Amy Do Nguyet Anh

The bike laid next to a "Bike Vancouver" bike rack quietly and stubbornly. Her skeleton was black and a small pink Kryptonite held her close to the rack. She was brutally minimalistic. Without a kickstand, she's leaning against the small steel structure, resting her entire weight, light but sturdy, on the support. I took a step closer and realize she's without brakes. I frowned, and the bike simply stared back defiantly. With a skinny Brooks saddle, placed rather high up compared to the handlebars, I knew the owner was a savvy hardcore biker. In between the spokes, a picture of a woman - perhaps an actress or singer from the 70s that I couldn't recognize - was nicely placed, but precariously. What is the rider trying to say about himself? He also is riding without lights or a rack. No stickers, no colours, no visible brand name. You'd think he's a humble and low-key personality, but the small touches of customization makes me feel he's trying to say s...

This Easter weekend I cancelled most of my social plans. Vivan's birthday party, Sally's baking date, Sailbot work party... Being stuck indoors made me realize how slow the world goes when I am not moving. This term I've worked really hard, but I've barely shown up. A lot of the work, Safewalk, job-hunting, textbook reading, data crunching,... happens outside regular hours. Keeping myself together is also a part-time job! I've cut out completely window shopping and real shopping from my schedule. I am saturated with stuff and completely clean of money. That definitely helps me stay home. I've also been hit by waves of exhaustion. The kind when my body just shuts down for a day or two, and I sleep for hours without feeling enough. I try to forget that I can only do so much, and keep pushing for a little more until I can't any further. So I thought my weekend was going to be shut in anti-social loneliness, but at 9 pm on Monday, me and Zak and his friend, B...

I'm going to blogging for the next five months at this new location! http://blogs.ubc.ca/amydo/ See you back in January 2016.

Airport are for goodbyes. And hellos. But this it was for goodbye. Words cannot describe the long nights we stayed up designing a bolt hole in a steel plate, or coming up with a list of stakeholders for our construction management project. The time we stared at a spreadsheet for hours to make our EGL/HGL work for our pipe system. Boy the time I "braved" driving to pick him up in the outskirts of Seattle, 5 hours late. The late nights clubbing, dancing, eating, drinking, laughing, driving. I'm saying goodbye soon as well, only for 4 months, but it feels like I haven't been away from home in a long time. Every time I say goodbye I wish I had one more week, month, year. But hey, I'm looking forward to hello again. I'm gonna miss a bubbly, energetic and optimistic smile in my life though!

I spent the entire day playing board games. Yes that's a very effective way to not spend money especially when I didn't buy the games. muhahahaha.

Time for some movies! Borrowed from the library of course. I watcher Her and The Looper. They were very different haha. Her is very critically acclaimed - so I was curious. Well, it's a hard movie to relate to... It feels like a movie targeted to lonely Silicon Valley nerds.

Why spend money eating out when you can have tons of good food at home: family dinner time!        I also spent the day finishing up my exchange application. It's good to go!