Agent of Change

change the world by ~moshimoshimoo on deviantART

Have you ever had the feeling that you're on a journey to seek out your purpose in life? That there's something you can do to change the world, in whatever small way you can? That something out there needs to change?

It's a feeling that's been growing in me recently. I read articles about things like the Embrace baby warmer for premature infants, designed by a group of engineering students at Stanford, or about the gay teen in AZ changing things for LGBT youths posted over at You Could Have It So Much Better, and I kinda wonder what I've been up to these last few years. Sometimes I feel like I should've accomplished more by now.

But then I realize that I should step back and take things into perspective. What is the kind of difference and change I want to make? What have I done? What can I do? What might the future hold? Time, energy, and effort are all limited resources. So with some perspective, a few things come to mind.

First, short-term are the various things I'm doing through student organizations. Patient Education was on the verge of being axed from the free clinic. T_T However, since we changed the flow of the program 3-4 weeks ago, the managers have agreed to let the program survive another year. Phew! Hopefully we'll be able to reach out to more uninsured patients at more than one free clinic in the city, and educate them on how to take control of their own health. Also, basically reviving the LGBT group to a semblance of a group from practically nothing is no simple feat.

Second, in the near future, my friend - who I've known since kindergarten - is starting a non-profit. He has asked me to be one of his board members. The central idea of his non-profit is simple (aren't all great ideas simple?): to provide kids with someone who will move with the kid through grades 1-5 and provide guidance, encouragement, and help. I'm incredibly proud and honored to be considered to help him with this endeavor! I could go on and on about the merits of his idea, but perhaps in another post.

Third, in the far(ther) future, my friend AG-F and I will make our video game project a reality. Over a year ago, we had drafted the concept of a video game to educate kids (and adults) on genetics. Now AG-F works practically across the hall from the professor for whose class we wrote the project for. Evidently we made a big impression as he keeps talking about it now! So yes, we promised each other that one day we will finish what we started as just a class assignment.

And so, I think in each of our own small (or big) ways, we can become agents of change. For the better or for the worse, that's up to us to decide. As Gandhi said:

"Be the change you wish to see in the world."

---TANGENT---
In case you haven't heard the news (as if it's possible miss something this big), DADT was repealed!! About time. A lot of human resources were wasted in the military as a result of this silly legislation. Listen to one soldier's account here, it almost moved me to tears. I don't think when that was recorded months ago, that he thought a repeal would happen within the year.
---END TANGENT---

Postponed Yet Again

I just can't seem to catch a break!! :-(

I sent Jay a Facebook message yesterday morning, just to confirm that we were indeed meeting today at noon for lunch. I figure, it's probably best to double-check just to make sure that nothing changed last minute.

Well, at around 9:30pm last night, Jay replied saying that he forgot that he had to work this morning, and so lunch would have to be canceled. I'm glad I sent that message, because otherwise he might've forgotten to tell me until this morning . . . or worse, forgot to tell me at all and leaving me there to wait for him at noon. Though he did seem sorry and did mention that he would never have stood me up, so I assume he would've let me know beforehand at some point.

I guess last night this upset me more than I thought it would. Silly me getting my hopes up. In the meantime, the clock ticks and my curse can work its magic at any moment. I hope we're able to reschedule for the near future, as we both have pretty busy schedules.

Well, if this somehow works out, Biki pointed out something quite amusing: we would have an atypical cliche doctor-nurse dating relationship, lol (but only until he gets into med school and gets his MD as well).
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On a completely unrelated note, the other night I was playing poker with some friends (and lost, as usual - I mean, I lost with 3 Kings, how does that happen?!) and we got talking about the nature of our med school class.

It seems that the "gunners" in our class don't operate in the open. The classical gunner studies at the library all the time, checks out all the books before anyone else can, finds and hoards info for him/herself, and aims to get one of the highest scores in the class. Not so in my class. The gunners in my class say they're going to go home to take a nap and unwind or something, but in reality they go home and study as the following day they know most of the material for that day already. Their secret to let no one know when they're studying, and so cast a false sense of security that doesn't cause others to go into a study frenzy.

