Yuan and I crossed the state border to go to the closest Starbucks tonight.
Craziness.


My boss discovered a neat desktop search software. Its search speed is fairly quick. Looked like faster than using Window's search function.

BBQ buffet can boost restaurant sales with a risk of losing some loyal customers.

I am disappointed at the Korean restaurant where Yuan and I dined out almost every Sunday for the past 3-4 months.
We liked it there because it was quiet and the waitresses were nice.
They changed the ownership and added Korean BBQ buffet 2 weeks ago. Boom! There were so many customers there!
It's simply an all-you-can-eat style teppanyaki at your own table, which is nothing special, but it was obvious that the new BBQ attracted new customers because we were the one of the only two parties who were eating non-BBQ Korean dishes.
We were (at least I was strongly) let down because 1) the restaurant lost its value as a Tofu soup specialty restaurant and 2) that place has become so smoky due to BBQ and the BBQ smell permeates and reaches even your underwear by the time you finish eating.
I don't think they have an appropriate ventilation system.

That's why I will not go there any more... So sad.

Americans gorge themselves with loads of food on holidays, and no mater how many times I share the holiday meals with them, I don't think my stomach will learn to expand to accomodate delicious desserts!

Recap of my weekend:

Thursday: dragged my exhausted head to the Thanksgiving dinner.
There was a lot of food and I got so full before desserts.

Friday: had lunch with Erics brothers girlfriend and her parents. We went to a chocolate factory after lunch and then played Pictionary at home.
Eric and I went to see Harry Potter the Goblet of Fire. Someone described it as Harry Potter for ADD, but I thought the story progressed at an okay pace.

Saturday: we both bought shoes. Went to see Walk the Line. Although I didnt know about Johnny Cash and had no expectation of the movie, I liked his music and enjoyed the movie very much. Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon did an excellent job of singing.
Following, stopped by Takara Sake Factory in Berkeley - the US headquarters of Takara Sake, which is one of major Sake manufactures in Japan. A lady at the tasting counter served us approx. 10 kinds of both warm and chilled sake (for free of charge! of course). My head was saying woohoo at the end of tasting. purchased a small bottle of premium sake known as Ginjo, which is very smooth like silk.
Sake can put you to sleep quickly. We were watching a couple movies at Erics apt, and as soon as I drank sake, my mind was gone...

I will be in SF bay area this weekend. My flight will leave PHL very early on the 24th and get me there around 11am, thanks to the time difference. I'm debating whether everything fits in my backpack.

On Friday (?) I am going to have lunch with relatives (parents?) of Eric's brother's girlfriend Sophie...
It's very odd because I have never even met Sophie. Anyway, all I want is good food and fun time.

It will be a nice TV-free weekend. I just realized how much my night life tends to be controlled by TV show schedule.
Let's review my favorite must-see shows:
Daily - Everybody Loves Raymond, the King of Queens
Monday - 7th Heaven, Related
Thursday - Law & Order SVU
Sunday - the Desperate Housewives, Grey's Anatomy

Hmm I guess I don't watch that much TV. I can live without TV, but if it's in front of me, I can't help it. I miss the Ellen DeGeneres show!

Since taking one computer class didn't keep me busy this semester, I decided to take two and pile up more skills next semester. Maybe I will become overloaded, maybe I will still have [lots of] free time.


It's getting cold and I'm loving it!

Did you know ...?

Losing consciousness on falling asleep results not because parts of the brain are shutting down, but because the connections among different areas cease.
- Science, September 30

On Brain Plasticity.

Your brain is able to recover from a stroke in many cases.
I have worked with some patients who regained ability to speak after a stroke.
Their stories amaze me and remind me of how fortunate I am (and you are) to have undamaged brain.

I've also learned tremendous positive impacts of speech pathologists and physical therapits on facilitating post-stroke recovery.
When I took two courses in speech pathology during college, the prof (she taught both classes) mostly discussed cases with children and didn't really talk about neurologic populations. Hence, I never realized the importance of speech therapy on patients who suffered from brain injury.
If I were a native speaker of English, I would def. want training and a degree & lincense in speech pathology. I even considered going to grad school for it.
[feels great to see people improve and lots of job opportunities]

Appreciate what your brain can do.

