sick of all the weight loss advice...gonna write my own

tip 1: sit in bed emailing all morning...give those fingers a good workout. you'll lose weight if you're too lazy to go downstairs to the kitchen.

tip 2: eat lots of different foods so they'll fight in your tummy and cancel each other out

tip 3: chew lots to get all the flavor out, then swallow. these actions use lots of face muscles.

tip 4: lift your fork/glass/spoon to your face multiple times before eating/drinking off it. it works better if you count aloud during this process. if this seems daunting, you can pump yourself up beforehand by muttering "5 reps per bite" under your breath beforehand. thrash wildly when the men in white coats come to take you away.

tip 5: eat sketchy foods and develop a stomach bug. diarrhea is the best weight loss medicine.

overwhelmed

4+2 years of college did not prepare me for bra shopping at victoria's secret. i stood in a stupor as the saleswoman explained the bra shapes complementing the boob shapes and which lines had what...in the end, i lifted my shirt and bought the ones she liked the best. i hope her tastes match jon's.

resolutions

when i started medicine, i kind of decided that i wouldn't let what i learned affect my way of life too much. yes, there are all these dangers out there, and if you hold the world up to a microscope, it's a gross place. but i've survived up to now, i'm relatively robust, and once you start avoiding the gross, where do you stop? it's all a slippery slope to bree van de camp.

only...i've decided i'm not going to eat anymore bivalved mollusks. did you know that human sewage plants don't kill the enteric viruses in poo? these viruses get into the water supply, where all these mollusks just sit around filtering tons of water to get the yummy and the yucky out of it. in fact, mollusks act as filters for the especially harmful types of norovirus (those that bind ABO glycoproteins). plus, it's not like oysters are that tasty anyways. i mean, if pigs sat around in virus infected water all day, i'd probably still eat them, but oysters are so not worth the risk.

random thoughts about paga 21

every year, paga divides my life: pre and post. this year was better than the last in that more international friends came, so the social scene wasn't dominated by the brits (seriously, there is a herd party every weekend that is more fun/less awkward than the crown & roses drinking game scene--btw, my scale of good times is by the amount of alcohol required before you're having one. altho there is ample drinking opportunity w the herd, i find myself jolly even without the liquor). oh yeah, and the herd were there this year, yay!

but then again, this year was not as good b/c we lost in the finals to fembot ballers 13-6...i don't think they were 7 points better than us. takeaways? losing sucks. i need to get more stable on my around backhand breaks. it's ok to hold the disc for a bit before throwing...tend towards the ange.

moments for the highlight reel: i tipped a callahan to myself in the semifinals against the russians (bonus points for demoralizing the russians), i got a poach D on one of the best japanese cutters, and i got a point block on one of the main czech handlers (both for immediate conversions). nothing spectacular on O, i'm afraid...something to work on.

the rest of paga was a blur...even without copious amounts of alcohol. lets see...shenanigans in the arcades:

• we managed to top last year's elephant debacle by getting 5 people on a mechanical horse while ppl dressed as old men waved their canes at us (they then blocked up a roundabout by crossing extremely slowly..the cops got involved).
• ange and linz are, as suspected, both ace at various tabletop games (air hockey, foosball). i sucked only marginally less than neibh, who may or may not have had an injured shoulder.

otherwise:

• i ate the obligatory amounts of gelato, strazzopreti, calamari (ie LOADS)
• went for a cold dip in the mediterranean (my first)
• caught up w the asian friends (jake, jim, doc, sherry, steph & trey, who are now ENGAGED!!!), the hot lava friends (alice, minh, beth), the mit friends (lori & christy, who is now PREGNANT!!!!), and the european friends from hotpot last year.

ok, now i'm less sleepy, so will get back to studying the kidney.

jon is awesome

an email description of an evening in beirut:

First along the seafront promenade – no sand but a nice broad pavement. Weirdly, no restaurants along the coast so we headed inland a bit. Lots of local street food but nothing that we were looking for. Ended up back in the fancy downtown where we had al fresco supper on cobbled streets where the leaves on knarled cedar trees, dappled by subtle illumination, chewed at the sandstone pillars on archways between which were interleaved domes of mosques and spires of churches, such are the perpetual emblems of a once war-torn city.

Or, if you would prefer that description in a more Hemingway-esque style:

“Hi,” I said.

“… Oh”, he replied.

“…,” I paused.

“How about a drink?”

“Hey,” I replied.

How do you get 2 whales in a car?

*on the motorway, dummy.--ok, so it doesn't really work in print, but if you don't get it, try saying it allowed.

Paul dropped into the UK for a brief stint while his brother Andrew sits on a panel at the Skoll Foundation Conference in Oxford. I met him for lunch at Mai sushi on Monday (I ate, he nibbled) before heading out to Swansea for 3 days.

i love stuffing my friends full of good food, but it's troublesome when friends visit from areas with better food than London (eg HK, cali, nyc, chicago, basically almost everywhere), so it was a huge relief when Paul revealed that he'd been in Africa for the last couple of weeks. Jackpot! Recently returned 3rd world travelers are so low maintenance and grateful for everything. he was bound to be impressed, and sure enough, cornish pasties knocked him off his feet. furthermore, when we first got into our hotel room in swansea, paul peeked into the bathroom and said: "wow, lily, have you seen this shower?!" um, yes, paul, it sprouts hot water when you turn it on. i totally get where he's coming from though...after mbita, my biggest joys were running water & real pillows.

