Something strange has occurred to me, which has been devastating. My body doesn't accept food even though I am starved to death. I have no clue why it has happened, and I have been really hungry since Sat or Sun. I try to eat something, but it only makes me feel like puking. To compensate for this loss of appetite a little, I fill my stomach with something fluid. Though I have had something solid for the past days, the daily intake of calories has gone down to about one-third of the regular amount, I think.
I guess I'm asking for trouble by myself. I'm not tyring to be on diet. So many stress factors surround me, that's it. Can't wait for the summer break.


One final down. I bombed the 2nd exam, but I think I did better on this 3rd exam of Cog Psych. Because Cognitive Psych is my most favorite field, I thought I would do well, but I just didn't get what the professor wanted students to learn no matter how serious I attend all lectures and read a textbook.

I'm glad that I have at least one final down today.

I had an interview for ISG-involved committees.
Though I clearly explained my purposes on my application, they didn't have it at the interview, and the way the interviewer talked was so hectic, so I couldn't really say what I wanted to emphasize...
It was supposed to take about 20 mins, but it actually lasted for about 3 mins...
After this casual interview, I realized that I didn't have to get out of a class earlier to change clothes.
damn.
Even if I don't get accepted, it doesn't matter. I just thought it would be a good experience to involve in the central campus committees.

I saw a fabulous show on Sat and enjoyed beautiful violin recital on Sun!

The best events of your life happen when you don't expect anything great.

Do young children have adult-like syntactic competence?

To write a paper, I started reading an interesting discussion of sytactic acquisition of young children (1-5 y/o). This article is written by M. Tomasello, a prominent researcher in psycholinguistics. Interestingly, Dr. Fisher of UIUC, who is going to read my paper, digged up Dr. Tomasello's article (2000) and proposed counter-arguments in 2002. Though I didn't intend to find Dr. Fisher's articles, article search of the library caught her articles as well with Dr. Tomasello's. Yesterday, I thought I wouldn't finish reading Tomasello's 45-page article, but as of tonight, I have even read Dr. Fisher's counter-argument article!

For most of you it's not a very exciting topic, but it's so fascinating to read these refined intellectual conflicts! Tomorrow I am going to read Dr. Tomasello's response to Dr. Fisher, which was published right after Dr. Fisher's proposal. How exciting~. :)

By the way, to conclude, young children do have some abstract knowledge of verb-syntactic knowledge, but not quite like adults'.

Today I have to declare that

I AM NOT A LESBIAN!!!

Greg kindly notified me that I have written too much about LGBT and sound like I am les...

I am not. I am not. I am not. I guess I was carried away a bit too much after watching beautiful men in QAF...

I've been so lazy these days...

I skipped my lab shift this morning because I didn't have any subjects and my supervisors were gone for conference...
It's ok. I work enough to compensate for it.

In the first class, I knew today's lecture material is not easy to understand, but I fell asleep anyway... grwww.

gambare, yoko... ato mou sukoshi.

Today was Easter. Everything was closed today. Espresso Royale I always go to was also closed, so I stayed at home and did little studying...

At night I went to Malaysian Dinner hosted by Malaysian Student Assosciation. The food served was decent, but not enough. Performances were interesting, so they cancelled out food part. It sucks that Japan doesn't have any of that kind of dances. I should attend more events of other organizations to get better ideas for J-Net's events.

I finally booked airtickets for a trip to Seattle! This time I was amazed to see airfares rapidly going up each hour despite that the departure date is 3 weeks later.

Orbitz.com and Expedia are the most popular travel sites, I think. But also try cheapfares.com when you purchase airtickets for domestic flights next time. It beat Orbitz and Expedia this time.

If you need to book airtickets to go to Japan, IACE is the best choice. It's a Japanese travel agency that offers the cheapest airfares for flights to Japan all year around. Though there are some other Japanese travel agencies in the U.S., I always end up purchasing airtickets to Japan from IACE after consulting all agencies. Its branches are located at the major U.S. cities (18 US branches), and agents are really nice. Ask me for phone numbers if necessary.

