au revoir!!!

i'm outta here today -- byebye to washington dc, and hello to

orlando (8/5-8/8)
honolulu (8/9-9/10)
maui (8/19-8/21)
boston (9/10-forever)
la (10/20-10/22)

love!



[edit]

ending the blog, since i've left dc.
click to jessihui.blogspot.com. =)

countdown

voila, my project poster! i printed it out today, and now it's all done and finished. i present it thursday morning, and go through a flurry of little things like the NIDDK reception this afternoon, the OMHRC reception in bethesda wednesday evening, and a big goodbye lab lunch either thursday or friday. there are only 4 more days before i leave dc for good.

i had dinner with sunny tonight at teaism in dupont circle -- the place was really cute, and i'm glad i finally made it there. i had mango juice -- which far surpassed my expectations -- and thai chicken curry. i brought my camera and lamented the fact that i forgot to take pictures until i turned on my camera during the (boring) metro ride and discovered i had no SD card in there anyway. oh wells!

i have loads of extra food, extra boxes of tissue, extra laundry detergent, extra dryer sheets, extra lightbulbs, extra hangers, extra water, extra plastic bags, extra...if anyone wants it, you're welcome to it. otherwise, i'm going to try find homeless shelters and/or people.

dinner w/ the boys

thwarted by the pancake house's unreasonably short hours, we ended up at the cheesecake factory (funny how those names are so parallel) for dinner. the wait wasn't too bad...about 45 minutes instead of the normally projected 60-90. it was pretty cool -- joshua, justin, and adam are loads of fun, and we ate a lot of food. i took a crabcake (out of my three) and half a cheesecake home, lol. and the best of all is having people to walk home with.

statement d'artiste

"There was a psychological study done on color perception. Subjects were asked to differentiate between colors as well as shades of color. What they found was that artists -- who from their familiarity with their paint palettes knew different names even for shades with only the slightest difference -- could see two distinct colors where ordinary non-artists saw one. The conclusion was that having a name for something played an substantial role in actually being able to perceive it at all. This is how I feel about writing: that I am forever striving to find new ways to name things in order that I might see more of the world that's around me, and ultimately see more of me."

view with a grain of sand

the shortlist of the choicest snippets from her poems
(for which i have to mercilessly exclude whole favorite poems)

"...You lie on last year's grass
bathed in sunlight to the chin
while winds of summer past
caress your hair and seem
to lead you in a dance..." [ Classifieds ]

"...The hour when the earth takes back its warm embrace.
The hour of cool drafts from extinguished stars..." [ Four A.M. ]

"...Between them and the people,
according to the plan,
the trees alone would sing
their silence on command.
Between them and the people..." [ Funeral(I) ]

"...So these are the Himalayas.
Mountains racing to the moon.
The moment of their start recorded
on the startling, ripped canvas of the sky..." [ Notes from a Nonexistent Himalayan Expedition ]

"...No day copies yesterday,
no two nights will teach what bliss is
in precisely the same way,
with exactly the same kisses..." [ Nothing Twice ]

"...Reflected in the rippling lake,
trees trembled, nebulous and gray; ..." [ Commemoration ]

"...Since eternity was out of stock,
ten thousand aging things have been amassed instead..." [ Museum ]

"...Which one of them is doubled and which missing?
Which one is smiling with two smiles?
Whose voice forms a two-part canon?
When both heads nod, which one agrees?..." [ Golden Anniversary ]

"...History rounds off skeletons to zero.
A thousand and one is still only a thousand.
That one seems to never have existed:
a fictitious fetus, an empty cradle,
a primer opened for no one,
air that laughs, cries, and grows,
stairs for a void bounding out to the garden,
no one's spot in the ranks..." [ Starvation Camp Near Jaslo ]

"...Job does not want to talk to them. Job wants to talk to the Lord..." [ Synopsis]

"...In Heraclitus's river
I, the solitary fish, a fish apart
(apart at least from the tree fish and the stone fish),
write, at isolated moments, a tiny fish or two
whose glittering scales, so fleeting,
may only be the dark's embarrassed wink." [ In Heraclitus's River ]

" ...The joy of writing.
The power of preserving.
Revenge of a mortal hand." [ The Joy of Wriing ]

"...They appeared to me for a long, long, happy time.
I woke up. I opened my eyes.
I touched the world, a chiseled picture frame." [ Memory Finally ]

"...While they kissed
with not our lips,
a suitcase disappeared,
not mine..." [ The Railroad Station ]

"...Oh how grassy is this hopper,
how this berry ripely rasps...

...I tug at life by its leaf hem:
will it stop for me, just once,
momentarily forgetting
to what end it runs and rns?" [ Allegro Ma Non Troppo ]

"A few clods of dirt, and his life will be forgotten.
The music will break free from circumstance..." [ The Classic ]

"...The little soul roams among those landscapes,
disappears, returns, draws near, moves away,
evasive and a stranger to itself,
now sure, now uncertain of its existence,
whereas the body is and is and is
and has nowhere to go." [ Tortures ]

"...One of many miracles:
a small and airy cloud
is able to upstage the massive moon..." [ Miracle Fair ]

"I should have begun with this: the sky.
A window minus sill, frame, and panes.
An aperture, nothing more,
but wide open..." [ Sky ]

"...Every passing moments has its fertile past,
its Friday before Saturday,
its May before June...

