Food, friends, fun, and SURP!

I am going to attempt to write every day and post every week just like Europe because this summer should be fun. Note, this will probably turn into a food blog.

May 22- 29

Move-in day was crazy. At the Palladium, there were 300 people moving in, lots more checking-out, and only one person on reception. After Susana’s parents dropped me off I waited for two hours in line before checking in. The rooms are pretty nice, there’s a living room, kitchen, bathroom, shared with 2 double bedrooms. My roommate was already here and she is in the same program as me, so it should be cool. I walked around the street a bit after getting settled in and it’s such a nice location. There are fruit markets, random food carts, Walgreens, Trader Joe’s etc. right downstairs! I keep forgetting the convenience of living in a big city.

Living Rooms

Bathroom

Bedroom

Walk-in closet! 

I went with Meng Tao ayi, her family, and two other people my age for dinner at a Turkish place after they came to drop off some stuff. A city like NYC makes people want to dress up; everyone looked nice but me because I was wearing jeans. The two people, one was studying photography and the other fashion, so I was left out with science haha. All my life I’ve been surrounded by science, I have actually never hung out with the type of people that were in art, so different than Rochester people. The table conversations were interesting, but I wish I was understood more art/design/etc!

First day of ‘internship’ was long, but interesting. I got to meet everyone else in the program, there’s 12 and apparently 600 applied. Haha, I’m really surprised I got in. We just talked a lot in general, got fed like crazy, and got our IDs. I tried finding my mentor at the end, but he wasn’t around, so I just left. Jane and I then went shopping at SoHo, we found so many cute dresses but decided it wasn’t worth it until we really liked it and would wear it haha. We’re such cheap college students. We then went to a Kung Fu Tea, it was so good! I just got a plane black tea bubble tea, but the bubbles were sweet and the black tea + milk was awesome. We also went to Sarita’s Macaroni & Cheese for dinner, it was so good as well! It’s just basically different styles of baked mac and cheese, I got Cajun and Jane got curry. I definitely recommend those places.

Cajun mac n cheese

Place with best bubble tea ever

My mentor is an interesting character to say the least lol. His is such a night owl that he starts work at noon and ends whenever he feels like it, then goes to bars or something like that. He treated me to lunch at this nice café and talked about the various projects going on. However, I feel like he doesn’t have much for me to do this summer, which really sucks. I was planning to learn a lot, but we’ll see how it goes. I read his publications for five hours in the lab and it all dealt with crowding. After that I went to SoHo again and then I met up with Jane to go eat at the NYU dining center, the food wasn’t that bad! They even had a waffle maker haha. We then headed to Times Square to write some postcards, be tourists, and go shopping. The last time I came to Times Square was probably when I was nine, the place is so lively!

I went to Maoz for lunch today and had a huge falafel loaded with all the toppings I wanted. It was this little shop with a line that went into the streets. However, the falafel were a bit dry, but together with the toppings it tasted great. I went to work at 4pm today because that’s when our group meetings were. It was really interesting because there are four high school students working there this summer and I think only 2 PhD students, so I was up there in terms of knowledge. From the discussions, it was very clear that college course helped a lot, obviously. However, there are not a lot of projects going on and I am having a hard time thinking of starting a project. I feel like there’s so much covered in the visual area that I do not know what to research. Anyway, I met with some SURP people for dinner and we walked around a bit. After that, we went to the famous waffle cart because I’ve been tracking it and I finally got to eat the speculoos spread mmmmmm! Also, the gym here is super nice, it even has a rock climbing wall. I wanted to take a picture of it, but it would be a bit weird haha.

Waffle Cart

Maoz

I talked with my mentor for two hours today at a coffee shop about my project and I finally have a topic! I will be collaborating with Jordan, a PhD student at Harvard, doing a separate part of a big study. To keep it short, Jordan already started a study on how we learn and read letters, both by component and as a whole. People were much faster at learning novel letters as a whole. They submitted the paper, but it got sent back because something was missing. What I am doing is adding onto this study, and conducting experiments on objects, so it will sort of be how we recognize objects, not letters. This will hopefully add another dimension onto the paper for it to be published! I’m so excited to get started! Anyway, Jane and I went to a bhangra dance part at Brooklyn Bridge Park. It was so much fun, but at the end I still couldn’t bhangra L The park was really pretty at night with a view of the river and Manhattan. We basically danced for 3 hours straight. What a workout!

