Hey, sorry about the delay in updating. I quickly began to enjoy my free time which led to me forgetting to post. From there, I was putting off updating until my computers were completed, but now that I'm remembering how much crap I have to download, it seems better to use that time to make an update rather than browse Reddit for several [more] hours. I'll go ahead and quickly go over what's been happening.
School Ending:
Looks like my quarter wrapped up well. It was a long, busy finals week what with my multiple finals and essay due. On top of that, I was trying to practice for the League tournament which made me have no free time (though one could argue playing videogames is free time whether im training or not). It seems that I clobbered my final project and exam in Microecon because I raised my grade significantly in that class. Oddly enough, my worst class was the one I didn't care about (though it was my easiest one). Usually my easiest classes are just the highest grades, but this time I cared so little about this class that my grade actually fell for it. In the end it doesn't matter what grade I got because I didn't need the class to graduate. In the end, my final GPA is somewhere around a 3.44 so not quite the 3.5 I was hoping for, but not terrible. I don't think I would have been able to raise it to above 3.5 unless I 4.0ed every class this quarter (though that may have not actually gotten me there) and with two of those classes being as hard as they were, it was but a pipe dream. Nonetheless, I was happy to be done with school for a month before I start again.
League Tournament:
This will be short. We lost an embarrassing game in the first round. The enemy team counter banned our best player's champions and despite counter banning their top lanes champions, he was still able to outplay me (he was really good). I actually wound up getting our team's only kill. The other team did some tricky stuff and it paid off for them. In watching the cast of the game, I was happy to notice that whenever the announcers talked about me in my lane, they didn't ever say I sucked, it was always about how great my opponent was. That was a bit of a confidence booster that I've used in playing since then. I haven't gotten too much in recently though because the servers have been critically laggy and buggy since an update implemented on fathers day weekend that went awry.
Graduation (Mine and Kathryn's):
My graduation was the week before Kathryn's. There were 1,100 people graduating in my class, so it took about 3 hours. It was a nice ceremony though. One stupid moment was our only student speaker who talked about having been awarded the *GATES* scholarship which gave her a full ride to the institution of her choice. Not 3 minutes after that, she quoted Steve Jobs. I thought it was not only silly, but actually pretty stupid of her to do that. The awarding of diplomas expectantly took forever, but eventually it finished and we all got to go outside (after I ran across my Econ thought professor and said goodbye to him). Afterwards, I got to see people I knew to say goodbye. I missed seeing Wennie, but we're going to hang out this summer anyway, so I didn't dwell too much on it. I had also gotten to see her the night before for her birthday party which was nice.
Kathryn's graduation was also pretty good. Senorita Stoker was the senior class adviser so she gave one of the speeches. It was weird to see her speak English. In Kathryn's graduation as well, several people quoted Steve Jobs. I didn't realize he was Jesus Christ reborn until now. Afterwards, I ran into a bunch of people I knew who had siblings graduating as well (including Willie, Oliver, Katie, Sam, and others). It was cool to catch up with some of them. Unfortunately we didn't get a picture with Kathryn's boyfriend because it was too hectic, but they had spree for that so it wasn't a big deal.
Oh right, Kathryn has a boyfriend. I kept forgetting to mention that. He asked her to prom (the weekend I was gone at a tournament in April) then took her to prom (on the weekend I was gone for the tournament in May) and they started "officially" (or whatever the hell it's called) dating shortly after. Going steady, that probably still works right? Not too outdated? Anyway, he's a cool guy (they've known each other for a long time and I know him moderately well already so no vetting required). Kathryn ditches us a lot to hang out with him now which is okay, but it is foreshadowing what life will be like for me when she leaves for college and I'm still at home alone with mom and dad for a few months before I leave to Korea (fingers crossed for that). It does not look pretty T___T.
Since Graduation:
I've spent a lot of time working in my Aunt's backyard. It's getting closer to being done which will be nice. I haven't touched the shed yet because that is a multiple week venture that I need to start after I have finished my class in August. Mostly for now there has been a lot of gardening, landscaping, and things of that sort going on. It has been fun.
I've been playing some videogames, but mostly League since that's what this laptop can handle. I try to play SC with Keir and Mike (one of Keir's friends who I have established a good rapport with), and sometimes Martin or April (two of Keir's friends, one of them is funny and one of them is attractive and both are really cool). I can't do too much SC though because if we get into a long macro game, I get about 1-5 frames per second making my army uncontrollable. Fortunately I can sometimes give Mike or Keir control, but that puts more work on their shoulders. Mike can generally handle it, but it's not too fair to Keir. Macro is my weak point, so I'm looking forward to getting my micro back so I can at least contribute to teams in some way. I play more League still, but not as much recently because the servers have been super messed up. It has been moderately to extremely annoying at times.
I built/am building myself and my parents computers. Since I had to order parts for mine, they finally caved and decided it was time to get a new one for themselves. I built myself a top of the line rig (keeping only a few components) and built them an economic model that is a bit better than what they need, but still a moderately powered PC which cost them just shy of $300. I was pretty happy with it. At the moment, my PC is running and I'm currently setting it up with everything it needs and trying to get my SSD situation figured out. I got my parents one too, so I'll be familiar with the process of loading an operating system onto one of those by the time both computers run. At the moment, their computer is having some power issues, but I'm still trying to determine whether it's something I did (I might just have to rearrange what is plugged in where) or if it's the Power Supply that was not good enough. Looks at the moment like I can fix it by just plugging things in differently, but we'll see. I'm happy with their computer because I weighed it yesterday and it is 57% as heavy as their old computer. It also came at about half the cost, which is nice. I'll be putting up an album of pictures on Facebook eventually and I might include a couple here.
So that's been about all I have done recently. I'm currently just awaiting my class to start soon so I can get it over with faster. The schedule will be brutal, but it's only a month, so I can handle it. Mom and Kathryn absolutely had to get out of town (though I'm surprised Kathryn was willing to be gone from her boyfriend for 10 days) so they went on a cruise up to Alaska, leaving dad and I alone for 10 days. They were worried that I wouldn't want them to be gone over my birthday, but I told them that their absence would be my present! And there's a kernel of truth behind every joke...
So not much is going on until class starts. If anyone wants to hang out, let me know.
Sunday, June 24, 2012
Friday, June 01, 2012
The end of most things
I am writing this post having completed my final lecture as an undergrad. My last class met today and now all that stands between me and graduation is a final essay, two final exams, and a 45-minute personal interview about the last 500 years of economic thought (and graphs!!!). It's been a busy couple of weeks and you'll see why shortly enough (that's right, an interesting post for once!). I do sincerely wish interesting things that happen to me would spread themselves out more, but it seems that is not possible. Since I do believe this post contains several interesting things, I figure it will be best not to reflect on how school is ending (I'll do that after school ends properly I suppose) and instead I'll just dive right into the post.
THAT (The Hot Apple Turnover (Frisbee Tournament)):
This is a tradition of our team to attend this tournament. It's mainly a tournament for older groups as it's a non-serious quasai costume tournament (not required, but observed). I don't know how we wound up going, but since most of the team tends to like drinking, we wind up going every year. I didn't go last year due to wanting to win my bet, but this year I figured since I'm an alcoholic now, why not go? It was a really fun tournament actually. We got there on Friday night and promptly set up tents, then began drinking. From 6pm through whenever I went to bed (I lost all concept of time (I'll get to that, don't worry)), I was constantly working on a beer. As soon as I finished one, I opened up another. Needless to say, I was pretty full of booze by the end of the night. I wound up talking to a freshman girl who sat next to me and complementing her and talking to her about frisbee for about half an hour. I was probably over complementary, but she is a very good player so it's probably not a bad thing to say so many nice things about her. Plus she's attractive so...
Aside from drinking, a select group of people on the team also took part in numerous "Safety Meetings." It's an ultimate tournament and the meetings don't involve drinking or ultimate, so I'll let you decide what the meetings refer to. Anyway, I always said to myself that I was open to that, but the opportunity never came up, so I never partook. During the first meeting, the captain and one other guy he was doing that with asked if I wanted in. I said sure, but I didn't know how. So the next time they started up a meeting, they were gracious enough to let me in on that. I have to say, it was an enjoyable enough experience (and wound up being pretty funny too because I was such a rookie). I would be willing to do it again, but I don't know how much I would actually value the experience at. That night, since there was a shortage of tents, me and my Starcraft playing friend on the team decided to sleep in my car (I had the Taurus, so the back seats all folded down and it was like a big floor big enough for the two of us easily). I don't remember much else from that night to be honest.
On Saturday, we started the day with a tag-team disc chug. Discs hold four cans (tall boys) of beer, so it took two people each to finish those off in a reasonable time. We had a good first game, followed by a frustrating lack of success the rest of the day. It can be attributed to the fact that we had some alumni on the team that most of us had never played with. They could play, but the team cohesion we had in more serious tournaments was not there. That night, we ate at a Mexican restaurant where one of the other seniors got super drunk which led to good times. That night, most of us were frustrated (I was mostly super tired) and we drank more moderately and then went to bed (I assume) at a more reasonable time. I went to bed at about 10:30 and was the third person to do so. I thought my friend coming into the car would wake me up since the light would turn on and he would make noise getting into his bag. That did happen, but I was passed out so hard (from being tired this time) that I didn't wake up and when I did eventually wake up, I jumped a little in surprise to see him laying there asleep already. On Sunday, I wound up seeing Zach and some of his Eastern crew. I guess they might do their tournament in the fall this coming year and we agreed that if that happens, we should get a Shorewood alumni team going for it for fun. On Sunday, we had a bit more success, but played good teams, so we didn't do very well on the whole again. It was still a really fun day. Oh and additionally, one player dislocated his knee and went to the hospital for it. He had two beers beforehand, so they weren't able to sedate him to reset his knee. He had to do it with minimal painkillers, what a badass. Fortunately for him, he has the full summer to recover.
My Computer:
Shortly after getting back from THAT, I hopped on for some D3 to try to catch up with Steven and Chris. Now when I first installed D3, I got the warning that my graphics card might be out of date. I figured since it runs SC2 on ultra with no problems, I could try default graphics settings to see how it worked. I didn't really notice a problem and the graphics didn't look like they were too demanding. Unbeknownst to me, my graphics card was not able to handle it. That day that I signed on, it finally gave up the goat and decided to overheat and cause my computer to crash. Subsequent tests to see if it was actually the card causing the problems led to more crashes and my computer being able to not even run SC2. Eventually, after a few crashes in quick succession, the boot files (or OS files located on it associated with booting) that were on my main hard drive became corrupted, so I couldn't start up my computer anymore. After a couple days, I was able to get my Windows 7 disc from Steven, but it became clear after I tried a reinstall that the graphics card is super dead. It gets extremely hot even at low-demand tasks (like starting up or being idle).
For the time being, my laptop is working for me. I'm much less productive on it, but not enough so that I could justify diverting time from my busy schedule to fix it before I graduate. Fortunately, I was planning to upgrade it this summer anyway, this just moved up the timetable on me. I'm going to build my parents a decent computer that will run the things they want to run on it, so I'll be ordering parts for me and for them right after finals end. In the meantime, I hadn't been gaming very much because I was so busy, so it didn't really matter that I was relegated to my laptop. Now that I'm getting more time however, I'm noticing that my laptop is really not equipped for gaming (especially not for 4v4s with Keir since we can't seem to avoid those long macro games).
