Rain

I think even the weather wants to make me feel miserable. According to the forecast, it will rain in NYC on Christmas day and two days prior to that. Why not snow? It's December already but it hasn't snowed in NYC yet... Alright, I hate cold winter but I admit that I'd prefer snow over rain. If it's gonna be wet anyway, then might as well have some snow instead. This is how I feel.

Finished social psychology exam on Friday evening--first down, two more to go. I feel that I messed up on the social psy final. Oh, well, nothing I can do about it now. I have finals on Tues and Wed but I really don't feel like studying for them.

Friday night was bit sad. After the final, I was so hungry and didn't think I could make it home without fainting. So, I decided to eat something in Union Square. Sad thing is, I'm broke and alone. This means, no fancy dinner for me. I ate at Wendy's...all by myself...on Friday night...at a table right next to bathroom. After writing this much, I realized how bitter I am. I need to cheer myself up...perhaps, some beer might help. :-p

kigen ga warui

Yes, I'm still in a bad mood. don't know why, though.social psy exam tomorrow + don't want to work on the Ohio Scales manuscript + still haven't found anything fun to do during the winter break = kigen ga warui Shihoko

Had donuts and french vanilla coffee from Dunkin Donuts. Feeling bit guilty about crazy amount of sugar and fat intake. But who cares? I'm stressing out!!!

I have no motivation to study for social psy exam. I don't know why. I want to avoid the same disaster from midterm...getting a B+ on social psy. I want to get an A for this class but some part of me doesn't care at all about grades. I really should care about grades because I need to keep my fellowship (which requires 3.7 GPA).

To me, "Sex and the City" is thought provoking. Last week's episodes were about "soul mate" and this week's episodes were about "relationship." Is there such thing as a soul mate? Is there only one soulmate? If so, what would you do that soulmate left you? Does that mean this "soul mate" was not real? Part of me want to believe in this whole idea of "soul mate" but other part of me kinda gave up on this idea. And what is the definition of "relationship" anyway??? When do you know you are in a relationship?

Alright, back to social psy...

can't believe it happened again

While I was writing my entry, IE crashed! and I lost my super-long entry. ugh.

Here's a very disturbing article.
The longer immigrants stay in the U.S., more likely they are going to be obese. Staying in the U.S. is detrimental to immigrants' health. I should remind myself about this article as my stay in the U.S. gets longer. Or, should I go back to Japan???

random stuff-cat seducing power: cats, including the ones that are not friendly to people, like me. Kaoru-san's cat (Chakko-chan) doesn't like people...but when I was babysitting Riku-kun, Chakko-chan voluntarily came to me and let me pat him. Same thing happened with Fonzie and Susie. Do I have cat seducing power??? Whatever it is, all I know is that this power doesn't work for men. (well, if it did, i wouldn't be single :-p)

-today is the last day of classes. finals on Fri, Tues, and Wed. almost there.
-it's super cold today in NYC. it was 25-degrees this morning. If it's below freezing temperature, it should at least snow. we haven't had first snow of the season yet.
-called my mom this morning to see if she got a package from me. yes, she did. she told me she's been sick. bit worried about her. :-(
-don't want to go to study session for social psych. study sessions are usually useless--some people ask bunch of stupid questions to take up the whole session and nothings gets done. there's another study session later on tonight but i will skip both of them.
-finally got my black coat from Esprit last night. it's really nice!!! i like it a lot!!!

I hate Monday

End of the semester stress is killing me. I just want to go home and sleep!!!

For some reason, I couldn't sleep well last night. Too much thinking going on in my head, I guess. Lack of sleep + end of semester stress + "I hate Monday" = super cranky Shihoko. And the prospect of spending holidays alone is making me even crankier.

Here are some of the things I can do over the winter break.
1. go to Toronto and renew my student visa
2. take a day trip to Philadelphia
3. stay home and start working on thesisI want to get out of NYC during Christmas because my roomie told me it's going to be very depressing in the city--everything will be closed. ugh... ok, I should get back to work.

