| I have submitted my resignation to my manager and my last day will be July 13. It's a bit surreal...scary and exciting at the same time. It was really hard to do it even though I've been talking about it forever and I kept putting it off. But I knew it was now or never. My manager was very nice and understanding about it though and he said that almost every person they've hired who was from California would move back after 2-3 years, it was like a pattern. He said he couldn't blame them though. ;) So my cross country road trip home will start July 16, and I should be back by July 28. Afterwards I may go traveling for a while before I begin my job search. While I'm in the sentimental mood, here is a list of things I will miss about DC in no particular order (yes some good things do exist here):
- The Metro. (One of the best subway and public transportation systems in the country).
- Beautiful brick houses and historical buildings.
- The greenery and foliage, especially in Brookside Gardens.
- Cherry blossoms by the Tidal Basin.
- Snow.
- Fireflies in the summer.
- National Gallery of Art.
- Summer jazz at the Sculpture Garden.
- Dupont Circle and Kramerbooks.
- The 9:30 club. (One of the best live music venues ever).
- Tryst Coffeehouse and Bossa in Adams Morgan.
- E Street Cinema.
- Events at embassies from all over the world.
- Eastern Market.
- Tara Asia's pad thai.
- The brunch culture (Cafe Luna, Logan's Tavern).
- Cosi. (Campfire s'mores right on the table).
- Yuengling lager. (Good cheap beer).
- The Washington Post Express (free news for people with ADD).
- Proximity to New York City.
- My manager and coworkers.
- Meeting people from all over the States.
- Kelli. (The best roommate I have ever had and probably will ever have).
- Andy. (The best boyfriend of a roommate I have ever had and probably will ever have). | comments: Leave a comment   |
| Every time I go to New York I wish I lived there instead of DC...it's just so much fun and bigger and more beautiful. And a lot more diverse, good-looking people everywhere you look. You can already notice the huge difference just by riding the NY subway vs. the DC metro. Thinking that this might be the last weekend I'll spend in NY for a while, Jenny and I went all around the city doing everything we had wanted to do but never had a chance to, including a lot of touristy stuff.
Friday night after I got off the bus we went to eat at a really good ramen place in Midtown. Saturday we had brunch at Alice's Tea Cup, a cute place with a million different kinds of tea and really good scones. Then we saw the matinee showing of Spring Awakening, a new rock musical about teens coming of age in late 19th century Germany, with music by Duncan Sheik. It was good and intense though I was a little surprised at how realistic the sex scene was. After the show we had pizza at Lombardi's, which is famous for their New York style pizzas. We had pepperoni and mushroom, plain, and clam pie pizzas. After dinner we shopped a bit in Soho, walked around the Meatpacking District, and then tried to get dessert at Chickalicious in East Village but the line was so long that we just ended up getting cannolis and cheesecake at Veneiro's. Sunday we had brunch at Yuca's in Greenwich Village where I had a crabcake benedict with guacamole sauce. Then we went to Brooklyn, walked through the Fulton Street Mall and Brooklyn Heights onto the promenade by the water, and over the Brooklyn Bridge back into Manhattan. I had the best cupcake ever at Crumbs. We went to Washington Square Park by NYU and then had dinner at Cafe des Bruxelles on Greenwich Ave. They are known for their mussels and fries, and they were absolutely heavenly. The weekend ended perfectly with going to the 86th floor observatory at the Empire State Building to take in the amazing night view of the city. | | comments: Leave a comment |
| Everyone should read "A Man Without a Country," Kurt Vonnegut's last novel which contains a lot of his personal musings on life, humans, the Bush administration, and the world in general. Really great short read. Here are some fantastic quotes from Vonnegut that I think really sums it up:
"Where do I get my ideas from? You might as well have asked that of Beethoven. He was goofing around in Germany like everybody else, and all of a sudden this stuff came gushing out of him. It was music. I was goofing around like everybody else in Indiana, and all of a sudden stuff came gushing out. It was disgust with civilization."
"If God were alive today he would be an atheist, because the excrement has hit the air-conditioning big time, big time."
