I still miss her so much

Feb 5th, 2009 - The saddest day of my life
Goodbye mama. I love you more than anyone else in this world and i am heartbroken that you are gone. But I hope that you have finally found escape from the physical and emotional pain that crippled you for so many years. I am very sorry that you will not be around to see me married, like you were hoping to, but please know that you will be very much on my thoughts when I do. Thank you for everything that you have given me, thank you for always loving me, and thank you for being so proud of me. I will not let you down. Bye bye mama. I love you. Always.

-Xiaojuan

mango madness
The Indian mangoes are finally in town! The US and India came to a trade agreement this year - Harley Davidsons for mangoes. Harhar, go figure. =) We quickly got our hands on some even though they cost a small fortune - $38 for a dozen of those sweet, juicy, golden orbs. When we first sunk our teeth into the succulent Kesar .... it was like POW! The jasmine fragrance, the explosion of sweetness....it was heavenly. Yar, i know they are very expensive.. but if you've been in the US for some time, you'd know that the most of the mangoes around here are hard, green and sour! Urgh! We're very deprived here ok? Now we're waiting for the Alphonso ones to ripen. They're supposed to be one of the best varieties out there. Now, how about importing some mangosteens?

They're so good I want to eat them green...skin and all!

ennui
D's away in Florida for a conference, and i'm bored out of my mind. There's so much that i could be doing right now, but the house just feels so empty and quiet. It's not like I hate being alone or anything... After all, we were apart for 5 years right? I should be perfectly happy to have some time to myself to do WHATEVER I WANT! Like dance, or go out with friends, or go shopping, or cook, or read a book, or go shopping or go shopping or go shopping! But..*sigh*...miss having someone to listen to me rant about my day. Miss having someone around to decide what to have for dinner. Also miss brushing my teeth with someone leh. heee....

Anyhow, that someone is now having lots of fun in florida where it's 30 degrees celcius out, at a beach resort right on the Gulf of Mexico. The conference program even schedules a break from 1 to 6 pm every day, so off they go to the beach to play! Wah... I better work harder and get more results, so I can also go for such a 'conference' and come back tan and relaxed a more informed grad student. Boo.

I also want! (That's really where he is now...*sniff*)

dancing cheek to cheek

*warning* This post contains the boring details of my dance history. Not for everyone. =P

I first learnt to dance at Berkeley. There was a weekly social dance class, and we were taught the very basics of waltz, cha cha, Lindy and a few others. I certainly wasn't born to dance. Team sports were more my kind of thing. Shakin' and moving those hips don't come naturally to me. Put me on a dance floor and i'm about as groovy as a surfboard. But it was fun, and no one cared that I wasn't a dancing queen. When I moved down the peninsula to Palo Alto, M (at Stanford) and I often went to these social dances and had so much fun dancing till we got really dizzy.

It was in Boston that I was introduced to the world of competitive ballroom dancing. I started out shy and tentative with the Boston University team. I struggled for almost a year, trying to find a suitable partner. I never did well at competitions - I didn't know how to move, didn't know how to balance, didn't know how to look good. Moreover, I focused on Latin, which involved being sexy, and I don't do sexy very well. Haha... =)

It was not until I started dancing with David that things started to pick up. He danced with the MIT team, and it was there that I was introduced to a very different instructional environment. There were classes tailored specifically for different levels of dancers, and these classes strongly emphasized basic technique, something sorely lacking at BU. It was with David that I got my very first ribbons! (Yeah, when we make the finals, we get ribbons, just like in dog shows.)

no, that's not a legal dance move.

I continued dancing Latin with a new partner, Stewart, and we did okay at comps. We usually almost always made semi-finals at the Silver level, but found it really hard to improve. We were both too alike - laid back and aloof, so we never really pushed each other to practice and become better dancers.

yar, everyone tells me I should get him to smile more.

A year down the road, started competing in standard and smooth with Kenny. When I started, I was not very confident at all. I hardly knew the basics of these new dances, so how was I to show them off on the dance floor. Most of all, I didn't want to let Kenny down, as he had done really well with his previous partner. But I never looked back once I started. I knew that this was IT. Instead of sexy, think dreamy and elegant. Not exactly words to describe myself, but the feeling of floating across the dance floor was amazing.

