Monthly Life Update

Seeing that my last "life" update was posted on March 26th, it seems only appropriate that I make another post on April 26th!

I am officially done with classes for the semester, so all I have left are review sessions and finals frenzy! I am lucky in that most of my tests are take home exams and papers, but still it is a lot of work! I am looking forward to going home for the summer - it is so close!

Here are some "life" highlights that have occurred this month that are not school related:

 - my friends Kelly, Hannah, and I made our own Passover seder! We had all of the traditional things, and were very proud of ourselves (check out the picture to the left)

- I tried Georgetown Cupcakes for the first time, which is the shop that is featured on the TLC show "DC Cupcakes". They were DELICIOUS.

- I went to a Nationals baseball game against the Cincinnati Reds, and watched their 13th inning victory!


- Alyssa, one of Chandni's roommates from undergrad, came and stayed with me in DC for the weekend. She had never been before so we had fun touring around the city and eating multiple delicious brunches, my favorite being at Kramers and Afterwards in Dupont Circle

- I have signed up to do a 5K in San Francisco with James this summer, called The Color Run. If you don't know what the Color Run is, you should click that link and check it out because it's awesome - registration filled up in less than 24 hours! In preparation for this run I have embarked on a running training program called "From Couch to 5K", which has been fun way to enjoy the nice weather while getting in shape for the run. My favorite place to run is on the Rock Creek parkway along the Potomac River. It's beautiful!



- I got to witness the space shuttle Discovery make its last flight over Washington DC, before its final placement in the Smithsonian Air and Space museum. It made multiple laps over the mall, the capital, and over the entire downtown DC area. It was amazing to see in person, and it was fun to share the experience with other DC residents - it seemed like everyone ditched their office to watch the shuttle!

- This "highlight" is bittersweet - unfortunately at the beginning of the month I traveled down to Richmond for my Pop-Pop John's funeral. I still can't believe he is gone, but am incredibly thankful that my mom, Pop, and I were able to visit him and my Great Aunt Doris last month before he passed away. While it was a sad event, it was truly wonderful to see my family that I do not get to visit that often.

- I attended this cool event called "ArtJamz", in which they gave us food, wine, a canvas, and unlimited painting supplies for 3 hours for a "destress" event during Public Health Week. I had so much fun getting back into art, I have definitely missed it! I painted a brick house with cherry blossoms and a dog. Not my best artistic creation, but I still like it!




This weekend, cousin Jeff and his friend Burdey are coming down to spend some time with me and help move some of my stuff back to New Jersey. I am incredibly excited to get a break from finals and have a fun visit with them.

I cannot believe my first year at GW is almost over, time sure does fly by when you're having fun!

Spring has Sprung

I cannot believe a month has flown by since I have last updated this blog!

I'll start back to midterms, because I think that's where I left off - I survived, and spring break afterwards was much needed. I had a blast running around southern California - from visiting San Diego with my college bests, to sightseeing and hanging out with family in LA, to indulging in the "March Madness" basketball tournament and St. Patricks day in Santa Barbara with James. It was nice to truly "get away" from DC and school for the week.





Left: James and I before "date night" on St. Patricks day in Santa Barbara

Right: Rachel, Femi, Lisa, and I before a night out in San Diego









Getting back into the swing of things has not been an easy transition, though! Within the next couple of weeks I have 2 big papers and a presentation due (yikes!), so I have had to get back into school quickly. This weekend I hosted Laurie and Lauren, two girls from my sorority, at "Hotel Al" as they were making an east coast trip to visit and interview at grad schools. It was great to have the girls around, and I had fun taking them out to all my favorite places to eat and exploring the cherry blossoms at the tidal basin!






Left: Me at the Tidal Basin with the Washington Monument and cherry blossoms!

Right: Looking at the Jefferson Memorial through the cherry blossoms








The only downside to the spring weather in DC is the return of my allergies - but hopefully with the help of my trusty allergy medicine and a little rain, that will be alleviated soon!

P.S. Figured I would also share this picture from "Spring Fling", which happened the weekend before midterms. It was basically another grad school prom, but I loved this picture of my friends Grace, Lauren, Becca, and I on the balcony of the venue!

