have a great time in china, steve!!! we'll miss you!!!

MY WESTERN BLOT TRANSFER WORKED!!!!!!!!!
MY WESTERN BLOT TRANSFER WORKED!!!!!!!!!
MY WESTERN BLOT TRANSFER WORKED!!!!!!!!!
MY WESTERN BLOT TRANSFER WORKED!!!!!!!!!
MY WESTERN BLOT TRANSFER WORKED!!!!!!!!!
MY WESTERN BLOT TRANSFER WORKED!!!!!!!!!
MY WESTERN BLOT TRANSFER WORKED!!!!!!!!!
MY WESTERN BLOT TRANSFER WORKED!!!!!!!!!
MY WESTERN BLOT TRANSFER WORKED!!!!!!!!!
MY WESTERN BLOT TRANSFER WORKED!!!!!!!!!


hahahhh ok that just makes me happy for some odd reason, cuz i had previously thought that i had ruined the CT-KK2 protein sample for sure. but it turns out that it's still perfectly fine!!..yess!!

wooohooo i got into FAP! hahhahh it's not that big of a deal even but that's the only one that i really wanted to do.


it's raining like insanely mad right now. we went and played in the rain yesterday and then azim freakin broke the trampoline!! michelle , brent, azim, and me were playing break the egg with brent as the egg, and then azim jumps too close to the edge and one entire side of the trampoline collapsses..HAHAH...most hilarious thign ever...don't worrie, we fixed it though, but there's gonna be a weak spot there. we told the RA and he didn't even care, lol.

we have two seminars today...gayness....my building's too far away for me to make it in time to both and then come back and actually have time to do lab stuff, so i'll either skip the first one or maybe both.

omg i freakin love my friends. APOORVA and MIINKAY rock, as well as the rest of the rice prefrosh...so yesterday around 3, apoorva calls me saying that some rice prefrosh are gonna meet up somewhere just to hang out and they invited me along cuz i knew some of them - it was supposed to be apoorva, miink, steve (miink's friend from memorial) and keith( a really really cool hightower person majoring in VOICE!! at shepherd!)..so we were gonna get jenna and myers and michelle to come along too, since they're all rice prefrosh too, but i ended up inviting like our entire program..lol..we ended up eating at el mesón in rice village, and seriously, we had THE BEST time there...hahah the moment of the night was when we were talking about rice's music program at shepherd:

steve: you know, they have a huge organ in the shepherd school of music.
me and keith: (hearing it wrong) they have a WHAT?!
steve: ..?
me: *to keith* did you hear that too..??
keith: yea, that's what i heard too!
miriam: OMG yall have sick minds!
me: haha yea i think we thought that he said "orgy" instead of "organ"
miriam: oh wait.....never mind, that's not what i thought you were thinking....i was thinking "organ" as in....never mind
apoorva: oh maan we know where your mind is!
me: what? i don't get it?
apoorva: she was thinking "organ" as in dick


HAHAHAHAAHAHAHAA.....i don't think we stopped laughing for like 10 minutes after that....and then the people sitting towards the middle of the table tried to tell the people on the other end what happened, but they couldn't tell it without laughing, so that went on for a while....hahhaha....classic, maan, classic

went back to martel and showed them around...they seemed to really like it there...and then all the rice people gathered on the trampoline and we talked until like 11 about random things...i hope we didn't make you get back home too late miinkay!...but wow....if these are the kind of ppl that are gonna be going to rice, then i am SOOO envious cuz they were soooo awesome....i hope MIT has the same kind of ppl like that....ahhh damnn, now i wanna transfer to rice...=(...j/p, MIT has the research facilities that i want...but still....=(...

so that's that, and now i'm exhausted!...but so much fun....we'll see if we do anymore random stuff this week

me: you know, jenna just got you a bag of baby spinach
chris: what?! does she know how many bags of baby spinach i just bought and put in the fridge??!!!

HAHAHA...ok yall need context to understand that...chris (javadi) eats baby spinach just like anyone else would eat chips. so jenna got him a bag yesterday just for a joke.




oh, and btw, i love how random phone calls in the middle of day always just feel so good.lol.

