We truly live in a world where we are brainwashed with stories of love, fairytales, soulmates, and happy endings that certainly don't exist. Its disheartening to do this over again from square one. I think I watched too many Korean dramas.
That black milk tea sure was strong. I can't go to sleep and I have my last final tomorrow. :(
sick as sick can be. I was in bed all weekend. no productive studying or anything done. today my cough got so bad that I had to go to a CVS minute clinic and check to see if it was something more serious. the nurse practitioner said most likely it is a viral upper respiratory infection. she just have me meds for symptomatic treatment. hopefully I get over it soon. I have a full day ahead of me tomorrow. school and then work.
this week is going to be really busy for me. I have a test on Tuesday that I barely studied for. then on Thursday ill be tutoring some students. on Friday is my industry mock interview. hopefully I make it through ok. I can't wait for next week. it'll be the career fair and maybe then I can breathe a bit.
I guess every person deals with pain differently. When my mother passed away nearly 4 years ago, I bundled up all my emotions and put them away and was forced to focus on other things (continuing school, etc.). I never really was able to cry and mourn for her passing away. It’s not to say that I didn’t love my mom, because I certainly did. She was one of the most influential figures in my life and made me the person that I am today. But why should mourning be a process that happens and ends? I still think about her everyday.
Anyway, to my main focus, learning about anticoagulants and all the medications she was on before and when she was at the hospital for months, just haunts me. Somehow I keep imagining that as I go through these different modules, more and more of the mystery will become clearer. What I’m talking about was the reason for my mom’s death. There was never a diagnosis nor even a good hypothesis of why she passed away. I just know that the day she came back from her one month trip from VN, she called me while being in the car on her way home telling me that she wasn’t feeling good. She was rushed to the hospital where she stayed there for a couple of weeks before being transferred to another hospital. I regret not rushing back to see her right away, but I visiting her the first moment I had that next weekend. The best the doctors were able to tell me was that it might have been Multiple sclerosis possibly an asymptomatic case activated by a change in environments leading her to be immobile in her bed. I find it hard to believe that it could have been MS. I do know that after several MRIs or CT scans it was found that my mom had a few clots. Treatment with blood thinners caused her to hemorrhage and made the situation worse. To top it off, being in the hospital for an extending period of time increased her risk of infection since she was continually being poked with different lines. Anyway, my theory is that since she had AFIB she was at an increased risk of getting a stroke. This risk in addition to the risk of DVT while being immobile (i.e. sitting on an airplane) could have increased her risk of a stroke leading her to become immobile. It was true that one side of her body was stronger than the other, although she never exhibited symptoms of a droopy face,etc. Uhh, I wonder if that’s what it was. I wonder if I could have prevented it by telling her and my father not to make that trip that year. Well what’s come has passed, and I can’t feel guilty for what couldn’t have been controlled. I just wish I could control these flashbacks. I don’t enjoy being haunted by these memories and hypotheses of what it could have been… T.T
Currently studying my hours away for the big cardio midterm we have this upcoming Tuesday. I can’t wait for the test. Hopefully I’ll go into the test well prepared and shut it down :P I really do enjoy this module though. It just seems like very practical knowledge.
I also can’t wait because it’ll be my bday this Tuesday and once again, I’ll be able to spend it with wonderful people. I’m doubly excited because I’ve come out to a couple of classmates and what better way to celebrate than by taking them to Weho. lol Speaking of which I haven’t been there for about 3 months now. My body really does need to take a break everytime I go there. Uhhh Long story short, too much ETOH in the first two hours resulted in lap dances, back flips, and me getting a bottle of water thrown at me T.T Hopefully I won’t be as bad this time.
Yay for red pants. Seungri approves Now to find them for Friday.
Been feeling a mix of emotions again lately. I think I’m happy but I’m not so sure. I was once told that loving someone is about learning to love a person’s imperfections in addition to everything else about them. So my current bf is great in many ways, more so than any other of my exes that I’ve had. However, I think there are certain small things that he says that can get on my nerves, small things that make me want to reconsider the entire relationship. When I stand back and look at the entire picture, I notice that these are trivial, yet they still seem to upset me. The big question is, do you learn to love an imperfect person as long as these imperfections are manageable or do you continue your search of that perfect mate regardless of the possibility that they may not even exist. Ahhhh what a quandary.
I think I need to go back to basics. If communication is the key to a health relationship, I need to start doing just that. I need to tell him about these pet peaves and maybe things will get better.
