The Lesser Fluffs

my very own food blog?!?!

2011-02-21T21:42:00.000-05:00

Hardly. But, after throwing together my own penne alfredo for a quick, student-friendly dinner, I thought I'd revisit my little corner of the blogosphere. After a long, less-than-pleasurable romp with Durkheim in a 9-page analysis of the State of the Union address, I want to waste my time with something a little less academic.

Today, I discovered that parmesan cheese is a key ingredient in alfredo sauce. Who knew! Somewhere along the way, my journey of life led me to believe that - cheesy and delicious as alfredo sauce was - there actually wasn't any cheese that went into its making. Instead, I held onto a vague notion that milk, cooked long enough, would eventually transmorgify into the thick creamy sauce I so enjoyed on fettuccine and chicken. While I'd already put the pasta (penne, of course) on to boil along with a separate pot of diced broccoli stems (yes, they're edible - and by god I will use every ounce of the 88 cents/lb produce), a simple search on allrecipes.com revealed the gravity of my error.

What I had was cream cheese, and what every recipe (well...at least the first 10) called for was parmesan. Crisis. One recipe had in its description, "The secret to this quick and easy sauce is cream cheese" (!!!!) but alas. It too required parmesan.

I was disheartened. But determined to have my penne with alfredo. And broccoli stems. So, as any good student and aspiring real-person would do, I improvised.

Into my rather shitty saucepan went a tablespoon of butter, about half a cup of milk (who knows? I just poured until it looked like it was enough to feed me), a tablespoon of flour. All of this I whisked together over low heat until I became skeptical of its ability to thicken, whereupon I added a dollop of cream cheese and pushed it around on the bottom of the pan until it melted down. Having nothing else to do, I checked on the pasta and proceeded to whisk my sauce again, praying for it to thicken to alleviate my fears of failure. Given time and maybe a minute's patience, magic happened, and it began to resemble something like alfredo. I congratulated myself on achieving master chef status. Tasting revealed a need for salt and pepper, and after waiting another minute or so and watching as it blurped and bubbled (even on low heat), I deemed it acceptable.

At this point, the pasta still wasn't done cooking. But I drained it and served myself anyways. After pouring my alfredo on top and throwing the diced broccoli on, dinner was served.

The pasta ended up being a little tough on the inside but that's life. Impatient life, especially. All told, dinner was prepped and served in under 20 minutes. Not bad, and certainly more legit than the shit that comes out of a box.

the obesity epidemic : sad problems on sad problems

2011-01-19T14:54:00.000-05:00

In light of the recent Scientific American article on "How to Fix the Obesity Crisis", I felt overwhelmed by a sense of you've gotta be f***ing kidding me.

When we go on diets and exercise regimens, we rely on willpower to overcome all these pushes to overeat relative to our activity level. And we count on the reward of getting trimmer and fitter to keep us on the wagon. It is rewarding to lose the weight, of course. Unfortunately, time works against us. As the weight comes off, we get hungrier and develop stronger cravings and become more annoyed by the exercise. Meanwhile the weight loss inevitably slows as our metabolism tries to compensate for this deprivation by becoming more parsimonious with calories. Thus, the punishment for sticking to our regimen becomes increasingly severe and constant, and the expected reward recedes into the future. “That gap between the reinforcement of eating and the reinforcement of maybe losing weight months later is a huge challenge,” says SungWoo Kahng, a neurobehaviorist who studies obesity at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and the Kennedy Krieger Institute.

Thanks, neurobehaviorist guy. I hope you didn't use millions of dollars in research to give us that enlightening tidbit.

What really frustrates me about this article is that it is, truly, paragraphs and paragraphs of DUH. Yes, weight loss is difficult, especially when you've got so much of it to lose. Yes, it sucks when all your friends are as big as you and eat as much as you. Yes, all-you-can-eat buffets and delicious foods put on lots of calories for you. And no, starving yourself is not the correct solution. Really?

The problem, as millions of dollars of research and the fattening proportion of America has shown, has everything to do with behavior. Excuse me while I shed any semblance of compassion I have for the plight of overweight Americans, but why does this even need to be published? You can't tell me obese people are dumb. They aren't. Like anyone else, they love yummy food, and they love to have lots of it. So what's the real problem here? Why do some (a whopping 30% of Americans) end up obese while the rest of the population continue on the righteous path of normal-BMI? I think the issue is a simple two-fold calculation:

Everyone's looking for an easy way out. Myself included. Diuretics, laxatives, "cleansing" supplements, and all manner of foods or pills that will help you drop weight without even thinking about it. It was easy to put on all the weight, so everyone wants a quick fix to throw it off. Well, it ain't gonna happen. Our bodies are designed to keep us happily stocked with calories for hard times that will - let's face it - with McDonald's around, never come. I'm really convinced that no one wants it enough. Those pounds won't come off unless you give your share of sweat, sweat, and tears.
What's "healthy" look and feel like? I sure as hell don't know, and I think most people would be in the same boat as me. As we come face-to-face with the plague of obesity, you have to wonder what our nation looks like. What's the average anymore, if a sizeable chunk of the population is "above average" in terms of weight? And, more than that even, what/who do people look at to aspire to? Our society is driven by a lot of different motivations. On the glossy front pages of magazines, there are ripped men and women, frighteningly (but beautifully) thin men and women. In school, afraid of these pop culture images, they teach: inner beauty is more important. The superstars we see - whether athletes or actors - give us examples of what is ideal but also what is nearly impossible to achieve as your everyday individual. I'm sure if all we had to do all day was prepare for the next game and work out and try hard to be beautiful, we'd all look like the stars we see on TV. As it is, none of us are getting paid to put in that kind of time, so what's the next best thing? You want to feel healthy. And for you, what that means is beautiful and sexy. But is that it? Becoming obese is not an instantaneous process, and so you might imagine you don't really notice when you don't feel good anymore - when your heart's beating too fast and you've always got a funny taste in your mouth and the food in your stomach never seems to sit well or leave.

The truth is we've built a culture that's entrenched in unrealistic standards and self-perpetuating bad habits. It's easy to show people what they could look like, all wrapped up in inches or pounds lost and smaller dress and pant sizes, but I think ultimately it's an uphill battle unless you really motivate some underlying change. Now how you do that - I have no idea. How can you show someone what it feels like to breathe easy when they've forgotten, or maybe when they never knew?

Ultimately the best thing to have done would've been to prevent this whole thing from happening in the first place. I'm convinced that major social stigma plays a large role in keeping other developed countries from experiencing their own epidemics. It's on the level of Amy Chua-crazy, but I know plenty of Chinese women who, upon deciding their 120-pound figure has gone too far, will impose their own vegetables-and-water-only diet until they drop back to their normal 100- and maybe even 90-pound figure. Weight's a sensitive subject no matter who you're talking to, but I think maybe other countries have better ways of dealing with its problems head-on.

idea : cold-weather running...with oxygen tanks!!

2011-01-10T22:52:00.000-05:00

I have a self-confidence issue with going to the gym. I'm highly paranoid that people around me, should I ever join the legion of tan, fit college students jogging away on the cardio rotunda, that people next to me would silently jeer at my sweaty, red face and panting breaths. And the fact that I don't have super-toned thighs that don't pudge around when you run. So my solution is to run outside. Given that I live in Chicago and the weather outside is frightful, it's not the most enjoyable experience (read: it sucks).

I can handle the chill on my body, no problem (gloves and some kind of ear protection are really the key to not being completely miserable), but as someone who's never had the strongest lungs, I get destroyed by the winter air. I've tried breathing more through my nose, where - if my high school anatomy still serves - some mechanism is in place to warm the air before it reaches your lungs. At some point, though, I'm pretty sure my nasal passages, along with all my nose hairs, freeze, whereupon I am forced to gasp in air through my mouth, and my lungs proceed to say, "WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!" It just adds insult to injury when the snot starts coming down too. Gross! I figure even with this nasty appearance, any passersby will get at most a two-second glimpse of my sad self before they walk on and forget me. Hey, it happens to everyone.