An Overdue Life Update

As I was emailing Grandma the other day I realized I haven't updated the blog in a while about new stuff in my life - so I figured I would take the night off of homework and catch you all up!

Thanks to 4 classes and 20 hours of work a week, admittedly I don't have much time to bum around and do as much "nothingness" as I would normally wish for. However, between the craziness here are some highlights since my last update:


- our monthly friend potluck dinner, theme being Indian food (ok so it was less of a potluck this time, and more of a take out....still delicious)
- a fun, low key Superbowl gathering at my friend Becca's, in which I helped make snacks (shocked? so am I!)
- my second "snow day", in which I promptly hibernated and did not leave my bed... literally.
- a fabulous Valentine's day, full of packages from home, seeing the movie "The Vow" with my girl friends, and a belated dinner at Zaytinya with James during his 2nd DC visit (the picture of us to the left is us before heading to dinner)
- speaking of... James came to visit DC again over President's Day weekend! We had a great time, visiting the Newseum, going to lots of yummy restaurants (especially brunch), hanging out with my DC friends, and going to the movies
- going to the Kings vs. Wizards NBA basketball game, where the Kings won! We celebrated promptly with Chipotle, of course. (the picture below is of me and my friend, Shannon, at the game)
- enjoying lunch outside in the 68 degree "winter" weather with Meredith this afternoon

And here are some things I'm looking forward to in the next couple of weeks:

- going to see "The Two Gentlemen of Verona" with Liz tomorrow night
- more spring weather instead of the winter crap... snow, snow, go away! Come on sun!
- going to Richmond with my mom and grand pop next week to visit some family
- Spring Fling, aka grad school prom part II
- getting through midterm madness
- getting a visit from Lauren, my sorority little sis, who has a grad school interview at Johns Hopkins!




Last, but certainly not least, I'm excited for SPRING BREAK IN SO CAL! On the itinerary are San Diego, Los Angeles, and Santa Barbara. I will have my good friend from DC in tow, also named Lauren, who is a NYC native and has never been out west before. I am excited to play tour guide and get my dose of Vitamin D.

I'll have some more stuff from work and school rolling in over the next week, but I'll save that for another post. Sending love northbound to and westbound to my readers :)

We Pah-ked Our Cah in Hah-vahd Yah-d

I know this post is slightly delayed, but I have been so busy this past week I haven't had the chance to write it out. For your extra amusement, I am writing it as I am standing in the community kitchen waiting to cook the macaroni for my mac-n-cheese (yes, this is how busy I am. Pathetic, I know).

As many of you know my best friend, Chandni, is brilliant and is currently in her first year of medical school up at Albany Med. When I decided to come to GW we were both SO excited to be on the same coast again... little did we know how busy we would both become. How many times did we see each other in the fall, you might ask? None. When we were both back in California for winter break, however, we decided to make a pact and fix this problem.

The solution was not Chandni coming to DC, nor me going to Albany. Instead, we met up in Boston (where I have never been before), and stayed with Chandni's good friends from undergrad, Alison and Kate. I was so excited not only to see the girls, but also to explore a new city.



Just as you might expect, my flight from Baltimore to Boston was delayed (I have the worst travel luck when I'm going between east coast cities!). I finally arrived in Boston and was happy to be picked up by Chandni in the same car she had all throughout high school - it felt like a time warp, it was awesome. We went directly out to Alison and Kate's apartment in Porter Square, an area north of Boston between Somerville and Cambridge. Friday night we did not do too much because we were exhausted from the work and school week, but Kate and Alison took us to their favorite pub for dinner. It was fun to just hang out and catch up.

Saturday morning we woke up early, grabbed some breakfast, and took off to explore the city! We first walked through Cambridge to Harvard Square (and through Harvard Yard, obviously), then took the train into downtown. We started off in Boston Common, worked our way down Newbury Street, and all the way out to Fenway Park! Although it was 45 degrees, it was SUNNY outside, so we were all very excited to be out and about in the nice weather.

