{"id":5985,"date":"2024-02-18T01:42:36","date_gmt":"2024-02-18T08:42:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.xephalon.net\/updates\/?p=5985"},"modified":"2024-07-05T08:47:31","modified_gmt":"2024-07-05T15:47:31","slug":"dragon-year-tears-cheers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.xephalon.net\/updates\/2024\/02\/18\/dragon-year-tears-cheers\/","title":{"rendered":"Dragon Year, Tears, and Fears"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a>Both Westley and I were lucky to have extended birthday celebrations this year. We kicked off Westley’s day with the Deas over pho<\/a> and boba<\/a>, then drove down to Sausalito with Melody for a romantic bayfront overnight stay<\/a>. We watched families disembark their seaplane adventures<\/a> then dined at Fish<\/a>, where we were reminded of our visit there 6 years ago<\/a>. We jotted our memory again browsing shops and galleries in Sausalito next morning, but were disappointed by bonsai hunting<\/a> and lunch<\/a> in Berkeley. Fortunately, my actual birthday dinner was tasty<\/a>, and I even got treats from my lab<\/a>, technician<\/a>, and scribe<\/a> to round out the week. After celebrating the return of Pooja’s<\/a> lunch buffet next weekend, I flew to Palm Springs for the Macula Society<\/a> meeting. Renting a car<\/a> to the resort<\/a> made financial and logistical sense, and allowed me to rush back for Westley’s birthday dinners over more pho<\/a> and lemongrass pork rolls with E3. His celebration continued through Chinese New Year as we rang in the Year of the Dragon and our lunar birthdays collecting a dragon tear<\/a> and completing his Wing Gundam<\/a>. We even donated paper dragons<\/a> to Catalyst Kids<\/a> to share the fun with his class. My next trip this month was a visit to Abbvie<\/a>. The proximity of their campus to the airport<\/a>, hotel<\/a>, and restaurant<\/a> kept the trip short and focused, allowing me to squeeze in clinic on Valentine’s Day before flying to NYC that night. The early hotel<\/a> check-in didn’t provide much time to rest after my red-eye. I joined my friend Meenakashi for artisan pizza at Jean-George’s abc kitchen<\/a>, yawned through my meetings and talk at Mt Sinai<\/a>, then socialized with the faculty over a cozy dinner at Pascalou<\/a> before staying up late to prep my lecture next morning. By the time I was done touring NYEE<\/a> with the chair and filling on Soothr’s<\/a> lunch special, I was ready to conk out. I somehow still managed to flip through vacation photos and chow down on a whole suckling pig<\/a> with my parents before passing out for 12 hours. I felt refreshed Saturday snacking through Brooklyn Chinatown with my parents. Despite being fooled by fuzhou-style XLB<\/a> and tiring on pineapple bun<\/a> comparisons, we were greeted by an exhilarating lion dance heading into Ji Bei Chuan<\/a> for their lychee shrimp balls, brown sugar rice cakes, and signature fish maw and beef brisket rice noodles. Sadly, my luck turned south when my return flight<\/a> got delayed by 5 hours and I learned that my R01<\/a> submission was not discussed. As my anxiety set in for an inauspicious year, I will keep my fingers crossed for my fortune to change in the near future.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Both Westley and I were lucky to have extended birthday celebrations this year. We kicked off Westley’s day with the Deas over pho and boba, then drove down to Sausalito with Melody for a romantic bayfront overnight stay. We watched … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5985","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.xephalon.net\/updates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5985","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.xephalon.net\/updates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.xephalon.net\/updates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.xephalon.net\/updates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.xephalon.net\/updates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5985"}],"version-history":[{"count":20,"href":"https:\/\/www.xephalon.net\/updates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5985\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6185,"href":"https:\/\/www.xephalon.net\/updates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5985\/revisions\/6185"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.xephalon.net\/updates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5985"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.xephalon.net\/updates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5985"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.xephalon.net\/updates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5985"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}