Angela Aki, singer-songwriter and purveryor of excellent frames.

I sort of stumbled across her when I was looking for final fantasy XIII music and saw that she's got the whole Asian Lisa Loeb thing going on. This is an example of what happens when you choose the right frame and have the right style to go with it. I think the slightly wavy hair, jeans and chucks and dark frames speak volumes.

Her father is Japanese and her mother is italian-american. Looks to me like a wonderful hapa combination and wow, can she sing. Just check out on youtube her rendition of "Eyes on Me": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A1T_m2hIn3U

I personally like her collaboration with Ben Folds:

How not to manage research, schoolwork, fitness and social life

Wow, I'm so behind on each of those things. Well, not really school work since I'm acing my scientific writing class and I'm sure i'm doing well on the rest of my classes. I used to really focus on my classes, but it's been second nature as of lately to complete them on time. Research needs a bit more focus, I really do see that I haven't been ramping it up as I should have been. But I think after my talk with Megumi on tuesday, I should be steered back on track. I really just need to read more papers, specifically on cGMP/GABA and inhibition in invertebrates.

GSCB stuff has been busy as normal but now I'm faced with developing a conference. A freaking research conference! I have some experience of running a conference but in terms of developing a program, I'm completely lost. I should also be having that meeting this week too as well as trying to "offically register" the Graduate council of biology with the Student Union. Hopefully, Dr. G has completed his end.

Running has been great after I've been giving almost 24 hour access to a treadmill. So i've been running continually for a while until last week. Ah, a social life. I'm sure that has suffered as well.

Anyways, I'm going to try and get back everything on track. We'll see if I'll go insane first or i completely collapse from exhaustion.

This is going to be a crazy next couple of weeks. I have to collect applications for travel grants in a couple weeks, coordinate and develop a symposium for conservation biology department (with the help of Gavin) and continue collecting data for my research. It would definitely explain for the fact I've been falling asleep in class more often.

In other news, I'm looking foward to that turkey and Black Friday... Woohoo!

Hollaween

This year, I'll be spending halloween in the city and not in seattle. Which would be awesome seeing that I have an awesome costume all ready to go. This year, I'll be going as a "Significant Otter". I'll have a name tag, a bouqet of flowers and I'll ask people if i can be their significant otter.. I'm going to buy a bear and sew the ears onto a hat. Then I'll use black face paint to make the nose and whiskers. I think i'll use some furlike material near my hands to give more of the appearance....

Whoa... I have blogged in a while...

New news! I recently got a new netbook! 6.5 hours of battery life!!!! What?!? In other news, I am awesome.

4th of July on a boat!

This fourth of july, i spent celebrating it on a boat in Redwood City, CA. We were docked in the marina, taking in the inland breeze and enjoying the heat that's common to the peninsula. I picked up Sam from the Mission and we brought over some veggie tofurkey dogs, coronas, and wine. Gavin headed out there before us and we spent the rest of days eating awesome bbqs and playing (and singing!) songs over the guitar.

Gavin got his groove on and we all decided to record him, for blackmail purposes:

After that, had some awesome fireworks, seen from the boat... oooo:

Research during the summer!

It's been a tough couple of days of accidentally snipping the wrong cords (what's going on?). I guess i'm feeling the strain of getting things in before the conference in August. Ahhh!

img_0563

Waiting for my new iPhone 3GS/ Annual neuroscience party @ Chabot Space Center.

It seems like forever but I'm excited for my new iphone this friday.. I'm a bit worried since according to apple.com, it's still "prepared for shipment" and it's wednesday. Crap. I'm hoping, that it does come in on friday because I've taken the day off. It'll be awesome to take some videos of the neuroscience party at the chabot space center. I've been a little obsessed, checkign apple.com almost every hour to see if there's been any change or tracking number. It should be shipped tomorrow and you can bet that I'll be blogging about it.

I guess the best thing I'm looking forward is the compass feature. Too many times I get lost and don't know which way I'm going. To actually orientate myself in the map is important. And word on the street is that, lattitude is on its way for the iPhone. I use google map soo often, it's not even funny. Second most used feature would be the nike plus system. If it works well enough, I'm selling my nano.. Seriously...

Anyways, I'm getting the white 32GB iphone (upgrading from my white 16GB iphone).

Uploaded - 6\3\09

In flight web browsing...woo

Checking Facebook on my flight

And I'm here!

2:38am: At long last I'm here, waiting for my baggage to show up from the underbelly of the plane. The plane that was delayed more than 2 hours. And that loud screaming noise in the background would be the baggage carousel. time to look for mine... Eeep!

3:30am: Tone's friend's passed out on the futon, crashing on the bed with bro.. Not until I finished eating an awesome meatball sub from WaWa. You basically order what you want on a touchscreen. Nice touych

11:00am: Headed out to have one of the best philly steaks in norrisburg with Beth! Good stuff, had some water ice (gelatos here in CA).

2:00pm: Took the Septa back to my bro's place. Played some wii with Beth. Not shabby for an artists.

7:00pm: Watched some entourage.. Surprisngly goood.

10:15pm: Went to my bro's favorite sushi place, hit up a few bars and then a dinner

12:10: Drank too much. Passed out.

Traveling to Philly

8:09: So apparently, there's crazy lightning storms delaying my flight to philly lame... This is irritating... good thingi have hulu and internet. The flight from San Jose was a bit unique, lots of old people. But generally, people here in texas are pretty friendly. I like it.