Videogames:
Back in early May, Eric found out about a tournament for League of Legends held by the UW's team. Our 5-person ranked team all signed up for the tournament, but due to high demand, some of us didn't get placed on the main list and got put on the alternate list. At first, I thought I was an alternate, but it turns out I was actually on the main list, guaranteeing that I would be drafted. Since I was the only one there that nobody had played with, I was drafted last (Eric said that it was undeserved since he knows for sure a bunch of people drafted before me are worse than me). I'm spending most of my week practicing League now which is kind of annoying because I have to use a backup mouse that I have which is less accurate than my Deathadder. I don't know how I got my good mouse to work correctly on my good rig, but for some reason when I play League with it on my laptop, the clicks get reversed. After I finish this post, I'll be back to training, so hopefully given that I have a week, I will be used to the crappy mouse by then. I still have my same keyboard working since I brought back several of the same model and one happened to have a usb connection. That has made the keyboard problem less bad. I still wish I could use my checkered one, I didn't realize until now (this one is all black) how useful it was to have every button alternate colors.
School Stuff:
Most of my time since my last post has been spent working on small homework assignments here and there alongside my final project for Microecon. Now all I have left for that class is an exam next Thursday (my last "exam" which is followed that same day by my final thing which is the 45-minute interview). Aside from that, I have a big paper in my Policy class and a written exam for the History of Economic Thought.
My advertisement seemed to go over well when I got the grading back, so that was good and now all I have for that class is a 7 page paper to write about recommending a policy of my choice. It's going to be not too hard, but will be a pain in the butt because I'll have to look at and break down senate voting records in order to make a coherent strategy to recommend my bill to specific senators to get it passed (in a hypothetical situation of course).
Thursday (I took a break overnight and I'm writing this on Friday now if the timestamp is telling you otherwise) was my last day of regular instruction at Seattle U. My policy class wasn't meeting that day, leaving me with free time between 10am and 3:30pm. I decided to spend it the right way to honor how I spent all my free time at SU, in the small study closets in the library. I went up to my favorite one and consumed much good bread that I brought along as my lunch as well as my finest (read: only) scotch whiskey. I drank and played SC2 with Keir, then moved onto other things like sending some emails, then playing a game of League. It was time well spent. I showed up to my last class after having finished off a lot of scotch whiskey (flasks hold a lot!) only to discover that my good friend (also a gamer and an econ major so we get along really well) had the same idea and brought with him a water bottle filled with champagne. We had to laugh at how great minds do indeed think alike. The class was nice; it was good to be done with classes, but at the same time I will miss it (until I start up again in the summer). I even took good notes it seems, so a plus to that too!
That night (this is no longer school related, but whatever), I went and hung out at Chris' for game night. We (minus Eric since he had to work) tried playing Arkham something (we suck so much at it, I couldn't even remember which kind of Arkham it was...), but wound up giving up and deciding to go play League which was also very fun. Hopefully we get more of that in the future.
Well I'd better get to training at League for today. I gave myself the day off because yesterday was really the first time I had played games in a long time and since I had nothing major due soon, I wanted to have one day off. Until I graduate (yikes!), peace out!
THAT (The Hot Apple Turnover (Frisbee Tournament)):
This is a tradition of our team to attend this tournament. It's mainly a tournament for older groups as it's a non-serious quasai costume tournament (not required, but observed). I don't know how we wound up going, but since most of the team tends to like drinking, we wind up going every year. I didn't go last year due to wanting to win my bet, but this year I figured since I'm an alcoholic now, why not go? It was a really fun tournament actually. We got there on Friday night and promptly set up tents, then began drinking. From 6pm through whenever I went to bed (I lost all concept of time (I'll get to that, don't worry)), I was constantly working on a beer. As soon as I finished one, I opened up another. Needless to say, I was pretty full of booze by the end of the night. I wound up talking to a freshman girl who sat next to me and complementing her and talking to her about frisbee for about half an hour. I was probably over complementary, but she is a very good player so it's probably not a bad thing to say so many nice things about her. Plus she's attractive so...
Aside from drinking, a select group of people on the team also took part in numerous "Safety Meetings." It's an ultimate tournament and the meetings don't involve drinking or ultimate, so I'll let you decide what the meetings refer to. Anyway, I always said to myself that I was open to that, but the opportunity never came up, so I never partook. During the first meeting, the captain and one other guy he was doing that with asked if I wanted in. I said sure, but I didn't know how. So the next time they started up a meeting, they were gracious enough to let me in on that. I have to say, it was an enjoyable enough experience (and wound up being pretty funny too because I was such a rookie). I would be willing to do it again, but I don't know how much I would actually value the experience at. That night, since there was a shortage of tents, me and my Starcraft playing friend on the team decided to sleep in my car (I had the Taurus, so the back seats all folded down and it was like a big floor big enough for the two of us easily). I don't remember much else from that night to be honest.
On Saturday, we started the day with a tag-team disc chug. Discs hold four cans (tall boys) of beer, so it took two people each to finish those off in a reasonable time. We had a good first game, followed by a frustrating lack of success the rest of the day. It can be attributed to the fact that we had some alumni on the team that most of us had never played with. They could play, but the team cohesion we had in more serious tournaments was not there. That night, we ate at a Mexican restaurant where one of the other seniors got super drunk which led to good times. That night, most of us were frustrated (I was mostly super tired) and we drank more moderately and then went to bed (I assume) at a more reasonable time. I went to bed at about 10:30 and was the third person to do so. I thought my friend coming into the car would wake me up since the light would turn on and he would make noise getting into his bag. That did happen, but I was passed out so hard (from being tired this time) that I didn't wake up and when I did eventually wake up, I jumped a little in surprise to see him laying there asleep already. On Sunday, I wound up seeing Zach and some of his Eastern crew. I guess they might do their tournament in the fall this coming year and we agreed that if that happens, we should get a Shorewood alumni team going for it for fun. On Sunday, we had a bit more success, but played good teams, so we didn't do very well on the whole again. It was still a really fun day. Oh and additionally, one player dislocated his knee and went to the hospital for it. He had two beers beforehand, so they weren't able to sedate him to reset his knee. He had to do it with minimal painkillers, what a badass. Fortunately for him, he has the full summer to recover.
My Computer:
Shortly after getting back from THAT, I hopped on for some D3 to try to catch up with Steven and Chris. Now when I first installed D3, I got the warning that my graphics card might be out of date. I figured since it runs SC2 on ultra with no problems, I could try default graphics settings to see how it worked. I didn't really notice a problem and the graphics didn't look like they were too demanding. Unbeknownst to me, my graphics card was not able to handle it. That day that I signed on, it finally gave up the goat and decided to overheat and cause my computer to crash. Subsequent tests to see if it was actually the card causing the problems led to more crashes and my computer being able to not even run SC2. Eventually, after a few crashes in quick succession, the boot files (or OS files located on it associated with booting) that were on my main hard drive became corrupted, so I couldn't start up my computer anymore. After a couple days, I was able to get my Windows 7 disc from Steven, but it became clear after I tried a reinstall that the graphics card is super dead. It gets extremely hot even at low-demand tasks (like starting up or being idle).
For the time being, my laptop is working for me. I'm much less productive on it, but not enough so that I could justify diverting time from my busy schedule to fix it before I graduate. Fortunately, I was planning to upgrade it this summer anyway, this just moved up the timetable on me. I'm going to build my parents a decent computer that will run the things they want to run on it, so I'll be ordering parts for me and for them right after finals end. In the meantime, I hadn't been gaming very much because I was so busy, so it didn't really matter that I was relegated to my laptop. Now that I'm getting more time however, I'm noticing that my laptop is really not equipped for gaming (especially not for 4v4s with Keir since we can't seem to avoid those long macro games).
Videogames:
Back in early May, Eric found out about a tournament for League of Legends held by the UW's team. Our 5-person ranked team all signed up for the tournament, but due to high demand, some of us didn't get placed on the main list and got put on the alternate list. At first, I thought I was an alternate, but it turns out I was actually on the main list, guaranteeing that I would be drafted. Since I was the only one there that nobody had played with, I was drafted last (Eric said that it was undeserved since he knows for sure a bunch of people drafted before me are worse than me). I'm spending most of my week practicing League now which is kind of annoying because I have to use a backup mouse that I have which is less accurate than my Deathadder. I don't know how I got my good mouse to work correctly on my good rig, but for some reason when I play League with it on my laptop, the clicks get reversed. After I finish this post, I'll be back to training, so hopefully given that I have a week, I will be used to the crappy mouse by then. I still have my same keyboard working since I brought back several of the same model and one happened to have a usb connection. That has made the keyboard problem less bad. I still wish I could use my checkered one, I didn't realize until now (this one is all black) how useful it was to have every button alternate colors.
School Stuff:
Most of my time since my last post has been spent working on small homework assignments here and there alongside my final project for Microecon. Now all I have left for that class is an exam next Thursday (my last "exam" which is followed that same day by my final thing which is the 45-minute interview). Aside from that, I have a big paper in my Policy class and a written exam for the History of Economic Thought.
My advertisement seemed to go over well when I got the grading back, so that was good and now all I have for that class is a 7 page paper to write about recommending a policy of my choice. It's going to be not too hard, but will be a pain in the butt because I'll have to look at and break down senate voting records in order to make a coherent strategy to recommend my bill to specific senators to get it passed (in a hypothetical situation of course).
Thursday (I took a break overnight and I'm writing this on Friday now if the timestamp is telling you otherwise) was my last day of regular instruction at Seattle U. My policy class wasn't meeting that day, leaving me with free time between 10am and 3:30pm. I decided to spend it the right way to honor how I spent all my free time at SU, in the small study closets in the library. I went up to my favorite one and consumed much good bread that I brought along as my lunch as well as my finest (read: only) scotch whiskey. I drank and played SC2 with Keir, then moved onto other things like sending some emails, then playing a game of League. It was time well spent. I showed up to my last class after having finished off a lot of scotch whiskey (flasks hold a lot!) only to discover that my good friend (also a gamer and an econ major so we get along really well) had the same idea and brought with him a water bottle filled with champagne. We had to laugh at how great minds do indeed think alike. The class was nice; it was good to be done with classes, but at the same time I will miss it (until I start up again in the summer). I even took good notes it seems, so a plus to that too!
That night (this is no longer school related, but whatever), I went and hung out at Chris' for game night. We (minus Eric since he had to work) tried playing Arkham something (we suck so much at it, I couldn't even remember which kind of Arkham it was...), but wound up giving up and deciding to go play League which was also very fun. Hopefully we get more of that in the future.
Well I'd better get to training at League for today. I gave myself the day off because yesterday was really the first time I had played games in a long time and since I had nothing major due soon, I wanted to have one day off. Until I graduate (yikes!), peace out!
Wednesday, May 16, 2012
Sunny Days!
Not only does that title describe the weather of late, but it also references the fact that the most beautiful girl in the world had her birthday yesterday. Now if I could just meet her in Korea, that would be amazing (beyond that, it would be head asplodery kind of stuff). I lucked out today and for the second day of classes in a row, I didn't get any homework. It's just coincidence though and I know I'll start getting more again soon. My current lack of homework combined with the fact that I'm installing Diablo 3 right now (I'll let you know how it is in the future) made it seem like a really good time to make a post. On and before I forget, congratulations Orion! By the time you read this post, you'll have graduated!
I finally got an Elo ranting in League of Legends. It's a mere 1278, but I'm quite happy with it considering how little time I've put into the game. I haven't had time to do solo ranked matches since getting the rating due to my workload, but I will definitely be improving it as my assignments begin to decrease in number and severity. I'm not sure, but my elo may actually be higher than what Chris' was. Shoutout to Steven and Eric by the way for getting to the next range of elo (generally it seems each 100 elo is a range). Eric rose to the 1500s and Steven is now up in the 1800s. I've also started playing Starcraft more with Keir and Mike (Keir's friend that I now play with a lot). It's been really fun to mess around in fours. I also want to get better at Starcraft again, but that will definitely wait until I'm free for the summer. The only other game I've really played has been Guild Wars 2. They did a beta weekend and a recent stress test day. I played a lot with Steven and Chris and I have high hopes for the game, it's been really fun to play.