that first night in swansea, we walked to our hotel and then went to mcD's to get a "snack"...

paul: "wanna share some chicken nuggets?"

me: "no"

paul (to cashier): "i'll have the 20 piece chicken nuggets, please."

needless to say, that snack ended up being our dinner, especially after i won a free apple pie to wash down the mozzarella sticks, chicken fingers, & french fries. ah, the beginning of our foray into brown colored foods. also, can we all just agree that orange fizzy fanta tastes better from mcdonalds? i don't know if it's the dispenser, the straw, the cup or what, but fanta in a can should be called can't (har har).

the next morning, we caught a bus to rhossili of worm's head fame. we got there too late to walk all the way out onto the peninsula, but we got far enough for paul to pee in the ocean and for me to play w the shells that completely covered all the rocks...it was like walking on, well, a slippery, mossy, mollusky chunk of rock (yes, i know, you're dumbfounded by my creativity).

From swansea mar 2011

From swansea mar 2011

after watching the ocean drown the rocks, we took in a fairly overpriced lunch at a sea-side restaurant and caught a bus to another stretch of shoreline, upon which we hiked to oxwich castle.

From swansea mar 2011

Along the way, we saw:

• lots of nice views of the beach (paul showed his appreciation for the prettiest ones by pissing from them, although they were invariably too far for him to hit the water).
• a rope down a steep path that allowed us to "rappel" down to the beach, where we found a homemade lobster trap (we think) & a very dead rabbit.

  From swansea mar 2011

  From swansea mar 2011

  
  
• a troop of ponies that galloped down to our bit of grass. the beautiful white one was heavily pregnant and thus shy, but a black one snuffled all over my R4 looking for treats (paul fled to the background and mumbled something about not wanting to be eaten).

From swansea mar 2011

• a wildfire that the firemen were having trouble approaching w their trunk.

we got to the castle just after closing, and it was deserted but accessible, which meant that paul and i could scramble all over its moldy walls without censure. awesome.

From swansea mar 2011

From swansea mar 2011

From swansea mar 2011



in the evening, we caught a bus back to swansea, where we found an unloved toddler's bike forlorn next to a rubbish bin. in spite of its sliding handle bars, flat tires, and miniature size, paul rode circles in the street (i managed to stay on just long enough to prove that i, too, could ride it if i so desired).



From swansea mar 2011



Dinner = lamb chops for paul, lamb cawl for me at the no sign wine bar on wind street. as w every meal, bites were interspersed w scrabble strategery.



From swansea mar 2011



the next day kicked off w a lazy trip to the dylan thomas museum, where we could listen to bbc recordings of him speaking like a preacherman and rolling is r's to beat the thunder. as paul says on his blog, half the exhibit is devoted to proving he's not a womanizing alcoholic; i contend the other half is dedicated to establishing the importance of swansea (over london & nyc) to his poetry.


then we headed to mumbles, a seaside town w a pier. i lunched on bubbles & squeak at the kitchen table, a yellow organic cafe that reminded me of tosci's. paul had eaten 2 meat pies en route, so he just sipped a (very delicious) fruit juice (beets, ginger, lemon, apple). the surfer dude owner drew us a secret map, and we hiked up to find a past place for WWII anti-aircraft guns and down to find a cheerful, red, plastic dragon slide that said "mumbles pier" (further along, seagulls nested and a plastic bikini'd gorilla lay on her back in disuse). More hiking along the coastline revealed a boat-shaped playground and a giant shaggy dog that liked to romp (to his owner's chagrin).



From swansea mar 2011

From swansea mar 2011

From swansea mar 2011

From swansea mar 2011




the next day, we took the train to oxford, where we sat by the river and played scrabble. i finally beat paul (1 out of 10, baby!). mags graciously let us borrow some bikes so we biked into town and made dinner w andrew before coming home to a final game of mapominos. oxford is not as pretty as cambridge, but much more accessible. oh well, i like my towns sleepy (when they're not overrun by tourists).




final impression of gower: a place i wouldn't mind retiring. it's got:

• friendlier natives than the deep south (sorry, hometown, but it's true)
• lots of large dogs
• lots of hiking paths
• lots of joggers
• lots of surfers

color me impressed.




From swansea mar 2011

welcome to czech

a few impressions:

the tap water is cold and delicious. cold enough to be numbing after a few seconds. where does it come from? far underground? even ice seems to be scarce, and soft drinks from restaurace refrigerators are often only tinged with cold.

the architecture is amazing, but the stonework is sooty. i spent lots of time looking up at cupolas. one building near the herd house even had an iron man hanging from the neck...i wonder who he was...

the astronomical clock is mechanical! i can't believe things can work without batteries.

pork and potatoes! i'm not a fan of dumplings if they don't have fillings, but i'm for any culture that uses pig for EVERYTHING! others of my teammates weren't so chuffed.

how did we do at worlds? iceni ranked 17th, after crawling out of a very tough powerpool. we lost to hot beaches, storm, and uno, but i believe we had a shot at both hot beaches and storm. our only other loss was to chukyo university, uno's feeder team, who went on to rank 10th. in the beer bracket, we had an underwhelming performance against little miss sunshine (except by kaleigh, who made sure we won 17-10), decimated jinx 17-5 (they had earlier beat leeds), beat wildcard 17-something, and then won a nailbiter against e6 (we were down 2 breaks coming out of half, game to 13...and managed to score the last 2 points in a row).

and now we're in vienna. watched the world cup last night, and i still think soccer is ridiculous. cheaters win too often.