Week 8 August 4-8

Just two more weeks!

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

I have yet to start on my paper or presentation yet, and I have yet to come up with just what exactly I'll be writing or presenting about (don't worry Vanessa, I'll be ready when the time rolls around). Hopefully, by some miracle, I'll make a brilliant breakthrough in mny research, come up with the perfect electrode configuration, and then quickly characterize the biogenic MnO2 to find out how the signals differ from the synthetic MnO2. (all in two weeks)

So, that's not completely likely, but I can dream. At least I've come closer to the goal. 3000 hours sounds like a lot, but trial error is very time consuming!

On a less depressing note, it's the Olympics! Being Chinese (I was actually born in China), its pretty cool that Beijing is hosting the Olympics. I'm sort of a 1st generation Chinese American immigrant (if you can count me moving to the states when I was 1 as me immigrating), and I'm at an interesting cross-roads of American and Chinese culture. I speak Chinese at home, eat Chinese food, visit China every couple of years, all my relatives are back there...etc. However, if I were to go to China, I'd be considered distinctly American, with my American mannerisms, lifestyle, culture, 2nd-grade level Chinese, citizenship... So I'm oftentimes caught in between--I don't quite have the nationalistic fervor of the Chinese, but with the Olympics hosted in Beijing, I find myself with a lot of China-pride, especially watching the AMAZING opening ceremonies! Its pretty undeniable that the show was just insanely cool. And it's also pretty cool that my two countries are dominating the Olympics (not that it says anything about my own athletic abilities). =)

So that was a huge tangent, but my life now consists of commuting (it took 4 hours a day last week), work, and olympic watching. I've also been doing some good reading (I'm rediscovering my love for F. Scott Fitzgerald), and even occasionally bringing home my work to get some graphing done while watching the Olympics. =)

But hopefully these next two weeks will go by smoothly and some miracles happen with the trial and error of my research!