We've aptly named these gunners "snipers." Our class is full of snipers.

I was pretty pleased when I got a 90% or so in anatomy overall last semester. However, the average was about 93%. And I was a good 5-10% below average in the other two classes (but still well above passing). FML.

Geeked Out

use the force by *Blepharopsis on deviantART

Not much has transpired since I finished up with exams (and I rather like it this way, for now).

After I went to Michelle's birthday celebration, we went to her house for cake and wine. There I met Alice, a fellow M1. Somehow it came to the topic of how horrible our genetics course was way back in August, and how frustrated we all were with it. I find out her undergrad major was basically in genetics, so we commiserated and felt an instant bond. We probably spent a good hour or two talking about genetics, how it was taught, how it should've been taught, its ethical ramifications, its growing utilization in health care, etc. At one point she was on the edge of her seat as we both bemoaned our dislike for the lab technique called "maxi-prep" (where you take a ton of cells, break them up, and extract the DNA).

Totally geeked out.

Around 7:30pm or so, we decided to hit up the bar crawl that Leslie was organizing. We went to the first place to find that no one in our class was there. o_O We saw 2 guys, so all of decided to go to the second bar early. The second bar was rather . . . avant-garde. Again, no one from our class was there. What gives?! We hang around there for a bit . . . there weren't many people at the bar except for some people in their 30s to 50s that looked like they had went there right after work. At one point several of them started to line dance to something . . . wtf. Well, at least their mango mojito was really really good. :-P

At around 9pm or so, after we had been there for well over an hour, people from our class finally started to show up. Leslie showed up a bit later, all dressed up and rather tipsy already. She bought me a shot of tequila, lol. Then several of us spotted this really really tall guy at the bar. He must've been at least 6'6" if not more. Several times people would whisper (insofar as much as one could whisper in a bar) how they wanted to go up to him and ask him if he had Marfan's syndrome . . .

Totally geeked out.

Lastly, I was chatting online with my friend JW-M (I'll call him . . . Jake) from undergrad. For about 3 years now, Jake has been trying to get me to sign up for Steam, an online gaming vendor of sorts. He bought me 2 games on Steam, Torchlight and Jade Empire. He knew I'd never play these games or get Steam unless he did something like getting it for me, lol. Truthfully, I haven't really played any PC games since starting med school - maybe a little bit here or there right after an exam. :-/

Anyway, now I'm pretty much addicted to Torchlight. It's a "dungeon crawler" very similar to Diablo II except that it's easier to play and level. My brother is also kind of hooked on it too, as I let him play a character on my account. I haven't tried out Jade Empire yet! Alas all good things will come to an end once med school starts up again.

And yes, we've totally geeked out (much to our parents' dismay).

Too Epic

Yesterday was epic. Too epic. I'm actually still reeling from the epic-ness.

I was pretty tired from getting only 5 hours of sleep between Saturday and Monday, and 4 hours of sleep between Monday and Tuesday. So, because I didn't have class on Wednesday, I decided to catch up on some sleep. Then I headed down to campus. I met up with my friend, AG-F. After lunch, it began.

Starting at 1pm, we began to crank out the remainder of our final paper/project. It was due at midnight. So, from 1pm until then we worked almost non-stop. I had 1.5 hours of office hours, and we took a break to grab dinner and ate while we worked. I must've written over 25 pages (double-spaced) yesterday.

When we started yesterday, I had written my half of the paper (about 10-12 pages, double-spaced) and AG-F had only written about 2-3 pages. My half still needed serious editing, which I accomplished by about 6pm. I had drafted several of the figures we needed. We had our project planned out, we just need to consolidate all our loose sheets and mental notes into writing.

9pm came and went. We were almost done with the paper, in the final stages of editing.

10pm came and went, the paper was done except for the bibliography. AG-F goes to the computer and creates the bibliography while I type up the summary and concept documents of our project.

11pm comes and goes, we're still working on it, ever closer to finishing.

11:40pm-ish comes, and we still needed one figure. AG-F took my student ID card and dashed to the other side of the building to use the scanner and upload our last figure.

11:55pm comes, and I'm uploading our documents to an email to the professor. AG-F runs back, out of breath, and I tell her that she can relax now - it was all going to be okay.

