Spotting a HVM: What Did Priscilla Chan See in Mark Zuckerberg?!

 dasdbobb Where ya been and what ya been doin'?

@Brenda55 Brenda55 I was lost in the internet jungle. See below.

 dasdbobb o/

How'd you finally get on? dasdbobb 

@Christelyn I was startint to restore the OS, when I remembered a trick I learned from an IT guy years ago. If there is only i site you can't get to, delete the cooki for it. It's a 50-50 shot, but because there were new servers the info in the cookie was obselete. So, I got lucky i guess.

 dasdbobb  Christelyn That's what I did too - deleted the old cookies. 

@SynaiAshford There is still time to mix and mingle if people are interested. One thing I learned from my failed dating history (before I met my prince) is that no matter how busy someone claims to be, if they are truly interested they will make time. At the same time love seems to find many people when they are not looking to hard for it. Best of luck in your last year.

 SynaiAshford Quite a long time ago (1960s), when I 'rushed' for fraternity membership at a mountain-state university, I was judged a 'closet case' (the fraternity-system's DBR status) - taken aside & 'interviewed' by a senior member, so that my very presence wouldn't contaminate the potential pool of pledges.  Even my father's fraternity wouldn't have me.

Since the social life at that university revolved around the fraternity-sorority system, I did not do well - flunked out 3 semester later, in fact.

So, by turns, I learned to date-and-relate far out from the university life and systems ... which included meeting the Foreign Students, the 'townie' folks and the pre-nerds and pre-geeks.

All this left me oriented to academics and achieving university rank, ultimately resulting in my doctoral degree, my ability to think and do for myself, and to find companionship well outside the conventional box.

Come to think of it, marrying Brenda55 was about as far out of the 'becky-white-box' as possible.

 SynaiAshford I found mine!

 SynaiAshford

 I didn't meet anyone I'd want to marry in college, but I met a couple of guys who wanted to marry me.  In those days I was hell-bent on being the first woman of color to head a Fortune 500 company--marriage was not on my priority list.  I found my late husband  the old-fashioned way: we were both at a cocktail mixer for professionals and he asked to host to introduce us.  He pursued me from Vegas to San Francisco.

My daughter met her prince in grad school.  She was doing a year of study at a University in the same city in which he was attending law school.  They married the day after he graduated (she finished college the year before.)  He was not drop-dead gorgeous, but he clearly loved my child.  She was smart enough to see his potential.  Needless to say, they are married 13 years now and both doing very well professionally and personally.

We women have to admit that we are oftentimes attracted to superficial and venal  things in men, and that has never served us well.  Looking for a solid, loving, ambitious man with character and integrity will almost always be a better pursuit than chasing smooth-talking pretty boys who look hot on the dance floor.  As I told my daughter when she was going away to college, "the qualities that constitute a fun date are not necessarily the same qualities that make for a good husband."

 Ricky T 

It is a nice story [see link below]. However, not that out of the ordinary. Asian girl sees invisible STEM student. In a related development, the sun will rise in the east tomorrow.

Hey, I never got back to you about June! No can do, as Grandmother Chu is going to Taipei for my brother's second wedding in Taiwan. The first one was in LA on the day before Easter. I plan to clock about 90-105 hours that week, then I go on two weeks of revenue-killing Active Duty for two weeks. Pretty much the time between May 16 and September 30 are a dead zone, as I need to make $135K extra during that time period. OK, I could pull it out of savings a few times over, but as your father no doubt told you once or twice [a day], if you spend it, it's no longer savings but spendings. The only way I know how to make that amount is by working more hours, so I'll average 70-90 hours a week throughout the summer.

Got any fall plans?

 Law Wanxi

no worries Law, I go down to see grandma every 2 - 3 months so yup, my next trip after this June one should be around September-ish. Hopefully you can join us (me & Chris) for some good food and grand plans. Remember to go out and play. =)

 Ricky T 

Play doesn't pay.

 Law Wanxi  Ricky T True but it provides the balance needed to make work time more effective. Nothing and no one works at peak efficiency when fatigued. 

 Brenda55  Law Wanxi I was just gunna say that. Productivity at full strength vs almost empty and feeling stale is a HUGE difference. =)

 Ricky T  Brenda55 

It's not as bad as it sounds. Besides, I've been running on fumes since third year med school. My grandmother as extracted a promise from me that I'll be at home and not working from 8PM Saturday night through 7AM Monday morning. 

Heck, I worked 16-18 hours a day, seven days a week for six months when I was in Iraq. OK, I got a day off, twice, when convoys I was in got chewed up more than usual, but I made it through that time relatively unscathed, except for an aversion to loud noises, sudden movements and sand, but that had nothing to do with the amount of hours worked. 

Four or five hours a day are tele-neurology work I can do from my office at home. I have a couple of people who can watch over Grandmother Chu for the summer when they're not working during the day, a couple of women on their clinical clerkships, which frees up my time to bring in the bucks. I say 70-90 hours a week but it's probably only going to be 75-80 over six days and that's not all that different from the usual 12 to 15 hours a day most physicians and surgeons do 4 or 5 days a week, just an additional day or two.

October 1, I'm cutting back to 12 hours a day, five days a week, or "slacker mode" as I call it.  

