explain them tags

It occurred to me the other day that some of my tags probably don’t make too much sense if you’re not me or the people encompassed within that particular group.

While it may not matter to most, I feel like explaining em’ today because I miss the contents of said tags. I think the whole concept of having a name for a group of people came out of sheer laziness/convenience (because who wants to have to name every single person in the group every time they mention it?).

In any case, they are invariably tagged in many of my recipe posts because we wholeheartedly believe that food is an event. I swear we do other things than eat, but generally speaking, the only pictoral evidence I ever have of our gatherings = the food pictures, because hell knows I never seem to take pictures of anything else.

If there’s one thing I have good taste in (I say this only because my first couple picks in dudes were pretty effing questionable), it’s in my friends. <3

You’ll probably notice there are several people who overlap consistently in these groups because we’ve basically been friends for what seems like forever and logic concludes that if you find a good one, you hold onto them. I’m gonna attempt to go somewhat chronologically.

This is, in short, the main cast of characters in my life. <3

.Family.

• I feel like this is pretty self-explanatory. :O Although I rarely cook with them, I do tag em’ once in a while because my parents come up with some pretty priceless quotes. :P

.CCL4.

Everyone except me (because I’m taking the picture).

• This consists of my closest elementary school friends (me, Joanne, Jun, Amy).
• I’ve known Amy and Joanne since fourth grade–Joanne is the first friend I made when I moved to the other side of my hometown. We have been through a shit ton together, and I’m super glad that we’re still awesome friends. :] Her mom has at one point mistaken me for her girlfriend (nope nope).
• I like to refer to Amy as my “favorite neighbor.” She lives across the street (x2) from me and for the majority of elementary school throughout high school, we’d walk to school together. We don’t really talk all that much anymore, but back in the day, we’d have annual sleepovers with the four of us and where we’d watch stupid movies, play games and be awesome.
• Amy coined the term for our group name, which is short for “ChenChanLiFongtastic Four,” a conglomeration of our last names. I shortened it to CCL4 because that’s carbon tetrachloride, although technically, it should be CCLF4. CCl4 had a better ring to it though. :O

.whibefariends.

Evidence of our hanging-out-ness in high school. This was us at Keat’s house before senior ball. :O

• The only two high school friends I consistently hung out with throughout high school (e.g. during lunch, etc.) that I remained in contact with. (I’ve known most of my closest friends since elementary school, but we didn’t necessarily hang out in the same groups in high school.)
• We used to write in notebooks and pass em’ back and forth throughout the week between classes to keep each other updated on our lives and such. We split to 3 different UC’s and then to different parts of the state (country, in my case) for a while, so now we keep in touch through facebook and try to hang out at least 1-2x/year through gathering together to garner new hobbies and make stuff (e.g. last year, I learned to knit).
• Whibefariends is a combination of the first couple letters of each of our first names. Yes, we were trying to be ghetto.

She made that scarf! I think I’m holding the one I made.

.9F.

Why yes, this is the kind of random shit we do together. :O The idea arose because we found out we owned matching underwear. We’re awesome. Clearly.

• Our lonely (hah, “lonely”) group of two, so named 9F because that was the apartment we lived in together for two years. This consists of none other than Jun, my college roommate/facebook husband.
• We lived together for all four years of college and have been married on facebook since July 8th of 2006 (which I believe trumps many actual relationships in length and quality), coupled with a 2-year long engagement.
• Each year (if we’re in the same timezone), we go out for steak or whatever we’re craving for our anniversary lunch or dinner and usually drag along friends to celebrate the joyous occasion. We’ve been friends since we were 11-12. <3

.6F.

At my junior recital! <3

• This was the merging of 9F with Nadia and Rey, who lived in 6F. To this day, we still blame Kayleen for wanting to sit with the sushi boats on her birthday back in freshmen year of undergrad because if not for that, it is highly likely that we would have met each other sooner and started living together/making even more awesome memories sooner. But better late than never!
• We had about a year’s worth of awesome times together and they are the reason why I am hesitant to ever live with anyone else again because the only way to go from there is down.
• I’ve technically known Nadia since freshmen year of Davis, but didn’t get to know her until around junior year. I officially met Rey in my junior year as well (she is my “dirty mistress” and collectively, we’re known as “Reyrah,” and the four of us hit it off immediately, so we replaced their former roommates the following year. <3 I miss them lots, and basically became Nadia’s weekend roommate from 2010-2011.

.supah speshal awsum.

Us as the Alice in Wonderland cast!

• This is the blanket term for everyone I hang out with from my hometown/Davis, and it’s the name we used for mogwee (a group chat application that we all downloaded one day because Florence was working for the company that made it and we were being their free beta testers).
• It’s butchered English for “super special awesome” [just in case you can’t tell] because we tend to regress (that’s not even the correct term because only one of us is actually a fob) into fob speech when we’re around each other. Right now, it mostly consists of Diana, me, Florence, Joanne, Jun, Kayleen, Steph, Nadia, Liz, and Kate, but can stretch to encompass others (anyone we hang out with back home, basically).
• The pictures I have don’t have Flo/Steph/Kate/Liz because I apparently stopped taking pictures of anything other than food/pole dancing after I moved back to Fremont.