PAX screwed us over big time this year. They had to delay their ticket sales by a week and when they came up that second time, there was no prior warning. As a result, all three day passes sold out within the first 9 hours. By the end of the first day, there were only single day passes for Sunday left for sale. Shortly after that, no tickets were left. All we can say about that is scalpers are douchebags. So since none of us could get tickets, we decided we may do something else and are currently looking at possibly camping or something. Since Steven and Chris have more free time, I've deferred to their opinion on where and when to camp. Occasionally, I might have input if a site where we went during my time in Scouts comes up, but other than that, I trust them to make cool choices and it seems like they are.
The sudden lack of caring about my third class bit me in the butt a little bit recently when I got 0.5/10 points on a quiz. Fortunately, the lowest of our quiz scores is dropped (which will be that one) and in addition, the quizzes only count for a small portion of the grade since they're more or less reading checks. I still try as little as possible in that class though. We recently had an advertisement project where we had to create an ad for a policy. I decided to make mine really cheesy, which seemed to go over well. After watching it enough, I didn't think it was very funny (I had to cut a lot of humour due to the time constraint), but people laughed during it and I got thumbs up from people on my way back to my seat, so I felt pretty good. I was really nervous presenting it because I know nobody in the class (they're all in the PoliSci department), so I fear I may have been shouting at them during my presentation, but I guess that's better than me being hard to hear.
Link to my advertisement: http://youtu.be/Mrba1VDYIPg
Yes, it's meant to be extremely cheesy and no, I don't agree with anything it says.
I've hardly been playing frisbee. After the last tournament (sectionals) where we played five games a day for two days, my knees started hurting really bad. They are fine now, but the slight pain combined with my homework load and the fact that I can play with Eric at a pickup that runs during the same time as our practices lowers my interest in going to play with the team. We do have our final tournament coming up this weekend though. It's The Hot Apple Turnover (THAT) and it's in Wenatchee and basically all that happens there during the weekend is a large amount of ultimate and massive amounts of drinking. All the seniors on the team are going and this is where we get to do our disc chugs, so that will be fun. Unfortunately, I'm going to miss Diablo 3 with the guys this weekend as well as Squirtle (the guy who beat me back in the Code A qualifiers back in September) is playing in the Code S finals. He got really good since I've played him. I'll be rooting for him in spirit though!
Well that's about everything I had to say so until the end of the month, peace out!
I finally got an Elo ranting in League of Legends. It's a mere 1278, but I'm quite happy with it considering how little time I've put into the game. I haven't had time to do solo ranked matches since getting the rating due to my workload, but I will definitely be improving it as my assignments begin to decrease in number and severity. I'm not sure, but my elo may actually be higher than what Chris' was. Shoutout to Steven and Eric by the way for getting to the next range of elo (generally it seems each 100 elo is a range). Eric rose to the 1500s and Steven is now up in the 1800s. I've also started playing Starcraft more with Keir and Mike (Keir's friend that I now play with a lot). It's been really fun to mess around in fours. I also want to get better at Starcraft again, but that will definitely wait until I'm free for the summer. The only other game I've really played has been Guild Wars 2. They did a beta weekend and a recent stress test day. I played a lot with Steven and Chris and I have high hopes for the game, it's been really fun to play.
PAX screwed us over big time this year. They had to delay their ticket sales by a week and when they came up that second time, there was no prior warning. As a result, all three day passes sold out within the first 9 hours. By the end of the first day, there were only single day passes for Sunday left for sale. Shortly after that, no tickets were left. All we can say about that is scalpers are douchebags. So since none of us could get tickets, we decided we may do something else and are currently looking at possibly camping or something. Since Steven and Chris have more free time, I've deferred to their opinion on where and when to camp. Occasionally, I might have input if a site where we went during my time in Scouts comes up, but other than that, I trust them to make cool choices and it seems like they are.
The sudden lack of caring about my third class bit me in the butt a little bit recently when I got 0.5/10 points on a quiz. Fortunately, the lowest of our quiz scores is dropped (which will be that one) and in addition, the quizzes only count for a small portion of the grade since they're more or less reading checks. I still try as little as possible in that class though. We recently had an advertisement project where we had to create an ad for a policy. I decided to make mine really cheesy, which seemed to go over well. After watching it enough, I didn't think it was very funny (I had to cut a lot of humour due to the time constraint), but people laughed during it and I got thumbs up from people on my way back to my seat, so I felt pretty good. I was really nervous presenting it because I know nobody in the class (they're all in the PoliSci department), so I fear I may have been shouting at them during my presentation, but I guess that's better than me being hard to hear.
Link to my advertisement: http://youtu.be/Mrba1VDYIPg
Yes, it's meant to be extremely cheesy and no, I don't agree with anything it says.
I've hardly been playing frisbee. After the last tournament (sectionals) where we played five games a day for two days, my knees started hurting really bad. They are fine now, but the slight pain combined with my homework load and the fact that I can play with Eric at a pickup that runs during the same time as our practices lowers my interest in going to play with the team. We do have our final tournament coming up this weekend though. It's The Hot Apple Turnover (THAT) and it's in Wenatchee and basically all that happens there during the weekend is a large amount of ultimate and massive amounts of drinking. All the seniors on the team are going and this is where we get to do our disc chugs, so that will be fun. Unfortunately, I'm going to miss Diablo 3 with the guys this weekend as well as Squirtle (the guy who beat me back in the Code A qualifiers back in September) is playing in the Code S finals. He got really good since I've played him. I'll be rooting for him in spirit though!
Well that's about everything I had to say so until the end of the month, peace out!
Monday, April 30, 2012
The final month begins
I realize it's April when I'm making this post, but it's mostly through the day already so therefore as good as May. May isn't really my final month I suppose, but since I get done so early into June, May might as well be considered the end of college for me. I don't know what the deadline for accepting law school acceptances is/was, but I have now fully committed to not going (at least not in the immediate future). I can't get Korea (and some people and things there) out of my mind no matter how hard I try, so I'm going to start looking for jobs. My parents have started to back the idea more and mom even did a bit of looking and found a class I can take that might at the very least make me a more desirable hire. It could also increase my pay scale, which would also be cool. It means now that since I'm not starting law school in the late summer/early fall (how many slashes am I going to have in this paragraph?), I'm going to be doing nothing much with my life outside of that class I might take. My parents actually sounded fine with that though and it's not like I won't volunteer to work around doing things for the family this summer anyway. In the past, I was a little hindered on the shed cleaning because my uncle would need to double check everything to see if it was junk or salvageable. The trouble was he was sick and rarely could make it and we agreed on the junk or not junk status of things every single time anyway. Unfortunately, now that he has passed away (didn't mention it, but it was in January), I shall clean the shed once and for all in my own little way of paying tribute to his memory. He had very little to do with the process other than looking at things, but I know he always wanted to see the eventual end-product of a clean shed and I will try to do that this summer. Anyway, I dragged on this paragraph enough and you get the idea (that I'm going to try to go back to Korea by the end of the year to live and work hopefully for a long time).
In other exciting news, I got my transcripts from Yonsei! I finally had to go to the study abroad office at my school when they were 3 weeks overdue. I had to pop in also to get some forms signed, but I brought it up with the advisor there and she said she would contact the necessary people. That was a Thursday. The following Wednesday (mind you there is usually a snail-mail like time delay when sending emails to/from people in Korea (AND it was going into the weekend)), I was emailed by the registrar that my transcripts came in and everything was approved. I almost 4.0ed my semester there which came as a surprise to me, but was a quite welcome one. Now that I have that sorted out, I realized I definitely don't need my policy class to graduate. Unfortunately, it's past the withdrawal date. I got rid of my W in Accounting 202 when I transferred (dropped the W because of a change in major and the class was suddenly irrelevant). I decided in the interest of not getting another W on my transcript, I would stick with this class. I can now care less about that class though. I'm putting out the minimum effort that I believe will give me an A in the class, so that has opened up some good time. Time I have filled with work for my other classes. The time opened up for my other classes has benefited those greatly. I'm having a lot more time to get the subjects we're talking about. And when I understand things more easily, assignments get easier and I get more free time. With that free time, I've been playing LoL more often and have even found time to get back into SC2 with Keir.
SC2 has been fun again and hopefully I'll get to play more in the future. I figure I'll have lots of time when I'm back in Korea, so I've put off my single player plans until then. I'm considering starting to train in the summer though. I've noticed that PAX prime last year, then PAX east this year both had SC2 tournaments and I think the skill level will be low enough that if I get going and train hard, I might have a shot. In League of Legends, I recently got level 30! Now I can play ranked games on my own (I will when I get time) or team ranked games with Steven, Eric, Chris, Eric (Canada), Albert, Albert's Brother, Peter (when he gets level 30) and anyone else we eventually add to the team. I can't wait to get back into that. I would have spent most of this weekend doing that, but they had the first open beta weekend for Guild Wars 2 so I spent my time doing that.
The Guild Wars 2 beta was so awesome. Since I planned on doing Guarding in the main game, I wanted to use these beta weekends to try a profession I didn't think I would consider playing when the game was released. My first one was engineer. I spent a lot of time this weekend on my engineer (and not just because I designed her to look like Sunny). It was a really fun class to play. Steven and Chris played a lot too and I have to say being able to play with them was extremely fun. Playing on my own was more enjoyable than Guild Wars 1, but still wasn't as great as playing with people. I do like the changes they've made to the game though (and there have been a lot). Not having to worry about mana is the best among those. I think next beta, I will try a mesmer to see if that goes over as well as engineer did.
This was a nice break from my work, but I suppose I had better get back to it. I had a six day weekend this week thanks to mission day (which was so perfectly timed given the presence of the beta on Friday-Sunday). I am now left with only studying for my microecon midterm this week which I think I have a chance of doing well on. Until mid may when I next post, peace out.
In other exciting news, I got my transcripts from Yonsei! I finally had to go to the study abroad office at my school when they were 3 weeks overdue. I had to pop in also to get some forms signed, but I brought it up with the advisor there and she said she would contact the necessary people. That was a Thursday. The following Wednesday (mind you there is usually a snail-mail like time delay when sending emails to/from people in Korea (AND it was going into the weekend)), I was emailed by the registrar that my transcripts came in and everything was approved. I almost 4.0ed my semester there which came as a surprise to me, but was a quite welcome one. Now that I have that sorted out, I realized I definitely don't need my policy class to graduate. Unfortunately, it's past the withdrawal date. I got rid of my W in Accounting 202 when I transferred (dropped the W because of a change in major and the class was suddenly irrelevant). I decided in the interest of not getting another W on my transcript, I would stick with this class. I can now care less about that class though. I'm putting out the minimum effort that I believe will give me an A in the class, so that has opened up some good time. Time I have filled with work for my other classes. The time opened up for my other classes has benefited those greatly. I'm having a lot more time to get the subjects we're talking about. And when I understand things more easily, assignments get easier and I get more free time. With that free time, I've been playing LoL more often and have even found time to get back into SC2 with Keir.
SC2 has been fun again and hopefully I'll get to play more in the future. I figure I'll have lots of time when I'm back in Korea, so I've put off my single player plans until then. I'm considering starting to train in the summer though. I've noticed that PAX prime last year, then PAX east this year both had SC2 tournaments and I think the skill level will be low enough that if I get going and train hard, I might have a shot. In League of Legends, I recently got level 30! Now I can play ranked games on my own (I will when I get time) or team ranked games with Steven, Eric, Chris, Eric (Canada), Albert, Albert's Brother, Peter (when he gets level 30) and anyone else we eventually add to the team. I can't wait to get back into that. I would have spent most of this weekend doing that, but they had the first open beta weekend for Guild Wars 2 so I spent my time doing that.
