should i? or shouldn't i? deciding whether or not i should consider myself disadvantaged for med school applications... i mean in a bigger picture yes i'm disadvantaged being asian american coming from an immirgant family, but then i wouldn't say i that i'm from the ghetto either... or is it more than just material wealth that i should consider? i wonder if it'll come up in an interview... hmmmm... need to discuss this some more

anywho, i'm exhuasted... spent the day at work and the afternoon back at the hospital... lolo is getting weaker and because he didn't have his dialysis treatment he's been retaining water... his whole body is just full of liquids... the wrinkles in his skin are gone and now he has a pudgy little buddha face... he's been comatose ever since he was brought to the hospital... although just thinking about losing him makes me weep like a baby, standing by his side i was comforted by the thought that he was probably reliving his life again... bringing back all his old memories and thinking about how pretty soon he'll be with his wife back home in the philippines... i was thinking about it and couldn't believe the sacrifrices he made to help raise me and my little bro... moved to the united states when i was about 5 while my lola stayed in the philippines to take care of my cousins... he would come back to be with her almost every summer until she passed away in 92... could you imagine leaving your spouse for months at a time to take care of your grandkids? i'm kicking myself right now for being the little bastard i was when i was younger... he received his last rites today and tomorrow i'll be back at the hospital again...

today was unexpectedly busy day... work, med school stuff, and more importantly i was back in the hospital... not for myself, but for my grandfather who's health has been slowly deteriorating... i got the call from my mom to get home quick so i could drive her to hospital... my dad had saved his life by giving him cpr and calling an ambulance, but the prognosis doesn't look so good... eyes not responding to light... possible sign of brain damage... had to perform cpr on him twice while in the icu...
i listened as my mom talked to the kidney specialist... it'll be touch and go, but we're expecting the worse... for a while now we've all been scared of what was going to come next... for my lolo i think he realized his time was nearing even before this incident... everytime i go i try to be strong, but my emotions get the best of me... funny how the doctor told me to take care of my mom when it's hard enough for me to deal with it... right now i'm just awash in emotions... memories running through my head and the tears only ebb and never flow cuz we all know boys shouldn't cry... tried to wash out the thoughts by swimming... almost passed out on my way back to the apartment... anywho, i'll check up on my lolo tomorrow after work...

went down to hillcrest to talk to the director of the HIV research lab for the position i had applied to... he gave me the tour and my thoughts were that i had left a pretty good impression... in fact, the language he was using seemed to suggest i had the job already... it wasn't until he mentioned that there was another candidate that i got worried... although i should mention he did say i was one of his top choices...=) he first said he'd get back to me by friday since he had one more person he wanted to interview, but as i left the office he said he'd be able to get back to me by thursday for sure... good sign, no? anywho, as i was about to leave the apartment an hour after my interview low and behold i got the call... he said he liked me so much he wanted me to start ASAP... woo hoo! looks like i start tomorrow or today depending on how you look at things... my fortune cookie was right then... something to the effect that i would soon reap the rewards i was waiting for... =) looks like it's chinese food every night!

after about a week of searching and sending out resumes i finally got a bite... come this time next week i might be working for UCSD Medicine in one of their labs in Hillcrest... let's cross our fingers...

my personal statement has finally been taking shape... it's gone through so many revisions right now and i'm still in the process of narrowing down what i want to put in it... my self-imposed deadline is to finish everything by 12pm tomorrow so i can submit it for revisions at the career center and then hopefully send out the final draft by sunday.

thursday night... no plans whatsoever... usually at a time like this i would be with phil, mayrin, and steph... this summer feels a bit different than other summers... it's the summer of change...i think i'm going through what's termed as empty nest syndrome... the kids are gone and now i have nothing to do... everyone in the apartment has been pretty busy which leaves me to my own devices... perfect opprotunity to work on my personal statement for med school... but maybe i'll work on that tomorrow... =)

no matter how much i try to clean my desk it always ends up getting messy... i organize it and papers just magically appear on it... speaking of papers... i now remember why i put off my med school application... it's the personal statement... everytime i try to work on it my mind just goes blank... i try to be eloquent and it comes off wordy... i try to be witty and it comes off sounding trite... giving myself till sunday to finish and send off my application... =/

just watched monster's ball... interesting movie although i thought the story line was a bit slow...

project headboard

when we were moving out of our last apartment i noticed that my cheap ass green sheets had left a green stain on the wall where a headboard should have been... all summer i was debating whether or not to buy a bed so that my sheets wouldn't rub up against the wall and do the same thing in our new apartment... after thinking it through i decided to scatch the idea since i could better spend the few hundred that i would spend on a new bedframe and headboard to paying off my credit card debt... armed with some inspiration and the fact i knew i could make something better than what i would find ready made at ikea, i set out to make my bed... although i didn't build it myself a new bed, i did come close...looks quite professional... plus, it all came to a total cost of $80...pretty damn good i would say.. thinking about it now i should have taken a picture of my bed before and after... anywho, my inspiration came from bamboo... take a lookie and see for yourself...