Later that evening we met up with Lange, another friend of Chandni and I from high school who is in his last year at Harvard. He gave us a special tour, taking us into Harvard's dining hall (another Harry Potter-esque building), Harvard's observatory, and Harvard's own pub. He also took us to Kirkland House where he currently lives, and where Mark Zuckerberg used to live! After touring we went to dinner at a Korean restaurant, bid farewell to Lange, and settled down to hang out for a bit in another pub (upon Lange's suggestion) in Harvard Square. Best part? People watching, and the special cheese fries the waitress ordered for us.

The next morning we got up and went to Chandni's cousin's house in Cambridge for a pancake breakfast. Chandni's cousin has a 6-month-old baby named Leonardo, an adorable, chubby, half-Indian half-Italian baby. We played with him for a while before heading back in downtown Boston to check out Faneuil Hall and get Italian food on the North End. I had lobster ravioli (delicious), and got a serving of Boston Creme Pie to take home with me!

Clearly, since we were having such a good time together I was kind of late to the airport...and when I say kind of late, I mean I walked up to the gate as the plane was boarding...oops! But it is alright, because I made it back to DC no problem.

As previously mentioned, the week following the trip was crazy, from normal work and school plus making up the work I should have done last weekend. I decided it was definitely worth the trip though, and I want to go up to Boston again soon!

Back to DC

After a month-long Californiacation, I am finally back in Washington DC. This is bittersweet, since I had such an amazing winter break. I got to spend 3 weeks in Stockton, spending the holidays with my friends and family, and 1 week in Las Vegas and Santa Barbara with friends. It was nice to enjoy some warm weather, and spend time with people I love so much!

The first week back in DC was not as bad as it could be - its nice to get back into the swing of work and school, despite the fact that it is SO cold outside! I experienced my first snow storm of 2012 on Friday night!

We have some awesome new fellows in the GovLoop office, who I am excited to work with this semester! My role has slightly changed since last semester - I am only working half-time instead of full time, and now I am helping with the GovLoop Mentor Program in addition to running the social media and writing. I am excited for the new challenge!

Classes seem like they will be a challenge as well. This semester I am taking Public Budgeting, Program Evaluation, Econometrics, and the Economics of Policy Analysis. Yikes! I'll let you know how that all goes, but so far so good!

Also, I was "that" crazy girl watching the 49ers game... I think my dad would be very proud. I was decked in red and gold, and was enthusiastic throughout the game! Needless to say the loss disappointed me, and I will probably be boycotting the Super Bowl this year (Patriots and Giants? How boring).

Keep checking my blog for all the exciting stuff to come!

Gobble Gobble

I had such an awesome Thanksgiving break at home in California! It was great to see my entire family and friends, and meet Robyn's roommate Jessica. The only damper was that James broke his leg playing football - other than that, I would say it was a perfect trip!

Of course, no trip home would be complete without cookies to take back. Grandma, I brought in the chocolate chip cookies to my office, and they were a hit! Since you don't have a Facebook, I figured I would show you what one of my coworkers posted on my page:

Because of my red eye flight, this week is already flying by. I can't wait until this weekend - I am heading up to New Jersey to visit the other half of the family, and to celebrate Jeff's 25th birthday! 

P.S. During my travels I decided to ditch my school books and read a book for fun. I read "The Happiness Project" by Gretchen Rubin, and I loved it! I highly recommend it if you are looking for a good book to read!

Since I've Been Gone...

Lots of fun things have been going on since I last posted... 2 weekends ago Terra and I went up to NYC to explore the city, and visit friends (mainly Adam and Danielle for me). Although our trip got off to a rough start when our bus broke down in Delaware, it was still a fun weekend!

Then, this past weekend James flew out from California to visit me in DC, and be my date to my school's Fall Ball! We had a lot of fun going to all the monuments and museums (which I actually haven't done a lot of, surprisingly), and hanging out with my friends at the GW basketball game.

Right: James and I at my friend's house before leaving for Fall Ball!
Bottom Left: NYC skyline from Terra's friends' apartment. Beautiful!
Bottom Right: Adam and I! So great to see him!

This week I am swamped with work and two midterms, which is no fun, but on a brighter note I am starting to enjoy the fall weather in DC! I guess cute coats, scarves, and pretty leaves aren't so bad after all. I'm starting to count down the days until Thanksgiving break!