The Guild Wars 2 beta was so awesome. Since I planned on doing Guarding in the main game, I wanted to use these beta weekends to try a profession I didn't think I would consider playing when the game was released. My first one was engineer. I spent a lot of time this weekend on my engineer (and not just because I designed her to look like Sunny). It was a really fun class to play. Steven and Chris played a lot too and I have to say being able to play with them was extremely fun. Playing on my own was more enjoyable than Guild Wars 1, but still wasn't as great as playing with people. I do like the changes they've made to the game though (and there have been a lot). Not having to worry about mana is the best among those. I think next beta, I will try a mesmer to see if that goes over as well as engineer did.
This was a nice break from my work, but I suppose I had better get back to it. I had a six day weekend this week thanks to mission day (which was so perfectly timed given the presence of the beta on Friday-Sunday). I am now left with only studying for my microecon midterm this week which I think I have a chance of doing well on. Until mid may when I next post, peace out.
Monday, April 09, 2012
I Hath Surely Stepped in it this Quarter
Sorry about the delay, I got legitimately busy for once after the quarter started. As a senior and an Econ major, my life in classes recently has been mainly reading articles and research reports and preparing to discuss them in class. On top of that, I have to work really hard for part of the quarter (or if I were smart, spread it out over the whole quarter) to study for tests and to write papers. But this quarter, I wound up in two of the econ classes that actually give regular homework. On top of that, my third class is also doing that. As a result, I've found myself doing pointless busywork with most of my free time since the quarter started. On top of that, it's tournament season for frisbee, so I have to be extra conscious about how much I can get done ahead of time. But enough complaining, I'll make a quick post here to talk about my classes.
Intermediate Microeconomics:
This is that one course where no matter who you talk to, it gets a groan and a negative response. Everyone thinks it's really hard and I have to agree. But I became an econ major after taking my first micro class, so I have high hopes for the class even though it's apparent I am behind on the math. I would have been doing better had I taken this course last year, but they couldn't fit me in then. Now, I'm taking it in my last quarter alongside the capstone course. Both of those classes are really giving me a lot of work. The math for micro is slowly coming back to me; it's been since 2009 Fall quarter that I did any math that was relevant to this subject, so it's fair to say I was more than a little rusty going in. The course is taught by my stats professor (the first professor I had at Seattle U, my last math teacher, and one of my two advisors at the school), so that's at least nice. I keep winding up in an early class when I'm with him, we're just destined not to sleep in I guess. This time though, I'm not falling asleep so much.
The Policy Process:
I was originally hoping my transcripts from abroad would come in on time which would allow me to only take two classes this quarter. Unfortunately they STILL haven't come in (a concern all of its own), so I was forced to keep this class. When registering, I didn't care what class I got because it was early February and I figured my transcripts would come in on time anyway. I wound up just going by the timeslot I wanted and filtered that for any philosophy or political science classes that fit and this was the only one. I didn't even know the title of the class until I walked in the room on the first day. The professor for this class looks like a student; he has a lip piercing, wears chains on his jeans, and is young enough that he is still finishing his doctorate. It's clear that he is still getting his bearings as a teacher, but he's a pretty nice guy nonetheless. This class is rather light on the actual problem-solving homework load (unlike the other two classes which assign large lists of problems to solve) and is instead very heavy on reading. In some ways, it's worse than the problem solving because I have to retain everything I read. But hopefully, this class shouldn't cause me too many problems this quarter and I can devote more time to my other two classes.
The History of Economic Thought:
This is my fun class and it's also going to be my hard class. It is the capstone course for econ majors which means it is the final course we get before we graduate. In lieu of having a huge final essay (which is what I thought we did), the class concludes with a 45 minute interview (per person) between the professor and one student at a time. He has said that other professors often like to come watch it happen, which means I will likely get anywhere from 1 through 4 of my old professors watching me get interviewed on the last 500 years of economic thought, seeing how I retain my knowledge. I'm sufficiently afraid of this final and I want to absolutely kill it, so most of my late-quarter time will be spent studying my ass off for this interview. Aside from that, this class is almost completely the same people (and we sit in the same places) as my markets class from last quarter, so there are cool people to talk to in it. On top of that, the professor is extremely funny and though he's scatterbrained, he's easy enough to learn from.
Frisbee:
We had our first tournament of the year (calendar, not school) and my first tournament in almost a year recently. We went to Ellensburg for CWU's tournament. Only 7 teams showed up, but it was still a pretty good time. I didn't get much play time as I wanted, but I got as much as I should have because I was still out of tournament form after missing so much practice time. It was no big deal though because we had over 2 full lines (I think there were about 16 people in total there). Our one grad student (law school) was talking all Saturday about how he always wanted a Finafrock (terminology changed for my blog, but you know what I mean) and he was running out of tournaments to get it at since this is his last year in school (he finishes law school in May). The next day, I was running on the D1 line (our zone defense line which turned out to be super baller for some reason) and he wound up getting a Finafrock. The whole team ran up and partied with him after he got it. On the weekend, we wound up going 4-2, so not too bad, but room for improvement. We have sectionals coming up in a couple weeks, so we'll see how that goes. With our field gone, our practices have been limited in existence, so I haven't been able to get playing much. I hope it doesn't hurt my play coming up.
Other stuff:
Not much is going on otherwise. I've still been working along on League, trying to get to level 30 so I can do ranked teams with Eric, Steven, and Chris. That will be fun when it happens. I beat Mass Effect 3 the other day and was disappointed by the ending as was the rest of the internet it seems.
I'm actually going to try to get ahead on homework again since nobody is online for LoL at the moment, so until next post, peace out!
Intermediate Microeconomics:
This is that one course where no matter who you talk to, it gets a groan and a negative response. Everyone thinks it's really hard and I have to agree. But I became an econ major after taking my first micro class, so I have high hopes for the class even though it's apparent I am behind on the math. I would have been doing better had I taken this course last year, but they couldn't fit me in then. Now, I'm taking it in my last quarter alongside the capstone course. Both of those classes are really giving me a lot of work. The math for micro is slowly coming back to me; it's been since 2009 Fall quarter that I did any math that was relevant to this subject, so it's fair to say I was more than a little rusty going in. The course is taught by my stats professor (the first professor I had at Seattle U, my last math teacher, and one of my two advisors at the school), so that's at least nice. I keep winding up in an early class when I'm with him, we're just destined not to sleep in I guess. This time though, I'm not falling asleep so much.
The Policy Process:
I was originally hoping my transcripts from abroad would come in on time which would allow me to only take two classes this quarter. Unfortunately they STILL haven't come in (a concern all of its own), so I was forced to keep this class. When registering, I didn't care what class I got because it was early February and I figured my transcripts would come in on time anyway. I wound up just going by the timeslot I wanted and filtered that for any philosophy or political science classes that fit and this was the only one. I didn't even know the title of the class until I walked in the room on the first day. The professor for this class looks like a student; he has a lip piercing, wears chains on his jeans, and is young enough that he is still finishing his doctorate. It's clear that he is still getting his bearings as a teacher, but he's a pretty nice guy nonetheless. This class is rather light on the actual problem-solving homework load (unlike the other two classes which assign large lists of problems to solve) and is instead very heavy on reading. In some ways, it's worse than the problem solving because I have to retain everything I read. But hopefully, this class shouldn't cause me too many problems this quarter and I can devote more time to my other two classes.
The History of Economic Thought:
This is my fun class and it's also going to be my hard class. It is the capstone course for econ majors which means it is the final course we get before we graduate. In lieu of having a huge final essay (which is what I thought we did), the class concludes with a 45 minute interview (per person) between the professor and one student at a time. He has said that other professors often like to come watch it happen, which means I will likely get anywhere from 1 through 4 of my old professors watching me get interviewed on the last 500 years of economic thought, seeing how I retain my knowledge. I'm sufficiently afraid of this final and I want to absolutely kill it, so most of my late-quarter time will be spent studying my ass off for this interview. Aside from that, this class is almost completely the same people (and we sit in the same places) as my markets class from last quarter, so there are cool people to talk to in it. On top of that, the professor is extremely funny and though he's scatterbrained, he's easy enough to learn from.
Frisbee:
We had our first tournament of the year (calendar, not school) and my first tournament in almost a year recently. We went to Ellensburg for CWU's tournament. Only 7 teams showed up, but it was still a pretty good time. I didn't get much play time as I wanted, but I got as much as I should have because I was still out of tournament form after missing so much practice time. It was no big deal though because we had over 2 full lines (I think there were about 16 people in total there). Our one grad student (law school) was talking all Saturday about how he always wanted a Finafrock (terminology changed for my blog, but you know what I mean) and he was running out of tournaments to get it at since this is his last year in school (he finishes law school in May). The next day, I was running on the D1 line (our zone defense line which turned out to be super baller for some reason) and he wound up getting a Finafrock. The whole team ran up and partied with him after he got it. On the weekend, we wound up going 4-2, so not too bad, but room for improvement. We have sectionals coming up in a couple weeks, so we'll see how that goes. With our field gone, our practices have been limited in existence, so I haven't been able to get playing much. I hope it doesn't hurt my play coming up.
Other stuff:
Not much is going on otherwise. I've still been working along on League, trying to get to level 30 so I can do ranked teams with Eric, Steven, and Chris. That will be fun when it happens. I beat Mass Effect 3 the other day and was disappointed by the ending as was the rest of the internet it seems.
I'm actually going to try to get ahead on homework again since nobody is online for LoL at the moment, so until next post, peace out!
Monday, March 26, 2012
Regular updates, how do they work?
Ah the problem of continuously putting off posting, I am unfortunately left facing a lot of things to say. Warning, you have what will possibly be a very long post ahead of you. But eventually I'll get the hang of posting more often again and hopefully I can get to posting twice a month at least so I can keep the size of each post down. I did finally decide I had to post though after a couple important straws broke this camel's back. Those things happen to both involve Seattle U; one being my clearance to graduate (I was starting to get worried) and the other being my acceptance to Seattle U law. I'm still leaning towards applying for teaching jobs in Korea, but it was nice to get that acceptance; my family had gone almost a week without hearing about a college acceptance (Kathryn has heard back positively from 6 of 8 so far). So anyway, time to reminisce about last quarter.
Projects Galore:
To wrap up the quarter, I was faced with two group presentations (a 20 minute one and a 50 minute one) as well as two 3,000 word essays. The level of business was almost reminiscent of spring quarter 2011 when I was doing projects alongside LSAT study. This quarter was less busy and the pain was less that I had so much to do and more that I had been lazy all quarter and brought this upon myself. My essays actually turned out to both be more enjoyable than I had hoped. My videogames and culture essay discussed the past, present, and future financial success of professional Starcraft. It wound up going over the limit by about 2,000 words; however I don't think the professor minded. We had to make a brief presentation to the class in addition to the paper and mine naturally went long (I couldn't help myself, I had a captive audience listening to me talking about Starcraft!), but everyone seemed to really enjoy it and was asking me questions about it afterwards. My second paper was a market analysis on the market of my choice. Since I chose my topic late, I wrote about how OPEC countries act as a cartel to control market prices. It was a pretty dry paper, but I had fun researching and writing it. I think it was just nice to get back into that grind that I never really had to get into in Korea.
