{ Hello }

As you might have guessed, my name is Zoë. I'm currently a sophomore. I haven't declared a major yet, but I will most likely be double majoring in biochemistry and creative writing. I am not planning on being pre-med, but instead am interested in genetic research. As for creative writing, I've been making up stories for as long as i can remember, and I see no reason to stop.

Besides the classes required for my majors, I also participate in several music-related activities. I just started taking lessons in North Indian music on violin. I also play in an orchestra, take secondary lessons, and play for OGASP (Oberlin Gilbert and Sullivan Players).

The other major activity that occupies my time is dance. I've been dancing ballet for most of my life, so I try to keep up with that. I've also been learning Bharatanatyam, a form of classical dance from southern India, and attend the sessions hosted by SPARK (Street Performance and Rhythmic Kollective).

{ Entries }

11.17.09				More about my tortured path to CSA I arrived early, because I still went early to things back then, and loitered around outside the door of the room in Wilder until I felt it was a proper time to enter.
11.13.09				Religion Right before I left for summer vacation, my Facebook status read, 'Zoë goes to the coolest church ever.'
11.04.09				A field trip After a brief walk in the crisp night air during which I considered making pirate jokes, we arrived at the hospital.
10.31.09				A rather belated post about a very important mission Mission: Get Zoë home for fall break
10.18.09				Culture Festival Various student organizations and groups had tables set up around Tappan Square, with food and activities available from their respective cultures.
10.17.09				The end of the world as we know it I turned back to my computer to further my electronic communication, and found everyone offline. So I refreshed the page. And it never came back.
10.06.09				Lions, Vicodin, and Audience Participation If you've been following along with us, you'll know that this past weekend we celebrated the Mid-Autumn Moon Festival. I was mainly in charge of directing the skit. I took this very seriously.
09.29.09				Cleveland, or And then I ate food Did you know there's more than one type of bok choy? There's Taiwanese bok choy and baby bok choy and all these other leafy green vegetables that look like bok choy but aren't called bok choy.
09.17.09				And then I got sick It wasn't fun trying to get all my work done and sleep more and walk around with a sore throat, but I managed it pretty well, with the help of cough drops and perseverance. Until Sunday night.
09.14.09				Another post about dancing By the conclusion of the meeting, we'd decided that the guy who did the lion dance last year would pass on his knowledge to those who were interested.
09.04.09				My schedule: no longer in flux Every day so far, I've had something to do during every hour until ten o'clock at night.
09.02.09				Pertinent details about me I do math on a calculator faster in Reverse Polish Notation.
08.27.09				Over the past week I've also been crashing international students' events.
08.15.09				My packing list Funny story: One time, I forgot to bring my concert pants and didn't realize until I was trying to get dressed for a concert.
08.10.09				Employment? Showing a little foresight for once, I started investigating jobs that would allow me to arrive early on campus, with somewhat minimal success.
08.02.09				More things that still hold true It can't rain ALL the time, you're thinking, and that's quite true. It snows or hails by way of variety.
07.21.09				Dining hall conversations Once we'd finished eating, we parted ways, and I expected not to see her again, unless we wound up in a class together somewhere down the road.
07.11.09				Ballet Remember when I was talking about opportunities? Allow me to expound upon another opportunity that I encountered late last semester, involving dance. Just to shake things up a bit, I'm not going to write about Indian dance again.
07.06.09				Information through the ages There are two main types of social life in Oberlin: (1) the inexpensive, and (2) the not-so-inexpensive.
06.28.09				Music Opportunities for Non-Music Majors Want to make your own banjo out of a gourd? You can do it. Want to be part of a gamelan ensemble? You can do that, too.
06.21.09				Why Oberlin? "You know," one of them said, "Chewbacca is the only one in his family with a normal name."
06.05.09				A vignette from finals week Luck, however, was with us, in the form of a front loader.
05.31.09				What's that about the bathrooms? You may or may not have heard that the bathrooms are gender-neutral at Oberlin. This may or may not concern you, your parents, or someone else whom you hold dear.
05.24.09				My schedule: in flux I'm currently signed up for four classes, only two of which are ones that I'm actually going to take.
05.18.09				Done. Really, the only solution was to stay up until around 3:00 AM, listening to hit songs from the nineties, reading picture books, and learning the proper way to put on bangles.
