Have I told you that I have a Red Cross donor card they sent me a couple months back? I figure they finally value my frequent-flyerness donating. Yeah, baby!

While on the way to the library today, I spotted a Red Cross bus parking itself in front of the Chemistry Building. And right there, I decided to give 'em, ehm, the gift of life. Partly Mostly, because I was eager to see how easy the whole pre-donation procedures would be now that I have the priviledge of a card holder.

I stepped up to the stool and up to the bus and waited for a couple minutes on the light flamingo pink bench. I think there was Cher singing on the background. I then proudly passed my pretty red card to the attending nurse. Seriously, that moment was up to par with the day I turned legal and bought my first alcoholic drink at, uhm...Walmart. She then scanned it and there it was, my personal information popping up from the databank. But, yeah, that was pretty much it. I still have to answer the 50-something questions, verbally, while she's clicking the YES/NO options.

And then there were the usual pulse and temperature checking and the finger-pricking: pulse, well within the range, check; temperature, normal, check. For a while, it looked that we were all on the way to enter blood-donating highway. But then, it was all going down on the last screening test. It turned out that my blood drop wasn't sinking on the copper sulfate solution, which means, qualitatively, I might have a low hemoglobin concentration.

The nurse then took a couple more drops on a pippette, went outside, performed some sort of Hematocrit test on them, and came back a couple minutes latter with a deferral letter officially confirming that my Hb-level was two percents lower than their allowable range for donation.

So today, I was pronounced an anemic.

"It could be a sign of iron-deficiency," she said.

Funny, I thought I've eaten well-and-balanced meals. Well, yeah, a little low on the vegetable side, but otherwise high in protein (and by protein I mean, red meat, chicken, and fish), carbohydrates, minerals, and vitamin C.

So you now, between now and Thursday afternoon (the last day to donate with them), I'd have to increase my iron intake, foodwise or some other way. I think I still have that Centrum A-to-Zinc somewhere, or can I just drink some rusty water? Nah...j/k.

I have just found King of Convenience and found solace on their video clip I’d Rather Dance With You. I mean, how many times has Ndoro Yadda been squinting her eyes, pouting her lips on my über-weird dance moves?

It’s not the “beauty” of the movement that counts, but rather the fact that everything is a form of expression of what’s inside. It’s kinda reminding me of that Napoleon Dynamite character.

Ha ha ha.

Here are the current top 50 books from www.whatshouldireadnext.com. Bold the books you have read. Italicise the books you might read. Cross out the books you probably won't read. Pass it on:


The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
The Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger
The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy - Douglas Adams
The Great Gatsby - F.Scott Fitzgerald
To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
The Time Traveler's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (Harry Potter 6) - J.K. Rowling
Life of Pi - Yann Martel
Animal Farm: A Fairy Story - George Orwell
Catch-22 - Joseph Heller
The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
Lord of the Flies - William Golding
Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
1984 - George Orwell
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (Book 3) - J.K. Rowling
One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
Slaughterhouse 5 - Kurt Vonnegut
Angels and Demons - Dan Brown
Fight Club - Chuck Palahniuk
Neuromancer - William Gibson
Cryptonomicon - Neal Stephenson
The Secret History - Donna Tartt
A Clockwork Orange - Anthony Burgess
Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
American Gods - Neil Gaiman
Ender's Game (The Ender Saga) - Orson Scott Card
Snow Crash - Neal Stephenson
A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe - C.S. Lewis
Middlesex - Jeffrey Eugenides
Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
Good Omens - Terry Pratchett, Neil Gaiman
Atonement - Ian McEwan
The Shadow Of The Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
The Old Man and the Sea - Ernest Hemingway
The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
Dune - Frank Herbert

I didn't cross out any, btw.

Machine..broken
Car..broken
E-mails..broken
Self..broken (what else is new in this department?)

But really, it's unusual how I don't have the urge to post anything here these past few days. Maybe it's because I am starting a personal handwritten journal. It's not a journal, really, more like an everything-thrown-into: lists, random quotes, sketches (miss D how I envy you), even NY contributes her random snippets of stuff on it once in a while. So, it's not really personal either.

Ah, well.

How are you people?

01/25 1:33 PM
Miss D, as you wish...



What it says:
"To Kak Inda
Do not pursue love
Love will pursue you (eventually)"

"Princess, I'd say it's more 'adventually' than 'eventually'"

the x-girl says:
OK, have you ever read/watched Pride and Prejudice?