My presentations were another matter. The 50 minute one actually went pretty well. There were only four groups in the whole class, so each group had 8 people, which is more than enough people to hide amongst. My other project was not as successful. We were the last to choose our topic, only really deciding on it a week before the deadline. What's more, we only had time to work on it during a four day weekend. It was a pretty stressful project in that I wound up doing almost the entire thing. I felt under pressure to do well and to carry it because the professor teaching the class for which this project was to be turned in is one of the ones that wrote me my letter of recommendation (the one I really respect and am terrified of). She also seemed to really only give me any credit for being intelligent in the group which I think was partly due to the fact that she knew me (which should suggest otherwise...) and the fact that I was the one that nobody ever had a problem with. The other three kept pointing fingers at each other for some problem. And I don't know what goes on in the International Business department (all three of them were in that major), but they turned in some really unprofessional crap to me that I had to really edit. One guy is from China and English is his second language, so I was fine editing his stuff, but I expected to have to edit less from the other two. Fortunately, I had allocated an entire weekend to devote to preparing the project and that seems to have paid off given my final grade in the class. On the day of the presentation, one of the girls in my group showed up late to class. It would be excusable normally, but she was late by 15 minutes consistently every single day of the quarter. The only day she showed up on time was the first day of presentations when we thought we were going to have to go, so we met before class. When the presentation started without her, I had to be ready to take her spot on it because not only was I the only one that read over everyone's part, but the IB people seemed really unable to publicly speak (but again in one case that's because he's not confident in English even though he did really well). Anyway, I was happy to put all that behind me. I even got time to study for the last test ever with my favorite professor and based on how I feel about the test and how my final grade turned out, it seems that it was my best grade on any of her tests.
Frisbee:
I actually wound up missing pretty much all frisbee events and practices between the beginning of February and the end of the quarter. I had some really bad sickness that we thought was pneumonia at one point, but now we have no idea. I'm basing it on what dad's doctor told him since I gave him exactly what I had and I refused to go to the doctor myself. Either way, I seem to be over it now. I did make it to the last practice of the year on our field. It's being torn down to make a really nice one that will be available next fall once the seniors have graduated. Those of us that showed up celebrated the last practice with drunk frisbee. I brought a shit ton of PBR (I bought it ironically which probably makes it 1000 times worse) and we had some hard stuff too. There was a lot of public urination, burying cans on the field, jokes, and the captain even gave a speech from LotR whilst riding around on his imaginary horse at one point. It was a great way to send off the field in style. Now that I'm healthy(ish) again, I'm looking forward to tournament season. We have one this weekend in Ellensburg, then sectionals next month. After that, hopefully one at EWU which was really fun last year and then a tournament at a location which I do not know, but I do know it involves a weekend of solid drinking. I opted not to go last year because I didn't want to tempt the fates with my 21 drinking bet and all, but I'm for sure going this year.
Videogames:
Well this is mostly League of Legends related. I did recently get Mass Effect 3, but nothing to report right now. I haven't seen the supposedly shitty ending yet and I hope it's not as bad as they all say. I've been playing a lot of League with Eric, Steven, and Chris. The occasional drunk LoL is also fun. I'm starting to narrow in on a few champions that I suck slightly less with although I still have a really bad game all too often. I haven't played much Starcraft recently, but I've been occasionally watching it still when I get time and am up late enough.
Spring Break:
I spent my spring break doing my tour of the family which has basically involved me talking about Korea to every family member that hasn't gotten to see me since I got back. I spent some time at the ocean with Grandpa over the weekend which was fun even though the weather was kinda crappy. We got up to see my great aunt and uncle in Forks which was nice as always. After that, I had about a day back, then went to Eastern Washington to see my uncle and aunt and cousin, then to see Shorewood do the state drill competition (Kathryn's in it, I'm not a creeper). I found out my cousin's husband plays League, so hopefully I'll get to see him online sometimes.
Teeth:
So I don't know where I last left off on my teeth and all, but I had that root canal for the tooth that long ago was chipped and had since died. Looks like I'll need a second because the one next to it was involved too. But in the meantime, I'll be getting permanent plaster caps (veneers?) on my front teeth tomorrow. For the last two weeks, I had temporary ones which are actually one unit and are made of plastic. Having two teeth as one has been uncomfortable, but I will soon not have to bear that annoyance anymore. The biggest pain in the ass about the temporary caps has been I can't bite my fingernails which has driven me insane to a point where I would be biting my nails even more frequently. Tomorrow I get it all fixed up though and I'll have nice, permanent caps over my front teeth. I elected to have them look exactly the same as before rather than make their bottoms level with each other because I decided I liked it being just slightly off like that since the teeth are otherwise perfectly straight. I'll take picture of it and I'll include those in my next post for your viewing pleasure (on an imgur account, I don't want to subject you to my teeth every time you hit this page).
Wow, that's actually all I had to say. Maybe we got lucky and this post was a little shorter. I'll probably wind up posting next Monday after the tournament in Ellensburg. If not then, I'll be posting in the second week of April. Until then, peace out.
Projects Galore:
To wrap up the quarter, I was faced with two group presentations (a 20 minute one and a 50 minute one) as well as two 3,000 word essays. The level of business was almost reminiscent of spring quarter 2011 when I was doing projects alongside LSAT study. This quarter was less busy and the pain was less that I had so much to do and more that I had been lazy all quarter and brought this upon myself. My essays actually turned out to both be more enjoyable than I had hoped. My videogames and culture essay discussed the past, present, and future financial success of professional Starcraft. It wound up going over the limit by about 2,000 words; however I don't think the professor minded. We had to make a brief presentation to the class in addition to the paper and mine naturally went long (I couldn't help myself, I had a captive audience listening to me talking about Starcraft!), but everyone seemed to really enjoy it and was asking me questions about it afterwards. My second paper was a market analysis on the market of my choice. Since I chose my topic late, I wrote about how OPEC countries act as a cartel to control market prices. It was a pretty dry paper, but I had fun researching and writing it. I think it was just nice to get back into that grind that I never really had to get into in Korea.
My presentations were another matter. The 50 minute one actually went pretty well. There were only four groups in the whole class, so each group had 8 people, which is more than enough people to hide amongst. My other project was not as successful. We were the last to choose our topic, only really deciding on it a week before the deadline. What's more, we only had time to work on it during a four day weekend. It was a pretty stressful project in that I wound up doing almost the entire thing. I felt under pressure to do well and to carry it because the professor teaching the class for which this project was to be turned in is one of the ones that wrote me my letter of recommendation (the one I really respect and am terrified of). She also seemed to really only give me any credit for being intelligent in the group which I think was partly due to the fact that she knew me (which should suggest otherwise...) and the fact that I was the one that nobody ever had a problem with. The other three kept pointing fingers at each other for some problem. And I don't know what goes on in the International Business department (all three of them were in that major), but they turned in some really unprofessional crap to me that I had to really edit. One guy is from China and English is his second language, so I was fine editing his stuff, but I expected to have to edit less from the other two. Fortunately, I had allocated an entire weekend to devote to preparing the project and that seems to have paid off given my final grade in the class. On the day of the presentation, one of the girls in my group showed up late to class. It would be excusable normally, but she was late by 15 minutes consistently every single day of the quarter. The only day she showed up on time was the first day of presentations when we thought we were going to have to go, so we met before class. When the presentation started without her, I had to be ready to take her spot on it because not only was I the only one that read over everyone's part, but the IB people seemed really unable to publicly speak (but again in one case that's because he's not confident in English even though he did really well). Anyway, I was happy to put all that behind me. I even got time to study for the last test ever with my favorite professor and based on how I feel about the test and how my final grade turned out, it seems that it was my best grade on any of her tests.
Frisbee:
I actually wound up missing pretty much all frisbee events and practices between the beginning of February and the end of the quarter. I had some really bad sickness that we thought was pneumonia at one point, but now we have no idea. I'm basing it on what dad's doctor told him since I gave him exactly what I had and I refused to go to the doctor myself. Either way, I seem to be over it now. I did make it to the last practice of the year on our field. It's being torn down to make a really nice one that will be available next fall once the seniors have graduated. Those of us that showed up celebrated the last practice with drunk frisbee. I brought a shit ton of PBR (I bought it ironically which probably makes it 1000 times worse) and we had some hard stuff too. There was a lot of public urination, burying cans on the field, jokes, and the captain even gave a speech from LotR whilst riding around on his imaginary horse at one point. It was a great way to send off the field in style. Now that I'm healthy(ish) again, I'm looking forward to tournament season. We have one this weekend in Ellensburg, then sectionals next month. After that, hopefully one at EWU which was really fun last year and then a tournament at a location which I do not know, but I do know it involves a weekend of solid drinking. I opted not to go last year because I didn't want to tempt the fates with my 21 drinking bet and all, but I'm for sure going this year.
Videogames:
Well this is mostly League of Legends related. I did recently get Mass Effect 3, but nothing to report right now. I haven't seen the supposedly shitty ending yet and I hope it's not as bad as they all say. I've been playing a lot of League with Eric, Steven, and Chris. The occasional drunk LoL is also fun. I'm starting to narrow in on a few champions that I suck slightly less with although I still have a really bad game all too often. I haven't played much Starcraft recently, but I've been occasionally watching it still when I get time and am up late enough.
Spring Break:
I spent my spring break doing my tour of the family which has basically involved me talking about Korea to every family member that hasn't gotten to see me since I got back. I spent some time at the ocean with Grandpa over the weekend which was fun even though the weather was kinda crappy. We got up to see my great aunt and uncle in Forks which was nice as always. After that, I had about a day back, then went to Eastern Washington to see my uncle and aunt and cousin, then to see Shorewood do the state drill competition (Kathryn's in it, I'm not a creeper). I found out my cousin's husband plays League, so hopefully I'll get to see him online sometimes.
Teeth:
So I don't know where I last left off on my teeth and all, but I had that root canal for the tooth that long ago was chipped and had since died. Looks like I'll need a second because the one next to it was involved too. But in the meantime, I'll be getting permanent plaster caps (veneers?) on my front teeth tomorrow. For the last two weeks, I had temporary ones which are actually one unit and are made of plastic. Having two teeth as one has been uncomfortable, but I will soon not have to bear that annoyance anymore. The biggest pain in the ass about the temporary caps has been I can't bite my fingernails which has driven me insane to a point where I would be biting my nails even more frequently. Tomorrow I get it all fixed up though and I'll have nice, permanent caps over my front teeth. I elected to have them look exactly the same as before rather than make their bottoms level with each other because I decided I liked it being just slightly off like that since the teeth are otherwise perfectly straight. I'll take picture of it and I'll include those in my next post for your viewing pleasure (on an imgur account, I don't want to subject you to my teeth every time you hit this page).
Wow, that's actually all I had to say. Maybe we got lucky and this post was a little shorter. I'll probably wind up posting next Monday after the tournament in Ellensburg. If not then, I'll be posting in the second week of April. Until then, peace out.
Friday, February 24, 2012
I owe you another post now
Well it's been a while since my last post. I've used my time in February to get caught up on some things while accidentally falling behind on classwork as I get used to a quarter system that is very short. The end of the term has snuck up on me, I was still used to semester length terms and neglected to start my multiple papers. Also notable, I recently finished my applications (oh wait, application) to law schools (er, law school T__T).
I did actually continue with the law school application process even though going back to Korea is now a more desirable course of action for me. I figured I burned so much time getting ready to apply that I had to keep going with it. Unfortunately, I found out there was a problem with my transcripts a couple weeks before the deadline for the UW (the problem being that they never arrived). So I had to go back to request transcripts from my school which was punctual as always, then SCC which was unpunctual as always. First of all, I find that every time I go back to SCC, I wonder how I was ever so happy to go there. Don't get me wrong, I got a good education and I'm glad I went and saved all that money, but a lot of the people there are just so weird. I guess maybe I'm just growing more used to the hipster crowd (shudder) at Seattle U. So I went to SCC and as usual, they told me it takes 5-7 business days to process then send out my transcript meaning it would get to the LSAC in about 2 actual weeks. As usual, I spent that whole explanation contemplating in my head why it takes a school 1/4 the size of SU 4 times the time to send out a transcript. But I had plenty of time, so I wasn't too frustrated about it. Until I received a note from the LSAC a few days before the deadline that my SCC transcript had arrived without a required form attached. Each transcript has to be sent with a form that is signed by the registrar so that the LSAC knows it's legitimate. I told SCC to attach it and they didn't. So I had to run back there and they actually made me pay for the transcript again, then gave me the same crap about how it would take time and I said well I was hoping you would have done it right the first time, so please do it as quickly as possible. And they did it faster than they had done before, but they got it in THE DAY AFTER THE DEADLINE. So having that transcript not there effectively destroyed any chance I have of going to the UW because even if I had been able to apply, they would have seen that I had only been in school for two years, which would be almost an instant denial given my GPA and LSAT score being about lower to middle range for what they want. Seattle U's deadline is the first of March, so I put in my application for them and we'll see where that goes. I'm not holding out for getting any money from them, so as soon as my projects are done, I'm going to start looking at ways to sign on with a company to go teach back in Korea.
