Year in Review

So 2012, the highlights…lengthy, lengthy highlights in no particular order.

Travel.

In March I went to Hong Kong for a scientific conference with my lab. Exploring the city was magnificent; spending time with my labmates, not so much. This was my first visit to Asia, and it was strange to me that Hong Kong didn’t feel overly foreign. The area near our hotel, located right off of "Dried Fish Street,"  reminded me of many neighborhoods in Brooklyn and Chinatown, hehe. I really loved the mix of modern and grungy the city had going for it, as well as the skyscrapers planted on mountains overlooking the sea – spectacular!  The food was good too, lot’s of fresh seafood; and when I say fresh I mean there’s a tank with live fish and you point out the one you want cooked. And of course there was delicious dim sum. Oh, and I loved all the markets – Cat Street Market, Night Market, Jade Market, didn’t matter if they were labeled "touristy" or "over-priced," I love wandering through crowded stalls filled with colorful junk!  Before I left, a Chinese friend of mine warned me that I’d need to haggle over prices, and she was so right. I wasn’t sure I’d be comfortable haggling, since it’s not something I ever do in the States, but you get the hang of it really quickly. Sometimes you don’t even need to try – just look at an item, then put it back and start walking away and the shopkeeper will immediately call you back, slashing the price on it.     

The conference itself was good, but tiring, and it didn’t help that I caught a cold and generally felt like crap during most of it. As much as I enjoy traveling to new places, I think the stress of living in a cramped hotel room with two labmates I don’t like all that much really got to me. I had zero space or time to myself for the entire 10 days, and I don’t handle that well. Maybe there were also hormonal issues involved, but I was a complete wreck the entire time. I cried almost every day at some point. Getting into a huge fight with J about our lack of communication probably contributed a lot to this.

So the Hong Kong trip was a mixed experience, but I still feel incredibly lucky and happy that I got to go. I definitely want to travel somewhere outside the US in 2013. No excuses about being busy or poor!

I also visited Chicago, once in the winter to catch a Russian concert with V, and once in the summer with J. Love, love, love that city! Although it is not an inexpensive place to live (St. Louis has definitely spoiled me). J wasn’t quite as thrilled with the idea of living there because the weather was terrible the weekend we went (that lake generates some crazy humidity), but that’s by no means a deal breaker, and if the opportunity to live in Chicago comes up, I’m pretty sure I can win him over 😛  

In October I visited my high school friend A. in the Bay Area. Ah, the West Coast. I think it’s growing on me. My friend lives about 15 miles outside San Francisco and for her it is heaven on earth – she has found her place.  It’s a bit too suburb-y and sheltered for me out there, but I’m keeping SF on on my radar. It was so nice to interact with people outside of the med school/grad school bubble while I was there. We hit up Santa Cruz and SF, hiked in the Merewoods redwood forest, went to the Renaissance Fair (kind of random, I know), and celebrated A’s birthday with a huge party at her boyfriend’s place. Pretty awesome trip.

My ex-boyfriend W lives in the Bay Area now.  I believe his wife was in labor during my flight back (they’re big on chronicling their lives on facebook..in super real time). They got married this summer (yes you did do the math correctly, she was about 6 months pregnant, but apparently it was planned?). He called to catch up and invite me to the ceremony, but I decided to pass, mostly because I wouldn’t know anyone there except him, and it seems weird to show up to an ex’s wedding if you have no mutual friends. We catch up on the phone maybe once a year (he was always great about keeping in touch with people), but I certainly wouldn’t say we’re close. I had ended things with him and my friend D suggested he invited me to show off how well he’s been doing without me. There may be some truth to that, but I don’t hold it against him. I’m glad he found somebody and that he’s happy, but I have no regrets about letting him go. I was reminded of that fact more recently when he sent me a catch-up facebook message. I replied with generic congratulations to him and the wife on the baby, asked how crazy is it being a dad, etc. His response ended with the following:  "You are awesome, I want you to have kids too.  I’m happy to lend you some genetic material, if you are ever in need – it’s a proven quantity now!"   Ugh. It’s classic W – two parts douchey/condescending, one part cheesy.  The irony here is that I broke up with him after a pregnancy scare that made me realize I do not want to raise a child with this man. It really made me re-evaluate the whole relationship, which up until that point had been very go-with-the flow. But once I realized just how much I didn’t respect certain things about him, there was no going back. When we broke up I explained why I thought we were not compatible, but I never mentioned the pregnancy scare. 

OK, major detour from the travel section, sorry!  2012 was definitely a good year, travel-wise. 

 
School/Career.