11:58pm comes, AG-F stares at the time on her cell phone, and I hit "Send." It was (essentially) done.

By the time everything we completely said and done, it was about 1am. We had wanted to get a drink to celebrate this feat, but since the bars and clubs tend to close at 2am here (and we had work the next day), we decided that we'll postpone that until this weekend.
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What was this final paper and project? Well, that's also epic! Our paper was on the utilization of video games for genetics education. Games that currently feature genetics (e.g. SimLife, Spore, BioShock) are woefully inaccurate in their portrayal of genetics. Thus, we wanted to analyze the educational potential of video games, particular for science and specifically genetics.

Once we knew what our teaching goals and "game goals" were, we wanted to create the concept for a video game that centers on genetics as our project. We decided upon a MMORPG kind of game. You are a field agent of the government, and you work for the Federal Division of Genetics. Your mission is to investigate the suspicious activities of a massive biobanking and biotech company. This company is "morally gray" throughout the entire game.

The company is also the creator of the Platywi, an organism that's kind of like a cross between a platypus and a kiwi. Throughout the game, you determine the genetic inheritance patterns of various Platywi traits (e.g. Mendelian, codominance, incomplete dominance, continuous, X-linked, Y-linked, epistasis, etc) and map the traits to the Platywi chromosomes. You also discover a hidden message/password hidden in the Platywi genome.

Within this game we wanted to model various different kinds of inheritance patterns, some of which are directly modeled after human traits/genetic diseases. We wanted our game to be marketable to a diverse audience, rather than have it be a in-class video game. There are many references to biology and genetics, particularly in the way we named things. There are far more details that I'm not disclosing in this post, precisely because I don't want our idea to be ripped off by some random visitor to my blog. Of course, we were only able to come up with the rough and bare-boned concept for this game, but it was quite enjoyable nonetheless.

I'll leave you with a couple figures that I created for this final paper/project.

Platywi chromosome map

Platywi concept art

The Value of Friendship

---TANGENT---
As James pointed out to me, we bloggers in this circle seem to go through cycles of depression and the like. He may post about it, we'll see. Several bloggers have been feeling down of late, like AJ and Landyn. Others might have "coming out anxiety" like Charlie and E. We should all be good friends and give them lots of love and encouragement, as well as the gall to drag them out of the mire of down-ness.
---END TANGENT---

On the outside I usually try to stay as calm and as stoic as possible, as it helps to quite down my emotions enough to allow me to think (and we all know how I tend to over-think). But unbeknownst to many, I have a tendency to soak up the emotions of others. So I often get happy when others around me are happy, and down when others around me are sad or stressed. Even if my own personal situation doesn't concord with those of others, the emotions of others sometimes take priority over my own. I don't know if this is a good or bad then when the lines between my emotions and the emotions of others become blurred.

A couple days ago I was in the bank depositing a check. As I stood in line my eyes began to tear up for no reason at all. I wasn't personally sad, I didn't keep my eyes open for a really long time, and I don't think it was an allergen in the air. But for some reason my eyes just welled up and although I didn't cry, I sure felt it.

I think it was the "weight of the world" kind of thing. How for a while now I've internalized the emotions infused into the posts of other bloggers, and how I've had to deal with my own things. I won't go into them here as it'd only make me sound emo or something, and I'm totally not an emo kind of guy.

I spent much of the evening bumming around in my apartment - without motivation, without inspiration, without want to do anything. I was just lonely and crawling by. Then I IMed my friend, JW-M. (For those who're new, he's probably my best friend from university here and is currently in China for a year.) He just replied, "Hey, I'm playing Neverwinter Nights (NWN) a bit, it's fun." Then he said something like, "We should make a module together!"

For whatever reason, that seemed to pull me out of my personal little mire of despair. Not sure why and I'm not sure why he has the power to do this. But I love him for it. It's totally trivial, really, designing a game mod together. We've attempted in the past with another game or two, but have never been able to finish. He assured me this would be easier if we made it as simple as possible just to get success. He said I could brainstorm storyplot ideas (he knows how much I like to think and come up with random creative things).