On that note, I find that I really miss that place. I enjoyed having my own place (although the basement is working for me again here) and living in a fun city where I could watch Starcraft whenever I wanted. There are some times when I don't want to leave here though, but those times are mostly when I'm hanging out with Steven, Eric, and Chris. I figure I can always meet up with them online though, so being in Seoul wouldn't be too bad.
Speaking of hanging out with those guys, I've started playing League of Legends a lot more recently. It's been fun and those three are saints for putting up with me bumbling around in the game. I'm a lot better than when I started, but I still have a ways to go. I hope to be at a skill level where I can maintain the default ELO rating once I reach level 30. Currently, I'm not up to snuff there. But I'm getting more practiced with a few champions that I like which is making it easier to improve in certain roles.
My classes have been going well, frisbee has not been so great. I've spent most of this quarter horribly busy on practice days or sick, which has prevented me from going recently. I want to go, but practice is 2 hours and my travel time to and from it is another two hours and when those hours are right in the middle of the day, it is really difficult to make it down since those are hours I need to spend working with groups on projects. We have a tournament coming up in mid-March and I'm really hoping to get some practice time in before then, but it's looking like I might not be able to get back to practice until next week at least.
For classes, my econ ones are fine. The videogames class recently had us playing WoW (I think he chose that one because of the culture it has created and the relatively flat learning curve). I picked a class that could heal, tank, or dps since I am one of the guys in class that is more experienced in games (most of the class is casuals). I leveled up at great pain because the game was so boring. Yesterday, we did our culminating event in the game, an instance run. I ran in a group with my friend from the frisbee team who tanked, then a new guy, an experienced WoW player, and my professor's dad (who was really cool) who were all dps. Then at the request of the professor since I was a priest, I provided heals. Healing is really the final frontier for me in MMOs because I seem to have touched on every other type of role except that one. I am proud to report though that I did really well and my group was one of only two that didn't suffer any casualties. I have to start writing my paper for this class soon, but I'm excited about it because I'm writing about the history and economic prospects of professional Starcraft. It's an interdisciplinary core class, so we were suggested to write papers about videogame culture that we could relate to our own majors in some way. This is going to be my easiest paper because I can definitely talk about economics and Starcraft for a long time.
Sorry to cut this post short, but I don't have too much left to say. Also, I'm making it while my rice is cooking for lunch (yes, we finally got a rice cooker!!!) and it's about done, so I'm going to tend to that, then get my papers started.
I did actually continue with the law school application process even though going back to Korea is now a more desirable course of action for me. I figured I burned so much time getting ready to apply that I had to keep going with it. Unfortunately, I found out there was a problem with my transcripts a couple weeks before the deadline for the UW (the problem being that they never arrived). So I had to go back to request transcripts from my school which was punctual as always, then SCC which was unpunctual as always. First of all, I find that every time I go back to SCC, I wonder how I was ever so happy to go there. Don't get me wrong, I got a good education and I'm glad I went and saved all that money, but a lot of the people there are just so weird. I guess maybe I'm just growing more used to the hipster crowd (shudder) at Seattle U. So I went to SCC and as usual, they told me it takes 5-7 business days to process then send out my transcript meaning it would get to the LSAC in about 2 actual weeks. As usual, I spent that whole explanation contemplating in my head why it takes a school 1/4 the size of SU 4 times the time to send out a transcript. But I had plenty of time, so I wasn't too frustrated about it. Until I received a note from the LSAC a few days before the deadline that my SCC transcript had arrived without a required form attached. Each transcript has to be sent with a form that is signed by the registrar so that the LSAC knows it's legitimate. I told SCC to attach it and they didn't. So I had to run back there and they actually made me pay for the transcript again, then gave me the same crap about how it would take time and I said well I was hoping you would have done it right the first time, so please do it as quickly as possible. And they did it faster than they had done before, but they got it in THE DAY AFTER THE DEADLINE. So having that transcript not there effectively destroyed any chance I have of going to the UW because even if I had been able to apply, they would have seen that I had only been in school for two years, which would be almost an instant denial given my GPA and LSAT score being about lower to middle range for what they want. Seattle U's deadline is the first of March, so I put in my application for them and we'll see where that goes. I'm not holding out for getting any money from them, so as soon as my projects are done, I'm going to start looking at ways to sign on with a company to go teach back in Korea.
On that note, I find that I really miss that place. I enjoyed having my own place (although the basement is working for me again here) and living in a fun city where I could watch Starcraft whenever I wanted. There are some times when I don't want to leave here though, but those times are mostly when I'm hanging out with Steven, Eric, and Chris. I figure I can always meet up with them online though, so being in Seoul wouldn't be too bad.
Speaking of hanging out with those guys, I've started playing League of Legends a lot more recently. It's been fun and those three are saints for putting up with me bumbling around in the game. I'm a lot better than when I started, but I still have a ways to go. I hope to be at a skill level where I can maintain the default ELO rating once I reach level 30. Currently, I'm not up to snuff there. But I'm getting more practiced with a few champions that I like which is making it easier to improve in certain roles.
My classes have been going well, frisbee has not been so great. I've spent most of this quarter horribly busy on practice days or sick, which has prevented me from going recently. I want to go, but practice is 2 hours and my travel time to and from it is another two hours and when those hours are right in the middle of the day, it is really difficult to make it down since those are hours I need to spend working with groups on projects. We have a tournament coming up in mid-March and I'm really hoping to get some practice time in before then, but it's looking like I might not be able to get back to practice until next week at least.
For classes, my econ ones are fine. The videogames class recently had us playing WoW (I think he chose that one because of the culture it has created and the relatively flat learning curve). I picked a class that could heal, tank, or dps since I am one of the guys in class that is more experienced in games (most of the class is casuals). I leveled up at great pain because the game was so boring. Yesterday, we did our culminating event in the game, an instance run. I ran in a group with my friend from the frisbee team who tanked, then a new guy, an experienced WoW player, and my professor's dad (who was really cool) who were all dps. Then at the request of the professor since I was a priest, I provided heals. Healing is really the final frontier for me in MMOs because I seem to have touched on every other type of role except that one. I am proud to report though that I did really well and my group was one of only two that didn't suffer any casualties. I have to start writing my paper for this class soon, but I'm excited about it because I'm writing about the history and economic prospects of professional Starcraft. It's an interdisciplinary core class, so we were suggested to write papers about videogame culture that we could relate to our own majors in some way. This is going to be my easiest paper because I can definitely talk about economics and Starcraft for a long time.
Sorry to cut this post short, but I don't have too much left to say. Also, I'm making it while my rice is cooking for lunch (yes, we finally got a rice cooker!!!) and it's about done, so I'm going to tend to that, then get my papers started.
Monday, January 30, 2012
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.
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.
Thursday, January 19, 2012
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.
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
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.
Tuesday, January 03, 2012
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.
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.
Sunday, January 01, 2012
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.
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.
Monday, November 28, 2011
Sneaking in a post before the end of the month
And golly gee willikers, what a month it's been. I went on (technically?) my first date ever, met both BoxeR and (more importantly) Firebathero, found new Starcraft friends, had a fun bonding week with my group, picked up laddering, and generally just continued to enjoy life in the city. I promise I will cover all these things in the post and with that, I shall get started.
Social interactions:
Most of those leads I mentioned in the last post have dried up. The North Koreans are not going to work out, but I had begun to think maybe that wasn't the best idea to begin with. The GSL girl is still around, but I still have no idea if that guy with her is her boyfriend or coworker. Either way, I was too shy to ever ask her out, and anyway, I wound up asking out the girl that was my first choice anyway (well I guess second if you count Sunny >__>). Anyway, the story shall be detailed below.
November 11th is Pepero day in Korea (Pepero is the Korean version of pocky sticks). Since this was 11/11/11, it was called millenium pepero day (despite it happening every century the way they wrote out the date, but whatever), however that is more or less irrelevant to this story. The magic of Pepero day is you can give Pepero to anyone and there doesn't have to be a romantic connotation to it, thought there often is. It's the perfect way to fall flat on your face in rejection, perfect for me and my nervousness! On top of that, I heard that the director for the program (the reason I am too shy to go up and ask the assistant out in person (her name is Boram which I will use from hereon out)) had the day off that day, so I took it as a sign that this was the time. I went out that night and bought her Pepero and the next day, went to deliver it in person. She looked pretty happy and surprised when I gave her the Pepero (no one else did that all day it seems). She then invited me in because she had something to bring up with me because of the volunteering project and the English tutoring I'm doing. That lasted a couple minutes, then it got more casual for a couple more minutes. Since I was concerned about the rejection last time, I tried to casually slip in my desire to move back to Korea to teach English in the future which she seemed surprised by, but it was well received. Right before I had to leave, I then decided to ask her out to dinner. Unfortunately, both our schedules didn't align for a couple weeks, so we decided to just get lunch the following weekend. I left the office quite happy with myself.
A handful of the girls in the group know I like Boram, but none of then knew I asked her out on a date. They just knew I had given her Pepero on Pepero day and all of them seem to think it's super cute. On my way to the date, I passed Katherine (girl that I came over on the same flight as) as she was waiting for the elevator. I had worn pants because I wanted to look nicer than usual for Boram, so I walked quickly so my legs would be hidden around the corner from Katherine, then when she said hi to me, I leaned back so she would just see my upper body and head. But she is too smart for her own good and walked around to where she could see all of me at which point she asked if I was going to the international party that day. I said no because I was going out to Sinchon for lunch (trying not to say I was going out with Boram because I didn't want it to be big news in case I failed). At that point, Katherine looked down and saw I was wearing pants, then looked back up at me with a smug smirk that just said "You're wearing pants, I know exactly where you're going..." With that, she said goodbye and I did too, then I headed out. The actual date went pretty well. I don't know how much she thought it was a date, though the fact that I was wearing pants should have clued her in. After eating, I paid and she only offered once before letting me do it (I take that as a success, if she had repeatedly insisted, that would have been bad). After that, we were going to go back to the subway originally since I had to tutor that afternoon, but she suggested we walk around a bit to find this art flea market nearby. So we walked around there and saw some cool things, then slowly made our way back to the subway. All in all, it was about 1.5-2 hours with her and quite enjoyable. I'm currently trying to find a time when I can go out to dinner with her. Eventually I'll be able to tell her I like her, I just gotta get out on a date with her again.
In other social lifey things, I made some new Starcraft friends. I found out through TeamLiquid that there is a girl that goes to school here that loves BroodWar. She actually recognized me at a GSL event (I have a blog on TeamLiquid with Starcraft related posts and pictures of me), but was too shy to say hi there and wound up PMing me later on. We eventually connected and now we go to games together (along with a couple other cool people from TL that go here too and one guy that's here on vacation). It's nice to have foreigners to hang out with at BW events because otherwise, I would be the only white guy there. She is a rising superstar on the TL forums and has studied BroodWar extensively. She only started getting into it in June, but she now knows a ton. I guess she went back and just researched the hell out of BroodWar history. There are still times when I can give some knowledge to her, but generally, her memory of events is better than mine (and I was watching them unfold live T___T). Anyway, hanging out with them has been entertaining. I'm planning to go to a PC bang with the girl so we can play some BroodWar (she has trouble with it on her computer and hasn't actually played hardly any BW yet).