The other guy says:
familiarity only....
3 sisters being matching up...

the x-girl says:
yes
but with regards to Mr. Darcy
don't be like him (at the beginning)
he's full of pride
but then he came out humble

which is ?
do I look like I am full of pride ?

if you're so sure that you'll get her, that's pride
but i know that you're humble enough

i was not sure...
i just need an answer

ok, then, you're all set

apparently I really have to earn it

yes
she's elizabeth

define elizabeth

one day, mr. darcy asked her to marry him
and she flat out refused
just like *the girl's name*
dia nggak setuju dengan apa yang diutarakan si darcy sebagai alasan minta dia sebagai istri

yaitu ?

something about her social status
and that she's way to lucky to be asked to be his future bride
lizzie wants love, romance
equal partnership
trust
man, that book rocks

so ?
suggestion?

i don't know
heart to heart
be sincere
and you do realize you're asking me this, right?
a girl with next-to-no record?

i am desperate
the pride and prejudice is a good angle

maybe I should wait

that's what mr. darcy did
and then he proved her his unconditional selfless love

Four Jobs I've Had in My Life

1. Math tutor
2. Teaching assistant
3. Research assistant
4. Random stuff at our family's small company

Four Movies I Could Watch Over and Over, and Have
(I don't have any of these movies actually)

1. 12 Angry Men
2. You've Got Mail
3. Monty Phyton and the Holy Grail
   
4. All three Indiana Jones

Four Places I Have Lived

1. Rumbai (the oil company's camp)
2. Rumbai (our own house)
3. Jakarta
4. College Station

Four TV Shows I Love To Watch

1. Law and Order and spin-offs
2. Good Eats
3. Little House on the Prairie
4. Book TV
   

Four Places I Have Been On Vacation

1. Singapore
2. New Orleans
3. DC/NYC/Boston
4. Lombok, Indonesia
   

Four Websites I Visit Daily

1. My blogrolls
2. Weather.com
3. Google News
4. Friendster

Four Favorite Foods
(Random)

1. Masakan Padang
2. Omellette
3. Green bean caserole
4. (Good) cheese sandwich

Four Places I Would Rather Be Right Now

1. Lombok
2. My bedroom and TV
3. Dinner and stuff with friends
4. In a certain coffee drinking establishment with him

Four People Whom I Tag Next

Anyone..anyone..at all?

I love this picture despite of the backlight gone wrong. Ndoro Yadda looks comparatively innocent than her usual pose, hahah. And me, I was in the paradox of being terribly heart-broken and fallen in love with the same person at the same time. I guess it shows. Things are tragic that way.

Dr. K, can I put this department laptop on your office? It's past five already.
Oh, this is not yours? I thought you have one.
Nope, I don't.
Well, you should. You know there's this thing they call "refurbished". They come with a warranty too. You don't need fancy thing, get one of those.
Uuhh..okay, I'll think about it.

Heh, apa maksudnya nyuruh-nyuruh gitu?

*
*
*

Dr. K: Btw, are you taking classes this semester?
I was planning to, but maybe not. I'd better concentrate on this thing.
Yes, concentrate on that. Just audit the class, you don't need to actually enroll on it.
Yeah.

Tumben perhatian...

*
*
*

Thank you for coming. I hope you'll be here next week as well.
Oh, I will. (Iyalah saya pasti dateng, ganteng banget sih kamu, Mas. huehuehue...)

Nona X:
Boston bagus, kami main ke MIT, Harvard
Bapaknya Nona X:
harvard?
si yada sampe bercita-cita mau sekolah di salah satunya
mimpi kli si Yada
hahahaha
cita-cita buat generasi berikut juga bisa
hi hih ih hi papa sakit perut ntar ya

I went home at 6 (PM), ate my dinner, decided on taking a nap for an hour or two before going back to school. Guess what, I woke 15 hours later. Ha ha ha ha.

The travelling journal thing will stop there at Day 2, pt. 1. Heheh. I am lazy that way. Besides, these days, I'm more into looking towards tomorrows than yesterdays.

Correction, I'm struggling for today I couldn't see how tomorrows will be brighter and I couldn't care less about yesterdays.

Oh well.

One thing at a time, X, one thing at a time.

Wed 12/28.

We checkout of the hotel at around 8:30 AM and took the metro to Gallery Pl/Chinatown. We found that the bus to New York was scheduled for 12 noon. We could have gone sightseeing to Georgetown, but our feet were still sore from all the walking yesterday. So we decided to just hang around the area.