By the way, the field of speech pathology is dominated by caucasian females. I felt sorta out of place being the only Asian and non-native English speaker in the classes.
Schools in Midwest offer strong programs in speech pathology. Some of the best schools are Univ. of Iowa, Univ. of Illinois (Urbana), Univ. of Wisconsin (Madison), Univ. of Minnesota (twin cities), Northwestern Univ., and Univ. of Washington.

Men like dark chocolate more than milk chocolate.
Is it true?


The magazines that's been rocking my world:
TIME, Scientific American, Vogue

I read Newsweek for 5 years and for the whole time I thought TIME was less reader-friendly. Wrong. TIME offers more balanced opinions and is not difficult to read at all.

I have occasionally browsed the SciAm website, but never expected the magazine to be so dense and educational until I started reading it. I love it because it seems to include one report in brain science per issue and teaches me cutting-edge info in the fields I don't otherwise think about much e.g. physics/astronomy.

Perfume ads in Vogue are fantastic. Sniffing sweet scent makes the magazine more enjoyable. ;) Lovely Sarah Jessica Parker smells very nice and mature.


What's best?
I subscribe to those 3 magazines for free of charge! This is the art of frugality.

Real estate investment is the way to go.
Buy the worst house in the best block.

Legal Notice:

My H1 visa petition was approved last Saturday!!!!
I totally owe this to Yukiko who kindly and generously assisted me through the whole process. Without her I wouldn't have known how to apply for a worker's visa, which is highly competitive.

The first thought that came to me was "I can go home!!!" I've been on OPT (Optional Practical Training) which is a 1-year temporary employment authorization granted after successful completion of a degree and as continuum of F1 visa. This authorization does not allow newly grads to work legally once they go outside the country while on it.
The huge weight has been lifted off my shoulders. I never doubted Yukiko's experience and legal advice, but I was nervous because neither the research institute nor I hired an attorney and the immigration service could do some crazy things to you at the last minute. On the way home I was singing a Pussycat Dolls song, and I was moved with my eyes becoming teary because it felt so great and reassuring. Call me a drama queen.

Yep, I will accumulate as many paid off-days as possible and go home for about 10 days in May. :)


KK, it's your turn. Good luck! I'm sure your prospective corporate employer will secure your visa w/o any drama and thrills, though.

Thank you, Yukiko!

Eric Cornell, who won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 2002, said:

"... don't say science disproves intelligent design ... science says nothing about intelligent design, and intelligent design brings nothing to science, and should be taught in theology, not science classes."

[refer to the last page of TIME magazine Nov 14, 2005 issue for more]


I strongly oppose to teaching intelligence design in biology class. If it's taught in addition to Darwin's theories, students will be confused about what to believe. If it entirely replaces evolution & natural selection, that will be a fatal mistake and the country will suffer from lack of true evolutionary biologists.
As Dr.Cornell suggests, the idea should be offered in theology/religious classes.

It all turned out great:


Delicious Taro Birthday Cake from Chinatown


Depressive mood kicked in when I woke up and realized that no plan was made for my nascent day. Since I rarely buy coffee outside my home nowadays, I treated myself with calming vanilla spice coffee from dunkin donuts while at work.

I went home without expecting anything special. It was gonna be another boring Friday.
As soon as I opened the door, my roommate Yuan dashed to me and shouted "Happy Birthday" which was so sweet.
What's more, Yuan was preparing dinner with food another roommate Joanna bought.
It was so nice of them to treat me like that because I didn't think they knew my b-day.

While eating dinner, we decided to see the movie "Pride and Prejudice." The movie is shown only at limited theaters and I thought I saw its showing times for a theater in Cherry Hill, NJ. It was only after we hurriedly drove there that we ended up learning that the movie was not on the their schedule! We luckily got hold of Yuan's friend who happened to be at home with internet and found out where to go. I don't know why we were so desperate, but we were determined to see it.
We went all the way to Old City, a cute historical distric of downtown Philly!
I liked the movie. The movie was a good recap, according to Yuan who had read the book and watched the whole 10-hrs of the classic version on DVDs.

The night was not over yet.
Look at the photo above! Isn't the cake awesome? It was another surprise.
My roommates are super! They went to Chinatown to get this Taro cake with custom frosting.
I loved the cake! It was not sickingly rich like typical American ones, and the taro paste inside the cake was delicious.


Thank you, those who cared to leave me messages here, on thefacebook, and on my phone!!! You all made my day! Perhaps it's not so bad to get older...

Federal regulations on protection of health information are driving my boss nuts, and it surely is affecting what I have to do at work.