So in the span of 5 minutes, he had given me some kind of strange purpose in my life. I don't know, but it made me pretty happy. And it's utterly silly in retrospect - all this over him saying that we should do something with a game together. But hey, we all need random things to perk us up like that every now and then, no?

Other tidbits of my life in the last couple days:

- Apparently I did much better on my pathophysiology exam than I thought. I got an A+ with the curve.

- My cold is progressing on time. I now have a minor cough and a slightly stuffed nose. Great. Too bad my pharmacist friend told me that every study on cold and cough syrup indicate that they do nothing. Note that for the future.

- I went to go see the CSO concert. I don't think I've ever heard all of Beethoven's monumental Symphony #5 in C minor. It was something else. I may do a post on just how the conductor seemed to weave the individual parts of the music from each of the sections into what we call "music." There was much nostalgia in attending a concert.

- I watched Top Chef tonight (well, last night now) with two friends of mine. Oh how we love food, and thus that show. Her roommate also watched with us and would not stop talking! A part of me wanted to say, "Hey, I love talking to you, really, but I can't hear the TV and the volume's up at a decent decibel." After her roommate went to her room, my friend (in a very quiet hushed voiced) apologized for the loquaciousness of her roommate.

- My brother's birthday is today. I'm going to skip going to the gym and he's going to skip class so we can have lunch together.

- My friend, JW-F, will be flying into town late tonight. I haven't seen her since we graduated. It'll be nice to catch up and such. (If you ever wonder who these people are, they're generally listed in the panel on the right of this blog if they're "recurrent characters" in my life.)

Long Week (Addendum)

- I present "Exhibit A" otherwise known as my biotransformation (metabolism of toxicants) notes. Everything in cursive and the organic molecules in the margins are in my writing. I need to know this for an exam the day before Halloween. Grrr.

- AG-F, SR-F, and I went to eat Indian food tonight. We all got dosas (large crepe-like things) and naan (flatbread thing). We all suddenly got full within about 5 minutes of each other. And we're still full I'm sure, and it was painful to walk to AG-F's apartment afterwards.

- I got my absentee ballot in the mail! Yay!!

- I did my laundry on Monday. But I still haven't folded it yet. Yeah.

- My calculator officially died. I need new batteries otherwise I can't do my epidemiology and genetics homework (what IS this, homework in grad school?!).

- I woke up this morning at 7:50am or so, to go help out at a flu clinic about 40 minutes away. We also helped with an anthrax emergency preparedness event. So in the event of bioterrorism, know that (at least in my state) the government has your back health-wise.

- I tried to play Warcraft 3: The Frozen Throne, with my friend TR-M (JR-M's older brother) because he's been wanting to play with me for like 4 days. Alas, our internet connections didn't like each other. We tried to connect to each other's games for about an hour before giving up.

- My friend JW-M, all the way from Beijing, notified me of the new Blizzard game developments. That effectively disrupted my studying for quite some time. The new Diablo 3 game just announced their 3rd class, the wizard! I'm SO going to play the wizard. Don't judge, just know that even future health professionals play video games from time to time.

- This firefox add-on called ctrl-tab is amazing! I'm so going to use this, as I tend to have like a thousand tabs open at once.

- Heroes is becoming more and more ridiculous, and yet I still watch that show. It's getting interestingly weird now, haha. SR-F was like, "I'm not watching this anymore." Meanwhile, I got AG-F hooked on it, lol.

- AG-F in lab, turning on the computer: "I don't know why I turned the computer on. It's because it has a button. If it has a button, it must be pushed. It's a rule."

- Several times this week I've wanked (I suppose everyone's using this particular slang nowadays) twice within 2 hours. I feel like something's out of balance, because that's way more than usual for me. And now perhaps I've said too much.

- JR-M's girlfriend looks kind of like Allison Mack (from the show Smallville). They could be sisters, except JR-M's girlfriend has blue eyes.

- When I go to sleep tonight, I'm not setting an alarm tomorrow. If I wake up at noon, so be it. And it will be glorious.

I think this brings my long week to a final close.

