Back at Purdue!

Hello its been a while since I've posted! Thats because I've been pretty darn busy. My flight back to the US was quite an adventure. I finally made it to San Francisco after many many delays, long looooong waits in lines.. only to realize that my baggage was still in HK, and I had to wait 14 hours for the next flight to Chicago!!!! Called Johanna in a panic and she said she'd pray for me to St. Anthony, patron saint of lost things. I asked if she knew a patron saint of connecting flights and she said she'd think about it.

As it turned out, I DID manage to get onto an earlier flight, despite being Number 16 on the standby list. And my suitcase DID make it back to me today. So, I guess it does work to pray to St. Anthony!!!! And Johanna also very kindly drove to Chicago to pick me up from the airport. :) She's da best.

Here's some pics from Singapore:

Me and Weiling at Chomp Chomp

Me playing golf at Mandai (Dad taking the picture) Cute little cousin in Purdue tee! (Everyone who has seen this pic says he is toooo cute!)

But yeah, summer vacation is over and its back to work again. I'm busy as can be. I'm taking 4 classes this semester, in addition to a crazy clinic load. I figure since its my last year at Purdue, I'd better learn all that I can. I think my classmates' SIAO-ON attitudes towards learning is rubbing off on me. I never used to be a person who would ever take extra classes or do extra work, but now I'm starting to! ;)

Speaking of which, I should mention that I won an award to attend the ASHA (American Speech-Language-Hearing Association) Minority Student Leadership conference in Chicago in November! I am very excited. :))

As an MSLP participant, you will participate in a set of leadership-focused educational programs and activities at the Convention. These activities will work to build and enhance your leadership skills; help you gain an understanding of how the Association works; and provide you the opportunity to interact with leaders in the professions of audiology, speech-language pathology, and speech, language, and hearing sciences.

ASHA should be really exciting this year. I think Johanna is presenting a poster and probably several of my professors will be presenting stuff too. A lot of us are probably going since its in Chicago, which is just 2.5 hours away. And I'm looking forward to all the freebies and career fair and exhibits!!!!! Its like the event of the year for speech pathologists. ;)

Blessings abound

Its been a good week and here's why:
1. Straight As again this summer
2. Assistantship contract is renewed for the 08/09 academic year, which means I am financially secured for my last year here at Purdue (except for Summer '09, but that can't be helped since I'd be in Cali)

All in all, Purdue has been very good to me.

Amanda's friend Gerald is visiting from LA, and we went to the Purdue driving range (again) yesterday. I think maybe its time I explored some of the other golf places. Then we went for Indian food at Taj Mahal (which was very good) and then watched Step Brothers, my third movie this month! It seems that these days I do nothing except golf, read, watch movies, eat and hang out. ;) I should enjoy these lazy days while they last.

POOPED OUT

I have great respect for all full-time mommys. I am not entirely sure the $90 I was paid to babysit a hyperactive 4-year-old for nine hours was entirely worth it. Much less do it for free, every single day! Or be a mommy of multiple children! Or homeschool! OMG!!

Anyway, Jenny McCarthy wrote in her book that she paid her speech therapist $150 per hour three days a week! Must be pretty neat to be a speechie in Los Angeles, catering to all the richy rich, desperate parents!! But I don't think I will really like it that much in California even though thats where everyone (Americans and foreigners alike) raves about. I will miss the winter. Its pretty fun aside from scraping the darn ice/snow every morning. ;)

Saturdays rock

Weather was absolutely perfect all day today. I slept in late, then went to the library to check out a couple of books and DVDs, sat outside Einstein's with a nice cup of iced coffee and read a book by Jenny McCarthy about her son with autism. I finished reading it in no time at all.. pretty good read. I enjoyed seeing autism from a mother's perspective, although I'm somewhat nervous about how much hope and expectations parents place on us, the therapists.
Then in the late afternoon I went with Scott to the driving range to whack a couple of balls, then went for ice-cream at Silver Dipper, then went to visit Amanda who has just gotten back from the hospital after getting a fist-sized cyst removed. Poor girl!! She had quite a whole bunch of Singaporean/Malaysian people visiting her, so we just sat around and 'talk cock' for a couple of hours. Seriously, hanging out with them is like being instantaneously transported back to Singapore. I was actually reminded of my cousins because they were all talking in Hokkein-slash-Singlish. Its the first time I've heard of "Aeronautical Engineering" being called tak peh gi (i.e. study airplane), which made me laugh hysterically.

Oh and I also met this guy whose Dad is like the Kaya King of Malaysia. He said it's also sold in Singapore, so I'm determined to try it when I go back. I think its called Sunny Kaya. LOL!!!

But it really does make my hair stand now when I hear people say "tree" for "three", "pek" for "peg"... although I still find the Singlish jokes very funny, I don't think I can speak that way anymore.

TGIF

Weekend's almost here! This week went by pretty quick, because I was busy studying for final on Wednesday. But that's overrrr now! Right after final I drove to Northbrook, suburbs of Chicago (which took me close to 4 hours because of stupid road constructions and rush-hour traffic!) to say goodbye to a dear friend who is moving to Maryland. :( But we went to a really nice seafood place called Bob Chinn's, which is the Number 7 top grossing restaurant in the country!!! Pretty cool.
"The Bean" at Millenium Park, one of my favorite places in Chicago!