 

wow. i can't believe that at one point earlier this year i actualy didn't want to go to this research program, because it is EFFING awesome. hands down, it's the best lab i've been in ever, and when we all get back to the dorm and just sit and bum around eating random things, and jump around like crazy on the trampoline, nearly breaking the thing (and nearly breaking other people's necks..haha.j/k). oh man. i don't even miss AIM anymore. since we don't have internet access at the dorms, we can't go on AIM after work. which is a good thing. so instead of stayign up late talkign on AIM, we stay up late talking on the trampoline.....=P...gotta love it...! there's just too much stuff to blog about that i just won't blog about it. it would take up pages and pages. like how javadi has more hair products than i do and he even has a straightening iron..(LOL)..like how when we're all tired, everything seems amusing.

we're going to HSO tonite!! 8:30 pm at the Miller outdoor THeater! (AKA the big hill close to the museum). and then out to dinner somewhere. and then probably the trampoline again. hahahhh the trampoline has become like an addiction, literally, i'm not even joking.

annnd more things to add on:

15)the "rape whistle" that they gave us all on the first day
16)miriam: "you know, they say that when ur dying of thirst, you ought to drink your pee"
anthony: "i'm wondering how you would be able to drink your pee when you're dying of thirst"
HAHA
17)the bean bag chairs
18)playing hearts with brian jeremy and darsh...and watching jeremy and darsh both get shoot the moons freakin TWICE IN A ROW!!
19) trying to get the non-texans to say "yall"
20)omg...yall won't believe this..but NO ONE from anywhere outside of houston has ever heard of the game VC!!!
me: oooo we should play VC after we play hearts
brian, jeremy, and darsh: *confused look* ....VC...?
me:...uhh..u know...short for "vietnamese cards"..?
jeremy: hmm...hey brian, ur vietnamese...have u ever heard of that game?
brian:..nope..man those crazy viets!
*falls over laughing*....but apparently VC is pretty much like a game called "big two"...which they had all heard of but i hadn't...weird..haha
21)jenna is awesome! she's obsessed with spanish stuff too!!!!!!!




ok...driving test in 2 hours...wish me luck!

ahhh back at home for the weekend to finish up driving lessons.....but i miss rice already!!!...i kinda like the idea of working my ass off during the day and then coming back and chillin at the dorms at night..HAHAH the trampoline..there's this gigantic trampoline on the side of the courtyard in martel and we all just sit there chatting away while being eaten to death by mosquitoes..some highlights of the week:

1)eating turkish food. yummy. we went to a turkish restaurant in rice village called "istanbul"
2)"what the f*ck?" books
3)miriam bought a "would u rather..." book at half-price..LOL...gotta love it...we spent like all of last night and the night before that reading weird things from that book
4)"would u rather have your sex organs glow red like ET every time you made an advance, or would u rather moan like chewbacca every time you defecate?"...HAHAAHAHHAHAAHA...that was our favorite one
5)"fart confetti"
6)-"she sells seashells by the seashore"
-"she shells...wait...she sells sheshells....ahhh, dammit"
7)the trampoline, of course
8) watching "elefant".....pretty sad movie actually
9) jenna got me into the habit of calling javadi "chris #2"
(yea...so now we have chris #1, chris #2, and chris #3 who we call "anthony"
10) jane's awesome chinese food
11) miriam's jelly bellies and the "perfume -flavored" wildblack berry....lol
12) FINALLY getting an email..=P
13) listening a 3.5 hour long lab meeting argument about who wants to clean up and how to enter in plasmids into a database
14)hot chocolate


and i met some more ppl too:

-jeremy--> darsh and brian's roommate who is from canada
-ramón --> someone from wilkinson's lab who speaks spanish and is trying to learn mandarin
- jane--> someone else from wilkinson's lab who is trying to teach ramón mandarin and is not tryign to learn spanish
-ankit --> someone else in our program from corpus chrisit who was telling us about flowing his entire salutatorian speech
-david --> random person from UT
-hong --> someone who i met in the kitchen one morning who invited us to play ultimate frisbee...have yet to do that
- lennell --> a black shuttle driver from new orleans who's really neat...the only shuttle driver so far who doesn't creep the hell outta me

and all of my lab ppl...hahah i LOVE them:
-dou --> the lab manager who i mostly work with...she's sooo awesome, like the best mentor-type person i've ever had....
-valeria --> an italian post-doc who is really funny
-xiaofang--> another post-doc i think...who doesnt' like to clean up
-kihwan --> a korean post-doc who oils carts with a pipet..LOL...he and xiaofang always pick on each other
-ling --> a really quiet post-doc who's really nice
-dong yu --> don't really know her, but she seems nice


ooo and we also have to wear these blue lab coats cuz we're summer students, but my lab gave me one of their white "department of immunology" lab coats..hahhaah i am SO wearing that from now on...it actually fits me better anyways

