When the heart hurts

I booked my flight tickets to go home for a week at the end of April. I'm excited to see what comparisons I make between Vancouver and SF. I want to see if I can, after just 4 months, decide which one I like better, or if one even is better than the other. Sometimes things are just different.

Moving to live in the US all on my own is definitely the most drastic change I've had in my life so far. There's been so much learning through all of it. I think that I've grown.. and changed, but I'm not sure in what way.

I still remember the first few weeks. They were overwhelming to say the least, and full of doubt and uncertainty. Had I made the right decision moving away from my established life in Vancouver? Was I going to be able to make it all by my lonesome?

It was a strange world full of foggy weather, palm trees, and the American attitude. The culture was dense, and the diversity was astounding. I naively thought that living in Vancouver exposed me to diversity, but boy was I wrong. Being here made me fully realize what a range of culture and races there exist in North America. African Americans, Mexicans, Latinos, Filipinos, Vietnamese, Koreans, Japanese, and a lot more I'm sure I failed to categorize would be crammed onto every street I would walk through.

It was all the little things that would always get me. People in my house insist on using the word 'bathroom' as the only means of describing what I was raised to call the 'washroom'. The first time I ordered deli meat I had to catch myself and order in increments of pounds (or in my case 1/4 pounds). What I think of as common courtesy and politeness is largely ignored here, and more often than not completely replaced by rudeness.

When I was living with my boss during that first week I was fairly miserable and pessimistic. I would wake up and go to work each weekday, return in the dark of the evening, think about any groceries that I needed, make a bland dinner, and then hide in my room. I was timid about going out and exploring the neighbourhood. The places that I needed to go to buy food were barely familiar to me, and the Mission District where I was living was sketchville in itself. The Mission is this up and coming trendy neighbourhood that is half-full of amazing restaurants, wine bars, and shops that insist on quirky originality. The other half is entirely devoted to government housing projects. It's a very confusing mix of affluent hipster foodies, poor immigrants, and crazy homeless people. Not the best place for a young female to wander around by herself at night.

And then I moved to my current abode...(to be continued)

Where breakfast is always for dinner

Attempting to carmelize some Fuji apple slices

We ran out of maple syrup so we decided to make our own vanilla syrup

Oh dear...

Why is it that despite all of my rationalities I still get freaked out so easily?

Here's the story: For the past two months I've been putting off getting my social security number. I had decided in all my wisdom that it wasn't that high of a priority, and I was getting around to doing it.. honest!

Well, it all came to a head this past week where the secretary for my lab began sending me "URGENT: social security number needed" e-mails. Again, I stupidly ignored the seriousness of the issue, and continued to drag my feet.

In my defense, I did go to the Social Security Administration building to try and apply for my number a total of 3 times at 2 different locations. Unfortunately since I'm not a morning person, my timing would always be poor and the line up would be a ridiculous 2+ hour wait. What with my working, there was no way I could be in there for that long.

Yesterday my co-worker, Sam, found out some dirt from the HR person in charge of our hiring process when he submitted his social security number. Apparently our lab is getting audited, and so everyone within my lab is technically under scrutiny. I am a resident alien legal to work in the US, and my documents are all in order except for one tiny detail. I don't have a SSN yet. Without one, I stand the risk of being in breach of my contract, and would get deported if someone of US authority were to find out. Oh wait.. shit.

So logically all I would have to do is get my act together and apply for the damn thing. It's free of charge and processes in the database within a couple of days. I would then get my SSN card in the mail in about 2 weeks. Even if something did happen I'm sure the university could figure something out to resolve it.

I knew all of this. I knew that the next morning I would just wake up early, go downtown, and get my application submitted. So what did I do? Freak the fuck out, of course. As in I wanted to cry at work, stop everything I was doing, and just already have my SSN dammit.

*breathe*

(And a chocolate bar later)

I finished my work for the day, which took an hour longer than usual (making me end at 7:30pm) due to multiple people asking if they could use my scheduled time on the robot so that they could finish their stuff and go home. WTF. Okay yes, I am a junior researcher here and you have shiny doctoral degree but I want to go home at a reasonable hour too. So after my long day and stint of emotional eating I went to the gym for a quick run (I make some healthy decisions too alright?).

It's weird I never used to be a fan of going to the gym. I dislike the monotony of just being on a machine and not going anywhere. Usually, the only way I get exercise is if I play a sport. But oh man, these gyms have individual tv monitors embedded into each machine so I can distract myself however I want. Cable is a scarce commodity for me.

Anyways, end tangent. I got my ass out of bed this morning, waited in line downtown, and got my application submitted! Everything instantly became better. The funny thing is that along with my relief and return of gratitude for life one of the first things I though was, "Man, I feel like doing some science today".