Today, I went out to run for the first time in...well, I'd rather not say...and I jogged like a decrepit 40-year-old through the fair, 20-something-degree weather for about 20 minutes before conceding to the elements and walking my freezing ass home. As I sniffled up the stairs to my apartment, I tried to think of ways to prevent this mucus-y meltdown from happening again. There are scarves and weird collars on jackets you can push up to hide your face, but you know, I think really the best thing would be just to wear an oxygen tank. It'd be beneficial on multiple levels! Not only would you be getting a nice, oxygen-rich supply of air (notably not contaminated with car exhaust and the smell of whatever-that-is-on-the-ground), you'd be lugging around an extra, what, 50 pounds? Triple the workout! Besides all that, you breathe nice, warm air and save yourself the embarrassment of a dripping nose. So many good things! I don't know why someone else didn't think of it before. Clearly, I'm made of brilliance.

P.S. This was a rather pointless post. Merely a disguise for announcing my attempt to get back in shape. Muahaha.

day emotional : connecting and separating from stereotypes

2011-01-09T23:34:00.000-05:00

When Boyfriend read me part of this article from the Wall Street Journal, I wasn't really sure what to think or feel. Amy Chua, a professor from Yale Law School, extemporizes on a model of parenting she attributes Chinese culture and lauds herself on a job well done with her two daughters, one of which had the opportunity to play piano at Carnegie Hall. As if she were the single most important factor for her daughters' so-called success. As if this "success" encompasses all aspects of their wellbeing - financial, intellectual, emotional.

Here's an excerpt from her article, "Why Chinese Mothers are Superior":

Here's a story in favor of coercion, Chinese-style. Lulu was about 7, still playing two instruments, and working on a piano piece called "The Little White Donkey" by the French composer Jacques Ibert. The piece is really cute—you can just imagine a little donkey ambling along a country road with its master—but it's also incredibly difficult for young players because the two hands have to keep schizophrenically different rhythms.
Lulu couldn't do it. We worked on it nonstop for a week, drilling each of her hands separately, over and over. But whenever we tried putting the hands together, one always morphed into the other, and everything fell apart. Finally, the day before her lesson, Lulu announced in exasperation that she was giving up and stomped off.
"Get back to the piano now," I ordered.
"You can't make me."
"Oh yes, I can."
Back at the piano, Lulu made me pay. She punched, thrashed and kicked. She grabbed the music score and tore it to shreds. I taped the score back together and encased it in a plastic shield so that it could never be destroyed again. Then I hauled Lulu's dollhouse to the car and told her I'd donate it to the Salvation Army piece by piece if she didn't have "The Little White Donkey" perfect by the next day. When Lulu said, "I thought you were going to the Salvation Army, why are you still here?" I threatened her with no lunch, no dinner, no Christmas or Hanukkah presents, no birthday parties for two, three, four years. When she still kept playing it wrong, I told her she was purposely working herself into a frenzy because she was secretly afraid she couldn't do it. I told her to stop being lazy, cowardly, self-indulgent and pathetic.
Jed took me aside. He told me to stop insulting Lulu—which I wasn't even doing, I was just motivating her—and that he didn't think threatening Lulu was helpful. Also, he said, maybe Lulu really just couldn't do the technique—perhaps she didn't have the coordination yet—had I considered that possibility?
"You just don't believe in her," I accused.
"That's ridiculous," Jed said scornfully. "Of course I do."
"Sophia could play the piece when she was this age."
"But Lulu and Sophia are different people," Jed pointed out.
"Oh no, not this," I said, rolling my eyes. "Everyone is special in their special own way," I mimicked sarcastically. "Even losers are special in their own special way. Well don't worry, you don't have to lift a finger. I'm willing to put in as long as it takes, and I'm happy to be the one hated. And you can be the one they adore because you make them pancakes and take them to Yankees games."

In the end, Chua makes it a happily-ever-after when her daughter miraculously begins to coordinate her hands and put the piece together. Lulu says, "Look, Mommy--it's so easy!" As if this realization - this little triumph - somehow justifies the insults and abuse.

Perhaps I don't have the right to make any claims on behalf of the Chinese-American culture as a whole, but this story resonates very personally with me. I've been at that piano, forced to play for three hours straight. I've sat on that bench and cried angry, hurt tears onto my beautiful, Steinway baby grand. And I can say honestly to anyone that those kind of experiences didn't come with a redemptive end - with a "Look, Mommy--it's so easy!".

When Chua says that Chinese parents assume "strength" rather than fragility, I think she's right. There is a lot of potential for verbal abuse in the household, and no matter how Chua wants to spin it, it is not motivation. It is what I've always called brainwashing. It takes a very specific role-play of praise and insult to instill the appropriate sense of self-shame in the child. Done right, the parent(s) need not say anything in the face of the child's failure. The child will feel it for his/herself, and if, as Chua says, the child is strong, I really think they will come out the better for it. For those of us not as fortunate, though, this kind of upbringing feeds back into an ambivalent storm of self-uncertainty that I really think poisons the parent-child relationship.

It's difficult for me to divorce this commentary from personal experience, and so I may be a little emotional and overdramatic. But objectively, I think Chua says some interesting things about the dichotomy between Western and Chinese parenting. She discredits Chinese mothers as a whole just in assuming this is the way every mother runs her household (and as an aside, I think she's fucking offensive for leaving out fathers entirely). She certainly doesn't give enough credit to the "Western" way of valuing a child's self-esteem and emphasizing things like "love and affection." Yes, ensuring a child is "prepared for the future" is one way to ensure their success, but that says nothing to the child about whether they're loved. And, like the study I referenced in a previous post, I think that's a HUGE indication of how successful a child will be. There's no replacement for that.

In some ways, I think the "Chinese" model of parenting is unsustainable in a transplanted setting like America. Once Chinese-American kids see that their peers get grounded instead of having to study for hours or actually enjoy the extracurricular activities they do or have relationships with other children that involve playdates and sleepovers and whatnot, they'll feel the lack of love. They'll recognize that something very important is missing from their lives.

The article links to a few videos I didn't bother to watch, supposedly testimonies of Chinese adults having been raised as Chua described and wanting to apply the same model to their children. They make me wonder whether such people are the majority or the minority among Chinese-Americans raised in this way.

Again, I'm biased heavily by my own experience of the Chinese-American upbringing, but I'm curious to see some statistics. In populations that advocate and practice Chua's model as compared with a more "Western" upbringing, how many children develop psychological problems or self-esteem issues? The funny thing is, this thought brings to mind a dramatic work I saw a few years ago: "Wong Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest." Although the writer/actress declined to make any sort of social commentary on the story conveyed by her work, she emphasized a recurring theme of suffering in silence. The play doesn't speak to children as much as it does to Asian women as a whole and the mentality the embodies the quite strength idealized by Oriental cultures.

"I don't want to see a therapist because it would show that I'm weak. My family would think there's something wrong with me."

"There's nothing wrong with me, I'm fine."

"I don't want to bother anybody. I don't want to make them worry. I'm fine. I'm strong."

In any case, just wanted to throw in my response to this crazy lady's article. As if we didn't have enough Asian female commentary on growing up Asian-American. All of it just puts me in the mood to bash myself over the head with an Amy Tan book.

day FAIL : on vanity...

2011-01-08T11:43:00.000-05:00

I am labeling this post day FAIL for two reasons:

Clearly, the 30-day challenge has been a bust for me. And I've missed the point entirely. And have proven myself incapable of 30-day writing discipline. I am sad.
Besides realizing myself to be utterly self-absorbed and incapable of logging onto blogspot to post anything about anything for a dedicated period of time, I have also discovered I am irredeemably vain and stupid.

