August is almost over, where is my secondary application?! I ask this after having ascertained that the schools in waiting mail out their applications to all applicants. I'm impatient, afraid I might have deleted one as SPAM. I want to put my hands on fate and push it along.

Reunion scenes. I always react as if I'm in a movie, and the climax depends on the degree of my shock. Last time I saw a friend from high school, a regular, same-class-same-grade friend, I stopped in my tracks, opened my eyes wide, gushed her name, and my hands instinctively covered my mouth just for the extra effect. If you are reading this and I have done the same thing upon seeing you, this is not to say that my reaction wasn't genuine. I am sincere, 99.9% of the time, promise. My elegant friend smiled without showing any teeth, and calmed said Hi. This is why I like spasmic and slightly neurotic people, it's no fun to spasm alone.

Just when I thought I'm approaching the boundaries of scientific competence, if only in the narrow but deep field of initiation factor 4E, I go to a weekly journal club meeting and come crashing down to face my ignorance. The ritual is too often repeated. I pour forth all my attention to the presenter, complaisantly following him for five minutes. But as is inevitable at such degree of concentration, my mind escapes from my hold, and I daze. Two seconds of missed words, and I never regain comprehension. I give myself the option to daze or die of boredom. I snap back every five minutes to find the same picture on the overhead. How?!
There are only five words!

Moments like these, I have such respect for the professors sitting around the table. The years of hard work that proceeded their knowledge. But it's more than work, it's faith and hope and passion. All will come with age; they better.

Last night was the opening ceremony of the 2004 Olympics in Greece. I dare say that there are few more devoted Olympic aficionados than me. I drink in the words and take in the competitions, all the while on the verge of tears, moved by the beauty and strength of so many athletes and nations coming together. There is a string that links my heart to every Chinese athelet. The quality of their day, I take personally. The marathon runner from Kenya with the face of endurance, he must win, if only to bring a rare and hard-earned moment of pride and happiness to a country that so rarely enters the spotlight, to a people so rarely celebrated for who they are. The satellite in my house causes the local channel to become blurry. But I will deal, this is the Olympics after all.

I talked to a good friend last night till midnight. We talked about medical school and life; the two are so closely intertwined at the moment in both our lives. I'm going to shake off this nervous worrying; it's out of my hands. Despite of everything, I have given college my best. At 1AM in the morning, I wondered how good friends become good friends. How did she, the girl who is in many of my classes and worries unnecessarily about her grades and life, when deep down, we both know that she will succeed in both, become the person that I trust to understand, tolerate, accept, and forgive me. So this is my gratitude to you for all that you are and all that you are to me. :)

Talking about good friends, this is so I don't forget to drag it up next time we're in an argument, how could you not call me just because there is a new man in your life?! =) There are two girls here dying to get to the bottom of this, so call!