Carview!

03 January 2010 @ 03:39 pm

2010 is THE FUTURE until it becomes the past

Welp! It is now officially three whole days into the new year. Yay? So far, I have not conducted myself with the greatest of aplomb, instead I have been gulping down benedryl and trying to sleep so as to get over a cold (I did not know my snot came in so many colors of the rainbow..). So, so long as I'm not feeling the energy to get out there and go, I might as well do a livejournal-y post-y thing-y for this journal that I never update :P

I will also take a cue from mah friendz here:

2009 in Review
This has been a fairly eventful year! When I woke up on January 1 of last year, I was... well, I don't remember specifically where I was that day (I think at home in Ithaca), but at that point I was entering my last semester of college, living with mah good buddy Christine in an apartment, and trying to focus on graduation. I wasn't even focused on that point at what came after! Baby steps, I guess.

Things that happened in the past year:
I
-went on dates -got a car -finished my thesis -graduated from college!!! with honors! and stuff -got my level 2 JLPT certification -went to Wisconsin -got lucky in getting scholarship monies -held down three different jobs (though not at once) -started studying another Asian language -met lots of new people -moved to New York! -devoted myself to studying -managed to get out a little more -became a little bit more extroverted...

So overall, this was a pretty good year. It wasn't perfect.. Despite my best attempts to work out and lose weight, I'm still at roughly the same level I was before, I lost the car, I'm losing the Thai, I don't have an easy time meeting new people, I should be making more money, and the studying didn't always help.... but you know what? That's okay. For every uphill, there's some down, and overall I think I'm ending the year as a better person in a better position than when I started.

2010

So what are my goals for 2010? Well, originally I would have said something like "go to law school or grad school!" but I've found recently that the timing for that is going to be effed up, so that's not going to happen until 2011. Rather, I think this year I need to put myself on the path to one or the other of those things, if not something else (e.g. I signed up for the foreign service exam, too). I think 2010 will be a year in which to further advance myself personally and professionally.

Personally, I'd like to become a little bit more at ease with myself (by trying concertedly to become a more healthy individual) and professionally, I'd like to find a job that not only allows me to merely afford my life - which my current job is okay at doing - but actually allows me the leeway to save money and plan for the next step. Goals are important, goals are motivating.. So that's my goal for 2010, is to find a goal. :P

Okay, this was fun. I'm going to go blow my nose now. Keep up the excellent posts, LJ buddies :D

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04 November 2009 @ 11:39 pm

(no subject)

Whee! Just blew $200 on LSAT registration. WHAT DOES THIS MEAN?

This means that I better friggin' well get my crap together, or that $200 is down the drain. Nothing motivates me more than my own tight-fistedness ;P

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04 October 2009 @ 12:37 am

Things That Amuse Me and No One Else

Thing Number One: taken from https://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8289147.stm

"On Saturday, a leftist group calling itself The Fire Conspiracy Cells claimed responsibility for a small bomb which exploded near Mr Karamanlis' last election rally on Friday. There were no injuries and only minor damage."

This isn't really that funny, except for the fact that Greece has a bizarre history with these sorts of teeny tiny terror cells; when I took the graduate class on terrorism last semester the professor was constantly grumbling that although his models for terrorist lethality and whatnot were excellent, they were constantly being f*cked up by these random Greek terrorist organizations with bizarre names that would release a manifesto, explode some poor bastard's car, and never be heard from again.

Thing Number Two: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_of_flowers

Oh those wacky Victorians. Too emotionally constipated to express their feelings of l'amour for each other, they invented a complicated and subtle "language" involving different flowers and flower arrangements to tell certain people how they felt about each other. I actually think this is really neat, and I would love to make use of it in an olde-tyme courtshippe ritual someday, but it's also a testament to Victorian nuttiness in its own right.

Apart from that, life continues apace. I am a little concerned as I have had swollen tonsils for a while now - I am hoping it will not develop into anything major, as I have no health insurance. My hope is to find cheap antibiotics somewhere. Anyone know where they might be found? I think a doctor has to prescribe them, but I don't have much money for checkups :(

Ta ta!

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07 September 2009 @ 02:19 am

Late-night

I don't know what I want. In any sense. :(

Is this a usual post-graduation sort of thing? I can't really tell. And how does one decide? (non-rhetorical!)

