Burning Candle

back from the south, coming home soon!

2006-07-26T14:37:49Z

i just came back from eilat and the judean desert today - it was absolutely amazing! and really really really hot...

eilat is basically a party/resort town on the red sea. we spent a couple days "getting used to the heat" by snorkling (coral reef = v cool), walking on the beach, shopping...

then we went the ein gedi field school (in the judean desert near the dead sea) to learn about desert survival. it was intense!

we (the asian girl party club) were unlucky in our room assignment - our room was about the size of a shoebox, infested with ants, and had a broken air conditioner. other people had two bathrooms, refridgerators, etc etc...we had to call "corner time" (everyone goes to their respective corners of the room and faces the wall) when we wanted to change, since trying to move around inside the tiny bathroom was physically impossible. before the ac was fixed, it was absolutely terrible...i remember excitedly shouting "it's bearable!!" when the ac started working on the second day...

sunday: the supposedly "easy" hike. woke up at 6, walked to the ein gedi spring (really really pretty - like a rainforest in the middle of the desert) through a very narrow and steep canyon - there were times when we slid down rock slides on our butts. we walked until 2pm - the sunlight is really vicious and you're not allowed to eat in the ein gedi nature reserve, so we were starving, sweaty, and bruised by the end of the hike.

the highlight of the day was me falling into a scummy pool (my hand slipped on an iron handle bar), getting completely soaked, and realizing that the pants i borrowed from my roommate had completely split open in a very bad place. after fishing me out (with some difficulty), two annoying guys in my group teased me for the rest of the day. they weren't completely heartless - one loaned me his pants and walked around in his boxers for a while until we met a guy from another hiking group with a spare pair of swim trunks. my camera doesn't work anymore :(

in the afternoon we went to the dead sea - the water there hurts like a mofo if you have any cuts or blisters. vvv salty!

monday: we spent 12 hours in a canyon - each person had to carry 6.5 liters of water. during the hot hours (12-3), we stayed by a spring and made lunch with flour and olive oil. good thing our medic/guard was a good cook. the highlight of the day was the two annoying guys from my group wading into a pool, slipping on the slimy rocks, flopping into the absolutely disgusting, smelly water, and getting covered in algae. ha!

we had to do some really hardcore climbs using ropes to scale nearly vertical cliffs. this sounds cheesy, but our group really bonded from helping each other through the tough parts. by the end of the day, we were utterly exhausted - one girl fainted when she got off the bus.

tuesday: rather boring walk in the morning through a very dry (and hot, of course) canyon. at night we camped in the desert near mosada (a small mountain and jewish stronghold from the romans). it was amazing! you could see the milky way and so many stars, and it was breezy so the heat didn't feel so bad. su, a chinese girl from london, said (during a bathroom expedition), "this is the most romantic place i have ever peed!" it was nice...surrounded by sand dunes and boulders, with the stars overhead...

we made a campfire (for light, not warmth) and sat around drinking tea and listening to people play guitar. i left to sleep at 11:30, since we were getting up "eetom" (even earlier than on monday). unfortunately some people decided to do "indian dances" around the campfire, so we couldn't fall asleep. so we (the asian girl party club and david from florida) left to find quiter places.

we found a nice quiet place, put down our sleeping bags, and tried to go to sleep. unfortunately, two guys were talking in a tent nearby, and we could hear every word of their rather boring conversation:

gangsta azn guy: yo, you should apply stanford, dude.
korean dude: yeah man.
gag: send me your essays, man...i'll proofread them for you.

david: *i'll* proofread your essays!