...So it happens that I am and look.
Above me a white butterfly is fluttering through the air
on wings that are its alone,
and a shadow skims through my hands
that is none other than itself, no one else's but its own..." [ No Title Required ]

"...Those who knew
what this was all about
must make way for those
who know little.
And less than that.
And at last nothing less than nothing..." [ The End and the Beginning ]

"...Where Hiroshima had been
Hiroshima is again..." [ Reality Demands ]

"...Without us dreams couldn't exist.
The one on whom the real world depends
is still unknown..." [ The Real World ]

"...Something doesn't start
at its usual time.
Something doesn't happen
as it should.
Someone was always, always here,
then suddenly disappeared
and stubbornly stays disappeared..." [ Cat in an Empty Apartment ]

"...I take note of the fact
that the shore of a certain lake
is still--as if you were living--
as lovely as before..." [ Parting With A View ]

matt!

matt came up from florida to visit me!! he got in late friday night and we took a spin around our little apartment before heading out shortly after the tremendous thunderstorm blew past to get pancakes down the street...only the pancake place was closed. so we foraged up and down rockville pike, stopping at all the little gas station convenience stores, before we finally came back and were reminded by the concierge that the supermarket was still open. so we went to giant to get munchies, came back, and went to bed. poor matt was relegated to a comforter folded into quarters on our living room floor.

slept in late saturday morning, until matt came to wake me up (much better than an alarm) and figure out what we were going to do for the rest of the day. we went back to original pancake house and had a huuuuge apple pancake (literally cake sized) plus another full sized breakfast and an extra side of eggs!

our first stop on our saturday tour of the red line was at woodley park to go to the zoo. while we were walking up connecticut we saw an bluejay hurt and watched it for a time until it made it into a tree, seemingly and hopefully on its way to feeling better. i didnt know that bluejays were quite so large. at the zoo, i finally got to see the baby cheetahs! and we didn't have to wait like i thought. they were really hard to see, too -- all camoflauged.



we tried to go see the anteater but, again, it was not to be found. =( but we did see lots of cooool animals, like the naked mole-mice (which were soo stupid), golden lion tamarinds, shrews, porcupines, hedgehogs (like sonic!), gorillas, giraffes, iguanas, and lots of snakes, which matt loves. like this anaconda. =)



after the zoo, we stopped at dupont circle, and walked down connecticut towards the city. we ducked into kramerbooks&afterwords, had a really fresh fruit tart at this cozy little place called firehook bakery & cafe, walked around the actual circle, went into krispy kreme, then got back on the metro.




our next stop was metro center, from where we walked to the hotel washington to look out at all the monuments from the sky terrace. after we came back down to ground, we walked along past the treasury, the department of commerce, the sherman statue (which matt doesn't like because the guy razed the south), and out to the washington monument. we got there as the sun was setting, and it was gorgeous and breezy.



afterwards, we caught the metro all the way back home, and went grocery shopping to cook dinner. matt cooked a mean chicken parmesan while i baked some croutons and tossed a salad. after we cleaned up, matt gave me an awesome massage and i fell asleep (after which he apparently stayed and sat with me awhile, turned off some of the lights for me, then later decided to turn out all of the lights, tucked me in, left, and came back in the morning to wake me up -- and i only remember the very last thing though matt says i was awake).

in the morning, we walked to church, which was nice. the assistant pastor mark dwyer approached matt after church coz he was a new person and was very noticeable with his height -- that's never happened to me and i've been there all summer! we picked up munchies at safeway, then caught the bus out to wheaton and walked to brookside gardens to see the butterfly exhibit. along the way, we clambered down into the little stream bed where matt looked for interesting creatures but only harassed a poor little squishy worm. and then...we saw deer! two does and three fawns...they were so pretty, and so stupid.



matt loved the butterfly exhibit, and recognized the spot where i stood in the picture that he has. we watched a butterfly hatch out of its cocoon, and then one butterfly decided to use matt as a roost from which to hunt girl butterflies! it kept returning to matt and landing on his shoulder. and i got to hold it on my finger! but in the end it liked matt more. =)



after that we stopped by shoppers and then at kfc so i could have one of their heavenly biscuits before getting back on the metro at glenmont (another one of our stops on our tour of the red line). we rode to cleveland park and got out to find a nice place to eat, and ended up in this really cute, really cozy little market & deli where matt had a reuben and i had a little bowl of gazpacho. we also stopped a few stores down at an organic market where matt got this really interesting juice and some great bittersweet chocolate.

we went home to clean up and shower and change, then chilled awhile before heading out to georgetown to have dinner at clyde's. georgetown was so pretty, and clyde's was totally yummy (except they disappointed matt by putting mint in his cucumber yogurt sauce).



afterwards we caught the bus toward downtown, then walked back towards farragut north (our last stop on our redline tour). we went through lafayette park and looked at the white house, and also passed the hay-adams and the MPAA. this morning, matt left the house at 5am but still missed his 7:45am flight by a few minutes, which must have been an awful experience. he ended up flying out on another airline in the afternoon, for an exorbitant amount. =( the word for the feeling in chinese is "yook tung". but at least he's getting on home, and everything will work out for good. *hug*

joie de vivre

stopping in at the hay-adams for a breather before going to the MPAA for pupus and the harvard screening of "charlie & the chocolate factory". the weather's been pleasant since the heat wave rolled away tuesday morning, and so the walk here was pretty enjoyable. not much in the way of little stores though.

internet's been down at home, which is a big bummer, and the business center in the lobby doesn't really suffice. otherwise, a delightful train of days mostly revolving around harry potter (and some food)...the last 5 chapters are slated for tonight! i've actually been pretty busy at work for the first time -- the week's found me staying till 5pm, and spending most of the day actually running experiments (often two at a time) in the wet lab. nevertheless, still making headway through gibran's "prophet", which is my at-work book of the week. =)

and to top it all off, matt is coming tomorrow night to stay for the weekend -- what great fun! but before that i have exit interviews in the morning, lunch out with the intern group, a gel to run, and laundry to do. hehe. here we go!