med school + mid life crisis

it's been 3 weeks of med school.

9 days of lecture + anatomy lab, 4 study days, 1 written exam + 1 practical exam, and so far 3 days of partying + class/lab + general laziness

i feel like i've been at this forever. there is no easing into med school, you just get thrown into the cold cold water. but after two solid weeks of studying, and taking the exam, and getting my score back, i finally feel i can do the next 2 years. i had definitely never studied so much in my life.

at the same time, i know i can't carry on continuously like i did the past two weeks. i had a mini mid life crisis today and went out and bought watercolors and brushes. so here i am, writing, listening to the song shauna and i recorded, and looking at a flower i painted and taped to my wall. i find a little comfort in my creations.

on painting: inspired by vermeer, i wanted to paint clouds, but when i started, i realized that to paint watercolor clouds you have to paint blue around them to make the white clouds and that all of a sudden seemed extremely difficult. flowers are probably the lamest and easiest to paint with watercolors. hopefully next time i'll challenge myself a little more.

also, i just got a sore throat.

blindness

i feel like in asian dramas, going blind is a big archetype, and usually it is caused by an accident like falling. is it that easy to go blind from falling? hopefully we learn this in medical school...

white coat

and now, medical school begins...

holland

i had a wonderfully productive 2 weeks visiting shauna in the netherlands! i visited just about every city in the netherlands and also brussels. also, shauna and i wrote/recorded a song (more to come on that later)! no time to blog in detail or caption my pictures in the near future, but i did manage to chronicle my vacation at picasa.

ti-89: found O_O

OMG MY MOM JUST CALLED ME AND SAID THAT SHE FOUND THE TI-89 MY BROTHER LOST IN OUR COUCH CUSHIONS!

LESS THAN 24 HOURS AFTER I BOUGHT ONE!

>_<

ti-89: bought

when my brother started taking UMTYMP last fall, i (in a strange moment of kindness) gave my brother my ti-89. i figured i wouldn't need it anymore, that i was going to med school, and leaving any use for a graphing calculator behind me. then, of course, after a couple of months, my brother lost it. and my parents had to get him a new calculator. at which point i realized, THEY DON'T EVEN MAKE THE TI-89 ANYMORE! it has been replaced by the ti-89 titanium, an uglier, heavier, more memory version of the ti-89 i first got in high school.

the more i thought about it, the angrier i got! mostly at myself for just offering up my ti-89...just like that! i've now lost it forever! AND i suspect that my brother purposely "lost" (ditched it somewhere at school) the calculator so that my parents would buy him the ti-89 titanium that all his classmates had. i guess what i thought was a nice thing to do actually condemned him into being the kid with the shitty calculator. (he was probably like the kid with ti-83. totally lame.) but...i was quite attached to my calculator. in fact, i HATE the heavy titanium version!! so ugly and heavy! OMG SO MAD AT MYSELF!

this past week, i have again been thinking about my lost ti-89. even though i won't be doing a lot of math in med school, graphing calculators are still way easier to use than scientific calculators!! even if you are just doing arithmetic, the big screen with multiple lines and memory is essential! HOW CAN YOU STAND A SCIENTIFIC CALCULATOR?!?! anytime you do anything your previous line disappears from sight! WHA! so, even though i just got 2 (one pink, one yellow) GREAT calculators in taiwan, i decided, i would just die if i didn't get my ti-89 back! SO...i made my first ebay purchase tonight! $74.01 + $6.99 shipping for a (the seller claims brand new) ti-89. is it new? i have my doubts. but at least, hopefully since the seller claims it is new, it won't have any obvious wear. actually, another seller was selling one still in the package! but...i just had to know TODAY that i'd have it...and that sale wasn't going to end for 3 days.

i actually should have another graphing calculator, my first love, the ti-85. but, i can't find that anywhere!! it should be in my room...BUT WHERE IS IT! alas, i loved the solid look of my ti-85. i like the functionality of the ti-89, but aesthetically, the 85 is my true love! i am tempted to buy one of those on ebay too! the 85 you can get for like under $20 i think!

anyway, i feel much better now that i have won the bidding on my 89.

another vacation!

i just bought my plane tickets for another vacation! i'm going to visit shauna in the netherlands during the last two weeks of july. then it's the start of med school on aug 6!

in other exciting news, this is my first post from my new computer! a few weeks ago i got my 15.4" thinkpad t61 in the mail!

spending so much money lately...