a few down, a bunch more to go

well, so far so good with my social contract. I've organized a drinks night at a local bar for all my classmates who are gonna be in the bay area (74 in all if you count internships!). I've had one swimming lesson so far. Had my placement test for Chinese class (i passed to intermediate!). Cooking more - had a dinner party at my house with some friends. Pasta puttanesca - mmmmm. And for the most part, i'm doing all my reading and work for my classes.

As for getting to know Chicago better, i've started compiling a list of things i want to do and have started sending out invites for them. let's see how many i can actually check off in the next 7 weeks...

• Bob Chinn's Crabhouse (http://www.bobchinns.com/) - for those of you who have never heard of this place, it's about 40-50 minutes outside of Chicago and has been around for about 15 years. They serve all sorts of fresh seafood (you got it, crab is one of them) that is flown in fresh daily and can be prepared, like, 7 different ways. They are one of the top 5 grossing independent restaurants in the country and they serve 3,000 customers a day. Can't wait. Hmm. Seafooooood.
• Art Institute of Chicago - believe it or not, i STILL haven't gone after a year and a half.
• Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind - The longest running show in Chicago, this is the Neofuturists' signature show that attempts to do 30 mini-plays in 60 minutes. It changes up often so that each time is a different experience and the cost of tickets is $7 plus $1 times the roll of a single six-sided die.
• Baha'i House of Worship - it's the only one in the country (there are 9 in the world) and it's only a mile and a half from our school. Supposed to be beautiful.
• Architectural Boat Tour - supposed to be great views during the good weather season and really interesting background on how the second city was developed.
• Brunch and neighborhood shopping - lots of cool neighborhoods in Chicago and what better way to explore than to go to brunch in a different neighborhood each time (on a weekday to beat the crowds) and do a little shopping afterwards. Orange, Toast, M. Henry, here i come!
• Dim Sum at Phoenix Restaurant - i know, i know. growing up in the chinatown suburbs (we had a plaza we called the Great Mall of China), it's gonna be hard to compare dim sum in the windy city to Southern Cal, but a girl's gotta try! You can only live without dim sum for so long!

my spring social contract

so Mark Albion, an entrepreneur, business man, motivational speaker of sorts came to give us a chat last quarter. one of the things he talked about was making a social contract with yourself. tell your friends or your family your goals for yourself for the next few months, years, whatever. this is a social contract that you put out into the open and that other people can call you out on and this will help you stick to your goals without getting too sidetracked. "Remember when you said that five years from now, you were gonna quit your high-powered job and become a teacher?" "Remember when you said that no matter what, money wasn't going to take over your life?" "Remember when you said that next quarter you weren't gonna be a drunken lush anymore?" Well, somethings can change...

so here's my social contract for this quarter before i graduate, so i can make sure to try and do them:

• COOK MORE! playing host is fun and when you have more time and are addicted to the Food Network, it's even more fun. biggest accomplishment will be perfecting mom's famous burmese dishes.
• LEARN HOW TO SWIM. yes, i know i know. i grew up in california. i took lessons at the Y. but REALLY (why doesn't anyone believe me?), i don't know how to swim. i even won a set of swimming lessons at the charity auction ball. but my nice friend Baby Corn is giving me free lessons at the gym. yay for not drowning. at least spring brings better weather and i will be in better shape too.
• LEARN MANDARIN FLUENTLY. okay, so i'm chinese and i can technically speak it. to maybe 3rd graders. or my boyfriend's grandma for about 3 sentences (then she starts to look really confused). but i can speak in my dialect fluently (but no one speaks my dialect, so it's like being a shoe salesman in a city filled with people with no feet). i'm planning to take chinese lessons if freaking Berlitz would ever call me back and give me that darn placement level test. i'm trying - you have to give me credit for that.
• GET TO KNOW CHICAGO BETTER. there are so many things i've wanted to do over the last couple of years in the city and i've just been too busy or a lazy ass to go check it out. but now, time is short! architectural tour. funky plays. neighborhood brunch and shopping. jazz clubs. the weird old guy who sits in front of whole foods everyday. whatever, i'm game!
• DO WELL IN MY CLASSES. so it's not that i haven't done well in my classes. but let's just say that i don't necessarily read all of the assignments. or put my 100% in all the projects. this quarter, i'm gonna try and really learn. i'm gonna read before class. i'm gonna participate. i'm gonna be the student that my professors have always wanted. yeah - it's only 2nd week (or is it 3rd?), so i'm still feeling ambitious...
• BAY AREA PEOPLE UNITE! organize an SF happy hour for all the people in my graduating class who will be working in the bay area. i think there's 30-40 of us. why not get the party started now?
• REGULAR HANG OUT TIME before we all go our separate ways. it's hard, but we're trying to do regular brunch things and dinner things and i've now ventured into this whole new world of couples dinners. apparently people have been doing this all year. who knew? i wanna get in on dis.
• GET TO KNOW PEOPLE I HAVE ALWAYS LIKED, but never gotten to know before we all graduate. you know those people. you always have great conversations when you bump into them. can tell they are great people and totally likeable. but you guys swing in different circles and never make an effort to get to know each other better. i like them. these people are not to be confused with the ones i've tried being friends with for a year and a half now and have come to the sorry conclusion that, no, i still don't like you after all that. don't worry. it's you, not me.

