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greenapplek
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Name: miss wyle
Country: United States
State: District of Columbia
Interests: basketball, rowing, food
Expertise: killing myself on an erg. im good at that. when i feel like it.
Occupation: Student
Message: message me
Member Since:
4/27/2003
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| it isnt reasonable to ask that we achieve perfection. what is reasonable is to ask that we never cease to aim for it.
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| the penguins are falling off the iceburg. oy.
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| random thoughts while taking a break from studying...
my worse fear at the moment is that ill graduate, get my MD, start to practice, and realize, crap, i dont know how to solve any of my patients problems.
i really love my family. i dont know what i would do without them.
my grandmother's 80th birthday is on monday and the only thing i can do is to call her and tell her happy birthday. sigh.
pbl really blows.
apparently its weird to eat steak with ketchup. apparently im the only one that does it. i highly doubt that. ketchup goes well with everything!
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| apparently xanga misses me. i know because it keeps sending me emails telling me so. 
i guess it's been a while since my last update. there's a lot to say and a lot of pictures to post, but not enough time to do any of that. maybe during the summer...
i was recently introduced to one republic and now im addicted to "stop and stare." except, when i actually listened to the lyrics, i realized that the words don't apply to me at all.
i feel like i'm at a very good point in my life right now and there's not much to complain about. to which im very grateful. so, long story short, here are the top 10 things (in no particular order) that are keeping me happy and sane:
1. daily gym buddy (he keeps me slim (sorta) and trim (eh) and motivated on the bike)
2. girl's bball nights (because we dont like playing with the boys...ironically a lot of boys have started playing regularly with us because they've realized that it's a lot more fun when ppl pass the ball!)
3. bball nights in general (even after getting head-butted by a short, fat, bald guy...)
4. the hills on monday nights with the roomie (the only person ive met on the east coast who loves it as much as i do...and she's from jamaica...)
5. doing well in school (that helps a lot)
6. gossip gossip gossip (there's ALOT to gossip about...all those med student dramas)
7. trail mix (especially the one with banana chips. to get me through those long studying nights)
8. learning how to cook my grandma's chicken curry (so i dont have to survive on cereal and soup anymore)
9. smelling chocolate and not chocolate-manure in the air on those special nights (although sometimes i cant tell the difference...)
10. good friends. good descent food. good times.
oh, and of course, as michelle would put it, im livin' the dream! so i better be enjoying it  .
time to study bloody vs. watery diarrheas!
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| the terminal.
so there i was friday night, sitting at the harrisburg international
airport, using free wireless to watching season 2 of heroes, and
waiting for my flight home to california. everything was going great. and then everything went downhill.
it began when the UA guy at the kiosk announced that the flight leaving chicago to pick us up had some problems. apparently there was some sort of fire in the cockpit, and thus their take off was delayed (and note, the details of the incident was, according to one of the passengers on my flight, reported on cnn). as a result, our flight won't arrive until 8:35pm. ok...that's not too bad. my flight from dc to sfo leaves at 9:40pm. the flight from harrisburg to dc takes about 20min. i can still make it. 8:00pm...8:20pm...8:30pm. no airplane in sight. the 16 passengers around me began shifting restlessly in their seats and looking out the window constantly at the empty runway. where the heck is our plane!!! all 17 of us were pretty much in the same position. everyone had a connection in dc around the same time. and if we didnt make it, we'd have to wait till morning to catch the next earliest flight. the UA guy comes back and announces that the plane will be here in 20min. numbers began coursing through my mind. if i run really really fast and the gates at dulles arnt too far apart, i can probably still make my connection once i land in dc. yeah, i can still do it.
by the time the airplane arrived, we were all ready and waiting at the gate. as soon as the passengers got off, we all piled on, strapped our carry-ons in the seats next to us, and listened to the flight attendant rush through her "exits on that side, seats can be used as a floating device..." spiel at 50 words a second. and the whole time i was thinking, if there was a first-timer on this flight, he/she must be in panic-mode by now, because there was no way anyone couldve understood her! by the time we landed, it was already 10:10. and needless to say, no one (except 2 ppl) made their connections. alright...now what? most of us had already been re-booked for morning flights as our "plan b", but what do we do for the night? this shouldve been united airlines fault, and they shouldve provided us with free hotel accomodations. but instead, the manager denied the whole incident, claimed that the delay was due to a closed runway at chicago, that she knew nothing about the cockpit fire, and that the best she can offer us were airplane pillows/blankets, some leftover cans of soda/tonic water, and about 20 small bags of pretzel snack. unless we wanted to spend our own money for hotel rooms, the airport would be our home for the night.
