Delusions of Grandeur

• This Week: 23 July 2007

  Posted: July 25, 2007, 6:16 pm by chi

  soundtrak: sara bareilles :: one sweet love

  - it’s been a good and bad week. i don’t know; i was really excited for the week to begin. this is the week i was planning on turning my appeal, when mom was coming back and i had various abstracts due for some scientific meetings coming up. the days following up to this week just got increasingly better to the point i have begun to dance and sing in lab (much to the chagrin and delight of MD and AW). i just haven’t been this happy in weeks.
  - i’m turning in my appeal tomorrow (by hand; my school has a tendency to lose materials that i send by certified mail). everything is ready, just a couple of last edits. i just feel good about it. i feel good about getting it done and out. and i have to thank everyone here that’s just given me words of encouragement and prayers. i have grown by leaps and bounds these past 60 days and it’s all thanks to you. the growing and the hard work won’t stop; even if i don’t get back into this program, i have to keep on keeping on. i have so many other people to thank.
  - more feeling good: mom is coming back today. i’m picking her up tonight. i just miss her so much. i miss talking to her everyday and hugging her everyday and laughing with her everyday (even arguing with her everyday). i’m also eager to hear about grandma and how she’s doing.
  - even more feeling good: working out has been going really well this week. i feel energized; i’m working on my pace and endurance, reaching for two-40 min. workouts a day. i can’t work out for an hour in the morning because i come into lab early and if i have a meeting in the evening, i don’t workout in the afternoon. i’m just trying to do the best i can.
  - jules’ wedding was this past weekend. it was nice; it was beautiful. i saw some old college friends of mine and CB; her boyfriend went to high school with jules and the groom. it was a black wedding, so of course we did the electric slide, followed by the cha-cha slide and some other group dance songs. i did the first two in heels (heels!) before i sat out. never again.
  - talking about weddings, my friend just emailed for my address so she could give me a wedding invitation. i have already been to/seen about 7 weddings this spring/summer. i don’t have anything against marriage or anything like that, but dag! a sister is broke! i think i have about 3-4 more weddings to go this year, culminating in my cousin’s (who’s the sister of my cousin that got married earlier this spring) wedding on new year’s eve.
  - just funny: so i was telling my friend, ani (from high school) that i need a man that can cook and clean. “why?!” he asked me. well, somebody has to stay at home with the adopted kids… (lol! i’m not going through childbirth if i don’t have to!)
  - chiiq.com update: plan to update music (because i have new music… wee!) and i still have to put my 101/1001 page up. also, i wanted to do an entry on high school since i’ve seen alot of people from high school lately.

  anyways, gotta get to work.

  peace.

• Plus Size

  Posted: July 18, 2007, 6:02 pm by chi

  soundtrak: mylo :: valley of the dolls

  as of today, i have lost 120 pounds.

  shopping has been a rather odd experience. aabs and i went to a couple stores as i am looking for a dress for my friend’s wedding this weekend. i’m at the point where i’m between the plus size department and regular size department. it’s frustrating because stores tend not to carry the smallest or the largest size, so alot of the styles i liked were not in my size. with the dresses that did fit, they didn’t fit well. we left defeated.
  when i was larger, i was comfortable because i knew where to get the clothes that would fit me the best. i didn’t have to try on or think, ‘do these jeans fit right?’. i had my basic wardrobe all set. now i need a new clothes, but i have no money (thank you maryland government).
  it’s other things too. i get approached more often by members of the opposite sex; i’m not quite sure how to deal with this one. somedays i miss that anonymity; being ignored. i find myself still thinking like i was still 100+ pounds. it’s work in progress.

  peace.