In addition to possible relationship problems, I’m feeling as if the rift in my life between my straight friends is getting larger and larger. I’m continously living a two faced life, which estranges me from my classmates more and more everyday. I’m a nomad, I drift, and I can’t seem to settle. I don’t know where my place is, who my friends are. Maybe it’s time for me to tell them, but then again I’m not ready. My friend tells me the “cat’s out of the bag,” but I still can’t find that courage to do it all over again, to possibly face rejection and feel even more lonely than I already am.
I just hope tomorrow will be better.
Hi everyone. It’s probably been longer than a month since my last update. Since then, a lot has happened. I finished summer school on August 2nd. Right afterwards, I went to NYC with a couple of my classmates (4-4 to 4-7). We had an amazing time doing all those touristy things. After I got back, I devoted half of my time to work and the other half to spending time with my boo. I have only a week left before going back to school. Can’t believe it, but I guess I can’t wait to finish up my third year of pharmacy school either.
Tomorrow I’ll be going to the Kelly Clarkson concert at the OC Fair. I’m excited although I’m not a huge fan of Kelly. I only know those two new songs from her new album that have been playing on the radio. It’ll be fun to head to the fair early though and just walk around.
I can’t wait until tomorrow, my last big presentation. Working in groups for all these presentations is also so frustrating as well. There’s always slackers and therefore others have to overcompensate. Also, for the first time there’s been a huge clash of egos. I have never really considered myself a difficult person to work with, but I realized that I get really defensive when people critique my work. Criticism is important if you want to be progressive. I guess there’s still so much to learn about myself.
It's weird how this week has been a complete 360 compared to last week. Last week I was so stressed because of my presentation/paper and midterm that I broke out with two pimples, one about a centimeter from my lip that almost looked like herpes (I know, disgusting huh?). +2 slutty points for me :P This week is probably just as stressful but I'm glad that I'm able to process it in a more positive way. I think it's because after this Sunday, I'll have more time to myself granted i still have a midterm and final to worry about. However, the bulk of the laborious work will be over with and I can finally go out and do what students do during the summer! I'll have about a month left before school starts and I can't wait to have a few good memorable moments before it ends.
August 4-7 NYC here I come
Afterwards... TBD :P
Found this song from Wang Lee Hom yesterday on youtube and absolutely fell in love with it. For some reason, it makes me teary eyed and shivers down my back.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTEe3IQUW6c
August 4-7 NYC here I come
Afterwards... TBD :P
Found this song from Wang Lee Hom yesterday on youtube and absolutely fell in love with it. For some reason, it makes me teary eyed and shivers down my back.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTEe3IQUW6c
This week and next week is going to be the toughest weeks for my summer classes. I have my big presentation on Bulgarian white goat cheese tomorrow, and then a Medical Devices Regulation midterm on Saturday. Then next week I have a midterm on Quality Control and then a gigantic presentation on our hemodialysis catheter. We are so going be grilled, and fried to shrivels! After the 19th, my life should be back under control. I still have a few take home finals to take care of but it’s nothing that I can’t handle.
I had an iced latte this afternoon to try to wake myself up. It works for that purpose, but I’m finding that my heart is beating extremely fast too. Natural adrenaline + caffeine is a dangerous mix.
More updates later.
My life’s a mess, but don’t worry, it’s mostly because of school. Never take 4 summer school classes in one summer. It’ll be the death of you
I’ve fallen back to my old habits. An hour nap a day. It sounds great but kind of bad for my productivity.
I’ll be officially done with summer school on August 2nd and after that it looks like I’ll be headed to New York for 4 days and 3 nights. It was kind of something I got invited into late but I’m glad that it all worked out. My plane ticket was only 20 dollars more than everyone else’s and I was able to get a seat in the same row. Half of my group of friends will be going to Hawaii, and the other half are going to NY. I really wanted to go to Hawaii but the date conflicted with my classes. I’m excited about going to NY though. Hopefully my cousin won’t be in South Carolina during that time and she can take us around.
I start summer school this weekend and will be attending classes almost every weekend of this summer until August 1st. This program I'm enrolled in is geared toward working professionals, which is why classes are held on weekends as opposed to weekdays. Since I'm enrolled to take 4 classes this summer, I can no longer work my usual Saturday and Sundays in the pharmacy. In addition, with the huge budget cut, my boss can't schedule me on weekdays. What I'm left with is being on call, just in case someone calls in sick or chooses to take a personal day off. I actually get a lot more hours this way than you'd think. Last week I was called in on Tu, Wed. This week I was called in on Wed. The only down side to being on call is that I have to drop everything that I'm doing and rush from LA to the Costa Mesa/Irvine area which usually takes about 1 hour, not taking into account the time is takes for me to get dressed.