nice people have character

i think it's interesting that when nice people perform an act of kindness - like they do every day in their lives - others react with "that's nice. it's so like [insert nice person's name here] to do that" and when mean people do something nice - for once in their lives - people are like "wow, that's so great of [insert mean person's name here] to do that!" and seem to appreciate it so much more.

i was reading material for my class for tomorrow and came across a quote from Alexis de Tocqueville who said that personal character constituted "the habits of the heart" to describe character as "a consistent pattern that constantly recurs, expressing who we are by what we do. No single act or statement shapes our character."

So next time someone says something nice or does something kind, appreciate it for who that person has always been to you, not just for his or her one act of kindness. my public service announcement of the day.

how sweet it is

i am going to miss the student life a lot. a replay of the last twenty-four hours reminds me just how sweet it is:

• went to Pete Miller's last night - a local bar for a friend's birthday. Bumped into 10 or so more friends there coincidentally. so nice. good friends.
• went on to The Keg (yes, that's what it's called) for a performance by a couple of classmates who are in a band called the Rocket Pockets. Bumped into a gazillion other people i know. my boyfriend was a guest bartender there that night for a Special Olympics fundraiser (NOT as fancy as it sounds) and had on the perfect attire - an Afro wig. In order for them to maximize the bar's use of him, i told about 20 of his friends to order the most complicated drinks possible during his shift. worked like a charm. ;)
• went to go find food after a night at the bars, only to find that at 2:30 am, most things around this quaint town are closed. off to bed - no class on Wednesdays anyway.
• woke up after a good 7 hours of sleep to head over to brunch and book club meeting. it's a group of good girlfriends and we read all the business books that we always say we should get around to reading (The World is Flat, Blink, etc) and talk about it over brunch. you can call me a geek, but what are you doing on your Wednesday mornings/ afternoons?? not having a denver omelette discussing how the world is becoming more globalized i bet. yeah, thought so.
• dentist appt in the middle of the day - not the highlight, but it's still not work...
• it's the afternoon now. nice and sunny outside. nice time to meet with a couple more friends at a cafe to go over our plans this summer to travel to Morocco for three weeks. life is good. especially with iced chai lattes.
• go home, think about a nap and instead decide to do some work for the board i sit on as part of a Board Fellows program at school and then check email (i don't care what people say, email is work to me!)
• decide to cook dinner tonight (beef stew - chinese style, mabo tofu, soup, kale) and watch the latest episode of Lost (it's sooo good. and why does Kate always look so fresh and clean?)
• i realize i don't have any class tomorrow either. hmm, another free day. what to do...

This may seem boring to you, but as my last 9 weeks here start to dwindle down quickly, i realize that every Wednesday come this fall, i will definitely not have the luxury of doing most of these things, if any, when i'm working again. I mean, i do want to work again. don't get me wrong. in the sense that i'll be doing something real again that effects more people than just myself or a group project in a class. that will be gratifying. but i'm not gonna lie - life's pretty good right now.

just soaking in the sun and thinking about Morocco...