5. Ravoli 2025

  Image by GettyImages “7 times 4, 7 times 4, 7 times 4,” I repeated over and over in my mind like a mantra. It was second grade, and the class was reciting multiplication tables, one by one. The voices marched closer, and finally, it was my turn. I stood up with a confidence that only a seven-year-old could have, opened my mouth, and proudly blurted out “7 times 4 is equal to 24.” The whole class erupted in laughter as I shrank back into my seat, wishing I could disappear. I wanted to rewind time and make sure that everyone, including me, forgot that this ever happened.  Throughout my life, I have had my fair share of embarrassing moments. Some louder than others, like the time I announced the wrong answer in front of my whole class, and others more private but still humiliating nonetheless. But just because they were uncomfortable, are they worth forgetting? Embarrassing memories, as awful as they may feel in the moment, has a strange way of teaching us lessons that we wou...

Songs are like a time capsule. Image Credit Every time I play music from my phone or computer, I close my eyes for a few seconds, and, just like that, I’m taken back to memories from the last time I was listening to the song. It just happens . . . Whenever I randomly hear “ Cheap Thrills ” playing as the hold music for customer service or in the grocery stores or even in an auditorium, I’m transported back to moments in the car with my family from back when I was in elementary school. Every Saturday and Sunday, the song would be blasting from the radio as my mom, dad, sister, and I drove down Paseo Padre on our way back home from Coyote Hills after a tiresome yet refreshing hike. When “ Dhan Te Nan ” plays on the Indian channel on Saturday mornings, I’m reminded of how it used to be THE song that would be playing from my oldest cousin’s laptop or our old television each night in apartment 131, where we lived with my aunt’s family for a few months when I was 4. Each night, when the son...

My cousins and I on a side quest during our journey to Cartlandia. When I think of summer in Oregon, I think of the wavy reflections above the asphalt ( the road separating my dad's childhood home from our dear next-door neighbors ),  going out onto the Columbia River to boat across the coldest water I have ever dived into, and biking miles to Cartlandia to eat to our hearts' content. When I think of fall in Oregon, I think of wet evenings spent indoors as my family prepares what might be the most American meals we consume all year for Thanksgiving, the dewy “Portland” (Gresham, really) air hanging above us all no matter the time of day, even as we go walk the dogs every dark evening. Oregon brings with it bright yellow-greens and the blues that span across the sky, memories of sparklers and driving a pick-up truck across The Bumpy Road while my unnies and I splay across the back, (probably) ignoring basic safety protocols. The trees look different here, much more plentiful an...

Downtown San Diego In November of last year, I went to San Diego with my dad to tour a few universities. I had never been before, so I was really excited to check the area out. The day we got there, we started exploring the city. Our hotel was right in the center of downtown, so it made walking to each district and neighborhood really easy. We first made our way to Little Italy, which neither me nor my dad knew existed. The only Little Italy locations we knew of were in San Francisco and San Jose, but we had never visited either one. So, we of course had to check it out in San Diego. The second we stepped into the neighborhood, we were hit with a wave of bustling crowds and cultural richness. In every direction were restaurants and bakeries, all selling a wide variety of delicious food and drinks, each being unique with its own recipes for classic Italian cuisine. The next day we visited two of the nursing schools in the area, SDSU (of course) and PLNU . Both had their own distinctive...

When the world is too much to bear, or frankly just a bit too mundane, I have always been able to escape by immersing myself in nostalgia. I have a small collection of memories which are a delight to rummage through on a lazy afternoon, full of warm, gleaming scents and snapshots which I treasure as much as any of my childhood hoards of seashell, if not more. Yes, many of these memories are from the beach—I spent most of my childhood in SoCal, and if you know anything about “down south” or whatever moniker there is for that area, you know the coast is gorgeous. But it's not the mere image of the ocean’s beauty which I truly value. After all, prettier pictures can be found on edited desktop wallpapers .  Sometimes, I miss my old mind. Never again will I be able to face the ocean as a stupid child. I say “stupid” with love (and to be honest I'm not too intelligent now either). Yes, I believed in unicorns and fairies when I was seven. I believed in more than myths and fairytales,...

  The magic of childhood is captured within our memories. Do you ever remember waking up on a Saturday and watching the television? Or sitting on that infamous rainbow rug listening to your teacher talk about rhyming words. These innocent snapshots of our life represent the whole of our childhood.  That segways into my blog for this week: Nostalgia. As the year closes and the end of my High School journey is drawing near I have been feeling nostalgic. I remember a time when I used to dream of becoming older and earning independence. However, recently I have found myself really missing being a little kid. This got me thinking. Does stepping into adulthood mean perpetually looking back into the past?  As a kid, I remember never thinking back into the past. I only saw the future and lived in the present. Partly because of nativity and partly because the future seemed bright and fun. Now as a young adult, the future truthfully looks tiring and stressful. As a result of this ...

We find ourselves relying on our memory for, well, almost everything. But how reliable is it? I, for one have a LOT of experience with the art of * forgetting*. “My name’s ____.” One hour later I’m trying to call out to him and my mind is just loading and coming up with a blank. Another time: “Remember to bring in the package!” “Did you bring the package?” “What package?” Human memory really isn’t as reliable as people may think. So then why do we trust it so much? After all, we use the memory of one or a few people in court as tangible evidence. Sometimes, just the words of a single person are enough to convict somebody. For some reason, people hold beliefs that reinforce many myths about memory. An academic review written in 2014 discusses a few of these myths and what people think of them: As seen in the above chart, the majority of people believe in myths that human memory is “like a video camera,” that “hypnosis is useful” in criminal trials, and a good percent believe that memo...