everyone was pretty tired and upset. but then again, there was nothing else we could do. so we decided to make the best of the situation. most of us decided to stay in the same area, and we ended up moving a lot of seats and built ourselves a little fort right there in the middle of an empty airport. then we just sat around, wrapped ourselves in cheap airline blankets, drank diet soda/blood mary mix, ate pretzels, and bonded over our misery. this night definitely makes my top 10 list of "the most interesting nights ive ever had." to bond with total strangers, listen to each other's stories, and know you most likely will never see each other again, was quite an extraordinary experience.
group photo. around 11pm. gate c22. dulles international airport.
and now, a little bit about everyone.
chris (bottom row, guy on the left wearing the white t-shirt.) is a student at ave maria university in maryland studying to become a priest. we actually started talking while waiting at the harrisburg airport. he saw that i was watching heroes, laughed when i told him that i can usually finish a whole season within a day or two, and then admitted that he does the same thing with anime. he ended up giving me a crash course on the history of catholicism, how the other groups (christians, mormons, etc) came to be where they are now, and how/why some priests can marry and others don't. very interesting and nice guy. and the fact that he's from ca made him even more cool =P
matt (top row, guy behind chris in the blue shirt) is a 4th year medical student from the university of tennessee. he was actually interviewing at penn state for our pediatrics residency program. he told me that his first year of medical school was the worst year of his life. his grandmother died that year and that wasn't even as bad as medical school. but it gets better. injustices still occur (he was yelled at by a resident for not knowing how to read an EKG), but it gets better. if he comes to penn state for residency, there's a very good chance ill see/have him during my rotations. and he promised not to yell at me if i didnt know how to read an EKG.
big guy in the black shirt (top row) works at a car rental company. his boss always sents him out to collect (money, cars...dont quite remember what it is that he had to collect) because he's so big and intimidating. but if you listen to him talk, he's actually a really gentle and quiet guy. it was, unfortunately, his first time on an airplane. and he had the joy of experience everything that's NOT supposed to happen when you fly.
stephanie (girl in black to the right of chris) just graduated from high school and was doing basic training at the air force camp near harrisburg. she's actually from the hershey area, so there's a chance that i could run into her again somewhere in pa. she was the most optimistic of the bunch, kept saying that we'll make our flights...until we didn't...
the blonde-haired girl is the sister of the guy in the black shirt. can't remember her name, but she had a really interesting relationship with her parents (who were also on the same flight but not in the picture). they kept on yelling at each other about little stuff, and then making up, and then fighting again. she told us stories about how her mom accidently left her at a closed nursery when she was young, and how she ran after her mom's car, and was eventually taken to a high school by some high school kids where she had to wait in the principal's office for her grandmother to pick her up.
and of course, ive saved the best for last. diana (lady holding the pillow) is a business professor and certified life coach. she was the one that argued with the united airlines manager for at least half an hour about how unacceptable the situation was and how they were violating our basic human rights to food, shelter, etc. a quite powerful and convincing argument. i think the manager almost wet her pants. diana's had 3 cups of coffee in her life, and she remembers the stories that goes with each cup. i was kinda scared to talk to her, because it seemed like she would try to analyze my words and then analyze my life based on those words. when stephanie couldnt fall asleep, she told stephanie that she just had to envision herself falling asleep and then she would be able to do it.
so these were the people that i hung out with friday evening in an empty airport. under the normal circumstances, we wouldve walked by each other without so much as a glance. but that night, due to a delayed flight and crappy airline service, total strangers became good friends. and even though it was just for one night, im sure it was an experience most of us will remember for a long time.
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on a side note, you know how airport carpets never seem clean? it's because they're not. and here's photographic evidence gathered at approximately 3am:
random cleaning guy taking a nap. a long nap.
random vaccuum left alone to do its job.
the cleaning crew either slept or stood around and chatted the ENTIRE night. occasionally, they would turn on the vaccuum, move it a couple
of feet down the hallway, and then turn it off and go back to doing
whatever they were doing. the guy sleeping actually woke up while i was taking a picture of him. so i quickly pretended that i was taking shots of the airport and slowing moved my camera away hahaha.
and now, im finally home! and home is good! 
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