After last day of classes of first year

Friday:

  • Spend half a hour chilling out with Kevin, Veena and Kelsey soaking in the realization that we’ve finished our last class of first year!
  • Kickstart studying for finals. Spent a couple hours with Kevin coming up with analysis ideas on Bram Stoker’s “Dracula”. We mostly hovered around ideas related to the fear of deviation from conventional gender roles/expectations of Victorian society, fear of reverse colonization.
  • Wait for Valerie at the Nest. Kevin and I spend half a hour talking about retroviruses, antiviral drugs. Towards the end, Kevin had a lot of thoughts and began a though-provoking conversation.
  • This provoking conversation continued on the bus after Valerie meets us.
  • Alyssa’s birthday party at her house:
    • play games: basketball, fooseball, mini billiards. Feel like a kid in a toy store thanks to all the games that Alyssa has
    • “How well do you know Alyssa” quiz
    • Karaoke. Kevin and Kelsey made a deal that they would rap if Veena and I sang. Veena and I sang. It was worth it to see those two rap, well rap for 10 seconds before bursting into laughter.

Saturday:

  • Late start to the day and I took a long time to get going today.
  • Pomodoro technique has helped me this morning. Pomodoro was recommended to me by both Jeffrey and Susanna and I thought it would fun to try something new this exam season.
  • Successfully did an overview of ALL the virology topics in the course notes before completing the quiz. Honestly, I could have done more but hey, I feel accomplished!
  • Had a lot of fun catching up with Laura, Shanae, Louise, Jamie and Chanon at Laura’s birthday dinner at Heart Stock, a trendy pho place on 2nd and Fir Street. Walked down to Granville Island. It’s so nice to do something as simple as talk when you’re spending time with some of the girls that were an integral part of your time in high school.
    • Underrated tip: I think it’s important to have friends in other faculties. It’s fun to talk to someone about classes that you have not taken and likely never will, and learn about the interesting things that they’ve learned. It broadens your range of your knowledge. For example, most of the other girls are in Arts except Laura and I. Louise and Shanae took a visual arts courses that taught how to use Photoshop and other technology to create art. Shanae and Jamie talked about learning about using political correct language. Laura, who is in the faculty of business, studied some interesting HR stuff. Louise and I talked about leptin and ghrelin. You get to have such a diverse conversation if you have friends with different interests and fields of study.
  • Write blog post.
  • Now I’m going to review Bacterial Diseases.  Don’t worry. I am good at refraining myself from talking about what I’ve learned about food-borne diseases when my friends are enjoying their meals 😉

Have a good rest of the weekend everyone!

My friend is now recovering :)

Thursday: 

One of my best friends was finally released from the hospital. It’s been rough for her but she’s incredibly resilient. I was torn between studying for an exam that I had Friday and finding how she’s doing. There are times in life where studying comes second in life. When you’ve been concerned if your best friend might DIE, this is definitely a time where you choose the person you care about over everything else.

She is recovering now and doing well!!!!! So happy that she’s fine and glad that everything went alright. Health is number 1!!! If your health goes downhill, nothing else matters. So if you’re concerned about your health, go see a doctor, dentist, pharmacist (depends on your concern) and get help! Taking care of your health should never be something that you put off. THANK YOU AWESOME DOCTORS AND SURGEONS AND NURSES AND TECHS AND OTHER HOSPITAL STAFF who saved my friend.

Speaking of health, UBC Student Health Services is fantastic. I’ve been a couple times and have been referring my friends to seek care there. (One of my friends is actually going. Success in converting at least one other person to seek professional care when he/she is worried about his/her health. Professions know their stuff. Go. Go. Go!!!!)

That said, the people you care about also care about you. As much I would have loved to, I couldn’t spent the entire night talking to her so after the really important part of listening to her talk about all the craziness that has happened to her, I gently let her know that I had a final tomorrow but let’s schedule time to keep talking tomorrow right after my exam.

Friday:

My friend actually stood me up but later, it turned out that she slept in. I figured that she must have been exhausted so I wasn’t too surprised.  She’s one tough cookie who totally deserved a break so I left a message about rescheduling.

