Monthly- Archives: August 2023

August 31, 2023


NATHAN LUU

In the summer of 2023, I worked for the first time at my aunty and uncle’s pharmacy. It was an absolute blast to work there, and to meet all of the patients and co-workers, and I was required to work to the best of my abilities and to wear some formal clothing to work every day.

Layout of the pharmacy: this pharmacy was in a brick building. You would enter the building and take a left and the pharmacy would be the first thing on the right. When you enter you would see all of this OTC (over the counter) merchandise for people to buy, out of pocket (uncovered by insurance). Then you would walk past the aisle to the register. And behind the register is where most people work. In the very back there was prescription medicine that doctors would have to prescribe to patients. Pharmacists would have to find the right pills to give out and put them in an orange bottle. In the back there is an office and a restroom where we would eat lunch. 

Along the way, I kept track of interactions, and what I did for work, and instructions what to do, so that I could reflect back in the future and make memories, and share with you!

Below you can see the journal entries I made during the summer; not a tremendous amount of detail is shared, being that this is a private business, but you can get a sense of my experiences at my first job.

July 5-10:

 -Clean the shelves

-Vacuum the floor

-Restock and over-the-counter check: in which I find stuff that the pharmacy needs to buy to keep it in stock

-Work the cash register

-Make phone calls to people to remind them to pick up their prescriptions

Now, giving prescriptions to those people who need them made me feel bad for the people. Like they had to go through all of these problems just to feel better. Obviously some are worse than others. I then realized how big of an impact my aunt and uncle are making towards the people. Not only them but all of the pharmacists out there. And I would like to say thank you to all of them. I’m not really thanking myself because I’m not technically a pharmacist. I don’t really deal with medicine because I’m not legally allowed to. And yes, healthcare is a business, and naturally all workers need to profit off helping people through their care, so people are willing to do that if they get paid. And healthcare workers get paid more because they are making a vital impact on their customers’ bodies, and it is a highly specialized field. And I guess that all healthcare workers have a special status-ish because in order to become one, you need to go through a long process of education.

July 17-21:

-Swept the floor

-Cleaned the floor with chemicals

-Worked the cash register

-Sorted new medicines coming in

-Arranged medicines

-Made calls to people to remind them their medicine is ready

-Restocked food and drinks

-Checked for expiration dates

When I was at the cashier, I noticed that people are more fortunate than others. Some are rich and wealthy and probably live in a mansion. On the other side, some people barely have enough money to pay for medicine. And today, I recently noticed that one of our patients has sadly passed away. Her son was on the phone talking to the employees and she then broke the news to us. This altered me as a person: as I work longer at the pharmacy, people show up with with baggy skin and with their cane in their hand, and they pay with cash from the bottom of their 10 year-old bag that they’ve have been using for quite some time, and to think that one day one of these hard scrabbling survivors is just poof! Gone? I thought about what it means to be human, to live every day, surviving in this unkind world, and then to poof! just die? What’s the point of living if you’re just going to die at some point? Well, according to the Bible you will get resurrected by our Savior if you trust in Him and repent. And my uncle who is the manager feels the same way, for if people don’t have money for the medicine he would either let them pay it back later or depending on the price just let them have it. And my uncle connected with so many people he practically knows every patient of his. I would be at the register and he would say “Hello, Mr. O’Leary!”. I myself go to know some of the patients: I guess over time you start to build relationships as people come back because they like your pharmacy. And people come back so many times you start to build relationships. And I myself am learning how to do that – through serving this community, I met many patients and have connected with a handful of them, which caused me to become a more grateful young man who respects others.

July 24-28

-Swept the floor

-Cleaned the floor with chemicals

-Cashed out customers

-Sorted new medicines coming in

-Arranged medicines

-Made calls to people to remind them their medicine is ready

-Restocked food and drinks

-Check for expiration dates

(Basically the same thing as last week.)

This time inside of the pharmacy, me and a dad had a pretty good conversation. We were talking about my life and his sons and what we have in common. 

 He started it with, “So how old are you?” 