"We are a disease, so like syphilis with a conscience, we should stop reproducing."
"No matter how bad things get, the music will still be wonderful."
Next up on the reading list: Cat's Cradle and Breakfast of Champions. | | comments: 2 comments or Leave a comment |
| Jeane Kirkpatrick: A Ronald Reagan Realist By Terence Jeffrey Twenty years ago, I took a course at Georgetown on strategic thinking in foreign policy. It was taught by professor Jeane Kirkpatrick, who had gained well-deserved fame as U.N. ambassador during President Reagan's first term. In an early lecture, Kirkpatrick read aloud from George Kennan's "American Diplomacy." "I see the most serious fault of our past policy formulation to lie in something that I might call the legalistic-moralistic approach to international problems," Kennan said in part of the passage Kirkpatrick quoted. Later, in the same chapter of "American Diplomacy," Kennan (writing in the 1950s) delivered what might seem like an observation on the Iraq war. "In the old days, wartime objectives were generally limited and practical ones, and it was common to measure the success of your military operations by the extent to which they brought you closer to your objectives," wrote Kennan. "But where your objectives are moral and ideological ones and run to changing the attitudes and traditions of an entire people or the personality of a regime, then victory is probably something not to be achieved entirely by military means or indeed in any short space of time at all; and perhaps that is the source of our confusion." When I later read Kirkpatrick's famous 1979 Commentary essay, "Dictatorships and Double Standards," I realized there was a similarity between Kennan's and Kirkpatrick's thought. "Dictatorships and Double Standards" dissected the moralistic mindset that inspired President Jimmy Carter to turn his back on pro-United States -- yet authoritarian -- leaders in Iran and Nicaragua, when they were challenged, respectively, by Islamic and Marxist revolutions. Kirkpatrick perceived the root of Carter's failed policy to be a mistaken faith in the idea that all nations are fated to undergo a liberalizing modernization. Within this framework, revolutions against right-wing authoritarians were not only historically inevitable but also morally desirable because they paved the way to the more democratic future that awaits us all. Left-wing authoritarians, by contrast, the Carterites believed, were on the right side of history, pushing for egalitarian modernization, and thus need not be resisted. Kirkpatrick understood why this moralistic view was uniquely seductive to Americans, who after all, cherished their own democratic tradition. She nonetheless believed it was wrong. "Although most governments in the world are, as they always have been, autocracies of one kind or another, no idea holds greater sway in the mind of educated Americans than the belief that it is possible to democratize governments, anytime, anywhere, under any circumstances," she wrote. "This notion is belied by an enormous body of evidence based on the experience of dozens of countries which have attempted with more or less (usually less) success to move from autocratic to democratic governments. Many of the wisest political scientists of this and previous centuries agree that democratic institutions are especially difficult to establish and maintain -- because they make heavy demands on all portions of a population and because they depend on complex social, cultural and economic conditions." Richard Allen, top foreign policy advisor to then-candidate Reagan, gave Reagan this article. Reagan loved it, got to know Kirkpatrick and made her a key member of his foreign policy team. Now, Kirkpatrick's final book, "Making War to Keep the Peace," has been published posthumously. It demonstrates her thinking remained consistent in the decades since "Dictatorships and Double Standards." Most importantly, it draws a line between the morally enlightened realism of President Reagan and the unrealistic moralism of President George W. Bush. It is unrealistic to expect the U.S. military to build nations -- let alone democracies -- in cultures we know little about and where the preconditions for representative government don't exist, Kirkpatrick argues. This is one reason she opposed the invasion of Iraq. "Iraq lacked practically all the requirements for a democratic government: rule of law, an elite with a shared commitment to democratic procedures, a sense of citizenship, and habits of trust and cooperation," she writes. "The administration's failure involved several issues, but the core concern is that they did not seem to have methodically completed the due diligence required for reasoned policy-making because they failed to address the aftermath of the invasion. This, of course, is reflected by the violence, sectarian unrest, ethnic vengeance and bloodshed we see today in Iraq." In the final analysis, however, Kirkpatrick was not a hard-edged Kennan-style realist. She was a Ronald Reagan realist. Like Reagan, she believed U.S. foreign policy must always be guided by a