kangawu

3/4 an MD! (I guess that makes me an M|?) Now people are going to expect me to be marginally more competent, whoops.

Now onto more standardized tests and then applications and interviews...again :(

But more importantly, it's warm...er in Boston (it's in the 40s after wind chill today!) which means the spring/summer food trucks/farmer's market/art stalls are baaaaaaack this Sunday.

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STILL ALIVE, haven't technically caught any babies yet but have caught a few placentas! Spoilers: they're as gross as you think they are.

Other things that have come up since starting OB:

1) I never want to be pregnant and/or give birth

2) How do people have more than one kid?

3) Related to 1 and 2, I have a daily desire to call my mom and tell her thank you for giving birth to me, especially since I'm the second child.

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Yesterday, my sister and I went to the Harvard Museum of Natural History and the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology! ...I guess we also accidentally toured most of the Harvard undergraduate campus along the way when we got lost (thank goodness for smartphones and GPS) but more importantly, glass flowers! They were super impressive! There was also an exhibit with some glass marine life, including octopi :D Sadly, no cuttlefish but oh well.

Definitely one of the highlights of this weekend was when, today for brunch/lunch, we discovered that there's a restaurant in Boston that makes ♥ stinky tofu ♥ Delicious nostalgia :9

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My sister is in town this weekend so our plans are for lots of sightseeing but more importantly, lots of food. In that vein, I walked the whole Freedom Trail today! :D And also got gelato because it's always gelato weather, even if it snowed the night before.

And last night we made Asian beef noodle stew with a side of stuffing because we're the best at Thanksgiving.

ALSO she crocheted me a blue scarf that has the Hylian Royal Family emblem on one end and then the lobster on Link's pajamas from Wind Waker on the other. BEST SCARF EVER 8D

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Just got back from watching The Book of Life, which was excellent! It's a movie based on/about Día de Muertos/the Day of the Dead that's really cute and thoroughly enjoyable even if the overall plot isn't omgshocking.

The characters are great (including my favorite lady of the many awesome ladies) and while the lyrics to some of the songs aren't the best, they're still cute and I enjoyed the melodies. Also, the Spanish versions are terrific.

Everyone should go watch it! *_*

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Today was my last morning of waking up before 4am, at least until OB/GYN at the end of the year! Now I just have to make it through the test on Friday and then I'll have a legitimately free weekend before internal medicine starts. \o/

I actually enjoyed my surgery rotation a lot more than I thought I was going to, in large part because the team for my second four weeks was amazing. So many role models I would want to work with for the rest of the year (and forever) ♥ I haven't ruled surgery out completely (although I don't think I'm enough of a morning person to do it for life) and I'm also glad I got the school year off to such a positive start. :3

...also I need to cook this weekend to make it up to my roommate since I've been too tired to really do anything domestic besides wash dishes for the past two months. :D;;;

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Things I have learned on my clinical rotation so far: I'm pretty sure I'm too short to hang things on the taller/average IV stands (before I could get creative about how to hold the bag, the resident noticed and hung it for me).

...obviously I've learned other things, but practical ramifications of being short :(

ETA: And then on Friday I learned that you can adjust their height! CRISIS AVERTED \o/

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OH RIGHT I should probably post about this so people I haven't died on know why I'm even less active than usual.

I finished my second year of med school (yay)! But right now I'm in the middle of my intensive one month study period for step 1 of the licensing exams, which is a huge part of determining where you end up for residency. Think the SAT or MCAT only on steroids (you can wiki USMLE if you're feeling masochistic but basically there's a reason all medical schools give students at least a month of protected study time). Older students/doctors usually not-so-fondly refer to it as "the worst x weeks of my life" SO YEAH. Aside from sporadic email/text checking when I do online practice questions, I basically only use the internet for a bit after I wake up and before I sleep.

tl;Dr general internet hiatus until mid-May. And then a week of freedom until third year starts and I'm thrown into surgery so you won't see me very often over the summer either

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We went to Taipei 101 this morning to walk around and take pictures (though hilariously most of the stores weren't open yet. We were not crazy enough to want to go/stay closer to the new year's countdown but they were already setting up for some sort of performance a few blocks down and there was some singing happening...and then they did a cover of Call Me Maybe and I cracked up.

