10-year plan

so, apparently i've always been a planner. my mom recently reminded me how i've always had a plan for my future... she remembers my making to-do lists and lists of goals ever since i was 6. i don't really remember this too much. anyway, i'm possibly gonna be done w/ school 1 yr from now, so i've been giving my future a lot of thought. my tentative plan follows:

(1) 12/15/2008 = apply to phd programs, just in case
(2) 12/2008 (or 03/2009) = finish master's at UCLA
(3) travel to italy, greece, france, spain for 2-3 months. i'll take a few pictures
(4) summer internship in 2009
(5) then choose to (a) get a full-time job or (b) get a phd somewhere

i'll probably be tired of school and may not get a phd. (5) all depends on how i feel by 04/2009ish. whichever choice i make, i want it to allow me to live in a good, thriving city w/ an appreciation of art, culture, entertainment, education.

i plan to live in san francisco, boston, new york city, each for ~3 years. so, my tour of these cities should be done in roughly 9 years from when i get my master's. hmm, so 2018ish. i'll be 34. holy cow that's old. the tour will likely get cut short as i'll fall in love (w/ a girl and/or the current job and/or current city). that's fine w/ me. hopefully i'll start a family sometime before i'm 34, also. at which point i would like to stay in the current city... i think it's important not to move during one's childhood. anyway, we'll see if the future unravels even remotely similar to this.

camera + theives

i'm going to start a "time lapse" project where i take a pic of myself each day for a long time, inspired by noah. after taking the very first pic, i noticed it came out insanely dark. after 1 hr of adjusting every setting i could think, i concluded it was broken :( i even tried my other lens--which had the same results--and i really didn't like the idea of having to spend a few hundred dollars to repair the camera's body. well, later i discovered that it was merely the lens' electronic contacts that were having a problem. after cleaning them, everything was back to normal! so, naturally, i took a picture of my recently purchased bananas as a means to celebrate:



on a similar note, i found out that someone ordered one of my photos from my zazzle.com collection... i get 10% revenue... which somehow was $11! can't believe someone spent $110 on a customized product that used my picture.

also, in the month of january alone, there have been 8 cars broken into within my two-level parking garage. that's so horrible. why can't people just respect other people's stuff? and why can't UC facilities install a cheap monitor system?