Group Project Bonding/Classes in General:
My professor that keeps cancelling class surprised everyone one day when he declared that he wasn't feeling well and thus would be ending class early....in the semester. That meant that after last Friday, the class would no longer be meeting for the remainder of the semester. The two remaining presentations would wrap up on that final day, then we would be done except for our papers which we are to submit online. The only problem with this is that my group was the last group and until he told us that (on a Sunday night), we were under the impression that we had twice as much time to complete the project. And we hadn't started. So we instantly figured it was crunch time and proceeded to spend a lot of time together over the course of that week. We did a prezi presentation to stand out and it went really well actually. You get docked points if your presentation is below 18 minutes and you get scolded if it is above 22 minutes. He asked for 20 minute presentations and ours wound up coming the closest at 19:47. The second closest was my friend's group who came in at 19:23. In the end, it didn't look like we scrambled the few days before it was due (though everyone knew we did because we freely admitted it) and we got 40/40s from all groups except one group who is full of bitches and grades everyone's projects really low (they gave us their highest grade all semester, a 39/40). When they said their score, half the class just got this confused look on their face and a couple people just confusedly stared at her. We were damn happy with our prezi and what we had accomplished in such a short time. We even included some trolly things in it, such as a hadoken and some cheesy pictures. Me and the gamer girl snuck those in late at night when we were really bored working on the project. The link is here for you to see. The slides are generally devoid of information because that's what the professor said he wanted from all groups.
http://prezi.com/itnjhtj_xzpa/topic-10-kim-jung-un-and-north-koreas-future/
(does you little good to learn from it without it being narrated, but you can still go in and spot the little hidden gems we put in).
My other classes are going well and are far less interesting than that one.
Laddering:
This one is brief. I have begun laddering more on the NA server. I ended the prevoius season with my MMR really low and because I lost my placement match this season, it put me in Silver. This has incresed my drive to get back to gold and someday higher leagues as well. Confusingly, I am ranked in Silver league on the Korean server as well, so I'm not sure what to make of that since the Korean server is way harder than the North America one. If anything, it might just be proof that I play better against better opponents (and the reason I feel like I played really well (though not nearly well enough) against the pro players I played in the Code A preliminaries.
Meeting BoxeR and FBH:
Two of my favorite players ever, I got to meet them in one month. Meeting BoxeR was already mentioned here, and my meeting FBH can be found in my TeamLiquid blog (it's a bit long) http://www.teamliquid.net/blogs/viewblog.php?id=289853
Getting to meet him was extremely awesome and I can't wait to keep supporting ACE at events.
So in conclusion, wish me luck on perhaps getting more dates. Who knows, maybe she likes me too and I will get a girlfriend. That would be quite interesting. Until next time, peace out.
Social interactions:
Most of those leads I mentioned in the last post have dried up. The North Koreans are not going to work out, but I had begun to think maybe that wasn't the best idea to begin with. The GSL girl is still around, but I still have no idea if that guy with her is her boyfriend or coworker. Either way, I was too shy to ever ask her out, and anyway, I wound up asking out the girl that was my first choice anyway (well I guess second if you count Sunny >__>). Anyway, the story shall be detailed below.
November 11th is Pepero day in Korea (Pepero is the Korean version of pocky sticks). Since this was 11/11/11, it was called millenium pepero day (despite it happening every century the way they wrote out the date, but whatever), however that is more or less irrelevant to this story. The magic of Pepero day is you can give Pepero to anyone and there doesn't have to be a romantic connotation to it, thought there often is. It's the perfect way to fall flat on your face in rejection, perfect for me and my nervousness! On top of that, I heard that the director for the program (the reason I am too shy to go up and ask the assistant out in person (her name is Boram which I will use from hereon out)) had the day off that day, so I took it as a sign that this was the time. I went out that night and bought her Pepero and the next day, went to deliver it in person. She looked pretty happy and surprised when I gave her the Pepero (no one else did that all day it seems). She then invited me in because she had something to bring up with me because of the volunteering project and the English tutoring I'm doing. That lasted a couple minutes, then it got more casual for a couple more minutes. Since I was concerned about the rejection last time, I tried to casually slip in my desire to move back to Korea to teach English in the future which she seemed surprised by, but it was well received. Right before I had to leave, I then decided to ask her out to dinner. Unfortunately, both our schedules didn't align for a couple weeks, so we decided to just get lunch the following weekend. I left the office quite happy with myself.
A handful of the girls in the group know I like Boram, but none of then knew I asked her out on a date. They just knew I had given her Pepero on Pepero day and all of them seem to think it's super cute. On my way to the date, I passed Katherine (girl that I came over on the same flight as) as she was waiting for the elevator. I had worn pants because I wanted to look nicer than usual for Boram, so I walked quickly so my legs would be hidden around the corner from Katherine, then when she said hi to me, I leaned back so she would just see my upper body and head. But she is too smart for her own good and walked around to where she could see all of me at which point she asked if I was going to the international party that day. I said no because I was going out to Sinchon for lunch (trying not to say I was going out with Boram because I didn't want it to be big news in case I failed). At that point, Katherine looked down and saw I was wearing pants, then looked back up at me with a smug smirk that just said "You're wearing pants, I know exactly where you're going..." With that, she said goodbye and I did too, then I headed out. The actual date went pretty well. I don't know how much she thought it was a date, though the fact that I was wearing pants should have clued her in. After eating, I paid and she only offered once before letting me do it (I take that as a success, if she had repeatedly insisted, that would have been bad). After that, we were going to go back to the subway originally since I had to tutor that afternoon, but she suggested we walk around a bit to find this art flea market nearby. So we walked around there and saw some cool things, then slowly made our way back to the subway. All in all, it was about 1.5-2 hours with her and quite enjoyable. I'm currently trying to find a time when I can go out to dinner with her. Eventually I'll be able to tell her I like her, I just gotta get out on a date with her again.
In other social lifey things, I made some new Starcraft friends. I found out through TeamLiquid that there is a girl that goes to school here that loves BroodWar. She actually recognized me at a GSL event (I have a blog on TeamLiquid with Starcraft related posts and pictures of me), but was too shy to say hi there and wound up PMing me later on. We eventually connected and now we go to games together (along with a couple other cool people from TL that go here too and one guy that's here on vacation). It's nice to have foreigners to hang out with at BW events because otherwise, I would be the only white guy there. She is a rising superstar on the TL forums and has studied BroodWar extensively. She only started getting into it in June, but she now knows a ton. I guess she went back and just researched the hell out of BroodWar history. There are still times when I can give some knowledge to her, but generally, her memory of events is better than mine (and I was watching them unfold live T___T). Anyway, hanging out with them has been entertaining. I'm planning to go to a PC bang with the girl so we can play some BroodWar (she has trouble with it on her computer and hasn't actually played hardly any BW yet).
Group Project Bonding/Classes in General:
My professor that keeps cancelling class surprised everyone one day when he declared that he wasn't feeling well and thus would be ending class early....in the semester. That meant that after last Friday, the class would no longer be meeting for the remainder of the semester. The two remaining presentations would wrap up on that final day, then we would be done except for our papers which we are to submit online. The only problem with this is that my group was the last group and until he told us that (on a Sunday night), we were under the impression that we had twice as much time to complete the project. And we hadn't started. So we instantly figured it was crunch time and proceeded to spend a lot of time together over the course of that week. We did a prezi presentation to stand out and it went really well actually. You get docked points if your presentation is below 18 minutes and you get scolded if it is above 22 minutes. He asked for 20 minute presentations and ours wound up coming the closest at 19:47. The second closest was my friend's group who came in at 19:23. In the end, it didn't look like we scrambled the few days before it was due (though everyone knew we did because we freely admitted it) and we got 40/40s from all groups except one group who is full of bitches and grades everyone's projects really low (they gave us their highest grade all semester, a 39/40). When they said their score, half the class just got this confused look on their face and a couple people just confusedly stared at her. We were damn happy with our prezi and what we had accomplished in such a short time. We even included some trolly things in it, such as a hadoken and some cheesy pictures. Me and the gamer girl snuck those in late at night when we were really bored working on the project. The link is here for you to see. The slides are generally devoid of information because that's what the professor said he wanted from all groups.
http://prezi.com/itnjhtj_xzpa/topic-10-kim-jung-un-and-north-koreas-future/
(does you little good to learn from it without it being narrated, but you can still go in and spot the little hidden gems we put in).
My other classes are going well and are far less interesting than that one.
Laddering:
This one is brief. I have begun laddering more on the NA server. I ended the prevoius season with my MMR really low and because I lost my placement match this season, it put me in Silver. This has incresed my drive to get back to gold and someday higher leagues as well. Confusingly, I am ranked in Silver league on the Korean server as well, so I'm not sure what to make of that since the Korean server is way harder than the North America one. If anything, it might just be proof that I play better against better opponents (and the reason I feel like I played really well (though not nearly well enough) against the pro players I played in the Code A preliminaries.
Meeting BoxeR and FBH:
Two of my favorite players ever, I got to meet them in one month. Meeting BoxeR was already mentioned here, and my meeting FBH can be found in my TeamLiquid blog (it's a bit long) http://www.teamliquid.net/blogs/viewblog.php?id=289853
Getting to meet him was extremely awesome and I can't wait to keep supporting ACE at events.
So in conclusion, wish me luck on perhaps getting more dates. Who knows, maybe she likes me too and I will get a girlfriend. That would be quite interesting. Until next time, peace out.
Monday, November 07, 2011
I wasn't feeling guilty about not posting because I had forgotten that I hadn't in a few weeks.
Well I suppose it has been a while since my last post. I've been up to mostly the usual, Starcraft and adventuring. I also find time to do homework and attend classes of course, but those are less interesting. Our study group went to Japan recently, so expect that to take up most of the post. Other than that, nothing big to report (at least not intro paragraph worthy) so I'll dive right into the post.
Starcraft Stuff:
I was a little disappointed because the GSL finals for October were going to Blizzcon in Anaheim. It was a good just my luck sort of thing, I go all the way to Korea and the GSL goes to America. There's one more final in Korea for this current GSL that I will get to attend, then I have to wait until I come back to go to a final again. Since a lot of people now had no good way to watch the GSL, GOM invited us all to the studio to watch. In the main studio, the Korean stream was being watched. For us English speakers, the lobby was playing the English casted version. It was a pretty fun day, though nowhere near as good as the last GSL finals.
In other Starcraft things, I've finally gotten to meet two of the best players known to man. Of course I'm talking about NesTea and Mvp (I know you knew that already). Someday, I hope BroodWar starts again because I'm really itching to see some good BroodWar games. In addition to that, I really want to see Firebathero play. Really badly.
Ok and I actually had to add this last part because even though I finished this section already (had to leave it unfinished overnight because I was busy), but this is too awesome. I met BoxeR. Of course it wasn't the first time I had ever met him, but the last time I met him, it was just kind of a pulling up in front of him, getting an autograph, thanking him, and moving on. This time, I actually got to more formally meet him. Like with BroodWar (but not with SC2) there are fan meetings after games. Being an old BW player and a generally popular guy, BoxeR held one of these meetings after his game yesterday. After it died down slightly, Jessica (his girlfriend) invited the other white guy and I to get pictures. It's hard to tell when to interject when fan meetings happen and in all cases where I have, the fans haven't minded having a random white guy come in really quick and get a picture and an autograph before asking questions again. This was just nice of Jessica to make it less awkward for us. The guy and I swapped taking pictures for each other and it was really cool. BoxeR used my pen so I don't think I'll ever be able to part with it now. Staying for the fan meeting was cool too even though I caught less than half of what they were talking about. I don't know what to say exactly, it was just so awesome to meet BoxeR for longer than 10 seconds. It's been the highlight of my Starcraft adventures here. Now all I really want is a picture with Firebathero, but that requires BroodWar to start up again.
