My Life! It's Back!!!

For the most part.

Did I mention flying is exhausting? I can't imagine how people do that for business. Note to self: never go into consulting work that requires travel. Two times in a row, I landed in Chicago's O'Hare airport only to have to run from the end of terminal B to the end of terminal C. I was out of breath, sweating, and in no mood for the boarding attendant's cheesy smile. If I was just on vacation, I wouldn't mind missing a flight, but I wasn't :T

I spent the weekend sleeping 12-13 hours per night. And then wandering around the house in a daze.

But now it's back to reality. I have to fill out my tax return forms and also my financial aid application. I also recently checked my credit report, and while it looks good, apparently I have a bill (which I have no knowledge of ever receiving) that was sent to a collections agency. When I called this supposed agency, it just transfers to a dude's cell phone. For a local district hospital that's not very busy, this is kinda sketchy.

I also have to plan an activity for work.

I'm not ready to switch gears into work mode!!

I'm currently debating if I want to work over the summer at a summer camp. It's low stress and a good chance to save up some more money before school. I absolutely do not want to do research in the summer before medical skewl. It wouldn't hurt to apply, just 'cause.

I'm thinking of training for the Tough Mudder marathon. I have one former acquaintance that has a team and will be running it in July, and one or two more friends who are interested but aren't sure of their commitment. I'd love to join in, but the smart thing to do is to check with my doctor (and possibly my orthopedic surgeon)  to determine whether my shoulder can safely get through obstacles like wall-climbing, monkey-bar-swinging, and swinging Tarzan-style before I pay to register. I will also have to build up my upper-body strength dramatically. And maybe invest in a pull-up bar.

I'd also love to be in shape before med school. I'd like to start a new page in life with a killer body. So then I can screw it up over the next 4 years. hehe.

Soooooooo Lazy Today

But despite being lazy, I guess I kind of had a productive day. 

If you can call spending most of the day on the bus "being productive."

For most average San Franciscans I think 30-40 minutes on the bus to get to work is reasonable. 15-20 minutes on a bus is considered lucky. Some people live even closer to work...probably, people who run a restaurant/cafe and live near it, or people who live in the Financial District and whose hours follow the stock market, or people who were just incredibly lucky. 

But I showed up to work, worked for just over an hour, and then my coworker/the physical therapist sent me a text message to tell me he wouldn't be able to make it at all for the third time in a row. So I spent more time on the bus today than actually working.

I should be more understanding, I suppose. In all fairness, his son was recently discharged from a pretty lengthy stay at the hospital, but soon after, he and his ex-wife started the custody battle over the kid. I don't know how custody battles work, nor do I ever want to know. I have more sympathy towards the kid than the parents. It's annoying to have to constantly reschedule patients last minute, and worse to do it three times in a row. I'm tired of getting suspicious looks because they think I'm calling them last minute on purpose. How many last-minute emergencies are allowed before someone is justified in being irritated? Or before someone can say, "Get your stuff together, and then come back and we'll talk." 

Also, I don't know why our boss doesn't send someone to cover the schedule for days like that, because I know one of them doesn't see many patients. 

I need to stop trying to ask "why" questions for things that are inherently irrational. I'll have better luck discovering the meaning of life. 

At least with this day (mostly) off, I got to go to my doctor's office for a TB skin-prick test. It recently dawned on me that my boss never had me get one when I started working, and now I'm paranoid. 

I also took my car to get a smog check. One less thing to worry about. 

I also played Minecraft for a bit. It's a video game that's kinda like legos, in that you can build whatever you want, and you go around mining for materials/beating monsters. Collecting materials is ridiculously repetitive, and yet strangely soothing. Maybe because hollowing out my mine feels more productive than my application-writing. But I'm not very imaginative when it comes to building things, so sometimes I look online for ideas, and then my self esteem shrivels to the size of a raisin when I see what people do:

How the hell do you find time to make that?! 

Randomness: Shoes, City Night Life and Orientations

New shoes always make me happy. Especially when they were on sale. ESPECIALLY if it was 30% off the sale price. Win!!!

Even though the back of both my ankles are missing a patch of skin and it burns like no other in the shower, I still looooove themmmmm. Shoes! Why do you hurt me so?!?! New shoe, new callus =/ I think every pair of flats and heels that I buy end up giving me a blister or rubbing off some skin, somewhere. I still wear my sneakers too, many of which date back from high school. The nice thing about San Francisco is that *most* of the time, nobody cares what you wear...Although I probably wouldn't walk into a J. Crew store wearing my Nike sneakers and a sweatshirt. I think a guy can pull that off and not be judged, but a girl would definitely get some side-eye. That kind of sucks, because a lot of "weekend lay-zee wear" for women looks awfully contrived and most definitely not effortless.