Any girl with a lick of common sense knows that, by their very essence, shoes with any kind of heel (wedged or not) is bound to cause physical, emotional, and intellectual pain. The question is why anyone would willingly subject themselves to this kind of self-torture. As if you actually want to prance around on your toes and exert brainpower (whatever you have left) attempting to re-learn how to walk.

Because, I mean, why take advantage of millions of years of evolution built into a beautifully formed foot that lets you walk and sprint and balance and a chunky heel bone that actually carries your weight when, instead, you could create a whole new system where you use all the tiny bones in the front of your foot to hold all however-many-pounds-you-weigh? Fuck nature! Your ass looks good when you're on stilettos!

Besides, the added height makes you taller and makes you feel taller. So you can come nose-to-nose with those misogynist assholes who think they're better than you because they can look down at you. Nevermind the fact that you're wobbling on your spikes and almost break your ankle 50 times a day. Nevermind the fact that you're submitting to some entrenched standard of beauty in torturing yourself with your sexy Louboutin pumps.

And when I say "you," I mean me. Not that I own a pair of Louboutin anything. Beautiful as they are, I can't afford them. Or ankle surgery.

So in all honesty, I am not one of those girls who walks around campus in stilettos or anything of that nature. But I am one of those girls who thinks she's practical in wearing heels that aren't spiky. Wedges, of course, are in my repertoire, and they're actually not too bad under a certain height. My mistake today was thinking that these:

would actually be wearable. They just look like wedges with the middle part cut out! How bad could they be? Well, turns out they mess up your balance. And have thin soles. Besides putting weird triangle heel under my ankle, the shoes made me feel like I might as well have been walking ON the concrete, and I have the quarter-sized blisters to prove it. Thanks boots. After hoofin' it (as fast as humanly possible under the increasing stress of shoes that don't actually let you walk) to my 8:30am class, I made the long and painful trek back to my apartment, defeated by vanity once again. Damn you, vanity!

Chances are I'll be wearing the shoes again, but for now, my righteous indignation with heels has put these shoes in the closet.

day 15 : back in action! but with not a single clever thing to say...

2010-12-27T12:50:00.000-05:00

Then again, when was I ever clever? :)

I rise from the dead to crawl back to my mess of a 30-day challenge with my proverbial tail between my legs. At this point, I think I've lost the point of the challenge but have decided to forge ahead nonetheless. The writing practice is good.

It occurred to me recently that, while in the shower, I have very little going on in my head. Same goes for driving. The 10 or 15 minutes I spend in the shower are often completely lost time. I go through the motions of personal hygiene; I'm in and out in no time at all. Some people do some good thinking in that shower stall, but it seems whenever I try to reflect on anything (because yes, I've consciously tried to think productive thoughts), I mess up. Once, I found myself washing my hair with shower gel, i.e. body wash, and another time I shampooed my hair twice.

You'd think that the motions of taking a shower should become so automatic that you wouldn't have to think about them, but apparently, the extent of my automated-ness hasn't gone so far as to let me focus on other things.

When I'm driving alone it's much the same thing. Not a thought in my head. Only space for those reflex reactions - stop, go, yield, slow down, stop. When someone else is in the car - whether it's because of some narcissistic need to impress or simply because I'm engaged in something else - I drive a little more recklessly, miss stop signs, accelerate faster, take turns more sharply...

This is probably a common phenomenon. Perhaps I should find others who share my lack of productive/inspired shower/driving time. Then again, maybe I lack meaningful things to think about.

day 14 : black friday must be named for evil

2010-11-26T21:45:00.000-05:00

While waiting for my hair to dry, I find myself sitting at my computer at 9:46am, mildly depressed and more than a little ashamed. Having just spent 10 straight hours shopping in the madness that is Black Friday, I feel I have thrown myself into the black pit of consumerism and realized belatedly there is no way out. The thing is it was all gloriously fun and lovely, hanging out with high school friends and racing to the mall, but I BOUGHT SO MANY THINGS I DO NOT NEED!!

The shopping nightmare began at approximately 10:30pm on the night of Thanksgiving when, upon arriving home from the family feast, I brushed my teeth and took off to meet my friends at a non-mutual friend's home. Which surprisingly wasn't awkward at all. After that, it was all downhill.

11:15pm - I meet friends at non-mutual friend's house. We chat briefly and then leave in our separate cars to catch the Gap opening at midnight.
11:45pm - We arrive at the mall and make a beeline to the Gap store and get in line. Next door, the Aeropostale line already extends to the opposite wall and curves around ours. I realize that people are crazy. Subsequently, I realize today I have joined the ranks of the crazy people.
12:01am - The doors open! And we flood in civilly. Fifty percent off everything store WOW! But we forgot that Gap is expensive anyways, so it only brings prices down to a relatively reasonable level. Friend shops for coat.
12:30am - Friend gets in line to buy coat.
12:40am - Friend buys coat. We leave Gap and wander the rest of the mall. American Eagle! But they, too, are ridiculously expensive.
1:00am - Friend finds shirt he likes! Friend gets in line and buys his shirts within 10 minutes.
1:15am - No other stores are open. The mall is lame.
1:16am - I realize I am hungry. I announce my state to my friends. We decide to go to McDonald's.
1:25am - We are failing to find the phone number for the McDonald's nearest us to determine whether it's 24 hours.
1:30am - We head to a far McDonald's near a Target, which we believe opens at 3am for more consumer revelry.
2:00am - We arrive at a 24-hour McDonald's. It has a Play Palace. Despite the fact that it is 24-hours, most of the doors to the facility are locked. Even with an adequate amount of sleep, I'm not sure this makes sense.
2:05am - I order a HappyMeal and receive a Hello Kitty watch. I love it!! Then I am disappointed as I discover I could have had a ChocoCat watch.
2:20am - We break out the Monopoly Deal game.
2:40am - We discover that Target actually opens at 4am. Monopoly Deal continues.
3:47am - We have finished at least 4 games of Monopoly Deal and are finally headed out the door to Target across the street.
3:50am - We are thwarted by the crazy people who have been waiting to get into Target for hours. Probably since Thanksgiving started, even. I am reaffirmed in the belief that everyone out to shop on Black Friday is crazy.
3:55am - We redirect ourselves to Macy's, where we know we will find parking and good things to buy.
4:45am - I leave Macy's with a new coat.
5:00am - H&M has a ridiculously long line. It winds through the store. I don't like H&M anyways.
5:15am - I reunite with a former orchestra buddy!!!! We chat about life; I reminisce about high school...damn! But kkiiiiiiiiiiiiib

--EDIT: and this is where I fell asleep at my computer in utter exhaustion--

5:30am - I am wandering around Express, contemplating how a 40% discount is actually very puny.
6:00am - I finally have the maturity to leave Express without buying anything and move on to the Loft, where I attempt to browse for items for my mother, who'd before I left the house requested I buy her an outfit.
6:20am - I leave the Loft with a dress for me and a ill-fitting shirt for her. I'm skeptical that it will win her approval. But the Loft shopping bag is lovely. I meet up with my friends again at Auntie Anne's Pretzels, and we split up. Off to New York & Company!
6:40am - I am a scarf and sweater richer, with another sweater for my mother. Perhaps she will actually like this piece of clothing.
7:00am - J.C. Penney: desperately trying to find a "meaningful gift" for my mother's friend's birthday.
7:10am - I spot a pair of purple boots.
7:30am - I am leaving J.C. Penney with a black pashmina neck wrap that was only $7.50, tax included. I am pining for the purple boots.
8:00am - My arm is shaking from holding so many bags as I scour Macy's once again for something for my mother. I feel I have to justify my spending by spending money on her. Incidentally, everything goes on my credit card.
8:30am - I am fed up with life. I purchase what I have in my hand and leave the mall. As I get to my car, someone is already waiting to take my parking spot. I contemplate again how crazy people are to come out shopping on Black Friday.
9:00am - I pull into a parking space at Target and stare blankly at the beautiful brick exterior. My car is still on, and I'm stalling in a back parking space. I struggle with myself before finally backing out and rumbling out of the parking lot. I am sick of shopping, and my Circadian rhythm is vomiting all over me. It's time to go home.
9:46am - Showered, pajama-ed, and thoroughly guilt-ridden, I sit down at my laptop and decide to record this day in my cyber history to remind myself: never again.

