Relatives' Weddings (Part II)

The typical immigrant story starts with memory back to zero, and an empty mindset. As I settled on US ground, a sense of wildness overcame me. No tall buildings, no apartments, and no one walking on the street. Unfamiliar scenery did not prevent me from charging forward, discovering the definitive boundaries of the unknown.

I walked into the small metal door that seem always to be shut tight, and entered into a dim living room with simple yet complete furnishings. Ran over a girl staring at me as if I was an object, trailing behind an older brother with no emotions on his face. What met my eyes were four slanted eyes on blank faces with no expressions of warmth and welcome.

My mother lead my luggages and slowly descends to the dim basement. In a room with no windows, we were situated with a provided full size bed. "You guys can temporarily stay here for a while." A pity help which mother responded with cheerful thank-yous to sweeten people up. I stood there, feeling uncomfortable with crushing celling and sticky carpet, dim lighting and stuffy air. I knew we had no choice but to stay there for a while, but I did not know that my mother was able to get us out of there just a month later. I knew I cannot complain about anything in my relatives place since I was a guest, but I did not know that they had so many things to say about me. I knew that I have to get use to this place very soon, but I did not know that a couple of years later I can stay goodbye to this town forever.

Relatives' Weddings (Part I)

I have two groups of relatives: maternal relatives, and paternal relatives. People in my maternal family sucks, while people in my paternal relatives are really nice. Because my maternal family sucks so much, I choose to talk about this in detail.

My maternal grandfather came from a very big family. It was a family that involved six sons and five daughters. Apparently one of the first few sons died at birth and did not add to the count. I find it quite pointless to have so much children, especially when the family have limited resources. In addition to my modern twist of feminism, I felt sorry for my great grandma, whom I had always viewed with the image of pig and piglets. Am I indicating that I dislike my great grandma? The great grandma whom always showered everyone around her with complaints and disrespect? Quite frankly, yes. The result from having given birth to many children, is a grand separation of groups when those children grew up. Like politics, there were a couple of sons and daughters that my great grandmother favored, a few optimistics whom tried to unite the family just like childhood, a few loners whom refuse to accept their pasts, and a few narcissistics whom only think of themselves. When I was little I usually see my grand aunts and uncles fight against each other verbally, and sometimes physically, which is more entertaining. By the time when I turned to my later teens, I then realized that it was not a family, it was a battlefield.

My family is part of the loners group. We slowly isolated ourselves from all that family politics that was going on within the larger family. We choose to move away from some relatives, we choose to selectively gave out our numbers for contact, we choose to turn off our phones when people called. There were many events that happened before the formation of our current situation, but we have to say, that it is very nice having a small, simple, united family.

My experiences with my relatives were negative, which caused my strong opinions against those people. However, I must admit, that I was also at fault for the outcome. I, unlike other relatives in my generation, am an immigrant. And believe it or not, the whole foreign immigrant status is not a glorious one. When I first came, I immediately given an English name. Soon after I realized what was going on, I developed a strong dislike against that name. It was not only because I do not like the way the name sounds, it was also because my identity was taken away and be given a new one against my will. Of course everyone in my relatives family started calling me by that name. I hated it, but I did not know enough English to accurately express my ideas, and did not know my relatives well enough to speak against them. This vulnerability has placed myself in an extremely unfavorable position, and I remembered it very well.

It is so spicy!

When I order dishes with hot pepper logos next to it, I would first pay attention to how many pepper logos deplayed, then read about the ingredients used to make the dish, then be stuck with the ultimate question: "Is this much spice something I can handle". Now, I take pride at my origin of birth -- a place far far away embedded in hot chilli peppers. People in my town ate spicy food for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Rarely do you see resturants that serves absolutely no spicy dishes.

After I came to the states, I shockingly realized that spicy food is not everything. Indeed, spicy food was looked negatively upon. Well, despite people's resentment towards spicy foods for its ability to cause regurgitation of food through the esophageal sphincter to the esophagus and casing esophagus cancer (sometimes mistaken as heart burn), I still cannot live without it.

