H1N1 and Pooh

It is finally here!

9 possible cases of H1N1 influenza have been reported at Harvard dental school... Although I've been hearing about the influenza on the news and have talked about it with some of my co-workers, it never really hit me that the flu could spread to Boston this quickly.

In a meager attempt to protect myself, so far I have:

(1) washed my hands a lot more that usual. I even tried singing (silently to myself) "Happy Birthday" because I heard from someone that you should wash your hands for at least 20 seconds, which is equivalent to singing the birthday song twice.

(2) avoided holding onto anything in/near the subway. Woogie does this all the time, and he tells me it's quite easy if you just pretend that you're surfing -_-; Besides getting strange looks from other people around you (because you do end up looking quite silly when trying to surf inside a subway), this is actually pretty hard to maneuver. I ended up losing my balance and bumped into everyone standing around me.

(3) passed Trader Joe's without sampling their food at the food stand where, ironically, they were passing out small portions of BBQ pork. It seems ridiculous to avoid consuming pork in fear of catching the flu, but at the moment, I can't help feeling a bit wary of anything that is related to pigs. I might have imagined this but there were far less people (less than usual) gathered around the food stand today :-/

To end on a lighter note, not that I was being very serious about my "protection" plan against the flu, this was posted yesterday on yahoo:

sketch the trees and the daffodils

The weather is finally warm enough (and consistently warm) to safely say that it's spring in Boston!

And I think these yellow flowers are the most prominent visual cues indicating this change in season. Daffodils are everywhere; in almost every patch of dirt near the sidewalk, in people's gardens, and they're sold in bouquets at Trader Joe's. I wouldn't be surprised if daffodils turned out to be MA state flower, or maybe even Boston's city flower, if there is such a thing. Whatever the reason, I don't think anybody can deny that the bright bright color of these flowers and their optimistically radiant shape really complement the beginning of a warm (and happy :-D) season.

And speaking of cues, the first song that pops into my head when I think of daffodils (or rather, the first lyrics to a song) is Starry Starry night: ... sketch the trees and the daffodils... I learned this song in 6th grade. My homeroom teacher Mrs. Nicholls liked to teach us American and Canadian songs during class, and to this day, those are the songs that are etched in my brain.

someday..

i hope to travel this way.

i hope to be brave enough to travel this way.