I'M AT M.D. ANDERSON RIGHT NOW!!!!!

i haven't had internet access for three days, but surprisingly, it doesnt' feel that weird...lol....i've done MORE than enough reading and research for today, so i think i deserve to blog..another way for me to remember stuff..here goes!

sunday - moved into martel college at rice...it's a very nice place - each room has four private rooms, with this HUGE common room that all four of us share...well our common room is freakishly empty cuz there's uh..nothing to put in there...i got bored waiting for all my roommates to arrive, so after i unpacked, i took off for the museum just to say hi.. which is about a 10 minute walk from my dorm...somehow sibyl persuaded me to help out at this huge hand-painting mural - it's basically these three huge drawings of a hand, and we had to get passersby to stop and put their handprint on these murals...i was working with brian, who seemed pretty bored as well..haha...so we started to "help out" (with the motivation of gettign this mural done earlier)...maaan i bet half the handprints on there were ours..LOL...and then guess who just happens to stop by the museum on that day - troy and his family!!...we got westin and troy to do their handprints, and troy's handprints nearly finished up the mural for us..hmmm.i dont' really remember much of what happened the rest of that day...anywyas...

monday - first real day and we met just about everyone, including some ppl who were in different programs...just for kicks, i'm goign to list out everyone i remember meeting and talkign to...some of the ppl are realy cool...oh and just for everyone who is wondering, YES there ARE some hot guys there....interestingly enough, they're all going to UT...=(..lol ok here goes:

- miriam --> the first half-hispanic jew that i've ever met..pretty cool person, she's going to harvard, and seems to be really really smart
-michelle m.--> is from grapevine ("btween fort worth and dallas"), will be a rice owl next year....and her mentor is reshena's dad..haha. wow weird is that...
-michelle t. --> one of my roommates, goign to washington university next year, is kinda quiet, but really nice
-amanda --> another roommate...is from cypress in north houston, will be going to BAYLOR! next year...at first we all thought that her lab project was somethign to do with the genetics of grasshoppers (ewww)..but apparently the sheet was wrong..haha..i woudl scream if i had to work with grasshoppers
-jenna --> another rice owl, i think she's from san antonio..she works in the same builing as me (yay!) and her phone batteries aren't working
-jane --> harvard girl, dont' know much about her
-whitney --> a roommate, going to UT Dallas, really nice but i don't see her a lot durign the day
-javadi --> his first name is chris, but since there are two chris's, he tells everyone to call him by his last name...also from cypress, and yesterday he got fined or something for having a barely expired metro rail ticket...those ridiculous rules....pretty cool kid, we've cooked up some water balloon fight ideas, and we found out that the huge trampoline outside of martel is insanely bouncy..will be a longhorn next year
-chris --> an insanely quiet kid who is goign to rice next year
-neil--> is from klein...i heard a lot about him from anu last year.i finally figured out that he doesn't REALLY like gardening...haha...and he's going to Wash. U. next year
-celsio--> colombian kid....hahaha i love how there's so many hispanic ppl...i think he's another UTer
-danny--> OMG. this kid is like THE MOST BEAUTIFUL GUY ever...seriously...hahhaha...is from south houston, half hispnanic, plays in band, and is another UTer... see what i mean about all the hot ppl going to UT?....lol...ohh and he's not realy in the King program, i dont' know what he's doing actually
-wesley --> this is THE TALLEST PERSON i've ever met....even taller than troy..7 feet!!!...and he looks taller because he's skinny...we had some nice conversations about drivign stick shift...georgia tech next year
-james --> a spastic but cool kid from strake who knows bobby huebel and frank lee
-brian --> USC med student who we chatted with last night
-parul --> our RA....she's really really sweet
-darsh --> a funny indian guy at med school at U of Indiana who likes to tell us stories about climbing lamp posts when he was drunk..o_O

alrite i'll have to cut this short since i want to get back to the dorms before it gets dark today.....i'm mentoring with Dr. Bing Su in immunology, and i'll be doign detection of antibodies on MEKK3 proteins, and some additinoal stuff...Dou (a researcher in the lab) is showing me how to do a western blot tomorrow....i'm excited!!..later yall!~

wow my house feels so empty now...my brother left yesterday to go to a math competition..and where is it located, do u ask?...in IOWA....iowa??? that's liek in the middle of nowhere..hahah well then he gets to go to SAN MARCOS (back in good 'ol texas) for another math competition..haahh wow...that kid is smart...


ok i leave in 4 days. OWLS!!!!