• A Long Summer

  Posted: July 16, 2007, 4:50 pm by chi

  soundtrak: bent :: exercise 4

  - i know this is going to be a very long summer. i just turned in an abstract for a meeting i have in september and my data is looking kind of wack. do you know what means? working all through august baby. i was planning on taking a vacation at the beginning of august, but i don’t have any money anyways.
  - on friday, i was working on four hours of sleep. not like i haven’t done it before (sleeping at 1, waking up at 4 to come into lab before leaving at 7 to get to class), but summer is supposed to be a slower time. i stayed in lab until 2 to work on data and this abstract. why didn’t i work from home, you ask? because you and i know i would have fallen into bed and woken up in the morning with nothing done. i was super stressed thursday/friday morning; my back was on fire. but it’s a lesson learned; procrastinate no more.
  - that whole burring of the midnight oil thing totally screwed up my sleeping schedule; i’ve been fatigued through the weekend, without a good chance to sleep. i woke up this morning feeling a little ill; i’m still at home, trying to figure out if i’m going to make it into work today (as i sit typing this entry… classy)
  - this afternoon, i’m going up to school to talk with my co-mentor and any other professors i can run down. i need to find advocates or this appeal is not going to work. also, talking with nic last week, i need a place where i know i’m getting the support and help that i need. we all need to be on the same page about things; things have got to change if we want them to work. i’m kind of anxious about the whole thing, because i don’t know what to expect when i go down there. i’m just praying and hoping for the best.

  peace.

• The Year of 27

  Posted: July 9, 2007, 5:34 pm by chi

  soundtrak: common: it’s your world

  i was reading this post about being/turning 27 and i started to do a little research on it.

  so it seems, the 27th year is associated with saturn’s return, an astrological event in which the planet saturn returns, after it orbits the sun, to the exact place at a person’s birth, which is approx. 29.5 years. it is said that at this time, a person experiences events that will challenge their significance, in which a person evaluates their life. this is time that people usually settle down, get married, etc.

  now, i don’t believe in astrology, but the number seven has it’s own special significance to me. i knew that 27 would be a special year for me, but i didn’t expect what’s happening to me now to be happening to me. i have had to do alot of self-evaluation of my morals, my beliefs, my ideals, my dreams and my issues. especially the latter, things that i have been trying to push from the forefront of my mind. i’ve been pushing along hoping that i wouldn’t have to deal with these things, to achieve my goals, but i now realize that it was never going to work that way.

  and it’s painful, i can’t lie. it’s painful dealing with all the issues; reopening old wounds and healing them the right way. but i know in the end, i’ll be better for it. even when i thought i was having the best day a couple of months, years ago, life can be even better than that.

  peace.

• This Week: 01 July 2007

  Posted: July 6, 2007, 4:58 pm by chi

  soundtrak: daft punk :: too long

  - chiiq.com updates: as you can see, i have updated music. i always try to have a theme for each month (or when i get the chance to update it), but then i end up downloading some song(s) that i adore so much, i have to upload it. i was going to with something quieter, to fit my depressive moods, but then i just downloaded a buttload (do people still say that?) of drum n’ bass and i haven’t stopped dancing yet (which has reallly helped to pick up mood so i can get stuff done). i also added the radio.blog player to the side panel; you can pop-up the player. for a complete playlist, visit the music page. on other updates, i recently added a creative commons license to the site because i will be posting some prose work soon (hopefully). still internally working on my (new) 101/1001 list (as in starting over…).
  - i find that i really like being by myself; working by myself, reading by myself, watching tv by myself…. this week i was running an experiment for dr. a and i had the whole lab to myself (since people took off for the 4th) and i was loving it; i didn’t mind that i was doing somebody else’s work or that i could have been doing something else. however, when one of the post-docs came in, i was instantly moody, wanting to finish up quickly. i think that’s why i like coming in so early in the morning; nobody is here and i end up getting so much done.
  - appeal writing went much better this week; i’m happy. i was sitting in lab yesterday morning; i couldn’t concentrate, so i unplugged everything and went up the 7th floor and just typed and typed and typed. the draft is crap, but at least i have a draft. i feel like i’m getting somewhere.
  - ha! you see, i’m posting everyday. that’s because i’m not writing everyday. i’m trying to make it a point to at least write once a day, but because of the crazy schedules i have, sometimes when i come to the keyboard to start something afresh, i end up not writing anything at all. so i have started a couple entries on wednesday, working on them piece-meal, so i can have something to post once a day. i have alot of entries in my head that i have just waiting to get out; some from months ago. so let the writing begin.
  - honestly, i haven’t been to the gym all week. my body keeps on acting up everytime i bring my gym bag with me (because i haven’t been able to wake up early enough since this whole appeal thing started; battle of the mind). my hamstring is feeling better, but then it’ll just hurt out of nowhere. my knees have been hurting on and off even though i haven’t been doing any activity and i’ve been having back spasms for the past three days. i think it’s just stress and i’m aiming to make next week better than this one.

  happy weekends everyone.
  peace.