Through talking with my family did I realize that there is something called the Scoville scale, a scale that measures the amount of capsaicin within a pepper. Wikipedia listed a very nice table with peppers with different scoville levels. The only pepper that I was familiar with was Jalapeno pepper, Gochujang, Banana pepper, and bell pepper. All of those peppers were less then 10,000 scoville units. Thess facts destroyed my pride in eating spicy food, instead, it made me feel worrysome towards people who eats Naga Viper pepper or Bhut Jolokia on a daily basis.

But back to my original concern of how much spicy can I really handle, maybe around 5,000 scoville scale and nothing more.

Siam House in Cleveland Park, District of Columbia

Siam House is a very famous local thai restaurant in Cleveland park in Washington, DC. I concluded that this humble looking restaurant is famous via an sample conversation below:

Coworker A: Going home?
Coworker B: No, I am meeting up with a friend for dinner.
Coworker A: Where are you guys going?
Coworker B: Cleveland Park, this restaurant called----
Coworker A: That Thai restaurant? Let me know how it is.

This restaurant is located right next to the fire station. Therefore, every now and then we can hear a nice symphony of sirens, which adds more pleasure sitting inside of a dim concrete box. I am not a fan of the size of the restaurant. It is small, and does not have enough space to put personal things (purses, jackets, etc.)

Despite these things, I still consider this place with the best Thai cuisines. My favorite dish is Drunken Noodle, which on the menu has one pepper sign, as oppose to three pepper signs in some of the dishes. I often wipe the place clean with my mouth filled with flavor and pain. So far I still have not tried the dishes with three pepper signs, but I imagine them being on a completely different level.

Some of the sample dishes:



Tom Yum soup with mushrooms. The soup tastes sour, and that is all the comment I have.



Fresh rolls from the appetizers menu. This is cellophone noodles wrapping carrots, avocado, cucumber, eggs, and lettuce dipped in sweet and sour sauce with diced peanuts. This dish is perfect for the summer. The cripsy cucumber goes very well with the mushy avocado, although I believe there might be a better sauce for the fresh rolls. Next time I will try to reproduce a recipe for this dish.



Drunken Noodles! This is my all time favorite dish at this restaurant! I love this dish so much that I forced my friend to switch mine dish with this one that he ordered. When enjoying this dish, you need to be careful of not eating the hot peppers which are carefully hidden inside the flat noodles. One bite will stimulate a lot of neurons on your tongue. The sweet peppers were stir fried under high flame and heat under a few seconds to produce a raw yet cooked taste, and this cannot be done for any home cooked meals.

Missing Home

I have not been back to New York for almost half a year. And before I went back to New York recently for an important event, I was indifferent about New York. Being away from home for a long time, some sentimental feelings diminishes. Of course the moment I went to New York, I started sampling around different restaurants like crazy. Below are some of the most delicious foods I have my heart on for a long time and would never forget:

This is the famous Sichuan style cold noodle skins. Why is it called noodle skins? Because it's flat and kind of reminds people of large piece of skin. The noodles is made fresh and cooked to perfection so that it is both bouncy and chewy. It can be made with flat noodles, pepper sauce, hot oil oil, sesame oil, dice of cilantro and scallions. If you want this plate to be more nutritious, you can add spongey tofu (which is what the resturant provide), and vegetables such as bean spouts and cucumbers.

This is another famous dish -- soup dumplings! What's special about this is that when you bit into it, the soup that are injected inside the buns will mix with the flour skin on the buns, making every bit flavorful. My friend's mother made it for us once, it is absolutely delicious! These buns is made best in small bamboo baskets. And you can replace the cabagge at the bottom with lettuce if you like. I have never made it myself since it require the skill of an experienced chef!

Picture above is the famous korean tofu soup. It is usually made in a traditional soup pot. It comes in different flavors ranging from spicy to non-spicy. Aside from tofu, you can add other things like seafood, beef, pork, and mushrooms. My simple version for this is to mix korean spice powder in hot chili oil as soup base, then add silken tofu, mushrooms, pork, etc. when soup is boiled, then crack an egg on top when done. I am not korean, so for authentic or "right" way to make this, ask a korean.

Now that I am back in Maryland, I really miss these food in New York. And when I say that I am missing home, I really meant that I miss the food.