“14, going into freshman year.”

“Do you play any sports?”

“Yeah I play baseball and basketball.”

“Nice! What school do you go to?”

“Milton High, but I applied to BC High and got in, but I’m not attending.”

“Oh really that’s crazy, my son goes to BC High and also plays baseball. Too bad that you aren’t.” Well, I’m very glad that I am attending Milton High because I’m with majority of my friends. Sure, BC High might have better academics and sports, but Milton High has similar features and with the addition with all my friends in my classes.

And shortly that, after he talked about golf to my uncle, he exited the store.

Now, how would you like to know how this young adult went about his day, ringing out customers?

“Hello, how are you? How can I help you today?”

“Good, pickup for ____.”

There is this wall of hanging bags sorted by the first letter of their last name. So if the last name of the patient is Watt, I would go to the W section and search for Watt. I would go on to get a paper bag and place all of the medicine into the bag and proceed to finish ringing out the customer.

“Alright, ___. Can I verify your address?”

”Yeah, it’s____.”

I go to scan it.

“Alright, your total is ___.”

The customer usually pays with plastic: they put the card in, and an awkward silence (unless my coworkers are talking amongst themselves or with the patients) descends. When the patient pays with a card, there is typically this awkward silence. And also, I’m the one waiting for the patient to do what they need to do, punching in their pin number, and waiting for the transmission of the information to the computer. In contrast, when they pay in cash, it is usually straightforward. They give me the cash, I return change, they sign the pinpad, and leave. I’m at work: I want to work, not wait, staring into space! So I prefer when they pay cash so there isn’t that awkward silence. And also I like doing the math when I’m trying to find the right amount of change.

August 2-4

Tasks are the same thing as last week.

Today we got an interaction with a patient that has been with my uncle for over 10 years and this is the first time I met her. 

She first goes up to my uncle to say hi.

“Hello, pick up for Debra.”

“What is the last name Debra?”

“——–.”

I searched for the prescriptions.

“Are you related to Hung in any way?”

“Yea, I’m his nephew.”

“Oh really! That’s great. And how old are you?”

“14.”

Uncle Hung chimes in: “Yea we gotta train them young. Kids these days.”

Everyone chuckles.

“So that will be $211.58.”

“$211? I thought my insurance covered most of it?” As she hears the number come out of my mouth her face turned from a happy one to one where she got concerned that something has gone wrong. You know when a lady is serious when she pulls out the reading glasses because she goes on to pick up the prescriptions to read the price tag. When my uncle goes on to tell her the real price, she has this sigh of relief.

I went back to check and realized it was $17.58 instead of $211.

“Very sorry about that ma’am. Your total will be 18.76.”

“Ah, I’m old so I have to write down every time I spend money.”

“Oh really.” 

She paid in cash so it made it easier on my end. 

I gave her the change. 

“Alright, everyone you all have a good one. And nice meeting you sweetie.”

“Have a good day ma’am,” chanted everyone.

August 14-17

This will be the last time I will do this, for this is the last time I will be going into the pharmacy. Alright, my time at the pharmacy was great. I got to meet great co-workers that would always crack some jokes then and there. The names of the two co-workers are Santana and Mel – Santana was more the jokester with my uncle, and on the other side Mel was considered, weird (according to Santana) as she would say the most random statements and comments.

Santana always says that he will “contact your parents” if I mess up. With that he would always beg my aunt to give him my parents’ number so he could contact them, but she refuses to and I left with him yelling, “This is nepotism” as I get away with it. I’m very grateful to have the chance to work in general, and to have amazing co-workers to work with. Hopefully I will see them sometime in the future, maybe out in the street or maybe if I go back for some reason I could pay them a visit.

August 18, 2023


LEONA ZHOU

Ancient Egyptian Fashion: Footwear and Accessories

Imagine what it would be like if the ancient Egyptians came here in the present, bringing their passion for fashion to us? From their footwear to their jewelry to their makeup and hairstyles, are all very fascinating, revealing their influence on modern style, and producing an awareness about the universality and importance of fashion and beauty in human culture. I hope to inform you about how the ancient Egyptians made and wore their shoes, how they wore their makeup, how they designed their hairstyles and how they wore and made their jewelry. We’ll see how all of these influenced the ancient Egyptians’ jobs and social structure.

