in less than one hour, i will be OVER the midpoint of the midpoint of my 20's. so sad.

i'm getting pretty bad at updating huh?

sorry... it's been a long week. i had a grant app deadline today, it ended up being 52 freakin pages long (yikes!). i'm so glad i'm done with that... now on to the rest of the things i'm worried about... midterms in 2 weeks, spring break the week after, and a 15 pager and a 6 pager due the week back. was thinking about trying to swing a trip down to the city with LU, but that ain't happening. i guess i'll just put in 40 hours @ work (summer trip money!) and crank out those papers.

so i went to see the doc this past wed. i'm gonna try out effexor to see if it helps with the anxiety and the lows. i really hate the length of time it takes to adjust to medication. i haven't self-medicated in a very long time. after watching that peter jennings report, i think i'm going to be even more suspicious about bad reports about e. things they don't say in the article, what the average dose of the md* is in an average pill, and was there any sort of correction factor used in the sense that rats and humans have fairly different sensitivity to sound detection. is the rat model a good enough model to use for humans? is 5 days enough to give conclusive evidence? it seems they should wait for awhile longer. recovering from rolling generally takes more than a day, maybe to fully recover it might take 2 weeks. oh... and to help the responsible use community. consider testing yours, and entering the results in the online database to help others! (it's been awhile since it was updated... don't know if they're still doing it... but try anyways.)

here are some saved links.

this one isn't so interesting, but... did you ever notice that people who have influence do that whole first-initial. middle-name last-name thing. p. david campbell, l. jay oliva, b. thomas golisano. does that mean i will never be influential since i don't have a middle name? i can only ever be jchow.

i found a link to this on buffalo's craigslist. i suppose it's good if you want a free car. maybe if i could pick who advertises on my car i'd go for it... maybe like get a nice '79 monte carlo sponsered by adidas.

throw in some buffalo links.
-so much activity in the buffalo real estate market as of late. old buildings coming back to life, new buildings going up, a fairly hot housing market downtown. the city hasn't seen this much development since the 1960's and 1970's, before the suburbs sucked all life out of downtown.

-kind of an interesting contest, but i wouldn't hire them to design my website. it's absolutely horrific.

-ha... dunkin' donuts thinks it can muscle in on timmyho's town?

-hope i won't be too busy of the summer so i can do this.

-they can't. then i'll get to see more of bill on snl. in all seriousness though. i'm a big fan of hillary. i'm glad we currently have two very influential senators, and a soon-to-be influential democratic governor in spitzer.

-cool baby story. yes there are problems with canada's health coverage... but i still think universal coverage for all beats out what we have here, which is coverage for the fairly well off, and the poor... leaving the lower middle class out on a limb. a mix of universal health care, with private coverage for those who choose that route should be made available. some argue that gov't control is too much, but for many states like new york, gov't already controls many aspects of healthcare. all hospitals in new york are non-profit as mandated by law, hospitals need to get approval from the state to exand, or build new with a certificate of need. gov'ts are inefficient sometimes... but i'd rather have a public interest group look over my needs than some private corporation worried about the bottom line. with a gov't takeover, care can also be standardized to a certain extent, which can save money... at least until we happen upon an era of healthcare where we can use people's genetic info to treat them.

hong kong is such an expensive place to live (when you can't live on USD $77K/year, that's expensive), but it's such a fun city to visit. you can't beat hong kong dim sum... that shizz is the the best.

i like this story cause it has a good title.

so i have a friend here, and she's all getting married to a canadian! she's very happy with the prospect that she will be canadian sooner rather than later (i'm so jealous she's gonna beat me to canadian permanent resident status/citizenship). congrats K & D.

probably be awhile before the next update. lots of reading and preparing for upcoming exams. hope you all have great weekends.

did a little reading, a little studying, and some grant writing.

donated blood and went skating with some classmates sat.

