Best Birthday Present...

is the fact my living room finally has four walls again.




Otherwise, still standing ladies and gentlemen. Which is great for a mid-20 year old who knew he shouldn't have had that last shot of whiskey.

Also got this -

Happy Birthday Joel!


From all of us on The Facebook Team, have a great day!

Hole in the Wall Gang

Yes, I am back in Boston, had a wickedly unstressful med school interview, and came back from the Philippines without getting dengue fever, malaria, or an arranged marriage. I would like to talk about the still-class centered and familial structured society of the Philippines or the immense social upheaval that will happen if the newfound wealth there doesn't start get trickling to the poor majority. Or my current thesis project, which centers on characterizing a dual-knockout worm line.

But instead, let's discuss what I came home to in Boston. There had been construction on the back facade of my apartment building before I left. This is the email my roommate sent me two days before my flight back:

On 10/4/07, Matthew Lee wrote:
>
> Joel,
>
> You're not going to f$%#@ing believe this, but the wall of our
> living room just fell out. They've been removing brick all week
> and I guess they took out more than they should, so the wood
> and plaster just peeled off the building. I'm looking at
> night sky and scaffolding from desk as I'm writing to you.
> In fact, I can see the night lights on one of those skyscrapers
> downtown right now. I'll try to have some answers for you
> for what that means about living here in the mean time.
>
> Matt

This is my reply:

On 10/6/07, wrote:
>
>
> Matt, I come back to America to find out theres a fucking
> hole in the living room. What else is new?

This is what the back of my living room looks like:







The construction workers estimate it will take them 3-4 weeks to repair the whole thing. Even though I can still use the bathroom and kitchen, and my bedroom isn't actually connected to the living room, it is a pain not being able to use it to relax, sit on the couch, watch basic cable, or play my roommate's PS3...Wow, was that really all I did with the living room? Anyway, it has forced me to have to watch the MLB playoffs at bars. And the main drawback to that is I can't save money buying my own beer.

For pics from the Philippines, look at http://uchicago.facebook.com/p.php?i=2902956&k=4V1445UZ4XTA6DDDRE2Y

Honesty

Med School Interviewer: "So, what would you say are your weaknesses?"
Me:(Pauses. Thinks.) "Girls."
Med School Interviewer: (Laughs)"A lot of candidates wouldn't admit to having weaknesses."
Me:"Well, I know I'm human."

Magical Mystery Tour

I will be out of commission for a while, as I will be making several transcontinental flights this week. As much as I'd like to be able to tell my Bangladeshi post-docs idea of having Bush and Ahmadinejad just duke it out in an arena Battle Royal style to avoid a war, or how my next-door neighbor's stomach is revolting against her Indian heritage by making her sensitive to curry and tea, I'm afraid it will have to wait another day.

If you're wondering, I'm going to have a medical school interview at Louisville on Wednesday, followed by a straight trip to the Philippines, where graft and nepotism exist,but it plays in favor for my family.

This is what my schedule will be like for the next week:

Tuesday 9/25/07 4:45PM Leave Boston Logan Airport
6:30PM CST Arrive Chicago O'Hare
7:30PM Leave Chicago
10:00PM EST Arrive Louisville Airport
Wednesday 9/26/07 10:00AM Drive aunt to work
12:00 Noon Sign in at the University of Louisville School of
Medicine Office of Admissions
4:00PM Day of bliss ends
7:45PM Leave Louisville Airport
8:29PM Arrive Chicago O'Hare, again
9:20PM Leave Chicago
Thursday 9/27/07 12:30AM Arrive Boston Logan
12 Noon Leave Boston Logan, getting repetitive
2:02PM Arrive Detroit Airport
3:00PM Leave Detroit
Friday 9/28/07 10:45PM Arrive in Manila, Philippines
Saturday 9/29/07 5:00AM Leave Manila for heart of darkness in the Philippines
7:00AM Arrive in rural, feudal provinces
Thus, if you been adding this up, I'm in the air for over 30 hours this week (42 if you include the 12 hours I lose crossing the International Date Line). Which is probably the reason why I'm kissing sea level right now. At any rate, if you haven't heard any news of me leading a rebellion of syndicalists and getting myself named Grand Moff of the Philippines, I'll tell you guys how my travels went.

The Crazed Filipino Show

Last week, I started working in a laboratory in the Pharmacology department looking at transgenic worms carrying the encoded LRRK2 gene which is tied to ubiquitin degradation in Parkinson's disease. If anyone can point out how this is related to Pharmacology, please tell me.

