YAY! my first round of exams are over!! well...until next thursday...but that's ONE WHOLE WEEK away! what a luxury! unfortunately after next week, i'm back to the two exams a week schedule....except now there are papers and presentations thrown in between to add to my STRESS. i am SOOOOOOOO tired....now i see why everyone says this year is the weeding out year. AND it doesn't help that everyday, i have 8 AM classes. i see their plan now. slowly wear them down over the year. i feel like a zombie all the time now.

oh a totally random segue....how many of you love jeans with stretch in them. i LOOOOOVE jeans with stretch. what did i wear before they made jeans with stretch? oh yeah....wide leg jeans. my hips are a size larger than my waist.....so i can never find stuff that fits. but with stretch, you just buy to fit the waist...and stretch the hip part. of course my friends here don't have that problem. their boocut jeans are loose all over. ok, why am i talking about this. i do not know.
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For those of you who have Pfizer stock, hold tight! Now that Vioxx has been recalled...the only other similar alternative is Celebrex...made by Pfizer!

HAPPY ANNIVERSARY to me and my very good friend!  It felt like just yesterday I was telling people what a JERK i thought that guy was!

In celebration, I will spend tonight studying for tomorrow's pharmacoepidemiology exam while trying to stay warm in Boston's BEAUTIFUL 40 degree weather.  Aaaah...Boston...where it feels like winter in the fall. 

3:30 AM....i want to sleep...but i can't.  darn you, Med Chem....darn you A LOT.

And...i will not be home for columbus day weekend...because i have to work...even on monday. 

My next chance will be turkey day....on which, i think i am scheduled to work as well.  I shall have to find a way to finagle myself out of that one.

Why is it that only pharmacy students have to work during the school year in order to sit for the boards.  The other health care doctors don't have to do that.  It's not fun taking 7 classes and working weekends.  We do rotations also, so it's not like we don't get any experience during our school years.  Work sucks.  Darn you, work.

I do not like this 2+ exams a week deal.  it is not fun.  My brain hurts.  I've been sniffing some brain power and uplifting oils that I mixed together today in herbs class.  Sweet orange (mood booster) + peppermint (mind stimulant) + rosemary (mind stimulant)  a few drops of each in a vial full of jojoba oil.  Aside from making me feel slightly nauseus...it seems to be working....i'll see how i feel at 2 or 3 AM.

Elton John Calls Taiwan Media 'Rude, Vile Pigs'

Thu Sep 23, 8:10 AM ET

Add Entertainment - Reuters to My Yahoo!

TAIPEI (Reuters) - British rock star Elton John (news), in Taipei for a concert, swore at reporters who swarmed around him at the airport Thursday and called them "rude, vile pigs."

Wearing a bright blue tracksuit and dark sunglasses, the star shouted expletives as he was mobbed by photographers and TV crew.

"Rude, vile pigs!" he shouted at the reporters at the Chiang Kai Shek airport after he arrived shortly after midnight.

"Do you know what that means? Rude, vile pigs. That's what all of you are."

One of the photographers shouted back: "Why don't you get out of Taiwan?"

John replied: "We'd love to get out of Taiwan if it's full of people like you. Pig! Pig!"

The star, who recently performed in Shanghai and Hong Kong, is scheduled to leave after his first performance in Taiwan on Thursday.

Hmmmmm.....interesting. I didn't realize that sort of behavior was any different from American media....yet it's the Taiwanese media that are rude, vile pigs.

And so, today was my first exam of the semester...pharmaceutics. So it's packed full of K questions....yknow where they say A is only choice I...B is only choice II .... C is only choice III...and they do combinations of the three. but a lot of the questions were like that, so they only posted the alphabetic choices once...and for each question, just put down the I, II, or III choice

So fine...i'm going along, answering questions. And we get to keep our exams and after class they post the answer key. So i'm comparing it to my answers...and some of the ones that i was sure of, i had gotten wrong and i couldn't figure out why. and then i look once more at the alphabetic choices. THEY WAS NO choice B is II only. They had skipped II only....so that choice B was III only. But i didn't realize and had assumed that if it were III only, it would be choice C....like it NORMALLY is. And so I had bubbled in C for all of those, when in actuality, the correct bubble was B. AAAAAAAARGH. i had gotten them all RIGHT. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH. Darn those finkin tricky bastids.

Sigh....something like that could only happen to me.

