Ode to a Californian Kitchen

It was inevitable, no matter how exciting New York could possibly be, I was going to miss Berkeley sooner or later. But it struck me in the oddest way.

I miss my kitchen. With its matching toaster and rice cooker. With its microwave stolen from a previous roommate. Crowded though its counter space may be, it is stocked full of non-stick pots and pans, complete knives and fork sets, an accessible and spacious sink. With multiple large coffee mugs for my morning chai.

On the other hand, I am finally feeling at home in this apartment. How do I know? I cooked breakfast in my underwear t, a surefire sign.

I also started work today. Not going to lie, not that exciting. The lab is a single room, no windows. About 15 people in my lab, ALL asian (as in all from china, taiwan, hong kong). Definitely a step down from UCSF. Coming from a large lab with seemingly endless resources to Columbia's 1-room Bone Bioengineering Lab, I feel like a silver-spoon fed child dropped in the middle of a dairy farm and asked to manage. I was like "oh, I don't know how to back-up data, we have special techs do that for us" (Never appreciated Andy, Bryan and Ayako more). But I am sure the city will more than compensate.

Finally, I went to the Taste of Times Square with the Goldman Squad* today. Three blocks on W46th shut down and 50 of the most popular restaurants around Times Square gives samples of their food for $3-5. I tried Buffalo Alligator, which is essentially buffalo wings, made with alligator. Tastes like chicken, but more moist, I'd suggest it. Also some delicious bread pudding, also shown below.So I'm obviously still having issues with picture placement on this site. At least I figured out I can shrink my images on ImageJ (thanks Kate for downloading that to my computer for 115) so its faster uploads since no one needs to see my face in 2560x1980 dimensions.

Tired as hell, good night kids!

*Copyright Ravi Dharawat, referring to ~10 Cal EECS students working at Goldman Sachs this summer.