Just as today, shoes were very important for the Egyptians. You might think, what shoes were used daily for the Egyptians? “Both men and women wore sandals made of papyrus. Sandals made of vegetable fibers or leather were a common type of footwear. Nevertheless, men and women, including the wealthy, were frequently portrayed barefoot” (History Museum). Both men and women and the wealthy wore sandals which were all made of the same material, while some people simply went around barefoot. Could it be that the upper class were often barefoot because of the clean environments they live in? I mention this because both men and women are also often portrayed as barefoot.

Sandals, gold leaf, New Kingdom, 1479–1425 BC. Photo, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Public Domain

Jewelry has always been an important ornament of fashion. Nowadays, jewelry is often made with the materials diamonds, silver, bronze and gold. But has it ever occurred to you about what materials the ancient Egyptians used, or the different types back in time? Has it ever occurred to you the difference of jewelry worn by the upper classes and the lower classes? And how many types of jewelry there were? And has it ever occurred to you what different types of gemstones used in Ancient Egypt meant? It turns out that the wealthier class would use primarily gold and some copper, while the lower class uses mainly copper and bones, stones, fake pearls and tiger’s eye for their jewelry. At the time silver was not at hand yet, so jewelers created colors like rose, gray and reddish brown by combining various elements with gold. There are many types of jewelry, for instance, there are ankle bracelets, armbands, brooches, collar pieces, diadems, earrings, girdles, rectorals, rings and much more. Now, jewelry wasn’t only for fashion, or complimenting outfits. There are certain gemstones used in ancient Egyptian that are believed for expressing, and, achieving, happiness and even health, “Certain colors were thought to provide health benefits, which accounts for the prodigious use of color in ancient Egyptian jewelry” (Ancient Egyptian Jewelry). Emerald was believed potent for immortality and fertility, malachite was believed to promote healing, garnet symbolized the extremes of anger and fire and victory, obsidian symbolized death, and much much more. 

Makeup was always valued throughout the past and the present. Cosmetics may seem easy or difficult to use, it may or may not look good. Though the Ancient Egyptians were always portrayed to look good with makeup on, what materials did the Ancient Egyptians use for beauty products? “Both sexes wore eye make-up, most often outlining their lids with a line of black kohl” (History Museum). In short, makeup was always an important feature throughout history.

These cosmetic pots contained kohl, which the ancient Egyptians applied like eye-liner, perhaps to screen out the sun (Credit: Two Temple Place/Ipswich Museum)

If you never really paid much attention to your hair, then you’d be surprised at how much hair mattered and related to the Ancient Egyptians’ lives. You might think it wasn’t that important. Back in ancient Egypt, different hairstyles helped different jobs. Yet how? “Status: High status members of society had hairstyles that were more elaborated with added adornments. Role in society: if you were a priest, for example, then your hair had to be shaved and you could not use any kind of wig. Age: Children were required to shave their hair other than one ‘lock of youth,’ which they were required to dye” (History Museum). Hair needed to be styled depending on your job and spot on the social structure.

Hey! Do you see that girl over there? She looks a lot like an ancient Egyptian woman, for her hair is black and perfumed, with gold clasps adorning it, delicately framing her almond-shaped face, and her eyelashes are heavy with kohl! l almost thought I went back in time!

August 11, 2023


EZRIE ZINCHIK

Chef Ezrie’s Adventures in Confectionary Creation

When I think of where all the desserts in the world come from, I think of some fancy chefs with hats that reach almost the ceiling, and I think of long handled brass kitchen implements and fancy whisks and copper bowls, all required for the production of delicious sweets, pastries, cakes and chocolates.