So I finally have time to sit down and blog about the last few days starting with graduation…I guess the reason I’m actually gonna take the time to blog this is because, well, this is just a nice way to end the school year and so if I want to remember these last few days 20 years in the future I can just come back and read my blog…how useful…

Graduation was on the 29th..it’s such a weird feeling, saying that we’re graduated. The thought of being out of high school. It didn’t really hit me that I would be seeing AHS for the last time prolly until heather and I finally left from pro-grad…anyways, pre-graduation and getting to the Toyota center was quite a hassle….i had said my speech like 5 times already, and my throat was starting to get dry…I was thinking that it would be interesting if I suddenly lost my voice halfway on stage..lol…went backstage, chatted with sid, apoorva, punag for a while…hahaah they were all giving me funny suggestions like “u should introduce yourself as ‘the wang!’”….they even suggested that I say some I-could-really-care-less-about-you things to the leach, which were HILARIOUS…I love those goofballs…=P…the whole time I was mostly kinda pissed off about how leach wouldn’t let me say jace’s sal address..but whatever..THEY CAN’T STOP ME FROM POSTING IT ON MY BLOG. YEA…hahah…when we walked up on stage, it was the weirdest thing…cuz Britney and me were technically the first students to walk out, so ..iuno, just kinda weird…and then getting to actually face the entire student body from the stage…WOW….that was just a neat feeling, also kinda alienated too, cuz ur not with the rest of ur friends really…and the whole time I was still trying to figure out how to work parts of jace’s address in my speech as it was SUPPOSED to be without ticking off leach at the same time…so I ended up just introducing jace, giving regrets that he couldn’t be here, and then giving david rockett’s classic line “AUSTIN IS FOR HUSTLERS!”…hahhaah there ya go jace, ppl clapped for that ^_^...the rest of the speech went pretty well….i think I surprised myself and just about everyone else because I was talking so slow…not as if I had a choice, since the microphone just about echoed every word I said…but thanks yall, I’m sooo glad that everyone liked it!!!...punag and apoorva and a lot of other ppl, though, pointed out that it was directed towards like only the first three rows of ppl..HAHAHA….ok well they have a point there….i didn’t realize that when I was writing it tho….apoorva pointed out that probably about 5 ppl actually understood the assuming-the-horse-as-a-sphere joke, and that he was the only one who understood the ACDC one….NIIICE…I like that then…=P…did everyone like the “Watergate” and “re-election” thing??...haha that’s the one that I’m proud of…^_^…then britney gave some really nice prayers – good way to start and end the ceremony….the actual ceremony was pretty boring tho…my dad said that he fell asleep..

Afterwards it was off to simposio’s for the graduation banquet that the JBC (jirehh) fellowship had for sid and steve!!..seriously, JBC fellowship is like the BEST – awesome ppl, awesome discussion, and they actually do useful stuff….but it was a very nice dinner, jessie had josh and jon demonstrate to us the “correct” way of table manners..geez I never knew that when eating bread, u have to tear off bite-sized pieces and butter each piece before eating it….and steve and I had an interesting revelation: the food item “baby white lettuce soaked in white wine vinaigrette sauce” is apparently not the same as “pao4 tsai4”…..LOL, I swear that’s what it sounded like tho!!...we all ordered different entrees, sid and nathan ordered some kind of dish that sounded like it was gonna be some huge slab of veal…the main entrée comes and ..*drum roll*..it was five sand-dollar sized pieces of ravioli..HAHAHA….they were both starign at it for the longest time and nathan even asks the waiter “uh….is this all?”…yup, apparently it was….lol….good thing they had these refillable baskets of bread - all the guys were stuffing their faces with bread cuz they were so hungry from having tiny entrees (totally forgetting that they should eat bite sized pieces..tsk tsk….hehehe j/k j/k)…after dinner, they showed this slideshow of sid and steve growing up that cyndy, lyndy, and jackie had made…which turned out looking really really nice….all the little kid pics of sid and steve were soooo adorable….and omg, STEVE used to be THE CUTEST little kid I’ve ever seen…awwwwwww, and he’s still cute today =P =P….the funniest thing was seeing the contrast between them two as kids – in all the pics, steve had this serious, mature look, while sid always had this goofy grin on his face..yup I still remember those good ol’ days back at walker station when sid made us all call him “oreo”…^_^……ohh, and I’m glad that yall liked ur CDs!...gershwin and maná all the way!