Food for Thought

A coworker shared this today, and I thought it was entertaining and spot on. Enjoy!

An Inspirational Halloween Weekend

(Originally posted in my blog on GovLoop)

This weekend I had the opportunity to attend the TedX Mid-Atlantic conference in DC. For those of you who are unfamiliar, TED is a nonprofit "devoted to ideas worth spreading". TED has annual conferences in California, and independently organized TEDx conferences throughout the year in cities all around the world. 

Let me tell you, this year's TEDx was full of inspiring people. It was an all day event, and at 11:30am I had heard so many great speakers, I couldn't believe that the conference wasn't even half over. Each speaker was incredibly passionate about their ideas, and was clearly eager to share them with the room. Their topics of expertise ranged from cooking and feeding people around the world (Jose Andres), to creating the newest telescope to replace the Hubble (Jane Rigby).

Although I was blown away several times by the energy and innovation of the speakers at this conference, the one that resonated the most with me was the presentation by Luis von Ahn. This associate professor in the Computer Science Department at Carnegie Mellon University was the founder of reCAPTCHA, the system that tests to see if you are human or not upon entering/making purchases on certain websites:

Inevitably we have all seen these images before, and have completed these puzzles countless times. Until this past Saturday I found them completely irritating and irrelevant. But now, I am tempted to complete them just for fun.

Luis shared with us that originally the displayed words were completely random. But then he realized that over 100 million people were completing these puzzles every day, and with each puzzle taking 10 seconds on average to complete, about 550,000 years of time was being spent on these puzzles each day. So he thought to himself, "what if we can use this to achieve a common goal?". Now, the reCAPTCHA puzzles serve a new purpose - one word is a "known" word (to test that you are actually human), and the second word is a "new" word from a scanned book that is in the digitization process. After 10 people come up with the same solution, the "new" word becomes a "known" word.

As humans, one thing that we can do that computers cannot do (yet, at least) is recognize scanned words that are slightly distorted. By completing these puzzles, we are simultaneously digitizing books that would have taken years to convert. So far with this new system, millions of books have been digitized for free.

Luis also shared his newest idea, called Duolingo, which is a website where you can learn a new language for free, and simultaneously translate internet webpages to and from English. Luis said if 5 million English speakers used Dualingo to learn Spanish, the entirety of Wikipedia pages in English would be translated to Spanish in 80 hours.

At the end of his presentation, I was nothing short of awestruck. What a brilliant way to engage the public, and complete tasks that would benefit the public, for free. Especially with the economy in the state that it is in now, there is no reason why the government shouldn't be coming up with ideas such as this to complete some of their projects.

Happy 22nd Birthday To Me!

Sorry this post is a little late - between midterms/birthday madness I haven't had time to update in a while!

Midterms went well, I actually did better than I thought, which is always good! And birthday celebrations were also lots of fun. For those of you who didn't know, I flew out to LA for the weekend to spend time with friends from UCSD/high school who are in southern California that I haven't seen since leaving for London (at least). It was nice to catch up and see so many faces that I love for my birthday weekend, not to mention get some familiar food and California sun!

The birthday celebrations continued on Monday (my actual birthday) with my new DC friends. A group of my closer friends joined me for a delicious Italian dinner (I got chicken parmesan and tiramisu - yum!), and then more people joined us after for a quick drink at Circa, a local bar near GWU.

The rest of this week has been spent catching up on sleep and homework... I slept in until 1pm today! This is unusual, since I usually wake up early regardless of whether it is the weekend or not. The cold weather has not helped with my inability to get out of bed.

PS. My mailbox is broken, and I haven't been able to get into it for over a week! So if you sent me a birthday card, I am sorry, I still haven't seen it! Don't worry, thank you notes will be coming your way as soon as I can get into the box :)

They Made It In One Piece!

Thank you Grandma Bune for the cookies! They survived the mail! Love you.
Also, my entire office agrees that you make excellent cookies.

RIP Steve Jobs

"Here's to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes... the ones who see things differently -- they're not fond of rules... You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them, but the only thing you can't do is ignore them because they change things... they push the human race forward, and while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius, because the ones who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world, are the ones who do."