I really wanted Nutella but my parents didn’t let me have any so I made my own but it tasted awful. Now, before we begin, there is something you should know about Nutella – it was invented out of necessity – the shortage of chocolate during WWII was the cause. The nuts, not a nut I am used to (normally I ingest peanuts, I crack pecans, and I throw walnuts at my little sister) were hazelnuts, and these are round nuts with a little point at the end that have a thin skin covering them.

The baker’s chocolate came in large square packages, sort of like an extremely dull form of a candy bar, and I wanted, as I always do, to rip open the wrapper (like Charlie Bucket) and eat a few squares, but being that there was little-to-no sugar, the product was unappetizing. I did enjoy watching it melt in the pan though!

The hazelnuts were smaller than I expected but I put them in the oven anyway. When I opened the oven, the smell of the air reminded me of the smell of roasted nuts they always sold on the streets in Europe. After they cooled down my grandma wouldn’t stop bugging me about helping peel the skin of the hazelnuts.

So, I just gave in and let her do it, leaving the kitchen while she labored away. Once the peeling was done, I put the hazelnut in the blender to make hazelnut butter, but every 5 seconds the hazelnuts would get stuck to the sides (because you need a food processor) and I’d have to push them down each time because the blade would be spinning around, blending nothing. And on top of that, my grandma kept complaining about the noise and how the blade was going to get stuck and break, and I found this ironic, for she was the one who kept arguing about staying and helping.

And after all that, the homemade Nutella didn’t even taste good (but the rest of my family including my grandma liked it and said it was delicious).

Having not like the homemade Nutella which tasted awful (though, not sure if I told you that the rest of my family liked it?), I realized that I was not done yet. I realized that I needed to make more desserts like cake, brownies, cupcakes, doughnuts, churros, Jell-o, cookies,  s’mores, and milkshakes, etc.

So naturally, I decided on baking a cake. Just any cake? No, a confetti cake with ruby red frosting. Do you think it worked out well? Do you think it was easy? I have much to share about this experiment.

A week later, I woke up and thought to myself, hmmmm, I want to make a cake today, so after my camp, (because it was summer) I searched up “homemade cake recipes” and one of the first recipes that showed up was a confetti cake. Well, I looked at the ingredients and checked if I had them all. I did! Next, I looked if I had all the cooking supplies like a mixer, bowls, and cake pans, etc. After a while I was done making sure I had all the essentials I needed and started preparing the amounts. Here’s what I needed for the cake:

3 and 3/4 cups (443g) cake flour (spoon & leveled)

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon salt

1 and 1/4 cups (2.5 sticks; 290g) unsalted butter, softened to room temperature

2 cups (400g) granulated sugar

1/3 cup (80ml) vegetable oil

4 large eggs, at room temperature

2 large egg whites, at room temperature

3 teaspoons (15ml) pure vanilla extract

1 and 1/2 cups (360ml) buttermilk, at room temperature

3/4 cup (135g) rainbow sprinkles

And for the icing:

1 and 1/2 cups (3 sticks; 345g) unsalted butter, softened to room temperature

5 and 1/2 cups (650g) confectioners’ sugar

1/3 cup (80ml) heavy cream, at room temperature

3 teaspoons (15ml) pure vanilla extract (or use clear imitation vanilla extract for stark white frosting)

1/8 teaspoon salt

optional: additional sprinkles for garnish

Once I prepared everything, I got out my mixer which looks exactly like the one below,

except mine is completely silver and I basically poured all the ingredients for the cake in the metal bowl that goes on the mixer and started mixing it.

But as you can see in the picture, there is a knob that you turn called a “bowl-lift.” Basically you turn the knob to adjust the height of the bowl. In my case I had to put it all the way until I heard it click in place so the whisk part that you attach to it would be able to reach the batter. I only had one problem. I was making a confetti cake and I only had about twenty little confetti sprinkles. So, to make do with what I had, I looked in the spices cabinet and found two more bottles of sprinkles, one red and one pink. But these were sugar sprinkles and these were the exact ones I 

used:

But, the cake batter being white, and the sprinkles red and pink, it turned the batter pink because I had a full pink bottle and a half filled red bottle and there was more pink plus red and pink are technically the same color because pink is just red and white mixed together. So anyway once it was done mixing, I filled the cake pans I was using and put them in the oven.