05.09.09				It's the end of the year. No, really. "Zoë," one girl said, "You're halfway done with college." It didn't seem possible. It still doesn't. And, of course, it's true.
05.04.09				How I picked my major This change in interests confused me for a while and made me seriously consider a chem major instead of a biochem major. Practicality and time eventually intervened.
04.27.09				Committee meetings are better over lunch I got a little overzealous and started quizzing people on their "action items," which I think only confused the issue.
04.18.09				How to put together a successful CSA film festival Watch some of the movie. Become rather confused because you've missed the first fifteen minutes. Snicker at inappropriate moments.
04.09.09				How to combine Ralph Nader, bad poetry, Bleak House, music, and chemistry into a single blog entry For some reason, that computer program for writing Western musical scores didn't want to comply to my demands that it blend with Indian ways of notating music. I'm not really sure why it was so stubborn.
04.04.09				And now, a love letter to pit orchestras That extra dash of terror because I don't really know what will happen next in my part is always exciting.
03.29.09				In support of my public library I could spend the rest of this post muttering to myself about the eight books I read over break. However, I don't think that's what you're here for.
03.19.09				"Translation is not a matter of words only..." I went into the first lesson armed with ten years of violin lessons, one year of music theory, and a textbook.
03.14.09				"Get your feathers out of my nose" Papageno, essentially a humanized bird and bird catcher, sang about how he wanted to catch chicks. And when he said "chicks," he didn't mean those little yellow baby chickens.
03.05.09				"And at first you're not so worried. It's just Geneva." He did say that there is a small chance that it will create a micro black hole that will gobble up Geneva and then the rest of the world.
02.28.09				Lunar New Year Banquet From what I saw of it from my place serving "beef in spicy sauce," the performance was great.
02.21.09				Housing (or, new methods of procrastination) It must have looked pretty odd--all those mini lanterns hanging from tree limbs and about five of us with cans of spray paint looking like members of a graffiti ExCo, but you get my point.
02.12.09				I'm cool, too! And one more interesting thing. This is my thirteenth post here. I figured publishing it tomorrow would be a little much.
02.02.09				My Winter Term in Lists Since my semester hasn't really started yet, I present you a summary of my Winter Term, instead of a description of my new classes.
01.26.09				On picking my Winter Term He proceeded to talk about a hotel that once existed, the spirit that haunted it, and the bomoh they hired to appease it.
01.22.09				Winter Term: Last Year, continued This mix of people leads me to a very important topic: food. Malaysia, and particularly Penang, where my grandparents live, is well-known on those travel cooking shows for having amazing food. Those shows aren't lying.
01.15.09				Winter Term: A Retrospective Though they all speak English, I've come to realize that what my uncle once said is very true: the conversation will start out in English, move on to a mixture of Chinese and English, and finally settle completely into Chinese.
01.07.09				Or, I mean to write about Winter Term and write about winter instead I am not spending my Winter Term in Oberlin. Instead, I decided that the best thing to do was to actually experience winter.
12.12.08				In which I relocate to the Asia House lounge I've gained a certain amount of respect - if not understanding - for mass spectrometry and I've begun to understand how the microwave in the kitchen works, at least for making Ramen noodles.
12.07.08				Chemistry Scene Investigation, part two (CSI) The trial began with the judge (who looked suspiciously like our professor, just decked out in a green choir robe) banging with his mortar and pestle to call the court to order.
12.01.08				Lists You can tell how stressed I am by how many lists I've made, and right now I'm making a lot.
11.25.08				Food! As I write this (but not as I type this, because I'll be doing that later), I'm drinking egg nog left over from my dinner at Lord/Saunders. That's right, I ventured to south campus to eat dinner tonight.
11.19.08				A bit of my weekend... I spent most of my time last week trying to memorize a dance for the International Festival, which was held on Saturday.
11.13.08				How to solve a crime The sign above the door to my analytical chem lab now says "Oberlin Crime Lab." For the rest of the semester, we're solving a crime that occurred at the Olympics involving arson, secret notes, drugs, and missing silver medals.
11.09.08				Notes on dancing This weekend, being parents' weekend, saw many, many events. The one I attended today was FELL, the 2008 student dance concert, which consisted of pieces choreographed and performed solely by students.