nu-gin

Learn this...man!

the spice shack

a new school year has begun. back to the grind of furiously studying and nervously bouncing my leg. that's med school for ya.

but some things are different this time around. now a one-year veteran, i know what to expect. i know i can skip class to study on my own and not feel guilty about it. i know there will be long nights in the library. i know there will lots of bullshitting when i'm supposed to be concentrating. i know i'm not the only one who struggles sometimes...

also this year, i've ditched the apartment and moved into an amazing house with 4 of my best friends in school. cleverly dubbed "the spice shack." come on, 3 indians + 1 egyptian + 1 vietanmese guy all living under one roof = lots of spice. the house is huge. everyone has their own space. close to coffee shops, pubs, restaurants, libraries, and parks. couldn't ask for a better location.

sure rent is a lot cheaper, but the best part about the house is living with a group of guys again. call me a male chauvinist, but it sure beats my experiences the past two years...

when i lived in the marshall islands, i essentially lived in a " teacher dorm" with 6 girls and 1 other guy. you think that'd be a dream come true (that's some damn good odds), but gawd, was that a trip. i already know girls are impossible to understand, but living with a group of them is a completely different story. the complaining, the crying, the cuddling. a marshallese "wow" to that. the overdose of estrogen was unbearable at times.

this past year i lived in a single apartment. yeah it was nice to have some privacy when i had the (now ex-) girlfriend over, but other than that, the sunken feeling of coming home from a hard night of studying (alone) to an empty place sucked. the only person around was the crazy, old lady across the hall who had the knack of catching me in the parking lot and talking my ear off. and then there was the obnoxious little girl above me who would stomp around her mom's apartment into the wee hours when i thought kids were supposed to be in bed.

it's nice to have that ol' frat house feeling back of "no girls allowed" (well, not always. heh).

with guys, everything is chill. we'll clean up when it gets gross. we'll replace frozen pizzas we steal from each other when we get the drunken munchies. we'll settle disputes over some beers. we'll call each other out for telling a bad joke or story...no bickering. no pettiness. no grudges. it works.

we apparently have already been deemed the party house for the year. here we go...

wha' happen'?

this pretty much sums up our little housewarming party. a little too many mojitos and tequila shots. fill me in on what happend, because i sure don't remember. yikes. sorry.

on a different note, my sister and i saw ben harper in concert last week. front row. boo-yah. if you haven't seen him live, you are missing out on one of the best performers in the business. his raw emotion was inspiring. he left every ounce of energy on stage. from his guitar-slinging riffs to his solo acoustic encore, he moved the crowd in every way. a memorable 2.5 hour set to say the least.

this past weekend was chicago jazz fest. checked out joshua redman play a fantastic tribute to john coltrane at the chicago symphony center. if i could only play the sax half as good as him...

for all you fools that missed critical mass last month, we're doing it at the end of september. literally hundreds of bicyclists took over downtown chicago at rush hour. hilarious seeing bewildered motorists trying to make sense of it all. the highlight - taking over michigan avenue and cruising the magnificent mile at sunset.