New classes and things I forgot to mention

Now that I've completed a few of the class sessions, it seems appropriate to comment on them. It's actually weird to think that I just have about 12 classes left for each one (time flies when you stack them all on two days of the week). On that note, I finally met someone like me. He happens to be in all three of my classes with me and we gave each other props for being hardcore enough to have all our classes on two days of the week. It's bad on the one hand because I have about 8 hours of class going on those days, but having those four day weekends and Wednesdays off is a pretty fair tradeoff. After I get done with the classes and frisbee, I'll hop onto a couple subjects that I forgot to mention in my earlier post that were quite noteworthy.

Asian Economic Development:
I signed up for this class first because I figured it would be a good class considering I just came from Asia and studied economics there. I was already looking forward to it before I found out my favorite teacher was the professor. I'm now in the cool circle with her because this is my third class with her. Many people usually wind up in her class once then avoid her like the plague, but I like her. This class is actually not bad, but it can get dry at times mostly because it's the first class of the day. I think I'll do well since I'm now quite used to her teaching style and this time around, I have more knowledge on the subject which means more participation points if I am so inclined.

Economic Strategy and Markets:
This class has turned out to be a more micro based course (I don't know what I expected...) which is nice because I greatly prefer micro to macroecon and this is the first micro based course I've had since I took microecon which is the first class that got me down the economics track all the way back in 2009 fall quarter. The professor is a nice guy and his class is organized well, but sometimes I feel behind in the class because prerequisites for the class are principles of microeconomics and business calculus and I believe that I am the person in the class for whom it has been the longest since they took those classes.

Videogames and Culture:
Originally, this was going to be a third economics elective because I thought I had to take one. I was not happy because that class was a Monday/Wednesday class, which made my classes split up awkwardly. Instead, I found out that I could take a core interdisciplinary instead of that course which I did not need at all and I happened to notice this one which fit perfectly with my interests and schedule. It turns out the captain of the frisbee team who is a good friend of mine is also in the class. As a Strategic Communications major, this class is a major-based elective for him, but it's cool to have someone I know well in a class for once. The professor is really cool and the class is going really well. My final paper is going to be about the economic prospects of the esports industry which is going to kick serious ass because of all the primary sources I am bringing back with me. We finished our first test recently and since I hadn't studied and his tests are organized very strangely (but he helps us figure it out after they are graded and constantly asserts that you can fail the first test and still recover well because the first test counts for so little of the test grade) it seemed that I had not done well because I got just one point shy of an A-. Then he showed the three highest scores (anonymously) and mine was number 2. I had to contain my chuckles as I could only wonder what the rest of the class did. This class is definitely my favorite of the three even though the other two are related to economics.

Other things:
I recently found out that the lump in my gums was due to having a dead tooth. I fell and chipped it back in 2003 and since then, it died. I had to go in to get a root canal which sucked, but we found out through the process that only one was dead, not two. That was good news since I didn't want to have to go back for a second root canal.

I've also been getting more into League, getting to play with Steven, Eric, and Chris pretty often. Beyond that, I've either been playing SC2 when Keir is on or just playing Skyrim by myself which is really fun. Until next post everyone, peace out.

Re-assimilation into America (but also some other noteworthy events in Asia)

I have indeed had classes by this point in time, but I will refrain from mentioning them until when I next make a post which I'm planning to do next week in the first half of the week. I should be able to hold myself to that deadline because the post will be short since it will only pertain to my classes. In this post, I'll cover the last few days I had in Korea, then Japan, then briefly go over things that have happened since I've been back. But before I get to that, shoutout to Steven for updating! Thanks for giving me new reading material! Go check out his blog if you get bored of my rants.

Final Days in Korea:

On the moving out day for the dorm, we had to be cleared out by 11am, so many people opted not to sleep due to a combination of some people having early flights and everyone not wanting to have to lose a lot of time when they could be having last hurrahs with each other. I wound up spending most of the night with Chang and this guy who is a BroodWar caster from England who was in town visiting (coincidentally, Chang happens to be his biggest fan) on his way to visit his parents in China. We also hung out with a couple other guys from TeamLiquid who were in town visiting relatives. I wound up getting into the dorm really early in the morning as some people were actually leaving (around 3am at this point). I got into my room where Steve (roommate) was still up and packing and I joined in as well. I got about an hour of sleep and he just went to sleep and planned to get up at 10:30am. I had to get up at 6 and make two trips back and forth to the hotel where I was staying. I would have liked to do it all in one trip, but I had bought so many things, I couldn't get it all into the one suitcase I brought (getting everything I had over in such a small amount of space was challenge enough). I wound up falling asleep in all the taxis I took, but it was fine because the taxi drivers were cool guys. I finally got back to the dorm after my trips after a 2 hour double cross town trip session and just went to sleep. I was awoken with a knock on the door as one of Steve's friends came to say goodbye. It was 11:30. So we both had to pack up and leave quickly. I said goodbye, then went downstairs to help Chang move her things to the bus because she had two huge suitcases that I'm sure she could have lived comfortably in (like using them as houses). That night, after some BroodWar related antics with the caster and the two other guys as well as a friend of mine from the OSL finals, I went back to the hotel and was reunited with my parents.

