Muhahahahahahahahaha.


That is all.

This is from an fMRI study I participated in last December. Awesome! Check out my parietal lobes...gotta love the expansion of the primary motor cortex and primary somatosensory cortex due to playing musical instruments. The cerebellum looks yummy, like a walnut. Gawsh, how I love my brain. I'm gonna see if I can blow it up and put it on my wall. ^_^

I'd forgotten how pretty a sunrise can be. I just watched the sun climbing over the rooftops as I waited for the bus, and oh boy, was it beautiful. I just stood there, unmoving, as the sun slowly rose from the horizon and cast its light and warmth over me. I basked in the glory until it got too bright for me, and I reluctantly turned my eyes to the ground again.

I can't believe I miss the sunrise every day because I am too busy looking out for the bus or worrying about the million little things I have to had done before going to school. Just a friendly reminder to all of you--don't be so busy that you miss things like this. I promise to myself that every day, at least for the 5-10 min it takes for the bus to get to my stop, I will stop worrying and just enjoy what's around me.

Lately I've been having a recurrent dream about sinkholes. I don't know exactly when they started, but they always start with one first sinkhole collapsing, then a whole network of them crumbling as well. In every dream, the first sinkhole gets bigger and bigger--it started out as roughly 10ft, but now it's a whole city block that gets swallowed. I'm always with three people--a man and two boys--but I don't know who they are. In the latest dream, one of the boys had a hamster in a tube strapped to his arm. We were avoiding sinkholes, then we had to stop by a convenience store to get hamster food. WTF. Does anyone know what sinkholes in a dream mean?

Weather update: FUCKING HOT. It's going to be 101F today, although right now it's a pleasant 63F morning. I better call teh bf's before it gets too hot because dammit, no bike and no DS makes for a very bored neko, and if you add the heat to that I will become a VERY PISSY neko.

I've been very busy the past couple of weeks, so I haven't blogged about China yet. Well, here's the photo-blog!

( Lots of pics! )

More China pics in my Picasa album. Check them out, they're very pretty!

In other news, teh bf is in Canada, I got a Nintendo DS + two games for very cheap and am currently addicted, I just had a midterm, I'm having a folding bike ride on Saturday, and teh bf is coming home Sunday! Back to my busy life!

Behold my latest architectural love: monolithic dome houses. What are they? A "super-insulated, steel reinforced concrete structure used for homes" and other stuff. Now, many people would balk at the thought of living in an igloo-shaped blob of mud, but if well-executed, these domes can be aesthetically pleasing AND energy saving. But wait, there's more! They're also pretty much natural disaster-proof, as shown by this dome that survived a wildfire-beleaguered SoCal and was even used as shelter by firefighters!

My absolute favorite one? The Dome of a Home in Florida. Check out the pictures--they are absolutely stunning. This place is huge, awesome, and it survived major hurricanes with minor damages. The only drawback is that it's in Florida. Eeeeurgh. Build one in NorCal and it would be perfect. Floor-plan wise, I like the 2 floor, 4-bedroom (one room says mech room, but I say it's a bedroom), 2.5-bathroom Orion, which is a more sensible size, or the Calisto, which has 4-bedrooms and 2-bathrooms but one-floor. My little interior decorator brain portion is whizzing with ideas on how to fill these houses up with beautiful and cozy accouterments. Must try in the Sims!!

Of course--darn it--these houses are expensive, but not as expensive as I thought they'd be. I accessed the estimate part of the monolithic dome website, and the estimate for an Orion-type house was about $290,000. Knowing how these projects go above estimate, I 'd say the real cost is about $330,000. Factor in the cost of an empty plot of residential land--say, $100,000-150,000--and you'll get a house that costs 430-480k, which we'll round up to the nice even value of $500,000. Say, $560,000, including all the furniture and appliances. That's not bad, considering the current state of SoCal real estate prices.

Oh well. Until I'm gainfully employed, I cannot indulge my architectural and interior design fancies. Come to think of it, even if I am gainfully employed, I might not be able. *sigh*

Remember the brand Derelicté from the movie Zoolander? Well, designer Jeremy Scott decided to do something similar. Oooh, I think that trashcan hat paired with the wrench earrings will catch on. *rolls eyes*

Speaking of derelict, my mum says my room looks like a garbage can. Does that make me Oscar the Grouch? If so, I shall keep my room this way!! Just kidding. As of now, I can hardly walk in my room because all the stuff is still on the floor and not in the cabinets. I'm not quite sure how to set up my room yet, so everything is a tangled, piled up mess of blah.

( The tangled mess of blah! )

Oh, and I'm in the closet. I mean, I'm sleeping in it. Here's what my bed --or rather, mattress, since I have no bedframe yet--looks like:



Note the clothes hanging overhead, and the tangled wires near the foot. In the old apartment, it was quite likely that I would die because of strangulation or electrocution because there were sockets at the head and right side of my bed, so wires crisscrossed my sleeping space. Now, I'm likely to die of suffocation, in the event that one of the dresses fall from the hanger and smother me in my sleep, or the old standby, electrocution. I can't move the mattress anywhere else though, as there really is no space. Great. I have to do something about this.