thoroughgoing analysis aimed at determining what practical course would best advance the national interest. Promoting democracy, in her view, was a good thing -- when done in the right place at the right time by the right means. It could be an instrument for promoting U.S. interests, but was never a duty of U.S. policy. "Policy under the Reagan Doctrine was established by prudential determination of the national interest in a particular context," she explained (italics in the original). "It denied that assisting in the overthrow of an existing government was always wrong. Rather, it highlighted the need to weigh the legitimacy of such acts within their political and moral context: the nature of the government, the role of a foreign force and the existence of resistance. Moreover, even if such an act were justified, the Reagan Doctrine did not dictate that such action was always wise; rather, it counseled that the long-term costs and benefits of such action should be carefully weighed before taking any steps. Because once we intervened in a given situation, we are accountable for the outcome." Kirkpatrick did not put it this way, but I suspect it is in keeping with her thinking that a proper prudential analysis should have told us there is a vast difference between, say, supporting Roman Catholic Solidarity in Poland and actually invading a country in the Persian Gulf in anticipation that a group called the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq would help us construct a pro-Western democracy. | | comments: 2 comments or Leave a comment |
| Current Music: | 30 Seconds to Mars, Stone Sour | | Subject: | update | | Time: | 11:16 am |
|
| I haven't posted in a while, so for the one or two people who read this, I'm still alive and well. A lot of different friends came to visit almost every weekend the past month so I've been busy showing them around and doing fun things but would probably be boring to read about if I were to recap. And I've been really addicted to Zelda: The Twilight Princess on Wii, that's pretty much what I do all day every day now if no one's around. Oh Shash, I found out about this cool bar that had 1,000 different kinds of beer from all over the world! It's good stuff. You need to come visit this Fourth of July like you kept saying you would for years. ;) | | comments: 2 comments or Leave a comment |
| A few days ahead of the 4th anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, thousands of demonstrators marched from the National Mall to the Pentagon last Saturday to protest and call for an end to the war. And what did I do? I did what most Americans did, I celebrated St. Paddy's Day and college basketball by going to the 51st State Tavern with an old high school friend, drinking Guinness, eating shepherd's pie, and wearing shiny green beads with Bud Light advertising. The day was further spent shopping in Georgetown, more drinking and eating at Nolan's in Adams Morgan, and capped off with a visit to DC9 to listen to some drunk guy play Irish songs on an acoustic guitar.
It was a fun day, and this is how far I've come in indifference and complacency towards the war and my ability and desire to do anything about it. So 21,500 more American troops will be sent to Iraq as Bush demands, more billions of taxpayer money will be thrown into the fire, and more people will be killed. I just haven't seen anything having an effect on the status quo, including the new Democratic majority, the whole Valerie Plame scandal, Gonzales and the scandal over the firings of eight federal prosecutors, etc. It's so much easier just to turn the other cheek like everyone else and pretend that everything is and will be just fine. | | comments: Leave a comment |
| Very interesting article from the Wall Street Journal, "Why your home isn't the investment you think it is." Excerpt:
"Houses (1) cost more than most people make when they sell and (2) rarely match the long-term returns of stocks or other investments.
The costs of owning a home -- buying it with a long-term mortgage and then paying taxes on it, insuring it, repairing it, renovating it -- sap most of what most homeowners think they make in price appreciation. ....Houses are nice financially because there are not many other things you buy that actually go up in value, and not many things can put a six-figure check in your pocket when you sell them. But don't delude yourself: You've already spent most of that check, and you are likely to spend the rest in just a few days when you buy a new home. ....Think of your sale proceeds another way: not as a true profit, but as a huge rebate. Some of the thousands of dollars that you paid into the house over the years are being returned to you -- sometimes with a bonus, often without. ....Boom market or bust, home buying has so many extra costs -- from upfront "points" paid to a lender to title insurance and appraisal fees -- that over the first five to seven years, a renter who invests the equivalent of a down payment in stocks could easily do better overall than a house buyer. Compounding that problem: Most homeowners move within seven years."