Runner's Knee

(image obtained from http://www.artintercepts.org/)

Runner's knee is the overuse of knee joints causing arching pain around the knee cap. This is mostly due to overuse of the knee in activities such as running, biking, or just any kind of cardio workouts; weak leg muscles that puts body weight on knee joints; and/or other traumatic events involving the knee. Embarrassing to say, I suffer from runner's knee every once in a while. After two days of short 10-minute cardio workout, I could feel the intense pain the next day morning in my knee joints, which forces me to take break for a day or two. And if I persist on running, the condition will worsen until I can no longer walk. After not able to walk for a month or two, I learned my lesson to give my knee a rest.

A good cardio regimen can be easily established after running 10-15 minutes everyday for 30 days. 30 days is usually a good way for your body to get use to the burning lungs and dry throats for a certain amount of time. However, with the runner's knee, the running regimen is difficult to establish. Usually what I ended up doing is weights for one day, then cardio for another. But without both in one day, it is difficult to obtain the complete post-workout satisfaction.

Checkerboard backgrounds in some photos

If you sometimes wonder why some photos you searched on google image appear to have a checkerboard background? But when you open the image in a separate tab, or saved it in your own folder, the checkerboard background disappeared?

That is because the image itself has no background color. White backgrounds in a photo usually does not impose a problem since majority of websites have white backgrounds. However, in some of the more personalized websites, white backgrounds does not uniquely reflect the owners' character. Therefore, when it comes to website layout designs, one should carefully consider this issue.

An example of a picture with checkerboard background:



An example of the same picture with a white background:



The good thing about white background pictures is that it can be saved as a JPEG, which can be saved at very good qualities (9-12). In the example picture above with white background, the faint blue brush background can appear with a feather affect. Transparent backgrounds can only be saved as GIF formats, which will appear grainy. GIFs also has very defined edges which may not appear to some designers liking.

Max Brenner in Bethesda, MD

Friday night is again one of those times that is only reasonable to hang out with friends. My friends and I went around bethesda row before seeing the movie Godzilla. Along the fancy light-decorated trees, summery restaurant table sets, and red brick roads on Woodmont avenue, is Max Brenner, whose mission is to "create a new chocolate culture worldwide". So far, I don't think they have succeeded too far on their mission yet.

Anyway, to kill time before the movie starts, we went in. It can easily served as a lounge, perfect for a girl time out. Although we have seen many high school teenagers on dates or girl times, many older people adore this place as well.

I find it interesting that they provide number signs, in table top style, to customers waiting on their order.

They have extensive menu that are chocolate themed. Their popular dish is the milk shake, according to Yelp. We ordered Smorez due to low exposure, and find our portion of food nicely calculated. Unfortunately I was not in the smorez mood, so I toasted some marshmallows. Toasting marshmallows makes me want to camp!

The fire pot provided gained an enormous attention. People saw the fire on the smorez, and their one of their own. I am pretty sure that we were advertising smorez for the restaurant. Once the fire ran out, we were able to ask them to get a new one for us, while take a chance to look at what exactly that was burning.

The pick solid inside the pot is ethanol gel. Makes sense.

Overall I would recommend this place as a date or girls night out place for desserts. However, their desserts are on the pricey side, similar to Leopold.

Cartoon Submission

I gave Dr. Fizzy some cartoon ideas, and her review looks positive so far.
So… out of excitement is the submitted cartoon! Hopefully it gets accepted and publish soon on her blog!

Sudden block of 10 minutes

Sometimes while doing research, I encounter a block of free time before the next procedure. Usually I know myself pretty well to make adequate plans. If I want to be lazy, then I schedule one thing after another so during those block of time, I can just lay around and be lazy. If I am on full energy, then I will schedule two things going on at the same time to practice my multiple-tasking skills.

Today experiments end up taking much longer than I suspected. I ended up with a huge block of time in between incubations for ELISA. I prepared Excel sheets for post-ELISA calculations, organized my bench, cleaned the biological hoods, and still left with 15 minutes! I started to wonder around aimlessly around the lab, pecking over other coworkers bench for interesting things. Eventually, with bordom, I turned back to my work space and turned on the table light. Soon after, I started turning all the table lights available at my bay to increase photon exposure and to establish positive stimulants.

