The best of the best is right here

This is also posted to Facebook…

I am on the hunt for America’s best vegetarian/vegan (sorry omnivores) burrito! Feedback needed from anyone who reads this! Give me the name of the restaurant/place and city, or if homemade, the recipe as precisely as you can detail it…GO!!! [Leave feedback on Facebook or here...]

In my many years of burrito eating, here are my rankings (I’m sure to add to them as I eat more/remember where I’ve eaten in previous years):

(Somewhere near the bottom) Anna’s Taqueria
http://www.annastaqueria.com/
Highly overrated for vegetarians/vegans.  The beans are not vegetarian (wtf) and the ’super burrito’ size is laughable.  Only put this on here to piss off people who love this place.
(Mediocre, but passable) Qdoba
http://www.qdoba.com/
In terms of quantity/fill per burrito, Qdoba is on par with any place.  Black and pinto beans are available.  Their guacamole is pretty good and the salsas are pretty decent as well.  You could do worse.
(Same as above) Baja Fresh
http://www.bajafresh.com/
The guacamole needs lots of work.  I had to add hot sauce, lemon, and salt to it.  Otherwise, the ones I’ve been to cater to vegetarians very nicely.  Decent sizes and decent portions.  Gotta’ love the salsa/toppings bar.
(Pretty good) Chipotle
http://www.chipotle.com/
I discovered this in Cleveland while going to Case.  Everyone needs to have a Chipotle otherwise death will occur (quote from one of my students).  The cilantro-lime rice is perfect as are the fajita vegetables.  It’s a shame that the pinto beans are not vegetarian otherwise this place would be higher on my list.  Quality top-notch.
(Same as above) Mad 4 Mex
http://www.madmex.com/static/menus/madmex_mainmenu.pdf
The options are fantastic for vegetarians.  The vegan cheese and tofu sour cream are just icing on the cake…or fillings in the burrito???  The quality of the food itself is okay.  The texture of the tofu is great…hard on the outside, but chewy once you bite in.  However, there’s no seasoning on the tofu.  Makes it pretty bland.  Overall, I give it a high ranking because of the variety…not necessarily the quality of the burrito itself.
(Awesome) Santa Fe
http://www.santafeburrito.com/
The wheat gluten burrito is delicious.  Absolutely delicious.  If only guacamole was included instead of being an extra.  That’s kind of a sham for a vegetarian burrito.
(The best) Lucky’s Mexican Spot
http://philadelphia.citysearch.com/profile/44829017/philadelphia_pa/lucky_s_mexican_spot.html#profileTab-reviews
Here’s the deal.  Tortilla.  Mexican rice.  Black beans and/or refried beans (I just stick to the black normally).  Seasoned chana (as in chana batura [chick peas] you get at an Indian restaurant).  Seasoned tofu.  Hot sauce, lettuce, pico de gallo, and guacamole.  Heaven.

Tell me what I’m missing!  I’m sure I’ve eaten burritos at 100 other places that I’m forgetting.  By the way, I’m not counting Taco Bell…because nothing will ever top TB :p

Note: My friend Mark Ayoub adds Taqueria Cancun in San Francisco.  Never been but sounds awesome!

Note note: Other friends have chimed in, with Boloco [been there once, wasn't too pleased...but I need to go there more], California Tortilla, and El Faro.  Todd had the genius idea of adding Leutner, our college cafeteria at Case.  That ranks miles below Anna’s but yet I think I’ve eaten more burritos from there than from anywhere else.  Okay, scratch that.  Leutner gets a bump because I got as much guacamole as I wanted.  However, it gets demoted because the guacamole was in stock once a decade.  [Maybe I was the cause of that?]

Thanks to Arvind for the comment below (he likes Mama Mexico’s) and thanks to all who have responded!  I want more responses…keep ‘em rolling. 

One day I will eat all of these!

Ever had a case of ’senioritis’?  A mild one?  A severe one?  What’s the prescription for it?  MORE!

Senioritis is okay.  I want you to embrace it.  If you’re graduating, leaving school, leaving your job, etc.  Anything that has to do with geographic relocation can be classified as senioritis.  Have I caught it before?  Absolutely! 

Senior year at Case Western, once I received my first graduate school acceptance, I essentially put down my books and enjoyed everything I had ever wanted to in Cleveland and on campus.  In summary, I spent half my time with my girlfriend and half my time doing activities with my fraternity brothers with overlap between the two, of course.  By graduation, I played in more intramural hockey games than I had in the previous three and a half years.  Same with community service.  Ditto for random talks, plays, events, etc.  More importantly, I learned more about my friends than I had in the previous three and a half years. 

Life seemed more fun.  It was.  But at what cost?  Minimal, if anything at all.  On paper, the only thing I had to worry about was not failing.  However, strangely, aside from Physics II E&M (more like S&M…but not as enjoyable), I did very well academically.  So it is not as if my parading through Cleveland and Case Western my senior year came at the expense of academics.