And from playing with this simple Rent vs. Buy calculator, assuming I pay $800 rent a month, a purchase price of $400,000 for a house in California with 10% downpayment, 6% interest rate, 30 year loan, and 2% yearly home value increase rate, I would actually save approximately $30,000 by renting instead of buying. This assumes I stay in the house for 10 years. This is obviously reversed if I stay in the house longer, say, 20 years, then I would save about $60,000 by buying instead of renting.
Using this simple affordability calculator, an annual gross salary of $50,000 with zero debt can get you a $160,000 conventional loan for a house price of $190,000. I do not know of any house in a desirable location in California that you can get for $190,000.
From San Diego's Housing Commission website, to afford a median-priced house in San Diego, which is $550,000, buyers need an annual income of $134,000. But the median household income is $64,000. Right.
This means that unless I plan to stay in one house for at least 15 years and make at least $100,000 a year, it really does not make sense for me to buy a house as opposed to renting, contrary to conventional wisdom and the crazy buying frenzy exhibited by my family, friends, and everyone else and their mothers. My track record of moving to a new place every 6 months and a new city every few years also makes buying pretty irrational for me right now. I'll take my debt free lifestyle any day, with the freedom to move anywhere I want at anytime, peace of mind from not having to deal with house repairs and tenants, and still be able to save the money I need to travel, live well, and invest in retirement.
| | comments: Leave a comment |
| Current Music: | Avenue Q - Purpose | | Subject: | V-day | | Time: | 11:06 am |
|
| Forgive me when I say that I hate Valentine's Day, always have and always will. I don't know why I even feel the need to mention it this year, but for some reason it has just been more noticeable everywhere I go, ads on TV, special products in stores, articles in the news, coworkers and roommates all talking about it. Even LJ and Google have the theme up.
At least the weather decided it hated too by delivering us the most snow we've had all year, 5 inches with a half inch of ice, supposed 20 mph winds, and resulting in pretty miserable road conditions. Walking through slush and snow in uncleared roads and sidewalks for almost half an hour to get to work is something I can now say I've truly experienced as a part of living on this side of the country. | | comments: Leave a comment |
| Yesterday was the first time I had ever watched an entire football game in one sitting, the Super Bowl game between the Indianapolis Colts and Chicago Bears, and it's enough to last me the rest of the year. The only reason I even watched it was because I went to a party where the people were actually really into it. I only went for the free pizza and attempt to be social. ;) Some of the commercials were kind of funny and entertaining, but collectively they didn't really live up to the hype. It was mildly interesting to see Prince perform during halftime, along with the rain and bad plays. I think next time though I'm going to watch the Puppy Bowl instead. | | comments: Leave a comment |
| My roommate and I spent the entire weekend moving into a new place, it's a really nice house that we're sharing with two other guys. My room is huge, and I got a free queen size bed and dresser! Plus, we're going to have a rec room in the basement with a nice flat panel TV and one of the guys is going to set up his Wii and Dreamcast on it! :) We've also got a really nice deck and backyard too. So sweet. Things still need to be set up, such as cable, internet, and we don't have any furniture yet, but I think it's going to be great. We're really excited about it and can't wait to have a housewarming party once we're all settled.
