525,600 minutes.

I knew a girl once.

I knew her since she first came home from the hospital, though I was pretty young too so the memory is a bit foggy. I still remember her first Halloween when I dressed up as Mulan and she was a pea pod. Even then, she was always smiling. While I wouldn't dare presume to say that she was one of the central players in my life,  her presence was definitely constant for a really long time.

She lived across the street and our paths would intersect every now and then. I was a mother's helper for her family when I was in 6th grade, oversaw her and her siblings during a birthday party in 8th grade and she and her siblings were the first and only kids that I have ever babysat.

Even though she was really young, I could tell that she was vivacious and clever and so so smart. But above all, she was kind. I was so nervous when I got to her house to babysit for the first time ever and I think she knew that. But she helped me get through the night by keeping her siblings in check and helping me come up with things to do. We danced together, played hide and seek and I taught her some yoga moves. I think at one point we even played a piano duet together. Somehow, this young girl had helped me through a night of taking care of others when I had barely gotten a grip of how to take care of myself. I was so grateful to her.

After that night, things in my life got busier and we moved away from our little town to start a new chapter. But then one day, I heard through the grapevine that she was sick. At the time, I didn't know just how sick and simply hoped that she would get better. Honestly, I don't think it ever occurred to me that she wouldn't get better. I thought that if anyone was going to beat it, she was. But more time passed and she didn't get better.

Last year, I got a phonecall from my best friend with the news that she had passed away.

She was ten years old.

I did not know then, nor do I know now, how to react. This girl is quite possibly the strongest person I have ever had the privilege of knowing. She fought so bravely for so long but somehow it wasn't enough. I question why it happened but I know that I will never get an answer, that there is no answer that will satisfy me. So I will say this:

She lived her life with more courage, conviction and passion than most people do their entire lives. She loved and was loved fiercely by everyone who knew her. I was lucky to be included in that number and I will never forget her.

That New Years thing I used to do

So I used to do these Facebook surveys because I was a super self-obsessed high schooler who thought they were introspective and cool and liked letting people know this fact. (I like to think I've gotten more subtle in my old age). But this seemed like it would be interesting so I pulled the one I did in 2007 transitioning into 2008 because that is exactly 5 years ago from now and put in my new answers as well. The original answers will be in this annoying shade of pink. So without further ado....



1 - Did you kiss anyone?
hm...if I told you, I'd have to kill you
When the occasion called for it

2 - Did you date anyone?
same as number 1
Yes...same person for awhile now...

3 - Are you going to kiss someone when the ball drops?
nope...unless my teddy bear counts
No, I was tired from flying all over the continent but I did manage to stay up so...brownie points?

4 - Did you lose any friends?
I think so...yes
Answer is the same as above

5 - Did you gain any friends?
YES!! and they are beyond awesome!!
Same case with this one

6 - Did you do something new?
sure, yea I think so
Yes; cooked for myself this summer and basically everything we did in lab was new. Also, I sailed in a regatta, went to a concert, went to Mixx froyo, and pulled an all nighter. I also went on my first out of state trip without my parents and got my first adult-ish job.

7 - Had a boyfriend/girlfriend?
same for 1+2
Surprisingly, the answer is the same for this too

8 - Did you change?
yes, very much so, as everyone thinks it fit to tell me.
I feel like that's kind of a hard question to answer about yourself but if I did, I hope it was for the better

9 - Are you happy with the year over all?
no. Actually, it sucked overall
Yeah it was pretty awesome

10 - Whats the best thing that happened to you?
I made a ton of new friends at Longy
Getting a tiara and Game of Thrones for my birthday was pretty sweet.

11 - Did you fall in or out of love?
nope, although I'd like to think I did, it wasn't really love
I don't know.

12 - Are you happy the year's almost over?
YES!!! I've been waiting for this for so long! I'm gonna burn my calendar
I'm kind of indifferent to it...I am glad the -semester- is over though!

13 - Are you going to change something about yourself next year?
we'll see...I don't really think that you can change yourself consciously, it just kinda happens
Still agree with young me

14 - Do you think 2008 will be a better year then 2007?
I really and truly hope so...if not; consider this my death note
On 2013 being better than 2012: I mean, I hope every year gets better but this past year will be hard to top.

20 - Did you go on a summer vacation?
yup
I went to NYC for a weekend, which was pretty baller.

21 - Did you lie to your parents?
um...I probably did, I just can't remember it right now
Agreed.

22 - Did you get into a fight?
a bitchy fight? sure
Probably more than I care to admit which is kind of weird because I don't think of myself as a confrontational person

23 - Did you leave the country?
nope not this time
Yes, to the fair shores of...Canada? 