Fast forward two years later.  I am leaving Penn in May.  What does this call for?  Senioritis!  Does that mean being lazy and goofing off?  If you read the above, you’d know that the answer is absolutely not.  In fact, I’m more productive than I have been in a while.  I’m attending biology department seminars, random talks given by professors or students I’ve never even heard of, going to ‘optional’ recitation sessions for my genetics class (I was the only student who showed up today!), etc.  It’s as if ’senioritis’ is kicking me in the butt saying, ‘DO EVERYTHING YOU WANT TO DO!’  Outside of academics, I’ve played poker at an Atlantic City casino, I am going to a Flyers-Bruins hockey game with Shrenik on Sunday, and will likely get to do a lot of things I haven’t done in my time at Penn.

My point is this: embrace senioritis.  It is really the truest form of hedonism possible.  Not giving two shits about anything is almost like putting yourself in a drunken state where your inhibitions are lowered and your desires are fulfilled.  For me, they happen to be partially nerdy (wanting to go to seminars and recitations).  The nerd part is about soaking in as much from Penn as possible.  Maybe it’s because I do not know if I will be in school next year and am grasping onto whatever pieces of knowledge I can find.

But maybe it’s because I could care less about responsibility and am doing what I want to do.

The preamble:

Manoj says, “People always want to have more stories to tell.” I first thought that was because other people might enjoy listening to these stories.  But I’ve now realized that turning your own experiences into stories is not about others, but about yourself.  Stories help you remember a particular experience better, independent of its impact on a potential listener.  And I have a story for you…but I’m writing it out mainly so that I can better remember it

The fun part:

The last three months have been very stressful.  Between my qualifying exam, academics, and other matters, I have not been relaxed (though I’ve always been happy or at least tried to be ) for a very long time.  Not long after today’s genetics exam was over, I decided that the best kind of stress relief would be to blow $100 playing in a poker tourney at an Atlantic City casino, the Tropicana.

By 3:30 PM, I was at the bus station in downtown Philly, hopped on a bus to Atlantic City, walked over to the Tropicana where I knew a tournament would start later that evening based on a brief internet search that I’d done.  It was a $100 buy-in tournament where you get a fixed amount of poker chips (15,000)…this is different than other forms of poker because you can’t be bullied by high rollers throwing tons of money into the pot since in a tourney, everyone starts off with the same amount and can only play with that amount (no add-ons/rebuys allowed).

My entry slip.

I didn’t expect anything out of this evening…in fact, I expected to entertain myself for as little as half-an-hour (if I stunk) or as long as an hour (if I was not as horrible as I thought). 

But one hand led to another, and out of a starting pool of 69 people, I made it to the final table (8) at around 11:45 PM.  I’ll omit the details, but that’s over 4 hours, a liter of water, two orders of avocado sushi, a bag of Stacy’s pita chips, and a pack of Tic-Tacs after I started. 

My sushi!

There’s no way in my freakin’ mind I thought that I’d EVER be this lucky…let alone in the first poker tourney I’ve ever played in.

Quick side note: Poker takes a healthy amount of luck and a LOT of patience.  A LOT of patience.

Back to the story.  At this point, I was excited because we’d received notice during the course of the evening that because 69 people were in the tournament, 7 would receive a payout.  So being at the final table (again, 8 people) meant I was nearly guaranteed to win something!  8 went to 7 (the remaining players all chipped in some money for 8^th place to reward him for his good play) and at that point, I was on cloud nine. 

Unfortunately, I could have been on cloud fifteen.  Here’s how…

When the table came down to 4 people, I was the chip leader (I didn’t think so but one of the remaining players who had a very short stack in comparison [so he had no reason to be biased] thought I did) or a damn close second. 

At that point, there were essentially two large stacks (mine being one) and two small stacks.  The guy with the other large stack proposed a ‘chip count’ end to the 4-way battle; basically, that’s like dividing up the money according to your chip proportions at the time as opposed to playing through until there’s one winner and earning the amount the casino tells you that you win.  [Apparently, a mutually agreeable deal amongst all players overrides house rules.]

Foolishly (or not, depending on your ‘deal or no deal’ perspective), I objected, because I stood a chance to win $2,760 (the casino’s assigned winner’s pot if we played the whole way through) if I won the whole thing. 

[If I had accepted the ‘chip count’ proposal, I probably would have taken home around $2,000.]

I was the only one to object to this.  I guess majority karma wins (the three other guys were ready to accept the proposal) because I went from chip leader to short stack very quickly and ultimately lost on an all-in pair of 10s.  Another guy had a pair of aces and called.  He won.  4^th place for me.

My certificate. 

All three of the guys who beat me were seasoned players playing in events around the world for many years (one each in his 40s, 60s, and 70s).

Ultimately, I took home $621…and some incredible memories that I’m writing about at 5:30 AM the next morning.

The fruit of my efforts.

Some other pictures I took:

Standing just outside the borders of addiction.

This gelato looked delicious.

I’ve always liked arrangements of fruits/candy/flowers/anything colorful.