Yesterday morning I woke up late, and started to watch some Korean dramas and was eating chips when my pharmacist friend texted me "Tech called in sick, can you work today?" As I was contemplating whether I should ruin my relaxing day to work to pay off my debt, I decided that I would do the more responsible thing. After I got off with him on the phone, he said it'd be great if I could get there in about an hour. I rushed, but even then, it took me 1.5 hours before I got to the store. The rest is history, working tirelessly and even staying over 30 minutes to help clean up the pharmacy. Boy, do I hate chain pharmacies. They increasingly cut hours and expect us to keep performing at an insane standard. Hopefully, I won't ever have to work in one after graduation.
Yesterday morning I woke up late, and started to watch some Korean dramas and was eating chips when my pharmacist friend texted me "Tech called in sick, can you work today?" As I was contemplating whether I should ruin my relaxing day to work to pay off my debt, I decided that I would do the more responsible thing. After I got off with him on the phone, he said it'd be great if I could get there in about an hour. I rushed, but even then, it took me 1.5 hours before I got to the store. The rest is history, working tirelessly and even staying over 30 minutes to help clean up the pharmacy. Boy, do I hate chain pharmacies. They increasingly cut hours and expect us to keep performing at an insane standard. Hopefully, I won't ever have to work in one after graduation.
It’s been such an eventful few weeks and I haven’t updated anything at all. To recap I’ll post a few pics of each event. I’ll be brief, that way I can carry you through the last 4 weeks of my life without wasting so much of your precious time :P
Banquets Galore
In pharmacy school, there’s one thing to always look forward to at the end of the year, extravagant and lavish banquets thrown by each student organization.
Phi Delta Chi Centennial Banquet at the Westin Bonaventure in downtown LA.
VAPSA banquet at the Trump Gold Resort in Palos Verdes
EIF Revlon run/walk 5K on 5-9-09
This was at the LA Memorial Coliseum
Wango Tango 5-9-09
At the Verizon Amphitheatre in Irvine
Getty outing with my PDC brothers on 5-12-09
Yuki’s (my pharmacist) wedding on 5-16-09
The wedding was at the Heritage Museum in Santa Ana. It was a very cute country-like wedding. :P
That’s it for my updates for now. I’ve grown tired of writing as of the moment, but that’s because I’ve consumed myself with work and fun activities. Also, I haven’t had one of those light bulb moments of realization lately and therefore have nothing deep to write about :P
It’s been a quite busy lately. I finished my last final on Monday morning! I had my final presentation today (Thursday). Afterwards, Mariah met up at my school. She took the tram from the main campus to the health sciences campus. We went to Target, got some cooking supplies to make tuna helper. We later got home, got to cooking and then went to my 2:30 hair appointment. Lok did another great job. I’ll have to write an entry on him separately at another time. In short, he’s been the only stable hair designer I’ve ever had in my entire life. This was the 4th time that I’ve gone to see him and I like what he does with my hair every time. Afterwards, we visited Phuong, who was at John and Pepsi’s place watching their dog Lucky since they are currently out of town. I passed out for an hour or two and then met up with Andrei and Denita at Noodle World for dinner. Afterwards, we all ended up at Cue Studios and took a set of sticker pictures. I still have to scan them. They’ll be up soon.
This weekend is going to be super busy. My Pharmacist is going to get married this Saturday! I’m going to go find her a gift tomorrow at South Coast. Ok I’ll be back soon with more updates. I have yet to post my pics of the Run/Walk which took place last Saturday and Wango Tango which was later that same day. Uh, this summer is starting out to be extremely eventful :P
My body shivers when I listen to “C’mon Through” by Lasse Lindh from the Soulmate soundtrack. I guess I really connected with the drama.
It’s 8:07am right now and in a couple of hours I’ll be in the classroom taking my Therapeutics IV final. This will be the hardest final and after this I’ll have an easy one to study for on Monday. I’m really excited.
Saturday is the EIF Revlon run/walk and in the evening, I’ll be going to Wango Tango. Pics to come :P
Yay, BS finals down. Now to get down to the real deal.
I can’t get this song out of my head. The Fray’s “You Found Me.”
“I found God, on the corner of 1st and Amistad…Lost and insecure, you found me, you found me.”