And so began the busy days of traipsing about Seoul in weather that was in highs of the teens. I showed them all my favorite places around the city and they seemed to get why I liked it so much. I also got to show them how pro I had become at interacting with people, which was also nice. I warned them that old people would point at me and say things to me, then I would respond to them and that all that was happening is we were talking about how I was wearing shorts in such cold weather. It happened a lot, so I was glad I didn't warn them for something that didn't happen. Another fun thing was that our hotel had a really nice casino that is regarded as one of the nicer casisnos in Seoul. I went gambling there twice and just wound up doing roulette both nights because the blackjack tables were all super crowded and it was a lot easier to enter a roulette table. The first day was just dad and I. I won about $25 (25,000W) and dad won about $37. The second night, all four of us went gambling. We all started out with $50 each. Mom and Kathryn and dad did slots for some reason. Mom and Kathryn combined came out up $5 and dad lost all his money. They went to bed way before me and I wound up sitting at a roulette table for 2 hours with these two nice Japanese guys and we all did pretty good. It was funny to react at each other when we all won big money from boxing out the same numbers. In the end, I won $350 (350,000W) and had to cash out at the big boy cashier. I was pretty happy with myself there. There was a Girls Generation repackage album that was different from the Boys by only one song, but it also came with some cool other things and since I won big money, I figured paying (normal CD price) for it was definitely fine. I do not regret that purchase as I now have a nice picture of Sunny looking back at me from above my computer screen.

Going to Japan:

This will be brief because I confirmed through my second time in Japan that I don't really care much for Japan. I just fit in a lot better with Korea. I think if I wind up living there, I will do more travel to China and if I learn a language after Korean, it will be Chinese (Mandarin or Cantonese? I thought Cantonese was for pros, but Eric says I would just get made fun of a lot T___T (I just wanted to be a hipster Chinese speaker)). Anyway, Tokyo was kinda cool. It was unlike any other city I've been in. I thought Seoul was huge being the second largest city in the world and all, but Tokyo stomps the crap out of that. It is massive and the subway system is complex to an equally insane degree. We looked around a lot and got to see a lot of the big tourist attractions. Using some of the gambling money I won, I bought myself Girls' Generation's Japanese CD that I had been looking for last time I was in Japan. In addition to seeing the sights, we spent a few days at Tokyo Disneyland because yes, we absolutely had to. It was really okay. The Japanese seem to be really afraid of rollercoasters, which were conspicuously absent throughout the park. Aside from that, it was a neat experience. Flavored popcorn is big there, sometimes the lines were even larger than those for the rides. After the five days in Japan though, I was starting to get homesick. Not necessarily just for Washington, but for Korea as well. I really just wanted to get out of Japan to somewhere I liked.

On our way out of Japan though, we found out the morning of our flight that it had been cancelled because the flight from Seattle never arrived. There was a small group of people from our flight that was also going to Seattle and we wound up getting rescheduled on the same flights, which was kind of nice to have people to share the experience with. We actually had a direct flight to Seattle, but they changed it to a Singapore Air flight (dad and I were super excited because we had seen the ads in the Economist and knew how good the planes were) and then we had a 7 hour layover in LAX (T___T) before going home and getting to Seattle 12 hours after we were supposed to land. The Singapore air flight was super kickass. It had bigger screens, more legroom, a power outlet, free internet, and pretty flight attendants. I would have used the internet, but I found a lot of good movies that I had wanted to see while I was gone from the states, so I used the time to get caught up with that. The layover sucked, but I drank a couple big beers on an empty stomach which allowed me to sleep through about 3 hours of the layover. In the end, we got to Seattle at 10:30pm on New Years Eve and stayed up pretty much just to see the clock turn over to midnight before going to bed. I was able to normalize my sleep schedule, but my family slept in way late the first day.