• Pity

  Posted: July 5, 2007, 5:12 pm by chi

  soundtrak: london elektricity :: will to love

  Main Entry: pity
  Pronunciation: ‘pi-tE
  Function: noun
  Inflected Form(s): plural pit·ies
  Etymology: Middle English pite, from Anglo-French pité, from Latin pietat-, pietas piety, pity, from pius pious

  1: sympathetic sorrow for one suffering, distressed, or unhappy
  2: implies tender or sometimes slightly contemptuous sorrow for one in misery or distress

  synonyms:
  a. compassion: implies pity coupled with an urgent desire to aid or to spare
  b. sympathy: mean the act or capacity for sharing the painful feelings of another

  i was raised to work hard. and when things don’t work or you don’t understand what’s going on, you work harder. i’m extremely self-disciplined when i need to be (but i do procrastinate). because of this, i think, it’s hard for me to ask for help when i need it. i’m really starting to see this now with the school situation i’m going through.
  one thing i can’t stand is pity, usually when people have pity for me. i can’t take it; it makes me angry. i think it’s because it hard for me to accept the feelings that comes with whatever’s going on, so when i see that portrayed by people for me, i can’t accept it. pity is connected to shame which is connected to inadequacy; it’s hard for me to let people to see the weakness in me. it’s almost like a switch; when it gets too much, i completely withdraw from the person. i avoid them, i stop talking to them.

  i’ve been talking to whm about my situation, being that we’re in the same department. in our last email correspondence, i emailed about my taxes and other issues. the last email he sent was just sympathetic, to the point where i cannot reply back. i see myself starting to do the same things i usually do; starting to pull away. i know he’s doing the best that he can with it; it’s hard trying to find a way to help someone when you don’t know how. however, people tell me that when they come to me with their problems, i always have the right mix of compassion, sympathy and advice. i can be the sympathetic one, but when the roles are reversed, it’s hard. i don’t know how to deal with this situation.

  peace.

• Picky Eater

  Posted: July 4, 2007, 9:07 pm by chi

  soundtrak: london elektricity: rewind

  i think i was watching tv on night when a commercial for the local news came up. they were talking about picky eating adults. i think i must have seen this commercial for this particular story about a dozen times. everytime, there was this guy that always said, “it’s an eating disorder.” and i would keep on telling myself, “i didn’t think it was an eating disorder.”
  unlike the people’s stories from the website, when i was growing up, i wasn’t a picky eater. my parents didn’t allow me to be. of course, there were things that i refused to eat (lima beans anyone?), but then i would always get the guilt trip about ‘the starving kids in africa’, but my parents would change it to ‘my cousins in kenya’, and lamenting how they wished they airmail my food over there. so i ended up eating whatever i was given, which i think very much contributed to my overweight problem. my mom refused to buy junk food ever and we didn’t do fast food well until timon was a kid. as a teenager, i think that’s when i started to ‘rebel’ against my parents. i remember i hated the way my mom cooked fish, usually in a stew and i hated eating it. “well, why don’t you become a vegetarian then?” she snapped one day and i yelled back, “i think i will!”
  honestly, i didn’t miss meat as much as people usually do. to this day, i miss chicken sometimes. in college, my tendencies really started to come out, of course because one moves away from home and starts to experience freedom for the first time. for days on end, i would eat veggie burgers, no cheese with mustard. some days i wouldn’t eat a meal because i couldn’t decide what i wanted to eat. towards the final years, especially when i moved into the apartments and i didn’t have to have a meal plan, it really started to come out. there would be weeks i would eat nothing but fries, but then the next week i would refuse to eat them. always at the end of the semester, i had bags of food that i had to give away because i couldn’t eat them.
  at work, AW and MD say i’m the pickest eater that they ever met. i turned vegan about a year ago, which i think only help to contribute to my picky eating problem. i do have a list, even though it changes:

  - i hate soup: (it’s like wet food… *shudders*); unless i am in the mood to eat soup (usually when i’m sick), i refuse to eat it.
  - no salad: i actually used to like salad alot, but now i don’t like the lettuce; iceburg ruined it for me
  - mushroom fiend: i love mushrooms; i could eat them all day everyday and i put them in everything. i prefer them raw than cooked. i have also been told this is the only vegetable i will voluntarily eat. it’s not that i don’t like other vegetables, i just don’t eat them.
  - tomato usage: i like tomatoes, but i don’t like them on my sandwich; when i got to subway, no tomatoes. however, i do like to eat them raw and in salads (when i feel like eating those)
  - cereal 24/7: i love cereal; all day, everyday. raisin bran crunch, smart start, all bran. nothing else. but i will go a week or two without eating cereal at all.
  - ice: also known as pica, eating ice is usually associated with low iron (which is true; i am anemic). but as long as i can remember, i have always been an ice eater. i love the fact that our fridge crushes ice because i just keep buckets upon buckets in the freezer to save to eat.