However, I goofed up with food coloring. I didn’t know you were only supposed to put in a drop – I put in three complete little bottles and…

This is how it was supposed to look:

It turned the batter pink because I had a full pink bottle and a half-filled red bottle and there was more pink plus red and pink are technically the same color because pink is just red and white mixed together. So anyway, once it was done mixing, I filled the cake pans I was using and put them in the oven. After that I put a timer on for fifty minutes. Here’s what the sprinkles did to the cake color:

While the cake was baking, I started working on the icing. First, I got a bowl and added all the ingredients but put in a lot of red food coloring (to add to the pink cake theme) and put them in the mixer. After a while I realized the icing was too watery. And I tasted it. It tasted awful and I concluded that I had put too much food coloring (I only put like three bottles😳). Well anyway, I added butter to make it thicker but then I realized after two minutes of mixing that I had needed to melt the butter. So, I put it in the microwave, and it was all fine after that but it still tasted bad (like food coloring), so I put yogurt in it and after that it tasted good, so I put it in the refrigerator.

This is the site and recipe I used: https://sallysbakingaddiction.com

And if you are going to try out this recipe, I recommend using a mixer or one of those mixers that you hold yourself for the cake and the icing (just remember to clean the bowl after you’re done making the cake batter because you are going to make the icing in the same bowl). 

Also, I recommend using a circular cake pan (the typical cake pan), because I used rectangular cake pans as I didn’t have any circular cake pans and I didn’t have time to buy one. I also suggest using either the exact-size cake pan they use in the recipe, or the sized cake pans they have in the options on the website so you know how much to bake it, because you have to bake it a different time depending on the size of the pan/cake pan. Lastly, I suggest you plan it out ahead instead of like me… where I found out I had to bake a cake three hours before it was due.

Two weeks passed by, and I started to feel like I wanted to bake something really bad. So, I went through my pantry and found a Ghirardelli brownies mix. To start off, I preheated the oven to 325 F. Then I got out a bowl and emptied the brownie mix into the bowl. Next, I added one egg, 1/3 cup of oil, and 1/3 cup of water into the bowl. Then I mixed everything together for the next minute or two. Once I was done mixing, I poured the batter into a baking pan and put the pan in the oven to bake for fifty minutes. It was too easy – baking from scratch is way more satisfying.

Then I found that more and more ideas and cooking projects started to happen: I wanted to stir-fry! I wanted to make more brownies – and here is a list of the many things I began to pump out from the kitchen, with a few comments for each:
Brown butter frosted banana bread bars – These did not take too long to make and they turned out great. The only thing was that my parents and I agreed that the frosting was just too sweet (I didn’t even use sugar I used monk fruit).

Banana splits – These were easy and simple but
instead of making a normal banana split, I made them battle royale style where you cut the bananas into discs and put them on the bottom of a bowl. Then you put the ice cream scoops on top and top it off with whipped cream, a cherry, and chocolate or strawberry syrup if you like. Also, my parents complained that I put too much whipped cream on the splits.
Rice cake stirfry with vegetables – For the stirfry, I had to dice up all the veggies and soak the rice cakes in warm water. It tasted all right but my parents were the only ones who really liked it.
Potato and leek soup – The potato and leek soup didn’t really come out exactly how we wanted it to come out. First I chopped up the leeks, potatoes, cauliflower, and onions. Then, I put them in the soup that my mom was preparing and we mixed and let it simmer. Next we had to blend the soup but my mom wouldn’t let me do it because she thought I would scrape her pot. But then she kept spraying herself so she had my dad do it and he accidentally pureed the whole soup.