Will post pics of the room after I clean it up, but don't expect it to be anytime soon. I have a stats exam coming up, and studying takes precedence over having a clean room. Won't you agree?

Oh, and lolsecret of the day:

To the socially challenged people out there: If you want to make friends, buy a cool bike and lug it around town. Seriously, it works.

I took my new Kent Ultralite to school today, and I got a lot of friendly comments about how neat it was, how odd it looked, and how cool that it could fold. Two Metro Rail drivers talked to me about other people they saw with folding bikes, other bikers smiled and nodded, and the general populace was curious about it. I got stares rolling down Hollywood and Sunset, and a distinguished old gentleman actually joked about giving him the bike in exchange for him giving me directions. It really is a great icebreaker when someone comes up to you and asks "where did you get that?" or "what is that odd contraption?"

Having all those friendly people approach me almost, *almost*, makes me feel better for killing myself trying to study and move stuff and do chores.

Lugging the bike around everywhere isn't bad either, as I can roll it easily if I keep the seat post up. I think I can bring it to class with me, with the probable exception of Wednesdays, where I'll be in a small conference room on the 6th floor of a building. I will get a bike lock just in case I want to leave my tangled mess of parts somewhere, but I think the convenience of zipping around campus and between transit stations is worth having my bike stick by my side at all times.

My legs hurt though, as I'm not used to biking anymore. Oh well. Here's to incredibly toned legs after a couple of weeks.

Ok, back to torturing myself. *cracks open psych books*


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Baby, I found Rom's sonata! Will transcribe if I have time, or I'll give it to you if you wanna do the transcribing in your free time.

Wait, we have no free time. We know whose fault that is--Stuyvesaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaant!!

To those who haven't watched The Caveman's Valentine, DO SO NOW!! Especially you, tomatoerin, as it has the most accurate portrayal of schizophrenia I've ever seen in a movie. Besides, Samuel L. Jackson as a schizophrenic, genius musician troglodyte is amusing.

"I'm not homeless. I live in a cave." ~Romulus Ledbetter

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Well, now that I've figured out how to avoid the hobo-, screaming middle schoolgirl-, and traffic-ridden areas of LA (just take the subways; much faster, less crowded, doesn't stop every 10sec to let someone on or off, and used mostly by yuppies), my daily slog to UCLA and back isn't as bad anymore. It's quite pleasant and relaxing, actually. People-watching is fun when said people are not squished up against your face, making you breathe in their noxious fumes, like perfume--I get fits of asthma when exposed to strong ones. I don't have to engage in idle chit-chat with vanpool/carpoolmates, and if someone I don't want to talk to chats me up in the bus, I can pretend not to know the language they're speaking. If something interests me on the way, I can hop off the bus and explore, unlike in a vanpool/carpool. I can do my homework and assigned readings in peace (albeit a little bumpy). Best of all, there is free wifi on some buses so I can surf the internet for around 30mins while stuck in traffic. Free intarnetz is always good, yes?Another good thing about finding a proper commuting route is that I've shaved off about an hour from my daily slog. I left the house at 7:30am today, and got to Ucla at around 9:30am. That's 2 hours instead of the 3+ it would've taken me had I taken the long and torturous bus ride. Phew. Time saved = Energy saved = Money saved, etc.

And now for random link-pimping, since I'm at UCLA early and am waiting for my slot at the choral auditions to start:

Microwave Popcorn is Bad for You ~> Guess what? That "butter" flavor in your nuked popcorn isn't butter! Wow, I didn't know that! *sarcasm* What I didn't know though is that it's actually diacetyl, which can cause bronchiolitis obliterans with organizing pneumonia. EEEP. I'm never eating that stuff again--I'll make the popcorn the old fashioned way on the stove, I swear!

Someone please buy me a bunch of stuff from here, particularly this, this, and this. Of course you'll have to buy me a car to stick them on too.

I'm currently looking for a folding bike to help me commute, because I have to walk around campus and downtown LA carrying a 10-20lb bag every day--not cool. I'm thinking of getting one of these from ebay, providing the price doesn't go over $100.

UPDATE:

On the bus, taking advantage of the free internet again. Go public transportation!

I got into the choir, as expected. What I didn't expect was Professor Donald Neuen, the choir director, openly praising my voice and asking if I was a music grad student (no, I'm not; it's the glasses, I tell you. The "grad school" glasses. Oh, and the fact that I sightread the music using my tuning fork while he was talking to his TA). Um, yay, I guess? I name-dropped Mr. Rogers, Mt. Suck's choral director, and Prof Neuen said, "oh, I know him, so that's why." Oh, the fringe benefits of being a former Chamber Singer, I guess, even if it was only for a day.

Weather right now is amazing--it's overcast and slightly chilly, and really light showers fall from time to time. It's a wonderful, wonderful day.