2:30pm - I wake up, fill myself with food, and wrap my mother's friend's present.
4:40pm - I hustle my brother out the door to pick up our baby brother to go to see Tangled at 5:30.
8:00pm - We are back at Macy's, and I am exchanging my coat.

I could be out seeing Harry Potter with my friends right now. Instead, I am lying in bed finishing this blog post and wondering whether I can get up the energy to work on homework. That I am this exhausted is ridiculous. Today, I spent over $200 on unnecessary things. Most of them purple.

Moral(s) of the story: Black Friday is evil. People are crazy. Writing is unproductive after over 10 hours shopping. Huddles frozen yogurt sucks.

day 13 : boob jobs

2010-11-13T15:49:00.002-05:00

Thought about one? Thinking about one? Think you might start to think about one after a few decades and gravity starts to take its toll?

It's not an unusual consideration. According to the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery, there were over 300,000 reported breast augmentations performed in 2009, down from over 350,000 the year before. And if you think about how these numbers represent the people who actually go through with the procedure, the number of people who've given even half a second's thought to it must be at least double.

I'm gonna be honest - I've thought about it too. Thought about and rejected, but considered nonetheless!

The thing is, how could you not? Media is pumped full of fantastic images - women with tiny waists and full, perky breasts. Audiences of men and women idolize the Victoria's Secret models with their sexy curves. Buy a push-up bra, increase your cup size, become your fantasy. All of it is just a surgical procedure away.

Until now.

Check out this product I discovered while reading better health blog:

Are your eyes deceiving you, you ask? Is this product actually called boob job? In fact it is. Marketed by Rodial Body Care products, boob job claims to augment your breasts by up to 2.5 cm when applied twice daily. For the nominal fee of £125.00, you too can be the proud owner of a pair of beautifully bigger boobs. Rodial describes the product's mechanism as a natural one derived from an "Asian root that has no hormonal activity." Their website doesn't really give any indication as to what it does, but other compounds in the cream apparently help to redistribute fat cells to the bust area and at the same time firm and tone the breasts as well.

Here's a testimonial from one of boob job's satisfied customers:

"After just 4 days of using Boob Job, I have definitely noticed a difference! My bra feels tighter, and my bust seems much firmer! I know longer need to use my chicken fillets!!"

Wow! She know longer needs to use chicken fillets!

Two things seem to be at work here. One, many many women would love to see their breasts fit the fantastic ideals put forth by marketing and media. Two, there's a stigma associated with undergoing plastic surgery of any sort, not to mention it's expensive. A third thing that might be tagging along for the ride is what I always refer to as the "green movement" - eating healthy, buying organic, turning to "natural" products that have previously undiscovered substances and properties that can substitute for all the synthetic junk we pump into our bodies through food and medicine and things like cigarettes.

Snaps to Rodial for putting all these things together and making a product with some relatively unknown compound from the Orient to give women exactly what they want in a discreet and inexpensive way that doesn't expose them to the stigma of plastic surgery...! But it's one thing to ingeniously put all these things together; it's another if the product doesn't actually work. That being said, it's ridiculous that the company doesn't put up more data from product testing. Testimonials are cute. But they don't really say much, especially if your sources can't distinguish between 'no' and 'know.'

Dr. Nield, of The London Clinic, was quoted in a news article expressing skepticism of the product. I agree with the need for very vocal medical scrutiny in a sketchy product such as boob job, but I think Dr. Nield could have taken more consideration in forming her comments, especially now that she may become part of a libel suit with Rodial. It is of course imperative that she makes her concerns known, but I think we have to consider the conflict of interests here. Dr. Nield is a consultant plastic surgeon. Would she want to see her patients go elsewhere for their breast augmentation treatments? And really, who are we kidding when we see a product that safely and effectively increases the size and perk of any part of the body? Maybe this cream isn't exactly safe, but is putting silicone in your boobs any safer?

When you look at it from the free woman's point of view, it's all a mess of ridiculosity. Be yourself, love your body, love your boobs - and keep them the way God gave them to you. The best way to go would be to just leave your boobs alone! 'Nuff said.

day 12 : the "good" parent

2010-11-12T00:47:00.001-05:00

I've been doing a lot of reading lately (trying to buff up on current events, particularly in health and medicine), and I stumbled across this article from the most recent issue of Scientific American Mind: "What makes a good parent?" Interested, I clicked and read about the "top ten skills" ranked and correlated to how well incorporation of these skills in the parenting scheme can predict a "strong parent-child bond" and a child's "health, happiness, and success." Here's what were found to be the "Parents' Ten":

>> 1. Love and affection. You support and accept the child, are physically affectionate, and spend quality one-on-one time together.
>> 2. Stress management. You take steps to reduce stress for yourself and your child, practice relaxation techniques and promote positive interpretations of events.
>> 3. Relationship skills. You maintain a healthy relationship with your spouse, significant other or co-parent and model effective relationship skills with other people.
>> 4.Autonomy and independence. You treat your child with respect and encourage him or her to become self-sufficient and self-reliant.
>> 5. Education and learning. You promote and model learning and provide educational opportunities for your child.
>> 6. Life skills. You provide for your child, have a steady income and plan for the future.
>> 7.Behavior management. You make extensive use of positive reinforcement and punish only when other methods of managing behavior have failed.
>> 8. Health. You model a healthy lifestyle and good habits, such as regular exercise and proper nutrition, for your child.
>> 9. Religion. You support spiritual or religious development and participate in spiritual or religious activities.
>> 10. Safety. You take precautions to protect your child and maintain awareness of the child’s activities and friends. —R.E.

This list is striking to me not for what it puts on top but for what it throws at the bottom. Life skills, behavior management, health, religion, and safety - these are things that are less essential than love and affection, stress management, relationship skills, autonomy and independence, and education and learning. On the one hand, I can see how stress management would be an important tool for maintaining composure in parent-child interactions; on the other, I struggle with the applications of this list - these qualifications for parental "competence" - to a low-income setting. This list of qualities is cute when you consider the potential audience for Scientific American. Of course life skills is not nearly as high as it should be, and safety seems a small concern when the biggest potential threat to your child's health comes from playing in the street in your gated suburban neighborhood.

What about the families living in the South Side of Chicago? What are the most important factors for "parental competency" when your struggles go beyond checking that Timmy has done his homework and gets a kiss before bed? Can we say "all you need is love" when Timmy lives in a food desert and walks everyday through gang territory to get home? Maybe doesn't even have a stable home?

Of course, love and affection are necessary, and sure, modeling healthy relationships in front of your kids is important for allowing them to internalize and emulate these kind of relationships throughout their lives. But I think there are some preconditions that need to be qualified before anyone can make a top ten list of parenting skills. Even beyond the acknowledgment of social disparities that impact family life and child development, I feel like there must be some recognition of the fact that children are also very different in their needs physically, mentally and emotionally. How is a child's "health, happiness, and success" reliably qualified, and how do you measure the strength of the parent-child bond? By and large, it seems like to raise your children in a "competent" way as described by the "Parents' 10" presumes a formulaic end goal of "health, happiness, and success." These vague terms say nothing to me. In fact, if anything, they suggest that there is some ideal child I should strive to raise, and this offends me.

It seems to me that, in reality, parenting competency should be about anticipating, meeting, and reflecting on a child's needs, whatever they may be. Culling skills and values from this list seems like a cop-out for the real job of parenting: discovering the life that is your child and assessing and re-assessing what exactly it is you need to do to cultivate it.

day 11 : marks marx left on me

2010-11-10T04:06:00.000-05:00

Do we like the punny titles? I do.