since we're on the subject of asian persuasion... just got back from margaret cho's latest film "notorious c.h.o."... think "kings of comedy".. it was pretty good and it was just screaming with overt sexual content... wanted to see the dangerous lives of alter boys, but it wasn't showing at the landmark... the one and only indie film theater in san diego... how pathetic... i think for the time being i'm foregoing hollywood movies in favor of more well thought out films... i remember from my cult classics class that my instructor would refer to good works of art as films and everything else (ie. mainstream hollywood crap) as movies... suggesting that films are studied and enjoyed where as movies are merely eye candy made for profit... the definition stuck with me... after margaret's film i went back and plopped on the couch to partake of the bounty that is digital cable... found another asian film "eat a bowl of tea" starring russel wong... it was pretty good... the thing i liked about it was that although it was about chinese ppl in the 1940's the story didn't revolve around their race, but their lives... unlike "the debut" which sought to provide a whole spectrum of filipino culture into less than 2 hours... the whole thing plays out like one long pcc/pcn...

the races proved anything but profitable... although it was overcast the weather just seemed to zapp the energy out of me... anywho... it's late/early so better get some sleep

too lazy to really go over the details of my trip... but you can see my pics here...

anywho, back in san diego and loving it... going to go to the horse races on saturday which will hopefully prove profitable... go zam zam!

seattle

time for really quick update while i have access to a computer.. while we were driving past the city in out rental car the memories and excitment of my previous trip up the coast came flooding back... took a bunch of pictures on my new digital camera =)... sonnier's place is quite small. reminds me of the apartment in "coming to america" only smaller... to quote jane "now i know what it feels like to be poor..." hahaha... seriously, the three of us have been sleeping in a room smaller than sonnier's office here at work... we try to spend as little time as possible back at his place... anywho, been quite the tourist while here in seattle... went to the space needle, international district, seattle underground, alki beach, pike's place market, and no visit to seattle would be complete without a picture in front of the lusty lady adult theater... their latest film is "the eyeful tower"... our first night we watched the new seahawks arena christening in a glow of fireworks... anywho, time to jet and partake of washington's version of in n out burger... zai jian penyuo's...

today i'm sore... my shoulders, my abs, my thighs... everything is sore. can't tell if it's from the surfing or the dancing, probably a combination of the two... had a fun beach day yesterday and was learning how to surf from my previous snowboard instructor philip... learned how to balance on the board and somewhat get the hang of catching a wave. the feeling of riding the waves was awesome and i can see why phil likes surfing so much... more than a couple of times though i'd find myself being tossed about in the waves... the feeling of being dragged under by the wave was scary, but then a second later my head would pop up since i'd be carried into shallower water... anywho, on my way back out to try again i was holding the board parallel to the shore (btw, which is something you shouldn't do) and then a wave comes and smacks the board into my face... it happened so quickly i didn't know how to react... i immediately began thinking that i had lost a tooth... luckily no teeth were lost and i only got a swollen and slightly bleeding lip... that cut my surfing lesson short to say the least...

back home

our program officially ended around 12 saturday afternoon... packing up the offices only took about a couple of hours since we had started packing the day before... that night we all got johns hopkins money's worth by eating at P.F.Chang's... yes i know it's bastardized chinese food, but hey it's good for what it is... it's like watching a porno you don't necessarily watch it for the dialogue, i simply serves it's purpose... hahaha... after a tearful goodbye with the office peeps i had grown to love i was back in la jolla in a bout 1.5 hours... there's something about being back in the apartment that makes me not want to sleep... it's incredibly strange... while i was in LA once the clock struck midnight i was out, but when i got back to the apartment although i was dead tired i just had to stay up... must be the paint or something, because this apartment turns everyone in it into insomniacs....

anywho, one week back home and then it's off to seattle with jane to visit sonnier! can't wait! =)

not so fast...

you'd think with all the drama the health assistants went through this summer that we would be able to coast to the end of the session without any problems... the CTY deities had other plans... lice. small, tiny, itch inducing lice. yup. a student here had lice and we spent literally the whole day up until midnight removing the little buggers. not to mention the fact we had to also check the student's hallmates. i just thank our site coordinator for not forcing us to call their parents. i could just imagine the responses... "what? there's a child there with lice??!?! only poor ppl get lice and with the tuition i'm paying there shouldn't be any of those around..." it's really sad but i think this summer really drained me.. when i first started out i was exhibiting classic Type A behaviors and was really anal about kids even missing their flintstone vitamins... come second session i don't even use the computer based system to log in my work... where did it all go?