Which leads me to the topic of weekend get-togethers with friends. A friend of mine, Katie, recently moved into San Francisco and through her, I started to learn more about the San Francisco night-life, like:

K: "Did you know that most people prefer to date along their bus route?"
Me: "BWAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!"
K: "I'm serious! You have to plan your dates around the bus schedules! If you plan to go home, you have to cut your date short so you can catch the bus, and transferring buses is a pain, so most people go to bars along their bus route to work. 
Me: "BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!"


It just seemed funny, but it does make sense. A lot of adults in their mid-20s to early-30s move into the city for various reasons, and I guess it's pretty much the only way to meet someone in a big city. I hate it though. I hate having to dress up and put on make up, and then going to a place where people stink, or step on your toes, or spill booze on you, or almost barf on you, and then you go home and you stink, you're sweaty, and your feet hurt.

But clearly, I don't get out a lot, because my idea of going out at night is meeting up with nearby friends for an after-dinner, post-studying beer at a neighborhood bar in sweats and a t-shirt, and then walking home to crawl into bed. However, I do like jazz lounges and don't mind dressing up a little to go to one because most people go to enjoy the ambiance and music. 

In AmeriCorps, the Volunteer in Service To America (VISTA) program held a pre-service orientation in Portland, Oregon. I felt like it was a huge waste of time. We spent the first day (8 hours) talking about "Poverty." Supposedly, it would lessen the culture-shock of working with The Poors (note: sarcasm). My memory of that orientation is unsurprisingly vague, but I DO remember some dude who kept repeating his story about "being from a very well-off family" and how, when he was volunteering for XYZ organization, he met a woman and "could feel the pain and suffering she was feeling" and something about "seeing it in her eyes that she was grateful" and by the way, my family is really well-off." I wanted to rip my ear drums out. I also couldn't believe that other girls in my group were going all googly-eyed. Seriously?

I think instead, the three 8-hour-day workshops could have given us concrete skills like how to write an effective grant proposal with a mock-grant application. Or discuss different options for fundraisers, drawn from the non-profits that many of us were being sent to, or how to deal with staff who were not treating us with respect and as a useful/free resource (there was a lot of that in the forums). The orientation ended up being more like a mini-vacation for me, because I got to explore Portland a little bit, AND AND AND I got my own hotel room (Naked time!!!! Just kidding) Powell's Bookstore was also a very cool bookstore, with lots of new and used books at a good price. I hung out with the other AmeriCorps people once, but I felt like a lot of them were kind of....ditzy, or, openly planned to stay in their home town for the rest of their life.

By contrast, the AmeriCorps HealthCorps group was more down-to-earth, adventurous and more fun...I kind of wish I joined that volunteer program instead. They held a lot of group overnight retreats to beautiful state parks, whereas I was kind of on my own, doing my own thing.

Unwinding

This past Monday was my first time spending my birthday and the weekend prior to it completely alone and in peace. My parents took a weekend trip with my sister to take a look at a college campus, which she may or may not be transferring into come Fall. I got a lot done - worked on my personal statement, went to work, read books about writing a personal statement, and did a lot of relaxing. 

I tried traditional Thai massage for the first time to see what the hullabaloo was about. From my understanding, it involves a little bit of deep tissue, stretches similar to yoga, and pushing pressure points to release tension and improve energy flow. I chose a thirty minute session because I was a bit apprehensive about the stretching - my shoulder's fine now but certain motions still make me nervous. Overall, I really liked it. A lot of reviewers of Thai massage businesses warned that it does get painful, so either I have a super high pain tolerance, or these people were pansies. Although the pressure on occasional spots felt uncomfortable, it never bordered on pain. My masseuse relieved a LOT of the tension I had built up in my back. I should probably stop using my messenger bag, because I think it only makes my back feel worse. 

I also cut my hair. I suspect part of the reason why I wanted to claw my eyes out from itchy-ness wasn't just allergies, but because my bangs were poking my eyeballs all day. 

Picture from www.foodgps.com

The best part of the day: buying six shrimp dumplings (har gow)

I could eat these every day. It's shrimp meat packed into a ball and rolled into a translucent wrapper made of wheat and tapioca starch. I think the tapioca starch makes it more transparent. I'm super super picky about the wrapper - if it's too thick it's super starchy and if there's too much wheat then the wrapper isn't as soft. 

