Someone apparently thought my car was too shady and abandoned in the parking lot, and towed the car last night.
I was shocked this morning. It is the combo of some unpropitious facts that my car; 1) was parked right next to the garbage collection spot, 2) is old, rusty and missing the center part of the right side mirror, and 3) has an IL lisence plate.

It is true that I should have moved it once in a while, but I had the right to leave my car there as a resident of the apartment. It's not like I left it there for the past 3 months. When I drove it last time at the end of Dec, the same spot was open when I came back, which made it look like sitting there for many months.
Since the car doesn't have much monetary value any more and my current daily activities do not require driving, I was giving it up, assuming that someone stole it or the towing company handed it to some auto recycling place.
Rather than regretting about my car, I wished I had taken my prescribed sun glasses, some CDs, and the precious books and file folders from the trunk.

It turned out that they will bring back the car tomorrow because it was a mistake.
Yes, I asked them to leave it somewhere else in the lot!


I was a bit upset and very hungry when I found out where my car went. I stopped by 2 bakeries in Chinatown and bought 8 pastries in total which surprisingly cost only $4.
Two thumbs up for Chinese bakeries.

I wish I needed only 4 hours of sleep every night.

Every morning, my alarm radio starts playing at 6:30am. I briefly become conscious and think about getting freshly baked pastries at the bakery 2.5 blocks away. However, the sleep devil wins over my appetite.
As I am always extremely slow to get ready in the morning, I have never been able to go to the bakery, which is unfortunately not on the way to the train station.

I come home, and with the heavier course load this semester, some caffeine often kicks in to help me study & program efficiently. After watching the King of Queens as the end-of-the-day ritual, I try to get some rest. Then I start thinking... typically about the brain functions or whatnot and end up looking for information on the web. Tonight my thoughts were about the lesion(s) on the left hemisphere and color discrimination as well as MP's discussion on perception and reality on her blog.

This vicious circle ought to be fixed.

Sorry, this blog hasn't been very interesting these days...

I finally decided to abandon IE and use Firefox this weekend.

I didn't have anything against Firefox. I just didn't feel like making a switch.

In any case, after using it 2 whole days, I like it better than IE.

At the "dessert boutique" shop I mentioned before, I bought a slice of cheesecake.
They gave me a reasonably big slice for the price. It was almost too creamy to be tasty, but was better than suppressing my craving and not eating any sweet stuff.
hmmm. I will try a different kind of cake next time.

On the side note, it is two thumbs up to mix a regular kind and pumpkin spice coffee beans.

Another weird symptom of my body - calf arrest

Last night I experienced the sudden contraction of the Gastrocnemius muscle (the larger calf muscle) around 3am. This happened many times during college, but has only occurred a few times after graduation.

This is one of the two physical cues my body indicate to confirm my near-ceiling fatigue level.

I think this muscle contraction lasts less than 1 minute, but it feels so long and scares me because of the extremely sharp pain, paralysis of my leg and my inability to scream for help.

In addition to this incident, I couldn't sleep well while whirling strong wind kept making raucous sound all night right outside of my window as if it were furiously going through a narrow hollow.

After one day, I still feel the remnant of the pain.

--------------
Shifting the gear...

I am dying to eat hot squid at A-Ri-Rang in Champaign, IL.
That hot squid is the best.
After eating Korean food at least once a week for 5 years, it's very rough to go through weeks without affordable Korean meals in Philly.

This information is probably embarassing to disclose, but I hope someone can give me a tip or you can laugh at it.

When I fall asleep on the couch or chair in a sitting posture (i.e. not lying down on my back as you sleep on the bed), my tongue gets misplaced.
As a result of my tongue moving between the upper and lower jaws, my upper canine teeth and molars end up falling onto and stinging my tongue. There is a sharp pain when I wake up, realizing my teeth are stuck on my tongue.

All I have to do is easy - move to the bed and take a nap! However, getting up and moving to my bed isn't easy for me (as KK may know).

Isn't this whole tongue thing weird?

One of my obsessions: Asahi Super Dry
Ah so heavenly.

I found a website which compiled information about restaurants, art galleries, community events etc in Northern Liberties. Like me, other people were looking for good Chinese delivery places, and it was interesting & helpful to read all the discussion on Chinese restaurants in the area.

Today I went to the "dessert boutique" bakery downstairs for the first time. I was disappointed because their baked products weren't so boutique-quality. They need to go to Japanese cake stores and learn some skills. Although I wanted to buy a piece of chocolate cake which I saw from outside the other day, they didn't have it today. I bought baked sweet potato. It was decent. I might go back there to buy a piece of cake before deciding my opinion on that store.

Meteologists said it was going to warm up to 60F today. It was so wrong to believe that advice. It was chilly even during the day because of deep fog and mist. Speaking of fog, to my surprise, it became too dense to see the skyscrapers in Center City from my apartment at night.

I can never leave work at 5pm like other people. Since I hate leaving things undone, I don't mind working overtime to some extent, but I feel crappy because other RAs go home even before 4pm at times. Around 6pm, fire of wrath is shot up from amygdala by which I get so annoyed at my boss, yet immediate release of workaholicness follows to make me feel a bit better about putting efforts toward satisfactory products. I don't think it's my inefficiency that forces me to work overtime.

Tip of the Day 1:

Don't mix pumpkin spice coffee and french vanilla coffee creamer.


Tip of the Day 2:

Yes, you can order less expensive and more tasty "short" cappuccino at Starbucks.


Tip of the Day 3:

This is the invention of the year.

Thanks to Yuan's driving and Ryan's navigation, yesterday we successfully went to Mitsuwa in Edgewater, NJ, which is on the other side of the river right across from NYC.
I love Mitsuwa.
It is so exhiralating to see and buy Japanese food like Natto (fermented soy beans - yum!!!), Daifuku (sweet rice cake with bean paste or strawberry inside), Onigiri (rice ball), Genmai cha (brown rice tea - a type of green tea), Name Take (wild mashroom - goes so well with rice), Asahi Super Dry (the best beer)!

Thinking of these food makes my mouth watering!

I have been working on source localization (of ERP signal generator) and due to complication of analyses coming home around 7:30pm every day this week (30% by force, 70% by choice). [note: everyone else leaves the research institute at 5pm]
The method is relatively new to the field, yet there are so many things to learn.
I am tired, but I appreciate having this learning opportunity.

My boss took me to a good Jamaican restaurant.
I had authentic (well, i assume so) jerk chicken for the first time. I have frequented Golden Krust, a fast-food type place, where cheap patties are my usual(pie crust filled with flavored paste), but now that I found a better lunch option, I can't go back to Golden Krust any more. ;)

I thought those photos were amusing, but I guess some of you may felt a bit shocked like my father to see the brain model on the table...

Anyway, the weekend went fine.
I stayed home alone and didn't do anything special, though.
It was my first time to spend the New Year alone in the US, and I found out that there is no New Year's special TV shows unlike in Japan.
This normality is sort of weird for me because New Year is a big celebration in Japan.
TLC and TBS in particular repeated the same shows or similar movies all day. boo.

I got so bored and even became motivated to cook. I was proud of making tasty soup and eggplant stirfry. :)

WISH YOU A HAPPY NEW YEAR!

As soon as the ball touches the ground at midnight, I ran to my room and
watched fireworks shot up at Penns Landing. :)