Life Update

HEART TO HEART. Boy time flies when you're having fun and relaxing. Over Thanksgiving Break, I was reunited with my family in San Diego, explored downtown and the Gaslamp district with JJ, and tried my best to avoid Black Friday shopping (I succeeded to some degree). Racking up the accomplishments with beating Uncharted 2, making obsessive headway into Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, and having an enjoyable  Monday morning to start off the first relaxed schoolweek I've had since this semester began (remember my haiku poem about studying in the library on the first Friday of classes?). The rest of the week has been filled with catching up with old friends, making time for chores, and alas playing too much Zelda for my own good. Felt a bit of the winter blues earlier in the week, but now the stark sun has banished that.

The next few weeks are going to be a intense academic version of P90X. Finishing up this penultimate semester at university is hard to believe - honestly high school doesn't seem that far off! I'm glad for those  humbling experiences that peeled back whoever I was on the outside to show myself what's really jiggling around the inside. Without several reality checks, I would feel no older and wiser than that naive girl with the odd mix of enough pessimism and dreams to last most a lifetime. 

For every day, I am grateful for everything that happens. For every day, I cherish life. It took a long time to realize that I don't have to change everything about who I am to become who I want to be. People are forgiving, and my harshest critic is myself. So, consider the culmination of Pandaphilia not only as a style journal documenting my wardrobe adventures, but as a platform for self-discovery, for the marriage of my natural inclination for art and my intellectual interest in science. This blog has been a topic of discussion during my med school application and interviews - my own fears were the only thing holding this back from legitimacy.

Thank you, all 518 of you and more. From those of you whom I have enjoyed knowing since the beginning, from loyal commenters, to admirers-from-far and IRL friends. As an aside, Google has announced that they're canceling Google Friend Connect next year, and they recommend us creating a brand new Google+ page. I can understand why they're eliminating their less popular gadgets, since they cost money to maintain, but this is unfair to us bloggers, and especially our friends who use Wordpress. What will happen to our readership? Will the switch even be smooth? Hopefully Google has some alternative plan in mind, because this leaves millions upset. [Edit: 12:49 PM apparently this won't affect Blogspot users? Need to verify this]

This is not a goodbye speech, certainly not. It's a long reflection filled with things I've been meaning to think and say for a long time. December is here (what!?) and in the 12 days leading up to Christmas, I'm going to do a "12 Days of Fabulous" installment. Being fashionable in the bitter cold is still something to work on. Without further ado, Happy Holidays!