Steve Jobs, thank you for your innovation and inspiration. You have set the bar high for all of us still here. Stay hungry. Stay foolish.

Don't Get Hit By A Brick

Last Thursday was Rosh Hashannah, so I decided to venture out to GW's Hillel service in order to celebrate the holiday. It was your standard conservative Rosh Hashannah service (Temple Israel of Stockton, I definitely missed you and all the music), but I was especially moved by a story that the Rabbi told as a part of the sermon:

One day, a man drove his new red Maserati to the grocery store to pick up a few things for his wife on the way home from work. When he walked out of the store, he was horrified to see two little boys throwing bricks at his expensive car. Enraged, he ran over to the kids, and started screaming at them for denting his flawless vehicle. One of the little boys started crying, while the other explained, "I'm sorry sir, but this is the only way we could get anyone's attention. You see, our brother fell out of his wheelchair in the alley over there, and we are not strong enough to pick him up. Can you help us?" Instantly, the man was horrified at his reaction, silently followed the children, and helped their little brother into his wheelchair. His walk back to the car was the longest 5 minutes of his life, as he was trying to process what had happened. The man never fixed the dent on his Maserati, in order to remind him to slow down, and not wait to be hit by a brick in order to stop and be more aware in his everyday life.




I have to admit that I am guilty of this as well. Especially since moving to DC I realize that I have been so wrapped up in work and school that I have barely taken the time to stop and enjoy my surroundings, and be fully aware and involved in the lives of the people I love the most. If you are included in this statistic I am truly sorry, and know that I am actively going to try to fix this in the next couple of weeks :)


In other news, my Jewish new year got off to a great start. This past weekend was a nice break from my constant work/school routine, as I got a visit from New Jersey by cousin Jeff, Kate, and Burdey! Definitely helped cure the little bit of homesickness I was starting to feel.


Shanna Tova, wishing everyone a happy and sweet new year!

Somedays I hate people

Exhibit A: Today.

I got on the metro as I normally do, and within 5 minutes I noticed the other end of the car stirring. It quickly became evident that someone was having a medical emergency, and other passengers were yelling "someone push the emergency button, someone is having a seizure!"

Appalling moment #1: No one close to the button was making any movements toward it, even though they acknowledged that they heard the cries for help. Being a good person, I pushed through the crowds to push the buttons.

And then, we arrived at the next station, and there was an announcement that there was a medical emergency on the train, and everyone please de-board and move off of the platform so emergency response could have room to come down and help. Seems reasonable, right? Wrong.

Appalling moment #2: Instead of kindly moving out of the way, people started refusing to move, saying that "they were going to be late to work" so they weren't going to leave. With this being said, the next stop was 3 blocks away from our current location.

Makes you lose a little faith in humanity, doesn't it? Let's just say I needed my coffee a little bit earlier today than usual.

Dear AlertDC:

I appreciate the hourly text messages about the flash flood warnings, but I am currently on the second floor, and am not in charge of the building's lobby. Additionally, I have no sandbags, so there is not much I can do at this point.

Love, Al


On that note:


Dear UCSD Alert System:

You are even more pathetic. Did I get an alert text about the wildfires in 2007? No. About the earthquakes all 3 years I went to school there? No. However, now over a year after I graduated, you sent me one about the POWER OUTAGE in San Diego County? Cool.

Love, Al

And we're back...

After popular demand (who would've thought anyone reads this stuff?), I decided to make a blog following my DC adventures.

Seeing that I am swamped with work and school, I figured this blog will be a bit different - I'll post some random narratives about my life (such as this), some stuff I'm writing for school (since Mom and Dad can't put my work on the refrigerator anymore), and some stuff I'm writing for work (yay for being paid to play online all day!).

My first couple of weeks in DC have been quite interesting, to say the very least. One earthquake, one hurricane, and three flash flood warnings later, I am completely convinced that the world is ending early. But other than that, I have been enjoying exploring the new city. DC definitely has a different vibe than anywhere I've lived in California, or in London - I actually felt that the transition from Cali to London was easier than the transition from London to DC. This transition has been a little easier though after going to my second home in New Jersey for Labor Day weekend.

I'll keep this short, because I already have a few other things to post. Hope you enjoy this new blog!