Growing up, when I ate at Chinese restaurants, I used to never order wonton noodle soup. It was always too plain and uneventful for my budding epicurean palate that preferred the salt and pepper shrimp or sweet and sour pork.  Lately, I've found that I keep coming back to this noodle soup. I've had wonton noodle soup three times in the past week from a local restaurant that makes it as good as the midwest gets. Sure..it COULD be that there is an utter lack of groceries in my fridge due to my impending move to a new apartment next week...but it's more than that.  Living in the midwest, where there are a dearth of Asians, has encouraged me to cling tightly to my culture and I think my penchant for wonton noodle soup is a reaction to this. Plus, it's light, comforting and actually not bland, just subtle. 

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"The Road Not Taken" has probably been read and reread in the doldrums of high school english class. It popped into my mind this morning, probably because of the bleak and simultaneously austere and beautiful fresh snow that blanketed everything outside my window. Today, instead of rushing through it so that I could finish by assignment for english class, I read it slowly. This poem is insanely perfect. 

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Although anatomy class is a ton of work, it has also piqued my fascination with how our bodies are composed and how different parts are interelated. In yoga class, I find myself thinking about which muscles I'm stretching and strengthening and what functions they serve. (it's no secrete that doing lunges will give you a bigger gluteus maximus!) I came across this book, The Key Muscles of Yoga, at a local studio and had to pry myself away from it. It's full of beautiful illustrations of exactly what muscles are working during each pose and I know geeking out on it will definitely deepen my practice - and reinforce some anatomy concepts. Maybe I'll purchase it soon...too bad it woudln't look good in a kindle version! 

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Seriously can't get over the entire Lauren Moffatt Fall 12 collection...so geeky chic, classic with a twist, vintage inspired, and terrific attention to textures and all the charming little details! Basically everything I look for in a piece, and I'd like to think I'm beginning to transition my wardrobe this way and leaving behind the crazy, loud and incoherent style of my college days. 

all photos from Lauren Moffatt

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I come from my-coffee-is better-than-your-coffee land in San Francisco, but I do wish the city had, in similar abundance, Tea Houses, Salon de Thes, Tea Rooms, whatever...but if one had to come up for a colloquial name for these places using direct approximation, getting 'Tea at a The' doesn't have quite the same ring as getting 'Coffee at a Cafe' does..

If you thought I wasn't a qualified coffee critic because I don't even drink coffee, maybe this will redeem my psuedo Epicurean hat. When I'm feeling particularly tense, a cup of warm Mighty Leaf tea lets me know that everything is going to be alright. The flavors are fragant and have an addded freshness and depth than the Joe Smith tea. It's available at most grocery stores, and a little on the pricey side, so these are quite the treat for me. My favorite flavor is Chamomile Citrus.

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I started a much less depressing post than my previous few gems, when I got back to Madison after winter break but I never finished it because of the usual lame culprit - school. Qualifiers and excuses aside, my life has been moving at a pace much faster than I can document. Sometimes I wonder if this is a good thing, because it makes the doldrums of the basic science years here go by more swiftly, but sometimes I think maybe I should stop and smell the roses. I certainly did slow down during winter break when I had three glorious weeks in Los Angeles, of which 56% involved eating. Thankfully, I was able to capture some moments in photos, something I don't do often enough!

It turns out that I'll be in Madison for part of the summer because I got a research position here doing work at a community clinic on the 'Patient-Centered Medidcal Home', which is the hot topic in primary care right now about how to organize care around the individual patient, and coordinating and tracking care over time. Remember when you had to get a duplicate test of something because you couldn't remember the last time you had it, or where that record went? It's a slow moving machine but I think our health care system is moving in the right direction...if Obama gets reelected....oh hey, has anyone seen my soapbox? Oh, here it is!

While I'm not entirely elated about spending my summer here, it's only for eight weeks, I'll be getting paid, and it's work I actually care about. I'm finally getting a car over here in April, so I can explore Wisconsin a bit more over break, and getting around this city won't be such an ordeal. And this is where I talk about how much I miss the effciency of public transportation in San Francisco..and the sounds of the city, and the way the sun gleams on buildings in the FiDi, and the olfactory factory that is the local taqueria, and and... 

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If I thought I loved Grizzly Bear and CANT before, I love them even more after this video! CANT is the solo project of Grizzly Bear's Chris Taylor and this is pure sensual baby making musicccc!!!

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“things wong kar wai taught me about love”

1. you will fall in love only once. obstacles will prevail. the rest of your life is spent recovering. 2. anything that distracts you from the pain of your loss is good. some people are more successful in this regard than others. 3. eroticising their objects will be the pinnacle of your sexual fulfillment. 4. desire is kept eternally alive by the impossibility of contact. 5. the most potent way to exist is to occupy someone else’s imagination. 6. technology will only heighten your sense of desolation making you more keenly aware that no one is trying to call. 7. hook up with someone. live with them. sleep with them. tag along. don’t be fooled. you are only a transitory distraction. ask for commitment. declare your love. watch the set up evaporate. 8. some coincidences are deliberate.