*silence from the tent*

gag: f*** you, man! how long you been listening?

david: about half an hour.

gag: shit!

david: if you're going to talk, at least say something worth eavesdropping on.

wednesday: eetom = 3:30 am. had some coffee, then went to climb mosada to see the sunrise from the top. we walked up stairs for 45 minutes - very tiring, but the view was amazing. mosada was fascinating - too bad i kept falling asleep every time we stopped. afterwards we visited a beduin oasis for camel rides (first 5 min = fun, next 25 min = pain) and lunch.

and now i'm back at weizmann! ~~tonight i'm probably going out to dinner with my mentor and lab partner~~...coming back on friday!

edit: we're doing lunch instead tomorrow...should be yummy

scary stuff ii

2006-07-18T21:20:04Z

one of our counselors and my friend's mentor got drafted (sucks for her project). we keep on hearing really loud plane noises - apparently they're military planes because they're too high up to see...?

edit: my mentor's going to the army next week...

speaking of ants in honey...

2006-07-16T19:16:47Z

our lab is infested with tiny brown ants. since you're not supposed to eat in the lab, i have no idea what they live on. the other day my mentor (haim) picked up a pencil to write down some numbers, only to discover an ant crawling on the tip. they invaded our glove box. they have a graveyard under the vortex. they're everywhere!

my lab partner nora (she's german) and i have become facinated by the ants during long periods of waiting for solutions to equilibriate and gels to run. first, we captured a few inside a pasteur pipette, parafilmed the end, and watched how long it took for them to figure out how to crawl out through the long skinny tip (anywhere from 5 - 45 minutes).

on friday, we planned an experiment using lab ants, after capturing about 10 (it took a while because they kept escaping) in a 25 ml tube. ants like sugar, right? but what kind of sugar do they like? our mentor had sorbitol and sucrose. and do they like their sugar dry or dissolved in water? while we were considering these important questions, haim (he was working with radioactive stuff, which we're not allowed to do) called out advice..."you should use plain water as a control!" "make sure you dilute the sugars to the same concentrations!" "if you need other sugars, i can ask my supervisor!"

unfortunately, our experiment failed - the ants we set down in the center of a blank sheet of paper wandered around randomly instead of heading for one of the little piles of sugar. when they bumped into the sugar, they ignored it and kept on walking. this strange result called for a radical experiment - we put two piles of sorbitol and sucrose on a sheet of paper and left it in a corner (the lab is so messy no one will notice) to see if any ants would eat them, and if so, which one they'd prefer.

it's sunday now, and still no ants in the sugar, although plenty of ants on the calculator and pipette rack. weird....even weirder is how there are still some live ants in the (closed and sterile) 25 ml plastic tube.

scary stuff

2006-07-16T10:41:43Z

maybe it's good we didn't go to the galilee - it was bombed yesterday.

if you haven't been reading the news, hezbollah kidnapped two israeli soldiers last week. now israel is bombing the shit out of beirut and hezbollah is sending missiles into haifa and other northern israeli cities. so far about 100 lebanese (70 civilians) and 15 israelis (2 civilians) have died.

it's still very quiet and peaceful here at the institute and in rehovet, just south of tel aviv. i just read an article saying hezbollah might send missiles into tel aviv (70 miles from the border), but let's not get too paranoid. hopefully it'll die down a little in a couple weeks before we go there - most of us are flying back from ben gurion airport in tel aviv and a few are staying longer with relatives.

my roommate noa's family lives in haifa, and so does my mentor haim's parents. he was really distracted in lab today - kept on getting phone calls and accidently spilled a flask of reaction mixture we'd just finished making. in the middle of a phone conversation with his mother, she suddenly had to go hide because alarm sirens were going off. haim's parents don't have a bomb shelter, so they're hiding in a bank vault where his father works.

our two male counselors (roman and tal) were called up by the army. they got out of it by using the excuse of running this camp, but if the situation gets worse, they'll have to go on saturday.

next week, we'll be in eilat at the southern tip of israel - probably one of the safest places in the country right now.

oh israel...

