Ultimate Coffee Date: October 2014

I can’t believe it’s already October! (I feel like I say this every time a new month arrives, but it’s true!) It’s the first Saturday of the month, so…time for another virtual coffee date! How has everyone been doing? :]

If we were having coffee/tea this morning, I would tell you that learning TKD + BJJ has been really, really fun. I’m worried that my ER schedule isn’t going to allow me to keep going to classes as often as I’d like! :[ Our instructor is really awesome, and I think the classes are also perfect for me because I have a whole lot of pent-up rage in me from previous experiences in my life. Most of it is directed towards the peeping Tom who broke into our (my + 3 of my closest friends’) apartment back in undergrad and stole a bunch of stuff.(Joy oh joy, a pervert and a thief.)

You’ll have to excuse the terrible photo quality (I took it on my super-old phone from back in the days of yore). It’s 4 years after the fact and I kinda still want to beat the crap outta him. :[ One could say that I am very capable of holding grudges, but if it matters any, it’s only reserved for people who really deserve it.

The lock pretty much gave out and died because he bodyslammed the door so many times. I’m not sure what I would’ve done if I’d actually been armed at the time.

(That plank of wood is there to keep the door shut.)

This is how I’d like to make him feel, but since I will likely never see him again, the next person who tries anything on me will likely feel the wrath of all past transgressions combined.

That being said…that’s also my very poor segway into another post about Davis. I love it there, even despite having had our apartment broken into. I’m vaguely concerned that I look through very, very rose-tinted glasses though. I do acknowledge and very much remember that there were some pretty bad times there (namely, my time spent taking organic chemistry where I had serious recurrent thoughts about biking in front of a bus), but on the whole, I really enjoyed my time there. The claim is that there “wasn’t much to do,” but I never, ever had enough time to do everything I wanted to do, and it wasn’t like I didn’t give it my best effort either.

Davis was my first-choice school back in high school. :]

I wonder though…was it because of the people I was with there, or was it Davis itself? (Honestly, it’s probably a mixture of both.) I still look back very fondly on my years there–yes, they were hectic and I barely ever had free time, but my last two years there still rank as two of the best years of my life (if not the two best years of my life). …But if my best friends aren’t there anymore and few of the people I know are left (other than my professors! <3 ), will I still love it as much as I used to?

I met a whole lot of the super-cool people in my life in Davis! :O

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about my “relocation criteria,” because I’m allowed to set up almost all of my 4th-year rotations pretty much anywhere I want (so long as it’s approved). I recently got my elective rotation approved!!! Granted, my initial request for Sports Medicine there was rejected (aka dashed my heart to a billion pieces, but we shall not speak of that). I will be in Bridgeport working with the head of the FM Residency Program there (I’m somewhat intimidated/apprehensive, but what better way to gain experience and learn, right?!)!

That being said, if I think of things later on down the line, aka where I want to end up eventually/long-term…I’ve narrowed it down to the following.

Relocation Criteria

• Warm weather
• Relatively close to family/friends
• Relatively close to an Asian market
• Relatively close to a Trader Joe’s or some such similar store
• Not located in a ginormous city

Bonuses:

• Close to lots of explorable + pretty outdoorsy places, and preferably not landlocked, because I happen to love beaches
• Located in a place where driving is not a necessity (e.g. bike-friendly, or at least has sidewalks)
  

  Davis is quite possibly the most bike-friendly town in the country.

• Relatively low cost of living

I went to Danville the other day to grab lunch with one of my friends, and we started talking about this, which made both of us super, super excited about the possibility of moving up there. (He says he could totally see himself happily living back there again too.)

If one of the FM residency programs I’m looking into over there were to take me in, I could do all of the following again:

• Be an accompanist for the Music Department once more so that I could (a) keep music in my life and (b) earn some side monies so I can pay off my loans a little faster
  

  We used to have the coolest conversations and/or naps on this bench!

• Volunteer for Paul Hom Asian Clinic again!
  

  I mean…PHAC really is kinda the basis for why I wanted to go to med school to begin with!

• Continue piano lessons with my former piano teacher?! (I miss her so much!)
  

  (I probably look all glow-y and happy because she just gave me super-positive feedback on my recital. <3) My dad + my piano students/their dad are in the background!

• Take up voice lessons (at long last), since I never got the chance to?
• Horseback riding lessons!
• Classes at the Experimental College
• Sushi buffets! Thai restaurants! Frozen yogurt! Food in general
  

  Birthday Sushi!

  

  Thai iced Tea at Thai Canteen!

• Continue being a research subject for more monies!
  

  This is where I was often a research subject for free!

• Could I even join Na Keiki ‘O Hawai’i (UCD’s Hawai’i Club) again!? Oh em gee, this is getting better and better.
  

  One of the first carwash fundraisers we had during my freshman year!

I started looking into affordable housing over there, and I feel like it’d be pretty darn awesome to try living in the Domes, or one of the other co-op housing places. As I stated in a previous post, I’d absolutely love to learn more about gardening, sustainable living, and the like…there’s a wealth of information I could get from that, and I think it could be really fun too! Unfortunately, the Domes only takes students (but what about alumni!?), so there is a tiny chance that I’d have a better chance of getting into the other ones.

If I were to get into said FM program there though, the income they’d provide wouldn’t let me qualify me for low-income housing. (But what if I were to tell them about my crippling student debt in my application!? I really feel that more than a quarter of a million dollars’ worth of debt should land me in the low-income bracket. >_>)

This is obviously all speculative, as I’m sure I won’t have all the spare time in the world, but still! This would be all sorts of awesome. I would be thrilled to be back there (or back in the bay) for my residency!

I’ll be keeping all my limbs crossed!

• What would you include in your relocation criteria?
  (If you’ve already settled down somewhere, what did you take into consideration when moving, if you did?)
  
• Is there anywhere you’ve lived that you’ve really, really loved?
  Where was it, and was it because of the people, the memories, the place itself, or something else?
• What makes you consider a place to be “home”?
  

Thanks for stopping by, and I hope you have a wonderful day/week/month! <3 Until next time!