wandering thoughts

To be honest, I don't like reading my old blog entries. Whenever I attempt to, I get this feeling of embarrassment about their content and how little my mind has changed since writing them. Ideally, I would like to look back and see some kind of steady improvement in terms of my attitude, my career progress, my self esteem, my adventures, etc. But unfortunately, my entries remind me that my life doesn't change much over time and that I don't often live up to the promises that I made to myself months before. Now, if I were more of an optimist, I'd argue that these reflections are just reminders of stuff that I can still accomplish. However, my most instant response is one of disappointment in myself, as these failed promises amount to just missed opportunities.

It's funny how a lot of my friends have stopped blogging. I wonder if the fad died out, if Facebook really took over people's voyeuristic tendencies to spy on each other's lives. I've wondered if I should make the move to Blogspot or Wordpress and start a new blog, but then again, I don't know how many hits this Livejournal gets so I don't know if it'd be worth starting/maintaining another one.

It's been getting cold, so I've stopped swimming. I think my body is getting back at me for being so lazy. Nowadays, I get tired earlier (Daylight Savings didn't help much either). I have a yearlong membership to UCLA's gym so I guess I should try working out there, amongst all the youngsters. I'd rather do some exercise that's less involving, one that requires less awareness of which muscles I'm working on, but I guess that can't be helped now. Unless I want to be content with a rounder belly.

I miss...
... the way clouds rolled through the skies, blanketing the hills with a fine mist.
... catching AC Transit on the way to class, saving me an extra 10 minute walk.
... people-watching on Sproul.
... the atmosphere of complete discontent for the present, warranted and unwarranted.
... how the Campanile tends to dominate the skyline, even with Evans Hall next to it.
... looking for fish and crawdads in Strawberry Creek.
... the obnoxious number of people during special events/holidays/weekends.
... cooking unhealthy food for myself because I couldn't afford a real meal.
... sensory overloads of primary colors during spirit stuff.
... impromptu parties and dinner/lunch dates.
... being in walking distance of everything.
... disharmonious styles of architecture clashing.

I wish...
... I had made an effort to see people more.
... I had thought about my career more thoroughly before I chose majors/jobs.
... I had been more creative and self-expressive.
... I had been more social.
... I could have kept some friendships in spite of bad grudges.
... I was better at keeping touch.
... the Bay Area wasn't so far away or expensive to visit.
... people would stop posting on Facebook how wonderful their lives are.
... I had put less emphasis on school my last semester.
... I had joined NSU sooner.
... I didn’t have so many regrets.

Being at home, I've been trying to devote more time to working out. Since I don't have to study anything and I have more free time than ever before, I put my focus into getting healthier. This means eating smarter and exercise.

As for eating smarter, it's tricky because being at home means there's an essentially limitless supply of food and my parents' tendency to pressure me into eating more. I try to eat a small breakfast every morning, whether that be yogurt or cereal. Lunch varies, but I try not to make it too big (if it is big, the workout's a little harder).

As for exercise, as of now, I try to swim at least 2 times a week. I aim for 30+ 50-meter laps a day, usually focusing on distance. I try to do as many flip turns as possible given that I swim in a 50 meter pool rather than the 25 meter pool I used in HS. Usually, it's a 10 lap warm up, then some set (a pyramid or several 100s), and then maybe something with breaststroke or backstroke if I'm up for it.

I like waking up feeling sore though. It makes me feel like I accomplished something, that I'm not getting completely complacent with my new post-grad life. It's better than being at home I guess and just being on the computer (which is a lot of what I do at work anyways). I just hope I can use an indoor pool when it gets too cold, or get into a gym routine.

( moar videos if you haven't seen them )

I really need to write more often. It helps me consolidate my thoughts. I'm pleasantly surprised with how many views my videos are getting though. There are a lot of them though, so I'll post the recent ones on the bottom.

Work's been good. I think I'm pretty acclimated now but I feel like I need to start taking more responsibilities. It's just hard not getting complacent and lazy. Sometimes, I feel like my mind is losing its edge since I'm not at school, like it's on permanent vacation. Maybe I should take a class in something practical like Statistics or something I might need for med school apps, like an English class since I never really took those in Berkeley. I try to keep my mind a little active, with playing Chess on my iPod, Sudoku, reading the New York Times, etc. but it's tricky. I'm scared that after awhile, my head won't remember a lot of things or that it'll take me longer to process things. And by then, it'll be too late for me to do anything more with myself, if I ever figure what I want to do with myself.