  that’s just some of my ‘restrictions’ that i have. some of the problems i have with this disorder is that mostly people don’t understand. especially the ice thing; only a couple of people have actually seen me go at a bucket of ‘pre-chilled’ ice. i’m embarrassed by it. my parents are hassled because of the space that my ice buckets take. i do take my iron tablets, but then i miss that craving for ice (it’s weird, i know). sometimes when i go out to eat and i don’t see anything on the menu that i like, i won’t eat. period. people usually think i’m mad, but i think it’s because they’re uncomfortable to the fact that i’m the only one not eating. also, the amount of food that i buy that i never eat. it’s good to have a brother that will eat anything. i have popsicles and oatmeal from last season still in the kitchen. i could have the same box of cereal for two months. i know it’s a problem because i don’t have a reasonable reason to why i don’t eat certain things; i might not like the colors, the texture is all wrong, it doesn’t ‘feel’ right. usually it’s not what it tastes like.

  i recently took a personality test (i need to look up the name) and it was very on point. i’m the type of person that likes to control my external environment because i can’t control my internal environment (i.e. when i get anxious); when i get stressed or anxious, i tend to work harder, longer hours, i will do strange things like clean the bathroom in the middle of the night. i see my picky eating now as a way that i’m trying to control my external environment. my counselor says that it’s good that i’m starting to recognize these things about myself; soon i will start to see that i cannot change ‘everything’ about the external (things just happen) and i have to enjoy my life.

  i don’t know how i feel about being a picky eater. i know it’s a problem, but like some of the people in the stories that are posted, i feel that it’s something that makes me unique, who i am. i am aware of what i eat however and i try to keep it balanced as much as possible. i take multivitamins. i don’t know if how i eat will ever change.

  do you have a particular food that you hate/love to eat?

  peace.

• Keeping It (Painfully) Real

  Posted: July 2, 2007, 5:40 pm by chi

  soundtrak: clara hill :: i’m here

  - so found out within the past two weeks that i owe the state of MD about $3000 in back taxes (pleeeease don’t ask); like the stress i was going through was not enough. i managed to take care of that by the end of the week, but i have never been so broke in my entire life… i mean, just broke.
  - we dropped mom off at the airport yesterday. i am now officially ‘mom’ of the house. this is hard. on top of the stuff that i have to do, i have some other items added on my checklist.
  - so this weekend, somehow i agreed to run a 10K this october. how do i get myself in these things? i think it’ll be good for me in the long run, to help me prepare for the marathon that i plan to run october 2008. i just need to keep up with my training. running helps me to keep my mind from other things.
  - i had a little mini breakdown last week; this appeal process is stressful. i’m continually doubting myself, which is not helping me when i’m trying to write. i feel like i’m going through a mid-life crisis; hopefully i won’t have to go through one when i’m 40. i have been seeing two counselors. one of them asked me what i do for fun and i told her, “i don’t even think i remember what fun is.” it feels like everything is out of control… no, things are out of my control; i’m not driving the car and i’m trying anything in vain not to crash. these are the times where the only one i can rely on is God. i have exactly a month left to turn this appeal in. i’m working on it; just pray for me.
  - at church this weekend, i was with one of the youths that i used to work with as a youth leader. she moved away a couple of months ago, but was visiting this weekend. she graduated from high school last year and wanting to be a doctor, she’s pre-med in community college. she was telling me about her struggles, trying to find another job and dealing with financial aid. then she said, “you have really been an inspiration to me. i remember when you were in college and instead of going out on a saturday night, you would go home to study. i want to work just as hard as you work; i know i can do great things.” honestly, i was shocked. who am i to be an inspiration to someone? yet, who am i not to be? i would have never guessed that something as simple as sacrificing a saturday night to study (trust me, there have been alot of those) would and could resonate so deeply. there is always somebody watching.
  - chiiq.com updates: i have not done them yet. focusing on music, pages and more entries which i have halfway written.

  on to work.
  peace.

Blah blah blah

Fish cakes

Alas a fish cake.

Yet more fish cakes

Guess what ... yeah ... fish cakes.

The end of the fish cakes