In other news, it is pretty freaking cold here right now. 20 degrees with insanely freezing wind is not fun. | | comments: 2 comments or Leave a comment |
| Current Music: | Theo Eastwind - Set-up | | Subject: | weekend | | Time: | 11:51 am |
|
| | The past weekend was packed as a friend from NYC came to visit and I did my part acting as a DC city guide. Friday we went to eat at Skewers for dinner, then went to see Patrick DeSantos sing at Bossa. Saturday we had brunch at Cafe Luna, went to the Archives to see the Constitution, Declaration of Independence and Bill of Rights, then to the WWII memorial. Went to Mie N Yu in Georgetown for the restaurant week dinner special, then to 18th Street Lounge for the live jazz band, and this night they featured a really good singer who did a great rendition of "My Funny Valentine" and Marvin Gaye songs. Sunday we went to the National Zoo and I finally saw the panda family there. Tai Shan, the panda cub, is already 18 months old and almost as big as his mother now. It was fun watching them roll around and eat bamboo like there was no tomorrow. After the zoo we ate at Cosi and saw The History Boys, a pretty good British movie about some students in a boys' school trying to get into Oxford. Monday we went on a tour of the Capital Building, ate at the Mitsitam Cafe, went to the Freer and Sackler Asian art galleries, walked up the steps of the Supreme Court, and had dinner at the Capital City Brewing Co. before my friend boarded the Greyhound bus back to NY. | | comments: Leave a comment |
| I know it's been a week already, but New Year's weekend in New York was awesome. I really wanted to go to Times Square on NYE but there were so many people that you had to get there early in the afternoon to get a spot and you can't leave, eat, or go to the bathroom until after midnight unless you wanted to lose your spot. I think we got there around 7 pm, and police had already closed off almost all the surrounding areas because they were getting filled up, and they kept telling us to keep going farther, first it was 50th St, then 55th, then 59th, and by that time we just decided to leave. We ended up at some bars/restaurants in the Hell's Kitchen area, and then went to my friend's friend's house party in Stuyvesant north of the Lower East Side, and ended up watching the ball drop on TV like everyone else. So close, yet so far. Other things we did during that weekend: Going to see Tiesto spin at Crobar, though most of the time was spent standing in line to get in and being pushed from all sides by the crazy crowd. Having an expensive dinner at Aquavit, a nice Swedish restaurant. Staying at the Broadway Hostel in the Upper West Side. Seeing Avenue Q, a very good and funny Broadway musical about muppet college graduates wondering what their purpose in life is. Who wouldn't love a musical with songs like, "What Do You Do with a B.A. in English", "It Sucks To Be Me," "Everyone's a little bit racist," "The Internet is for porn," and "I wish I could go back to college"? Walking around West Village. Having really amazing corn on the cob at Cafe Havana in Soho. Strolling through Central Park and watching the ice skaters at the Wollman Rink. Riding Amtrak. In DC: Seeing the light show at Brookside Gardens.
| | comments: Leave a comment |
| Current Music: | Plain White T's - Breakdown | | Time: | 12:08 pm |
|
| I am unbelievably addicted to this song..it reminds me of another time and place...and keeps me pushing forward here...6 months....
This chorus particularly resonates with me right now:
"I'm gonna drive and never ever slow down.
I'm gonna drive until I break down.
Packing my things and getting out of this town.
I'm gonna drive until I break down.
Hold it inside until I break down.
Not going to try until I break down.
Say my goodbyes until I break down."
I seem to have a propensity for constant change...I wonder what it would be like to be a cab driver for a while...read this interesting blog about a 30-year old college-educated woman yellow cab driver in New York City. http://newyorkhack.blogspot.com/ | | comments: Leave a comment |
| Yesterday my roomie and I went ice skating at the Sculpture Garden by the National Gallery of Art. It was my second time ever trying to ice skate, the first time was at Christmas in the Park in San Jose years ago, when I couldn't let go of the railing. This time I actually succeeded in letting go and skating very, very slowly, but still couldn't really get up to speed. It's actually a lot more tiring than I thought it would be, my ankles were kind of hurting after an hour. I want to practice more next time, maybe in Central Park or Rockefeller Center in New York...