24 - Did you have a good birthday?
It was ok I guess...
I was working on a lab. It was fun I suppose.

25 - Did anyone in your family get married?
she's not in my family but she's a really good friend
Yup, two cousins! 'Tis the season.

26 - Did you get any taller?
2 inches baby! whoot!
God, I wish.

27 - Did you dye your hair?
nope, but I kinda wish I did. Maybe next year (reddish brown?)
No I didn't but reddish brown is still not too bad of an idea. Maybe I'll use henna...thoughts?

26 - Who did you talk on the phone with most?
I'm a hermit and never talk on the phone...but I would have probably talked to Anna the most
D or my sister probably. 

29 - Did anyone sing to you?
maybe...you'll just have to keep wondering about that, won't you...?
D has tried to...

30 - Did you sing to anyone?
um...maybe. actually yea, probably did. Probably when we were all fooling around in Chorus
I sing to my roommate all the time, it's casual.

31 - Did anyone tell you they loved you?
yup
Yes

32 - Did you ever go to the hospital?
nope. they scare me
Yes but to work not because there was anything wrong with me. Side note: I don't find them scary anymore just a little melancholy.

33 - What did you drink and eat the most?
drink: water/green tea food: canned soup?
Drink: coffee/tea food: salad? Nah it's probably chocolate.

35 - Did you change your profile over 10 times?
psh...hell yea
If this refers to profile picture, then no but I do get bored with my cover photos pretty quickly.

36 - Did you get a tattoo?
nope
I didn't but I'm of legal age to get them now...though I hate pain so I probably won't.

37 - Did you vote?
I can't
HELL YEAH I DID.

38 - Are you going to make New Years resolution?
probably, but I never really bothered with them before, but we'll see.
Why wait until the New Year to make a change? Besides, my fitness schedules kind of go in cycles.

39 - Did you stick to your New Years resolution from last year?
prolly not cuz i dont even remember it... lol
I don't think I made any

40 - Think you'll date someone in 2008?
yea...well, we'll see.
In 2013?: It is highly likely.

41. - Where will you be when the ball drops?
at home, probably finishing up a movie with the fam fam...or else I'll crash over to the Winthrops' place if they're home
Haha I wish I could still just crash over to the Winthrops' place...it's kind of far away now so it would require a lot of premeditation to do that. Ironically enough, I did watch a movie at my house...and then promptly went to bed.

42 - Do you think you will make new friends in 2008?
i hope so, although I must say, the ones I've made this year were pretty friggin brilliant
Isn't that kind of the point of college?

43 - Are you hoping to meet someone special in 2008?
Of course I'm hoping for that, but I can't really control fate.
The jury is out on that one.

44 - How do you feel, another year has passed you by?
I kinda wish I could go back and do some things over again. I mean, it was a pretty yucky year and I didn't really feel like I was in control of my life. It's pretty hard when you had to let some things go forever, but I'm hoping to start again in 2008 and leave that all behind.

Laissez les bons temps rouler. It only gets more awesome.
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Some final thoughts: It's kind of weird to think about 5 years ago being 5 years ago because I literally felt like being a freshman in high school was like...yesterday. Then again I do remember when I was going through high school, college seemed elusive and unknown which was pretty fantastic: I felt like I could go anywhere I wanted. And while that kind of possibility is exhilarating to some extent, I definitely would not go back to be a high school freshman...ever. From what I remember, getting a boyfriend was my absolute priority(and somehow I thought that Facebook was the best way to pick up guys?) and even though I spent a lot of time doing my extracurriculars I don't think I actually appreciated them the way I do now. I can only imagine what 2018 has in store for me. 

Tiffany's favorite movies EVAR

Seeing highlights from the Golden Globes has made me a little nostalgic so I thought I would compile some of my all time favorite movies EVER for your entertainment. It's worth noting that most of these movies also happen to have great soundtracks(the true way to my heart), which I currently listen to on a fairly regular basis. A lot of these movies have stood the test of time and I still enjoy them now as I did when they first came out.

So without further ado....

1) The Parent Trap(1998) 

This is without a doubt one of my favorite movies of all time and will probably remain on this list until I die. I loved this film so much that I made my best friend make up a handshake up with me. In addition to making me really want to go off to summer camp, it also made me want to go to London really really bad. And not only was this my first introduction to the wonderful Nat King Cole(in addition to the Beatles), it also documents a time before LiLo went off the deep end and was actually kind of good at acting. I was however incredibly confused when first told that there was only one Lindsey Lohan. Mind. Blown.

