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donna8157
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Name: Donna
Gender: Female
Interests: Film nouveux, JDoramas, Golf, Swimming, MG42 Camping, Micropipetting (lol), and Takizawa Hideaki ^_^
Expertise: Genetics/Evolution
Occupation: Student
Industry: Research
Message: message me
Member Since:
5/20/2003
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| Hello. It's been another pretty long absence from Xanga. Anyway, today I went to Chinatown with Prasant in the search of a new cell phone. My older one had been giving me trouble since I couldn't access my voice mail and people had not been able to leave me any voice mail. Anyway, we went to the store on Grant/California (? - near that area) and found a cell phone store that sold unlocked cell phones with great deals if you sign up. I picked a Samsung SGH D600 which only recently released in Hong Kong.
It's very sleek with a large screen. It has a 2.0 Megapixel camera along with video, voice recognition, MP3 player, and this new T-flash thing which is a smaller version of Compact Flash. It also has a bunch of other features. I like the picture editing one where you can put little emoticons on your pictures. Oh yeah, it also has this nature sounds thing with Rain, Forest, Ocean, etc. It's interesting, but I don't know what it could be used for. Here are some pictures.
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| Hello. This weekend (Saturday) was Savi's birthday. We celebrated with Steve, Kerry, Bakhti, Zeke, Himanshu, Prasant, and me. They went rock climbing at a gym near Mission. While walking with them there, we came upon this piece of shit (literally) with a flag stuck on top of it. The flag sported a picture of Bush. Lol. It's just crazy.
Then they treated us to a Comedy Club called the Green Room where this Mexican stand-up performed. He was pretty funny. Then we watched "The Family Guy: Stewie the Untold Story". It was okay, just a prolonged episode. | | |
| Lately I've been having dreams about everyone, I think it's because I miss them: Amy, Karen, Pam, Shana, Kavita, Caren, and Kanoong. Anyway, last night I watched "City of God". It takes place in this city called City of God, near Rio de Janeiro. It revolves around a young boy named Rocket who grew up there amidst all the crime and aspires to become a photographer.
Karen had recommended this movie to me awhile back and I only got to watch it now. Wow, it was just excellent. Great story plus great shots, nice editing. I highly recommend watching this. It's a must see. | | |
| Hello. I hope everyone had a great Christmas! I came back home to FL Sunday morning (Christmas morning). The flight was long and tiresome, but somehow I managed to stay up the whole night. I had a lot to entertain myself with on the plane. I finished reading this book called "The Sari Shop" by Rupa Bajwa. Wow, it was an amazing and intense read. I highly recommend it.
The story revolves around a twenty-six year old Indian male named Ramchand. He works in a popular sari shop showing saris to women six days a week, from morning to night. He lives a tough life - being overworked and underpaid. He feels that he has little meaning in his life and derives pleasure from watching the newest Bollywood films with his coworkers or going to a duhba to eat samosas and such. One day, the shop learns that one of the city's richest and most prominent person's daughter is going to have a wedding. With some luck, Ramchand is assigned to go to their mansion and show the saris to them. His life changed at that point - being around such learned people, he decided that he wanted to take up learning English again. He goes to the bookstore and buys a few English books and begins his self study.
Anyway, like most of the books by Indian authors that I've read, this one really tore at my emotions. After reading this book I felt .. angry. But more of a repressed type of anger. Ramchand discovers some terrible, terrible things about the realities of life, politics, society, and the ugly aspects of human nature. During one scene of the book, I was in between wanting to vomit and wanting to curse and punch the characters in the story. It was jusr that involving. I guess I'm a sucker for tragedies - blame that on Chinese dramas and movies that I watched while growing up.
I highly recommend the story. It's great and short enough to finish in about 1 and a half hours. (It's about 240 pages). Definitely worth it. | | |
| Hello again. Yesterday was Zeke's bday outing. Well, the day before that:
Friday, December 2, 2005
Prasant had his gig at "Counterpulse" which is located at 9th/Mission near Civic Center Bart Station. Anyway, the show was a fundraiser to raise money for Parijat Desai's dance company which is a mixture of modern/Indian/martial arts dance. It was definitely very interesting. There was some poetry, some dance (all choreographed and performed by Parijat Desai), and some music (from Prasant's trio). Prasant's trio consisted of a bass player (Devon) and a drummer (Andre Sumelius). They were really great. Devon is considered one of the best, if not the best bass player in the area. Andre is a great Finnish drummer who won a Finnish grammy for his jazz album in 2003. They performed altogether 2 songs - Ascent and Charukesi (untitled). It went off really well considering they didn't even get to rehearse together until 15 minutes before the show. Really amazing that they were able to pull it together and do it so well, especially the second song.
Afterwards, we went to Smitha and Ganesh's place and watched this documentary about Tuvan throatsinging. It revolved around this blind native San Franciscan named Paul Pena who was a blues guitarist that later became interested in throatsinging. He travels to Tuva and goes into this contest that happens once every three years for throatsinging. He wins an award for being audience's favorite. (Kaygyrra is his style of throatsinging)
Saturday, December 3, 2005
We woke up early this morning for Zeke's birthday outing. We went to Point Reyes which is a National Park in California that is situated near the Pacific ocean for hiking. We got there early and had to wait for the rest of the gang (Zeke, Savi, Himanchu, Josh, Bakhti, and Steve) for an hour and a half. Anyway, we took the Bear Valley trail which is altogether an 8.4 mile trail towards the ocean. We walked through woods, valleys, and plains. It was very, very beautiful. We finally reached our destination which was Arch Rock. It's a cliff overlooking the ocean. The sight was just amazing.
On our trek back we saw some fawns in the grass. They were eating. 
For lunch we had Grilly's burritos in Fairfax. It's a cute little town that kind of reminded me of Mt.Zion's little town. I had a Tofu, Veggie, and Cheese burrito. It was really good, but of course any food would have been good because we were all starving. | | |
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