So I went on a double date tonight: a high school classmate and her date, me and her sister. Hearing she had just gotten into college around Boston, I thought the sister was a freshman, though she turned out to be a junior transfer. Except does it still count as a double date if it was just me, my high school classmate and her sister when the date canceled? Especially since I paid for only the sister? And should I feel relieved and yet unadventurous the sister wasn't five years younger than me?

On for more sitcom situations: stay tuned as Joel has to go to two parties at the same. And the guest he encounters is hilarity!

Damn, I need a theme song.

Born in the Wrong Decade

Line from Pharmacology lecture today:

"Researchers found the receptors for THC, the active substance in marijuana, through active testing."

Another throwback from the 60's is this article from the Onion I keep on reading and wishing I was there when Slaughterhouse Five was first published.


15 Things Kurt Vonnegut Said Better Than Anyone Else Ever Has Or Will

You Can Take the Boy Out of the Ivory Tower...

I finished three secondary apps to medical school today (UIC, Tufts, and Drexel), when I looked over the essays I wrote and saw I referenced Socrates, Ray Bradbury, and Nathaniel Hawthorne. Do the med admission committees appreciate essays with footnotes?

Ironically, my secondary application to UChicago had only one quotation. Not from Durkheim or Nietzche, but Star Trek:TOS. If there is no one who gets that reference on the committee, I'm in the wrong field.

Better Homes and Gardens than Mine

So since I bought/was given for free half of old Shoreland East's furniture, I thought of showing what my room looked like now instead of clogging mailboxes with 360 KB worth of jpegs.

Here's my bed, with its low Japanese frame I bought for $20, oriented horizontally to the room as Vanessa suggested, which actually gives me the greatest amount of walking space and room for Poulos' old desk and my shelves and closet.




Now, time to stop procrastinating and do my secondaries since school doesn't begin till next week...or find some other activity to waste my time.

Guess I Should Stop Pissing Off Those Norse Gods

My reward for finishing the MCATs and not feel utterly broken:

9 medical secondary applications to fill out
$485 to pay out with said apps
3 neuro articles to read before I work in a Parkinson's disease lab
and 40 days to pack until a trip to the Philippines.

No wonder I want to be distracted by power tools, fire and alcohol.

Complete with a Ceiling Crawling Crack Baby

I've been up since 4 AM studying MCAT Chemistry and finished two Med School Secondary Applications. That was such a rush...(puts out cigarette on arm)...I'M ALIVE!!!!
And now I need a fifth of bourbon, a monkey wrench and a blowtorch.

Wonder Boy

Note: This is an old essay I wrote in high school that I recently found.