Docendo disco, scribendo cogito - I learn by teaching, think by writing.

Often I don’t know what I am thinking until I write.  Most of the time I still don’t even afterward.  And I feel disappointed.  Or even empty because of self-heightened expectations about what I was supposed to have accomplished by writing.

But today is different.  No matter the outcome of what I write, I will not be disappointed.

I found out this afternoon that I will not be finishing my PhD degree at UPenn…for now.  In what has been the biggest disappointment I have ever experienced (pretty blessed life I’ve lived, right? :-)), I was told that I did not pass my qualifying exam on my 2nd chance.  That means that I will finish this May with a Master’s Degree in Cellular and Molecular Biology. 

My committee tried to frame it such that the Masters degree is for two years of hard work and not for four more years of work that should have been.  But when you are essentially ‘fired’ from what you’ve devoted your life to, it is very hard to think of what you’ve accomplished as opposed to what should have or could have been.

I have absolutely NO idea what I am going to do.  My lease with Manoj and Zack is up June 25th, but the school year ends in early May.  I have no absolutely no plans after that.  First time in my life I have no idea what I’ll be doing in two months…three months…whatever.

I’m actually writing this without having told anyone except Zack, who happened to be sprawled out on the living room couch and asked how my day was (in a bit of good news, he got a new job!) and Shrenik, who called me for unrelated reasons (Achira’s wedding) but I ended up telling him what happened.  I thought it might be better to write first.  Slow down a little.

Shrenik asked me, “How do you feel?”  Maybe graduate school has desensitized my emotions, both in a good and bad way, but the answer to his question is that I feel alright.  Having heard the news that I did is not what I wanted to hear. 

In fact, I was sure that I was set on what I was going to be doing until 2013.  I was ultra sure because I have the tendency to daydream…think ‘what if’…a lot.  But for the first time ever, during the last four weeks, I haven’t gone on a single pharmaceutical company jobs website, law school website, medical school website, etc.  Sure, I’ve been distracted by Gmail, Facebook, ESPN.com, etc., but in terms of my career path, never once did I stray from the task at hand.  And because of that, I began to think, ‘Hmm…maybe this is where I belong’. 

But other people have other ideas, and I’m okay with that.  As usual, I did things systematically.  When I was informed of the news this afternoon by the graduate chair and committee member, I asked the graduate chair, ‘Do I have any other options in order to fulfill my PhD degree at Penn now?’  She said no.  I was out of petitions, options, hunger strikes, terrorist threats (just kidding), etc. 

Then she started talking about career services and other things.  She was trying to be helpful, which I told her I appreciated, but I told her and that all I was concerned about today was finding out my academic options.  The rest of the stuff, I’ll worry about later because it would all go in one ear and out the other given the bad news I’d just received.

Is it a shock?  No.  I told everyone I knew that this could go 50/50.  I did my best to answer tough questions.  I fared better than last time but ultimately it was not enough.

Apparently, I’ve already fulfilled the master’s degree requirements, so I could just coast the rest of the year.  It would be easy to do that, but that’s not in my blood.  The funny thing that sucks is that if you finish your PhD, no one cares about your grades but if you don’t, your grades for future employers or other school programs will become even more important!  And I have an even 3.5 right now…I’ll work hard to keep it. 

I don’t really have time to think about what I want to do next…after this school year ends.  I have a biology exam on Thursday and my sister’s wedding coming up.  The latter will be an absolutely welcome distraction, but after that, it will be back to, ‘What do I do now?’

Maybe 20 years down the road, I’ll laugh at this and think this was the right thing for me.  Many people believe that things happen for a reason and whatever happens turns out for the best.  I don’t know if I subscribe (prescribe?) to that theory but in 20 years’ time, we’ll see.

None of you should feel bad for me.  I did not have the merit to pass, so I did not deserve to.  Are there a number of items which I disagree with on the final report?  You bet.  The final report written by my committee is well-meaning and detailed, but in my opinion, laden with errors.  However, no amount of nitpicking will change the end result.

So I stand before you and ask you, ‘What do I do?’  Leave a comment.  E-mail me.  Something.  I’ll come up with the final answer, but your opinions are always welcome and will shape my thinking.

I remember sitting by the pond just before Friday’s qualifying exam and thinking, ‘What is the one thing I have learned throughout this process?’  And while it is not something new, I was reminded that the fundamental nature of humanity is kindness, forgiveness, and good graces.  Sure, unhealthy amounts of ego, ignorance, and other misdemeanors get in the way, but I have received so much help from people over the last few months and the last couple of years that I know I could not have made it through without them.  Family, friends, classmates, teachers, etc.

Today kinda’ sucked but I have a biology exam to study for, so I’ll put this behind me and move on.  When a real tragedy comes my way, I can only hope I’ll be just as unaffected.  But today…well…I’m just hoping it’s a blessing in a disguise.

Oh yah, I came home today and made a fresh batch of cookies.  I made 8 cookies and the ate the rest of the cookie dough.  Mad relief = ecstasy.