Lumbar Punctures are brutal

As it turns out, lack of sleep coupled with a high fever can induce fainting and seizures...especially in me. Put 10 people in a room, don't let 'em sleep for a few days, and at least one of them will end up fainting...so says the doctor I had for my first three or so hours in the emergency room on Sunday night.

The ambulance took me to the ER, where I was put on oxygen and went through a full battery of tests including a spinal tap and a CT scan. All I have is a bad case of strep throat, and nothing worse.

 Lumbar Puncture - they tested my CSF to see if I had meningitis, thankfully I did not

A big thank-you to Dr. Sehgal, Dr. Choi, and everyone else who tended to me at the hospital. :)

A Joyous Tryptophan Day to all Americans!

Today is Tryptophan Day, a.k.a. "Thanksgiving," in the United States of America.

In celebration, people usually have some sort of feast with family and/or friends, and express their gratitude for one another and their fortune. The centerpiece of this feast is usually a turkey or roast. Other dishes include things made with potatoes and/or sweet potatoes, cranberry sauce, and a stuffing to go inside of the turkey (if you have it.) For desert, there is pie; usually pumpkin. You can also have pecan pie, sweet potato pie, or really any sort of pie you want (since it is after all, your feast.)

Now you may be wondering whatever this nonsense is that "tryptophan" has to do with, so I shall tell ye.

Tryptophan is an amino acid; these are essential chemicals that make up proteins, your body needs them, or else....  Tryptophan is found in a variety of meats, including turkey. I have heard, though never experienced it myself (nor has anyone that I know), that eating copious amounts of turkey will make one sleepy, all thanks to this chemical. This sounds a bit silly to me, since eating enormous quantities of other meats with even more tryptophan in them than turkey mysteriously does not seem to make "them" tired. It's probably all the potatoes and pies they're piling on in addition to the turkey that is making them tired, in my opinion....

Tryptophan Day, besides a day for family, is controversial because the whole thing and all the myths surrounding it push aside (and quite frankly ignore) all the decimation, horror, and racism that the Native Americans suffered at the hands of the colonists, and would continue to (and even still do) suffer up to more recently in history. So Tryptophan Day is a day of giving thanks for what you have (like family or being able to put food on your table), and also a day to solemnly recognize the treatment of the Native Americans, and to commit to making things right and to end all the oppression and lack of equality. (Well, at least for me it is.)

In the spirit of this, there are Native American cultural festivals around this time, and the month of the November is designated Native American Heritage Month. People also volunteer to work to give/cook meals and shelter to those less fortunate, like the homeless.

"Never Pass Up a Beautiful Watch"

Such is "one of the ever expanding laws" of magician, photographer, gentleman, and everything else extraordinaire, Daniel Schaefer......he's absolutely right about that watch quote, and I wish to Odin and Quetzalcoatl that I hadn't passed up buying that antique Japanese pocket watch in June. The beauty and quality of it would have been well worth the price, and even more. Ah well, there are other paths up to the mountain, and future days await which may be dedicated to climbing.

Mr. Sir Schaefer not only has words of wisdom to offer us, but _____ photographs as well. That space there is for your own adjective, or you could replace that space with two more and add in two adjectives if you want, or do anything you feel like with the space really. Go check out his photography at Outlier Imagery on Tumblr, and see for yourself.

ENVISION: Interesting little light box

ENVISION : Step into the sensory box from SUPERBIEN on Vimeo.

Here's a neat little video of a "sensory box" I found, thanks to the magic of StumbleUpon.

AfterEffects and an awesome projector that can detect 3D space, perhaps? I'd like to figure out how to do this...

Cretaceous Period Dinosaur Named After Korea

The Cretaceous Period on Earth is one in which the dinosaurs (and other creatures of course) roamed; how exciting! It lasted from about 145.5 Ma (Ma = megaannum = million years 'ago') to 65.5 Ma. If you think the number 65 looks familiar to you, well, it probably does; it's about when the K-T mass extinction happened. Assuming you remember something you learned in a related science class at one point, you'll know that this is when the dinosaurs went pretty much extinct. 

...but I digress.

No, I don't own this image, so don't come after me.

