Month: September 2013

  • photoblog: scripps, the last day

    I just got a new camera which I am absolutely in love with.  When time doesn't allow for a lengthy blog post, my new camera has sufficiently provided a means to blog as the lazy, new-age Blogger - writing posts through the exciting visual experience of Photoblogs!  After all, as the lazy blogger says, isn't a picture worth a thousand words?

    WELL HERE'S 9000 WORDS THEN



    Soon, expect a Photoblog (or maybe even a real blog, oo la la) frommmm.. *drumroll*

    ... ATLANTA! :)

    This girl is going to visit a boy in Georgia tomorrow!

  • come around, autumn

    Call it your 2.0, your rebirth, whatever –
    So long as you can feel it all,
    so long as your doors are flung wide.

    - Vienna Teng, Level Up

    -+-

    -- "Omer has a parrot, and he loves me! He was freaking out and squawking whenever I walked away."
    "Well, I'd scream too if I were a parrot and couldn't get some of that."

    -+-

    Huzzah, (finally) got my Xanga migrated to 2.0!

    I bet when everyone else heard about the transfer and realized that you now have to pay to be a blogging member, most others went, "dafuq that don't jive with me!" I was initially like that too - you might recall my tremendously anticlimactic migration to my tumblr, but sentiment dies hard. Of course I couldn't stay away long. ohohoho

    We'll be here a while, Xanga!

    (unless xanga freakin closes down again)

    -+-

    Finally, I can talk to you about a girl named Christa -- who she was, who she is, and who she will be.

    As recently as two weeks ago, I couldn't even begin to tell the third part of that narrative: who I will be.

    Beyond the glamorous hustle and bustle of my romantic life, which I gratuitously have been writing about in this blog, the post-graduate life has actually been heavily muddled by uncertainty. I spent all of summer butting heads with the unknown. My summer internship was scheduled to last from early-June to August 16th, so I spent most of the summer not knowing where I would be in autumn.

    I spent all summer running on faith. I accessorized with pie-in-the-sky goals, realistic objectives, and back-up possibilities. But, at the end of the day, the outlook for my professional life was enormously dependent on a few simple words that required enormous amounts of faith: “Everything will be okay.”

    I was invited to the Baldwin Lab at Scripps for a tentative full-time position, although the offer had the footmark, “as long as budget allows.” As summer went on, this became a rollercoaster of an offer. After months of wondering about my future after August 16th, it wasn’t until the last week of my internship that my principal investigator informed me that she was waiting to receive grants and for funding to get approved. Thankfully, I was extended by a month through a grant provided by my summer internship, giving me more time to wait for my principal investigator to get funding for me. In the last few days of my grant extension (again, spending the entire month wondering where I’d be after September 13th), my principal investigator let me know that she didn’t have enough funding to keep me on as an employee. So yet again, I was wondering where I’d be after September 27th.

    And somehow, everything will be okay.

    Thankfully, in the last week of my internship, after two job extensions, I was given a job offer at UC San Diego as a lab manager for the Department of Rheumatology.  Even more gratefully, Jacob’s parents provided me with a few weeks of free housing until I could figure out more permanent career goals.  The same week that I was given the job offer, my sister tells me that she has a friend in town that has an open room in San Diego, and is looking for a new roommate.  A few days later, I put down my deposit and pay for my first month's rent.  So now, I can look forward to spending October with a new job and a new place to stay.

    So, I'll be spending the autumn (and then some) as an intern-turned-lab manager, and a UC Merced graduate-turned-San Diego resident.  I wonder what adventures await!

    Now, this Friday is my last day with the Baldwin Lab, and then even more adventures -

    I’ll let you in on what they are soon! ;)

    I promise you'll be as stoked about it as I am!

  • snippet #1

    It was a simple five-second sample in the introduction of a song in his music library.  Still, it's hard to deny that it warmed my heart when we both soulfully sang along, him sitting in his chair and pulling me close to hug me,

    I can't help falling in love with you