Drove down to NYC this past weekend to attend my cousin’s wedding and along the way got nailed with a speeding ticket by one of those sneaky highway patrols in Connecticut. Who would’ve thought that going 70mph in a 55mph zone was considered speeding? It was certainly news to me. The wedding itself can only be described as surreal. What began as a traditional Chinese dinner banquet with shark fin soup, abalone, and lobsters, turned suddenly into an 80’s dance party, as bridesmaids, groomsmen, and others boogied on the dance floor at the center of the restaurant complete with disco lights and smoke effects. We drove back up on Sunday after a bit of bowling and dim sum with the folks.

With the approach of the summer weather, my past weekends have become much more eventful. Two weekends ago, Melody and I went head-to-head on the pool table at Jillian’s for two and a half hours of 8-ball, with her coming in a close second. =P On Sunday, we headed over to Copley and got a pair of half-priced tickets to the Blue Man Group’s new show through BosTix. Though Melody was a 3-time veteran, the experience was completely new to me, with its array of clever drum plays, humorous stunts, stunning digital animations, and a most memorable tissue paper tsunami during the finale. Even Jeff found some free time from his crazy schedule at MGH to join us for dim sum at Chau Chow City for Sunday lunch.
This past weekend, we grabbed a couple of Vietnamese sandwiches from Chinatown and hopped over to the Commons to attend the Commonwealth Shakespeare Company’s rendition of Much Ado About Nothing. The play was clever and playful (and FREE!), and even featured the casting of a real life couple as the title characters Beatrice and Benedick. We spent the rest of the weekend playing some tennis at a nearby park, and doing some shopping at HomeGoods and Target, rounding out a most relaxing weekend for me.

The annual July 4th extravaganza on the Esplanade here in Boston always manages to trump the fireworks display from previous years. This past weekend was no exception, with a particularly interesting one where glowing strings of light floated down from the sky like catepillars (which we later found out were carried by tiny parachutes). Melody and I, along with Junne and her friend, found a spot with an awesome view of the fireworks where we could immerse ourselves in the dazzling light show, with the thunder of every explosion pounding at our chests. We were much more fortunate than our counterparts across the river at MIT, where ashes carried by the wind rained down onto the audience. We even brought our own little feast in tupperware, with Melody’s famous pot chicken, sausage fried rice, edamame, and cherries. After the show, as always, we didn’t bother with the T and followed the crowds of people onto the street for the stroll back to Brookline. The fireworks, food, and mild weather made for a great night out, almost making up for having to work all three days this long weekend. Btw, check out Spiderman 2 if you haven’t already. It’s certainly worth a look.

I was walking by a construction site yesterday evening when I came across these markings on the sidewalk. They looked like the words “Pig Safe,” which made me wonder whether it meant that I was on the pig UNsafe side, or whether the arrow pointed toward the vault of a piggy bank. If you asked me, I would have to kindly defer your question to my very own personal expert on piggies, who I am happy to say, has finally returned to Boston! Since last Saturday, Melody has begun settling into her new crib with the help of her parents, and will be starting her residency at the BI today. With the end of our year apart, I will be looking forward to some brighter days ahead, as the light of my life returns to me for good.

Thanks to one of med school friends, I’ve finally joined the world of Gmail. Though still under beta testing, Gmail is Google’s approach to email, with 1GB of free storage, no pop-ups or banners, and most importantly, an algorithm that replaces old school email sorting with the Google search engine. Though for a product that hasn’t gone public yet, it has already fired up a storm with tons of privacy issues currently being debated. In other news, I just got my hands on the demo for Unreal Tournament 2004, and I’m already hooked! Unfortunately, having abstained from gaming for about half a year, I feel like I’m totally being schooled by the veterans. Especially with all the new weapons and vehicles, it’s gonna take some time for me to get back into Total-Geek mode. =P

With the grant finally submitted and my professor in Asia for a conference, the past two weeks have been a time of recuperation for me. I finally got a chance to do my dishes, my laundry, and most importantly, a chance to cook again. I even fired up my indoor grill and made some scallop kabobs, scampi-style. Last weekend, I went to DC to attend Melody’s best friend’s wedding, where she was the Maid of Honor. To save on cash, I took the Chinatown bus to NYC, and then another to DC, where I rented a car to pick her up from the airport. Despite the arduous trip, I got a chance to see my Melody again and even earned some brownie-points on the side playing chauffeur for her and her bridesmaid friends. The wedding itself was meticulously organized (see their wedding site), with color-coded teams reminiscent of a SWAT operation. Melody was a bit nervous, but everything fell into place and she was able to give a most heart-warming toast at the reception. Having been deprived of TV for so long, I spent much of the evenings flipping through the cable channels at the hotel, one of which in particular was showing scandisk results. You really have to wonder sometimes what cable companies are offering with their ultra gold premium 1000-channel package… Anywayz, this past week has also been well-flavored with social engagements, including a lunch with some labmates at Bertucci’s, a dinner with my soon-to-be-intern buddies at the Peach Farm, and even several games of 8-ball at Jillians, which I’ve been thirsting for in a long time. Though next week will probably get more busy at work, it will not water down my excitement since Melody will be returning to me for good in just one week! =D