It is once again a late night post, and a time when I should be strongly considering my priorities. Lot yet to do and an early start tomorrow, I should be in bed. But here I am. Reflecting, at least, on something I'll have to address in a paper for my Self, Culture, and Society class. It's somewhat productive, right?

So we started the quarter with a work by E.P. Thompson on the development of time, not only in the concrete but also in the abstract. In the concrete, he gave a rundown of the history of clocks and clock-making, the invention of the wristwatch, and its implications of the possession of such objects. Abstractly, he sketched conceptions of labor time and leisure time and the role that time played in instilling a sense of work-discipline - of "time is money."

We blasted through Smith and Rousseau - traveled through the period of early manufacture and the breath (yes, breath) of time that separated it from the spark of Modern Industry. I personally experienced Smith as a primitive analysis of our life and times and saw man and society, tragically, from the eyes of Rousseau. Man is interdependent. Man wants. Man cannot conceive of himself without the Other. All fanciful pictures, painted with the intellectual's brush, looking backward, making guesses, imagining a space to justify human nature and the human condition.

And then Marx.

The Communist Manifesto, the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844, Grundrisse, and Capital. Intense analysis focused on historical fact and based practically on man as embodied in his activity and his consciousness of such. In a cogent treatise, in a philosophical discourse, in streams of consciousness, in an omnibus of empirical definitions - all capturing a passionate and unorthodox viewpoint couched in the inchoate grammar of a righteously indignant man.

Capitalism is the perpetuation of want. When the end goal is wealth and the intermediary desire is to minimize necessary labor time - when wealth wants value and more and more surplus value - how can the end be achieved? Marx says capitalism creates the conditions of possibility for its own destruction, but decades have passed since the time of his prediction. Capitalism as we know it is still thriving.

But things have changed. The world doesn't look so bleak as it did when Marx lived, at least not in this country. In places that aren't here, things probably look worse. The labor serves the wants of those thousands of miles away, and the conditions of possibility are worth nothing when those kind of obstacles must be overcome. When will the whole world hop on the capitalist bandwagon, and when will the market finally be saturated to the point where the communist revolution might occur?

What bothers me is that I don't think the communist revolution is ever going to come, and even if it did, it seems an impractical thing. Why should we only produce what we need? What would be the "capacity for experience of the men who have this undirected time to live"? The idea to me is inconceivable - a dream of a passionate man driven by the suffering around him. Communism simply cannot be achieved in this capitalist world. We move forward more and more quickly, and the gap between the richest and the poorest is one that becomes more monstrous every day. There's no way everyone can be accommodated to his need and more. No flippin' way. We're already at carrying capacity - probably beyond, even.

As beautiful as it sounds, there's just no place for communism in this world, and despite what Marx seems to think, there never will be.

day 10 : 5 most wonderful things

2010-11-07T01:07:00.000-04:00

As I close a rollercoaster week of ups and downs, I can't help but reflect on some of the things that help keep me sane. These are the things I can turn to to brighten my day, no matter what the situation - the things that pull through for me when no one has time to be around, or when I just want to make peace with my karmic space in the world.

P.S. I really enjoy lists. And spreadsheets, for that matter. =]

Sun-dried tomatoes. These are at the front of my mind tonight as I muddled through an evening with friends I've neglected to keep in touch with for a while. About six weeks, to be exact. The food at the Medici is generally uninspiring, but their Mediterranean pizza is straight from the pearly gates of heaven. One of the reasons I like it so much is, of course, the sun-dried tomatoes. Even the tiniest morsel of this shriveled fruit explodes with flavor - all the sun-ripened goodness of a tomato in one bite. The kind I get probably comes from a stolid factory farm that picks and dries its tomatoes by the thousands in some mechanized dehydration process, but I like to think that I can taste the sunshine in every bite. It's a burst of happiness.

Frozen yogurt. Not the sugared kind that's basically ice cream with 20% less calories but the kind that actually tastes like yogurt. Tart, rough on the tongue with tiny ice crystals, and delicious with mochi bits. This is food I could eat for a lifetime and never tire of. Honestly, I want it every day of the summer and sometimes make a pilgrimmage up to the Berry Chill on State Street just to get my fix, even in the winter. A friend from New York introduced it to me about a year and a half ago, and I've been hooked ever since. I was outraged to discover there were no Red Mangos or Pinkberrys within reasonable distance of Chicago. I can only be grateful that Berry Chill was here to save me from a fate worse than death.

My vacuum cleaner. Of course. This had to be on the list. There's no better cure for a shitty day than getting to suck up all the shit on the floor to beautify your humble abode.

Christmas lights. Blinking, monochrome, icicle, or the works, Christmas lights remind me fresh snow, warm living rooms, and a beautiful sense of peace and comfort. There's nothing better than walking into a heated room after trudging through snow and wind, but when I see Christmas lights, no matter how cold I am, it's a different kind of warmth that settles in my chest. Christmastime is my favorite time of year, and nothing makes it feel more like Christmas than the millions of lights that go up around stores, on sidewalk trees, and all over peoples' houses. I'll have to make a special effort to put some up around the apartment this year.

Fluffy things!!!! I think there is an ingrained mechanism for squealing at cute fuzzy things. It is actually built into our genetic code. You cannot help but want to reach out and cuddle anything that looks like it has more fur than it can handle. Or just has four furry feet. I love furry feet! Fluffiness is the stuff of happiness. Just to give an example, this puppy makes my squeal every time.

One my note: there are no credit cards or shopping sites in this post. Huzzah!

day 9 : as balls drop

2010-11-05T01:53:00.000-04:00

Week 6 of the quarter is always a bitch. These past few nights punched my midnight bedtime in the face and left me bruised and wounded for the rest of the week. Perhaps it need not be said that one of these past nights was occupied by frosting two dozen cupcakes in preparation for a fortnightly meeting with a group of volunteers. Anyways, the week is thankfully almost over. I dropped the ball - rather, many balls - on a lot of things this week. At least now I can pick this one back up.

As everyone in the world knows, third year is super-special-important in the life of an undergraduate, and this week (of all weeks) seemed to be the kick-off for discovering why that is.

Chicago Careers in Health Professions: Application Seminar I - the first in a series of five mass meetings that aims to lead me, the needy but motivated pre-medical student, through the long, treacherous timeline of medical school applications. Today, I was given the proverbial now-or-never for my future in the deceptively innocuous question: is it the right time to apply for medical school?

The anxiety is two-fold. Am I ready to apply? I have to get my ass movin' if I'm going to. If I apply next year instead, what will I be doing in my gap-year? Adding another dimension to the great wake-up call, I have yet to tell my parents of my decision either way.

Our pre-med advisers ask us for a personal statement by January, MCAT by mid-June, and recommendation letters by yesterday. There are application fees and prep courses and the long and daunting process of cultivating relationships with credible and successful people who will "provide evidence" that I am, in fact, the perfect candidate.

I am at once enchanted and disenchanted by the process. It is thrilling to imagine building this image of myself that will endear me to an admissions committee and potentially secure my ticket to the intellectually and emotionally rewarding experience that med school promises to be. An acceptance would lay the tattered red carpet for the next half-decade of my life and finally, finally put me on the path to becoming a real person. But all the hurdles I have to jump. Playing to pre-med advisers, courting faculty for recommendations in science courses and non-science courses and outside activities, standardized testing...and even harder than all of that, maybe, having to articulate to a panel of people (who've surely heard it all) why medicine is a good fit for me.

It's all very scary to think about. So, on the eve of yet another midterm (physics this time) and a biochem quiz looming tomorrow (today), I'll leave it at that - let it simmer some more.

day 8 : do you really need that many...?