Finally Friday! I woke up 9am to go to a safety orientation then we had a SURP lunch with Dr. Chiye Aoki giving a talk about how GABA causes moody teenagers. It was really interesting. For dinner, I ate at Biryani cart and had kati rolls. I had two different kinds, one was SO GOOD, and the other was okay. Highly suggested!! I made macarons with Jane, but it failed for some unknown reason. She has made them before and they were perfectly fine, maybe it has to do with the oven, not us haha. We then went with her housemate to get Kung Fu bubble tea again, mmmm. I always end the day with food.

Fail macarons

Awesome Kati Rolls

Central Park

Saturday, I went to eat breakfast at a Polish restaurant called Neptune, it was very similar to American breakfast, but with really yummy bread. I then went to Seinfeld diner and Central Park with the SURP people. Central Park is so big, but it was a really nice walk. It felt nice being out of the city environment (even though it’s pretty much in the center).

Seinfeld Diner

 I then went to Long Island for the weekend. On the way there, we stopped at IKEA, which I kept hearing about, but it’s pretty cool and very cheap! For dinner, we went to this Chinese buffet, but it was so expensive $27 a person wtf, however the food was delicious.

Sunday, after breakfast I played tennis with Leo. It felt so refreshing to play again after all these years! After about half an hour, I started enjoying it more and more. I guess I was really tennis deprived in college haha. Unfortunately, it was way too hot, so we called it a day and went back to the house. Leo’s dad made dumplings, spinach/shrimp/pork filling, yum! I then headed to an outlet with Meng Tao a yi. That outlet has to be the biggest and most awesome/cheap/coolest one I’ve been to all my life. Everything was SO CHEAP. What a yi told me was that New York has the biggest discounts in America because of the thousands of people going to the outlets every day. I bought nice clothes that are usually $100 for $10, I mean seriously…lol, screw the random stores like Forever 21….haha. Anyway, at night we had a barbeque, cause it’s Memorial Day, and then walked along a pier. What an awesome day! I can’t believe it’s ONLY been a week since I moved in. 

Start of Summer

Ah, the start of summer. After reading the itinerary of my internship, I know I will learn so much this summer. There are lectures every week and something is always due every Friday. I am so glad I applied for this program and am very excited to see where it will lead me.

Currently it’s 3am and I’m sitting on the couch at Susana’s house. I’m staying with her family because my move-in day for NYU is after they kicked me out of GLC. Her family definitely reflects how she acts in real life, which is not a bad thing at all! They are all very fun and I think I’m slowly getting better at Cantonese. On a side note, it’s very cool that Sining and Jane will be here as well. It’s actually a nice feeling that we’ve all grown up so much and are all in a big city. It makes me feel very proud of us and gives a sense of accomplishment. We have definitely come very far, literally too.

Even though I’m in the city that never sleeps (wait…is that Vegas?). Uh…even though I’m in the Big Apple, I really have to try and focus on GRE and graduate school applications. These couple of days has been a good schedule and hopefully I’ll follow it after later with work added in. It goes: wake up, eat good food (including dimsum), go to library and study, Chinese pastry, go back to chill, eat more good food (Indian, home cooked meal, etc), watch TV, sleep. Obviously, you can tell that eating is very important in my life.

This is my first time actually ‘living’ in NYC and the first thing I have to mention is that the libraries here are so different than back home! They have many stories with security guards. You are not allowed to sleep or take your shoes off. They get mad at you over the slightest things and are pretty annoying. I also saw my first live protest. It was about how the city is cutting down on library funds by 25 million and that would result in the library opening only 3-4 days a week. People of all ages and ethnicities were there, waving signs in all different languages. It was really nice to see a community come together like that, despite all the cultural barriers in everyday life.