Bleh. I doubt there's an easy answer. My guess is the way that most people do it, and the way that I will do it, is to arbitrarily choose a path and go down it. That there is no easy sign, no guidepost, is I think what scares me. It thrills me too, because I am aware that I have a number of different things that I could do (and I am grateful that I have the confidence to think I could do them), but I do not want to make the wrong choice.

Maybe it's that conservative nature that's slowing me down, anyways. Into the fire, I suppose....

Current Location: Home

Current Music: COLTEMONIKHA - SLEEPING girl

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27 August 2009 @ 12:58 pm

Braaaain sluuuugs

Since most people I know seem to have a thing about posting their dreams, I figure I should share mine - especially as I just woke up.

So in my dream, I was coming home from school. I was on one of those short school busses, because (as in real life) my house was one of the further ones out into the countryside, into the stix of Lansing where most of the poor kids/farmers lived. So it always meant that the bus was a little rowdy, and this was no exception. I remember panicking in the dream because the bus went down to the lake, circled around the neighborhood near the power plant, then started going back up the hill - only the hill was at a ridiculous angle that I couldn't believe the bus could take. Yet the bus, inside, remained perfectly level whilst the outside landscape was tilted by at least 45 degrees. In retrospect, I can blame this on my flat, flat bed.

At a certain intersection, I knew the bus was not going my way, so I stopped and told the driver I would walk. He made some pithy comment, and then let me off. Although the walk wasn't too long, maybe what would be four or five blocks in the city, or half a mile to a mile in the country, I remember this sense of ominous foreboding. The skies had become dark without me noticing, and everything was veiled in shadow. "Hm," I thought, "this is creepy." When I got to my house, both my house, the trailer park across from it (out of real life) and all the neighboring houses down the street (not real, at least never present in my childhood) were dark in the nighttime gloom, as if someone had shut off the power. I could hear faint screams in the distance, a constant running series of howls from a terrified woman. I went inside my house, where thankfully I have never felt danger, and turned on the TV (okay, I know the power's off BUT IT'S A DREAM).

The news reports were full of panicked people screaming in the streets running from.. something. As I watched, some news reporter made some comment about how things were changed forever, and we had truly made contact with another form of life. As I watched scenes of Tokyo panic, some older Japanese lady's head exploded. I slowly learned that in fact, brain slugs had come to planet Earth, intent on infesting our brains with their slugginess - when I heard someone in the house. I ran upstairs and hid under my covers.

In came a nice, cutish guy about my age. I somehow managed to convince him that I would be much better off without a brain slug implant - not in the least because the brain slugs made your head warp in some weird way, as if half of your head had a large fleshy tumorous lump or something. Then my dad and some ... woman came in, and I knew that the brain slug propaganda was all wrong and that the brain slugs did not peacefully coexist with human minds inside their heads, because otherwise Dad would not have been with this random woman, a woman cradling a sleeping baby with a giant brain slug bulge right over its eye...

Then I woke up.

Ahhh, dreams.

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06 August 2009 @ 07:48 pm

Noone's updating! Basterrrrds

Hoooooo. Well, I suppose it's time for my bi-monthly update of some kind. It is a Thursday in August and I am leaving Madison shortly! This is an exciting prospect for a few reasons:

1) I get to go home and have access to people who can cook food!

2) I get to go home and find a scale and see how this summer has been fitness-wise!

3) I get to prepare to move to New York City! Whee!

4) I get to start a job hunt.. oh, wait..

I guess #4 is the only reason I'm really nervous; the job market is crap and I do wonder what kind of marketable skills I have. Kate assures me Steve and Michele could probably find some kind of grunt-level job for the Bloomberg campaign at the very worst, which sounds alright, but I don't really want to fall into the actor-schedule of weird temp jobs off and on all week. I would like to find something a little bit steady that I can proudly put on a resume as relevant to my interests.

I think it should all work out, though. My life seems to balance out, karmically, in one way or another.

There's also not more than a hint of excitement in me at the possible romantic prospects of the big apple. WOOOOoooooOOOOO massive numbers of people means surely there's one there for me? Plus, I'm going to take this as as much of an opportunity as possible to revamp my life to eat healthier, dress better, and generally make a more complete and interesting person of myself. I mean, I know I always promise that, but even if I promise every time to do that and fail miserably while making only a little progress, a little progress is better than none, right? RIIIIIGHT.

Oi, I do like the people I've met here and the stuff I've learned, but I think it's really about time to leave the Cheese State.