Random Pics

I'd rather post something more meaningful, but I need to think of what first. That could take a while . . . So instead I'll just post some random pics I found on my laptop when I was preparing to reformat it a few days ago (but thankfully was able to avert such an arduous task). I don't even know where I got most of the following pics from, haha.

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I don't know who this is, but he has a cute smile and a hot body.
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Wang Leehom smile progression. ::swoons:: lolWang Leehom and his coffee. :P

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Hmm, some Jessica Alba pics. Her top is see-through . . .
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Now on a totally unrelated note, I simply can't wait until the Summer Olympics start!!

Here are two YouTube vids with English subtitle translations. The first is a "less literal" translation than the second, though the second somehow actually makes it easier for me to understand (and makes more sense, as well as sound more poetic).

Next time I post I'll have something "substantive." Until then, enjoy some of the randomness I found on my laptop.

Some Articles

I try to read the news as much as possible. Too bad a lot of things don't really interest me, so I tend to read that which I personally find interesting. Here are three:

1. Essay - Eyes Bloodshot, Doctors Vent Their Discontent
An article I fully sympathize with. I shadowed a doctor last May, and this article brings up all the crap he had to put up with. And what I witnessed was only a fraction of what it must really be like. I mean, the current health care system does rather suck right now. Few understand how much paperwork doctors have, even with a secretary, and how restricted they are when dealing with insurance companies and reimbursements. On the one hand, you want the best medicine for the patient. On the other hand, you want the patient to be able to afford it by making sure it's covered by their insurance. And every insurance is different. So you need like, a chart with all the different medications on it. It's rather insane. Oh yeah, and malpractice insurance.

I hate it when people make the claim that a doctor always makes a good living or always makes money. That's simply not true for many doctors, particularly the primary care ones. And yeah, doctors don't get laid off, but one successful lawsuit could be the end of their entire career. And yeah, they do make a fair amount of money, but they have to pay back at least half a million dollars in debt, plus malpractice and such. As a result of the intense training and extensive time they must go through, doctors better damn earn what they deserve. I mean, how many people spend almost their entire 20s still in school and learning and such? Non-stop, without break.

At times like this, when I read such articles, I wonder why I ever really wanted to become a doctor. It would be easier if I just finished my Masters in public health (MPH) and just stop. But right now, I feel like that won't satisfy me. It doesn't feel like one of my end goals in life. So yeah, maybe I'm still hopelessly optimistic. But maybe, just maybe, there will be some amazing health care reforms by the time I'm a resident. When I'm 27. I'm going to be SO old when I start practicing medicine . . .

2. Why Gays Don't Go Extinct
To be perfectly honest, I take offense to this article a little. It doesn't seem to be very all-encompassing. It's an interesting theory, but it's a population study. They haven't located these genes, they can't test it. It also suggests this as one of many possibilities. I still hold out for sexuality to be an additive genes trait (explained in one of my early posts here).

Still, it's an interesting possibility. Too bad it doesn't apply when one's an only child, or most/all siblings are also male.

3. Spore
I want this game SO bad. You have no idea. I think the biology geek in me is showing. I mean, you get to create a unicellular organism, and have it evolve into a creature. And have that creature eventually evolve into a a society and such, and then launch into space.

So I downloaded the trial version to the Spore Creature Creator. I was hoping for something that'd allow me to do really interesting things. Sad to say, the trial version is pretty limiting. Of course there are tons of options that aren't available. Yet, judging from what I've seen, the full version has its limits too. And here is where my biology really starts to show.

You see, whatever you make has to be a vertebrate. There doesn't seem to be an option for a non-vertebrate creature. And this vertebrate can only have one vertebrate - that is, only one backbone. So I can't make an invertebrate like, for example, a land-based octopus or something. Or if I did, I'd have to "hide" the vertebrae of the creature I create. And I can't make like plant-animal hybrid things. So no photosynthetic creatures, I think. Then again, maybe all this IS an option in the full Spore Creature Creator (that I didn't buy).

Regardless, within the range of possibilities for vertebrates, this game allows for tons of creativity. And it has cute-ish graphics too. I think it's targeted for a younger audience, but it still looks like so much fun! I hope to get it when it comes out in the fall.