Since all my friends are about to graduate, I thought it would be appropriate to include this hilarious comic detailing the 12 types of med students, courtesy of my girlfriend who sent me the link. The artist is actually a Pediatrics intern in New York City who authors the ScutMonkey website. What kind of med student are you?

Memorial Day weekend goes by in a flash when you work through all three days. The month of May has been relatively quiet since I’ve been mostly working in near-seclusion helping my PI with an NIH grant. Life has generally been the same old eat-sleep-work cycle, though sadly, work continues to dominate. In fact, I’ve pretty much given up on correcting my schedule. I’ve gotten used to trekking out to work in the middle of the night and walking against the flow of interns and residents in the morning when I go home. The one highlight of the month was a weekend visit from Melody. Though the trip was too short and much of it was spent apartment hunting in preparation for her upcoming move, it provided a much needed day off for me. Otherwise, the few chances I’ve had to pop my head out of my shell have been for grub, including what has become a regular pilgrimage with the guys to visit the sushi buffet and hibachi overlord at Minado, a visit to the TGI Fridays on Newbury for Savita’s birthday, and Jasper White’s Summer Shack for a pre-graduation gathering with some of my other friends. Now that the grant is near completion, I’ll be looking forward to some reprieve from the hard work.

For all you out there who’ve been waiting so long and patiently for my scintillating updates, I’m happy to report that I’ll be rolling out with a new and improved version of my website tomorrow morning. While the new site retains most of the cosmetics of the original design, the basic structure has been fleshed out to incorporate a heavily-modified version of a freeware PHP script called CuteNews. This overhaul was initiated mainly in response to suggestions from friends, though I’ve been putting this off for a while to avoid the headache of writing all the necessary codes. But thanks to our friends at CutePHP, I’ve been able to add several new features to my site with relatively little effort. The most important but probably least noticeable is the ability to post comments for each of my updates, which will finally make this page a true blog. Both new and archived posts will no longer be stored by html, but in data files to be accessed by PHP scripting. I’ve also converted the old forum back into a guestbook, and have added a text search function to look up archived postings. And just to add a bit of pizzazz, I designed an animated version of the logo for the welcome page with Adobe ImageReady. Anyway, since it’s been more than a month since my last update, I’ll have more to report on life in my next post. In the meantime, feel free to post any helpful suggestions, bug reports, criticisms, or just random thoughts!

While walking to the cafeteria in Children’s Hospital yesterday to grab a quick bite for lunch, I ran into this gizmo wandering down the hall. It appears to be an automated cleaning machine with proximity sensors to navigate the hallways, and a smiley face and colorful headlights to attract small children into its path of destruction. In other news, my brutal lab schedule continues to take its toll on my day-to-day life. Last week, I fell asleep while waiting for a pot of pork stew to cook, and for those of you familiar with this Chinese recipe, you can probably guess what happens to hard-boiled eggs when left on the stove unattended – they explode. When I woke up, I beheld the awesome view of pieces of burnt eggs and pig flying in every direction, with splatters along the kitchen walls and ceiling marking the target of their trajectories. It would’ve been a great addition to Glenn’s Believe-It-Or-Not gallery of camera-phone captures (bomb-squad, ducks, etc.), but I was too busy scrubbing the kitchen and cursing myself to have considered such an idea. Adding to the insult, my garbage disposal also decided to conk out last week, which wasted me a good hour before I figured out how to manually turn the flywheel with an allen wrench and remove this doodad, which I can think of no other word to describe, nor imagine how it came to be inside in the first place. In fact, I’ve been spending so little time at home now compared to lab that when I walked out the back door last week to dump the trash, I walked right into a spider web! Stumbling away from what I was sure would have sealed my doom, I left home wondering if that daddy-long-leg we shot at the week before had other eight-legged-friends in high places (high as in the food chain). Gotta keep my eye out for these bloody entrapments in the meantime…