In other news, I finally saw An Inconvenient Truth, the documentary about global warming by Al Gore. Really good, scary, and rather depressing. If global warming continues unchecked at its current rate, we could be facing very dire consequences in less than 50 years. A worst case scenario, in which half of Antarctica or Greenland or both melt, could cause a rise in sea levels that would put many coastal cities underwater, including parts of Manhattan, other east coast cities, southern Florida, and the San Francisco Bay Area, as well as in other countries such as the Netherlands and China. It's horrific to consider the possibility, and when I checked the effects of sea level rise in this map, it looks like the San Francisco airport, the eastern part of SF, Oakland, Alameda, Richmond, Stockton, and those areas would be gone. San Jose and Sacramento seem just barely safe, as well as the central part of SF up in the hills. Santa Cruz and San Diego seem a little on the questionable side. Just something to keep in mind if you're out shopping for a house that you expect to live in for more than 50 years. That's if other things don't kill us first as other consequences of global warming, such as increased disease and insect epidemics, heat waves, hurricanes, etc. A million species could be driven to extinction due to the change in ecosystems. Suddenly I don't really see the point of saving for retirement or having kids anymore. | | comments: Leave a comment |
| This is supposedly a pretty accurate quiz, as told to me by a coworker from upstate NY who got a "Great Lakes" accent result (Inland North). Another coworker said that her accent could be pinpointed to be either from Canada or Minnesota (North Central). Too bad my accent is so non-distinct.
| What American accent do you have? Your Result: The West Your accent is the lowest common denominator of American speech. Unless you're a SoCal surfer, no one thinks you have an accent. And really, you may not even be from the West at all, you could easily be from Florida or one of those big Southern cities like Dallas or Atlanta. | | The Midland | | | Boston | | | North Central | | | The Inland North | | | Philadelphia | | | The South | | | The Northeast | | What American accent do you have?
Quiz Created on GoToQuiz |
| | comments: Leave a comment |
| I don't know why I've been looking at laptops lately, must be the holiday season or something...but now I want one when I have more money hehe. I am trying to decide between these two models: ASUS A8JS for around $1500, or Apple's new MacBook Pro for $1800 (student discount). Yah that's kind of a lot, but it looks so nice. Both have the new Core2Duo Intel processors.
UPDATE: I just realized that my new Creative Zen Micro Photo mp3 player doesn't work on Macs. In that case, screw that. I am not getting an Ipod.
Here are the specs for each:
ASUS A8JS:
14" WXGA+ (1440x900) Color Shine(glare-type) LCD
Intel Core 2 Duo T7200 2GHz, FSB: 667MHz, 4MB L2 Cache
nVidia Go7700 512MB Discrete Memory Graphics card
1GB RAM, DDR2 667MHz (1x1GB)
100GB 5400RPM 2.5-inch SATA Harddrive
8x DVD-RW Dual Layer Drive
8-in-1 Card Reader (SD/MMC/MS/MS Pro/XD)
Gigabit LAN, DVI, VGA, S-Video, Firewire, 5 USB ports, Infrared
0.35 Mega-Pixel web-cam
Built-in Intel® High Definition Audio compliant audio chip
Windows XP Professional
13.18” x 9.64” x 1.37”~1.46”, 5.25 lbs
Apple MacBook Pro
15-inch TFT display, optional glossy widescreen display, 1440 by 900 (native)
Intel Core 2 Duo 2.16 GHz, FSB: 667MHz, 4MB L2 Cache
ATI Mobility Radeon X1600 with 128MB of GDDR3 SDRAM and dual-link DVI
1GB DDR2 RAM, two SO-DIMM slots support up to 3GB
Built-in Bluetooth 2.0+EDR (Enhanced Data Rate)
Built-in iSight camera, DVI, VGA (DVI to VGA adapter included)
120GB 5400-rpm Serial ATA hard drive
6x slot-loading SuperDrive (DVD+R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW)
Two Firewire ports, Two 480-Mbps USB ports
Mac OS X v10.4 Tiger, can run Windows XP via Boot Camp
Aluminum casing
Illuminated keyboard backlighting feature
14.1" x 9.6" x 1.0", 5.6 lbs | | comments: 1 comment or Leave a comment |
| Amidst my ongoing quarterlife crisis, sometimes I can't help but question how I came to my current situation at 25. I thought I would have things figured out by now. I thought I would be on a set path. Am I really such a defect from the normal people that follow a prescribed route in life? Why couldn't I have been naturally happy with pursuing the life everyone else wants and what my parents want for me? Why do I have to make it so hard for myself? Apparently, the point in life is not to be happy doing what you're doing, but to make more and more money. Is the cost truly to become another soulless cog in the machine?
This song describes my mood perfectly even though it isn't what the song is about. I just wish I knew what my heart wanted to do.
