Other such situations include a trip to Wurstküche in downtown LA, where I got into line right behind a fellow 2008 UCLA orientation counselor!  Then, later on as I was eating, I looked up to find one of my pledge bros from AKPsi sitting at another table.  Imagine that.  And many months ago, one of the engineers at work and one of the operations girls were chatting because they found they had both lived in Michigan.  When the guy mentioned that he swam, she was interested because she had worked on the coaching staff or been an assistant.  Further probing revealed that she had actually been there working with the swim team that he was on during the time that he would have been on the team!  And then they both end up at the same (very small) company out in California?!

In addition, that same girl recently found out that her former roommate bartended with the girlfriend of one of our sales guys.  Of all the bars in LA and all the roommates and girlfriends these people could have had…  Seriously, what’s up with all this interconnectedness?  I guess even a large city like Los Angeles can quickly become small after a couple years of building relationships and connections.  Eventually you’re no more than a 2nd degree contact to anyone!

For the most part, this isn’t really an issue – I love things that are smooth, crispy, crunchy, or any variety of textures as long as it’s not rubbery.  Something about the elasticity of a food (usually seafood) just doesn’t appeal to me at all.  Luckily, most things aren’t like that.  As for dishes that are very dry, I’ll still eat them if I have plenty of water.  I can’t stand it if I don’t get enough liquids to mask the dryness, which is why hot chocolate and tea are my friends when it comes to cookies and crackers.  Maybe my body’s trying to tell me that I’m not hydrated enough?

Whatever it is, I’m always looking for a place with great soup or noodle soup.  Yummm…

I remember reading once that contrary to popular belief, ice water is not more thirst-quenching.  In fact, it said that warm water is the best for absorption and therefore more thrist-quenching.  However, through media portrayals, it seems we have learned that only cold drinks can satisfy our needs after a strenuous workout or on a hot day.  I think that cold water feels refreshing and it wakens you a bit, which gives the impression that it is better when you’re thirsty.  In addition, if you’ve built up a lot of heat from working out or are already too hot from the weather, you want to feel the coolness of the drink to help lower your temperature.

Still, I usually prefer at least room temperature water in those situations when my body is hotter than it would like to be.  I find that cold drinks numb my mouth and freeze up my insides, which isn’t comfortable at all!  I’ve always been sensitive to temperature changes, so when it gets cold or I cool down too much, my stomach and intestines throw a fit.  Perhaps that’s the real reason why I avoid really cold drinks.  Who wants to have a stomachache after they drink a cup of water?

Anyways, this whole cold drink popularity thing has always baffled me, since it’s not really the same in Chinese culture.  I don’t think the Chinese would have iced their drinks if it weren’t for Western influences.  Whatever makes cold drinks so appealing just isn’t worth it to me.  I’ll take the drink in the box over the one in the cooler any day.  And watch me quench my thirst better.  ;)

Similarly, when I recall what age I was when something happened, I think of the situation based on location, tie it back to a grade level, then calculate how old I was .  I’m not sure why it’s such a lengthy process, but that’s always how I’ve drawn on memories in my life.  It makes me wonder how other people who don’t move as much do it, since much of their memories would tie back to the same location.  They seem to do it much better too!

Today someone put on 90′s music at work and one song came up that was of particular interest.  Each song that I recognized put me back to a place and time in my life when I heard that song most prominently.  Backstreet Boys took me back to the summers I spent in China with my cousins and extended family.  Destiny’s Child took me back to the fun I had biking down a huge hill by my house in New York.  TLC took me back to getting driven to swim practice at the YMCA over in Connecticut.  Tupac took me back to the lounge I studied in my first year at UCLA (yeah, I learned of him later in life).  I wouldn’t be able to place a year on when those songs came out, but I could definitely get close.  Somehow other people seem to be able to remember just what year it was though.

I’ve never understood that ability and I wonder how I will remember things if I don’t continue moving around a lot.  When everything merges into one physical space, what cues will I use to differentiate between time periods?  The way I’ve put my life into context for over two decades would become irrelevant.  I’m sure I would adapt, but at this moment I can’t fathom how.  So I wonder, how do you do it?

Still, I really do want to go through and clean out my inbox so I can actually tell when I have new mail.  Once you start getting thousands of unread messages, it’s really hard to remember if it was 10,502 messages when you last checked, or 10,507.  So do I actually have some new emails to look through or did I just remember the number wrong?  Who knows.  I’ve completely given up looking at how many unread messages I have.  I check infrequently enough that it’s basically guaranteed I’ll find some new ones each time I log in.  Perhaps whenever I am waiting around in line, I will check old emails and get rid of unnecessary ones rather than play a few seconds of a game.

