As part of preparation for grad school admissions, I recently started contacting faculty members at schools I'm interested in. I think it is a very good way to indirectly know how friendly and responsive professors are. The schools I have so far the best impression about are UCDavis and UCSD. Surprise? UCDavis opened the brandnew Center for Brain and Mind this month (yeay!) and several professors who use electrophysiological methods seem to buy my long-term research experience. I'm actually very excited about going to Davis if I get accepted. The school itself is not well-known as UCBerkeley and UCLA etc, but there are professors who are prominent in the field. Although it will be an awesome experience for me to go to prestigious/well-known school, I also think that it'll be as great to pursue grad study somewhere less crowded like Davis and have more attention from and discussion with professors. All what matters is to do research with good productive advisors. I love Champaign-Urbana, so it's no problem for me to live in a less populated area. I prefer cheaper rent and gas, anyway. And Davis and Berkeley are not so far apart (one hour by car). By the way, my research interests have been changing. I don't think my major concentration in grad school will be a hard-core psycholinguistics. Psycholinguistics is and will be still very fascinating to me; however, I feel limitation because I am a non-native speaker of English who is more interested in pursueing studies in the English language than in the Japanese language. I just got so tired of recruiting the native speakers of Japanese while helping researchers in my lab. In addition to a limited pool of possible participants, all the Japanese speakers in the community don't necessarily show an interest to a brainwave study. It may sound like I'm trying to avoid challenge, but this is a real obstacle and it's a lot more painstaking than you think.
This is one of the reasons I want to pursue something else than language. While taking awesome psych classes this semester, I discovered very interesting aspects of attention, executive function and working memory. Findings from these areas opened my eyes. In a nutshell, I strongly feel the need of expanding my research experience to other cog neuro fields.

The semester is coming to an end...
I saw the last film of the semester for the pol s class tonight and will have the last lecture and film quiz tomorrow. My cog neuro class will be also the last lecture.
It's exciting to get over with the semester, but depressing to study for one paper and series of exams. I worked hard tonight. My paper is looking good.

Gas prices have been sooooo expensive! Boooooo.

I am worried abou her. This matter has been broadcasted on and off in Japan, but it must be getting worse since it made it to the international news.

It's no good to smoke. This is a very interesting study which associates cancer and race.

Please be extra careful of things around you when you mow lawn.

I was very suprised to learn that the news about Tornado damage in Illinois made it to Japan.
My parents called me. I wasn't even aware of the tornado warning that day. In case you wonder, Chambana was fine. The damaged areas were the five counties in northeastern Illinois.

White Stew:

I made white stew. Yes, it's white and creamy stew made from sauce mix (this is how you make curry and stew in japan!). The ingredients were chicken, potatoes, carrots, onions, milk and sauce mix. J and EMB said it was the same as potato soup... -_-;; No No No, that was stew. Believe or not, stew is white and creamy in Japan! Anyway, all the girls plus EMB enjoyed the stew, so I'm happy.

Yeay to J's new laptop.

That was a crazy night.

There were four people from U of Iowa and several Illinois people hung out with them for a day. They came all the way from Iowa City to meet up cool J-Net officers. :)
Btw, I dozzed off too many times this afternoon because I was feeling sick from the change of seasons. It was a really hot day all of sudden, which kinda screwed me up.
I finally became conscious around 5pm and went to join dinner with U of Iowa people.
After dinner I studied for about 2 hrs and joined them again at Jordan's place for some alcohol and socialization. I was gonna go home around midnight, but I ended up staying past midnight and even went to this insane (Asian) party with them (Jordan, his roommates, other U of I people and U of Iowa people).
Since that party was really crazy, we didn't stay there long. Tiara, did you stay there for a long time??? It was really nice seeing you again!!!
Although it's almost 3:30AM and time for me to go to bed, I am trying to stay awake and let all the alcohol run down my body; otherwise, I will be suffering from a hangover tomorrow. I haven't had this much alcohol since the day I got drunk and puked last August.

Today I was almost killed when a crazy driver swerved in front of me at the intersection of Lincoln and Illinois (I had the right to go straight on Illinois St.!). ;P
It was funny how quickly she called and apologized to me after that incident!
I guess some of you can identify who it was!

A hair stylist who took care of me today has anterograde amnesia for real. She asked me if U of I is a comepetitive/difficult school three times. She asked me how long I have been here twice. She asked me whether there are many asians at U of I twice. She asked me about Kobe and commented on the city twice. She complimented naturally wavy end of my hair three times.
Many questions were repeated within one hour. It's not that she didn't understand my answers, but that she asked me the same questions again as if she never asked me those questions 5 minutes ago. It was weird.

Be careful if you drink A LOT on a regular basis.

A busy morning:

I arrived at Parkalnd at 8am to register for summer classes. There was already a line of students at the registration desk! Although I had to wait for 30 mins, I successfully got into two classes (bio 101 for fun and history 102 as a requirement).
If you are going to start a class at 8am or finish a class at 11am at Parkland this summer, let me know. I'm happy to give you a ride.

Easter Weekend at EMB's house:

We went up there on Saturday for Easter Sunday. The easter bunny came to the house and left us lots of chocolate and nice stuff. After hunting for buskets, we went to have brunch at Sheraton Arlington Hts. It was a good weekend.

To celebrate EMB's BD, we went to Biaggi's. It was a very fine dinner I hadn't had for a long time. yeay.

OK, so I did some search on Google about the "head-start" programs in Japan.
There are lots and lots of colleges that accept smart kids. I found out two patterns, namely, "high school-to-BS" course, and "college junior-to-MA/MS" course. Interesting.
If you are interested in this recent education system, search for "tobikyu nyugaku".

I wonder what's happened to the "head-start" kids at the Chiba University in Japan. The national university located in Chiba Prefecture started this head start program about 4 years ago in which superb high school kids skipped their 3rd year of high school and started college. Since it had been traditionally exceptional for Japanese high schoolers to skip a year and move up to a higher institution of education, it was really a hot topic back then. I think approx. 10 students passed the very competitive admissions and entered the university.
Do they still have that program? Is there any other college with that program?

My biggest concern is how those students have been doing. Are they just devoting more time for a part-time job and parties just like other Japanese college students? It was supposed to benefit the students and the future of Japan's science level. Well, I should do some search on the web.

A night mare for Julie. (Meredith Monk)
Scroll down to the "listen to samples" section. Fei, this is what Anita and I imitate! Listening to her vocalization reminds me of her concert. I'm listening to more of her "songs" from other CDs.

Soledad O'Brien plus many wonderful women are here at UIUC! (The Biennial Conference for Women) I watched CNN this morning. Yes, Soledad is off today.

I had a strange dream. I had been wearing my high school uniform for at least 2 days and was feeling very disgusted. I wanted to change clothes, but I wondered around my old high school. Then, my intention was to go home and get new clothes. However, against my will, I visited my professor's party at her house... Is this dream telling me to do some laundry???

It was a busy day.

Because I had to unload 50 dozens of donuts for krispy kreme sale this morning, I went to park by the Quad at 7:30am just to get a good spot. And I registered for fall classes at 8am! :) I'm going to take 1) pragmatics & semantics, 2) neuroling of bilingualism, 3) visual cognition, and 4) tea ceremony and zen. I'm so happy to take a fun class at last.
I really like the new registration system. It seems a lot more efficient and flexible than the UI Direct.

J-Net's krispy kreme sale went well. We sold out all 50 boxes! I had to man a booth for a long time under the sun and got a nice sun tan.

I need to study for an exam on Wed now. ciao.

Happy 22nd Birthday, EMB!