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I just barely survived my first authentic 12 course Asian wedding banquet @_@ (and I technically cheated because I didn't even eat some of the courses, plus I was way too full when the cake arrived) It was also my first time eating shark fin soup, although I only tried a bite of the actual fin (very rubbery).

In unrelated vacation news, I finished A Link Between Worlds today! Excuse you Yuga, I am way prettier than some of the sages :B

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I am 3/8 of a doctor ☆*･゜ﾟ･*\(^O^)/*･゜ﾟ･*☆ Also 1/4 of a century but that's less exciting

I have also cleaned the apartment and done laundry so now it's time to be unproductive for the rest of the evening! And tomorrow evening I will be back home with my parents :3 In a few days more I'll be in Taiwan to see my relatives, be force-fed lots of delicious food, play A Link Between Two Worlds and sadly, do a little bit of studying.

Anyway HOW HAVE OTHER PEOPLE BEEN, now that I am alive once more on the internet?

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I just got back from The Legend of Zelda: Symphony of the Goddess, Second Quest. IT WAS AMAZING and I bought a poster and T-shirt. (∩˃o˂∩)♡

They started with the general overture, which had clips from most/all the games (including cucco deaths, of course). Then because the 20th anniversary for Link's Awakening was this summer, they did a special piece for that! Ocarina of Time was the next song, followed by Spirit Tracks and then the intermission. After that was a short piece about the creation of Hyrule. Then they did Gerudo Valley, Twilight Princess and Wind Waker (with new footage from the HD version!) before closing with A Link to the Past because A Link Between Worlds is coming out soon.

For encores, they did Majora's Mask (hence my subject line), then an all-new arrangement of Dragon Roost Isle and THEN A THIRD ENCORE of Ballad of the Goddess (with other songs from Skyward Sword) because the new (?) poster features it.

Also before the concert started and during intermission they had recordings of environmental music from various games playing. Hidden Village came up a lot :D

There were also a lot of people dressed up, including a guy who was playing his ocarina outside of the hall before the concert started. There was also someone dressed as the mailman from Majora's Mask, including his little flag on a stick.

BEST NIGHT EVER \o/

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Animated movie songs sung in their actual language.

The soundtrack starts with Hellfire in French, talk about awesome.

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- Done with my first year of med school! \o/
- Going home on Saturday for the summer, yay California!
- Elementary finale tonight, I am going to die
- Met up with omg_its_fiore for lunch and wandering (including bubble tea) in Chinatown today! Our previous appointment was postponed because of the lockdown, so this was awesome
- Related to my second point, now I need to clean and pack...

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BACK IN BOSTON, the Met and the Natural History museum were as awesome (DINOSAURS) and huge as everyone said they would be. We also went to Chinatown and had lunch at Teariffic, and then made good decisions on a sleety day by having visiting the Chinatown Ice Cream Factory. Egg custard ice cream and lychee sorbet are delicious no matter what the weather is :9

More importantly, this animated Skyward Sword cake is amazing. I want those parents in my life ;w;

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In New York for spring break! I'm visiting friends, doing tourist-y things, and also being dragged to restaurants by said friends.

On Saturday I went to Harry Potter: the Exhibition at the Times Square Discovery Center, as well as Spy: the Secret World of Espionage. They were pretty fun, with lots of cool movie trivia and gadgets! I also ate at Five Guys for the first time, which was indeed full of deliciously huge helpings of fries. We also visited the Nintendo Store, and I am two for two at timing it for when they have a Zelda exhibit going on :3 Bought a Zelda T-shirt, a Hylian shield-shaped mint tin and OoT for the 3DS.

Sunday involved meeting up with more people for a late lunch at BonChon, impromptu karaoke and then dinner. Still can't sing, but it was fun :3

I dragged two lovely patient people with me all the way out to the Bronx Zoo on Monday. Some of the animals weren't out because it was too cold, but we saw a bunch of others! The polar bear was adorably sleepy, the tigers were awesome, and the peacocks just wandered around the whole park like they owned it.