 Law Wanxi  Ricky T 

I had a period where I worked 70 to 80 hour work weeks when I was in mortgage down payment mode.  Did not work out so well once for a patient of mine, Nothing tragic thank God but troubling signs that I lacked focus and a lack of my usual attention to detail.  Nurses can't do that.  Their patients derserve better.

My boss wisely forced a decease in my hours and that took care of things.

 You know you best and even though we've never actually met we care.  OK.  A strange world this cyber-space.

 Law Wanxi  Ricky T  Brenda55

 Law, you doctors are very circumspect about working long hours.  Beloved Spouse does QA/UR work by computer at home at least 4 hours a day, aside from keeping office hours.  I don't know how he does it.  He tells me that all doctors should have at least two jobs, and many of them do. 

@Patricia Kayden Possibly because They knew Asian women are open to dating them (stem guys who happened to be white). If you believe you have a chance (by observing many such couplings) it tends to boost confidence levels. Obviously she's was not JUST an Asian woman but someone very special to him.

 Bren82 That about sums it up. 

And I just got my book today! I'll leave an Amazon review when I'm done.

 Soul_Incites Soul_Incites, Thank you for the reminder,  I read the entire book and loved it.  I will also leave my review.   

 Soul_Incites Standing and applauding this post. 

 Soul_Incites Thank you--that means a lot. It really, really does.

 Elegance Yeah, I was looking for someone in college (and did date and have a BF for a while), but I didn't meet the one there. That's okay though... I think the bigger point (which I'm sure you know, but for others who don't see it) is that you're wasting a serious opportunity if you don't even make the effort to date and seek a potentially serious relationship in college. If it doesn't happen, it doesn't happen... but it shouldn't be because you kept your head in the books the whole 4-6+ years or worried about getting pregnant and therefore tuned all members of the male species because "boys are trouble"... you know, all that stuff people say to black college girls and then those black college girls hit 35 still single and not a prospect in sight and wonder "what the heck happened?" (Yeah Chris, I stole that from you!)

@Brenda55 It takes a certain level of confidence to approach a woman hanging out in a group. It definitely seems much wiser to go with one friend if there are plans to mix and mingle.

 Bren82  Brenda55 

"It takes a certain level of confidence to approach a woman hanging out in a group. It definitely seems much wiser to go with one friend if there are plans to mix and mingle."

Most guys will not do it.  I know this was a mistake that I made when I was younger.

Here is a short story. A bunch of us had gone to a wedding and wanted to hang out together after the reception was over.  Six of us headed out to a club for drinks and to ...ahem scout out the landscape. We go a large table together near the dance floor so that we could check out the "wildlife".  Now we were coming from a wedding so we were dressed to the nines and got a LOT of looks but not one guy, black,

white or indifferent came over to our table.

I get up from the table to go to the BR and walked past the bar. Two guys followed my approach and my walking past them.  Dummy me was so intent on handling my bushiness that I did not even notice them.  Every one at my table sure did and told me about it when I got back to the table.

 Unfortunately I had came back via a different route and by that time the guys were on the dance floor with someone else.

If I had it to do over I would not have gone out in such a large group and  I would have kept my eyes open more.  I could have taken the time for a drive by flirt which may have tided the guys over until I got back.  Oh well missed opportunities. 

 Brenda55 Another co-sign! I wish I had realized sooner that I should separate from the group more often. I try to do that more often now, but sometimes I'm so wrapped up in having a good time with my friends that I forget. Anyway, nearly every time I do go have some "alone" time, a guy will approach me! Yay!

 Brenda55 I went to a white frat party once with a group of white girls. It was perfectly fine. They held the party in the backyard of the frat house and there were HUNDREDS of people there. We talked to some guys, had one or two drinks, then left.  While no love connections were made by any of us, it was better that I went instead of sitting in my dorm or apartment moaning about not meeting anybody on a Friday night. I don't see what's so scary about non-black frat parties. Seriously, just be smart, don't stick around if you see you're the only woman in the house and it's getting later and again, in most cases, the parties end up spilling outside anyway because there are TONS of people there.

 Bunny77  Brenda55 It drives me insane, Bunny. These girls act like going to a frat party is tantamount to being invited to an orgy. Somebody on the FB page was bemoaning about not wanting to be "the exotic one." Well, Priscilla was "the exotic one," and look how well it worked out for her. The chicks act like frat party=rape upon entry. I wish black women and girls were so guarded of their bodied with members of their own race, then perhaps we wouldn't have a 73% OOW rate.

 Christelyn   Brenda55 Yeah, I saw that... I'm sorry, but with every suggestion, why does there have to be an excuse??

I went to black frat parties as well, and honestly, I felt a million times more objectified and leered at like a piece of meat at the black ones! Ultimately, frat parties of any type proved not to be my scene, but to fear the non-black ones as some potential rape fest versus thinking everything would be hunky dory at the black ones would have been pure foolishness on my part...

 Brenda55 Thinking back to college, I can confirm this. Usually the only black female faces (sometimes the only black faces PERIOD) would be me and 2 of my other friends. The downside was people assumed I was uninterested in hanging with black folks. (Upside was that I met my first (and only --eep!) boyfriend at a frat party.)

 Karla00 "She's not Caucasian, flashy or extravagant." This makes me giggle, because it brings to mind Paris Hilton...and I could never see a Paris Hilton type going for a Zuckerberg type (unless she's a straight-up golddigger).