Then I started feeling guilty. Normal pre-medical students spend their free time reading about enticing articles about complicated diseases such as craniosynostosis. I, on the other hand, spends my free time turning on lights at workstations for a new look.

Complains?

Some people like to complain. They complain just to let things out. Others complain for a suggestion. Some people like to listen. They listen to get to know more about others lives. Others listen actively to give their opinions. 

If complainers gets mismatched with the wrong kind of listeners, the pair would get a less desired outcome.

And this is my friend and I at the dinner table:

Me: Blah blah blah long story short my boss is preventing me from doing greater things due to my lack of a degree.

Friend: You should tell your boss's boss to let your boss know who's the boss.

Me: But then I would get into trouble since my boss's boss trust my boss.

Friend: You should at least make the initiative. You will never know unless you try. Just show your boss's boss the proof.

Me: But it's difficult get proof and plus this would get my boss in trouble.

Friend: So what? You need to confront things and clear this out!

Me: But I feel like there are underlying rules that you have to obey in my work environment, if I don't follow those un-said rules, I would make a bad impression.

Friend: Why do you have to follow the rules? Do you know who didn't follow the rules? 

Me: …

Friend: AMERICA!

Me: …

Friend: And what happened if they didn't follow the rules?

Me: …

Friend: They WIN!

Me: …

Friend: …

Me: Yeah okay I think you are very right. I should just do as you say.

Friend: Yeah.

I attempted arguing against my friend by giving dead-ends to the issue. I thought that was a easy way to prevent further discussion of the issue. However, some people, like my friend, seemed really worked up on the issue of giving me a good opinion. If that kind of thing happens to you, maybe take a step down would be the easier way to prevent further discussion.

What is laziness

I encounter several thoughts of laziness in a day. Once when getting up from bed, once for making breakfast, once for recording on my lab notebook, once for second-checking of errors, and even once for holding bathroom break for longer. When I was studying for my MCAT, I was certainly having this thought often.

But is this really laziness? Is un-wanting to get up in the morning due to lack of sleep really called laziness? I think it's called irresponsibility. Is not wanting to make breakfast due to lack of time called laziness? I think it's called lack of interest. Is not wanting to recording down lab procedures as mandatory lab practice laziness? I think it's called lack of appreciation. And is not wanting to study for MCAT called laziness? I think it is my inability to accept reality. 

Laziness, defined in the dictionary as "the quality of being unwilling to work or use energy", is just a by-product or reflection of other negative traits I exhibit. In social psychology, people quickly associate a trait with another individual so that they can conveniently recall everyone they know about that individual. Isn't that laziness? And applying internally to an individual, laziness is just a way for one to figure out the most effective and energy conservative way to get things done. Isn't that smart? Therefore, if one calls me laziness, I will defined with pride, that I am indeed, not lazy, but instead, not interested/not appreciative/irresponsible.

Tulips

My first time trying acrylic painting at VisArt workshop in Rockville, MD was a blast. The class was on a saturday from 2pm to 5pm. Before I started the class, I was dwelling around downtown Rockville. The red-bricked streets and the close proximity of restaurants and shops reminded me of downtown Bethesda, vibrating a very modern yet rural feel. My major discovery was BonChon (korean fried chicken that is slightly different from American fried chicken) on Gibbs Street. The town center of Rockville is a big square plaza surrounded by 3-4 story-tall early modern offices and shops. It had a stage set up with chairs and tables, seemed to be getting ready for a performance.

I was early for my class, so I was able to do a little chit-chat with our instructor of the day Mark Collins. At the beginning of the class, Mark tried not to give us lectures but instead pointers on color and brush techniques. Apparently to make a color darker, you have to mix with the opposite color on the color wheel, instead of just mixing the color black. We were painting a field of tulips with a windmill. I had major problems with the clouds. Often times painted something good and have no idea how I did that. But after 3 hours of battle, I was finally able to whip up a painting that is recognizable. I think this is a good start on my painting career. My next project will perhaps be Albert Bierstadt's Among the Sierra Nevada Mountains.

The Cheltenham Illustration Awards

Are you into graphic design? Have you been looking into some outlet to show your amazing but hidden graphic design skills? Do you want to rock that photoshop and illustrator like no other? Well there is a chance for you.



