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Chronicles of a Girl
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About Me
I am a nerd. Well, a nice nerd. Some say I'm a cute nerd. Sometimes I'm a happy nerd. Sometimes I'm a sad nerd. I can be a perky nerd. Or an emotional nerd. Sometimes the raddest nerd ever. But nonetheless, a nerd. Previous Posts
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Thursday, December 27, 2007
Microfinance
I feel like every single holiday season, I'm becoming progressively more repulsed by the commercial Christmas - the incessant ads, the reminders that only 3 days are left to show your love, the gift cards which are just a more limited form of money. However, I am still attracted to the idea of giving, which to me means appreciating all that I have and giving to those who are less fortunate. Recently, I have been particularly attracted to the idea of microfinance. I plan on investing through these organizations this Holiday season.
For me, these are options for those with only a small amount of money to make a difference in the world. Thursday, December 06, 2007
All the months I haven't written...
I haven't written in forever, but fearing that Max will forever delete me from his bookmarks, I write once again.
Since the summer, life has been busy busy busy. Lots of lab work with its usual ups and downs. NSF application, which took like a week out of my life and took away my Halloween in Castro on skates yet again. TA'ing advanced genetics and spending on my time writing beautiful problem sets and then grading them. Biostats which...okay, maybe I haven't spent too much time on that class seeing I never bought the book. =) I'm a full mac convert now. In my younger years, I had never thought this would be possible, but I absolutely love both my mac desktop at work and my Macbook. Leopard is absolutely the best operating system ever. Coverflow and preview run amazingly fast and make it so easy to locate and preview files. My desktop is clean. I can access my internet downloads quickly and easily. The icons for all my photos are a preview of the photo itself surrounded by a white boarder, just like a professionally printed photograph. The built in programs make sense. Calendar brings up pop up reminders of things I have to do or places I'm supposed to be (like class...seriously I forget sometimes, which is why I set the reminder). Terminal allows me to quickly ssh into the campus servers. perl and other languages are built in and script editor is a versatile program for coding. Stickies let me post my to do list on my desktop. Preview means allows me to quickly view pdfs and photos without slow programs such as Acrobat reader and the silly trial photo editing programs that often come with PCs. Chat is the equivalent of Trillian allowing access to all instant messaging accounts. Everything about the mac just makes sense. I have started skating again which has made me very happy. The Wednesday night skate at Stanford is just so much fun and I am so in love with all the people there. I get an absolutely amazing workout every single time (especially if drill sergeant John is there) and I always feel energized by the end no matter how tired and lazy I felt at the beginning. Louis wants me to race next year, which to me means that I might skate in some of the races but not necessarily race. I'm contemplating starting with a 20k and maybe working up to a 50k or marathon. It will force me to stay in shape, and push me to skate rather than drive to lab. I swear driving is aging me like no other. Driving on University (and surrounding streets) through downtown Palo Alto is driving me crazy. I have seen two great movies recently. Wristcutters: A Love Story is about a guy who commits suicide and goes to an afterlife which is just like everyday life, just slightly worse. It's beautifully shot, has great dialogs, and has a great story. I also saw Golden Compass at a sneak preview a week before its release. It's fun and enthralling and features great acting. It's fairly true to the book, although I feel that it changes the order of two significant events (the test station and meeting the king of the bears) in a way which no longer makes logical sense. I highly recommend both movies. I'm going to see Tori Amos at the Paramount Theatre in Oakland tomorrow night and Saturday. We've got crappy balcony seats for tomorrow but super awesome seats in row F (7th row!) in the front Orchestra on Saturday. I'm super excited. I'm going to Cancun in a week! We're staying at a five star all inclusive resort and I know I'm just going to get so fat eating so much. But maybe if I swim a lot and do Yoga I can cancel out the constant eating? I finish with a picture from Kanaha Beach Park in Maui where I went windsurfing a couple of weeks ago. 
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