I feel like there\’s some metal ring around my head that keeps getting smaller and smaller. Sigh, the consequences of getting sick.

I have a presentation that I need to do in class tomorrow. It should be easy, EXCEPT that I lost my voice. I e-mailed the GSI about me being sick, but he wouldn\’t let me change my presentation date to Wednesday.

Many things I did not accomplish this Thanksgiving break! Namely, the letter, my two projects, my 26 things. Oddly enough, the most I have accomplished this break is the nanowrimo.

A few weeks ago after having a successful meeting with a graduate student, I came out of Soda Hall and a woman ask for directions to the Haas Business School. I told her that I was just happened to go that way (actually it was slightly out of the way for me) and asked her if she would like to walk with me. She gladly obliged. She was dressed in formal attire-a business suit, but she seemed ruffled. I admitted to her that I had difficulty finding the school my first year at Berkeley. I asked her if she was a professor. Indeed, she was…a economics professor from the University of Technology in Sydney. She was in Berkeley to do research and was going to Chicago later that week to attend a conference. One striking thing she asked me after we had five minutes of conversation was that she asked whether I was Japanese. Because she was pleasant, I didn\’t snap back as I would have. I said simply that I was American and was born near Berkeley. And that my ethnicity was Chinese. As we continued, we made pleasant chat, me talking about my major and my intentions for graduate school. Then we finally arrived at the Haas business school. She seemed so grateful for my help. To my surprise, she handed me her business card and told me to drop by the University in Sydney if I was ever around. And to tell her that I was the one who helped her through the UC Berkeley campus. I walked off, knowing that I would probably never meet her again, sort of sad that I was not an econ major…but knowing that I had made her day.

EDIT: i finished the nanowrimo! 50,088 words! The majority of what I wrote was in my feverish haze this morning at 7 am. That is, 50088 words of…CRAP. If you really want to read my \”novel\”, then let me personally know. It\’s over 400k in Word.

Not to my surprise, I got sick. Lost my voice.

For the past month, my friends were coughing in my face. My mom was coughing in the house. And yesterday after only 5 hours of sleep, I caught the bug. I felt the annoying itchiness build up throughout the day until I had a full-blown sore throat.

In celebration of Thanskgiving, my family is actually going to have a dinner…for the first time ever. This years is the first time in many many many years that my mom has Thanksgiving Day off. And it\’s the first time that my sister has decided to come back to the Bay Area from San Diego. And what\’s more my cousin Jeff (who recently moved from Chicago to the Bay Area) is actually attending. A true family affair!

And we\’re going to have our dinner in Legendary Palace, a Chinese restaurant in the heart of urban Oakland. In fact, a few months after this restaurant opened, a guy sitting near the front windows…got shot in the back by the Chinese Mafia!

Something to be truly thankful for.

But I am also very thankful for tomorrow. The day where I can rise at 5 am so that I can wait outside in the cold for 45 minutes outside stores to warm my hands on steaming hot deals. Very thankful. Very thankful for spoofee!!!

A snippet from my nanowrimo!

\”The movie of us is not finished yet,\” he said at the airport.

It was almost like a movie.

There are many times that you wake up and you think that the previous few days was only a dream. Only because you are in your bed now, back to familiarity. The same walls, the same sun. All the same before you had the dream. But you remember being somewhere else. You remember the moments the day before. You remember the emotions. The physical intensity. The gentle quietly laughing nudges he made when you had whipped cream on your upper lip. Then that is when you realize it all has been real. Do you smile and fall back into bed? A satisfying moment when you think life is good, almost perfect. Or do you rush yourself into nostalgia? Aching for those moments to repeat again.

I am currently on my slow Win2k laptop (to be returned to the CS dept in two weeks) outside in the freezing code just so that I can get cellular reception and Internet access off someone\’s unprotected wireless network.

Because my cordless is dead. Because SBC (according to their pre-recorded msg on their helpline) has accidental downage and will not be upage until 2:19 am. (estimate time pst of course). I don\’t like days like these!

Edit: 2 hours of downage and I already gave up my privilege of staying warm…then it comes back!

My parents\’ Sony cordless phone at home has lasted more than 10 years and is still chugging! It even survived my accidental drops.

As for my Vtech cordless phone with a 3 mailbox answering machine. It lasted approximately a year, right after the warranty expired.

The recipe for the soup I made for Aaron\’s party
two sliced peeled carrots
three celery stalks (that I forgot to skin, no wonder the celery was tough to eat)
three peeled medium-sized potatoes cut into eighths
one can of chicken broth 99% fat-free (how can it be 99% fat-free if 1% is fat?)
sliced and diced uncooked turkey breast, include a wing bone to make the soup asian if desired
two whole peeled onions, diced into small pieces that you can\’t even tell there\’s onion on the soup

put everything except celery into a large pot. add water until it covers most of the ingredients. boil, then add celery! then the soup will last for five days of meals if nobody at the party eats it.

And because of PREVIOUS COMPLAINTS, the e-mail address is no longer displayed in the comments. Just to protect yourself from spam. (Whose idea was it to put DELETETHIS or NOSPAM within an e-mail address.) If you did not know, b2 converts all e-mail addresses into ascii format so that bots cannot find the e-mail address. However, it is required that you enter one for my own evil purposes!

And my landline phone broke. I don\’t know why. Today, I picked up the phone to dial a number, but it wouldn\’t dial. I just heard the dial tone. So I called this number using my cellphone and it worked fine. I don\’t know what\’s wrong now. :p