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There are many things to love about my family, but in this post, I am not going to talk about them. Every time I visit home for the holidays, it becomes increasingly apparent how my mother’s heavy hand, harsh criticism and neurotic tendencies have instilled in me a deep self-consciousness.  Not the kind where I feel like I need to change what I look like or what I wear, but the idea of “not enough”…both a ‘we don’t have enough’ and ‘you are not enough’. I remember being asked to take on more classes while I was in college, or to take a second job, when I was already working a full time job. Somehow there must be enough working hours in the day to compromise any second of self-preservation.

Yet there was always a catch.  While there were phone conversations coaxing me to take on more activities, every other conversation, in a disparaging tone, would be about whether I could handle the workload, the possibility of failure, whether I was behind my other classmates. I was always either not doing enough, or becoming crushed by the amount I took on. With my mother, there is no comfortable middle ground. For me, this translates into anger, resentment, and a consistent feeling of guilt. Small wonder that I didn’t turn out more fucked up.

Living away from home has allowed me to separate what I thought were her unrealistic expectations for me, from my mother’s self generated neurosis. She grew up very poor and lives forever with the idea of scarcity - that nothing will ever enough. It was how she was raised, and I do not blame her for her reaction. It’s as if any semblance of happiness is quickly eclipsed by cynicism, as a means of self preservation. While I can only offer my empathy, part of me wants to change her, to let her know that everything is ok, and can’t we all be happy now? It’s more than impossible to change the behavior that took a lifetime of conditioning. I know she isn’t truly happy, but I guess for some, happiness is truly a luxury. 

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wow posterous has changed since I last posted. I will try to salvage it from neglect tonight, though whether this post will go half written and unpublished like a handful of others I have filed away, remains TBD. Here I am at home on a rainy Saturday night studying for my final exams. It feels so good to say 'final exams' because it means winter break is a mere two weeks away, which means California is a mere two weeks away, which means refuge from the simultaneously expansive and oppressive midwest is. a mere. two. weeks. away.

Have I changed since I first moved here? It is baffling how much I have learned in the past five months. It feels like I've integrated as much information as one year of undergrad. I've also learned that I'm not as adaptable as I once thought..there ARE places in the world where I don't feel compelled to completely throw myself into and fully relish, if only for the sake of novelty, change, variety. In yoga this week, we meditated on freedom...the idea that through breath and self awareness, challenging and upsetting situations do not need to be fled, because in those challenges lies personal growth...and beyond these challenges lies true freedom. I haven't found true freedom in Madison, though I have found, tolerance, inspiration, independence, and vague optimism. I've also started wearing mittens.

I've made some good friends here..and interestingly, they share my same sentiments about Madison. Social groups have definitely formed in the class. How do people recognize similar interests? Is it something we just exude? I don't wear my "I'm not from Wisconsin shirt" every day of the week, so how do people know? It's weird to think that in our third year when we rotate through different clinics outside of Madison, students and friends will be scattered like the wind. I wonder if I'll maintain my friendships beyond the second year. The interactions are so different from familiar friends in that an underlying level of professionalism still persists. I never gave the 'professional' part of professional school enough credit. I thought it would just be like undergrad, just more facial hair and husband shoppers.

Most importantly, I've learned to not look too far ahead in time. It's just too overwhelming. This perspective has helped me cope with the present. As Rilke would say, "love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then, gradually, without noticking it, live along some distant day into the answer." 

His prose IS poetry. Even against the sterile interface of a slate gray kindle.

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I started Jonathan Franzen's Freedom after exams last month and got about 12% (according to Kindle..haha...are page numbers obsolete?) into it until an avalanche of classwork limited my free time. Franzen is most notable for Freedom's predecessor, The Corrections, which is now being adapted as a film with an all star cast - Naomi Watts, Brad Pitt and others. So far, Freedom is not as good as The Corrections in that there is a lot more....shock value. It doesn't have the subtle audacity of The Corrections to engage its characters in situations that are at once unbeleivable and completely relatable. I don't see myself in Patty like I saw myself in Denise or Chip or Alfred. But then again..I'm only 12% invested. More reactions to come.

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I like Beyonce more than Lady Gaga.

....there i said it!

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I was never a huge fan of Versace (a little too glamazon for my style) but the Verscae x H&M collection looks pretty enticing...edgy and fancy but still subtle. It hits stores November 19th, but now the issue is whether the H&Ms in little ol' Madison will carry them. If I really wanted a piece of it, I'd probably have to head down to Chicago.

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I love food photos on facebook as much as the next person. It's cool to see what other people are eating and even better to see what restaurants are serving up so I know whether to avoid them or immediately book a reservation. However, when a photo surfaces on facebook of some delectable dish from a new restaurant in the Mission in San Francisco, I can't help but feel resentful. I know eateries are constantly turning over in San Francisco, and especially in the Mission due to rapid gentrification. Yet, because I no longer live there, I feel some injustice has been done to be because the neighborhood has changed and will continue to change...like I want it to stay exactly as I had left it, in a moment in time when I still lived there, and that everything will be familiar the day I return.  

