One day until the road trip...

Fruity Goodness, originally uploaded by shobster.

To my surprise, i managed to fend off Matt's suggestion to not go swimming today!!!! Wow, never thought i have the power to say no to Matt!! :-)

But i'm glad i decided to stay and go swimming. I weighed myself again today... I wasn't going to, considering i only swam once last week and what with all the festivities of this past weekend, and seeing as how it's that time of the month (i'm feeling SO bloated and unpretty). I was so sure that i had probably put on more lbs. than i've managed to shed after the 3-ish weeks of exercising again. I was already sort of back at 163 lbs. the last time i went swimming and weighed myself. So yeah, finding out that i've effectively pigged myself out back to square one would be a complete let down. I wasn't sure if i could handle it. But of course me and my weak will couldn't resist the calling of the scale when i walked past it in the changing room. So weigh i did.

But hey, guess what! I'm actually 4 lbs. lighter than when i first weighed myself, February 28th - almost four weeks ago. I'm still in line with the 1 lbs. a week goal, despite the weekend! I'm pretty psyched about it (well, here you are reading all the unnecessary detail about it... that's just about how excited i am).

Next challenge would be to maintain portion control over the course of the road trip... Ben has made it clear that part of the trip is about experiencing the culinary culture of Southern California (if there's such thing, i added), so we'll be doing lots of fine dining. Oh boy. I can tell that i'm in trouble already... And i don't think we'd want to carry leftover food around, so i really have to be strong-willed in stopping myself from eating more than i should.

Fingers crossed. Go shobi.

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PS. Are you still clicking on the ads? Click click click, pretty please?!?!?!?!?! I'll love you a really long time the day they cut me my first check!!!! Besides, i think most of my ads are quite amusing... (or maybe i'm just biased).

Birthday - BFD

Poppy field by the hill, originally uploaded by shobster.

Happy 27th birthday to me, yay. Do i feel special? Not the least bit.

Don't get me wrong, i enjoyed taking time off of work (well it was a Saturday) and spending some quality time with my best buddies. I'm more than thankful for the few friends that i have, whom i love to death. I'm thankful for Ben. I do reflect on my life once in a while, and i did a little bit of that on my birthday to see how much i've accomplished in the time it takes the earth to complete its full orbit around the sun 27 times since the day i was born (which is not that much, sadly). I'm glad for yet one fewer year that i have to live through. And i think that last bit is what takes away all the fun from a birthday, in my opinion - at least as an adult.

Time's ticking. Noone lives forever. I'm getting old, and every day i'm just buying time. And i feel as though i'm not working hard enough to make that costly purchase worth it. I should be somewhere in life by now, damn it!! 27 seems like a few steps past the peak of the hill... Not too far downhill, but not exactly at the peak either. Oh no, i don't feel old, i just feel... behind. It seems as though the people around me and my friends from college or high school have all settled, either with a family and/or a career, while i'm still stuck here trying to define my goals in life and and nowhere near getting there. Sometimes i feel like telling myself, "Get on it, Woman!!!" but that still doesn't get me anywhere...

So, yeah... Birthday? BFD. I thank you and all of my friends and family deeply and whole-heartedly for all the birthday wishes and attention and affection they showered me with; they're the true reason today (well, yesterday the 22nd anyway) worth celebrating. But as far as myself is concerned, i'm not really that thrilled.

Do i sound like an old, bitter and weary soul? :-)

W00t! Maybe life isn't that bad afterall!!

Such soft folds and pretty curves..., originally uploaded by shobster.