America:
I've been doing normal things again. School and frisbee started up so that's been eating up some of my time. I'll get into those next post in what will be a fairly short one. I also started seeing Grandpa on Wednesdays again which has been nice to get back to. There has also been game night which changes nights and times now that Steven and Chris are both working (props to that guys). Finally, I started back up with the D&D group. They switched to 4e while I was gone which is unfortunate because according to Steven, there has been less roleplaying and more combat which has definitely been the case since I've been there. I got my new character though and it's been pretty fun to play, so I don't mind terribly. And there has been an economic aspect added to it which of course I enjoy because Chris invested in land which was converted to a farm and brothel (I have no idea why those two things, but they're really profitable).

I really miss Korea still which is interesting because I didn't miss America at all when I left. I don't mind so much when I'm hanging out with people, but times like right now, I kind of wish I was back. I haven't watched any live Starcraft since I've been back partially because I just can't go back to low quality streams and I got too used to it being on at a convenient time. Fortunately, BroodWar matches get free high quality vods posted, so I've been keeping up with that better so than with SC2. I just started playing again though with Keir. I can't wait to play more, it's been too long since we've played together. I also have started to get more into LoL with Chris and Steven and Eric. It has also been fun to have them teach me how to suck slightly less. And of course the biggest news:

I

BEAT

GUILD WARS

My Hall of Monuments Page as Proof

 The moment.

 At long last they can be together!

I'm pretty happy about this.

So I'm done with Guild Wars 1 forever. Unless Chris calls me back in to help him with his own progress, there is no chance you will ever see me online. I was determined to spend as little time on this as possible when I got back and thankfully, I was able to play the mercantile game rather than having to resort to farming to get my last three titles. It took two weeks after getting back, but on the 14th of January, I finally did it. Major weight off my shoulders as now I feel like I got back a piece of my life that I haven't had in a very long time.

Well until next week, that's all I have for you now. I'll see you later.

Ok at long last, my last month in Seoul

Well as pretty much all of you reading should know, I'm back from Seoul. I got in when I made my last little post. A lot of things happened in my last month and between all that and finals, then my family coming, then having no internet access into having late flights, I somehow managed to not make a post in December at all. It was quite a colossal failure and I'll try to make up for it with a good post. For now though in the interest of keeping this short, I'll stop this post at the point when my family arrived in Seoul. That keeps this post to a manageable 25 days (at least I hope manageable....).

Girls:
When I last left off, I had gone on a single date with a girl. That unfortunately did not pan out as I had hoped. We seemed to get along, but since she worked for the company I was a student for, she pretty much flat out said there was to be no dating between us and left it at that. The email was actually pretty bluntly worded and I wasn't sure if she was angry/frustrated with me or if she was just simply stating the facts. After that point, I apologized, tried to keep it professional going on, and communication with her was less frequent, though we still were nice to each other. On my last day there, I got called up to the office because she had something to give me for participating in something (unimportant as to what it was) and at that point, I got to talk to her and the director of the program a bit about saying goodbye, thanks for doing this and that, and the I'll see you if I'm ever in the area. But the assistant awkwardly forced into the conversation the fact that she would see me again if I came back to Seoul. Not in a creepy way of course, just in such a way that it was notable, almost like she was asking to meet up when I came back. Honestly, I have no idea what to make of it, though as always I will be optimistic. In the meantime though it's probably at least 8 months until I get back to Seoul for teaching, so we'll see what happens.

After getting rejected by her (which happened just a couple days after my last big post), I was a little disappointed about it, but remembered this other girl I was hanging out with a lot. She was the one that was really into Starcraft. At the point when I got rejected, I started to get more flirty with her until a point eventually when I actually talked to her about it. But she had had a bad breakup with a boyfriend who moved away and either cheated on her or just dumped her, but either way, he wound up with this girl that he had liked for a long time. I figured that had been 3 years ago and she was over it, but such was not the case. She said I was cool, but she refused to do anything long distance (especially since she is a junior in college and it would be a while before we theoretically lived in the same city (I will not entertain the idea of moving to California) so it would not work out. Now having been rejected twice, I figured it was time to just stop trying in Seoul. That conversation happened on the 17th anyway (family came in on the 21st), so it seemed a reasonable decision. I was disappointed to have been turned down twice like that, legitimate excuses or not, but oh well, that's a hell of a lot more than I've ever done in my life before so I'll take what small victory I can get from this haha.

What do you mean that's all you wanted to read about? Keep reading, there's more stuff.

Starcraft:
It was my last few times going to the GOM studio. I got to show a lot of people around there and eventually, the adventure came to an end. I said goodbye to casters and some players (they all had nice things to say when I left) and I departed for the last time. I also managed to get a picture with the girl at the front desk who I was always to shy to talk to. I did have a brief conversation with her (in Korean!) in which I told her I was leaving, but was hoping to come back next year to teach English. Then we got a picture (which took an awkwardly large number of attempts (stupid camera)) and then she let me take a picture of the picture wall. I picked on that made me laugh all season long and it is now safely in my possession...somewhere. I'll find it eventually. It's with another picture that I don't want to lose, so I know I have it stashed somewhere, unpacking is just taking me forever.