Veena and I treated ourselves to delicious and inexpensive pizza for dinner. Veena ordered cheesy bread, which was (in my opinion) a better version of cheese pizza. Food makes us happy.

We admired the set-up of Nordstrom. It felt like a half-way between the Bay and Holt Renfrew but was closer to Holt Renfrew. I like admiring beautiful places, even if I’ll probably never ever buy anything (haha).

We hunted for Christmas gifts for our friends. One of our friends always paints her nails for good luck before exams so we bought her a set of little polishes in many different colours so she has a colour for every mood and exam. We searched quite the number of places before we found this set so we really hope she’ll like it.

I’ve put together a hilarious prank gift for Kevin. Well, the outside is a prank gift but inside, there’s a gift that I scratched my head a long time to come up with.  It wasn’t expensive but I think it will have a lot of meaning to him.

Veena and other friends have been trying to convince me to pierce my ears for years now so she went with me to Claire’s where I finally got my ears pierced. Susan Tran at Claire’s was very meticulous and cared a lot because she “wanted to make [me] look good” and make my first piercing experience a good memory. If you ever want to get your ears pierced, go find Susan at the Claire’s on Granville.

As usual, Veena is awesome.

A thorough cleaning and reorganization of my room took a long time (I mean a LONG time) but was worth the effort! Having such an organized room makes me happy. I’ve been complaining about my desk so I finally changed it to a smaller, rectangle-shaped desk. Having a smaller desk means that I have to be diligent about keeping the surface clutter free but so far I’m happy.

Saturday

**Highlights of my day were spending time with my family today!!! I feel like I haven’t spent time with the whole family like this in a long time. Something as simple as taking my little brother to the dentist and going out for lunch might be  something that someone else does often but everyone in my family is so busy that going out for lunch as family is extremely rare.

When I talked to my brother on Friday, I promised him that I would take him to the library because he loves to read. I made him promise that he would finish a piece of writing by the end of his winter break. My brother also got a Raspberry Pi set that would be fun to help him build. As a result, after lunch, dropped my brother off at the library, ran errands, went to library to get him and borrowed some books for myself.

I wrote a couple Christmas cards.

Long awaited lengthy chat with my best friend who had surgery. She is required to walk on the treadmill a lot to reflate part of one of her lungs so to keep her company while she walked, I also walked. Memorable line from our conversation: “You’re one who just had surgery and you’ve not breaking a sweat. I’ve been normal and …”  (points to sweaty red face and panting). We multi-tasked like pros: getting our catch-up and exercise in at the same time. Missed her soooooo much. And she knows that she is obligated to try to visit me soon! I will try to video chat with her again so when Misaki and Rachel are done exams and can join me.

After I publish this blog post, I’m going to work on my literature review on lidocaine and send in hours that I’m available to work for the next two weeks.

Sunday (Tomorrow)

For breakfast, I’m meeting with the smart and kind-hearted Silvia who’s been out at UCLA .

Really really need to get working on my play

Really really need to work on a philanthropy project that I’ve cooking in the back of my mind for some time now

In general: I’ve been crossing off lots of minor to-dos but tomorrow, I need to do deep work.

I also want to work on blemish banishing my brother because his face is very teen boy.

Dinner at Yue Shan Society. Goal: to make my grandfather proud.

My reading list: 

  •  Chi Sweet Home  (French version of volume 11) because I have a strange penchant for Japanese manga translated into French because they help me maintain my French.
  • Dracula  by Bram Stoker
  • Richard III by Shakespeare
  • The Mind’s Eye by Oliver Sacks – I’m so excited about this book. I’ve wanted to read writing by Oliver Sacks for a while.
  • The Mind’s Own Physician. – meditation, the mind, neuroscience, psychology, philosophy.
  • HTML5   –  Haven’t decided if I really want to learn HTML5 yet or not. I like designing but to be honest, I’m reluctant to learn a programming language.

I’m going to meet Scott Young!!!

