a mind of their own and just cavorting around the city streets is a funny one.

Brown Bag Lunch (Food Truck #1)

 
Last week, my school organized a "Truckin' for Haiti" event in which a variety of food trucks came for the lunch hours. People lined up. Some of the proceeds went to Haiti. As anyone with limited time is prone to do, I researched carefully and decided what trucks I'd be visiting.

First up. On Wednesday, Denise and I went to Brown Bag Lunch Truck. I tried the Pulled Pork. Here's the information, according to the menu:

brine: pineapple juice, mexicoke, chinese black vinegar, kosher salt
smoke: applewood or cherry wood, oak
tea party sauce: banana ketchup, earl grey tea, green tea, rice wine vinegar, kecap manis, ginger

I'm not a food blogger so I can't say that I tasted all those things. But I did love the smoky flavor of the meat. The sauce was also delicious- a little bit like sweet barbeque sauce. But the pure flavor of the meat without the sauce was perfect. My dad taught me to be a purist. Sometimes, though, the sauce is too good to resist.
Denise had wanted to order the spicy elotes (charred whole corn on the cob, spicy japanese mayo, shaved parmigiano reggiano, cilantro, lime juice), but they didn't have those. They did, however, offer supposedly the same combination in "pudding" form. I was glad she was down to try it because the corn on the cob sounded so good. The pudding sounded weird. When she opened her container, it wasn't pudding as we expected, but looked more like a pie. We must not be fancy enough foodies to know what that really is. It tasted delicious, though- kind of like cornbread. 

I feel like people with more sensitive palates are probably sensing all their taste buds die at my 3 AM attempts to describe food with a rather limited foodcabulary (okay, vocabulary in general...). She also had kimchi toasted garlic rice (jasmine rice, kimchi, toasted garlic, oil, kosher salt), which I thought was delicious as well. 

And we just had to photograph the mini Chinese takeout box. I heard that they have chicken and bacon waffles. Must. Track. Down. I view this as an accomplishment toward my Eat Delicious Foods goal. So great to have such achievable goals.

Wednesday, February 1, 2012

Bucket List #5: Send the Ultimate Package

When telling Saad about my as-of-yet in-progress Bucket List, I found myself saying, "I guess I already did that, but I want to do more of that" a lot. And in response, I heard "That is the worst Bucket List ever." Except with a more expletive-like word that "worst." And I realize that's true because you can't really have a Bucket List with already-complete tasks, but am I really to be penalized as having the worst Bucket List ever just because I did some things that were on an even less-official checklist in my head, just because I was late to the whole keeping-track-of-things game? I say no.

This is one of those things that I already kind of did a long time ago because most of my extended family lives in Taiwan and I would occasionally send some small packages of things to them. Also I have this weird desire to keep the US Postal Service alive, despite the fact that it is incredibly difficult for me to conveniently get to any post office near where I live and I ended up having to send this through UPS. My goal for this one was to end the Ultimate Package. I'm no longer five years old and know that you can't just wrap things up in a brown paper bag and throw it in your mailbox, but this is the packaging that went inside the box. It took me a month from when I decided I was going to send it to actually sending it. It also helped me realize that I really need to work on my response time. For everything.

I can't help but notice that everybody loves receiving packages and snail mail, if you will, and that's why I'm on this (personal) campaign to send more handwritten letters.
 
Avid burrito-eaters will know that the bottom package is a bag from Chipotle. Not only do I like the typography, but the Ultimate Package is environmentally-friendly, obviously. That reminds me, the twine is from the wrapping of Hoosier Mama Pie Company, the best pie shop in Chicago. But that's a whole other story.