By the way,
Happy Birthday, Yoko!

Mother's email:
Happy 2Xth Birthday! You were born at 5:30am. Since I'm not sending you any gift, buy something for yourself on a credit card [assuming i still carry a card linked to a japanese bank. too bad i don't.]. I am in Shiretoko, Hokkaido now. I will go home tonight. [after 3 kids grew up, she's been treating herself with occasional short domestic trips. lucky her!]

I'm getting old...
Sadly no special plans for this weekend... boo.

Eric passed his preliminary exam today. That means he is officially a PhD candidate! (He has 4-5 more yrs to go)
Congratulations!

THE Shocking Fact of the Day:

There is no Steak 'n Shake around here!!!! The closest one is in Pitts...

I switched the comment module from halo.com to blogger built-in function.
That's why you don't see any old comments.

Does anyone know how to preserve the old halo comments for the old posts and change it to blogger.com comment link for the recent ones? (kat?)

For the royal readers, the old comments have been saved in halo's server, so rest assured that I didn't wipe off everything!

behind the house

Exquisite Sushi Dinner.

Joanna took Yuan, Mei and me to Fuji Japanese restaurant where she works part-time.

We had so much delicious food!!! I ate authentic sushi for the first time in a very long time. I wish I had brought my camera...

It's been 5 days since SEPTA started the strike for the first time in 7 years.
It's great that no slow buses are running on the streets, but there seems to be a slight traffic increase. The last strike lasted 47 days. I hope they reach the agreement soon. Otherwise, I will have to drive to work after I move to a new place.


Some nurses smoke like chimney. Yuck. Yuck. Yuck.
I see some of them smoking during lunch time outside. I hope they try to remove the smoking smell before getting back to work with patients.

I have a confession to make... (Afandy A, 2005)


Tonight I have become certain that my stomach cannot tolerate coconut.

My poor intestine spent a chaotic night. It reacted to Alfredo sauce during dinner, and then again to slices of yummy coconut meat consumed about 50 mins after dinner. [I often overlook the dairy power of Alfredo sauce and forget to take a lactase enzyme pill!] The latter reaction came very very very unexpectedly quickly and painfully. To make matters worse, my roommate who likes to take a looong shower had just begun taking a shower!
As soon as I banged on the door and begged her, she kindly vacated the bathroom after a couple of minutes. phew. She was sympathetic because she fed me those coconut slices. I can usually wait around, but it was such a massive attack tonight. I had to stop chatting with Melissa, pause the movie "Shall We Dance?" (Japanese version), and couldn't do anything but groan.

I knew Thai curry which heavily contains coconut milk usually ended up sending me to the bathroom, but I was not sure whether the culprit was coconut milk or a natural bodily cause which happened to collide with the curry consumption.

If you would like to know more about coconut, this website seems interesting.


For more about lactose intolerance, these websites provided by federal agents are very helpful.


Why do I keep torturing my lactase-deprived small intestine?
Small amount of dairy products does not bother me, for example, milk in coffee and a slice of cheese in subs. That's why I overestimate my capacity. Another reason is that my appetite masks the thought of a painful outcome.
How can I avoid the tasty & rich burritos? How can I stop drinking Cappuccino?

Oh dear intestine, thank you! I praise you for putting up with the negligent owner.
[oops, this sound like dramatic Bambita ;P]

By the way, lactase is a correct spelling for the name of enzyme.

Any recent movie suggestions???

I am interested in seeing Tim Burton's Corps Bride, Prime, The Weatehr Man, Harry Potter, or Memoirs of Geisha.

I am so nerdy that programming has been dominating my time both at work and home.
And I know this blog has been boring these days, and Anita's drama is stealing my royal readers.

My cognitively optimal time tends to take place when I have to push myself so hard against hunger and fatigue. On these tough days, the amount of energy and food consumption has a disproportionate influence on my productivity. Ex. my lunch consisted of only pieces of fruits. Since I was feeling it coming today, I decided to stay in the lab until the program improves to a certain level. After so many hours of staring at and editing the codes, I finally noticed one critical and inadvertent mistake. With some more logical thinking, the long-awaited moment came!
That felt so good! By that time, the cleaning workers had left the building and I had a radiating smile like the summer Sun. *grin*
Special thanks to Akira who kindly gave me very helpful guidance.

I will open my GRE books tomorrow...