Today's Thai Proverb: "Sweet mouth, sour behind." Basically means that someone may talk nice when you're around, but will be nasty when your back is turned. Should I share with you all more Thai nuggets of wisdom, I wonder? Let me know.

Byeeeeee.

Current Location: Madison, WI

Current Music: Buddha Bless - Fire

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13 July 2009 @ 10:18 pm

(no subject)

Sometimes... I forget how to breath.

(but I am still alive!)

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02 July 2009 @ 02:52 pm

Long time no meme

Leave me a comment with "ROBOTSROBOTSLOL" in the subject line.

I'll respond by asking you five questions so I can get to know you better.
Update your journal with the answers to the questions.
Include this explanation in the post and offer to ask other people questions.

1: If you could build a robot that would accept any programming, what would you tell it to do?

Hmmm, tricky question. I would first program it to not destroy all human life. Then I would program it to clean, and to drive me places. I know, I know, all of my love of robots is just for that? But think about it, when you don't have to clean and you don't have to worry about transportation anywhere, what more can you really ask for? Ohkay, fine, I would also have it print money. But then I think I'd just get a DS.

2: What event/accomplishment/achievement in your life are you absurdly proud of?

Lemme see... I'm absurdly proud that I actually did manage to graduate in the POS Honors Program. Some part of me kept whispering "FAAAAAIL" and for a while, I really thought I would, but I eventually managed to pull that off.. somehow.. even to the satisfaction of my teachers. Whee! I'm also pretty happy that even if I'm still not perfect now, I managed to turn my life around a lot in late high school by losing forty pounds and busting out of my shell, a process that continued somewhat until college, and involved me accepting more responsibility for my choices and learning who I am while accepting the realities of it.

3: If you had unlimited funds, what would you do?

Oh easy, I'd travel everywhere on gastronomic holidays and buy a fabulous house and stuff it with cheese and cool gadgets. This is really all I want from life.

That, and to go into SPAAAAAAACE

4: Do you REALLY <3 interpretive dance, or did you just say that to get questions?!

I love the absurdity of interpretive dance. Primarily because it's usually pretty hard to interpret.

5: What hobby/talent/skill would you really like to cultivate?

I'd love to be able to dance like a cool kid. Right now I have a self-deprecating, sorta-funny "white-and-nerdy" vibe going on; I think it'd be fun to actually learn how to seriously bust a move. That, and getting better at making new friends with random people.

Current Location: Muang Madisahn

Current Music: "No Work, All Play" Hilary Duff

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27 June 2009 @ 02:45 am

Sawat dii khrap!

Hello everybody!

I haven't made a post in a gazillion years, so I figured on some deep dark level that maybe I should. I'm a little bit nomisugita right now, so you'll forgive any spelling mistakes!

I am having a fun time learning Thai~ my teacher is acaan (pronounced ah-jahn) Sidhoon, an extremely genki little 75-year old lady from Thailand who rules the class with the tools of fun and an iron fist. Hehe. It's only been two weeks, and I can't exactly say a lot of things, but at the same time I feel like I can say a ton of stuff! For example, I know how to say "Grandma May is still drunk." Not a terribly useful sentence, but how many language students can say that after two weeks? It's not an immersive program, but it is definitely intensive, and I'm already considering how to come back next year.

Everyone here is also pretty nice; I've met a ton of people who are doing interesting things. One girl I know is studying Thai so that she can complete her thesis on Indian textiles for Thai markets; another guy is doing the program so he can do a research project on gender+Buddhism, and another guy already has two master's degrees from the UN University in Costa Rica and the University of Austria in Innsbruck (sp?) and is just taking Thai for fun. That excludes, of course, all the neat people from all the other languages. Did you know Tagalog is technically pronounced tah-gahl-ig? I sure didn't, till today. Wacky!

Of course, none of these people replace the void in my heart-area that is created by the absence of my college buddies. Elly, Christine, Holly, Victor, Debbeh, + others who don't read this WHERE THE HELL ARE YOU. Madison kinda sucks when you don't know anyone to hang out with, really. I even went to my very first gay bar today... it was kind of interesting, but despite all the progress I've made towards being social all the past four years I still can't walk up to people in a bar and introduce myself while flirting with others. Ah well, all things come in time :)

Anyways, I genuinely hope you're all well, those few of you who read this and pay attention. Ta ta!

Current Location: Madison

Current Mood: chipper

chipper

Current Music: Not The Doctor - Alanis Morrissette

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