With the advice of a friend, I applied to an internship that’s related to Regulatory Science up in Norcal for the summer. It’s for an internship at a small biomedical company researching some type of heart valve that’s currently in clinical trials. Given that getting into the industry field is going to be incredibly tough, it’d be nice to get some experience before I graduate. Next summer, the competition for internships will only get worse as it will be the time when the majority of the students in the program will be applying.
It’s been nearly 4 days now since I’ve applied. Still crossing my fingers. The only bad thing is that it’s in Santa Rosa. They haven’t exactly discussed the topic of room and board yet, but I’m guessing that students will be responsible for it entirely. I think that’d absurd considering that it’s in a foreign area and most students wouldn’t have any contacts up there. I checked on google maps the other day and it’s about 1 hour west of Napa, and 1 hour north of SF. My friend told me I’d be bored out of my mind, but I guess sometimes you just have to sacrifice a bit to get what you want. Sacrifice would be an understatement though, since leaving LA would mean missing 3 concerts that I’ve already bought tickets for (Kelly Clarkson, Incubus, and No Doubt). It also means taking 4 summer school classes online on the weekends after working. It’s way to say to predict what will happen though. I need to stop overanalyzing things and just go with the flow.
Somehow I didn’t realize that my first final is less than one week away. I’m starting to feel the pressure and have finally started to study today. Unfortunately I won’t be able to give updates on events that have recently occured, but I promise to be back on May 12th to update, maybe even before that. Until then, I’ll be locked in my cave attempting to study.
I’m excited that 2 years have already passed me by. One more year until rotations, and then a year of rotations before the real world. :sigh:::
I have been looking forward to Friday for a very long time. My last midterm was last Tuesday, but so many things happened afterwards that it left me with barely any time to myself. Right afterwards was the annual broomball game. Unfortunately, this year we didn’t win. It was a tie. There hasn’t been a tie since 2000 and every year since, we had won. Oh well, I think both sides played an amazing game.
I finally finished watching soulmate on Thursday night. I told myself that I wouldn’t mind losing sleep over the drama and that’s exactly what happened. I stayed up until 3am and powered through the last 8 episodes. It was an amazing drama and I will be back to talk about the concept of a soulmate later.
So, to my main topic today. On Friday, Mariah, Johnson, Phuong and I went to the CA Science center and explored. I believe I have been there but probably not since elementary school. It’s too bad that a lot of the machines were broken, but then again you shouldn’t expect too much given the fact that admission is free besides the donations that people give the museum. I’ll keep this short as I need to get ready for work. Enjoy some of our pictures :P
I was working in the pharmacy today and after seeing today’s date numerous times on computer screens, prescriptions, and signature logs, it finally hit me. Today’s the anniversary of my mother passing away. I can’t believe how fast time has passed us by since that day. So far, already 3 years have gone by. I still have mixed feelings about the entire event. At first I was optimistic that it had some benefit since it seemed to bring the family closer together. People from far away visited, my sister from out of state would call me often. Now, the ties between my immediate family are still close, but everything is far from perfect. Issues of my father remarrying and retiring has brought out a lot of emotions and drama within our family. Things just seem to be falling apart. Certainly, the timing of things seems to be off. I just wonder sometimes how it would all be different if my mother were here. She was a very strong women, and the center of our family. At this point in time, since my older sister, brother, and I are troubled financially (me being in school) it’s hard for us to provide for my father’s retirement, especially if it includes another woman we don’t even know. If my mother were here, things would be ok, atleast for a couple more years.
But what’s happened has happened, and I’m glad she’s in a better place. I glad she was able to free herself from this world which has so much suffering.
I know I said I wouldn’t be back here until Tuesday but I couldn’t resist after an eventful day. I had IV rotations this morning at County. Woke up at 5am and then worked until 10am. Afterwards, I went straight to Monterey Park to a Church for a Health fair. This health fair was held by the Chinese American Pharmacy Student Association (CHAPSA) in collaboration with VAPSA (V for Vietnamese). I was pretty useless at first, just standing around talking to some of my classmates since I didn’t know any form of Chinese. Patients would go up to the educational booth and talk to me in Chinese and I would tell them to wait as I got them a translator. Right when I was getting ready to leave, my help was needed. Fortunately, I had brought with me my intern license. This allowed me to do screenings that included finger pricks. I then walked over to the cholesterol screening booth and did about 10 screenings before I left at 1:30pm. I had originally planned to stay until 12pm to get some extra credit, and then go home for some much needed sleep and studying, but what I can say when patients are in need of my help. I had a great day and was glad to stay the extra hour or so to help out.