2006-07-12T13:31:46Z

we're going to the galilee on friday...everyone's reading news updates and looking at maps to see how close we'll be to the bad areas.

edit: they cancelled that trip (it's too close to the lebanon border)...we're going somewhere else instead. *relief*

edit2: we didn't go their either since it was too close to haifa...went to the beach instead

jerusalem

2006-07-10T20:07:36Z

so the trip to jerusalem was pretty awesome. they told us to bring shoes we could wear while walking inside water, so i packed my shower flip-flops, thinking they would suffice.

anyway, the first day we visited the old city of jerusalem, the part that's been around for thousands of years. jerusalem is a city of hills, and all the buildings are made of the same white limestone. it was cool seeing actual biblical places, like the site of the original temple and the mount of olives. speaking of olives, there are olive trees all over the place here - with actual olives on them!! ok, probably not that exciting...

then we walked to the city of david, which has been excavated a lot over the last century. a really long time ago, some people built underground tunnels to bring water from the spring in the valley into the fortified city. before going down, we changed into our water shoes, and the tour guide was like, "so, anyone claustrophobic?" as we descended.

at first it wasn't so bad - kind of dark, kind of damp, but okay. then we get to a stairwell that leads down to a dark passage emitting sounds of running water and shouts of "holy crap!" the guide had told us that the water was no more than knee deep, so i thought i'd be fine if i rolled up my jeans. unfortunately, i'm short - got really wet! the tunnel was about 2 feet wide, 6 feet tall (i rarely had to duck - payback for short people!), flooded with rushing water, pitch dark (some people had flashlights), and really slimy. it took us 45 minutes to stumble through - my shoes were definitely not sufficient - kept on falling off...

one good thing about israel is that you dry off really quickly. in the afternoon, we saw the dome of the rock and went to the western wall.

thursday night, we were dropped off in downtown jerusalem and left to fend for ourselves until midnight. my friends and i shopped and sat around - we were really tired and had a 6 am wake up call the next day. some people went to bars - two (orthodox) american girls got so drunk they puked all over the floor of the hotel lobby. not cool.

friday (early!) morning we went to a holocaust museum. it was incredibly moving and beautiful - unfortunately we weren't allowed to take photos (copyright issues?). later we got time to shop in the bazaar, where innocent tourists get ripped off (this is very nice...real silver...only 100 shekels!) on all sorts of stuff. i went to what was supposedly the best hummus stand in jerusalem - a tiny shop just inside the muslim quarter where they make the hummus right in front of you with a mortar and pestle. mmm...

friday night we had country presentations - we were supposed to bring flags, food, clothing, etc etc representing our country. i figured one of the other 18 american would bring something (turns out most of us thought that way) and our presentation was kind of lame. some of the presentations were really good. the canadians had a game show where they asked questions like "what is the proper use of the term 'eh'?" if you got the question wrong, you had to take a swig of maple syrup. the one guy from belgium brought 5 different kinds of belgian beer, and gave us a demonstration of how belgians drink (yes, we're not supposed to have alcohol). after opening a bottle with his teeth, he chugged it in about two seconds - impressive!

on saturday, we toured the christian quarter of old jerusalem. we walked along the via dolorosa and saw the 8th - 14th stations of the cross - important places in the crucifiction of jesus that st. helena identified 1500 years ago. at each station she built a church - these were really beautiful, with lots of byzantine style mosaics - they look a lot more cool and glittery in real life. the last church had a bunch of stations, including the place where jesus was crucified and the remnants of the cave where he was buried after his "death" (i think it's called the anastasia).

(pics)

there really are people with guns all over jerusalem. a lot of them are soldiers - mostly men but some women too. we were guarded by two (good looking) soldiers - definitely made a lot of "big guns" jokes with my girl friends.

whylaine @ 2006-07-05T19:57:00

2006-07-05T16:58:13Z

going to jerusalem tomorrow!

israel

2006-07-02T19:43:50Z

arrived today after a reeeeallly long flight from jfk. the campus is very pretty - i'll post some pics on facebook soon!

miss you guys

2006-06-03T02:47:32Z

hey...having fun, but wish i could see you guys.

sunburn fun

2006-05-17T23:12:45Z

i have a patch of skin on my nose shaped like west virginia.