Recently, I stopped doing latin, and decided to concentrate on standard and smooth. Happy happy! We've been doing really well at competitions and I attribute it to Kenny (who's a great leader) and the fact that i'm much happier doing what i'm doing now. We've moving up to the Gold level next semester and competition will be really tough. Wish us luck!

Dance has greatly influenced my life. I still don't have good enough posture and high heels still kill my feet, but I've improved so much since those California days. More importantly, I'm discovering and exploring this new side of myself, and I certainly like it! =)

Fastforward in time

To those of you that still visit my blog, thank you for believing that my life could possibly be interesting enough to provide some type of entertainment. =P Well, now that D is here in Boston with me, life has changed significantly, and thus, so should the content of this blog.
Life is good here.. we've settled into a comfortable rhythm. I'll go into that when I have a little more time. Well, to bring this blog up to speed, here are a couple of pictures from the past 2 years, a glimpse into my little life.

So D's in Boston! I must have looked at over 10 apartments before settling on this one. Boston is a pretty historical city, so many of the apartments are..um... 'charming' (read: old). Ours has elevators, on-site management, garage parking, and a pool (which unfortunately has a creepy lifeguard, but that's another story) etc. It's only an 8 minute walk to school, so we wake up unbelievably late every morning. Well, guess i'm a spoiled little princess! Here's our dining area all neat and uncluttered - not anymore, unfortunately.

Just as with great power comes great responsibility, with big kitchen comes big meals. We try to experiment with different dishes and cuisines. Yum! We have every common kitchen appliance imaginable - hand blender, juicer, george foreman grill, slow cooker, deep fryer. We have managed to convince ourselves that some of these things may come in handy some day. Here are some pics which explain why my face is now as round as a fishball. =(

japanese-inspired dinner: grilled miso cod and shitake miso soup

a feast with friends: 'claypot' chicken rice, carrot cake, kung pao chicken and sambal kangkong

ma la hotpot heaven

okay. this is making me hungry. We have many, many more pictures of food. Eating is our favorite pastime. I could share 3 pictures with each post for several posts! Must move on..

Glorious summer...
...and fall (Halloween with labmates)

Winter came....

...and refused to leave...

Signs of spring (in Chicago, the windy city)

Finally, summer weather has again descended on Boston. Kayaking, sailing, windsurfing, picnics, fruit picking... can't wait! Boston gets cold pretty early (Sept-Oct) in the year, which doesn't leave me with many weekends to enjoy the sun. Another reason to love summers is to have friends and family visit. Already this year, Daryl's friend V, my old friend YS, and a senior from RGS have stopped by. I enjoy having visitors. Not only do I get to know Boston a little bit better, but I get to spend some time catching up and sharing life's stories.

Be warned
A very good friend once called me an 'ice-cream girl' (ala The Teenage Textbook) - Sweet, but cold.


The Wild Rose
Random Brutal Love Dreamer (RBLD)

Colorful, but unpicked. You are The Wild Rose.

Prone to bouts of cynicism, sarcasm, and thorns, you excite a certain kind of man. Hoping to gather you up, he flirts and winks and asks you out, ultimately professing his love. Then you make him bleed. Why? Because you're the rare, independent, self-sufficient kind of woman who does want love, but not from a weakling.

You don't seem to take yourself too seriously, and that's refreshing. You aren't uptight; you don't over-plan. Romance-wise, sex isn't a top priority--a true relationship would be preferable. For your age, you haven't had a lot of bonafide love experience, though, and this kind of gets to core of the issue. You're very selective.

The problem is them, not you, right? You have lofty standards that few measure up to. You're out there all right, but not to be picked up by just anyone.

"You're never truly single as long as you have yourself."