I think this picture most aptly describes our friendship.

.Chamber Trio.

• This is comprised of a small faction of our music group back at UCD (also known as me, Rachel & Jaclyn). Back in our starving-artist days, Rachel hired me as her accompanist for the rest of our years there as music majors. I’m terrible about accepting money from friends, so she offered me home-cooked meals whenever I wanted in exchange for being her/Jaclyn’s accompanist. (Twas a glorious deal.)
• We try to get together once a year on some end of California to hang out, play music, shoot arrows, etc. I really miss our “team bonding” moments (aka running away to a Davis restaurant after practice to get food).

.coterie.

We’re missing Sylvia because she’s taking the picture! And Elyse because she couldn’t make it there that time!

• Although I’ve known Mekala since the 4th grade, we actually didn’t become friends until around freshmen/sophomore year of college (weird how that works, huh? it only took 9 years, haha). I had treble ensemble with Sylvia, but again, we didn’t become friends until sophomore year, and I met Kaitlin at Davis too.
• Physiology and/or our creation of Dames & Fellas A Capella helped us to bond, and after we all graduated and moved back home (other than Kaitlin/Elyse :[ ), Mekala and Sylvia became my running/recipe experimentation buddies.
• We try to all meet up somewhere in the middle of where we all live once a year because we miss each other, and are all freakishly busy/not in the same time zone otherwise, since I’m generally in the eastern time zone, Mekala’s in the middle, and Sylvia/Kaitlin/Elyse are in CA.
• This group name is taken from the name of our group texting app (yep, that’s how we keep in touch. that and the ecards Sylvia sends us). :O

Yay! Here we are. :O They came to see my senior recital! <3

.MH gang.

This is us with our landlord! Kinda blurry because it’s a picture of a picture. :x

• MH is short for the road/hill we live on, but this is basically me and my neighbors in WV. Both of them are full of all sorts of awesome and I am beyond lucky to have them as my neighbors.
• I’m pretty biased towards Adam in terms of bonus points of awesome because we never see Dustin anymore and because Adam cooks me meals (my parents are likely hanging their heads in shame over this because I seem like a total eternal freeloader, but I swear I try to reciprocate ;_; ), picks up random stuff at the store that he knows I’ll like, functions as my alarm clock/cold-weather-living advisor, as well as my study buddy.
• We spend inordinate amounts of time together studying, so it’s a really good thing that we get along so well, or shit would go down. All in all, I couldn’t ask for better neighbors. :O I’ve become severely spoiled and am not really sure what I’m gonna do without them after these two years pass by. :[ :[

.We D.O. Food / hydro flaskers.

These are the hydro flaskers!

• This is the group I hang out with at med school other than my neighbor (this doesn’t happen so often anymore because I started studying at home/med school happened, but we do still see each other! :O).
• We keep each other sane and often make food to share with each other. For the ones who can’t cook (e.g. Kosina, despite the fact that her name means “kitchen”), they buy stuff and bring it in so we’re usually all in good moods.

The majority of We D.O. Food!

.Underground Hula Harlots.

This is the 4 of us plus Kosina! <3 I think I’m holding food.

• This is my original hula group from first year! Three of us made to the same region and are actually all living in the same apartment complex, but Monika’s on the other side of the state and we all miss her dearly. :[
• The “underground” part was because I was just teaching hula by word of mouth during first year (which eventually turned into official weekly classes during second year!). Harlot is just to be ironic, because none of us are actually harlots.

.Church.

•  I love the Lewisburg SDA church. <3 They are a group of truly kind-hearted and amazing people, and I’m so glad that I got to be a part of them for the two years that I was there.
• They are also absolutely phenomenal cooks, and I’m fairly certain that if I could make all my meals the way they did, I could probably be mostly vegan/vegetarian for the remainder of my life. (I do really love chicken, salmon sashimi and Korean BBQ though…) :x
• They were really great about sharing their recipes with me, so I get to share em’ all with you! :D

.HBLers + 1/The Vagal Tones.

This is all of us except me. :O I supply the ovaries to our group. Isaac is the +1.

• Apparently, I don’t actually have a picture of all four of us. Kinda weird, considering how much time we all spent with each other.
• “HBL” stands for Home-Based Learner, which is what Sean, Mike and I were. (In other words, we rarely went to class back in first/second year of med school.) I studied at my neighbor’s apartment for most of my first semester in med school, and later spent most of my waking life in the catacombs.
• The Vagal Tones is our med school band! Isaac is our lead guitarist and male vocalist. Other-Mike (HBL-Mike defected) is our bassist. I’m the keyboardist and female vocalist, and Sean is our drummer! We reversed roles for the picture below though. I know how to play drums for exactly one song (Muse’s Supermassive Black Hole)! We got to perform in Carnegie! :]

The Vagal Tones!