I've done a lot of traveling in the past 3 weeks. I went to Berkeley on the last weekend of July, and I was in New York in the 1st week of August. I had a lot of fun hanging out with friends, being touristy, reminiscing old times, catching up with relatives and what not. Hopefully I can make more random trips to Berkeley, or even New York. There's so much in both cities to see and do that I can't possibly do them all in one weekend.

I feel like at this point, I should be researching medical schools, getting professors to give me letters of recommendation (I don't have a lot of prospects for that), and getting to know the whole healthcare debate. As of now, it's hard for me to tell the lies from the truth in the whole debate, the paranoia from reason, from what issues are based on class/race lines. My gut instinct is that even if the system is not perfect, there's plenty of time to fix it and improve it before the debt weighs too much. What I don't like is inaction, of parading other solutions that are clearly not getting any ground. I'm still sketchy about all this increased welfare for drug addicts, homeless people and the elderly but it'd be great if hospitals could better reimbursed for treating them. I don't know. I'll have to learn more before I can make a better stance.

Oh, I recommend watching (500) Days of Summer. It's romantic, refreshing and mature, if one sided. When they started playing the Smiths though, The Perks of Being a Wallflower came into my head. I have a feeling that had I seen this movie 5 years earlier, it would have an effect on me, but I feel more mature now about romance and relationships, so it didn't as much. Still, I recommend seeing it.

I forgot how terribly relevant Jack's Mannequin's "Everything in Transit" is during the summer. I offhandedly was listening to it this morning while walking to work, and it hit me just how the lyrics changed meaning for me.

Nothing says summer like the pained lyrics of a piano-playing singer-songwriter, battling with leukemia, who misses his girlfriend (wherever she is) and is dealing with the mediocrity of everyday life, airline travel, emotional distance, and dying.

Kinda hits home for me since some of the people I really care about are still in Berkeley. At least in 2 weeks-ish I will be there, if only for a weekend.
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On a less sad note, I made more videos of myself.


More on my channel, if you care/can stand my voice for another few minutes.

Wow, I'm really not trying with this blog, am I?

RIP Ed McMahon, Farrah Fawcett, Michael Jackson, and now Billy Mays. Wow, it really isn't a good week to be a celebrity.

Anyways, here's a video for all you BSG fans. I'm a big communitychannel fan, so I thought this heightened her awesomeness.

So I make Youtube videos now. I don't know if they're very good, but here's a few of them. I try to make them on a regular basis.

First week and a half of work is done. I really hope my body gets used to this waking up at 6:30AM everyday since last week was really tough having to adjust to that. Everyone at work is friendly and I'm kind of anxious to take on more of the responsibilities, since the people I'm replacing are leaving for medical school. I just hope this work was a good choice, even if it means living at home for awhile.

I have a Youtube account now for video logs, which I question since I don't update this Livejournal much either. If you look up konfusedkomet on there, you should be able to find some of them.

I'm really eager to get back to Berkeley, to being reckless and around familiar faces, before they become unfamiliar. I'm not sure how I'm going to go out with my family and how much freedom I'm going to have. Especially since my natural disposition is to be a hermit or a homebody. Maybe that'll change after the first few months at home.

So for my birthday/graduation, I got a new 13" aluminum Macbook and a iPod Touch. Apple really overdid all the features on both of these things. I don't think I can really appreciate/use all of them. Nor will I be able to fill 250 GB of space. As per tradition, I named my new pieces of technology: the laptop is "WALL-E" and the iPod is "EVE." I thought that was a cute touch.

I was kinda torn about switching computers. My old laptop and I have been through some really tough times. It held up very well throughout my time at Berkeley, in spite of its 20 min battery life. I uninstalled programs and emptied most of its 30 GB hard drive space so my mom can use it. It kind of feels like that Ikea commercial.



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I graduated 2 weeks ago, and the whole experience was really surreal. I spent the remaining week being lazy and cleaning up my apartment piece by piece. And now I'm here back at the Sadakane nest.

So after landing in LAX from Berkeley and getting on the Flyaway bus, I get a call. It's from one of the jobs I applied to at UCLA and they wanted an interview. Shocked, I hurridely agreed to one in 2 days. Fast forward and I was being interviewed, trying to explain how my lab classes still qualified me for a lab position even though I've never been in a formal research position. The next day, I get an email saying that I got the job. Having not heard from anyone else and thinking this is a great opportunity, I took the job.