Link: The Online Dating Persona Test @ OkCupid - free online dating.

the calm before the storm
Tomorrow is the big day. I don't know how to feel. A part of me feels all twisted up in knots, a big worrisome mess. There's limitless information out there...without a fixed syllabus, i could be asked absolutely anything. Yet another part of me feels a strange calm, simply because i know there's nothing much more i can do. I've studied perhaps 80% of what i planned to, maybe it's enough, maybe it's not.. Anyhow, i just have to take a deep breath and plunge right into it. I know i can do it.
I just want it to be over. I'm tired of feeling stressed and tired and lifeless everyday. I want to enjoy life again. I want to have a life again. To spend weekends at the beach, to watch plays in the park, to shop to my heart's content. but most of all, i want to go home.

the final stretch
3 more days to go. Feeling slightly better now that i've finished up a chunk of stuff from BE567. I was feeling thus suffocated and demoralized partly because of non-linear systems, which i took last fall. It was hard grappling with all the equations and definitions that i very quickly chucked out of my memory all those months ago. Oh well, welcome back into my life you confusing Hopf, transcritical, pitchfork, and saddle-node bifurcations. Welcome back all ye wonderful differential equations, vector fields and phase portraits. I would say that my brain is somewhat chaotic right now, except that chaos is defined as aperiodic behavior in a deterministic system that exhibits sensitive dependence on intitial conditions. I don't think that i'm exactly a deterministic system (behavior determined by only the state of system and initial conditions) since several external stresses are currently acting on me and threatening to drive me into a state of insanity (a stable fixed point, which is not possible in a chaotic system).

See, i have been studying. =)

Now that i'm pretty much done with this part of my revision, it's back to physiology and biochemistry, which is much more interesting and also easier to revise. I feel a strange attraction (oooh..i can define a strange attractor too!) towards thick biology textbooks (remember Campbell in JC?)...i actually look forward to having some time to sit down, put on my thinking cap and plough through them. Gonna take a short break to grab some food and water so i don't die a horrible death at home alone.
I can't wait to have a social life again. So many good things lined up for the next month or so. *shoves thoughts away* For now, i'm a hermit! 3 more days to go...

lost
As each day goes by, the feeling grows stronger. In the past month or so, this strange emptiness has taken root in my heart, and it slowly, very slowly gnaws at the core of my being. I don't know what's wrong. But sometimes i just sit there, not motivated to do anything. I am loathe to move, to eat, to enjoy the sunshine. I sometimes feel like life has lost its meaning. Why am i here? Where is the joy in living where i am now? What am i trying to accomplish? I feel lost. Not having anything to look forward to each and everyday except for the day i finish my PhD and return home. Home. So close to my heart, yet so many thousands of miles away. but then again, I'm not ready to go home. I want to live life to the fullest, experience all that i can, and receive the best training in the sciences as possible. Yet, alarms are sounding.. well, not really. Actually, nothing is sounding. It feels likes a vast, empty vacuum yearning to be filled.

I think i'm just tired. Tired of doing it all on my own. Motivating myself, making decisions on what to do, where to go. Seeking out new things to try, meeting new acquaintances but making few lasting friends. Moving from city to city, dealing with any problems that crop up. Exploring a new city, discovering its beautiful secrets but not having anyone to share them with...

It's been five years. I've been away five long years from all the people that matter. I've seen so much and learnt so much that I would never have had I remained in Singapore. But now that I know how much there is out there, and that i've seen how other people lead their lives, comes the realization that so much is lacking in mine...

I've been dealing with so much crap recently. god knows how much money i've wasted in bills, parking tickets, rent and the such. The housing search took freaking long and uncovered some problems with my credit..which leads back to the money issue. Someone put a dent in my car and drove off (i suddenly noticed its appearance one morning). Add to that a broken refrigerator, and worse, clogged kitchen pipes which caused water to backflow into my apartment, flooding the kitchen floor.. gross. This doesn't help my studying for the PhD quals, which is scheduled for next week. Too many shitty things at once makes xiao an unhappy person.

I need to change my attitude before i screw up the exam. Everyday i sit in front of the computer (as i am now), willing myself to study, but not moving an inch towards the books. There's so much more to study.. right now, i feel like doomsday is approaching, but i'm not doing anything to salvage the situation. Ha. I feel like yelling at myself to "WAKE UP!"

But i have faith that everything will be better soon. Thanks to Kat, i feel like I have some semblance of a personal life. Thanks for involving me in your life, and for sacrificing some of your precious 'alone time'. Also, boon will soon be in Boston for a visit, and i'll be more than happy to show her around boston. Then comes a much awaited trip back home. A chance to spend some quality time with family and friends and really recharge my draining energy. Perhaps most importantly, D will be flying back to the US with me....a dream come true.

Give me a month to bounce back. Life will be good again. Hear me roar.