I Don't Know

But this much I do know . . .

My efforts in volunteering at the hospital by playing trio music in their lobby is starting to pay off. It sure took me a long time to set up and get going, and I (we) had wanted to give up more than once before it even started. But we're all glad we're doing it now. Last week and this week, for just a few minutes during the hour we play, a few people - patients and/or their families - actually sit down and listen to us. One of the people who work there is even telling her friends that "there's this trio that plays in the lobby." I'm so glad when someone says something like that, as it means what we're doing is having a positive impact and people appreciate that. However, I do feel self-conscious and a little embarrassed that we're only amateur musicians - we make several random mistakes each week. Even if no one else but us hears the mistakes, the fact that we can makes me a little embarrassed. I want nothing less of our best each time, but stage-fright sets in whenever people actually pay attention.

I also know that I'm quite annoyed and even a little pissed at a few of my friends. They spent a week convincing me to get back into WoW. By the time I started up again, they were over 20 levels higher than me. By the time I catch up to the point where I could actually maybe do something with them, they're no longer interested in playing anymore. Then why did I even bother! The whole point was so I could play with them, together. Not with strangers (though there are many nice and competent players) and not by myself soloing things. Done that, been there. No, I wanted to specifically play with them as I've always wanted to, but last time they quit before I even really got WoW, and now they're doing it all over again. I should just delete WoW from my computer, as I'm clearly not having as much fun as I should. But I did pay for a 1-month subscription, $15, and that expires 6-27-08. So I now feel almost obligated to play till then. Sigh.
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What I don't know . . .

Is why I've been feeling so crappy lately. And by lately I mean the last several weeks, and prior to that the last few months. I'm beginning to think that 2-3 weeks of not feeling crappy was just an illusion, a fluke. I can't even pin an emotion on this - loneliness, sadness, frustration, anger, exhaustion? How about all the above. Let's see if I can think this through.

A few times a week I wake up wanting to cry but being unable to, as if I forgot how. There doesn't seem to be a reason behind this. I just wake up and feel like the day's going to suck. A week or two back, the "death" thoughts came back. Thankfully they came and went quickly this time. I must make a clear distinction that I only think about what it's like to be dead, not what it's like to die or how to kill myself. But still, they're by no means comfortable thoughts.

I know I'm sexually frustrated and lonely. Here I am, 22, and have never fallen in love, never kissed, a virgin in practically every sense. I sometimes wonder what it's like to even just touch someone without feeling embarrassed, without feeling like I've invaded their personal space or violated some unwritten rule. Even hugs feel awkward for me. The fact that I don't seem to be losing weight (or gaining for that matter, thankfully) doesn't help. It seems no matter what I eat, no matter how much I exercise, I can't seem to lose any more weight than what I'm currently at. Generally, I run a mile on the track, lift some weights, then run 2.5-3 miles on the Elliptical machine. And I do this at least every other day. I know I have a rather low self-image, and it's almost always been like that. And I hate that feeling of not being comfortable in my own skin, as if my body's just some awkward clumsy thing I just happen to be stuck in.

Although I have friends who know I'm bi, I've never since talked to them about it. What do they know? What do I know for that matter? What can we talk about? What can we discuss? Such matters fall so far outside the normal realm of stuff we talk about that this invites nothing but awkward silences. And I want someone to talk to, someone to relate to, someone to help me sort out this confusion. All this leads me to feel dissociated and even disconnected from my friends. I used to love my privacy and solitude, but these days I almost can't stand to be alone. But when I'm with friends, I feel silent as if I've nothing to contribute, as if I'm just a body sucking up oxygen in the room. I feel like I have nothing to say, though there's lots I want to say but I don't know or think I can. I feel distant and I hate it.

I know I'm exhausted as I don't get much sleep. They're doing construction on the dorm across the street from me, and they start early in the morning with plenty of loud noises. As I tend to go to sleep way too late, they wake me up relatively way too early. I've been feeling myself falling asleep at random throughout the day. Not good. This in itself almost makes me want to cry.

