Songs without Words

It’s always fun finding common ground with friends where you never thought you’d find any. I announced how I would say, “Ouch!” for objects I drop or hit that, if sentient, would indeed be hurt by the impact. But little did I expect a newfound friend to agree, telling me how, when she crashes into a table, she pets it to make sure it’s okay. It was so cute! And plus, three other completely dry people at MIT? Woow .. it was really shocking to me (in a pleasing way) … people here drink wayyyy too much .. such a turn-off sometimes ^^;;. Speaking of drinking, I told another friend that I was spending most of the summer cooking, but she misheard it as drinking, and yet admitted that, in light of it being me, she took that to imply that I was drinking lots of water. =) Nice to know what I’m internally consistent on *something*.

I really love cooking … . So today, I brought the raw salmon and a bag of ingredients with me in the morning, parking the salmon in the lab lounge fridge and the ingredients in the BMES lounge. After lunch, I skipped down to marinate the salmon (was aiming for a 4~5 hour incubation marination period), but I had forgotten my detergent, so after slicing the salmon (to distribute it evenly into the high-salt and low-salt containers – gotta be sensitive to peoples’ tastes, ya know!), I carried the knife through the lab-filled hallway. Strangely, no one seemed to care (or notice) that I was wielding a big sharp knife with my hand covered in some strange glistening substance.

Afterwards, I bumped into my ATS little sis (wow, good job Jen and Kenny! You really paired us up well – we talk all the time now =) ) and she asked me why my shirt was wet around the belly. I answered, “So I was in the BMES lounge cutting [raw] salmon, and a piece of it got on my shirt.” She just sort of looked at me quizzically. It was rather amusing =P. I told her I was on my way to Pearl to get some materials for an art project (heehee, it’s for a very special person ;) ;) ). She advised me to go across the street to a run-down looking place simply labeled “Art Supply.”

Indeed! Not only was there such a store, but their products were considerably cheaper and varied in ways I didn’t expect. For instance, they had many racks of cheap hand-made paper (huge — like 3′ x 4′). They also had matte board of all colors, precut foam, etc. etc. I was really astounded, not expecting such a place in a crumbling basement of sorts. I bought a decent paintbrush on clearance for a buck. Highly recommended! The true artist, after all, is starving and therefore must be frugal =P. Half-kidding ~_^.