Had a long but productive day today. I'm really pleased! Jim and i finally finished and submitted our National Geographic application, and i think he's just as excited about it as i am. And then Matt and i signed up for the Evolution meetings, and we're going to share a room together! How fun is that, being roommates - albeit only temporarily - with your buddy buddy?! That's Six Days with Matt!!! And then my 1042-S form finally arrived (those slackers!!), and tonight i completed my tax return forms. I'll be getting ~550 back from federal and ~87 from state! I can buy a DSLR!!! We'll have to see about that though, since i also parted with $280 today to pay for the Evolution registration, and i still have the road trip coming up, and also paying for the ticket to get to Minnesota. Granted the costs for the meetings will be reimbursed later, but that's not gonna happen until another month or two, at least... But i'm happy nonetheless!! And then i get to talk to my Tea Sibling in Boston for a little while, and now the number of readers of this blog has increased by one (hey, that's a 14% improvement!). And tomorrow night my sweetheart's coming over (it's been a really long time since i get to spend Friday nights with him), and on Saturday i'm going hiking to Briones with a bunch of my best buddies!!! And soon thereafter, spring break is here and the road trip is ON!!!!!!! Woo Hoo!!!!!!

Can't wait, can't wait, can't wait...

Oh, Life... (woe is me!!!)

IMG_3248, originally uploaded by shobster.

What do you do when everything in life feels so underwhelming? Yes, you heard it right: "underwhelming". Failing to interest or astonish. I feel that the last few days i've found no sparks in most everything that i do... School, well that's an old story. I've been kinda just going with the flow the past few months, not really too motivated to swim to the end of the river. I swear learning new things and all things biology used to make me tick, but lately i've had to really search to find that spark to keep me going. I usually blame the situation on my short attention span and how i'm almost always more interested in my distractions - i guess that makes me a procrastinator - like photography and the blog, but this past two days i wasn't even motivated to do any.

Hmm... At least my friends still keep me interested. And Ben, too. If it weren't for them i'd prolly be in trouble by now. I have a knack for getting into "bad" things when i'm bored and left to my own devices. That's how i got to 29, partly...

But hopefully things are starting to look up. Today was much better than yesterday, so maybe tomorrow will be even better. I'm very close to finishing the National Geographic application, and maybe tomorrow i'll be able to finish the Explorers Club application. And sign up for the Evolution meeting. And hopefully my cycle sequencing reactions worked - i stayed until 10 PM tonight just so i could get it to start running. Keeping my fingers crossed. Tomorrow's another day...

Fuzzy matters

Day 118 - Another day gone by, still feeling fuzzy, originally uploaded by shobster.

Some days I would think back and ponder on where i am in life and can't help but to worry about what lies ahead... These are very, very humbling moments.

School. I realize now that school is probably one of the least of my concerns. I mean, at least in school my goals are obvious. Write this proposal. Get money for research. Do research. Get my degree. See? It's all laid out for me. It's only a question of *how* to get there, but "there" is well defined well in advance.

I sometimes tell people half jokingly that the reason i decided to go to grad school was to avoid Real Life a little bit longer. It's somewhat true, sadly. I wasn't ready to face the world. I wasn't ready to set my own goals and go ahead pursue them. Life seemed like a big fuzzy matter to me that i didn't know how to navigate, and school seemed like the only path well enlightened at the time. And as far as life paths are concerned, advanced education isn't that bad so i decided to go that way. It's a rough path, but at least it's clear. But what's after grad school? There's no more putting it off... I have to make a decision about what i want to do with my life.

And these past few days i've been thinking a lot about the not-so-distant future and the choices that i'll have to make. Inevitably, this has something to do with Ben being in my life. In short, i can't help but feel that choosing between Ben or my slated career in academia back home is a mutually exclusive decision. It's either life in the states with the boy who's brought me so much joy this past six months, forgoing all the expectations that so many people back home have put upon me that i would go back and help build the country, or going back to Indonesia to live life as i have once dreamed it to be, but without Ben. There's no having the cake and eat it, too.

If this was only a question of which would make me happier, the answer is probably obvious: I'd stay here with Ben, live a convenient American life, and make a modest living teaching in a small school. Or something. But - go ahead and call me crazy - somehow i've always believed that i'm destined to do something big. Not that i believe in destiny, or that i vision myself to be a future Nobel laureate or be the person to discover the cure to all the world's problems, but i hear a calling in me sometimes to do things that are far bigger than myself and what i think i could do. Saving the environment is it, or one of them. And that calling, while not very strong and at most times can be easily drowned out by many other things, is not easy to ignore. It's like... a calling for martyrdom. To negate what i want for myself, give up what's comfortable and convenient, and go the distance and embark on a journey to the unknown (to me the prospect of saving wildlife in Indonesia is pretty bleak and i know it will be a rough journey... And i find it very belittling sometimes to think of the scope of the work involved in the task, but that's a whole story for another entry in my blog).

