bacon

There is nothing better than waking up beside someone you love and then making a breakfast that is full of bacon :)

spending

Amount Americans spent on cosmetic surgery (2007): $13 billion
[http://www.cosmeticplasticsurgerystatistics.com/statistics.html#2007-NEWS]

Amount Americans spent on pets (2007): $41 billion
[http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/07_32/b4045001.htm]

Amount Americans spent on cosmetic products (2006): ~$57 billion
[http://www.google.ca/url?sa=t&source=web&ct=res&cd=1&ved=0CA4QFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.marketresearch.com%2Fbrowse.asp%3Fsortby%3Dp%26categoryid%3D1547%26g%3D1&ei=cloRS4WjMYiUnQe5hrTVAw&usg=AFQjCNGFuft3kDgChdjSMRYuih8XZyKGwA&sig2=Sb0vAfSz1p0YibcGISaS9Q]

Amounds Americans spent on net official development assistance i.e. foreign aid (2007): ~$25 billion
http://www.globalissues.org/article/35/us-and-foreign-aid-assistance#ForeignAidNumbersinChartsandGraphs

Not to knock on Americans per se, I think the patterns are reasonably consistent around the world

sleepy

earlier this school year, i tried to subsist on five hours of sleep a day - my rationale being it was possible to train oneself to sleep less and less.

let's be honest, as nice as sleep is, we waste a huge chunk of our day doing it. productivity could increase by 30% overnight (pardon the pun) if we didn't need to sleep. people who get around on less sleep have more time to work, to see friends, to pick up a hobby, to do all those things that make us human. since really, if we liken being awake to being alive, then a similar parallel can be drawn between sleeping and being dead.

i succeeded at doing the five-hour a night routine for a few weeks, but then i crashed. crashed in the sense that my autoimmune arthritis was potentially triggered by this. now, i struggle to stay awake at 1030 after sleeping for five hours the night before. whether this is because of my medications or because i am just weak, i do not know.

alas, what a failed experiment :(

luckily, different people surely respond differently to sleep deprivation. even though i was unable to succeed, you may be able to! i highly recommened trying this little sleep-less experiment if you foresee a busy future.

heresy

religion is a strange creature. there are parts that are so appealing, so enlightening, so divine and then there are parts that are so ???

i often feel that my ideas are balanced between opposing influences - rational vs. faith-based thinking, christian friends vs. non-christian friends (this means associated differences in lifestyle), church vs. scientific establishment. i just realized that in comparing the 'religious' vs. the 'scientific' ideas, the diction intrinsically favors the latter - food for thought for another day.

so, if i could ask God to clarify a few things, this is what my list would look like:

1. why is there a hell? and related to this - why do religions often think that everyone not of their own faith are going to that rather unpleasant place?

2. what's with the prohibition on sex - very rarely is there an exchange that leaves both parties rather (intensely) satisfied?

3. why is there always some killing/smiting/general violence going down?

4. why does God want us, amazingly insignifcant little humans, to glorify him and worship him?

now, don't get me wrong - i think religion can be a very good thing. in fact, i am christian and i think it is absolutely wonderful. but being christian doesn't mean i shut off parts of my brain (a common criticism leveled against those of the faith, i think) and so the questions remain...

yan yan returns

tomorrow my mother is returning from china. she has been gone since early september, an absence of almost 2.5 months.

since she has left, my dad and i have been eating rather unhealthily (i swear i go to macdonald's at least twice a week), her plants that i promised to water (and that i do!) have been slowly dying but have hopefully not passed the point of no return, and the house is drifting slowly into a state of dilapidation (i exaggerate, but we haven't even vacummed since she left).

my mother and i have an interesting relationship. i often can't stand her incessant nagging and her frequent bouts of irrational fear (jia! don't go out in the rain, you get hit by lightning!). i probably shouldn't make fun of her when she is incapable of defending herself so i'll stop now.

it is interesting how difficult it can be to love those that are the closest to us. i wonder if it's because we become so familiar with them that we take them for granted. or perhaps it's because we know them so well that the bad parts of their character outweigh the good in our minds. or maybe we just lose the veneer of politeness we maintain in the day-to-day for strangers, acquaintences, and even friends. i must confess i find it very difficult to love my mother, in spite of all that she has sacrificed for me; and she has sacrificed eons more than i could imagine sacrificing for another single human being. if ever i need to be reminded of the darkness of my soul, then i need look no farther than how i have treated my mother. i could make a list of the reasons why, but at the end of the day, do they really matter?

so tomorrow yan yan will be back. for once, though, i find myself awaiting her return. i am sure i miss the food she cooks and the general order she brings, but i think that i might just (fingers-crossed!) miss her lively presence in my life.

soleil x 2

(1) i think about the future too much - how to make a meaningful difference in the world, how to balance relationships with travelling, how to find true love (i'm a sap i know)

it's time to stop thinking so much and start having fun! hedonistic lifestyle of drugs, alcohol, and women here i come. just kidding. maybe. there's no sense in letting abstract thoughts get in the way of present happiness, right?

(2) http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/researchers-labour-of-love-leads-to-ms-breakthrough/article1372414/

I don't know a whole lot about multiple sclerosis (MS), but from what i understand it is an autoimmune neurodegenerative disease that can be dreadfully difficult to treat. enter a scientist who wants to find a cure for his wife. this fellow finds that MS is strongly correlated with chronic cerebrospinal venous insufficiency, essentially making it a vascular disease and begins treating it accordingly - by dealing with strictures (narrowings) in patients' jugular veins. the results are apparently astoundingly positive! much more research needs to be done, but it's nice when you hear about a medical breakthrough that maybe, just maybe dramatically improve outcomes for many people

rhodes musings

this weekend i travelled to regina for a rhodes scholarship interview. suffice to say, i didn't win.

this outcome has left me with rather mixed feelings. a part of me is sad - winning something like the rhodes would be rather nice - great experience, great education, great people, great on the resume; however, i think an even larger part of me is quite relieved - let me explain why:

over the past few weeks i have been filling out-of-sorts. the spectre of potentially having to leave home so soon again was like a little raincloud sitting on my head. over the past 6 years, i've lived in a few places - edmonton, boston, and beijing. every move i make, you say goodbye to your friends and the people you care for, travel to a new place, spend time forging new friendships, and then say goodbye to them all over. the cycle gets to be a bit annoying after a while. and sometimes people say (myself included) that friendships don't change when you move far, far away - well, let me say that that's absolute bollocks. seeing people way less is change, no matter how you slice it.

i don't know why emotionally i'm such a homebody. i feel that the friends i met at harvard do not suffer from this particular affliction. i'm sure many of them have lived in more places over a shorter period of time than i have. i'm not sure if i should even be calling this an affliction...

hiatus

it has been a very long time since i have blogged - i stopped because i thought i didn't have enough to say. however, after many months of vacation my mind has churned out enough ideas for me to venture back into the blogosphere (though what i do hardly consistutes blogosphere posting).

one of the challenges (at least for me) of blogging is that it is very difficult to keep the subject matter varied enough to be interesting. i will try my best to do so. i will also try my best to post at least once a week.