2010-11-02T01:34:00.000-04:00

This is a question Boyfriend asks me often, and almost 100% of the time, it's "YES, in fact I do!" I haven't really considered the ramifications of this affirmative, especially when the question is about shoes and wallets and bags. At last count, I had over 20 pairs of shoes in my closet. And that doesn't even include the ten or so pairs I leave at home. Luckily, that is the most extreme of my collections. Bags, I have around ten. For wallets, I count a bare five or less.

I'm excluding clothes from the conversation just because...well, because. Okay, that's probably an indication that I should think about it a little bit.

On the one hand, I recognize that on some level my acquisition of shoes (and clothing, I suppose) is somewhat excessive. I justify purchases to myself with thoughts like, "This is cheap!" or "This is a basic item. I'll need to get it eventually." Rarely am I thinking of how something would look with another item I own - I don't really shop to put together outfits.

If I could break down the thought process behind my accumulation of clothes and shoes, I imagine I'd find some very useful information. What would be terrifying is if I didn't find anything at all. That, I think, would be a shining beacon for a path to shopping/buying rehab. As it would happen, I think my hoarding can be explored.

What puzzles me is that I love every step of the shopping/buying process. Whether it's online or in-person, I thrive in the act of browsing - whether I'm looking for a specific item and adding my search constraints to an online engine or picking through a clearance rack in search of a good deal. The funny thing is, once I've picked out things I like, I put very little practical effort into deciding whether I should buy them. Trying things on takes about ten seconds per item. Sometimes twenty, if I decide I need a second look. It's the decision process that drags on for ages. Literally standing at the rack and asking myself, "Should I?" The whole process is something I could do for hours and emerge from the store with nothing. When I do buy something, though, I'm giddy as the price rings up and joyful when I thrust forth my shiny plastic card (a beautiful Amex Blue) and scrawl something resembling a signature on the crude touchscreen terminal.

And then I'm proudly toting my paper-or-plastic bag, emblazoned with the store's insignia, and ready to take public transit home to admire my new purchase in the fluorescent lighting of my apartment. Sometimes I end up not liking what I buy; sometimes I do. I'm not exactly sure what changes from the magical interior of the store to the very real interior of my home, but there's really no rhyme or reason to what I eventually decide to return. Often, I just don't like the way an item looks. But why didn't I figure that out while I was trying it on?

I think ultimately what drives it all is my desire to have choices. It's not uncommon for me to buy something, throw it into my closet, and forget about it for the next month. When I happen upon a satisfying purchase, I'm delighted! Occasionally I'll receive my credit card bill and curse my love of pretty things, and then occasionally I will reconsider the shoes bought recently but only worn once or twice without great love. Maybe I'll return them. They aren't exactly what I wanted...I was enthralled by how cheap they were and persuaded by the fact that they yeah, they look pretty good at that price. Maybe it's not something I need, but like I said, it does look pretty good...

So maybe that wasn't very productive. I think maybe, though, it boils down to having choices - but not just any choices. Subconsciously, I'm building a wardrobe that will never do me wrong - that I can purge of unflattering pieces and replace with things that are actually nice. As I write this, I am saying to myself, "Erica Ting, you are so full of shit."

Okay. So maybe I'm actually just groping around in the dark. I'll just end with a list of my favorite purchases:

a pair of gold Tahari sandals (my very first gladiators!)
a pair of b.o.c. wedge slides
a pair of New Balance sneakers I got on clearance!
a white scarf from New York & Company
two plain solid-color V-neck T-shirts from NY&Co
one white and one black cardigan, Nordstrom Rack
a black wallet from the Coach factory outlet store
a pair of dark-wash Bayla skinny jeans from Aeropostale
a brown leather belt from Aeropostale
a hot pink (they called it "coral") sheath dress from NY&Co
a pair of DKNY jeans from Macy's (clearance!)

I do love things on sale. I do. Actually, I now notice that everything on the list was on sale, with the except of the b.o.c. wedges, and god love DSW, but those things were never going to go on sale. I think I got them from Famous Footwear, actually.

Maybe I should consider throwing out everything but these favorites. Maybe it'll give me a better conception of what to buy. But then I'd need to replenish the wardrobe. Haha, I'll have to think about it.

day 7 : when I grow up...

2010-10-31T23:55:00.000-04:00

I want to be a princess. A real princess. With a tiara and ribbons and frills and beautiful dresses to wear everyday. With children and stand mixers and a kingdom of my very own: one that is modern with glass walls and state-of-the-art technology. Maybe something like this:

The Casa DeLeon in Paradise Island, New Providence/Nassau, Bahamas: one of the badass estates for sale on ArchitecturalDigest.com

Nice, right? Every few months, I get onto the Architectural Digest website and just drool at all the beautiful houses, like this one. Excuse me, did I say houses? I meant $*#@ing palaces. No man (or woman) should even be allowed to own residences like these. It's a waste of resources and an insult to philanthropy and world hunger.

But I want one. So bad.

At this stage in life when my peers are starting to move out of the idealist dreams of youth and into the concrete goals of adulthood, I find myself still fantasizing about an ambitiously fairytale life, surrounded by beauty and immersed in the simple joys of love and life.

It'd be nice to be accomplished - to live a fulfilling professional life where I thrive on learning and cultivate a spirit dedicated to service and, hey, maybe make some money along the way. But what I want - what I really, truly hope my life looks like in 10 years - is almost a nightmarish vision of domestic bliss.

I want children, and I want them relatively soon. Two, at least, before I'm 33. A girl and a boy. I want to be married, hitting my fifth anniversary. I want to live in a beautiful place. It doesn't even have to be an Architectural Digest palace...just somewhere beautiful. With a brand-new kitchen and wide, open spaces, and high ceilings.

The thing is I don't even know if it's possible. Going forward, the modern woman seems to be all about career and independence - about shoving domestic bliss up society's proverbial ass. Family can wait, and so can marriage for that matter. We're all living longer anyways, so what's the harm in putting off children and putting yourself on a pedestal for once? Be selfish, do something for yourself!

What I find interesting about this is that, were I to make the choice to move forward, as they say, and develop my professional career, I would receive all kinds of support. It would validate my parents' hard work, my expensive education, and the hours and hours of sleep I've lost as a slave to achievement. On the other hand, if I decided to drop everything and dedicate my life to family and home, I would've pretty much damned myself to disappointment and a lifetime of "Oh, you're a stay-at-home mom? How nice..."

I acknowledge that there are ways to make it work. That's the point of an entire blog. However, I also acknowledge the fact that it is a struggle that comes with (what seems to me like) more than its fair share of sacrifices. Having a child at any point in your medical career means inconveniencing others - finding people to cover for you. If you're missing work, someone has to take on your patients. If you're not at home, someone else is raising your child. These compromises are not worth the time saved by pursuing a career and building a family life at the same time. Inevitably, one side of your life will suffer, and to me, that seems like the ultimate sacrifice - not being able to do better than a half-assed job.

When I grow up, I want to raise my own kids because, in the end, my time with them is limited. I want it to happen soon because my father is getting old, and I want my children to be able to play with their grandpa. I realize if I don't walk the professional path now, I'll be walking it alone later, but there's always time for that, isn't there?

The funny thing about growing up: you spend your whole life thinking about it, but I imagine it's never what you expected when you get there.

day 6 : things I keep in my closet

2010-10-31T01:32:00.000-04:00

The closet seems always to have been the proverbial cubby for embarrassing/potentially awkward things that are best kept to yourself. I imagine it's where boys keep their porn and ex-girlfriends' gifts - the same place one might roll up all the atrocious holiday sweaters and hope for a swarm of starving moths to nest upon them.

My closet, on the other hand, is always thrown open to the world. And so is my bedroom door, for that matter. At least when I'm conscious. Sleepytime is time for closed doors (because if a burglar were to come into my apartment at night and attempt to come into my bedroom, at least I'd hear my door open first! But that's virtually the only reason it stays closed). Perhaps this would suggest that I'm a very open person!