I went to IMPE to play tennis with Kat, Dawn, Euntae and Faisal today.
It was the first time for me to step into IMPE this year... haha, surprised?

I suck at tennis. That's all I can say today. I improved a little bit, but I need to work on the correct swing form.

After tennis, at Kat's, I fell asleep while watching British QAF because I was full, and the story was almost identical to American version...
In addition to returning the DVD, I took a walk about 40 mins before going back to Kat's. It was interesting to see all apartments in Champaign, and I found a dentist on Second St. Now I know where to go when my teeth hurt. For dinner, Thai curry and mabo tofu were served. Hao chi le! (for real!)

I started jogging a week ago after realizing how lazy/non-athletic I have become. I don't jog every day, but try to jog as often as possible.

I jogged at 9ish pm today. It was sorta dangerous for me to jog after dark without glasses... Because of my bad vision, I couldn't even recognize if something was a street lamp or a person... Even if I recognize someone on the street, I couldn't tell if s/he was walking toward or away from me. ha- really bad, huh...

Contact lenses? Nah... I cannot stand my finger touching/closely approaching my eye balls. I practiced, but I gave up and wasted my parents' money on the first lenses... So, glasses are the only choice for me to live. Even when I wear glasses, I can fall asleep on my bed and sometimes don't realize it until I wake up in 6 hrs. Therefore, (you know what will happen...)
If I wore contact lenses, I'm sure I would fall asleep with lenses on and get troubled in the following morning.

Believe or not, I was a good long-distance runner a long time ago when I was still actively playing soccer 7 days a week.
I remember the days I was one of the best runner in my schools... Although it's been years since I quit playing soccer regularly, long-distance enduring muscle on my thighs hasn't completely turned into fat. So I find myself running at a good speed and regaining stamina. I don't want to gain any more fat and muscle, but rather shape up my chubby body...

Try hard, yoko. Don't give up, yoko...

Nothing much.

I just wish I could lie down on the Quad in the early afternoon and get nice tan. (I have to work whenever the Sun is up, you know.)

On Sat Julie and I saw a students-run play Mouse Trap ~a loose interpretation of Hamlet.

I liked the play in a way that Hamlet was gay. ;) Is Hamlet gay in the original work??? Julie, a pre-med, doesn't remember if Hamlet is gay in the original work... I've been exposed to gay culture so much this semester.

I'm hetero, btw...

Kat, Dawn and I went to see West Side Story at Assembly Hall tonight.

They imitated Peruto Spanish accent well (it sounded like real Spa-accented Eng to me at least) and sang well. It was too bad that we decided to go see it at the last minute.... Kat should've asked me earlier, so we could've getten better seats!

I love musicals.

I registered classes today. Although I have taken all prereqs for Psych 331, UI Direct didn't allow me to register for it. So, I wanted to talk to a Psych advisor to get into it. There was already a long waiting list at 10am, and my turn didn't come even after an hour. I also had an appointment at OISA at 11am, which I couldn't cancel at the last minute. Since I only needed to renew a document, I thought the talk with an OISA assistant director would be done in 5-10 mins and make it to talk to a Psych advisor. However, OISA kept me waiting for nearly 40 mins without notifying me when they were actually going to let me see an advisor. I waited at OISA because a receptionist kept telling me that I would be taken care of in a minute. Of course, Psych advising office skipped me, while I was patiently waiting at OISA, and Psych people told me that they wouldn't have time for me today when I went back. Dang it, they can't say that they dont have time. My waiting time deserves a better treat!
In short, I wasted precious 1 hour and 40 mins and failed to register for a class I really wanted to register.
Now Psych 331 is full. I need to take this class at the same time when I start my own project in Fall, so this class will teach me how to do a research in Cog Psych in a timely manner. I hope an advisor adds me on the roster when I see him on Wed...

Courses in Fall '03

Psych 331: Laboratory in Cognitive Psych
Ling 301: Phonetics
SPSHS 383: Development of Spoken Language
Chinese 103 or whatever level I should be in.
Psych 290: lab credits

I changed places to study for a change today and went to undergrad library. However, the quiet study area in the basement floor of undergrad library was too quiet and I fell asleep... I always sound like a severe sleepy head, but I am indeed busy during day time, so I get tired by the time I go home at 6ish. This busy schedule squeezed into 9 hrs of the day is the reason why I want to find a new job and have more relaxed life.