So, it's Saturday

for some reason, I get semi-sick every week, right before weekend. I usually get sore throat, headache, and so on. But if I stay in and sleep a lot, I feel OK by Saturday evening. I guess I'm too tired by the end of week. This is when I feel really old--my body can't deal with crazy weekday schedule any more. sigh...

Yesterday, I woke up at 5:30am to finish up results and method section for Ohio Scales manuscript. Although I hated waking up early, I think I was working very efficiently and I really liked how productive I was. I don't think I can keep getting up this early to do work, especially because I have classes from 6-10pm but I like doing work early in the morning. After that early morning paper writing, I babysat Karen and stayed for her 1st birthday party. At the party, I met a few other moms and babies, and it was quite interesting because they were definitely not the type of crowd I usually hang out with (obviously!). Babies were absolutely adorable--I really don't think I can handle one of my own yet but they are definitely cute to look at and fun to play with. Moms were really cool, too. Akiko-san (Karen's mom) cooked great food (Japanese food!). One thing I felt bad about was that there was a Filipino lady whose husband is Japanese. But she didn't know Japanese while everyone else did and kept talking in Japanese. I should have talked to her in English but I was too busy playing with babies or too busy eating and didn't put enough effort to talk to her. And for some reason, I felt awkward switching to English...maybe because the dominant language of the environment was Japanese or...I don't know.

After the party, I went back to school to finish up the paper and went home to watch TV and relax. Today, I went to Manhattan, walked around a bit in Midtown, and did some reading at a coffee shop. I was thinking about how I spend most of the day by myself without interacting with anybody. This is very unhealthy! I should start hanging out with people at least once during weekends. As a student, I feel guity for doing something fun when I have tons of homework or some other stuff to do. But I also know that I don't spend full 48 hours during the weekend studying. In fact, I find myself watching TV quite a bit on weekends. So, I should go out and do something fun, instead of watching TV all day. Only problem is going out costs money, and I'm broke. Oh, and I don't have that many friends to hang out with...(well, I have some friends but I'm not that close with them)

Oh, I just remembered that something strange happened last Friday. When I came home, after walking around all day running errands, I noticed that there was gum stuck on my social psych book that was in my bag! My bag was open all day long while I was walking in Manhattan, so someone probably spat gum into my bag (either accidentally or intentionally). It was really disgusting but it was also kinda funny. I find myself amused by little stupid things like this. :-p

Interesting articles

I love reading random articles online.

First one: Young men warned of laptop risk--Heat could damage fertility, researcher sayshttp://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6677040/
This article basically talks about how heat from laptop can damage sperms, thus damage fertility. Ok, that's interesting, right? How many people actually put laptop on his lap? Don't we usually put laptop on table/desk/etc when we use it? And, don't burn your balls with laptop!

Second one: Dude, you can't be serious!--Linguist deconstructs the word, sees many meaningshttp://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6676586/?GT1=5936
Linguists at Pittsburgh studied the word "dude" Although I don't think their methodology was good based on the description on this MSN article, it's just interesting to know some people seriously study some random stuff. Does this change your attitude toward "dude"? I personally have a negative stereotype against "dude"--it just sounds unintelligent.

Anyway, change to a different topic. I've been having weird dreams lately. I actually want to have my dreams analyzed. Most of the time, I don't remember the exact content of a dream when I wake up. But here's one from two days ago. I had lice on my hair! It was so disgusting!!!!!! (in real life, I don't have lice because I wash my hair every morning!) I don't remember other dreams but most of them are anxiety provoking. I often wake up feeling anxious, sad, irritated, etc. It definitely is not a good way to start a day. Does this mean I'm stressed???

Ok, I should get back to work now. I have to finish up some parts of Ohio Scale stuff by tomorrow.

I should be working...

It's Monday morning, and I am supposed to be doing some work now. I just don't feel like doing work because I'm tired. I couldn't sleep well last night. It was like my brain didn't want to sleep. But this is not to say that I was thinking about something productive--they were all random thoughts.