I am so excited that I’m going to meet someone I deeply admire! Scott Young is an author and blogger who writes about productivity and self-mastery. I’ve subscribed to his blog for quite some time now and now I’m going to meet him on my birthday. If you’re interested in learning how to learn and career development, check out Scott’s blog at http://www.scotthyoung.com/blog/

Now if I could also meet Cal Newport, Leo B from ZenHabits, LadyKayMD, Andrea Tooley, Cassey Ho and … (this list goes on and on )

As my birthday is coming quickly around the corner, my friends have been asking me what I want and what I want to do to celebrate. I’ve often replied, “Nothing.” My ideal birthday doesn’t involve any gifts or fancy night out. I really don’t need any things. In fact, I believe that I need to live with less. Things don’t make me happy. Having more things can make me unhappy because things can become clutter and once I have things, I’ll want more things. Once I want things, the wanting never stops. So for my birthday, I don’t want material items or money being wasted. My ideal birthday would involve:

  • Spending time with those that I care about. Perhaps over a meal,  or casually chatting over snacks at home, or teasing each other and laughing and the laughter becoming white puffs  in the chilly autumn air, or doing laundry together with my mom. That’s what I like.
  • Spending time quietly to reflect on the last year of my life that has gone by. Perhaps while all cozy with a notebook and pen or while sweating it out on a nice long run in the early morning.
  • Time writing writing and writing
  • Relaxing because I know that all my studying and homework is already be (mostly) done
  • As much I love people, I feel like I haven’t had much time to myself nowadays. I’m thankful that I’m constantly surrounded by a bright, cheerful, caring, loyal and supportive crowd of family and friends but I need a break to stop and think about who I’ve been this past year and what kind of person I want to be to this world for the next year.

A preview of this upcoming week: (sorry for all the abbreviations.)

  • LEAP Launch Party and Orientation at the Arts Club Theatre on Granville Island tomorrow. I have to get to sleep after I’m done writing this!
  • Time with my favourite
  • Study time with my best friend (Best Friends Forever!! )
  • Lots and lots of studying and prepping for meetings etc
  • A light workout
  • Lunch with my Big
  • Physics quiz.
  • LEAP first session at BMO Theatre Centre, which means that I have to miss RD crew appreciation that evening. That’s too bad because I really want to see the crew. I could stop by after LEAP but that would be pretty late and I should probably go home instead.
  • Volunteering as a sighted guide for VocalEye AGM meeting downtown.
  • Math quiz
  • Research meeting at HVEM
  • One of those brutal 9-5 non-stop Fridays… sigh. But I love Chem lab so I’ll have something to look forward to.
  • Need to prep for REX meeting

Then it’ll be next weekend. I think this week is going to fly by.

Hope you all are going to amazing weekends!

Shanna

Back to school adulting

Is adulting boring? It’s actually okay because I  feel productive when I get a lot done.

Is adulting exhausting though? Yes. Yes. Yes.

The Labour Day weekend included:

Lots of adulting but I feel very far from being an adult. I wonder if I’ll grow up….

  • Going to the bank
  • Completing and mailing paperwork
  • Laundry
  • Making an enormous pile of clothes and other things I plan to donate -hopefully so that someone else in need can use them 🙂
  • Collecting all my stuffed animals at home to donate. I found that Splash toy store in Dunbar collect toys for distribution to children in the Downtown Eastside so when I get a chance, I’ll bring mine there.
  • Reorganizing my stationary drawers
  • Returning library books
  • Prepared outfits for the next few weeks so that I’m less tempted to go to school in my running shorts everyday

Fun

  • An friend from Winnipeg visited Vancouver this weekend so a bunch of friends met up for dinner. We took her around Gastown and Downtown and had a great time.
  • Facetime with one of my favourite people on this planet
  • Learned a lot and had fun while volunteering (See my upcoming post on 10 things you should know about the visually impaired)
  • Pasta at Anton’s in Burnaby. The dinner portion is so huge that I couldn’t even finish one plate over lunch and dinner. Anton’s pasta also tastes amazing and is not too expensive.
  • Talked to my Imagine Day Orientation Leader, Emily, through email. She’s nice and gave me advice.
  • I’m addicted to the song “Like I’m Gonna Lose You” sung by Meghan Trainor and John Legend. I’ve been playing the 1 hour loop on repeat while I’m cleaning.
  • Other foolishness that I can’t remember at the moment.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CVZV8InFxps

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