"It Takes a fool to remain sane" by The Ark, excerpted lyrics Whatever happened to the funky race?
A generation lost in pace
Wasn't life supposed to be more than this?
In this kiss I'll change your bore for my bliss
But let go of my hand and it will slip on the sand
If you don't give me the chance
to break down the walls of attitude
I ask nothing of you
not even your gratitude
And if you think I'm corny
then it will not make me sorry
It's your right to laugh at me
and in turn that's my opportunity
to feel brave
'Cause it takes a fool to remain sane
It takes a fool to remain sane
It takes a fool to remain sane
In this world all covered up in shame
Every morning I would see her getting off the bus
The picture never drops, it's like a multicoloured snapshot
stuck in my brain
It kept me sane for a couple of years
as it drenched my fears
of becoming like the others
who become unhappy mothers
and fathers of unhappy kids
and why is that?
'Cause they've forgotten how to play
Oh, maybe they're afraid to feel ashamed
to seem strange, to seem insane
to gain weight, to seem gay
I tell you this
That it takes a fool to remain sane
Oh, it takes a fool to remain sane
Oh, it takes a fool to remain sane
Oh, in this world all covered up in shame
(Oh, take it to the stage)
Do, do, do what you wanna do
Don't think twice, do what you have to do
Do, do, do, do, let your heart decide
what you have to do
That's all there is to find | | comments: 1 comment or Leave a comment |
| | No thanks to me due to my refusal to register to vote in another state and my neglect to get an absentee ballot from CA, but yay to the Democrats for gaining control of both houses and double yay for Rumsfeld resigning! Maybe I won't have to move to Canada after all...it is rather cold up there. I hope we'll see the tide slowly turning for the better, and it seems promising as the Dems are now calling for policy change in the Middle East. It's interesting that though the White House says withdrawing troops would be a disaster and result in more violence/civil war in Iraq, it's not like they have been very effective in preventing that and many others say that their prescence is in fact what is fueling the continued violence. Then there are others saying we need more troops there in order to effectively secure it. It's hard to tell who's right at this point but some kind of change and investigation into the course would be a welcome start. | | comments: Leave a comment |
| | My roomie, her b/f, friend and I all went to Philly over the weekend for some touristy fun. We went to the Reading Terminal Market first on Saturday afternoon where I had an amazing rib sandwich and Pennsylvania Dutch apple dumpling. Then we spent a few hours at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. My roomie's friend decided to run up the steps just like Rocky did in the movie. There's a statue of Rocky just outside of the museum as well. Afterwards we drove by Boathouse Row, then met up with some of my roomie's friends who are med school students there and had dinner with them at Jones restaurant downtown. We walked by Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell afterwards, then went to our hostel, the Chamounix Mansion in Fairmount Park. We met some Brazilian high school students, an Australian and German au pairs who were working in Bethlehem, PA. I have to say though that that hostel was the worst one I'd ever stayed in of all the ones in Europe and South America. The floors were so creaky that just walking across them would wake up everyone in the dorm. The dorm also had 7 bunk beds, so there could be 14 girls at any one time. The blankets were also really thin, and it was pretty cold, so it was quite miserable sleeping there. With the group of us, it probably would have been a way better idea to just have gotten a hotel for the night. I feel like I might be coming down with a cold now from having stayed there, which really sucks since I am taking the GRE's in 2 weeks. But everything is an experience I guess. We did see deers roaming around near the hostel. On Sunday we went to the Franklin Institute Science Museum where we walked through a giant heart and saw an IMAX movie about the Galapagos Islands. We popped in for a little bit at the Academy of Natural Sciences, and skipped the Rodin Museum because I was the only one who wanted to go. We had lunch at Winnie's in Manayunk, then did a drive-by of South Street before we headed back to DC. I wish we had had more time to walk around South Street and eat a Philly cheesesteak sandwich at Jim's, but maybe next time. I really liked Philly actually, it's a big city with a small town feel, and in my opinion, better than DC. | | comments: 1 comment or Leave a comment |
| |
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
alternablue's journal