Today, I also bought raw, unprocessed honey from a company called beekind. It's pricey, but so delicious I can eat it straight of the teeny jar. omnomnom. I bought a small bottle of Oregon Blackberry, which did have a hint of blackberry flavor.  I also bought a smaller bottle of San Francisco Wildflower honey, which was much sweeter, but had a nice cinnamon and citrus taste in it.  

This must be how Winnie the Pooh feels when he sees honey. I suddenly have the urge to dip my hands into the jar to scoop out honey to eat...but my hand doesn't fit into the jar =/ 

RIP

Florence Green, thought to be the last known WWI survivor, passed away on Saturday at 110, just shy of her 111th birthday on February 19th. [Link: BBC]

When I think about all the things people like Florence experienced and observed at home and abroad, I feel nothing short of awe and immense respect.  In general, whenever I meet really old people, I just wish I could get a visual of their lives when they were young.  Things that we perceive as "history" today, things that get romanticized in movies, was "daily life" for Florence.  I want to know what it was like for her to live through WWI and WWII - she must have had so many stories from her own experiences and those of her peers.  I want to learn history as she lived it, without coloring it with my own modern-day values so that, when I think about it, I don't just say "oh that was awesome," or "yeah, that was bad."  


And, selfishly, I also feel a lot of shame to compare the myself and the kids of today to the people in past generations.  The world today is simultaneously more global and interconnected, thanks to the internets, and also easier to ignore.  We can access the latest news with her fingertips at any time of day, from any source we want.  We utter half-hearted "oh noes" and "shame on them" and then distract ourselves by simply logging into our Netflix/Hulu/YouTube accounts to stream mindless entertainment.  At 17, Florence joined the Women's Royal Air Force to make her contribution to the war effort.  At 17, my grandma was working hard for a living in a rural area of China.  At 17, I was probably complaining about how boring it was to have a two hour gap between classes in my senior year of high school while playing Halo at a friend's house.  Don't even get me started on the kids of today - I wanted to bang my head on a wall every day at work.  


Reading that article made me think about how to live up to the legacy that people like Florence left behind.  It puts things into perspective and also motivates me to work hard.  I don't want to be look back one day and realize that my entire young adult life was spent playing Angry Birds on the iTouch.  The studying I do now seems lame and cushy in comparison, but if I persevere, I can eventually grow and become someone who has the skills and knowledge to do more.  

Aaaand it's Monday

Nnnnoooooooooooooooooooooo.

I had two days off work due to Thanksgiving weekend.  I wish I could have a four-day weekend every weekend.  University students have it easy.  If they're smart (and/or lucky), they can arrange their class schedules such that they can have Monday AND Fridays off every week.  I was able to do that all of senior year....which was GREAT looking back.  The downside was that I had 9 hours of class non-stop every Tuesday and Thursday BUT even then, that is less time than I currently spend at work every week.

Earlier this month, I came across an online deal for customized Christmas cards through a vendor called Mixbook.  For $20 (plus $6.98 shipping), I get 40 5"x7" cards+envelopes that are supposedly "silk-finished."  I guess "silk-finished" means that the printing is shiny?

I like the overall result and I am hoping that the prints turn out okay, otherwise I will be sad =(.  Before I set up the print on Mixbook's website, I re-sized my picture to fit almost-perfectly on a 5x7 card but for whatever reason, this was the best I could make their interface do.  During the process, I learned to increase the dpi (aka dots per inch), which controls how well an image can be converted from a digital image (seen above) to print.  If I was smarter, I would have asked a friend who does art & printing as a side job/hobby...well, now I know.  

Nicknames - The Digression

My real name is Ming.  A name like that leaves me open to a lot of puns.  At first, they were "normal" cute nicknames like "Ming-o" or "Mang-o".  Then my friends and I discovered the awesomeness of puns and I became "Mingle."  At gatherings, my friends would say "Go mingle, Mingle- haaahaha!"

Then, when Napoleon Dynamite came out in theaters, we learned the term/slang, "dingleberry."  For the hardy types, you can look up the exact term on Urban Dictionary, but I'll just say that it means a "tenacious piece of poo." Someone cleverly noticed that "dingle" rhymes with "mingle" and I became "Mingleberry."  Thank you, friends, for holding me in such high esteem.  I am pretty tenacious though, so I guess it's kind of an apt nickname...except for the part about being a piece of poo.  