Anyways, the (very mundane) contents of my closet:

lots of clothes
Boyfriend's clothes
laundry hamper (separated by whites, darks, and "colors" whatever that means)
boxes with lamps I never use
cheap black Room Essentials comforter (super scratchy, mostly polyester, would not recommend)
cheap lime green Room Essentials sheets (also super scratchy, yuck)
black body pillow I thought would be a good idea initially but turned out I just threw it on the floor =(
Zoloft, Ducksquirrel, and Pikachu! They're just chillin'
Luggage receptacle...container-things
Under-bed storage (not under my bed, haha) full of shelving
Box of electronics/wires
Large plastic bins full of old textbooks and the remains of a failed attempt at a Sailor Mars costume
sad neglected violin

That's pretty much everything. Nothing embarrassing to speak of. Except perhaps a pink nightie that looks a little awkward. That's ok.

It'd almost be nice if I did have something incredibly embarrassing or interesting in my closet. Maybe then I could actually write about it. Along the same lines, I have nothing under my bed either. Not even dust bunnies because - as it happens - I virtually took my bed apart and vacuumed underneath it today. That was pretty nasty. I mentioned the hair on hardwood floor thing before, right? Yeah.

I will say, though, whenever I notice my violin, I feel a little guilty. It used to be so well-loved, and now it's just sitting in my closet. I think I keep it there so that I can forget I have it, sometimes. I should get it out to play at some point...see if I can still hit a note. Or read music, for that matter.

Aside: once again, it is the night of Halloween, and this is my activity for the evening. I'm so cool.

day 5 : the short, the long, and the ugly

2010-10-30T03:10:00.000-04:00

I feel like I could make a very crude penis joke here...but I'll leave it at that.

It is very late in the day right now - so late that it is actually tomorrow already. Kindof odd to think about since my periods of consciousness don't necessarily overlap with the periods of the day. Hence, I've been cheating a little in my 30-day challenge, posting after the day is technically over. I figure it's all right.

I had the most delicious red velvet cupcake today, from more cupcakes. My lovely roommate brought it home just for me, as they apparently decided to shower cupcakes on college students as some promotional shtick. At least that's what I imagine the goal to be for some food truck to schlep out to South Campus and hand out cupcakes in Chinese takeout boxes. They were cute! And super-delicious. Something about the icing...reminded me of the filling in lemon creme donuts. But with less preservative aftertaste.

This cupcake I consumed, of course, all by me onesy, shortly after having a discussion with my Peer Health Educator coordinator about diabetes. And my consumptive fear of it (less severe than my consumptive fear of public restrooms, but still pretty high on the list).

My grandmother has diabetes, and my experiences with carbohydrates suggest to me that I probably don't metabolize sugars as well as I should. The carb coma is a serious problem in my daily life, and I proactively limit my carbohydrate intake in the morning and afternoons when I need to sit in class, i.e. actually remain conscious, after a meal. It is truly unfortunate that I LOVE cinnamon rolls and red velvet cake and cream cheese frosting and all manner of sugary goods.

I know that type II diabetes is getting diagnosed earlier and earlier, i.e. in younger populations than ever before, so I wonder if other college students - people my age - otherwise healthy and mindful of exercise (OK, I guess that's not me...) have the same concerns I do. I imagine this is something I should think more in-depth about later, but for now, it is 2 in the morning, and I have little insight to offer.

P.S. I realize this is a...different way...to spend a Friday night. I would say, perhaps, very U of C. :)

day 4 : multiple-choice

2010-10-29T03:05:00.000-04:00

Today, finally, I took the midterm I have been mentioning in my past few posts, and I have to say it wasn't as bad as I expected. It brought me back to the days of AP World/European/U.S. History, except that it was even easier. The thing that reminded me of the good ol' days of high school, though, was the format. Sixteen multiple-choice, two short-answer. Just like every high school class used to make 'em.

And like I said, these weren't even the really hard kind. They were the "Pick the statement that is TRUE" kind. This, of course, included the option "All of the above," but really, what else could you expect? There's always an all-of-the-above. Or a none-of-the-above, for that matter. Sometimes those can be even worse.

I've heard it said that multiple-choice isn't rigorous enough to test for breadth and depth of knowledge. I don't really have anything to say to that. It's probably true. I'm not doing the best of my critical thinking when all I have to do is circle A, B, C, D, or E.

But wouldn't it be nice if life were just filled with multiple-choice?

What, you say? Life is already multiple-choice? Not true, my friend! The defining feature of multiple-choice is that the choices are finite, and let me tell you, my choices in any aspect of life are never finite.

Think of the possibilities!

It takes me sometimes over 20 minutes to get dressed in the mornings. It's ridiculous. I stand at the door of my closet and run through outfits in my head. Even if I only had 10 different shirts and 10 different pants/skirts/what-have-you, I'd have 100 different possible outfits I could put on in a single day. And believe me, I have way more than 10 different tops and bottoms.

I live the sad life of the poor decision-maker. Not in that I make poor decisions, just that I take a long time to make them, regardless of their moral value. I would much rather let someone else decide things for me. In those not-uncommon moments where I tire of dressing myself on my own, I defer to the arbitrary but efficient decision-making power of my boyfriend:

"Red sweater or yellow?"

"Red."

"Skirt or jeans?"

"Skirt. No - jeans."

"This one? Or this one?"

"That one."

Really, he could care less about how it looks (and this I know to be true. He dresses himself in the same thing. Every day. He also wears sweaters under his zip-up hoodie); most times, he doesn't even bother to look. The nice thing is that I get handed a decision, and I cut my morning getting-dressed ritual down to five minutes or less.

Even more powerful than that, though: what if I could reduce my career options to a multiple-choice? It would be the end of so much educational and emotional strife! There are just so many choices - all I want is to presented a platter of four or five. If I could somehow take a test to determine what I would be best for me, I could skip all the time and effort wasted on "career exploration" and shadowing. It's all part of the process, I'm told, but damn what an inefficient process it is. Wouldn't it be great if someone could just tell you up front, "You would hate this job because of the long hours and low pay," or "You would love this job because it sucks up your life, which is great for you since you don't want anything but professional success." Wouldn't that be amazing.

This is poorly formulated, but really, I think all I'm trying to say is I want some simplicity. Some refreshing simplicity. None of this process of discovery that jerks you around as you try to find something that works for you. I'll have to re-write this post sometime. It is a sketchy blob of thought that hasn't yet matured into a coherent idea. For some other time, friends. I'm just trying to keep up with my challenge.

Boyfriend tells me these 30-day challenges breed bitterness and stifle inspiration and enthusiasm. I dunno. I'm liking it so far. =)

day 3 : pathological shopping

2010-10-28T02:13:00.000-04:00

I confess. I have a problem.

I've seen that movie with Isla Fisher, Confessions of a Shopaholic, and I'm sad to say that I identify with her character, although I don't think my problem is as extreme as hers.

I've seen Chanel and Dior on the runway - I'm actually kindof a fan of Givenchy and Valentino, I think - but those kind of items are way way way out of my price range, and I wouldn't even dream of clicking past the online shopping cart to commit myself to credit suicide. Suffice to say, I've never gathered the courage to actually walk into a real live store to gawk at these things-I-want-but-cannot-have. I'm convinced my lack of purchasing power would emanate from my pores. And it wouldn't be the first time I'd gotten called out for being a plebe: once I strolled into a Saks Fifth Avenue with a Coach bag on my shoulder and, god bless his heart, a chicly dressed "sales associate" came out from behind his pretty glass counter to ask whether I was looking for a bathroom. Thanks, perfume sales guy.

Then again, it probably didn't help that I'd been otherwise dressed head-to-toe in Old Navy tank top, shorts, and rubber flip-flops. But still.