I’ve always had a preference for spring cleaning rather than a daily ritual, and my inbox is no exception!  Problem is, my inbox has yet to see a springtime that inspired me to clean it…  Well hey, I guess I’ve got myself a resolution for this year then.  In fact, I think I’ll tackle some of it right now.  Wish me luck!

Back in China, I was going to have them removed, but then I changed my mind when I realized I might not get to enjoy the food there if I went through with it.  I thought it’d take a week or so to recover, but as I later found out from my parents, it could have been fine after a day or two.  Oh well, it’s too late for that now!  Unfortunately they’re bothering me these days, so I really want to get them out.  I’ll have to review my coverage and see if it’s worth it right now.

I’m very tempted to find something to prop my jaw to help ease the tension, but what is there?  I tried using gum for awhile and also putting food on that side of my mouth to chew so I couldn’t accidentally bite my cheek.  Those solutions proved too temporary for my needs.  Maybe a night’s sleep will reduce the swelling and make me forgetting about those annoying buggers.  Why didn’t I have them removed long ago??  I’m regretting that now.  :(

HBS

1. Tell us about three of your accomplishments.
2. Tell us three setbacks you have faced.
3. Why do you want an MBA?
4. Answer a question you wish we had asked.

Stanford GSB

1. What matters most to you, and why?
2. What do you want to do – REALLY – and why Stanford?
3. Tell us about a time when you made a lasting impact on your organization.
4. Tell us about a time when you generated support from others for an idea or initiative.

I felt like Harvard’s were more practical and Stanford’s were more emotional, if that makes sense.  What made Stanford’s challenging for me was how personal those first two are.  It was really getting to the core of what is meaningful to me and it’s hard to express something you believe in so deeply.  I had to work backwards, first sharing stories of my workplace successes, then tackling what I want to do and what matters to me.

The first versions of my responses to questions 1 and 2 came out extremely idealistic.  I realized that I sounded like my mind was in the clouds and my feet weren’t on the ground.  I knew I had to present things in a more concrete manner so the selection committee could see the logic behind how what mattered to me drove what I wanted to do and why that all tied into going to business school.  Unfortunately, I cared so much about properly expressing something so close to my heart that nothing sounded right.  I would write a paragraph and start the next only to decide that I wanted to add a paragraph to the beginning instead.  I labored over those two for so long!

Finally, I was satisfied with how the second essay came out, but I was still pretty stumped by the first.  How do you share your greatest dreams without sounding unrealistic?  Again and again, I would rewrite my response to that question until I started to create a structure that made sense.  I then made the very smart move of sending my writing to Maven for a proofread.  One of my greatest challenges in writing essays is making everything flow.  I tend to let my ideas out stream-of-consciousness style, which usually results in random connections and scattered ideas.  He was able to help me reorder some of my sentences to make my structure infinitely better!  At that point, I was finally ready to turn everything in.  I had put forth a great effort and now it was time to officially apply to one of the most prestigious programs in the world.

I feel so relieved now that it’s in and strangely, I’m not really nervous about decision day.  That’s probably just because it’s still over two months away!  As the time nears, I’m sure I will nervously anticipate the news and hope for the best.  I can really see myself going to a top business school and excelling.

I’ve still got another day and a half to get my Stanford GSB application submitted in time for round two, so I’m going to put all my effort towards that and this time I will not fail. I will spend all day tomorrow making sure my recommenders get those recommendations in before we leave work.  I won’t accept another missed deadline!

I feel like it’s been a long time coming, so it’s really rewarding to find someone who has a vast number of skills that I don’t, and who needs the very skills that I do have.  At the same time, we share many values and both believe in the synergy that can be created to make a partnership more than just 1 +1.  It’s just enough overlap to agree on the important things, and plenty of complementary abilities to pack a powerful punch.  I couldn’t have imagined a more perfect scenario!  If nothing else, 2011 will go down in history as the year I met Maven.  A very fortunate experience indeed!

Whether or not we are able to get this idea off the ground (and I am confident that we can and will), I have a great feeling about just knowing Maven.  There’s a lot to learn from him and he is a fantastic conversationalist!  I’d been craving the kinds of discussions we’ve been having – about business, personal philosophies, psychology, and so many other topics.  We’re both very curious, inquisitive folks who think a lot, ask a lot, wonder a lot.  I’ve never had someone ask me so many “whys” about my beliefs and it really helps me understand myself better.

In addition, I got a kick out of the fascination we both seem to have with personality tests and what can be gleaned from them.  I love reading personality profiles!  I feel like I learned a lot about him when I read the description of his “type,” whether or not all of it was accurate.  At least it gave me a good basis for understanding the type of person he is.  The more I get to know, the better it all seems.  With our work ethics, determination, and combined efforts, I wouldn’t put anything past us.  You just wait!