I’ve been MIA lately, mostly because it’s been a busy couple of weeks. I’m currently studying for my Therapeutics midterm that’s this Tuesday. I can’t wait until afterwards, because on Tuesday night is the annual Broomball game against the other fraternity, AIP. We’ve been winning for the last 10 years straight and hope that we continue that legacy on Tuesday night.
If you ask me what’s new, I can’t say much. My thoughts are still filled with the same thoughts of the same people. Why I continue to think about them, there’s no explanation. I just can’t wait until summer time. Maybe, going outside in the sun, hanging out with friends, and the occasional weekend classes will help to clear my mind, and bring back some positivity in my life. Until then, see you guys on Tuesday when I update about the game.
This weekend was actually one of the busiest in a while. It wasn’t busy studying wise, there was just a lot to do. There were events lined up back to back. It started with Phi Delta Chi’s annual Luau on Thursday night. I was hesitant to go because I didn’t know what to expect. I thought Elevate was in Hollywood, so I really didn’t want to drive all the way over there and have to deal with mad traffic. I also didn’t want to disappoint my littles so I decided to go with Amy, who happened to offer to drive Doris and I. It only took 3 drinks to make me into an affectionate drunken dancer. 
Then Friday rolled around. I had promised Phuong and Hadley that I would go to Rage with them in WEHO. I was looking forward to the event but reluctant at the same time. The last time I had been at Rage was for Hadley’s birthday back in early October. I had been away for so long, I didn’t know what to expect either. It was a good thing though that there were so many familiar faces. Most of our peeps were there. It was so cute that Paul came down from Norcal to surprise Henry. 
On Saturday morning I had a health fair at an Elementary School in Monterey Park. Before the health fair, there was a Runathon put on by a 2 of our USC Pharmacy organizations (5K Run/walk fundraiser). After the Runathon, a lot of the participants strolled over to the Health fair and we were able to give them a lot of information about sunscreens and skin cancer. I left early for my Rho Chi initiation banquet to honor our induction into the prestigious society. The top 20% of the class get invited. Your invitation is based on 1.5 semesters of classwork. It was held at Roy’s in Pasadena. I hear the place is actually really expensive. I’m glad I was able to taste all of the amazing food for free complements of the organization. 
On Sunday, I woke up at 5:30am for IV rotations at LAC+USC Hospital. After working for 4 hours, I left at about 11am and I went straight to another health fair. This one was in Alhambra at the YMCA center. I stayed until 2 pm. This one was a lot busier than yesterday. The only problem I had with this healthfair was that it was outside; it was extremely windy and sunny. How ironic that the skin cancer/sunscreen booth was located in direct sunlight.
My friend got about 10 mins of footage of the Utada Cd listening yesterday. We took a lot of awesome pics but I haven’t been able to get my hands on them yet. So for now I will post some of the fobby pics that we took afterwards
I’m skipping part of my class today to go to the cd listening in Hollywood at Sephora. We’re having a quiz today too but hey, my grades can suffer for Utada anyday. I hope I get an autograph and picture. I’m so excited. Hikki has been my favorite artist of all time. I just bought her cd digitally this morning. I also preordered my cd on Amazon a few weeks ago but didn’t want to wait until after May 12th to listen to the cd for the first time. Hopefully in my next post, I’ll have pictures of the Japanese and to be American superstar.
While I was in Nebraska, I spent an entire week relaxing. My phone carrier Tmobile actually didn’t receive any signal in Omaha. Normally, not receiving signal would be a bad thing, but since it was my break, it allowed me to retreat and further de-stress from normal life.
Most of my time was spent with my nieces, Katie who is now 7 and Kalia who is just 2.5 months old. I did a lot of shopping too. On Wednesday, my sister took me to Lindley’s Clothing. This was where I bought my first suit and she got me another one that day, this time a black suit with white pinstripes. Then on Saturday we went shopping again, I got a few shirts from Buckle. I love this store since there’s nothing like it back in CA. I just hate that there are rarely any sales, and everything is so highly priced. Here are the only photos I was able to capture of this week’s journey (with my camera phone). The rest will remain with me in my memories.
Hey everyone! I’m writing straight from Omaha, Nebraska. I’ve been here since Saturday night and have been enjoying my stay so far. My phone has absolutely no signal and I forgot to bring my charger but that works out perfectly; I can truly have a vacation with no worries at all. I’m still connected as you can all see since I have internet over here.