And of course there's the waiting, the everlasting waiting to hear back from med schools. I try not to think about it, but it's ever gnawing at me in the back of my brain. There's nothing I can do, I'm at the complete mercy of "the system" and I hate it. I feel like maybe I didn't give it my all, or maybe I'm not good enough, not worthy, what-have-you.

All of this, all of it, is affecting me at my jobs and I can feel it. I feel tired and unmotivated at research. Some days I'm really productive, others (like today) I literally got nothing done despite being there for 3 hours. At my group tutoring thing, I feel disorganized, unfocused, and unable to direct or answer questions. And if they start to feel it, they'll stop coming, which makes it harder for me and those who do stay. I don't even really try to hide these problems but no one's mentioned anything. No one - not one of my friend's - has asked me if I was okay, or if anything's wrong, or pried into it. Am I that good at instinctively hiding this? Is the Mask of Stoicism that foolproof?

I sit here every day and night trying to make the next day better, but it never seems to be. I seem to be waiting for something, but since I graduated, I feel like what I'm waiting for is a future that's foggy at best. Sometimes it's almost graspable, other times it's like a mirage and seems to fade when I get closer. I don't expect anyone to read this, especially this far. This is more for me to have it out, to have it confessed, so it doesn't fester inside me. Hopefully, this has helped me. I'll find out when I wake up in the morning.

Wir Betreten Feuertrunken

So I'm playing WoW again. I have a level 20 Blood elf female paladin. It took me a few days (like 4-5). I must admit, there are parts of the game I still remember liking, and other parts that I really really don't care for (I do NOT look forward to walking into contested territory where a high-level person of the opposite faction can one-shot me). This time around, the whole purpose for me is to get to a high enough level (just a few more) so that I can do group dungeon quests with some of my friends who started about 2 weeks before me. I miss my druid - that was my one true class character in this game. Oh well, the paladin's okay . . .

Anyway, the true purpose of this post. I went to see an orchestra concert today with JW-M and SR-F. It was good, they played Beethoven's 9th Symphony. It's so famous and amazing! For many years it defined the symphony, it was the pinnacle of symphonic music - and Beethoven had already been deaf for 6 years before he composed his 9th (and last) symphony!! Can someone be that amazing?!

Beethoven's 9th Symphony is pretty recognizable and well-known even if one never listens to classical music. The most identifiable part is the 4th movement, where the words of the title fits in; they translate from German to "We approach fire-drunk." It's a couple lines into the "Ode to Joy." It's such an epic line. While the chorus and the soloists were singing I kept remembering back to freshman year when my roommate, JW-M, used to sing the first few lines to me in the middle of the night. It was silly, but the words are still so epic. Look them up! Anyway, I had never heard the full original version of Beethoven's 9th Symphony until he played it for me freshman year. And at first I found the singing weird, but it grows on you because it's kind of funny-sounding.

Sitting in front of me in Orchestra Hall was a little kid. I kind of felt bad for him, as the whole symphony's over an hour long. A kid his age does NOT have the attention span to stay awake. I barely had the attention span to stay fully awake the whole piece, and I know and love that symphony!! As I saw him curl into sleep in his chair, I suddenly remembered something random. When my brothers and I were little, we used to have "stick figure wars." Each of us would choose a color and connect 3 sheets of paper lengthwise. Each person took a sheet of paper as their original territory and base. There were (loose) rules to the game. But basically, your stick figures, with their powers and technologies, had to overpower the other two and take over all 3 sheets of paper. There were limits to each person's armies - i.e. no one can have a laser that pierces everything nor can anyone have an energy shield that blocks everything. The "wars" always got ridiculous and someone would get pissed and would have to convince the other 2 of us that he won (which the winner never did).

That was about it. Sum of my day. Also had Chinese take-out food-of-sorts. It was okay.

22nd Birthday

Most of my birthdays have been rather underwhelming. For the last 4 years it's been after school has already ended and I'm already home for the summer. There aren't many people in my hometown that I'm particularly close to, so my birthdays tend to be celebrated at home with just my family . . . which is okay.

This year, however, I was still on campus for my birthday (now yesterday on 5-21). This was nice, as a few of my friends did stay in town for a while. So I had lunch with some and dinner with another group. That was fun. I had more dessert (mostly ice cream) than I've ever had in a single day. But hey, it was free! Now I need to work out hardcore, lol.