March 4, 2001


One October morning, I frequented the annual St. James Art Fair, which showcased local crafts and products. While I tried to conduct warmth to my benumbed fingers from a Styrofoam cup of coffee, I gazed at some Quechuan tapestries from Ecuador. The proprietor of the Ecuador stand must have mistaken me for a Hispanic, since he greeted me in Spanish and inquired if I came from South America. I replied no. After he named several other Latin American countries he thought I came from, I curtly retorted, " I'm Asian!" He uttered meekly "¡Ay! You're Asian; then you must be smart."
I contemplated first whether or not I actually did appear Latino. However, the fact that the vendor associated the word "smart" with my race flooded into my mind many thoughts and meditations. The stereotypical Asian has a high IQ, a superior mentality in mathematics and science, and an industrious, competitive and perfectionist work ethic. In short, everyone expects the Asians to be geniuses.
Of course, this view has misconceptions, and it seems racist to correlate Asians with intelligence. But, I too have enhanced this cliché by appearing as the cliché; in public I assume the prototype of the Asian whiz kid. I wear a conservative and unpretentious suit of turtlenecks and polo shirts. I talk in a smug and pretentious voice, as if I do know it all. I even opted to wear glasses instead of contacts because I thought glasses would amplify my highbrow persona. Thus, I have become what everyone thinks I am, a prodigy.
For all the regular people with average intelligence, I would like to apologize for making you look inferior. But, since my mother gave birth to me, my father has always craved a reason to boast about his son. My cousin had an astounding singing voice that my uncle would gloat about for hours. My envious father found no vocal or athletic talent in me; he almost accepted me as average when my kindergarten counselor had me take an Advance Program test and I scored in the top four percentiles. Now, my father brags about his genius son, with his high SAT score at age fifteen, his all A report card, and his thirty academic awards. I feel sometimes that I have not lived up to my father's image of me, but I must continue this illusion that I am some sort of genius. So, I enrolled in a nationally distinguished high school and have tried for the last three years to impress my doting father with academic accolades.
My parents did not put all of this anxiety on me alone. Society placed a great deal of pressure on this generation of teens. I know many of my peers feel overwhelmed by their expectations. Today's world requires everyone to be educated. Politicians habitually clash over the best way to improve education. College admissions have become highly competitive; the statistics from the College Board shows Ivy League schools like Harvard University only accepts 12% of the students who applied there, and approximately 30,000 high school seniors applied.
The title of genius has become more hallowed than before. In the 1980's, genius meant geek, nerd, Steve Urkel. Now, genius means Bill Gates and money. Naturally, I enjoyed when people called me an Einstein. So I carried on this façade by studying for tests four days ahead of time, by typing compositions over until they reached perfection, and by researching until I found the answer to a question. This reputation as a genius, I realized later, gained me nothing internally. I alienated people and made myself antisocial. I had no stable friendship and even those who tolerated me thought of me as a nuisance. When PSAT scores arrived, I became so irate that someone else's score was higher than mine that I forgot my score probably qualified me for the National Merit Scholarships. I berated myself for receiving a B+ in Advanced Placement Computer Science until it dawned that some people, like my friend Cynthia, cannot even turn on a computer without slapping it.
So, recognizing how much of pompous jerk I became, I lightened up. Out of character, I became the manager of the girls' basketball team my freshman year, but that is a different story. Today, I try to balance my intellectual side with my personal side. Sometimes, not wanting to sound condescending, I would say something irrelevant and quirky. I would rather people think of me as an amiable eccentric than an arrogant show-off.
In the classic movie The Wizard of Oz, the Scarecrow desperately wanted a brain, even though, he had no guarantee the Wizard would give him an exceptional brain. The Wizard might give him a retarded brain and the poor Scarecrow would have gone on thinking he was smarter than a flying monkey. Still, the Scarecrow did realize he lacked something most people, like me, take for granted. I empathize with the Scarecrow, afraid that I will not fit other peoples’ judgement of aptitude. But, I have learned the only person my intelligence can truly satisfy is myself, so I have begun to live without pressures or contention, and I think I have finally begun to enjoy life for the first time. Humanity can recognize me as a genius or a predestined Nobel Laureate if it wishes to, but I would like it to know me first personally rather than intellectually.

Don't Remember Having Personality DNA in the Lab...

Muggle's Lament

Actually I haven't had much time to do my secondaries since I've spent the past 11 hours sleeping and then prior to that 14 hours reading "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows." The sad thing is I was alerted that the book was on-sale at Walgreens by Victor after I had spent two hours waiting in line at Borders at midnight.

If you want a review of the book, look on Amazon. All I have to say is it is a fitting ending to a seven-volume series that for a lot of fans they've been following for twelve years. But WHY J.K. ROWLING, WHY, DO YOU HAVE TO RELEASE THE BOOK EVERY DAMN TIME I'M STUDYING FOR THE MCAT?

Secondary Colors

I received my first secondaries last week for med school, which puts into perspective that in the next six months, I will retake the MCATs, work in a Parkinson's disease lab, gather data to write a paper for a thesis committee to tear apart, write more secondaries and hopefully get interviews, TA for Histology and go to the Philippines for a week.

But like my grandpa said, "If this family could survive WWII, this family can do anything."
God bless his Japanese-hating bones.

The Lone Gunman

I am the last of Shoreland East.

Well, actually Tera Ellefson is here in Boston too, but of the original Kids, I am the last one since Poulus and Vanessa have returned to Chicago.

I tried to fill the void with work. That did not help.
I tried to fill the void with study. That did not help.
I tried to fill the void with drinking, clubbing, and making out with hot girls. That partially helped, but the fact the conversations I had always turned to MCATs, med school application, and Red Sox reminded me of what I was missing. Also, it didn't help that I am durnk.

Anyway, I remain in Boston for at least another academic year, so if anyone is visiting, call my cell (773-xxx-xxxx) or email me. Seriously, I'll be missing the conversation.

How I Feel About Summer Action Movies (or why is it that Keanu Reeves survived in "Chain Reaction" but the Asian Scientist got Shot)

Pretty much sums it up for me...

Crap... better start breeding.