So now I have a job at the UCLA Medical Center's Semel Institute at the Cousins Center for Psychoneuroimmunology. I get to do ELISAs for blood samples, extract DNA/RNA, perform flow cytometry and all those other fancy things. I hope I enjoy it and don't get too bored. The dynamic of using immunological techniques to investigate the brain seems really cutting-edge.

I'm kind of scared about staying for 2 years, since I don't know if I can get those letters of rec by then or if my MCAT score will be valid still. I guess I'll just have to see how the first year will go. Until then, I'm going to need excuses to leave LA (and my parents) so hopefully, I can take some random weekend trips to Berkeley/San Diego/etc.

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So now I'm 22. It feels like only yesterday that I turned 21, so the fact that I'm 22 is really unexpected. I don't feel any older and it's not like I fully enjoyed the benefits of being 21 last year. Now I have to make definite plans towards med school. No more of this dilly-dallying and being wishful. No more of this lightness of being. My feet need to be making steps towards a destination.

I had a job interview at UCLA today. Hopefully I get it, even if it does mean living in LA for 1-2 years.

This trailer kinda reminds me of my life, minus the love triangle and the chick flick moments. I also like how she wears a shirt that says UC, except it's in RED so it's definitely not Berkeley.

I'll write another entry later, one that's not about a Youtube video.

I like to randomly think of cool names to give to kids, if I were to ever be a father. Maybe this is because of my experience growing up with a common name with many variations (Ryan, Brian, Bryan, Ryanne, Rian). Here's some I thought of -

For a boy -
Lucas (sounds fancy and Latin)
Tobias (yeah, like Arrested Development, but it reminds me of Animorphs)
Orion (sounds like Ryan, but is much cooler 'cause it's a constellation)

For a girl -
Maya (easy to pronounce in English or Japanese)
Gabrielle (from Xena?! no I just like how it sounds)
Sophie (I like the wisdom motif in it)

OK back to studying.

I've always had this picture that friends stick up for each other, that they support each other. A lot of things in the past few weeks have made me question this. And it's made me see that there are limits to how far people are willing to help each other. I probably have limits to how much I want to help others, but still, it's disappointing coming to terms with this reality, when people choose to not help you, to not butt in, because it's not their problem, they don't want to have to choose between sides. And I'm left there on my own dealing with it.

I wonder who I'll remain friends with after college, especially people from Berkeley. I only keep in contact with a few people out of habit and that list's been growing smaller with time. I suppose I have to make an effort to maintain them? I haven't been very good at that at all, especially with friends from middle/high school. So I'm not surprised if my random interactions/meetings/conversations with them are distant and awkward. It's just disappointing and I end up feeling guilty about being a poor friend.

With all the bridges I've broken in college (some of them I really miss), I keep wondering who will remain when I need help. And who will say, "It's none of my business." I suppose I won't know until it gets to that point and until then, I just have to keep guessing. All I know is growing up, having lots of friends was never part of my ideal future. It's hard negotiating that picture now.

Wow, what happened to updating every week? It's like a bi-weekly basis now. How lazy of me.

This past week has been a complete rollercoaster, emotionally and academically. I tried dropping that modeling class, only to tell my advisor who took it upon himself to get me an extension and student help after offering to give me a letter of recommendation to medical school (my first one!). Now I'm scrambling for a new model (the old one had errors and uber math) and I found one I like, except it didn't have one critical value in it. I have a presentation on Monday on Miyazaki and why his movies have pseudo-European landscapes. I finished my ED100 reading response paper at least. But I have another problem set due on Wednesday on PCR stuff. All this stuff to turn in, but I guess it's better than passively memorizing lecture notes.

At least after tomorrow, NSU is no longer my responsibility. But it'll be a bittersweet thing, I think. Hopefully I can get myself to write a skit or something over the summer.

Achievement is a funny thing. You can do a million things in life, but if you're just in it only for a little bit, if you don't put your heart into it, all those million things don't add up to anything in the end. I've tried to make my college career about that (even without a minor, most of which are useless anyway) and I hope that some people get that. I helped make a Culture Show. I did OK in one of the more difficult majors at Berkeley. I've made a lot of good memories and I've grown from my innumerable failures (getting internships, research, leadership pos. It's what I try to think in order to avoid what most seniors before me have told me to avoid: regret.

I'll end on an Oscar Wilde quote used in the Simpsons this week.
"Experience is simply the name we give for our mistakes."