Brownies – Same as last time.
Pizza – Easy and simple to make. Just make sure you have the right size of a pan for the pizza to bake.
Crême Brûlée cheesecake – It was kind of hard but I had to have my dad take the cheesecake out and put it in because when you bake a cheesecake you have to put it in 1-2 inches of water and my dad thought I was going to spill it. Also, it ended up being a regular cheesecake because I didn’t have a crême brûlée torch to melt the sugar to crême brûlée it.
Fettuccini pasta with chicken – My mom made the pasta and chicken and I made the sauce. The first attempt at the sauce, my mom took over because she said I took too long to prepare all the ingredients.
Sea Bass – My mom made it, but I told her how to cook it because she was trying to cook the sea bass in the air fryer but I told her to do it on the stove top because I searched up what is the best way to cook sea bass and that’s what all the websites said and it turned really good to where everybody ate and the only person in my family that likes fish is my dad.

Here are a few more pictures of the brown butter frosted banana bread bars:

August 8, 2023


JASON QIN

The Twitter Files: the extent of current censorship

The Twitter Files are a series of Twitter (now called “X“) threads published from December 2022 through March 2023, discussing internal documents between Twitter and the FBI that reveal government involvement and left-leaning bias in content moderation, information on the suspension of Donald Trump, and censorship of COVID-19 vaccine information. The actual files that the name refers to are a series of internal Twitter documents given to certain journalists (Matt Taibbi, Bari Weiss, Lee Fang) and authors (Michael Shellenberg, David Zweig, Alex Berenson), who then used these documents to create the Twitter threads. It reveals Twitter figuring out how to maintain its policies when bombshell stories go against a certain narrative, one policed and supported by actors in the federal government. One of these stories that put Twitter under scrutiny was the Hunter Biden laptop controversy, where Hunter Biden’s laptop was left at a repair shop. It was retrieved and the New York Post wrote a story on the later-verified emails that suggested corrupt activity from Joe Biden. Twitter ended up suppressing the story, justifying this as the emails were technically hacked materials. However, an invasion of privacy does not really matter when it suggests something like corruption, especially on the eve of a national presidential election. 

On the topic of moderation, Twitter can moderate anything covered by Section 230(c)(2), where the “good faith” removal of anything deemed to be “obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable” is stated to be completely legal. The problem is that “otherwise objectionable” is vague. It’s essentially a blank check, with courts having to either look at the provider’s policies or assume what Congress initially meant. In other words, the wording makes dealing with Section 230 incredibly messy. However, it begs the question: what has Twitter deemed “otherwise objectionable”? Of course, there is the Hunter Biden laptop story, but there was also the moderation of COVID-19 vaccine information that went against the Biden administration’s narrative. This is where government involvement came into play, which recently came up with Missouri v. Biden, where the judge issued a preliminary injunction (a temporary fix essentially) stopping Biden and certain agencies from requesting takedowns from Twitter and other Section 230-protected publishers.

However, it is not like Twitter has to comply with these requests from the federal government, and Matt Taibbi wrote that Twitter ignored some of them, showing that they were attempting to act independently. So why would Twitter follow through on these requests? Perhaps it is because these requests align with their policies, but it does not excuse the FBI and Twitter from violating the First Amendment, silencing people who are perceived as simply out of line or in utter disagreement with a preset narrative. What is interesting is that former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey seemed fairly confident that there was nothing nefarious going on, as he “urged Elon Musk to release ‘without filter’ Twitter’s internal communications about moderation decisions” (Forbes). Perhaps Twitter is innocent, but the government is not, which is where the case currently stands with Missouri v. Biden, with evidence of coercion towards Big Tech companies. Unfortunately, unless there is nothing else of importance in the thousands of documents that are still being kept under lock and key, a proper judgment of the Twitter Files cannot be made until all context is given. 

Either this context will defend the actions of the government, or it will prove even more scandalous. Also, due to the strong response by the Weaponization of Federal Government Committee during Matt Taibbi and Michael Shellenberg’s testimonies, one might ask: what does the government have to hide? Must the federal agencies involved in these meetings with Twitter release their own internal documents? Even with these questions answered, the overarching question is, who was at fault? In other words, should companies like Twitter that are integral to our society have this much influence and power, so that when the government waltzes up to their front door, they can control the flow of information?