Things I've been doing to procrastinate studying:

1. Change layout of blog.
2. Damning Science.
3. Look up old Onion articles.
4. Damning Science and Weathor, Evil God of Weather Chaos against Scav, again.

Study: Uneducated Outbreeding Intelligentsia 2-To-1

CHICAGO-In a report with dire implications for the intellectual future of America, a University of Chicago study revealed Monday that the nation's uneducated are breeding twice as fast and twice as often as its educated.

Adventures in Medical Bureaucracy

I'm afraid of becoming just another tool in a vast, convoluted and highly inefficient machine called health care. A great big tool.

I had to go to BU's Student Health Services to get an ear infection treated last week. First thing they had me do was get an MMR - because apparently different offices of BU don't share important student documentation, like their immunization records. So I wasted 20 minutes standing in line with international students for a vaccine which I later found out I was already up-to-date on.

Then they had me wait in the clinic for another 5 minutes for the doctor to prescribe that my ear be washed with a saline-water solution (apparently, it wasn't an infection, my ear canal was just clogged with wax). So I waited another 20 minutes in a clinic, which afterwards the nurse practitioner doused my ear canals with cold saline solution that while cleaned my ears put a lot of cold pressure on my ear drums and lead to me being dizzy, disoriented, and somehow on a bus going to Chestnut Hill.

The moral of this story: don't use Q-tips in the ear canals.

Inanimate Objects that Probably Hate Me If They Gained Life...

includes Vanessa's car, which in the past week, has undergone inadvertently thanks to me...
1) had a mattresses strapped to its top
2)accidentally had its doors tied up because of the strapped mattress, causing the driver and passenger to attempt to get in through the window (the driver succeeded).
3) was driving down Storrow Drive at about 10 mph below the speed limit, which then was 35 mph below the speed of everyone else driving on Storrow Drive
4) got stuck during through Back Bay looking for metered parking during the Boston Pride 2007 festivals
5) got stuck and almost blindsided in Chinatown
6) I kept on closing the door on a seat belt.

Revenge of the Nerd’s Romantic Life

As advised by my legal counsel (the former Shoreland Scav captain) I will try to make some of the names involved as ambiguous as possible since this blog is open to the public (and I don’t really feel like using LiveJournal).

At any rate I was back in Chicago for Alumni Weekend. I left an UnCommon Core Lecture given by my old Biological Diversity professor, Dr. LaB to have lunch with Victor at Salonica, a lecture which culminated in Dr. LaB taking off his pants and standing in a water tank demonstrating the amazing world of biological fluid mechanics. This has nothing to do with the rest of the story but it needed mentioning.

At Salonica, Girl #1 called me just as I’m sitting down into the booth. She wanted to meet up, as friends, and actually this is the least messy romantic flameout involved in this story. We made plans to have dinner that night. I gave Victor a vague response as to who Girl #1 is. He justifiably gave me a skeptical look.

Some time as we were finishing up lunch, Paul, an old friend, CS major, Mac Labbie, and Max P Scavvie comes into the diner and saw both of us. He’s waiting for Harold, another ’06 alum who’s now working in SF for Facebook. Unfortunately, Harold was walking to Salonica with Girl #2, who I haven’t had a decent conversation with since May 2005. I made a horrified look, Victor realized who she is too, Paul informed me Salonica has a men’s bathroom in the back. Inside said men’s bathroom, I texted Victor, “Is it safe?” His reply: “Yes.” Coming back to the booth, I asked if it was bitter and rancorous of me to host the Shoreland Scav HQ in my dorm triple that year across from her room. Victor said it is if my only reason was because she hated Scav Hunt. I said the main reason was b/c Shoreland needed an HQ and it was an added benefit. He said then its okay if it wasn’t the major incentive.

Harold then joins us and then all four of us started talking about the good old days, and what's been going on in Chicago. After a spirited conversation on the etymology of the word “bugger”, I found out that Harold lived in a certain dorm, incidentally, one floor right above the girl who gave me the only reason to visit that dorm. I shared my experience about that disastrous night with Girl #3, including the involvement of a certain “Creepy Guy” who we all know… and know. Needless to say, some very personal information was shared. I apologized retroactively to Harold for any noise I may have made being there. All four of us discussed the uselessness of Creepy Guy.

So yes, I was forced to remember the wackiness of my romantic life at the University of Chicago, which possibly could make for a very bad after-school movie or a very good teen sex comedy. It really seemed all too coincidental. Any idea what God or the makers of The 40-Year Old Virgin are trying to tell me?