- I'm sick of typing stuff on Microsoft Word. I had an extremely dense book review paper due on Tuesday, an immunology lab report due on Wednesday (deadline moved to Friday), 2 reading summaries (I finished one on Chinese flexible citizenship), along with the prospect of a quiz on Monday, my unfinished HIV co-infection model for that modeling class I want to drop, and a final project for the Miyazaki decal I'm taking (probably on religion's role in his movies or a post-colonial look at his romanticization of Europe). FML.

- I don't like punk rock that much anymore, especially made by bands over the age of 30 (Green Day, Blink 182). Something's wrong if you're that old and you have that much teenage angst still. Same thing goes hip-hop artists who've made it and now live in cozy homes in Bel Air. No wonder all they rap about is material things.

- Spring is pretty but it destroys my allergies. It also makes my left eye dry so I can't see clearly out of it. I can't think straight when I'm both sleep deprived, food deprived and morale deprived.

- I still have no job prospects. I have no letters of recommendation. I don't know how to negotiate between my future and the present (school) and I have too much senioritis to negotiate how to do that, even as people around me make positive efforts towards grounding themselves in a future.

Spring Break would have been more fun if I actually took a break and didn't study as much. Lounging around home was boring, but hanging out with friends occasionally was fun. Plus I got 400 feet within Utada (along with hundreds of crazy Utada fans). Note to self though = never travel at night. It's never a good idea.

Returning to school has been a drag. I feel like I'm working really hard for my classes but with little to show for it. One of my classes, MCB 137, is really hard for me to understand, since it involves mathematical modeling of biological systems, the professors' way of teaching is too hands off, and I can't talk to them about what's going on with me. I want to NP (Not Pass) it, but everytime I email my professor about it or try to talk to him about it, he doesn't listen. I don't know what to do about it other than to keep trying, but I don't want the stress to stray into my Immunology lab and ED100, which are more interesting to me.

Everyone keeps asking me what I'm going to do after graduation. Truth is, I've been so preoccupied with school, I haven't had time to make plans. Now I'm afraid I'm going to be stuck at home with no prospects and doomed to be a loser for the rest of my life. Sometimes, I feel like I use school as an excuse to not have fun, and that I miss out on a lot of great stuff because I'm studying so much. This isn't the final senior semester I had hoped it would be.

Monoclonal antibody lab report finished. All 8 pages, single spaced, Times New Roman 12 font,  0.75" margins. Too bad I was up to 4AM making sure my numbers were consistent.

I'm going home on Saturday. I'm going to try enduring Amtrak's bus service to Santa Barbara, and take a train from there to the Valley. Hope I'll be able to sleep or at least that the bus doesn't crash.

Does anyone want to come see UTADA with me on Tuesday? She's appearing at Sephora (whatever that is) in Hollywood at 6PM to promote her new English album. If you know me well, you know that I'm a crazy Utada fan, so lemme know if you're interested.

Also, looking forward to the Battlestar Galactica finale tonight!

Ryan enjoys
- checking quarters to see what state they portray
- the first drink out of a newly opened juice carton
- reading books for non-academic purposes
- meaningful/playful lyrics in songs
- the smell of something being sauteed
- the position of the sun at 11AM
- the sound of flowing water
- well designed websites
- sitting at the edge of his seats while working

Ryan's dislikes include
- getting too much candy as a present
- hanging words at the end of paragraphs
- diet soda
- Comic Sans as a font
- sauce on his plate contaminating his rice
- stray hairs on the floor
- heavy metal, or heavy rap music
- the smell of freshly cut grass
- blogs that contain nothing but surveys
- overly precocious children
- people who have an answer to everything
- heavy backpacks

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Instead of working on my lab notebook, studying for my ED100 midterm or reading ahead for this week, I think I'm going to follow up on those topics - friendship. I don't know if I've talked about it before on Livejournal, but at least this one will be tagged.
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Friendship has always been an iffy thing for me. The idea of forming a bond with others in a way that's not based on blood, but by shared interests and enjoyment of their company. Yeah, I never really understood that in a semantic way, perhaps in a more intuitive way. That way of understanding friendship still guides me now, but not after a lot of failure and time.

When I was a kid, I had playmates and a few friends, but most of the time I was with my sisters or playing by myself. During the summer, I didn't go to summer camp or take any special classes. I stayed at home watching TV and reading random books lying around. I'd build stuff with Legos and tinker with my Erector set. I drew a lot. But I didn't play with anyone outside of my own family until school began again. By then, I was used to being on my own, that I could entertain myself and I was usually fine with it.