Recently, a type of Cretaceous dinosaur discovered in 2003, has recently been named and, as has never before happened in paleontology, its namesake was that of Korea. This new dinosaur, Koreanosaurus boseongensis, was about 8 feet long, lived on the Korean peninsula, and was a herbivore.

You can read more about the story (in English) here at the site of the Chosun Ilbo, a major S. Korean newspaper....although I think the fact that it's South Korean kind of goes without saying.

Moving Forward

/caution: unfinished + unpolished reflection ahead/

After this June, I will be done with high school. I will leave my school, maybe even my city and state, go to college, and move on with my life. Of course I will still have friends and family, even though I'll see them less frequently than in the past. There are people that I know now that I will slip away from, and lose contact with, but even as sad as that may be, I'm not worried. Even as stressful and daunting this college process may be at times, with writing essays and tests upon which so much weight is lain, trying to pull something together and say "this is where I might want to head in life," and getting lost in the names of a hundred places that are all viable options for continuing one's education, I'm not worried.


Even if I don't get in to the colleges I most want to attend, I may be upset, but not worried. There is more than one path to the mountain, or to Rome, or London, or Daejon, or wherever you want to go. I will try the best I can to go down my intended path, but if that doesn't work out I may be forced to consider alternatives. This will happen in life, and I am not going to complain about it even though I may not find it enjoyable to go through.

Things are meant to move forward. My high school has changed from how it was in its first couple years, for better and for worse. Though I regret what changed for the worse, I know that it may not be "for the worse" according to others, and that what happened cannot be undone, and so all there is to do is to try and initiate change in a new direction to reclaim the spirit of that which was lost, to adapt it.

 I will lose people in my life during the next few years, just as I will welcome new people in. Change is the constant; impermanence. Though I do not wish people to fade out of my life, in any sense of the word "fade," I realize that things just simply work that way, and there's no point grieving over it. I will try my best to maintain things that I want to maintain, and to build positive memories and experiences between me and those I know so that if and when things fall apart, there will be no bitterness or sorrow. Things will simply move on. My best friend recently moved across the continent, and three of my close family members died within the last few years. This is upsetting, yes, but I am grateful for the time I spent with them, and will be enriched by what I have learned from them and what I have experienced with them. And although I can't see my friend as often as I'd like to anymore, I will still do my best to maintain the relationship I have with her, and not let it slip away. Though I'm disappointed that we never got to do some things together, there will be time for new things in the future, and for that I am most glad.

In college, there are many things I want to study. I'm still confused about where exactly I want to go, since I want to head off in so many different directions. I don't need to obsess over it though, since I can just learn on my own...which is essentially what I've been doing for as long as I can remember. I'll just keep on doing what I've been doing, and it'll be fine.

Lazy Chefs

Actually, I don't know if he was lazy so much as incompetent...though it might have been a mixture of the two.

I was visiting a certain university in California around mid day when the pangs of hunger struck me. Thus, I decided to grab a bite to eat. Their food court immediately disappointed me, and I immediately missed UCLA fare...though I decided not to dwell on the happy thought of the food of other university cafeterias, since that wouldn't exactly feed me.

I walked up to one of the few places that was open, and ordered a teriyaki salmon wrap. I wanted salmon, and it was the only salmon dish available on the menu. I also ordered a small Greek salad with it since it sounded good to me at that moment. (What possessed me to do this? Like I said, I was hungry.)

The wrap came to me about 20 minutes later alongside my sad little bowl of cubed cucumbers, tomatoes, and kalamata olives all with a lump of feta cheese on top. It was basically just a large hunk of salmon that had been charbroiled and stuck on a bed of basmati rice mixed with peas and chopped cooked carrots. Oh yeah, it was also drowned in teriyaki sauce. I couldn't even bite the thing without the viscous stuff languidly dripping out of the green tortilla in which it was all enclosed.

Bottom line: it was bad. I was very hungry though, so I ate it (*shudder*) and the little salad too.

Dear Odin....why basmati?!

That thing wasn't even what I was expecting...I could have had something better at airports; small, regional airports.

This is why you make your own food, so that you don't end up getting carrots and basmati rice soaked in teriyaki and stuffed in a dry tortilla alongside an awkward piece of salmon.