whylaine @ 2006-05-02T13:09:00

2006-05-02T17:16:39Z

wow.

after 2 days of endless pressure and living off adrenaline, i'm glad to be back...

damn, we're good.

ahhh

2006-04-28T21:14:13Z

i love the feeling of missing econ.

biology lecture

2006-04-25T01:18:17Z

there's a bio lecture at penn state tomorrow:

The 2005/2006 John M. Chemerda Lectures in Science
will be presented by

Dr. Peter G. Schultz
Director, Genomics Institute of the Novartis Research Foundation
Scripps Professor of Chemistry
The Scripps Research Institute
La Jolla, California

Tuesday, April 25, 2006, 6:00 p.m.
Berg Auditorium, 100 Life Sciences Building
"An Expanding Genetic Code"

i'm probably going - anyone else interested? email/talk to me sometime by tomorrow afternoon.

edit: if you need a ride - there's kmopen/scibowl? practice after school tomorrow (i'm probably going straight from there to psu).

oh yeah, you should definitely come to the km open on wednesday. yes, YOU.

math and more

2006-04-19T01:47:43Z

went to a math department thing today. i met our grader - seems like a nice guy. i wanted to bribe him, but mom was watching...
also saw joe, my ta from camp - exciting!

in other news, i can't stand our english student teacher. if she really wants to know why we don't answer her completely obvious questions, she could just ask us, instead of handing out stupid surveys that try to get us to say our friends won't think we're cool anymore if we participate in class. grrraaarrrggg!

when you've got so much work you can't think...

2006-04-11T21:06:24Z

Go to Uncyclopedia and look up your birth day (excluding the year). List five neat facts, including the year:

October 4: International Holiday In Space Day

1969 - Astronauts land on the moon. They celebrate the biggest achievement in human history by bouncing up and down. No holidays are named. Skeptics call their bluff.

1973 - Shit happens.

1980 - The 80s are back!

2006 - Texas splits into 3 pieces - Box, New Texas and Dubyaland

2064 - The space cow is discovered. The first space cheese is made within four days.

http://uncyclopedia.org/wiki/Uncyclopedia:Anniversaries/October

funny looking bicycle

2006-03-10T16:49:10Z

ylaine tours paris, fails to get lost

2006-03-09T14:07:00Z

so yesterday i decided to finally go back to the musee des arts et metiers...
daddy wrote me directions before he went to work in the morning. although only semi-legible, they only involved walking along 3 different streets. unfortunately, SuperBitch decides to walk me there.

she looks at daddy's directions, which she apparently finds unsatisfactory. "rue de bretagne is not nice to walk on. it's very straight." umm...that's a bad thing? so we take an alternate route that involves 6 or 7 tiny winding alleys.
sb: "i wouldn't want you to walk here alone at night. it's not a nice district."
yg: (smile, nod, clutch purse)

inside the museum was awesome - i only saw 2 other visitors. on the way back, i decided trying to retrace sb's route was hopeless, even armed with a list of notes i took on the way there. i pull out my trusty map. it shows the museum at a six-way intersection, but looking around i count at least eight roads...

after circling around the intersection a few times, i find my road. sure enough, rue de bretagne isn't nice to walk on, but luckily it's very straight. i get back. sb looks mildly surprised to see me. ha!

in the afternoon, daddy and i walked to an art museum that was hosting the philips collection (normally in dc) for the winter. it was a small exhibit, but with lots of really famous artists (picasso, degas, kandinsky, ingres, delacroix, hopper, klee, van gogh) and paintings, including the big renoir of the people having lunch on a boat (the one in amelie). very cool!!

today i went to eat lunch with my half-sister hadia. i took the bus alone - had to change once. that was a bit scary, since i was paranoid about getting on the wrong one, missing my stop, etc. afterwards, i took a bus back to daddy's office (where i am now). i got off at the stop daddy had said was the closest to his office, but i didn't see the block-long ten-story diarrhea-tan building (it's hard to miss). so i walked in random directions until i glimpsed a distinctive brown corner...and it was all good.