Except for the restaurants, the stores were mostly opened at 10, which was suck since we had all those time to kill. We then sat for hours in a Starbucks, plotting our NYC adventures and commenting on how Washingtonian seemed to be overdressed for such a "warm" weather. I mean if it were CS, people would be still in their A&M sweaters, no gloves and no hats.

The bus trip to the city took about 3 hours. I was mostly sleeping along the way and woke up when it was already Jersey City. And then the bus finally made it way through the Holland Tunnel. Yay, we were so excited to be in the city.

First thing to do was to late lunch in the famous Chinatown. We found a Fuzhou place. The food was sort of an epiphany: fishballs, duck and cassava noodle soup, duck and cassava stir-fry, and something else I forgot.

We then proceeded to the subway station on Canal St. It took us a while to study the subway system, but we made our way to the 81st St. station and walked up to our "hotel" on 83rd and Columbus.

...for the price of a Happy Meal. I am one happy girl.

It was Day 1 of our East Coast trip.

We landed at DCA at around lunch time and took the Metro down towards Alexandria, which was only on the next stop, but then we needed to walk six more blocks to our hotel to drop off the luggages.

We then headed back to DC and spent the whole time around hopping for the typical touristy places.

One of the Metro people advised us to take the train to Arlington Cemetery and walked across the bridge from there to the National Mall. It was quite a long walk, but fun, nonetheless. I wish I could join the crowd jogging along the Potomac River.




Major places we went to around this area were the Lincoln Memorial, the National Monument, some of the Smithsonian museums, and the White House. We had dinner at a burger join on 12th St.

From there, we continued to visit the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception which is located inside the Catholic University of America complex. We also stopped by the famous Union Station and take a peek around L'enfant Plaza. We didn't have a chance to visit the Georgetown area.

For our latenight dinner/snack, we stopped by a run down El-Salvadorian/Mexican place near our hotel. We had some sort of cassava with meat, chicken taco, and plantain with sour cream. I kinda developed a certain fondness for the Salvadorian food. They somehow tasted better and fresher then the Mexican food we usually have in CS.

All in all,we praised kudos to the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority for the convenience. Schedule and destination are announced clearly on its every car and station.

At B&N last night, I picked up this book and read it all the way to the beginning of chapter 16. It was such a page turner, enjoyable and fun at the same time. That stuff about the ducks migrating from the frozen pond, that cracked me up really.

So anyway, I read it on an oversized green sofa in the corner. That sofa being available was trully a rare occasion, you see. How lucky I was! Beside me, there was this one guy who sat on the one to my right with both his feet up on the table.

At one time, my coughing was in the verge of becoming an annoyance so as a courtesy for fellow readers in the area I briskly walked towards the restrooms. Besides, I really could use a water fountain to tame the itchiness that was my throat.

When I got back, the guy was sitting straight up, the book was on the table, his feet were down, and he was yawning.

"I am sorry. I didn't notice you were there up until you left."
"Hey, no problem."
"I guess I was heavily into this book. I've finished 300-something pages in the one hour or more I've been here."
"Oh, wow, such a rapid reader. Is that the new Anne Rice where she wrote about Jesus when he was a seven years old? I couldn't remember the title."
"It's not, but I know what you're talking about. There's this one book about [some character] drinking his savior's blood and become all-powerful. But anyway, this book is killing me!"

And the he went on and on about how Memnoch is evil but not really a devil...or something. All that time I didn't actually listen to the things he said but instead I was measuring him up and down, you know what I mean. It wasn't really about the physical thing --I admitted there was something about it stuffed somewhere-- but mostly it was more like if we could click on conversations or something. And maybe, I could act on it. Maybe.

Gosh, I don't normally do that to people.

Today, we checked out the hotel by 10 AM, strolled with our carry-ons to our favorite just-around-the-corner place, Columbus Cafe, for breakfast. We then took the B train uptown to 125th St and the M60 to La Guardia and got to an earlier flight (1:30 PM EST) to Houston. I knew I'm almost home when while on the way to my (coach) seat I heard this exchange between a stewardess and a first-class passenger.
A shuttle took us to where we left the car last Tuesday and then we went directly to Chinatown for dinner and some groceries. We safely reached home by 9 PM.

Ah, I miss the city already. Good thing is, Law & Order is on as I'm typing this.

More stories later. I need to revive from all the walking and the eating and the excitement.

¡Próspero Año Nuevo!