Delightful News:

YEAY!!! I got accepted to the annual summer workshop in Cognitive Science at Univ. of Pennsylvania!!!!!!!


I can't be any happier. :D

I had tears of joy coming out from my eyes on the way home after checking the email from UPenn. It's a 10-day workshop in June where I get to meet prominent cognitive science researchers of UPenn and selected students from other universities. This year's topic of the workshop is Vision and Language. As you may know, my major interest is psycholinguistics (specifically, parsing of garden-path sentences, lang acquisition, and prosody in sentence comprehension), and I really wanted to get into it not only because the topic well-matches my interest, but also because this workshop is an excellent opportunity for undergrads who want to pursue researches in cognitive science and cognitive neuroscience. Anyway, I am soooo excited to attend the workshop and absorb what they offer!!!

This opportunity will surely help me conduct a good research project next year and will look great on my resume for graduate school admissions in 2 years.

This offer blew off all the negative mood cumulated over the past weeks.

My mom sent me this big news just now.

A friend of mine in Japan (her and my moms are friends) is getting married with a Chinese person who studies law in Japan.

I cannot belive she is going to marry soon!!! International marriage!!! I wonder where she met the guy because she doesn't study law or speak Chinese... etc. In any case, I don't see any link between them... I guess my mom was too surprised at the news to tell me how they met.

I wouldn't marry at the age 21, though. Look at me, I financially rely on my parents a lot for living and still don't want to get tied by someone, even if he is the love of my life. It's not that I have one now, but I am not ready for a lifetime commitment like this friend. I guess my marriage will happen when I'm 27 or 28 y/o. I hope to find Mr. Right by 26 at the latest... OK, this is getting miserouble. I stop this discussion here. ;)

The reason why I closed the site on the past weekend is that I just wanted to be alone and alter some parts of the site. I am now well-rested and feel good esp. after finding out good results of the exams except for one I had before the break. I wanted to alter some parts of the site, but I didn't come up with any good layout and design, so I didn't do anything to it.

Sushi San's Beef Bowl (gyuu don in Japanese) needs sugar and soy sauce!
If someone like me, who is from Kansai area where non-rich flavor is favored, thinks it tastes plain,
it must be too plain for someone who grew up in the U.S.

I even thought of sending an anonymous letter to the shop.

I started watching QAF 2nd season last night. Fabulous as I expected.

I am reaching a point where my consciousness and thoughts are falling apart.

I don't want to talk to anybody... I don't want anybody to talk to me... Just, just leave me alone. My life is getting too complicated.

I watched Now Chinatown with beer.

The movie was not particularly good, but it was an interesting depiction of hard-working and unfortunate Chinese immigrants in a Chinatown.

Honey Brown after tough days tastes super. :)

This week was seriously the worst week for the past 3 years of my college life...

I had 3 exams, 2 quizzes and 1 short speech all in 2 days. Yes, I did study during the break, but I didn't get serious enough to be ready well for exams, you know. Fu- it was like the hell from Tuesday till 5:30pm Thursday. When I had 3 exams in one week a month ago, I didn't take any day off from my work, and it was too hectic. From this experience, I took a day off today. Oh my godness, being free between classes is sooooooo nice!!! Thanks to the owner, I had time just about enough to study for exams and a quiz today. After spending a day without a work, I really want to be unemployed again now... Well, I'm actually looking for a new job because I am sorta tired of dealing with those old ladies and eat the same thing every day. *hush-hush* (to the owner who's been eating the same old good food for 17 years) However, when you cannot work off-campus due to foreign citizenship, you don't have many choices. Hopefully, a friend of mine will get me a job in FLB soon when there is an opening.

Anyway, I am so happy that this week is almost over. The only thing left to me for this week is the issue that has been annoying me. Hope it settles somewhat better tomorrow.