What a weekend! After spending the morning and afternoon at lab on Saturday, I had dinner with Brenda for some Japanese udon at the Blue Fin restaurant at Porter Exchange. Afterwards, I walked over to Harvard Square and crashed the BBS recruitment social at the Fogg Art Museum, mooching the fondue stand and various treats while checking out the art collection there. There was a small but very good collection of French impressionist paintings from Monet to Cézanne, as well as an African, Renaissance, and modern art collection. Around midnight, some of my fellow MD-PhD classmates at the event headed over with me to Club Caprice for Raj’s birthday. Unfortunately, the place was completely packed, and realizing that we would not be able to get in, we went our separate ways which, for me, turned out to be a night at the Roxy. I’ve been to the place once for a Harvard Grad party, but this night’s crowd was completely different, with a lot more meat-grinding than I’ve ever seen in other clubs… On Sunday, I got a chance to play laser tag for the first time in my life with a bunch of HST people at Good Times Emporium. The place itself appears to be a warehouse that has been modified to house over 200 arcade games, 71 pool tables, batting cages, basketball courts, and a laser tag arena as well. While the games were cheap, the place was very run-down and seemed more of a white trash hangout than anything. Alas, I arrived a bit late and missed out on the first game, and since we didn’t get briefed during the second game, I ended up trying to learn the game while playing! It was quite an experience and a lotta fun shootin’ my friends in the back =P

Happy Valentines Day! Unfortunately for those of us who are single, this evening was just like any other friday night. Of course, refusing to conform to the sad notion of staying at home, I called up a couple of friends to hang out. I spent the early portion of the evening busting my back helping Bob carry home a 32″ TV he just bought this afternoon. We chilled out a bit at his place and then grabbed some food at Punjabi Dhaba. Of course, realizing afterwards that we were burping up curry breath, we quickly stopped off at a 7-Eleven to buy some chewing gum before going to what was supposed to be an Asian party over at Limbo. Unfortunately, the place was rather small and the crowd didn’t seem like our type, so we decided to head over to Wonder Bar for a drink before calling it a night. It turned out to be a pleasant surprise, as I got a chance to meet some very interesting people there.

After returning to Boston this evening, a bunch of my friends took me out to dinner for my birthday at East Ocean City, one of my favorite Chinese restaurants in the city. Though it was a belated celebration since some people were busy last week, today was coincidentally my lunar calendar birthday! After our fully-loaded course of lobster, fish, duck, and spare-ribs, some of us headed to Christina’s for ice-cream and then to a pre-med meeting at Dunster House in Cambridge. Jeff and Melody actually got me a new BMW M3 body for the RC car I recently bought! Ain’t it purdy? 😀

Happy Chinese New Year! After a very satisfying New Year’s Eve dinner with my family last night, we woke up early to visit a couple of Buddhist temples around the city to pray to various buddhas and bodhisattvas, and pay honor to my ancestors. It’s often said that the “religion” of Hong Kong is more accurately described as a hodgepodge of East Asian Buddhism, Confucianism, ancestor worship, and good old superstition 🙂 My family and I also visited a few relatives to wish them a happy new year, and of course, exchange red envelopes! This will be the year of the ram, which also happens to be my zodiac symbol. Unfortunately, this is actually considered unlucky (more superstition) so I’ll have to be careful this year…