The last day before my move-in, I went with Susana’s family to a wedding. I believe this is called wedding crashing haha. Anyway, at first it was a bit awkward and boring because I knew no one, so I just sat there while everyone took pictures. Then, the good came. It was such good Chinese food! Anyway, there is a reason that I’m writing this. When it was everyone single’s turn to go up and catch, I went up, thinking I don’t want to catch this, I’m too young! However, somehow they threw it right at me and I had to catch it or it dropped to the ground lol. So, I didn’t know what happened next since the last wedding I went to was a while ago. They threw the garner and this random guy got it. He then had to put it on my leg with his mouth haha, it was so awkward, because he was kinda old. Later, I found out he was 27 and his name is Terry, so I guess it wasn’t too bad. The first thing he asked me was how old I am LOL, cause I guess I look like I’m 13. Anyway, everyone then danced a lot until almost midnight. It was the most interesting and fun experience this week haha, but I don’t wanna get married that soon. 

I have made a list of top 10 things I want to do this summer and hopefully it will be crossed off before I leave. In no particular order:

1.       Watch Broadway

2.       Watch a fashion show (I doubt this is likely…)

3.       Sew a tote bag

4.       Take nice pictures (especially at night: Brooklyn Bridge, Time Square after midnight, long exposure airplane in sky, etc.)

5.       Some museums like MoMA

6.       Six Flags New Jersey

7.       Skydive at Long Island

8.       Shop

9.       Eat: Try most of the famous cart foods and cool/interesting restaurants.

10.   Bake macarons

This is what happens when I actually make money during the summer L

Spring 2011

Besides freshman year and study abroad, this has definitely been one of the most fun semesters in college (which I guess makes it rank…4 out of 6 semesters? Lol). I met new friends, got closer with other friends, hung out more, and it was perfectly drama free.  

School

I think the reason I enjoyed this semester so much was because my classes did not include organic chemistry. Last year, I was so busy studying, I could not handle even the little things like going out to eat because thinking about not studying even stressed me out. This year, I took all the random classes that I needed to fulfill my major and pre-med requirements, linguistics, physics, comp sci, BCS. Although some were 200 level courses, I somehow easily managed to pull off a 3.7 and that is my highest GPA up to date. Hopefully it’ll get better from now on. J

Sigma

After being abroad for a semester, I realized that I was so busy last year I did not have a chance to be that involved. This year I took on three chairs, although they were very easy ones, and went to as many events as possible. I definitely got to know a lot of sisters much better and would like to know some of them more. It has been really nice being with them in and outside of Sigma events. I love all my sisters. They remind me of why I joined in the first place, it’s always nice to have them around and I know I can count on them when college is over and for more years to come.

CSA

I am so glad I was on Eboard for CSA, I have to say that I have learned so much organizing events with them. We definitely know how to have a good time, which includes a lot of food, while being on top of everything we do. These people are amazing and I am glad I got to know them this year. We’re pretty awesome.  I mean…we hung out with Wong Fu for a day! Being on Eboard is so much different than a member and I am very excited put together China Nite next year. I remember I was very indecisive on whether I wanted take the position, even during elections, but now I can say that I have put my mind to it and it will possibly be the highlight of my senior year.    

RICE

I love RICE crew! I have spent so much time with them this semester and learned a lot from everyone. Before I came to college, I always enjoyed dancing, but have never done any choreography. Meeting all these people and forming RICE are one of the highlights of my college thus far. Without them, I would have never found this passion for dancing. They are a group of amazing people that I love hanging out with. I have probably been with them more than anyone because of China Nite/Korea Night/AHM/Graduation performances but I enjoyed every single minute of it. Yes, even the 10 hour a day practices. After college, some of us may not have the opportunity to dance anymore, so I hope that next year we go all out and do some amazing stuff.

Life

Of course, there were some up and downs this semester, but mostly ups. I wish I had more hours in the day; there is so much I want to do before college is over. The only down side was that for a few months I wasn’t sure what to do with my life. Of course, most of my friends hit this stage with me at the same time. I guess I’ll call it…second semester junior crisis. Most of us are taking the GRE or MCAT or GMAT or something this summer and we are all afraid that we will not do well. If we don’t do well, everything we’ve worked for in college will be ruined. We would have to direct ourselves on another route to do something we may or may not want to do. That is the problem. However, I had amazing friends and family talk me through it and I just have to say I’m so grateful for everyone I have in my life.

I am so ready for summer adventures in NYC!