We were supposed to meet back to church for fellowship, but it was almost 9:30 by then and sid and I had to be back at Austin for pro-grad between 10 -midnight….ravi took a bunch of us from sid’s house to starbucks, where dori had an awesome cookie cake that temporarily stained my teeth red. beautiful. Rawr….lol…pro-grad started off kinda slow….but got progressively better and better…the cool moonwalk stuff in the gym was the BEST!!...we watched danny and justin butcher each other in the moonwalk jousting thing, and then raced each other in the bungee cord thingy…maaan that thing can BURN if ur not careful…I liked the huge obstacle course moonwalk the best….u had to first crawl thru a tunnel, dive under something else, then climb up this moonwalk rock-climbing thing, and then finally slide down…SOOO much fun!!..two ppl could race each other at a time, and it started getting crazy…I raced justin, which was a bad idea, since justin is like 2 feet taller than I am and could climb at like crazy speeds…got a caricature done which turned out pretty good and actually looks like me…then finally found heather and we tried to do karaoke..HAHA…and then TRICYCLES!!!...THAT was balla…heather kept laughing because I couldn’t’ figure out how to steer it at first and kept running into walls literally about every 5 feet….and then I kept running over ppl’s feet in the casino area….o_O…maan it was hard navigating thru the crowd…especially since jace jumped on the back!!..but at least I could still pedal. Then troy jumped on……………..LOL….but it was hilarious seeing all the tall ppl trying to ride on the bicycles, cuz they got all cramped up…

The hypnotist was the best part of the night!!!....sid tried to get hypnotized but for some reason it didn’t work on him…his IQ must be too high or something….but the hypnotist was making everyone do all these CRAZY hilarious things….colin chapman (not lupold), dutka, ryan morrow, and travis springer were the BEST….the hypnotist made colin think that the microphone stand was a hot chick and even made me French the freakin mike stand!..ewwww…and he hypnotized ryan and this other kid so that every time he said the word “hypnosis”, they would think that their shirts were on backwards and had to start turning it around….LOL he said the word “hypnosis” like ten times…my favorite part was the music part….he put on ballet music and hypnotized travis, dutka, and this other kid to think that they were prima donnas..OMG…watching those guys do pirouettes and trying to be graceful by doing leaps across the stage made me laugh sooo hard…and he hypnotizd ryan so that every time he heard rock music, he started dancing like ELVIS!!!!....hahaahaha ohhh maan I so wish that I had a video camera with me…

That was it for pro-grad….Sunday was mostly bleh, I got about four hours of sleep, then went to thida’s graduation party…there were lots of neat ppl there. – punag, jace (he shaved his head!!..it looks nice actually), apoo, lauren, lizz, amanda, sarah, justin, danny, and I think some ppl may have come later….had to leave early, but had a great time while I was there…the elliptical machine, etc…maan I wish I could have stayed longer, but my family was going to eat at this Italian place called “buca di beppo” with the CCE teachers from ascension…rite, like I’m gonna have anything to do there, but I went along anyways…the food was pretty good , even tho I got ridiculously stuffed with that plus the yummy thai food that thida had at her party….there was no one there my age… I ended up talking to peter (one of grace’s sons) the entire time…so that made it interesting at least, since he was an interesting person to talk to..lol…and he has curly hair..woot, how cool is that… it was a weird restaurant tho…they had random pictures everywhere, of religious figures to scantily clad figure, they got it all…I went into the bathroom and there were pictures of nude women everywhere…rite, like I’m gonna want to see pics of nude women..o_O…and then peter told me that in the guy’s restroom there were pics of ppl peeing….wtf..??...hahah like I said, it was a weird restaurant….


Alrite….so I think that was everything, I hope I didn’t leave anything out!!...if yall have any pics, please send me some!!!!...the rest of the week, I’ll be chillin and trying to study pre-cal (mostly trig UGH) cuz I gotta get all my MIT stuff out of the way before I leave for rice…I move in next Sunday…..Saturday will be hectic tho….there’s fellowship in the evening (we’re painting, I think….?) so I’m not sure if I’ll be able to make it to kelley’s graduation dinner (sooo sorrie Kelley!!!...=(…i’ll still get u a present, nevertheless)…and then apparently neerav has something that lasts until 1 am Sunday..? iuno, lemme know whatever’s going on!...thanks everyone for such a great time!!..^_^