Yesterday I went in to work for a little bit, then went for dinner downtown with dear roomie for a post-exam celebration and farewell dinner. She moved out this morning!!! I am VERY SAD. She's going to Kansas City for the weekend, then going home to Oklahoma. My new roommate is moving in sometime today or maybe tomorrow.

Golfed for a little bit today with Korean guy, who teased me for not having a life. Kept saying how I'm young and in my twenties and I should be partying every day. Apparently in Korea the college students go on blind dates all the time, and he went on at least a hundred of them during his college years, LOL. In Taiwan I know they 联谊 quite a bit too. I wonder why we don't do it in Singapore, esp since the government is always kb-ing about the low marriage and birth rates? Anyway it must be great fun to be a Korean guy because all they do is go out and get stone drunk with their buds while their wives stay home with the kids...!

Why I love working with kids ;)

Me and roomie debated about whether this kid has a phonological disorder. ;) Methinks he is just assimilating the /f/ from fire to truck, but roommate thinks he has an idiosyncratic phonological process for replacing a stop /t/ with fricative /f/.

Kid below is soooo cute, esp the last part ("I love you too but I don't like you all the time!") LOL.

Last week of school

I am sad that summer '08 is coming to an end. Its been the best. But alas, its almost time to let go and move on again.

Life has been pretty good these two weeks. I slept in late this morning, although quite unintentionally. School load has been lighter and I've been keeping myself busy with some extra tutoring and babysitting. Today I met Korean guy II who has the most interesting life. He's in the Korean military and has been deployed to the North/South Korea border and also to Iraq, and is now funded by the military to do his PhD in Industrial Engineering. We talked about Lee Kuan Yew too, of all things. ;)

I have a final on Wednesday though. Boo.

Oh, and American Apparel and Izod are my new favorite clothing brands. I wonder why I never noticed them before??

Hello I'm home

I'm back from Louisville ("Luhvul"), Kentucky! I actually saw a billboard with a picture of Colonel Sanders on it, but we didn't see any KFCs when we were there. Haha. Louisville is really cool tho. We stayed in a nice hotel, walked around the river and chilled. I really liked that this retreat was actually really relaxing (first program was at 10am, and we only had two short sermons the whole retreat), instead of the crazy-intensive ones that I've been to in the past. The weather was crazy hot and humid though, totally reminiscent of a certain little island in Southeast Asia.

We went to the Louisville Slugger Museum and toured the factory where they made the bats. And we each got a "mini bat" as a souvenir which was nice. :) And I also saw videos of the best hitters in history (who would've thought Babe Ruth was so old and chubby?), and also all the baseballs autographed by presidents of the USA: Calvin Coolidge, JFK, FDR, Eisenhower, Woodrow Wilson, George Bush Sr. and Jr.,..... and a "Obama vs. McCain?" display. LOL.

Arrived back in Lafayette at about 9:30pm, after making a stop at the Edinburgh outlets where I bought a Nike cap and wristlet and two Izod golf shirts for ~$35 :). I didn't even know we had outlets within 1.5 hours of Lafayette! Probably won't be my last time there hurhurhur. Anyway I've been wanting to watch the X-files movie all weekend, and I was sooo happy when I finally got back in town so I convinced Scott to go watch the 11:40pm show with me. So yep, I'VE WATCHED IT FINALLY.

Well its not the best movie ever made but I'm still happy to see Mulder and Scully again, although they aged sooooo much. I think Skinner's probably the person who aged the best. The movie was pretty creepy though, and now I'm really spooked out about snow and snowplows. But thankfully I won't be seeing those for some time yet! Hopefully by the time winter rolls around I would have forgotten all about this. Oh, and we pretty much spent the whole movie yelling at Mulder to call for backup or dial 911 for goodness' sake!!

More summer adventures

Me and roomie drove back to campus at last night because I heard that the results of Fall scheduling were out and I buay tahan to wait until this morning. After moping around the house for a half hour, I finally convinced her to make the mad dash with me at 10:00pm back to our 2nd home, the lovely Heavilon Hall, parked illegally at handicapped parking, RAN down the hallway into the grad room, grabbed the results off the wall....

I got all the placements I wanted!!!!

Actually we both did, so we're very pleased. :) In the Fall I will be at: the birth-to-3 program (little babies, here I come!), ClarianArnett (boring Adult speech and swallowing stuff, but I need the hours), Kids Club (kids pragmatics group) and an adult stuttering client (should be interesting..).

Anyway, I've had a nice couple of days. I have sooo much more time to relax now that summer clinic is over. I babysat Av the last two nights too, for 3 hours each day. Trying to keep a little preschooler occupied for 3 hours is no easy feat. I greatly admire all mothers!

Check out our neat volcano! We used playdoh to make a volcano then made it erupt!He is such a little darling. :)

Brand new week

Its Monday and I'm well-rested, pumped full of caffeine, and ready to take on the new week!!

Phonology Group is overrrrr, which means I have 3 free mornings a week to sleep in till 8am, enjoy my breakfast, read news online (severe storm alerts again today), go for golf lesson, and THEN head to school. :)))

But I still have to sit through three hours of boring school methods class this afternoon. PAH.

Roomie made pumpkin pancakes last night (we suddenly craved pumpkin), and tonight we're having a little dinner party. She's going to roast a chicken and rice, and I'm responsible for the side dish of stuffed peppers and cupcakes for dessert. ;) It feels soooo good to have leisure time to engage in culinary pursuits!