On Sunday, I went out to Zorinsky park where there’s a 5 mile perimeter lake and ran around it. I’m a bit out of shape, haven’t had to run that much since my half marathon and so it took me over an hour to finish the trail. Then afterwards, my brother in law, niece, and I went to Two Rivers for a bit of fishing. I just sat down on the tarp and watched as my niece and brother did some fishing. There were a lot of trout in the river. What’s interesting is that they used corn as bait and it worked. My niece caught her first trout within the first 5 minutes. That was certainly excited. Today, I went to try some Thai food with my sister. It was horrible I must say. The Tom Yum soup was so sugary I thought I was going to become pre-diabetic upon leaving. We’re supposed to go shopping today after we pick up my niece from kindergarten. Can’t wait!
Every time I write a new blog, I’m surprised to see how many days have gone by since my last post. Time certainly does fly by when you’re keeping yourself busy.
Next week i have a Pharmaceutics midterms and Therapeutics final.
Next Friday is Kristin’s bday; hopefully I’ll be able to go, but that will depend on whether or not I’m scheduled to work. The day after I’ll be going to Nebraska for one whole week.
This weekend has been amazing. All I did on Friday was just lounge around. Then on Saturday, I listened to music and did a bit of spring cleaning. I finally hung up my 10 pound picture frame. Melissa bought me some special nails to hang it up. It was a well deserved break from studying but the only problem is that I have a Management midterm on Monday. I've been putting it off all weekend because it just doesn’t seem like a class that even deserves my attention. I initiated my studies at 4pm today and went to dinner shortly after at around 5:30pm. Then I went back to OC and didn’t start up again until about 10:30pm. I have work tomorrow so it’s cramming time after that. Well, we’ll see how this turns out.
I haven’t seen my sister and father for about 8 months now. My sister just had her second child about a month ago, Khalia Tran! I’m so excited to go over there and rest for one wonderful week without any worries whatsoever. I’ll be running around the beautiful lake, getting my exercise and taking lots of pictures of my beautiful niece. Photos to come soon, but before that I must survive 4 tests and a paper. T.T Wish me luck
From this point on, my social life will continue to dwindle until there’s nothing left. On Monday I start my IV orientation. Midterms, Health fairs, Cancer walks, and IV’s will make my schedule quite hectic until the end of the semester. After school is out, I’ll be taking four classes this summer. Granted, the classes will be held during the weekends, I’m sure I’ll be busy either working during the weekdays or doing hw, and presentations for those classes.
I’m sure I’ll find periods in between to relax a bit, but my carefree days are officially over. It’s constant busyness from here until the end of my third year T.T
I do regret not following some of my upperclassmen’s advice about enjoying 2nd year to its fullest. I regret working 3 days on the weekend after 4 days of class instead of enjoying my Friday’s off. Oh well, some people don’t have the luxury to enjoy themselves. Many of us have to worry about the growing debt accumulating above our heads. With the way the economy is going, maybe it is a good idea that I work all the hours given to me. Many people don’t even have jobs at the moment.
Since last Thursday, I’ve had a string of bad luck, I’ve lost quite a few things and had a couple of near-misses as well. It started last Thursday after case conference. I walked into class trying to save seats for my group of 4 friends that sit together and had to reserve seats in two separate rows. Why we need to save seats is another altogether ridiculous story. You would figure that after 1.5 years, all the students would settle down and sit in the same seats but they don’t. They steal our seats if we don’t come in soon enough. Anyway, so I saved the seats with my folders. Shortly after, I left to go get some tea. When I came back my friends had returned from case study. Some of them sat in the seats that I saved, and the others didn’t because they didn’t recognize my folders. Because they didn’t sit in the seats I saved, I totally forgot about the folders I used to save those seats. After class, I left and those folders are now missing. I didn’t lose too many important things but it’s still a hassle since some of my class notes needed for my oral exam next week are in those folders. On Saturday, Valentine’s Day, my roomate and I were supposed to go to Rage, as you have probably read in my prior entry. She lost her id card so we decided to go to a tea house and hang out instead. In a rush to go and pick up my friend Phuong that night, I left the house without my wallet. Then Tuesday rolls around and I go to the gym with Kimberly. I misplaced my temporary gym membership so I take my id card out of my wallet for proof of membership. Later that night, I accidentally drop my wallet inside Kim’s car and forget my driver’s license in my exercise shorts. So on Wednesday, I panic because I cannot find my wallet, but fortunately Kim finds it and brings it to me in class. I then drive around on Wednesday not realizing that my driver’s license was taken out on Tuesday and was never put back into my wallet. On Thursday night of course, when I open up my wallet to grab my driver’s license again for the gym (I never found my gym pass) I panic when I don’t see it in my wallet. A few minutes later, my breathing and heartbeat return to normal as I realize that I just forgot it in my gym shorts. To make matters worse, I realized I left my thumbdrive in the computer lab yesterday when I met up with a classmate to work on our case study. This has been an awful week! I hope I don’t lose anymore stuff T.T
I’ve never had such a string of bad luck in my entire life. What is happening?