Held by the University of Gloucestershire in United Kingdom, the Cheltenham Illustration Awards is opening to submissions from everyone who are interested in graphic design. This competition is open once annually. There is always a theme associated with it. The theme for year 2014 is "Being Human". To help you figure out literally, the official website provides a narrative line: "Humanity is self-evidently all around us: although all of us are unique and different, we all are born, live, love, feel, eat, sleep and move – and ultimately we all die. Your brief can explore the shared universal principles of being human, or celebrate the diversity and cultural mix that forms today’s society." Different people's interpretation of begin human can be different depending on their life experiences, environments, and education. Works will not only reflect the theme, but also each and every designers personal experiences and personality. It will be interesting to see the works submitted for this year.

This submission for this competition is FREE, and the with your own work of art at size 50x40cm and resolution 300dpi. They expect the work to be 7-9 quality JPEG, which is not bad since the choosen works will be printed out on actual media. You will get nothing for winning, except have your work exhibited at Illustrator's symposium and printed in the Annual.

I wonder if graphic designers will choose vector based or pixel based softwares for editing their works. The deadline for submission is June 1st, 2014. I am going to see what I get by June 1st.

Minimalism

Althrough it is a bit late to advertise for this event, but this weekend at Bethesda is the Bethesda Fine Arts Festival! This event last through the weekend: Saturday May 19th 10am to 6pm, and Sunday May 20th 10am to 5pm.

The media provided for those fine arts varies from Jewelry, sculpture, to paint or clothing and fiber. As a beginner in acrylic painting, I am more interested in the painting booth that will be available. There are some impressionist, still-lifes, landscapes, but no minimalists. To be honest, I was a bit disappointed.  Minimalistic paintings can be very easy home accessories, and are good products for home owners to decorate the walls of their homes.

Minimalism is a movement in post-modern art that people either love or hate. The emphasis on minimalistic paintings can be described by Ad Reinhardt's "more is less, less is more". Minimalism raised to react against abstract expressionism, against the flattening images of the 3-dimensional world on a 2-dimensional world. The simplicity of plain paint, perhaps in combination with  another shades of color make make a beautiful work of art yet convey meaning. For people who do not understand art as much, minimalistic paintings serve as easy home decor that cannot go wrong. In the 21st century, minimalism has already silently occupied the leading artistic trends. Kate Spade, famous fashion designer, uses geometric shapes in simple and contrasting colors to create a modern New-York feel for her products. Minimalistic architecture, more specifically interior design, now go for minimal embellishments and usage of dual-functional furnitures for space. In digital design, editors tend to go for a less busy appearance, usually with a single button on a blank screen as the start of their projects. Advertisements now go for symbols and at most a two-lined messages in the middle of the poster for the visual appearance.

Perhaps the current trend of favoring minimalism is in correlation to the raising demand for space and efficiency. However, the idea of minimalism in itself is being adopted in the minds of designers as trendy styles.

The Devil Wears Scrubs

One of the blogs that I have been following since last year is by Dr.Fizzy McFizz: A Cartoon Guide to Becoming a Doctor. She complains a lot, which sometimes gives me a mis-sense that she, too, is one of those doctors who regret going to medicine. McFizz always give the right amount of medical information that satisfies the eager doctor-wanna-be pre-medical students/post-bacs, which is what I love the most about her blogs. I also love her blogs with cartoons that often seen a bit sarcastic; but nowadays, everyone seems to appreciate satire rather than just plain funny. It seems like McFizz is often on the defensive side about her blogs, against the comments, in her biography, etc. It certainly seems so in her Q&A section, which gives a very detailed description about herself.

Recently I have been hunting down a book to read. And it just so happens that Dr. Fizzy wrote a book! And it is about (surprise surprise) medicine. I admit that I have not been reading her blog recently, because otherwise I would have known about this book which was published last year. The writing style of the book is how she writes all her blog posts, and the stories seems very similar to real life experiences. This is an excellent read for students who are thinking about the field of medicine. It gives pre-medical students a realistic view of the turmoil a doctor will go through.