Weekend passed by so fast. I slept a lot :)

I got a coffee maker for free so I've been drinking so much coffee lately. I love having a coffee maker at home. On Friday, I ended up shopping all afternoon instead of getting some readings done. Bought a pair of brown pants and two sweaters from Gap--very satisfied. Shopping definitely made me happy.

I'm feeling bit grumpy this morning...

December already

I can't believe that it's already December AND that I haven't updated my blog for two weeks! I wasn't that particularly busy but updating blog wasn't on top of my to-do list. N

ot much has happened in the last two weeks. Oh...it looks like I stopped updating my blog on the day Dave came in town...so it's all his fault. Anyway, I will just briefly go over what has been going on in the past two weeks.weekend before Thanksgiving--Dave drove all the way from Ohio to NY on Saturday. After 10 hours of driving(!), he finally got here. We went out for dinner and we accidentally found the Greek restaurant in Astoria his friend or co-worker recommended--even though Dave forgot to bring the direction to the restaurant! Food was decent, and the price was reasonable. I had stuffed tomato and green pepper, and Dave had stewed rabbit! Rabbit tasted like tasteless chicken (well, not that chicken has that much of taste). I don't know if I will go back to the restaurant again (and who wants to hang out in Astoria anyway??) but this doesn't mean that I didn't like the restaurant.

Next day, we went to get some dim sum in Chinatown. We randomly picked this place on Mott, and it was quite good. I actually liked this place better than the other place we went with my roomie in September. Anyway, funny stuff happened there. We were sharing a table with a group of 4 White people (which made me the only Asian at the table). One of them asked the lady who passed by our table with a cart what one of the dim sum dishes was. Then, the lady responded, "try! it's yummy, yummy!" Typical dim sum scene! The lady didn't speak English well, or not well enough to explain what the dish was, so she simply said "it's yummy!" Not knowing what to say or do, this guy took the dish without knowing what it was. His friend asked him what it was and he answered, "um...it's yummy, yummy." Hahahahaha. I couldn't help laughing. I'm telling you, these dim sum ladies are all about making you eat more. After the fun time at dim sum, we went to this wine store in SoHo and did some tasting. It was pretty cheap--$5 for 5 tastings, and they pour so much wine for each tasting. I got little tipsy after the tasting! Then...we saw Paris Hilton! I didn't even notice her but Dave did. We saw her around Houston and B'way, shopping for shoes. then, we walked bit more in East Village and went to this nice cafe. It was really cozy there, and their latte and tiramisu were great!!! After we got more energy from warm drink and tiramisu, we walked over the Brooklyn Bridge towards Brooklyn. We finally went to this famous pizza place right by the bridge. Their pizza was great! We finished a large pizza! I definitely want to go back there again!

Next day (Monday), we had lunch with Yayoi's sister and her husband at this restaurant in Midtown. It was really nice. I was bit nervous at first because 1) it was for Dave to network with Yayoi's sister 2) pricy restaurant 3) I didn't know them very well. But at the end, I felt comfortable and had a good time. Bonus was, they are members of the MoMA and they could let us in to the museum for free! So, I got to see the MoMA for the first time! I don't think their collection changed too much but the architecture was amazing. I enjoyed it so much.

After writing this much, I'm getting bit tired...anyway, Dave drove up to Buffalo to spend Thanksgiving with his family on Tuesday, and it was kinda sad.

On Thanksgiving day, my roomies and I cooked Thanksgiving dinner together. None of us has ever cooked turkey before, but it turned out really good. I thought that I would have to eat at Boston Market and have a lonely Thanksgiving but I had a great Thanksgiving!

After Thanksgiving, I realized that I have so much work to do and I've been stressed ever since. I finally submitted my encyclopedia entry (first publication!) today and I'm feeling really good about it. :-) I hope the editors will like my writing. It's only 1500 words long but it's a big deal for me.Now I realize that updating blog after a long time of absence is not a good idea. I'm going to get some beauty sleep now and try to keep my blog updated from now on.