First Blog!

Enjoy! Enjoy!!

Significant Otters

I think this photo would be a great segueway for this paper:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11787162?ordinalpos=1&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_DefaultReportPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum

Finally!

Just a quick note that my experiments are finally working due to the fine tuning of my preps. That's all! Woo!

Shinichi Osawa - Our Song (A Lonely Girl Ver.) (DVD HQ ver.)

This actually sounds a bit like MGMT, and it totally rocks...

Favorite Blogs to follow: Thisisphotobomb.com

As you know, I love to waste time on the internet rather than doing actual research. Here's one of my favorites: This Is Photobomb . What is photobombing? You know how you get a group together and you take a photo and some people in the background are doing something pretty funny (intentionally or unintentionally) and they happened to be captured along with the group. Usually, said phototaker does not realize this until after the fact.
Here's an example:

This is hilarious because, unintentionally, it looks like we took his beer away from him and he is sad. Behold! Photobomb.

P.S. He does really look that sad. Look through your old photos, and see what you come up with!!!

Seattle!

I had an awesome time in Seattle, playing various video games, eating fried wings, spam musubi, pizza, ribs, baked fish (cooked between two planks of smoked wood), pie, copious amount of pepsi max. We did get a chance to go out on friday. We hit up Finn MacCool's and hung out with Gary and Colin's AuD group. Jayme, Shivani, Beth, Wendy and few others that I can't remember. I know Dara was annoyed that I didn't go out as I should, but eh, I just wanted to chill with the guys and play some video games.

It was definitely a great break from all the research and lack of sleep I've been getting. Research is draining but I think I'll have more time this week.

Spider Research

Developing a few ideas for my research based off this video..

Photo Post!: Favorite Photos

I'm such a hipster (btw, i love PBR).

This place will sell your stuff on ebay for you. Seriously.

I love this Cal Academy Photo. It definitely shows off my digital SLR.

Ahhhh, it's been forever since I posted anything!

My Band Name: The Beiijing HsingHai Musical Instruments Corporation

The Album: "In fact, they do so"

Upgrades

Wow. That took seriously almost 14 hours to clone my old mac 60g hard drive and replace it with a 500 gig hard drive. That should be plenty of space, I'm thinking...

Time for some sleep..

Eating Greener!

So last week, my coworker microwaved something that smelled really, REALLY good. To my surprise, it was some veggie steamers by the Green Giant. When I think frozen veggies, i usually think bland, watery mush. These were really good and came with a not too salty yet tasteful seasoning. I HIGHLY recommend these. Only 100 Cals for one entire package. Katie (my coworker) told me you could mix this with pastas.

Something to think about. Especially if you're going to eat one of these:

Stone Ale

Crazy amount of alcohol in such a tiny container. I think this was the night that I thought I would be here for may be till 9pm. I ended up leaving around 12. Damn you Gavin and Michelle. Damn you toronado. Damn you sad old man at the bar..

This also happened to be the night where I created a new rule. If I unnecessarily apologized, and someone caught it, i will owe that person a beer. I henceforth proclaim it on my blog.

Today was an odd day. I was a lot more tired than I'm usually am. I completely passed out from work, not because of work. I think I need to jumpstart my metabolism.

Anyways here's a link to the worst songs medley done by Kate Micucci and Riki Lindhome:

Not looking forward to next friday

Crap, what happened to my animal physiology class? Only 5 students in the class? How is this going to work? Did everyone just suddenly drop the course? What the hell?

UPDATE: I'm an idiot, I just figured that the other students are probably in a different section. I was freaking out that I might have to be partners with a certain someone.

Yay grad school happy hours...

Went out for a drink after work with a couple of grad students to watch the Mexico/Sweden game (boo, Sweden won). Had some really good mexican food and then a beer at Toranado across the street. I decided to bug the hell out of my friends by videotaping.. It's what I do.. Enjoy how i digitally capture the embarrassment. Good times

No ticket!

I usually love the fact that I find something in my pocket, whether it be extra change or even a five dollar bill I didn't think I had. Instead, while digging around in my pants, I found that I had an unpaid parking ticket given by my institution. Boo-urns!

In other news, I finally did it. I got myself a macbook (circa 2006 model). It's pretty snappy and quick and I feel a lot safer using it to purchase online (less viruses). The only that sucks is that there are fewer freeware programs for it. I'm using this new blog software so I can type offline and manage my posts from far away.

It looks like my netbook is going to be sold. I'm thinking of either selling to a friend for either $200 or on craigslist for $400 or so with its upgraded 32gb ssd.

I think one of these days, i'm going to sell my laptop and this macbook and end up buying a high end macbook air (i need a large drive, 128gb is tiny for me and my uses and I want the new video graphics card too). In the meantime, I'm going to enjoy my macbook.

Happy New Year!

Let's hope this year tops last year's! Happy New Year everybody!!

Office day-dreaming

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

Very Scrubs-like dream like montage...

Jake and Amir: Interpreters 2 (Cheer Up)

This is what happens when i drink...

Bowling For Soup - Girl All The Bad Guys Want

Guilty pleasure song...when no one's looking..

Jake and Amir: Tissue

Hilarious... we all have someone like this...

Happy New Year!

Let's hope this year tops last year's! Happy New Year everybody!!