2) Howl's Moving Castle(2004)
As of right now, this is still my favorite Studio Ghibli film and has been since I first saw it in middle school. A love story, magic and a brooding hero? What's not to love? (side note: it's completely ok plot wise that Sophie has to fix Howl because he is missing his heart. Literally. So don't pull any feminazi jargon on me). I really can't say enough about how beautiful the visuals really are...everything is done by hand so it's really like you're watching a moving painting. Not to mention that the score(compliments of Joe Hisaishi) is absolutely beautiful. Also, Howl may or may not have been my first anime crush.


3) Ever After: A Cinderella Story(1998)

"And while Cinderella and her prince did live happily ever after, the point, gentlemen, is that they lived."

Before Once Upon A Time and every other fairytale re-interpretation, there was Ever After, the re-telling of the Cinderella story where "Cinderella"'s bad ass aristocratic great grand daughter tells off the Grimm Brothers and sets the record straight. Angelica Houston was absolutely brilliant as the evil stepmother and Leonardo DaVinci was freaking hilarious. I still drool over the costumes because not only are they gorgeous, I was also starting to watch the original Disney movies around this time as well. Needless to say this is far superior in every way to the cartoon. Not to mention I also now happen to enjoy the chants of the Fransican monks but that's a post for another day.

4) Uptown Girls(2003)

I was more or less Rae(the little girl)'s age when this movie came out so needless to say I sympathized with her a little more than I did with the wild child, whimsical disorderly "adult". What's interesting though is that this story is kind of a coming of age for both characters: a reminder that being a kid is ok and that you can still be a dreamer when you're supposed to be a responsible adult.

5) Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone(2001)

Still my absolute favorite Harry Potter movie to  date. Even though I saw this before I read the books, I still consider it one of the most honest representations of the Harry Potter world. Also, no one that we love dies(Quirrel and Nicholas Flamel don't count) and everything is still new and...well, magical. We were being introduced into magical London at the same time Harry was and even though I love the rich, dark backstory behind the rest of the Harry Potter stories, it's kind of nice to watch this again and really see quidditch and friendships and school without the dark looming cloud of misery that is Voldemort.

6) Shrek(2001) (the rest of the movies are pretty cool too)

Being only 8 when these first came out, the fart and earwax jokes were funny but there are always a lot more subtleties that come through when you rewatch "children's" movies as you age, primarily of the sexual nature but also other pop culture references. As you can see, I clearly have a thing for fairytales but this movie is absolutely hilarious even as it parodies everything about them that I love and it gets funnier every time I watch it.

7) My Big Fat Greek Wedding(2002)

This was when I realized that there are families out there that are crazier than mine. Also, it was the moment I decided that I am absolutely going to be responsible for everyone's dresses on my wedding day lest I become a snow beast. And yes, while the movie's humor is predominantly wedding centric because the cultural clash and fighting about invitations and dietary restrictions is funny, let's not forget that this all came about because Toula decided that she didn't like where her life was at and she decided to do something about it. Talk about Women Who Will.

A Post About Narwhals

I chose to write about narwhals because when I first heard about them I honestly thought they were fake. And continued to think so for a little while after(for longer than I'm willing to admit). So I wish to enlighten you a bit about these incredible creatures, the unicorns of the sea.

Narwhals(also known as Monodon monoceros) enhabit the waters near the Arctic Circle. A majority of the narwhals are concentrated off the coast of Canada. The incredibly long horn (where the monoceros part of the name comes from) is actually a tooth that protrudes from the jaws of male narwhals which is a characteristic for sexual selection. They mainly dine on squid and different types of fish.

The narwhal population is estimated to be between 45,000 and 50,000 individuals. This may sound like a lot but in fact, narwhals are a near threatened species and may become extinct fairly soon. Narwhals mate during the spring(March-May) and only produce one calf per litter. However, narwhals are capable of living up until the ripe age of 50 years. Also worth noting, females can only mate once every 3 years so it's no surprise that the population is starting to dwindle.

Another threat to the Narwhal population is the fact that their natural habitats are slowly becoming obsolete due to global warming, much like the polar bears and penguins.


...And really I'm not sure what else you really wanted to know about Narwhals.

Citations(because I'm a good scientist)
http://www.defenders.org/narwhal/basic-facts
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narwhal

Land of the Never Rising Sun(Thoughts from Places: Vancouver)

Didn't look like this while we were there

In recent years it has become a tradition of sorts to visit my extended family somewhere on the west coast. This year was no exception; I completed finals, packed my bags, packed them again and prepared to head over to Vancouver, BC, which is where a majority of my extended family resides. It's also where my parents spent their formative years and so we have been going back ever since I've been really young.