Oh, the agony. One option is easily more convenient than the other, but it's not just a question of what's easy... Pedro will probably call me crazy and tell me that i only need to worry about myself, but i know it's not that easy to do.

I'm going to end here on this hanging note... In case you're wondering, no i don't need to make the decision until graduation time is nigh upon me, which is like 2 years from now. Heheh, yeah i overthink things sometimes. Or i plan way too far ahead. But that's just me; i can't help it. For now, i think all i can do is to live life to the fullest - work hard, play hard, love hard - until the time comes to give up one thing for the other...

Progress

Day 115 - Saturday at the gym, originally uploaded by shobster.

If you're still checking my blog on a regular basis and reading the entries (and clicking on the ad!!! Click on the ad!!!), wow i admire you so much for bearing with my less than $0.02 worth of thoughts. But i'm going to have to apologize because in my head it's looking as though this thing is about to turn into a documentation of my journey trying to lose weight. But what can i say, that's just my big thing right now - aside from school that is, but i won't bore you even more with my PCR reactions and grant proposals, so... The lesser evil.

So, yeah. This photo is old (i.e. it was taken 3 days ago), but it's sorta related to my theme today on my progress in working out and losing weight so i'm gonna go ahead and use it anyway. If you remember the first time Matt and i set a goal for our weight loss, i was 165.3 lbs and i wanted to lose 1 lb. a week. Fast forward a week later (that's 4 swim sessions and a week of eating healthy), i weighed 166 lbs. Great job for not losing weight!!! Of course the optimistic side of me was going "Oh whatever, i know i'm feeling so much better about myself already so i won't get too hung up on the numbers," but in all honesty deep down i was thinking, "WTF?!?! What did i do wrong? It worked so well the last time, the swimming+portion control combo!!!"

But this goes to show just how body weight is governed by so many different, often inexplicable things (e.g. water retention, what i ate, did i cr*p, are the stars aligning, etc.): Two days later - Saturday last week, that is - i weighed myself again and i was 162.3 lbs. Dude, did i really lose 3.7 lbs in two days? Is that even humanly possible? But yeah, fast forward again to today, and i still weighed sorta the same (i was 162.2 lbs) so i guess i really did lose that much. Hellz yeah!!!!

Oh, and my time at the pool was also getting so much better. I was sooo close to cracking 29 minutes today, if it wasn't for the pool being uber crowded (there were like 5 people in my lane when i started and about 3 when i left). That's a 39 seconds improvement since Saturday! I'm super excited. I wonder if i'd be able to squeeze in an entire lap altogether within 30 minutes' time by the end of this week...

Oh, if you're wondering what's transpired between Ben and me since my last post... Of course we kissed and made up. :-) The only major fight that we've had since we started dating, i couldn't stay mad at him for too long... It was the same thing this time. To be honest i know that this last fight was not just because of him not thinking before he speaks, but also because i was being overly sensitive towards his words. In retrospect i know it could have been avoided if only i had kept my cool. So, no i'm not mad at him anymore. He can call me slow any day now, won't hurt me. I'm over it. He's over it. Things are once again peachy keen between us. We went autocrossing again last Sunday and it was tons of fun. I LOVE MY BOY!!!!!