One of my favorite memories of San Francisco is walking down Valencia street on a chilly SF night with a bag of italian groceries from Lucca in hand, past restaurants and cafes that look so cozy, lit up by warm light and conversation...people looking terribly frumpy yet distinctly refined SF at the same time. Sounds terribly trite right? It was one of the best times of my life and I never once took a single moment for granted there. I never wanted it to end, but I guess it'll all make sense later why it had to.

Many things in Madison are so distinctly Midwestern that people who have lived here their entire life have become so desensitized to things that seem so foreign to a Californian. For example, below is a Cold War era bomb shelter under the basement of a friend's home. A real bomb shelter!

I just finished my first round of exams and got together to celebrate over sushi. I was surprised to find high quality fish in Madison given there is NO FUCKING OCEAN ANYWHERE NEAR THIS PLACE!!..ahem...wow...I've got some pent up something or other. The nigiri at Muramoto was soooo good, the rolls, soso. I've found a new favorite fish, escolar, which tastes like buttered ocean, or oceaned butter....whichever you prefer...so rich and smooth.

It's all crispy air and colorful trees here in Madison. The fire engine red and bright yellow trees are pretty stunning, and it's fun to watch the same tree slowly change color from the window of my yoga studio as I am in a passive spinal twist position at the end of class. I guess I don't mind things changing here so much as I mind things changing in SF. 

Looking forward to a relaxing weekend and breather in LA with friends and a special someone..

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I have my first set of exams next week and the tension in the air is palpable. I wasn't too concerned about the intensity of it all until we had a mock exam today in which we learned how to use the software. Turns out that not only are we recorded on camera, but our exams are recorded, so every single click we make is followed. We also aren't allowed to wear sweaters with pockets, so no hoodies even though the room is freezing. I guess we might as well take the exams naked. Just kidding..I don't want to see that many med students naked. 

I'm craving mexican food but the most convenient thing that closely resembles it is Qdoba (like a lesser Chipotle). These are times I really miss living a block away from five taquerias. At least there is good American food here...and the mail service is surprisingly reliable..I always seem to get my packages on time. No weird unable to deliver notices or lost packages, or mail that seems to have been open, then resealed.

so I guess new things I learned about the midwest:

-don't cheat.

-Mexican food still sucks.

-reliable mail service.

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I usually get up pretty early every morning to shower and get to class by 8am, so don't always have time to make breakfast. Because we usually go from 8am - 12pm, I get kind of hungry...ok REALLY hungry...and end up bringing snacks along or buying something from the cafeteria. I grew weary of spending money on tasteless bars that had little to no nutritional value (all sugar, no fiber, no protein to curb my hunger, small portions, etc.) so I decided to take matters into my own hands and make some homemade protein bars! They turned out to be economical AND delicious! 

I adapted mine from a recipe I found online:

1 ripe banana

1.5c rolled oats

0.5c shredded coconut (I used unsweetened, but sweetened is fine too)

0.5c dried cranberries (or blueberries, or raisins, etc.)

0.5c chocolate chips

2 heaping scoops of vanilla whey protein powder

2tbsp flax seeds

2tbsp chia seeds

1.5tsp cinnamon

0.5c agave nectar

1.5c peanut butter

1tsp vanilla extract

1.25c coconut oil

Mash the banana, add dry ingredients, add wet ingredients, then mix it all up! Press into an 8x8 inch pan and pop in the freezer for ~1 hour. Freezing it makes it easy to slice. Total prep time was about 10 minutes to throw everything together. Makes about 8 large bars that I individually wrapped and stored in my freezer. They are good for about 1 month in the freezer, but I'll likely have to make a new batch in a couple of weeks.

Smooshy smoosh the banana:

To keep from making a mess of the kitchen and myself, I lay a piece of saran wrap over it before I pressed it in the pan. I also lined the pan with saran wrap before putting the mixture in it for easy clean up.

The finished product is pretty hearty. It looks and tastes kind of like a fresher Cliff Bar. All raw, vegan, nutritious, elitist, high brow, and hipster!

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Med School is...

...holding in your pee until the next lecture break but continuing to drink water because succumbing to oral fixations helps you pay attention in class.

And I miss Calfornia a lot.

And I am meeting new people.

And I am finding my way around this city.

And I am trying not to take this all for granted.

Ahh well..really digging this Weeknd cover!

Coeur_de_Pirate_-_Wicked_Games.mp3 Listen on Posterous

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Med School is...

..students fighting to sit in the FRONT row.

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	ANATOMY 710	00A B7 S17	Cell Structure and Function
	MD GENET 721	00A B7 S17	Molecular and Medical Genetics
	MED SC-M 800	00A B7 S17	Patient, Doctor & Society 1
	BMOLCHEM 704	00A B7 S17	Comprehensive Human Biochem
	POP HLTH 717	00A B7 S17	Prin-Population Med&Epidemiol

My courses! Yikes!

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