Yesterday I went to visit one of my all-time favorite role model: my family doctor. After telling her about my upcoming MCAT exam, she was extremely encouraging. She told me the serious of hoops she had to jump through: taking the MCAT, followed by the 3 steps of USMLE, then residency, finally the Boards. Yet despite all of those challenges one had to go through to become a qualified doctor, she still would not regret her profession. She told me, that no matter how bad the patients she encounter, and how ridiculous the paperwork gets, she still enjoys every single day of her profession. Not only my family doctor, my all time favorite mentor (whom also happens to have a blog: Rainbows Ahead) was also very encouraging about my dream of becoming a doctor. It is true that pre-medical students have doubts about the problems they face, such as having the highest suicide rates, guilt going through after misdiagnosis, and not able to show any weakness, etc. Medical schools have classes that center around morality, empathy, altruism, etc, that will train you to face those tough situations. So if you are a pre-medical student having doubts about whether you can be a good doctor, I say if you are really enthusiastic in doctoring, fear not.

Juices and Sauces

Work was nice and quiet today, like the quietness before a big rainstorm depicted in beethoven's 9th symphony 1st movement.

Yesterday I was fortunate enough to use my roommate's ultra "Vita-mix", a high performance blender that was said to create very fine juice. Without the patience to consult their nice recipe book, I jumped in without prior planning.

Cucumber and Apple Juice

First I peeled the cucumber, and got some gala apples. Those apples have been left in the fridge for one or two weeks, so I thought might as well put it to decent use.

Then, throw them into the blender with some water. Coconut water, if you can your hands on it, is a good choice. It will make the juice tastes fresher and crisper. Let the blender go on for about 2 minutes under high power, then you are done!
 
The most annoying process is the separation process. If you want a good smoothie, then do the above with the addition of honey. You can also separate out the juice from sauce by filtration through cheesecloth.

Even now and then transfer the leftover "sauce" on top of cheesecloth onto a separate container, that would be your sauce! If you are wondering why would you ever need the sauce, I found fruit sauce is actually really good ingredient for a nice mushy popsicle. Perfect for the soon-to-come summer.
 
Here are some good combinations to try if you feel adventurous:
- watermelon and cucumber and/or mint
- spinach, kale, and cucumber
- lemon and mint
- orange, pinapple, and papaya

When There Was a Clue

In the one-two-three year transition between undergraduate to grad school, often times I think about whether the way I am going is really right for me. Eventually I reach a question of whether my goal of medical school is due to my infatuation of the medical field, my belief of an omni-giving life, or just  my stubbornness.

Yesterday I had the pleasure of speaking about this puzzling topic with my 60-year-old roommate. It took place in a car after we spent two happy hours shopping for groceries. She is a type I diabetic, with chronic back pain, constant acid reflux, and depression. She also went through a cardiac bypass surgery due to her genetically related Wolff-Parkinson syndrome (that's an irregular electrical pulses leading to irregular rhythm in pumping of heart). When she first told me about her medical symptoms, I felt sorry for her. I thought god was so unfair with some people while so lenient with others. It was unfair that she had to experience through so much while I had lived twenty-something years of my life being extremely healthy. Will I only understand the pain and the emotional struggle of likes of her if I was an actual patient? I tried thinking in her shoe, and tried applying those horrible un-curable diseases onto me. I then realized the intensity of hopelessness one could become, followed by the amount of positive thinking one should require to keep on battling those diseases.

My roommate asked me why I was so puzzled about my future. My uncertainty evolved from lack of confidence in academic performance, forming ideal relationships with others, and patience. I asked her that if I were her internist, would she trust me as her doctor. She said yes, perhaps due to her lack of trust in her current internist, perhaps due to our fragile relationships as roommates, or perhaps she really trust me.

As we discuss about these things, it suddenly started to rain. With the presence of sunlight from the other side, it formed a rainbow due to the refraction of light in water droplets. My roommates said to me, maybe god is trying to tell you that everything is going to be okay. Surprisingly, I was more assured than ever.

I also found another rainbow in very faint intensity running in parallel. I have never seen two rainbows in parallel to each other, so I snapped another picture.

Can you tell an acrylic painting from an oil painting?

After some research on starting out oil painting, I have came upon the opinion of acrylic painting. They are pretty similar to beginners. They both require brushes and pastels, both can paint the same kind of landscape that I am interested in. Except, some major difference once you get into the actual painting process.