i think i was the only person in all the land who hasn't seen garden state. well, now i'm not, saw it last night with JT, and JT. i thought it was quite good. the shots were framed very well. the story was off kilter, which i liked. it had a lot of kinda reminded me a bit of edward scissorhands (but not as tim burton weird) in that it was serious, with subtle comedic moments. i liked the scene when he was rolling, though i don't think you can ever capture what that feels like on film. plus... drinking while up is not a good combo... not only do the effects cancel each other out, it's very likely that you'll become very dehydrated. i think i good soundtrack can really push a film to a higher level. while i have heard the movie's soundtrack before, hearing it when watching the movie was so much better. it's kind of like how i feel about kill bill vol 1. great soundtrack, even better as the movie's playing.

that's that... and tomorrow's monday =[.

made an appointment with the doc on wed. we'll see how that goes.

hope everyone has a good start to the week.

dear friends,

got this pic in a forward from LU awhile back, it's turned into one of my favs.

hope you're all doing well. happy rest of the week!

-jason-

hola. i've been starting posts and abandoning them 15 minutes in the last couple days is it cause i'm losing interest? perhaps. or maybe it's because in the grand scheme of things, who really cares about what i have type out anyways? hmmmm. i've had a hard time focusing the last couple weeks as well. been debating whether or not i should make an appointment to see the doctor... maybe go back on anti-depressants. i feel a little off, and the thing i dread the most is falling back down into another hole. on the otherhand, i don't think i can take going through a month trying to find something that works, and keep up with school.

ok enough with that.........

so new york got dumped on yesterday. 27 inches in cp. if i was down there this weekend, i would've gone out and taken some pictures. i love going outside in whiteout conditions. no one else is out, and you're just walking around and you literally own the place. it's so quiet, and if you could walk in/on clouds, that would be what i'd imagine walking in white fluffy clouds feels like.

i think this was the ironic/moronic news story of the day down here. it's about vp cheney shooting his friend while he was hunting. how big are quails anyways? i never really got the gun thing. i hate them. i don't think they should be sold ever. i don't like hunting, and i kind of think hunting with a gun is pointless. some people say there's skill involved. where's the skill in sneaking through the forest and blowing up a defenseless animal? it's not like cheney's starving either that he needs to hunt for his own food. how many open chest surgeries has he had? something like 50 right? ok... even if you HAD to hunt for your own food. how big are quails? do you really need a frickin shotgun to take those things out? where's the challenge in bird hunting with shotguns? those things spray shot over such a large area that you're bound to hit some part of whatever it is you're shooting at. congratu-frickin-lations. leave it to the US to lazy-up hunting. i think it's very ironic however that cheney is such a huge supporter of gun rights, and the nra in the US, and now he's actually shot someone else.

i saw brokeback mountain this weekend with a JT. there were a lot of things i liked about it. i'm always amazed at how ang lee sets up his shots and scenes. the setting translated so well onto the screen. all the actors and actresses gave great performances, but in the end, it kind of felt a little contrived. i think it's a great big step for hollywood to even release a movie like this and have it distributed over so many screens. kind of like how crouching tiger was all over the US the year that came out. it was great to see asians acting in a serious movie, and not just being relegated to being the nerd kid in the background, the tech wizard, or some martial arts master. thing is... you can't fake being chinese. if you're chinese... you're chinese. with brokeback though... going in, you knew the actors weren't gay. so... in a sense, i think it took away from the movie a little despite their awesome portrayals. it's quite a sad movie, but it could have been even more effective even with 2 straight unknown actors.

so my parent's are making their asia trip in march-april-ish... so i won't be going with them. right now, i'm still trying to work out something in may after my exams. a bit has changed though, i'd really like to head over with some friends now. i think it'd be a lot more fun if others were with me. even though i look like i'm asian and all, i've grown up here, so this is what i'm used to. having some english-speaking people with me, i wouldn't feel so out of place over there. plus it's an incentive for anyone coming with, cause maybe they wouldn't feel so intimidated by having someone who at least can speak the language. so if you want to come along... i'm thinking 5 days in taiwan and 3 in hong kong. maybe fly out of jfk so i can spend a couple days in new york too. i think i'll have to postpone china til next year. for that trip, i think i'll really need the rents. i'm comfortable with taiwan, and hong kong, but china's really intimidating. the communist government there... they don't mess around.