I’m currently researching for my pharmaceutics case study paper that is due next Thursday and also studying for my Therapeutics oral exam as well. Thought, I’d take a study break.
Utada is coming out with a new English album in March so I thought I would post up a link so everyone could enjoy it.
Hope you like it. Utada's new single "Come back to Me"
Valentine’s Day was quite interesting this year. About 3 weeks ago my roommate Melissa invited to go to Rage on Vday. I was actually dreading the whole event although I knew that I was going to have an awesome time. I was scheduled to work three days straight this weekend and wasn’t looking forward to having to drive from Costa mesa after work to Alhambra and back to Costa mesa the next morning for work.
It turns out, Melissa somehow lost her driver’s license while she was out perusing for shoes that afternoon, so we ended up making a trip to Guppy tea house and chatted until 2am in the morning. This was perfect because I would rather have an amazing conversation any day over dancing up a storm in the club (although I do admit that that would have been fun as well). It’s funny though, because Melissa and I overdressed for a tea house. We were in our clubbing attire and arrived early too, (at around 11pm )which makes it difficult to pretend that we had just gotten out of a club since that’s the time when people just start to trickle in. Ehh but who cares, people are generally trendy there anyway and it was for a special occasion.
We just talked about relationships, about people, you know, all the fun stuff to talk about on Vday. Talking about these things really helped to solidify in my mind the type of person that I’m looking for. Melissa was entirely right, I do have high standards but I tend to settle because I can’t find the right person, which I shouldn’t do. It was a reality check of some sort. Good times
I’m glad that I didn’t have to wake up early the next day with a hangover, drive to work, and then manage to work an 8 hour day. Yesterday was stressful enough working sober, no need to compound that with lingering alcohol in my body.
On the weekend of the 1st of February, VAPSA was at the Tet Festival in Westminster representing USC. We had cholesterol, diabetes, hypertension screening in addition to educational booths regarding skin cancer, healthy living, and smoking cessation. I brought about 200 individual sample sunscreens that day to give to individuals that passed by and was able to give all of them away. It was slow towards the educational booths corner for most of the day. I’m guessing it had more to do with language barriers more than anything. There were very few of us that actually knew how to speak Vietnamese. I attempted to speak to some of the people but was stumbling as I tried to find the correct scientific terms to address my point. No one would have approached us if they hadn’t seen the free samples. Towards the second half of our shifts, we became a bit more aggressive and stepped out into high traffic areas offering the sunscreen while giving people a small excerpt about how to use the sunscreen and prevent skin cancer. It was a great experience as always, and I’m looking forward to additional health fairs this semester. We will also be participating in the Relay for Life at USC Main campus, and the Revlon Run/Walk to raise money for Cancer Research in a few months.
So windows live writer was installed on my computer when I bought it. I’m testing to see if I can cross post to both xanga and blogger from just one program with pictures. I’ve figured out how to crosspost within Microsoft word but the picture part I have yet to comprehend. If you see my picture pop up, you know that it worked. That means I’ll be posting more pictures in my blogs.
If you've read any of my earlier entries, I talk a lot about the topic of time. Here's yet another entry. I'll begin by talking about how I always came out of relationships resilient, often times seeing new people faster than I think is healthy for my emotional well being. I've always had this mentality though that my true match is out there, and the longer that I wait, the greater the possibility that he might just pass me by. I have this idea, that every person out there could just be that perfect person. So if I decline the offer to get to know someone new, even if it's at a bad time of my life, I may be declining the once in a lifetime possibility to meet my true soul mate. However, what I've learned from my experiences is that the right person will come at the right time. So much of this is out of our control. I say this because I'm thinking back a few years when I met someone I thought was really interesting and fun. We were good friends, and would call each other up at random times to talk. I think there was chemistry and even potential between the two of us. I won't provide the details but it just seemed that the timing was always off. One person was always in a relationship while the other person was single. It seemed to rotate like that back and forth. Fate wasn't on our side. This is why I've come to the conclusion that I'll just let destiny manage my love life. In time, the right person with a complementary soul will come my way. To my lover, I wait patiently until the day we meet. Our meeting may be like the rare occurrence of an eclipse but our love will be eternal, beyond this material world.