In fear of future such encounters, I've directed my energies into online shopping and clearance whoring. Old Navy, Gap, DSW, Victoria's Secret, New York & Company, and Express are all regular targets in my cyberquest for great deals. I'm one of those people who spends hours browsing, adding, and removing items from my virtual shopping cart, only to close out the window without purchasing anything. I'll even go so far as to enter my shipping information and redeem any coupons I might have before fleeing the site. And when I say I spend hours in this ultimately fruitless exercise, I mean hours every day.

It's phenomenally unproductive. Not to mention a huge waste of my time. Today, for example, I had a midterm to study for. It's happening in less than 12 hours. For a solid hour and a half, I clicked around the clearance section of Victoriassecret.com, trying to put together a cart full of merchandise that was just over $100 so I could get free shipping. Because, more than anything else in the world, I hate paying for shipping. Especially when it could be free. Luckily, I just happened to have a coupon code good for free shipping on orders over $100. Why? Because I decided I might as well have a VS Angel card for all those purchases I make at VS (their underwear, you must admit, is excellent). I think that puts my credit card count at just over a dozen.

Ridiculous? Probably. I don't even want to start on how many pairs of shoes I have.

day 2 : vacuum cleaners

2010-10-26T23:59:00.001-04:00

It's midterms time at the U of C, and in spite of that, I found myself spending part of my lunchtime buzzing my faithful Dirt Devil around my bedroom and bathroom. I probably should've been studying, or working, or starting that biochem problem set that's due on Friday, but I felt an overwhelming need to remove offensive debris from my environment. We're known for quirkiness at this school, and while my clean fetish probably doesn't qualify quite as quirky, I think my love of vacuum cleaners could probably take me a long way. Yar, stranger. Vacuum cleaners.

If Dirt Devil were a god, I think I would worship him. Or her. There's something wonderfully familiar and comforting about the bright red plastic and high-pitched whine of a Dirt Devil that brings my back to the dust bunnies on the stairs of my childhood home. Before I foisted the chore off onto my little brother, I used to fret over the little fuzzies that got stuck in the corners. I hated that our stairs didn't sit on top of each other in 90˚ blocks; I'd have to run the vacuum over carpeted riser at an angle to make sure everything was dust-free, but I loved how pristine our white carpet would look afterwards. I could even feel the cleanliness under my bare feet.

Remember those UltraShark commercials on TV? I fell in love. The UltraShark was definitely at the top of my Christmas list that year. I was definitely superhappy when I got it. I definitely used it the next day.

When I got to college, a working vacuum was a luxury. First and second year, vacuums were a premium I had to go to the front desk to ask for, and even then, they weren't guaranteed to work. Usually one of the wheels was missing. At the end of the year, I had to prowl my thinly carpeted floor with masking tape to get rid of all the hair that had accumulated there. Gross and gross.

Life is better now that I have my own apartment. For one thing, I'm a proud owner of the Dirt Devil Versa - one of those lightweight convertible vacuums that's perfect for hardwood floors and hard-to-reach corners (don't I sound like an advertisement?), and I use it religiously. Is there really anything worse than gaggles of hair on a hardwood floor? I think not. Sometimes I think I must be going bald from the amount of hair I find on the floor. This, I'm sure, is not a unique experience.

Anyways. Back to work.

Aside: I used to worry that I had obsessive compulsive tendencies. After taking this quiz, I decided I had nothing to worry about. Take one question it asks:

Have you worried about acting on an unwanted and senseless urge or impulse, such as:
Physically harming a loved one, pushing a stranger in front of a bus, steering your car into oncoming traffic; inappropriate sexual contact; or poisoning dinner guests?

In fact, no...I have not.

the 30-day challenge

2010-10-25T17:02:00.000-04:00

No, I'm not eating Special K for two meals a day for 30 days. That's ridiculous...although I can't say that I've never considered it. In any case, today is about the beginning - my beginning - of a 30-day blogging challenge. In spirit of the ~~fact~~ ~~idea~~ fact that it takes 30 days to form a habit, consider this a toast to habit-forming, writing practice, and the niceties of becoming an eloquent and - dare I say it? - entertaining writer. Because let's face it: who's going to read something that's not entertaining? Certainly not me.

It's been a while since I last made any sort of effort to write for an audience that didn't involve an instructor of some sort. My last blog post, as you might observe, happened over two years ago; I stopped writing in journals once my angsty teen hormones subsided; and the guilty/sad/embarrassing pleasure I used to indulge in writing fanfiction was swept under a rug as well.

I could have given reasons and excuses - traced my fall from grace from the moment that last blog post hit cyberspace - but I'm not sure I could really justify my departure from writing to myself. If anyone asked me (and no one has, but for the sake of argument and for the sake of pretending I have an audience), I'd tell them I actually was a good writer. With a point and a voice and an overwhelming respect for the beauty of words on a page. But that was the past. I was a good writer. But how about now?

"Good writing" is a term that in many ways makes me shudder. It brings me back to the days of Honors English in middle school - to the Shurley method, sentence jingles, and formulaic five-paragraph essays. (Aside: clearly this guy had more fun with Shurley English sentence jingles than I did.) As if there were an actual formula to writing well.

I admit, there is some merit to these methods in learning to write grammatically and correctly, but there is no real formula to teach something as complex as voice and word choice; I have doubts about the ability to teach fluency or organization either. Attempting to teach someone how to write is akin to attempting to teach someone how to think. Maybe I should qualify that: attempting to teach someone how to write well is like teaching someone to think well. What does that even mean?

Arguably, it is not keeping your paragraphs to a strict five sentences or more. It is not conforming your thoughts to an introduction, body, and conclusion or using transition words and sentences to coax your reader along the orderly thought-path you've paved for him in arguments and analysis. And maybe I'm not qualified to say, but good writing for me is voice and content alone. What are you trying to say? And how are you going to say it?

Which is all for me to say: I lost my voice. I'm struggling for content. Here's to me, trying to gather it all together again. And here's to you, Yifan, for doing it first.

In Honor of the Self...

2008-03-31T22:05:00.000-04:00

Today is a special day - today, Monday, March 31, 2008. Ta da! The great day of IVY LEAGUE ADMISSIONS DECISIONS(!) Oh my goodness, someone hold my hand.

I'm not sure I really have my thoughts together on the subject, but I - like many others, I'm sure - awaited this day with the kind of niggling hope and precarious confidence that comes with being a top student throughout life. And I - like many others, I'm sure - saw this hope smashed and this confidence smeared with the appropriately cordial regrets of an undoubtedly stressed-out admissions officer.

THANK YOU Princeton, Columbia, Yale, Harvard, and, even earlier, Stanford.

With compositions even skimpier and more shallow than the 500-word essays I offered you, you have successfully undermined the past four years of my life. I appreciate that!

...

*sigh*

I have heard that this year was supposed to have been the most difficult of any so far to get into college...not only in terms of academic talent but also by sheer numbers, and although I struggle to take this Ivy League rejection to a higher level, I also understand, truly, that this cannot define me.

More than anything, this Ivy League competition is a test of pride and resilience because, honestly, I'm not sure how I could've worked harder for this - for a letter of congratulations and four years of intense competition and family struggle to pay off a $50,000/year education. No. I don't need that. I really don't. But I can't help but want it...because I've worked for that letter, because the moment I stepped onto the Columbia campus, I loved it. I felt it. And I wanted a part of it.

But I am so much better than this. This entire admissions process undermines the foundations of our learning, undermines the depth and scope of our achievements - because we can't be expressed in hours per week or 500 words on a topic of our choice. There is no person that simple. And maybe I'm bitter, to have been flatly rejected from my dream school, but if whatever I put on my application didn't filter through that convoluted process of admissions reading, so be it.

I apologize to God, for having been so cocky about myself, but other than that, eh, I think I'm done with this college thing. I've got options, and I know I'm lucky for those.

Besides...

There are soo many more better things in life.

I'm over it. So over it.