I LOOOOVE my herbs and nutraceuticals class.  It is absolutely fascinating.  For a while, alternative medicine has been conceived of as almost anti-modern medicine.  But it really isn't.  What is modern medicine anyway? Aspirin? Totally a natural product.  The active ingredient, salicylic acid, is derived from tree bark.  Antibacterials....derived from bacteria.  Digoxin? Derived from the plant digitalis.  I'm sure people from way back were using these things as treatments...and just because the stuff is manufactured and bottled, it's now considered modern medicine....as if the pharmaceutical companies discovered it themselves.  Pharmaceutical companies are the devil....I will never work for industry, no matter how much they pay.

I would LOOOVE to open my own pharmacy one day....and have your traditional CVS style pharmacy along with herbal and other alternative therapies.  How cool would that be?  Now i just need some mulah to open the store.....any takers?

Like today, we learned that one of the best respiratory tonics is boiling garlic and ginger and adding some honey.  I've been taking that since i was a kid...whenever i got sick, my parents would brew up some of that stuff and feed it to me.  And you know how asians crush garlic by smashing it with the flat side of the butcher knife? Well, turns out, if you crush garlic (as opposed to mincing it or cutting it) it doubles the potency of garlic as an immune potentiator!!!

Oh and my prof says that all the medical residents that do rotations with her, end up carrying a bag of Schizandra berries in their pockets.  and they suck on one a day to boost their immune system...and they stay healthy!  We got to try one today...kinda looks and tastes like a mini dried prune ("myi-ah").

But on a totally different note, someone in my building stole my magazines.  I have a small mailbox, so the mailman leaves my magazines on the floor.  And all summer, i had no problems, cuz it's basically just the working people left.  But once september started, all the college kids moved in...and there's been loud banging noises and shouting all the time...and if i see my magazines on the floor before class, i'll leave them because I don't want to carry them with me to school.  When i get back, they're GONE.  SO RUDE.  This is an apartment building, not some FRAT house....people leave beer bottles all over the front steps and after people move in, they'll take the boxes and trash the stairways with them.  I mean, really, GROW UP. 

i hate studying....there's so much crap to read already...and i'm already way behind....like HUNDREDS of pages.  i know i should study at the library, but i'll get hungry and be tempted to buy the overpriced snacks from the cafeteria.

But i like to listen to classical music while I study.  Apart from being at home, it's probably the only time i do it....I especially like Bruch's scottish fantasy and I've been known to put the third movement on repeat for hours.  It's the only time I wish i played the violin.

oh wait, what am i talking about...i DO play violin...kekekeke.  I think i can still scratch out Twinkle Twinkly Little Star....but very out of tune.  That's what happends when your Junior High School orchestra teacher gives you a full size violin to learn on, when you're a mere 4 feet tall.  EVERY single note was flat...I had to extend my arm all the way just to be able to reach that knob thing on top. 

Oh, and i KNOW that some of you remember church orchestra...where our parents managed to corral our poor little selves into screeching our Sunday afternoons away.  I don't even remember what we played...but i do not think it was good. hahahaha.  This was way before the string/flute invasion we have now...so it was just 4 or 5 of us playing overly ambitious pieces.  I remember the lucky ones had that yellow tape on their violins to show them where to put their fingers.  Alas, I did not....and so i played as close to on key as my little fingers could stretch.

Aaaaah...those were the good old days, weren't they.....

puahahahahaha.

Oprah is awesome

I was watching the AVP beach volleyball tournament this weekend. I've become a fairly avid fan after following Misty May and kerry Walsh in the Olympics. So i watched them win AGAIN...and following their game was the men's championship game. So i just kept watching because there was nothing else on besides NASCAR racing, which i just can not watch. Anyhow, one team had two very asian looking players...so of course I look closer. And the announcer mentions the name Kevin Wong. And i'm thinking to myself...kevin wong...kevin wong...why does that name sound familiar. And then they pan in on his face...and he LOOKS familiar.

This was the same guy that was at ITASA a few years back. I remember him because during some fair, I was selling CD's at one booth...and he was the booth next to me. At the time, i didn't know who he was...i just knew he was mad tall...I think a few of us got up on chairs to see if we would be taller than him, while standing on a chair. He was taller. And people kept going over to get autographs. So during the down times, he'd chat with us....and i was like whatever, because i had no idea who he was....so i didn't really think he was famous.

But turns out...he's actually pretty good...and ranked pretty high up...even made it to the olympics and all that good stuff. Good thing i ended up getting an autograph! Although I may have thrown it out. hahahahaha!

But even better than seeing a FRIEND on TV....is seeing his hot volleyball partner...eric fonoimoana. hello eric.

anyhow, now i want to play volleyball....too bad i suck. First of all, i'm short...second of all, no matter how i hit the ball, it hurts like heck....third of all, i always end up bursting all the little blood vessels in my arm and end up with red spots all over my forearms.