Oil paints takes a long time to dry. By "a long time", I mean a day or two. And it makes sense. If you poor a drop of oil and a drop of water on a counter top, which one would dry faster? Of course the water drop. And because of the slow evaporation rate, it is much easier to mix colors with oil. You can attend the oil painting after an hour or two to change some clouds, mount ranges, etc. and make it appear as if there were the original artist's intention. As a result, oil paints are much more blended. If you see an oil painting with no sharp edges throughout, chances are the painting is oil. Acrylic, on the other hand, dries very fast (one or two hours). Acrylics are water based. From a typical acrylic painting of landscape, you can see very distinctive lights and shadows, with minimal blend between different shads of colors.

The picture above is by one of my favorite artist Leonid Afremov, called two couples. This is a typical palette knife acrylic painting, as a good example of the sharp edges of knife strokes of acrylic paintings.

As a chance to advertise a good Smithsonian program: The smithsonian associates. They are starting a 6-session evening introduction class on oil painting starting July 10th, 2014 at 6:30pm. Concurrently, a 6-session evening introduction class on acrylic painting starting July 11th, 2014 at 6:00pm.

See you there.

Watching the Withering Tree

It was a sunny sunday morning. Jamey got up early to complete her laundry before running out of cloth for the next work week. She looked at her phone, unable to see any good morning text messages from her long distance boyfriend.
"Oh well, he is probably sleeping still." She thought. Turning to her multiple loads of laundry nicely positioned in the middle of her bedroom, she picked up a bag, gruesomely moved towards the washer.
Sunday use to be a fun day for her. Sunday meant hanging out with family, lunch at a familiar restaurant, hanging out with friends, and hanging out with boyfriend. Until she moved for her new work position, sunday now meant chores, packing lunches for work, and emptiness.
She folded her dried cloth slowly and neatly, moving her robotic arms controlled by perfectionism. To prevent boredom, she turned to a random TV show to yield some stimulation on her minds. Among the ambient laughter and background music, rings her phone.
"Jay must be up." She slowly moves her body over to peek at the screen placed away from her. 'Good Morning' said iMessage, 'time to wake up'. "But I am already awake." she thought, turning back to her automatic routine. She placed her cloth away, and dialed Jay's number. It ringed twice, and:
"Hello?"
"Hey."
A familiar silence. She moved to her desk. He remained seated on his couch. She turned on her computer. He grabbed a blanket. She continued her TV show. He was watching a game.
"So what are you gonna do today?"
"Um...I don't know. Maybe I will hang out with my friends later."
"Oh."
Ambient music playing. Jamey stares at two women in the TV talking about things she will only worry about ten years later.
"They said they want to hang out and maybe watch the game later."
"Oh."
Another touch down! But not his winning team. The Bandettes are doing so bad this year.
"The game this afternoon is going to be big. It's their championship game."
"Oh."
"All the best teams are playing."
"Oh."
"Yeah, so I'm gonna go watch the game with them."
"Oh."
Jamey looked outside. A quiet residential area, occasionally locals walk their dogs to the nearby trail. Nothing was going on. She did not see any dog walkers today. Not yet.
"What are you going to do?"
"Oh, I haven't decided yet."Jamey looked down, thinking.
"Okay. Well let me know if you decide."
"Maybe cooking something so I can pack lunch."
"Cool."
"Yeah."
The ambient music turned more serious as the TV show changes its course. Will the protagonist be tricked by the shooter? Screen on Jamey's computer suddenly changed. Progressive, GoDaddy.com, StateFarm, are all companies she came to familiarity thanks to the amount of TV shows she watched. The sharp sunlight radiated in through the windows. Sharp increase in light intensity gained her notice. She looked outside. "It's afternoon already," she thought. Listening to the background noise transmitted sporadically through the other line. A few more commercials to tolerate: catfood, eHarmony.com, allegry pills. Next screen shows the shooter talking into a room never scene before. He knocked on the heavy wooden door, and another individual looking exactly like him opened it.
"What? who is this guy?" Jamey thought to herself, then said to the other side of her phone: "Okay, I am going to hang up."
"What? Why?" Jay slightly startled by the sudden rejection.
"I---have things to do."
"Okay. Call me later, okay?"
"Okay"
"I love you."
"I love you, too."