The highlight of my day was going to Borders and buying several books for my "someday shelf." My aunt gave me a $50 gift card to Borders last August when we visited them in California. I used up almost all that was left on that gift card today.

So I bought The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, all 4 books in a box set for $7.99. That's ridiculously cheap for 4 books!! I then later bought (at another Borders) Speaker for the Dead and Xenocide by Orson Scott Card for $7.99 each. Both Speaker for the Dead and Xenocide are sequels to Ender's Game that I finished reading earlier this week. My friend, JW-M, recommended that first book to me. I bought it, read it, and really liked it. So I bought its 2 sequels as well. There's a 4th book that I may/may not get, we'll see about that.

Right now I have like $2.39 left on that gift card. Since I participated in one of my university's studies by submitting a term paper, I got another $10 gift card to Borders. So I have a total of $12.39 left that I could spend at Borders. Not bad.

Lastly, I think some of my friends are getting sucked back into WoW. Sigh, and after they've denounced that game for years for its addictive nature. And I watch them play that game again as they alternately try to convince me to also start up again (with them) and telling me I shouldn't. I must resist. Besides, I have books to read!

Any Indication of . . .

This post will be so incredibly nerdy . . . Anyway, the last few days I've been playing Starcraft: Brood Wars with my friends. When I told my med student host this he was like, "People still play that?!" Um, yeah we do! While playing, I noticed how different my "style" of playing was compared to theirs in general. So I have this theory: the kind of game(s) one plays, the character(s) one chooses, and the way one plays reflects something about that person's personality, or at least tendencies. Let's start . . .

I very rarely play first-person shooters, as I stick mostly to strategy games (like Starcraft) or RPGs (like Zelda games). I lack the speed and reflexes for first-person shooters. I'm too methodical, calculating, and cautious. I could perhaps be good at sniping, but that's my limit. For this reason, I tend to stay far away from shooters.

I like strategy games like Starcraft because I can plan out my moves to some extent. And I can coordinate my armies and groups. I'm not the best at micromanaging and I don't tend to memorize hot keys, so I'm definitely not the fastest player. And again, if it's a game of speed, I will almost certainly lose; but if I'm left alive for a significant amount of time, it can prove difficult to kill me (or at least, I'll make it as annoying and harassing as possible).

So here's where I differ. I tend to play very defensively. I either concentrate on building defenses before troops, or I completely ignore defenses and build lots of troops and have them stationed in/near my base(s). I don't build expansions very quickly either, though I'm a decent resource-gatherer. I like to build ranged and highly mobile units so they can go from point A to point B in a flash. I am usually useful in team games because I make good support for teammates. I can usually get some of my troops to defend my teammates or to support their armies, most of the time. If we're able to coordinate our troops, we can make a good combo.

In RPGs I like to play spellcasters or ranged characters. I don't like to get hit and I prefer not to be "up and personal" with my opponents. For example, let's take World of Warcraft (henceforth called "WoW") when I used to play it a couple years ago. My two primary characters were a hunter and the druid. The hunter was great because he was a ranged character who didn't rely heavily on mana, so he could just keep going provided he had enough arrows. In groups I was basically ranged support. I dealt damage to the primary target, but I also protected the spellcasters (particularly healers). However, I liked my druid much more.

Why? Because the druid could do a little of everything: he could be a great healer, he could be a great tank, and he could be a decent damage-dealer. The druid can fundamentally fulfill the role of whatever's lacking in a group - the ultimate support unit. I find that I really like to be a support person in a group. I'll volunteer to be the healer, the one everyone depends on to stay alive. Or I'll volunteer to be the tank, the one that takes all the damage so everyone else doesn't. While I only really like to tank for a good group, I prefer to be the healer/backup healer in pretty much any other group. By the way, most people hate healing in WoW, and I'm not sure why; I guess it takes a special person to enjoy healing others.

So the moral of this post is, I suppose, if games are any indications, I can be a cautious, methodical, defensive, and supportive person. Hmm, sometimes I wonder why I post such random (and trivial?) things.