when in rome

2006-03-07T19:28:01Z

i didn't get to go back to the museum yet, because there was a massive strike/protest in paris today, really close to the apartment. the streets were really crowded - imagine south building at rush hour, except everyone is taller, wears more clothing, and smokes. there were tons of policemen lining the rue de beaumarchais, and more hidden around corners carrying big guns.

dad: hey look, there's my union...hmm not a lot of people
yg: maybe you should hide in case they want you to join them

vacation is a good time to catch up on homework

2006-03-06T14:44:27Z

one word to describe my father: uxorious

other than SuperBitch(TM), i'm happy to be here. went to musee des arts et metiers yesterday - very cool! it's basically a collection showing the history of technology housed partially in a (romanesque?) church. there's a foucault's pendulum hanging from the dome (in the apse?). i left my camera at the apartment, so i'm going back tuesday (it's only 15 min walking and free if you're under 18). will post pictures.

<td align="center"> <table width="300" align="center" style="border: 2px solid black;">

Your Nutritional Information: Servings Per Container: 1
x
% Daily Value
Sweetness:	6 g	12%

Bitterness:	541 mg	49%

Power:	33 g	94%

Healthful:	220 mg	88%

Excitement:	815 mg	74%
x
Deliciousness:	95%

'What is your nutritional value?' at QuizGalaxy.com</td></table>

yessss

2006-03-02T02:03:42Z

february scorecard: 3-0
(won science bowl) ^_^

no ipods, but it's still awesome...nationals in april!!

happy ^_^

2006-02-12T23:11:52Z

won ocean bowl regionals. it was awesome - we played really well. nationals is in montery (CA) in may...exciting!! also got cool glass trophy, lots of textbooks (yes!), some random crap, and video ipods (mine is black and shexshy).

yg: i can't believe it! nationals!! and ipods.
gl: i can't believe it! ipods!! and nationals.

js: YEAH! kicked some BOO-tay!
(this was said as we're walking back to the van down a slippery hill in the dark while i'm carrying an armful of books. almost fell - didn't expect that from james!)

life is good. i don't think i've stopped smiling in the last 24 hours (except sleeping?)

<3 ocean bowl. <3 my team.

should i trust these people?

2006-02-08T04:32:54Z

Accident at the Pittsburgh Zoo kills 10 sharks

PITTSBURGH - Ten sharks and a puffer fish died when ozone gas was accidentally pumped into their tank Saturday at the Pittsburgh Zoo & PPG Aquarium, zoo officials said yesterday.

Ozone is used to purify water but was accidentally introduced into the tank with the sharks and other fish in it.

"We are in the process of conducting a thorough investigation into the incident, and any necessary changes will be made immediately," said Barbara Baker, the zoo's president and chief executive officer.

In October 2002, six bonnethead and two black-tip sharks died from a variety of causes at the aquarium. Five sharks died in separate incidents in April and December 2000 when an ozone machine malfunctioned and a vendor accidentally put cyanide in their tank.

(that's where ocean bowl is this weekend...should we turn down the free behind-the-scenes tour?)

cocina me mi arroz, mujer

2006-02-07T02:58:31Z

fyi: the rice i started cooking at 1:30 pm on sunday turned out ok, dispite 8 extra hours in the cooker.

weird.

2006-02-04T02:15:01Z

my ballet teacher decided to do modern tonight instead of ballet - kind of randomly. it was v strange for me, but fun in the end after i got over the fact that it isn't supposed to be pretty, and rolling on the ground is legal.

some of my ocean bowl team seems to think i am a man-eating shark/kill people for fun and stick their bodies in my drier. i have no idea where they get these ideas.

You Are Not Scary

Everyone loves you. Isn't that sweet?

How Scary Are You?

actually, i'm a little disappointed...

any suggestions?

2006-01-03T01:48:50Z

In the year 2006 I resolve to:

Dedicate my life to making someone else's horribly miserable.

Get your resolution here