On a side note... The math of weight loss:

Today i found out that it takes about 3500 calories to burn a pound of body fat, so if i wanted to lose 1 lbs. in a week i need to cut my calorie intake by about (3500/7 = 500) calories off of my daily calorie needs. Well, what's my daily calorie needs? I did some snooping on Google (it took like two clicks, so it's not detective work really) and according to some BMR calculator, my BMR is 1538.3. If i keep up to this moderately active lifestyle of 3 - 5 days of exercise a week, then according to some dude named Harris Benedict (hey if you get your name immortalized in a frequently cited equation then you can't be that wrong, right?) my daily calorie need is (BMR * 1.55 = 2384.6) calories. That's how many calories i need to maintain my weight. Right now i think i'm putting myself on ~1400 calorie diet give or take (i'm not really counting, plus i cheat on mini snacks), so i'm slashing my intake by ~984.6 calories, which means in a week i'll be cutting (984.6 * 7 = 6892.2) calories, which equates to about 1.97 lbs of body fat burned per week. Now, i know that these numbers are nowhere near Exact, and every one will differ in how their body response to a weight loss regime so i'm not hanging by these numbers, but still i think it's a good reference point to compare to...

Anyways. On with the march towards weight loss!!!!

A pat on the back would have sufficed...

I was only 13 seconds away from breaking 30 minutes' time at the pool today. I'm 4 minutes faster now than when i started going back to swimming, only one week ago (If you're confused, i'm talking about the time it takes me to finish doing 20 laps). I wasn't getting better gradually; i was cutting my time by minutes. My body's remembered. I'd call that progressing by leaps and bounds... And i was proud of myself.

I wish i could stop at that: Just me being proud of myself. It should be all that matter, right? Myself? I mean, isn't that the main reason why i'm doing this? To make me feel good about myself again? So in an ideal world, i should just be happy when i start feeling better. But being me of course, i couldn't stop at that. I had to tell other people. They have to understand that i'm making a good progress. They have to acknowledge that. I wanted a pat on the back... But apparently i went to the wrong person to get it from.

Ben called me slow. I had just finished explaining how i'm trying to break 30 minutes, and he called me slow. So much for a pat on the back. I KNOW I'M SLOW. I'm not saying i'm becoming really good after only 4 days at the pool. I'm not trying to break the olympic records. I'm slow, and i know it. But truth of the matter is, even though i'm slow i'm working very hard to get better... I set myself a goal and i'm actually doing something to accomplish it. I went from not swimming at all to going three times already in a week, back to back, even on days when i didn't feel like going. I made time for swimming, even though it means i have to stay at school until 9:30 or 10 PM to make up for the time i spent at the pool. I try and watch what i eat. I put in a lot of effort. I keep track of my progress. I'M TRYING MY BEST TO BE BETTER. All that has got to be worth something, right? I deserve a pat on the back!!!!! But no, i'm just slow.

I exploded. I raised my voice. I was on the verge of being hysterical. I was so disappointed. How could he? Did he not realize how hard i'm trying? Is all my effort only laughing matter to him? I'm dead serious about this effort (fuck, i wouldn't be trying so hard if i wasn't), and to him it was something he could make fun of. Ouch. I guess in all honesty i know that he didn't mean it like that, but still. If you poked someone accidentally in the eye and they ended up losing an eyeball, it still would hurt even though you didn't mean it. I know he didn't mean it like that, but it still hurts me that he said that... And all i wanted was some encouragement. Silly me.

And now comes the time when i blame myself for the things that come to pass... I wish i wasn't so weak. I wish i was stronger so that i won't need other's acknowledgment to keep me happy. I wish i was self-supporting, self contained. I wish i had learned to be content with just me being proud of myself. To hell with what others think, right? I wish it was that easy. As for Ben... I don't hate him even though in that heated moment i said i did. It's just that him being the person closest to me, i tend to expect more from him and consequently i get hurt more easily when those expectations are not met...

I hate myself. And to think i was so proud only a few hours ago... *shakes head*

It's all a matter of perspective

Day 112 - On a roll, originally uploaded by shobster.

W00t, i really was on a roll today. I was a busy body during the day, going back and forth between the lab and my office a bunch of times. I got plenty of things done, even though pretty much nothing worked. Yeah, bummer but at least i tried. Tomorrow's another day.