Most of the day today was spent lazing around and recovering after the zoo, but we wandered around Brooklyn for a little in the afternoon. We met up with a bunch of others at Max Brenner's for dinner because they were all horrified when they heard I'd never eaten there. It was expensive but delicious! I also had churro fondue for the first time, which is one of the best things ever.

Things that are hopefully happening later this week: the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the American Museum of Natural History, and at least one visit to a Wafels and Dinges waffle truck.

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Apparently medical school is a never-ending cycle wherein we spend a block going "oh my god how are we going to learn all this information ahhhhhhhh" and then after we take the test and start the next section, we immediately want to go back to the previous block, how did we ever think it was that bad etc etc.

This realization brought to you by our intensive Neuroscience block, in which our midterm is based on 27 lectures, 3 labs, 3 discussions and is exactly two weeks from the time the class starts.

Also today one of my classmates compared the preserved brain smell to the pool-chlorine smell and said he kind of liked it.

ON A LESS COMPLAIN-Y NOTE, barring terrible weather (please no) I will be back in California for two weeks starting the evening of my midterm. CALIFORNIA WEATHER YAY '-' I'm also planning to bring my stethoscope+stuff back so I can practice things like blood pressure on people.

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Whoops, haven't updated in a while. To provide a brief summary of the past 11.5 weeks of medical school, have a sampling of my gchat statuses from the past month or so:

(ﾉಥ益ಥ）ﾉ Anatomyyyyy
ヘ（。□°）ヘ WHAT IS MOTIVATION
CROSS-SECTIONAL ANATOMY, MY NEMESIS щ(ಥДಥщ)

...you can probably sense a theme, and also that I have turned to adorable Japanese emoticons to express my feelings. BUT YES, almost 3 months and 5 exams later, medical school hasn't won the academic fight (yet) but it's sure doing its best. More sadly, my suitemate and I have reached the point where we're too stressed to stress bake. :'(

On the positive side, my classmates are awesome (dorky jokes everywhere, also someone brought their N64 and I failed horribly at 007 for the first time ever), I went to a video game concert, I shadowed a doctor on Columbus Day, I gave a ton of undergrads their flu shots a few weeks ago (:3), and we get our stethoscopes+diagnostic kits the day before Halloween >)

And now, back to studying for my second anatomy test on Monday. ᕦ(ò_óˇ)ᕤ

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SORRY INTERNET, I have been shamefully neglecting you again. In preparation for starting school in two weeks, I've spent the last month-and-change binge-replaying video games 8D; I did uh...

- poked around a little on Ocarina of Time (N64 version) but got distracted after beating the child dungeons.
- replayed some of Trauma Center: Second Opinion before remembering how much I hate some of the GUILT (TRIANGLES)
- replayed some of Trauma Team; I was going to replay everything but then I remembered how much I suck at endoscopy and how annoying orthopedics can get. I DID ALL THE OTHER SPECIALTIES THOUGH
- messed around in Kirby's Epic Yarn because adorable ♥ Even if some of the mini-games get incredibly enraging
- replayed Twilight Princess because wolf Link ♥
- replayed Baten Kaitos: Origins because I love these games :C
- replayed Skyward Sword on Hero Mode again because apparently I'm still a masochist. I got the Hylian Shield but didn't get all the Heart Pieces because screw you, Fun Fun Island and Fledge's mini-game >(

...and then my sister dared me to do a run-through of Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance using only Ike and Soren. She graciously allowed me to do it on easy mode and to use pre-promotes as packhorses to hold items. And then because things were going so well (also Soren promoted at chapter 9 or something), she also let me add Volke to the team. And then I decided that we'd never used Stefan before so WHY THE HELL NOT plus it would give Soren a support chain (...I removed Astra after one chapter).

( Highlights under the cutCollapse )

AND NOW I should probably do more packing...later.

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SO starting randomly this afternoon, I haven't been able to access Livejournal at all. Firefox gives me the error message "The connection was reset. The connection to the server was reset while the page was loading." (and so on); it doesn't work in IE or Chrome either. I tried stuff like clearing my cache/cookies, flushing my DNS and...a lot of things I found after googling online that I've already forgotten. :|a I can access the site if I use a proxy but that's kind of useless for doing things logged in.

8(!!!!

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