It's finally over. The show that Vy and I have been working on for the last month and a half was yesterday. Everything seemed to fall into place. The dragon dancers came right when the show was about to start so we did have to start about five minutes late but that gave student extra time to walk over to the quad and watch up. The dragon dance I must say was very impressive but it was only 10 minutes. We were expecting more considering we paid them so much but in the end I'm just glad that everything went smoothly.
I can't wait until Tuesday. That's when all of the madness concerning the culture show will be over.
Sometimes when I try and sum up my entire life, I feel there one word that can describe my ongoing journey, my struggle at being atypical. It's a contradiction of course, I'm a Vietnamese American guy who's family owns a salon, and who goes to pharmacy school. Even my brother is a pharmacist. How much more can I fit into the general Vietnamese stereotype? Yet, deep within my soul, I know that I can't be another generic Toan who graduates to work for a greedy chain pharmacy, which has no other interest other than how many prescriptions I can churn out in one hour. So each day, I push myself to be different. Thank goodness that there are so many opportunities for me in this profession. With pharmacy, there are so many options, you can do hospital pharmacy, ambulatory care, industry, and retail. So while everything about me says that I'm following in the typical pathway of a young Vietnamese-American, the opportunities allow me to stray away. While I'll eventually be a pharmacist, I'll be more than your stereotype. Atleast I hope to be. I hope to work for a pharmaceutical company, working in regulatory affairs; I want to help make sure that these companies are complying with the regulations of organizations like the FDA.
While the opportunities in pharmacy school allow me to detract from the usual course, I think being gay has an important contribution as well. Being gay has allowed me to be open and take on a different mentality; I can never reject something unless I've atleast tried it or considered it once before. Being so open is why I've allowed and want myself to be different.
It's a constant struggle within me, as I try and fight the typical by being atypical. Then again, should I really care? Why do I really care if I fall into a stereotype? Society has judged us (gays) so much for being different, why should I care if I'm to be judged for being generic? I should be happy for once to be just the same as everyone else.
Is it better to have hope, to have something to grasp on than to have nothing at all? That's what I'm wondering these days, but I realize that even when there is little hope, as long as there is, you still have a chance. As we are all familiar with, when things are left to chance, it's hard to say what'll happen. You just really never know until everything unfolds.
I should find out in about one week regarding my interview for this industry job. I've interviewed more than 3 weeks ago. The last time I emailed my interviewer to find out about the results, she said that she was scheduling two more interviews soon and that the conclusions would be made known to us soon. It's hard for me to have hope, when I was interviewed more than 3 weeks ago. I can't help but think that maybe I wasn't the perfect candidate, which is why they are delaying their decision until they can find someone that is better. Then again, maybe they are just waiting for multiple candidates to be interviewed so that they can better compare and see who is best fit for the position. We'll see...
This also relates to other parts of my life right now too. All I can say is that we'll see what happens as well. That will be part of a personal entry that goes into my journal.
Yesterday I tried something new when I went out with Steven for dinner, English tea. Basically it was a mixture of coffee and tea. The combination, although quite tasty was an entire disaster for my body. My heart was beating so fast after having that drink. After dinner we watched my bloody Valentine, and I kept thinking that my heart was beating fast because of the movie, which wasn't even all that scary. I've seen a lot worse. Now I know it was because of what I had to drink prior to watching the movie.
I woke up really early this morning. I'm not sure if I slept at all. I didn't realize my body would be this sensitive to the combination drink :/ I hope I can survive work today and somehow make it to my Pharmacist's birthday party afterwards without having a body meltdown sometime in between.
I thought coming back to school would be a stress free month but with the culture show around the corner its hard to lounge around pretending like I have nothing to worry about. It was just 7:30 this morning when I woke up after going to bed at 2:20am. My heart beats extremely fast and I figured I'd roll out of bed instead of trying to avoid the cold and attempt to fall back to sleep. I'm up and about to go run some errands. We're making props today for the culture show, drawing the 12 animals of the zodiac.
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