I have never really found airports to be stressful, mainly just the places where you wait for hours on end and it ultimately makes you tired more than anything else. But I would argue that this flight over from Boston to Denver ranks very high on my stressful airplane experiences list, second only to the time we ran out of fuel in the middle of a field in the middle of the night(not joking).

Denver International Airport is very long.

The weather in Chicago(whence our plane came) was apparently abysmal and thus that flight coming in was over an hour late. Which would normally not be a problem except we needed to make a connection in Denver, Colorado and we had a little bit over an hour between our originally scheduled arrival and our connecting flight. The short of it is that after sprinting 3/4ths of a mile in under 4 minutes(the fastest I have ever run anything, incidentally) and a gate agent that made me want to pull a Draco Malfoy(My father will hear about this!!!), my parents and I finally made it up to Canada.

There be beavers. 

Totem poles...

Having lived in the Northeast my entire life, Vancouver(which is in the Pacific Northwest) always seems kind of quirky interesting, not least of all because they have a zoo(?) in the middle of airport. The name also seems to invoke images of copious amounts of totem poles as well, which are things you will never find in Massachusetts. So that's always interesting.



My brother joined us shortly thereafter and then we went to a wedding(which seems to be a trend lately). Most of the time I spent eating or sleeping, two activities that had gone to the wayside as of late. Vancouver has excellent Asian food on which we all happily gorged and most of the time allotted to eating was spent in the company of my lovely family members. We had Hong Kong style banquets, congee, wonton and noodles, dim sum, sushi, bubble tea...basically ALL the Chinese food as seen below.

Food.

Food.

Food.

Honestly, I don't really know how I am going to go back to school food after being in Vancouver for 10 days; I've gotten so spoiled. I would say that we spent about 85% of our awake time eating but we did do some other things too. We saw the Trinity Holiday light contest which was really spectacular(albeit probably not too eco friendly). We did some shopping in the Asian malls(malls that have predominantly stores from Asia or catering to Asians). We went to Downtown Vancouver to see the Olympic torch as well as Queen Elizabeth Park to see the view.

Unfortunately for us the sun only shone for about 2 hours of our 10 day trip and most pictures that I've taken to suggest otherwise were likely digitally enhanced. We used to visit the city in the summer and spend more time outdoors and doing things but this is quite a challenge in the winter because it might be cloudy, raining, or snowing. So a lot of the time we stayed indoors. I started to chip away at reading Game of Thrones and played computer games to amuse myself since I lacked internet connection.

It occurred to me that the city feels differently to me now than it did when I was 4 or 5 years old. It's busier, more pressured, and dare I say more inhibited. That's not to say that one is superior to the other because I think I can appreciate being there much more today than I could before(especially now that I've consented to eating raw things). But it is also a reminder that nothing ever stays completely the same, a feeling I'm sure affected my parents who had lived there in the 1970s much more acutely than it did me. A bittersweet revelation. But as long as the dim sum continues to be good, I don't think we have much to complain about.

Inspired by the Vlogbrothers: A Curious Endeavor

I haven't written regularly in a really long time...before this semester to be precise.

I wanted to write for the longest time but I was stumped about what I would write about. Before, I kind of just wrote about the things I found interesting or things that were going on in my life. Essentially, I wrote about things that hopefully someone else would find interesting too. During this semester in particular though, I didn't think that people would really find what I'm doing all that interesting and so posts would probably go something like this:
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Hey guys! Here's a cell I was working with in Bio lab today...we poisoned it for fun!

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For this reason, I have concentrated more on my thoughts about other things(which I use broadly) rather than to write my thoughts about myself. Those types of entries are usually reserved for one of the numerous tomes on my desk(side note: it seems like there is something a lot more honest about the [physically] written word).

I've been getting kind of restless though so I wanted to come up with some kind of compromise: where I would still be able to come up with some kind of stance on something without necessarily having to mull over what would be interesting for hours on end.

So I came up with this: I want to do a series of blog posts about things that people most liked from the Vlogbrothers Youtube Channel. Why? Because I like them...? Because I find that even though I don't know them I still care what they think about certain things. I know it's kind of weird that the mediums are different but frankly the written word is exponentially easier for me to edit than the spoken word. I'm also not going to put any limits or make any false promises about how many I'm going to do because that's gimmicky and kind of defeats the purpose of doing this in the first place. Once I run out of topics that they've covered that I find interesting, I will inevitably stop and find something else. But for right now, I'm kind of excited about this...and I hope you are too.