The mangled part refers to how I feel after a stressful day, which is summed up in this picture:

ROAR! 

And that was how I came up with my blog name and e-mail (berrymingle@gmail)

D= (sad face)

Me: "Oh when are you going to China?"
Senior Home Resident (not a patient):  "Next week to visit my family"
Me: "Oh that sounds really good.  The winter there in the south is warmer than winters here."
SHR (Non-patient): "Yeah...It will probably be my last chance to see them"
Me: "Oh...." [Awkward silence]

D=

Yikes

I took the abbreviated MCAT diagnostic test today for my prep course.  Ouch.  Even my verbal score wasn't as high as I had hoped.  After being out of school for some time, my brain is pretty rusty.  I've been reading my biology prep book but I haven't touched upon the physics and general chemistry sections because I hated them in undergrad with a passion.  Also, at this point my analytic skills are terrible.

I am worried about the physics part of the test though.  I did fine in the undergrad classes, but I was also forewarned by several physics tutors during undergrad that the regular not-for-physics-students physics program at school had a crappy way of teaching physics for students that planned to take the MCAT.  Three hours of lecture each week seemed really inadequate to learn.  We spent 6-8 hours in lab each week, but many of the TAs openly admitted that they were so far into their own graduate work that the grossly oversimplified undergrad physics stuff seemed foreign.  It was very reassuring (not).  And sometimes, some people just aren't very good at teaching.

Despite that, I had a blast in one of the three physics classes I took.  Mainly because the TA brought her rescue tripod chocolate Labrador to class and everyone got to play with a happy dog that hopped around on three feet.  "What? I can play with the dog if we finish our work early? Hell yeah!"  She was a good teacher too.  Circuits is probably the only thing I remember out of a whole year of physics.

The TA for the following quarter wasn't so great.  One day a girl broke down sobbing, "Why are you so mean to us?!"  Lab was really awkward after that incident.

And that is what I remember from physics =D

Crappy Roommates

Sometimes I wonder if I'm the crazy nit-picky one...I've shared rooms and had my own room, and either way I seem to encounter a few nutty ones along the way.  The only person I never had a problem with was my other fellow pre-med roommate.  We were civil to each other and our schedules were such complete opposites of one another that we never had any sort of conflicts (or none that we mentioned to one another).

I've had

• A dorm roommate that brought friends that would use my laptop until I password-locked it.  The roommate was cool but as for her friend - really?  Where was your mom when you were supposed to learn manners?
• A housemate who slept with her boyfriend on the couch fold-out bed almost every night during the school year.  She finally stopped after a while.  What I didn't like most was that there was basically an extra person using our kitchen/bathroom/living room, but not contributing any rent.  
• A landlord who seemed nice and put together at first, especially because she ran a nursery home out of her house, but turned out to be nutso.  She did yoga and let the kids watch Baby Mozart and I don't think she cuddled her infant charge much or really played with the other kids, unless you count gardening while they waddled around the cul de sac as "playing."  I also could not for the life of my geeky self figure out how to connect to her Airport wi-fi router, not even with Apple techs, and her router was in her colon irrigation office, so I only used internet via Ethernet late in the evening.  She also ate my entire, brand new tub of Dreyer's ice cream in the time it took me to pop into the office one Sunday to check e-mails and take care of other things via internet.  The last straw was when my landlord's fully grown daughter moved in with her three kids after some family drama.  If it wasn't for her nutso self, I wouldn't have minded staying there - the kids were really cute and it was fun playing with them on a day off and in the mornings, but I couldn't stand her anymore.  
• A landlord who seemed like a really cool hippie...until her girlfriend moved in and they started planning their hippie screw-the-legalities wedding.  It seemed like my landlord was footing most of the bill for this event, and when they argued about it, I felt reaaaally awkward cooking my dinner right next to them.  She would also have near meltdowns over something really small - like when Bubbles the cat lost her collar one day.  I think Bubbles actually avoided my landlord completely - the poor thing was really skittish.  

I think I'll try my hardest to find an itty bitty studio or 1 bedroom in the future...Some place where I can bake and cook any time I wanted to, not have to listen to crayzee couple spats, and can actually enjoy being in "my place" as opposed to feeling like I'm hiding out in my bedroom or avoiding the house completely.  

Evacuation Protocol 101

Run screaming
Act a fool
Cuss at patients
Everyone for themselves

Some days are fun days at work.