When I started going to school on a daily basis, that's when the concept of friendship started to approach me and challenge me. Since I was quiet a lot, I didn't talk a lot during class, or on the playground. I had groups of friends who I'd hang out with from time to time, but they came and went. There was no permanence in my friendships, and a lot of the time, I felt lost. I'd feign interest in things but in the end, I couldn't define what a friend was.

I always left questions like "Who's your best friend?" blank. I think that's one image that's stayed with me all these years.

I blamed it on my inability to talk freely with others, that I was boring, that I didn't share the same interests in sports or dumb movies. I didn't understand how you can just form a bond with someone and call them a friend. I still do sometimes. Seeing all those kids playing with others, watching my sister be invited to parties, I kept wondering if there was something wrong with me.

Going through middle school and high school has been interesting though. I've had friends who I've known since I started going middle school, who I see occasionally even now that I'm in college. But it wasn't really easy for me. A lot of the time, I still struggled with friendship. Often, I felt like I wasn't as close to others as I'd like. I felt like my friends were closer to each other than to me, that I was the outsider looking in, a third wheel because I was weird, quiet and at times, boring. It tore at me a lot, as I tried to define who my friends were and my entries during high school probably attest to how I didn't know how to be a better friend or if I was just being hard on myself. I felt lonely a lot, and I burdened my good friends with my problems, to the point that I felt bad talking to them.
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Now that I'm in college, I think I have a better handle on friendship that I used to. I have friends who I connect to on a good basis, and I realize that friendship is based not just on shared interests and enjoying time together, but also of favors, of being able to help them when they're in need so that in the future, they can help you just the same. That's different from acquaintances, people who you know but haven't had the "trust" developed.

Thing is, in college, I feel like I toss away friendship more easily. A lot of the friendships I've made in places like the dorms or in organizations like AAA have become acquaintances. And for the most part, I'm fine with that because it's all part of growing up, of finding people who help you grow and make you happy. Facebook trivializes my concept of friendship even more, with its counts and constant overload of info on people I hardly talk to. It makes me sad when I awkwardly find out that someone has "defriended" me. I could never have the heart to clean out my friends list like that.

Sad thing is, now that I'm on the brink of graduation, I feel like there are a number of friendships that I've made in college, and even in high school, that are going to die eventually. Even now, I feel like a lot of people are letting go of me, and I of them, because I'm just passing through and I'm not important to them. I don't know if I should make an effort to strengthen those friendships before leaving, or to let them decay in the normal state of things. Will they be there for me in 5 years? I don't know. Will we still be talking? I don't know, especially since I don't talk to people often online or in person.

So who knows, as I continue evolving, so will my friends I guess. Only time will tell who I will miss and who will become a vague feeling/memory.
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Here's the song for the title of the entry. I think it sums up my feelings pretty well.

- Being in ED100 with Ananya Roy constantly blows my mind away. I never knew urban theory could touch on so many ideologies, and so many readings. It almost puts CORE to shame, I have to admit. Having to do an average of 100+ pages of reading a week is demanding, but I'm learning a lot. At least I'm spending my last semester "expanding my mind" and not taking the easy way out.

- I'm starting to admit I have a lot more fun thinking creatively (what I do for fun in NSU) than scientifically (what my major compels me to do). I wish I could figure out how to combine the two.

- This week, I did submitted an internship application for HCC (doubt I'll get it), finished my first lab data summary on a T-cell hybridoma assay (results, discussion, figure legend, references and all), and settled on simulating HIV-T cell dynamics using mathematical models (after finding out that malaria models are impossible to understand). I also managed to finish most of my ED100 readings and keep most of my sanity intact.

- It rained straight from last Wednesday to this Tuesday. Back in SoCal, rain was a rare occurrence and since then, I've always enjoyed it. Still, this much rain makes me question just how much rain is too much. Especially when it limits my mobility and fashion choices.

- My friendships are starting to feel more acquaintance-based and less on actual connections. Maybe that's because I'm a senior. Or maybe I don't matter to people as much as I think. I look at all my pictures in my room and I feel no connection to them.

- I broke my resolution of one post a week. I'll have to make up for it, maybe some long topic on Friendship or Music.

I think Kara is "Daniel," the 7th Cylon. Ala genetically altered by Cavil.

Explains the crazy art, her "resurrection," her corpse on Earth, her ability to sense where Earth was, why she's so tomboyish. This seems to confirm my suspicions.

What do you think?