anyhow. i guess another week starts. hope everyone's goes well.

i've journeyed here and there and back again
but in the same old haunts i still find my friends
mysteries not ready to reveal
sympathies i'm ready to return
i'll make the effort, love can last forever         -smashing pumpkins

endnote rocks. i just took a class in the biblio database management program. it makes citation and references so easy for research papers. if you are in school, or have access to school libraries, i recommend learning it, it will be highly useful. gone are the days of typing up footnotes, remembering mla, turabian, etc. formats. man... kids these days, they have it so easy (well not really) =].

what is it with me? do i look like i stepped off the boat or something? is my english that bad? do i have some sort of chinesey accent? they're doing some diversity thing at work, and i was forwarded a survey. it was pretty much a "Tell us all about your culture" survey. i think there were like 30 questions, and i could only answer 2. i'm already NOT a doctor, and i suck at all things math, and i have a hard time understanding science sometimes, and i was never an A+ student. if you want any more proof on how un-asian i am... there it is... 2/30. i failed the being chinese paper test =].

the weather's been all weirdo this winter. cold, warm, snow, no snow (for a long time), then snow again. after stopping by the hsl library after class today, and was walking back to my car along the kinda quad that south has. i was looking down @ the brick pathway. it had snowed just enough fluffy snow, so that you could make out nice clean imprints of the soles of shoes, but if the person walking stepped hard enough, you could still see the bricks. i was looking @ all the shoe prints, and was thinking. each trail walked is a person finding or honing his or her talents at school. as i was walking to the main-bailey lot, the bricks turned to concrete, then to asphalt. the snow stopped sticking, and all the trails of footprints from all the different people disappeared. it's kind of fitting. for so much of your life, you're in school... following some path, and then you kind get out in the real world, where there are no paths. you just have to start making your own. haha. then there are some people like me... who go back to following the paths... cause we have some sort of sick hunger for staying up til ridiculous hours trying to write or read a paper. who does that anyways?

that's all.

1) it is already sunday night
2) it is already 12:53am
3) i procrastinated this weekend
4) i procrastinated some more by watching a superbowl in which i didn't care about the outcome (ie. my team's not in it).
5) i'm procrastinating some more by typing this.

so... what other procrastinating did i do this weekend?

-strapped on my skates and went skating with a friend. it was nice to get back on the ice. it's been awhile.

-got some vietnamese eats.

-a whole lot of nothing.



i was trimming my figernails earlier today. i think fingernail clippings are disgusting. when people trim their nails and don't make an attempt to contain them, it makes me cringe. it's one thing if you're outside on a porch or something, but i just think back to being in new york and on the subway. some people will break out the nail clippers right there and go at it with their clippings going all over the place.

i also bought yogurt a couple days ago, and this is what i thought about. when i buy yogurt, i buy the fruit on the bottom kind. i eat the top layer of yogurt first, and then i eat the fruit on the bottom. i rarely mix everything together, and when i do, i only leave a little bit of the top layer of yogurt to mix. does anyone else do that? i think it's a common theme for me though, when i eat anything i rarely mix things. if i get a hamburger and fries, i will finish one first, and then go on to the other.

so on grey's anatomy tonight, this one doctor ran off after there was an unexploded explosive in one of the patients they brought in. he left this young paramedic there all alone, first day on the job and everything. total dick move on his part. i think i'd rather get blown up than go some other way that involved a lot of pain. there are many diseases where people die slow painful deaths. if i had the choice, i'd choose quick and done anyday. unfortunately it's not my choice.

well... i need to wrap up some stuff... and sleep. i'm exhausted.

btw. i just passed the 400 post mark on blogger.

wish everyone a good start to their weeks!