World Cyber Games:
So the WCG this year was held in Busan, the first time it had been in Korea since the first one. I was going down with Chang (Starcraft girl) as well as a friend from Canada (they were both going separately from my other group) and then also my group which consisted of me, my Canadian Starcraft friend Chris, Matt from my program, Dan (a friend of Chris and Matt), then Jan and Daniel who were the Germans. We met up with another friend there, Jens who also plays SC with Jan and I at PC bangs once in a while. Since the Germans had class on Friday morning, we all decided to leave after that. Chang and the Canadian guy left first thing that morning because there was a BroodWar game going on that night and Chang wanted to be there for it. My group got there just as it was starting, then the rest of them decided to go look around the town (they mostly went for tourism, just wanting to come to the WCG for the finals day) while I went to meet the other two at the event where I caught the last 3 games of the proleague. At that point, I met up with Jens by random chance. After the game, the four of us went out to get Korean BBQ and our drank on. Chang is really short (5'0") so she had four shots and it was all about how attractive she thought Bisu and Stork are. After that, we met up with the other people from my group and went out drinking again before everyone went back to go to bed.

On the second day, it was just the four of us (that had gone to BW the day before) again. Jens split off during the day and eventually wound up going back to Seoul because he had things to turn in for classes and he could call what was going to happen in the finals (it was the best Terran Korean in the world vs a relatively unknown Chinese Zerg player). I got the chance to talk to Moletrap (GSL caster) for a while which was cool. That night, there was an auction for charity and Stork was not quite MCing it, but not quite modeling things either. It was somewhere in between. Long story short Chang wound up buying a Samsung KHAN leather jacket that belonged to and was signed by Stork with my financial backing (she was short on cash, so I put in 70k (Won, not dollars) to help her out (I got paid back (wouldn't have been an issue if she hadn't rejected me >__>)) (I hope my parentheses open and close correctly here or I will feel the fool)) and as a result, we both got to go up on stage to meet him. It made it on a Korean news site, which was a little funny. After that, the three of us went to get some food nearby, then me and the Canadian guy went out drinking with the Germans since we had some time. We then proceeded to play semi/drunk SC which was really fun.

The third day we were there was finals day. I spent the whole day just watching finals of various games including Warcraft 3, Starcraft 2, League of Legends, and even Fifa '12. In there somewhere, I also managed to get interviewed about Samsung by Samsung. I don't know what's going to happen to that horribly awkward video. We stuck around for the awards ceremony which was fun in that it was really cheesy and lame. There was a silly performance by a magic dance troupe from Korea. They danced to All that Jazz (which since it was Korean, became "All Dat Jaj") before breaking into Danshing Queen. After that, a Chinese pop band came out to perform songs (since the next 2 WCG's are in some city in China). The C-pop was the most creepy pop music I have ever listened to, but the girls at the end when they congratulated everyone and said they would see us in China was so amazingly cute. I want to have each of them to talk to me like that forever. I would never tire of it. After all that, the entire group of everyone caught the train back to Seoul at about 10 at night. The Canadian guy had kind of made everyone sick of him, but Tasteless and Artosis (most famous SC2 casters) and a couple other guys were on our train, so the Canadian guy ditched us for the whole ride to have an epic drunk adventure with them. It worked out for the rest of us. Chang was sleepy so I let her lean over on my shoulder/arm since she is so short which made the train ride home super awesome. Chris and I talked about SC most of the way, then decided we would hit up a PC bang when we got back at 1am. We wound up going to one from 2-5. I lost a best of 7 to him, losing 4-1 (he is a platinum NA player and I am not quite anywhere near that) then we did some team games.

Classes:
Well they finally ended. Actually I really have nothing else to say about them, sorry.

It's now late and I should really get to bed because I need to eventually get my schedule normalized since I'm starting school again in two days. I'll try to fit in a post sometime next week about time until school started. Until then, peace out.

FFFFUUUUUUU

I FORGOT TO POST LAST MONTH. THE FIRST TIME MY BLOG HAS FAILED TO DELIVER EVEN ONE UPDATE IN A WHOLE MONTH. I APOLOGIZE AND WILL POST MORE EVENTUALLY.

We can blame flight schedules and laziness and whatnot. I'll probably give you guys a somewhat detailed account tomorrow, but then I will post more in detail about stuff I did.