And then i went swimming again - twice this week already, and two days in a row!! I'm so proud of myself. What made me even happier is that i did really good at the pool. I cut my previous time by a full 2 minutes, and i wasn't even the slightest bit winded. I was ON A ROLL. I think my body finally remembered how it's supposed to be done. :-) The weight was the same as yesterday, but big deal - i was feeling so much better about myself already.

Speaking of weight... today i realized that if i wanted to get back to my old weight in college i need to lose a whopping 40 lbs. I used to weigh 125 lbs!!! Now how the hell did that happen?! Not the 125 lbs., but putting on 40 lbs. in less than 5 years... Man it really sneaked up on me. And to give you an idea of how f***-ed up my body image was, i had always thought i was Fat. And ugly, but maybe that's mostly because i thought i was fat. And now 40 lbs. later, I can honestly say that i think i'm pretty, despite the little bit of extra weight. I've sure come a long way in loving myself... :-)

Alright, over and out. Time to go to bed.

This whole Web-Two-Point-Oh thing

Day 111 - Flash Tuesday, originally uploaded by shobster.


Today while my mind drifted off during class (i should make a more conscious effort to sit at the front row so i pay more attention) i started browsing the news and stumbled upon an article on the trial of Kevin Underwood. This being the Age of Information where very few things can remain a mystery for more than however long it takes people to google things up, soon i found myself sucked into a virtually endless chasm of past news stories, following the trail(s) of information surrounding the case. Apparently Underwood murdered a 10-yr old girl who lived in an adjacent apartment unit in 2006, and later admitted to fantasizing about (and/or planning on) cannibalizing the corpse. That's obviously a disturbing case, but what really sucked me into the whole story was the fact that Underwood had been maintaining a blog since 2002, and to my surprise Blogger hadn't taken it down.

Just how creepy/trippy/disturbing is it to realize that as you browse through pages and pages of past archive, you are actually going through the mind of a murderer? That you are pretty much listening to his thoughts, written down into words instead of being spoken aloud to you? I found it all very intriguing... To think that instead of just knowing him as a part of a news story from halfway across the continent, i'm actually putting together a person to go with the name. And then to imagine that person sitting in his lonely apartment typing this whole thing up while ideas were brewing in his head and emotions were flowing from his heart... My head was spinning with excitement and sensory overload. This is a guy that would later bludgeon a child to death, slit her throat, and then go and chat with an online buddy as the corpse was left hanging to let the blood drains out. A murderer.

One particular thing about my discovery today really hit me in the face: This whole Web 2.0 thing... It's crazy if you think about it. It's SO EASY to broadcast yourself in any manner possible these days. Take a few photos, post them up on Flickr. Sign up for MySpace, put up photos and videos, go crazy. Think outloud and cast your thoughts out at CyberSpace. Write them up in a blog. Confess. Reveal. Ramble. Threaten. Whine. Rant. Rave. Do anything. It's the Web 2.0, Baby. You are your own publisher and marketer.

Apparently as i later learned through my information spelunking session, Kevin Underwood is only one of a few other murderers who had been maintaining an online persona(s) in various forms. Eric Harris of Columbine shooting had one. Jeff Weise had one. Jet Duncan had one. (Yep, i stormed through all of those tonight). Of course i'm not implying that online self broadcasting is the realm of psycopaths and the mentally disturbed. I mean, hey i'm on Flickr. You're reading this blog that i wrote. I have a FaceBook account. I broadcast myself and my existence through these channels. What i'm saying is, the existence of the Internet with its whole Web 2.0 resources truly enable people to dish out and dig in now more than ever in history, i think. Of course people have been taking photos and writing journals since who knows when, and serial killers and the Unabomber have been known to keep meticulous records of their thoughts, but never are we so connected and at the same time accessible to everyone else as we are right now through the Internet. S-C-A-R-Y, if you ask me. It's a bit unnerving (and also a good mind exercise) to think what people will rediscover about me 10 years down the line from now, the things that they can learn about me through my own words and photos...

Oh well. Sorry for the long read. On a brighter note, i went swimming again today and i weighed 164.4 lbs. Going down. Oh yeah i know that the first few weeks are easier (thanks, water loss!!), but i'm thrilled about it still.