This summer I passed my Phd qualification exam, or my "prelim." I wound up doing pretty well in the end, but it was still a terrible, terrible experience that I am glad to be leaving behind in 2012. Things are very much up in the air on the PhD front, but I have to propose my thesis this year, so that should focus my efforts somewhat. Towards the end of 2012 I received a strange piece of news that I haven’t discussed here yet because it’s probably nothing, but I guess I’ll go ahead and mention it now. About a month ago I asked my PhD supervisor if he had any advice about applying to faculty positions since my (very serious) boyfriend is a post-doc who just applied to two positions at my university.  Really what I wanted from this man was to put in a good word for J, but I felt awkward asking that outright. As I’m going through my spiel about wanting the two of us to be together in St. Louis for the foreseeable future, my supervisor gets this panicky expression on his face and asks if J’s applying anywhere outside STL. I respond that he’s applying everywhere, but focusing on STL because, well, I’m here. He then proceeds to tell me that he’s been offered a position at UPenn as the director of a new motility research group they’re putting together, and that last week (when he was mysteriously gone for a day) he was actually attending a recruitment visit. What a freaking bombshell!  The actual offer is still quite vague, which is why he wasn’t even close to making a final decision, but he’s certainly considering it very seriously. He gets tons of clinical directorship offers which do not interest him, but here he would be the head of an entire research center, where he could have more funding and be able to recruit the people he wants. He seemed very excited about the possibility. 

At the time, I was the only person in the university he had mentioned this to. He asked if I thought it was a good idea to let the other lab members know now (it’s always weird when your boss asks you for advice, isn’t it?). I said I understood his hesitation about telling people before he had a concrete offer, but at the very least he needs to let E know before her fiance submits his residency rank list (sometime in January?). It would be disastrous if he put here down as his first choice (which is the current plan) to be with E, and then her lab up and moves to Philadelphia forcing her to decide between doing a long distance relationship or losing 2 years of her Phd work.  

My supervisor said I took the news much better than he expected people would. Part of that was because I was in shock. But part was also because I was legitimately excited about the possibility of a change. I like St. Louis, I really do, but it is pretty isolated, and there aren’t a lot of job opportunities for J in the area. There’s Chicago, but it is still a good 5 hours away, driving. Philly on the other hand, aside from being a sweet city itself, is within a 3 hour drive from NYC, Baltimore, DC, NJ, etc. On the other hand, if J does wind up getting an offer in St. Louis, there’s no doubt I’m staying there, even if I have to start my Phd from scratch (hell, I wish I could start over in a different lab every other week if not more frequently anyway).          

I’m expecting my supervisor to let the lab know sometime this month, thought it’s possible he’s already spoken to everyone individually and I’m just not aware of it (this seems unlikely). When we last spoke it still seemed like the odds of him going were around 50/50. He’s been at this university for 30 years, and has 2 kids in college here, and 1 in high school, so that’s a lot of uprooting. On the other hand, his wife still calls Maryland "home," and has family on the east coast, so she might be for it. I catch myself hoping the move happens, even though it may not be in my best interest to come with. Just craving a change, or a way out perhaps.

Relationships.

Given our situation, I think J and I are in as good a place as we can be at the end of 2012.  There were some strained times and some fighting, mostly when one of us was traveling outside of the US, where there were time zone and internet access issues. But there was also Chicago, and kayaking in the Chesapeake, and theaters (some whole-in-the-wall, some grand), and a winery in a cute German town in Missouri, and just general laughing and cooking and bumming around together. There was also some fantastic sex. Don’t get me wrong, the sex has always been excellent, but after five years, it does mellow out and become just a touch more routine. Again, this isn’t a complaint. It’s just that recently we’ve spontaneously become more..spontaneous in the bedroom; you’d think we’d know it all by now, but we’re discovering new things about each other and ourselves, and..this is starting to sound weird, so I’m going to stop, lol. I like that we are continuing to grow together (vs. growing apart) in all ways, including this one.

Finances.

I can haz savingz? Yes!  Financially, 2012 was a pretty good year. I managed to save up a decent amount of money despite traveling around a lot (I buy airline tickets every other month to see the boy, on top of all the other trips). I think not having to make any major purchases (say, buying a car like last year) is what really did it. Otherwise, it doesn’t feel like I was particularly good with money. I’m still eating out way too much, and there were a couple of months when I was spending $5+/week on cigarettes which was super wasteful. Still, I had enough money at the end of the year to invest a little bit in an index fund. I don’t entirely know what I’m doing when it comes to these things (though I have tried to do my research). I just got tired of of making virtually no interest off of savings in the bank, so I thought I’d give this a shot. I’m aware it’s a gamble, so I haven’t invested too much, and I’m not getting my hopes up, but we’ll see!

Family.

My parents moved back to a condo in Brooklyn this year. They were incredibly lucky that the Staten Island house was spared from any major Hurricane Sandy damage. I think the plan now is to fix up the house and sell or rent it, but I’m guessing that’s going to take a few years. Scaling down from a three floor house to a three bedroom apartment takes some getting used to, but this makes their work commute much easier, and really, what do two people need a three floor house for anyway? It’s the house I grew up in, and I am sad to see it "go," though we still own it, so it’s not really gone, just..gutted.

These days I catch myself thinking more about how I’d run my home when I have a family of my own; what traditions I would keep, and what new ones I’d like to create. 2013 is (FINALLY!) the year J’s finishing his post doc. And I can’t help thinking that 2013 will be our year.