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.