Japan Excursion:
Our group had a trip to Japan (specifically Osaka and Kyoto) to study Korean diaspora. Unfortunately, the first day consisted of leaving for the airport at 5am, then getting on a plane and spending about from noon until 6pm walking around and touring. By the end of the day, everyone was super wiped out and nobody really recovered until we got back to Korea. The first day was spent touring around Kyoto. We went on a walking tour of an area near where there is supposed to be heavy Geisha activity, but did not see any. Later that night after dinner (which wasn't that great. I didn't eat well in Japan due to the fact that I detest fish) there was an optional tour to the actual geisha activity area at which point a few of us did get to see geisha after we split up to head home after giving up as a large group. After giving up, the big group split up into two groups. I was with the less party-tastic (stupid way of saying less popular?) group which was cool because I like hanging out with them. It's also good to get good points with as many of the girls in the group as possible which I am actively trying to do. Gotta alienate myself a bit less here. We got froyo and saw actual geisha (the other group did not) and then we went back to the hotel.
The next day was the long walking tour of Kyoto. It was pretty informative and for some reason the guide liked talking to me even though I didn't know that much about Japan and couldn't add to the conversation. Usually if a guide likes talking to me its because we have something in common like a deep knowledge of classic rock or maybe just I knew about the topic we were learning about. Either way, this tour was informative, but way too long and about halfway through, everyone kind of stopped paying close attention when we got somewhere. It wasn't necessarily to be rude, it was just that none of us were able to sleep that well given the rigorous schedule we were on (bed at about midnight, up and ready to leave at 7). Everyone welcomed the hour and a half bus ride that afternoon from Kyoto to Osaka at which point we were given the night off. It was one of the girls' birthdays, so a handful of us went to celebrate with her. In the process, I found a really good steak place for cheap that I ate at with a bunch of people before the two groups (we split up to get seated at different restaurants easier) rejoined each other. At that point, a lot of people began to be drains on the productivity of the group while myself and the birthday girl looked around for bars that had room for all of us. I hadn't interacted with her a whole lot before this, but she was one of the people in the group that gets me, so it made walking around with her less awkward. I also think I earned points for being one of the only people helping her find a place to go. Eventually, we all decided on a bar that had some karaoke in it and we just went there and drank and the girls sang a lot. Well the bar neglected to tell us that there is a 200Y charge per song (about $1.50 per song). Anyway, all but a couple of the girls sang a bunch of the songs, but we all decided to chip in equal amounts to punish ourselves for collective ignorance. The guys wound up paying extra because those couple of the girls that didn't sing (unlike the guys) were really bitchy about not paying. We made sure everyone was back safe in the hotel, then me and one of the guys went back out to casually walk around the town for a little bit because we weren't quite tired and we wanted to get away from a couple of the girls who had been really annoying. After walking around for about an hour, it started to rain so we headed back in.
This hotel was nice because the rooms were really small so every person got their own room. Even better was the bed played good elevator music (a console on the bed rather) so I got to fall asleep to that. I actually got 6 hours of sleep and that was the most sleep I got in one sitting the whole weekend. Sunday was our fun day. We had to get up early to tour around a big palace in Nara (just outside of Osaka), but then got the day off starting from noon. The big palace was really cool. In the surrounding area, there were free roaming deer (a lot of them) and they were really tame, so it was like a strange petting zoo. Going into the temple was also pretty amazing because of its size. It is the largest wooden structure in the world measuring at about 160 feet tall, about 190 feet wide, and about 170 feet long. Inside the temple was really nice as well, containing two huge statues each about 45 feet tall. There was also a pillar with a hole at the base that was just large enough for someone of my size to squeeze through, so a bunch of us tried that. You're supposed to gain enlightenment or wishes granted if you do it, so fingers crossed. I also did a special love walk at a palace in Kyoto where you walk from one stone to another with your eyes closed (me and two other guys did it for fun) and if you do that, you're supposed to find true love so fingers super crossed. Who knows, maybe Sunny will just appear at my doorstep someday with all this good luck I'm supposedly accumulating. After seeing the palace, we had an hour to just randomly explore which turned into people trying to eat whilst being harassed by the deer. Apparently I was either the deer whisperer of the group or just the only one that had any experience whatsoever dealing with farm animals because the responsibility kept falling to me to keep the deer from bothering the girls too much. Having so many deer to pet was a nice substitute for not having a cat.
That afternoon, the group split up quite thoroughly. Not even all the guys stayed together which was the strangest part. Usually there are at least four of us (plus one guy that tags along), but this time, only three of us went to get food together. I had planned on hanging out with Boram during this time, but as with all weekend, she was perpetually kidnapped by other people and was hanging out with them. I'll go into a bit more detail in a little bit here the subject of her. Anyway, the three of us got food, then went back towards the hotel to rest for an hour because we were all tired. One guy offered to knock on our doors in an hour and we all went into our rooms. The problem for me was that my bed was so comfortable, if I even sat on it briefly, I would fall asleep. Such was the case this time and I wound up sleeping for four hours as did the other two guys. By that time, we all decided we should go get dinner because it was 6:00. The two guys really wanted steak, but the other people we were now with did not, so I volunteered to go get steak with the two guys since I desperately wanted something that wasn't seafood (any meal provided to us through the program was predominantly seafood which sucks because I hate hate hate that stuff) and I also didn't need to hang out with those other people. We got the good steak again then proceeded to wander around town looking to find gifts for people. Eventually we concluded that gifts were too expensive and we gave up and left back for the hotel to rest for an hour again. Then 3 hours later, we woke up and a couple people decided they wanted to do a night exploration this night similar to the one I did with that other guy from the night before. It went pretty well, but eventually it started to rain, so we went back inside. Back in the hotel, I played cards for a bit with one of the guys, then eventually began winning at that game really consistently. I guess I'm a natural. We then played a few games during the first half of the Giants game (one of the guys is from New York), but at halftime, it was 3am and I was tired, so I went to bed for 4 hours before getting up for the next day.
It was now Monday, our final day. We took a tour of a nice temple which took up a good amount of time. We then spent most of the afternoon making our way to the airport and then waiting for the plane to arrive. A few of us stopped at the duty free store to pick up alcohol (it's gonna be a partay when I come back to game night with all these asian drinks). Also somewhere in there, me and the two guys I hung out with on Sunday ran across Little Bow Wow (who I didn't recognize). He was super nice and the two guys got their picture taken with him. I didn't want to get in on it because I only know who he is because of Like Mike and there was no way in hell I was going to tell him that. We finally arrived in Korea at about 9:00 at which point I got back to my room and passed out at about 11:00, then proceeded to get a much needed 12 hours of sleep.
Japan was actually an interesting experience in that it was not terribly interesting. I had been wondering for a couple weeks prior to going there if I was really liking Korea for Korea or if I was just liking it because it was different from home. After going to Japan and coming back to Korea, I now know that I really like Korea for being Korea. I feel at home here and it was nice to get back into my regular familiar schedule here, doing all the things I like to do on a daily basis. I am positive that were I to come back here (which I still really want to do (but how to tell my family....)), I would really be happy. I know if I tell my family this, they will all say well you're an adult so you can make the decisions and that's cool, but I would rather they support this decision rather than accept it. And unfortunately, unless I underestimate how much they would approve of my plan, my most convincing strategy for them realizing why I want to come back would be to get a girlfriend over here. And I don't want to make that sound really creepy, I would really like a girlfriend here anyway. I've been spoiled here with all the pretty girls everywhere. So with this topic, I shall transfer into...
Amorous Affairs:
Well not so much I guess given my general lack of success/attempts.
First, we have the assistant. I did ask her "out" about a month and a half ago, but after a few events that made me wonder if she understood I asked her out instead of asked her to hang out, the rendezvous fell apart and never happened. It also sounded like she wanted to meet with a larger group of people so it would be more casual. That sounds pretty straightforward, but I still have no idea if she knows I asked her on a date (I applied some of the nuances with the English language that I would on an American girl (that a Korean girl might not understand)) so I'm currently debating whether to try again and that end has kind of been left open for now. I'm also working other leads.
The girl that seemed to like me from the volunteering project has not shown up since that first week. In fact, I haven't heard from her much, so I assume that is now a dead end.
But last week, a new girl showed up to the volunteering project. She is 150cm tall (the perfect height!!) and recently got a license for something involving programming. I take programming to mean one thing, but it sounds like she may just be certified as proficient in excel and programs like that. Either way, she's slightly nerdy and I'm considering asking her out next time she comes if I haven't scored a date by then already. And again, we're allowed to do anything with the people outside of the project so it's totally okay. I actually have a student now through that project and every Thursday, I'm going to be teaching him some English.
And last, but certainly not least, there's the girl that works at the GSL front desk. I see her every day I come in and she greets me with a big smile and I greet her back in Korean. I sometimes try to make chit chat briefly in Korean (still haven't gotten her name yet though) and we're too shy to make prolonged eye contact, but people that have seen me talking to her described what she did while I was complementing her or talking to her and it's usually something that gives me a pretty good vibe. Confusingly, there's this one guy that always sits with her and I can't tell if he's her boyfriend. I don't necessarily think he is, but there's also the possibility that he is a close friend that is protective of her or possibly even an unfortunate friendzoned guy. Being in that position a few times myself, I hate to ask her out under his watch, but I figure I gotta do it eventually. I was planning to do it last night, but since BoxeR was there, getting to meet him had to take priority and in addition to that, there were a ton of people, so I couldn't talk to her really well. Ideally today the guy will not be there and I can just approach her during a game or something. Wish me luck, hopefully win or lose I will actually get up the balls to do something.
Korean Life:
The classes are going well, but they're really boring and my desire to talk about them is even less than your desire to hear about them I'm sure. I've been making casual friends mostly through trips to Costco. It seems every time I take my roommate, he finds someone that wants to tag along, so I get to meet new people that way which is kind of fun. People are also getting to know me as the Starcraft guy or the Costco guy. I also have taken to liking to make really terrible puns around people, so that's been fun to have that going too. Hopefully I can provide people with some amusement. As for my adventures, I haven't had time for many since my last post what with my Japan trip and midterms taking place. I did manage to do another big walk starting at midnight the other day though. The subway broke and I was too cheap for a taxi, so I walked for about 2 hours from my location to my dorm room starting at midnight. And I only got harassed once and it was in the most public area. A Korean guy called me the n-word to which I gave him a confused look and kept walking.
Not much else to report. This post has taken me a while to write and for a second time is running right up into my language class, so I should get going to that. Until next time, peace out.
Starcraft Stuff:
I was a little disappointed because the GSL finals for October were going to Blizzcon in Anaheim. It was a good just my luck sort of thing, I go all the way to Korea and the GSL goes to America. There's one more final in Korea for this current GSL that I will get to attend, then I have to wait until I come back to go to a final again. Since a lot of people now had no good way to watch the GSL, GOM invited us all to the studio to watch. In the main studio, the Korean stream was being watched. For us English speakers, the lobby was playing the English casted version. It was a pretty fun day, though nowhere near as good as the last GSL finals.
In other Starcraft things, I've finally gotten to meet two of the best players known to man. Of course I'm talking about NesTea and Mvp (I know you knew that already). Someday, I hope BroodWar starts again because I'm really itching to see some good BroodWar games. In addition to that, I really want to see Firebathero play. Really badly.
Ok and I actually had to add this last part because even though I finished this section already (had to leave it unfinished overnight because I was busy), but this is too awesome. I met BoxeR. Of course it wasn't the first time I had ever met him, but the last time I met him, it was just kind of a pulling up in front of him, getting an autograph, thanking him, and moving on. This time, I actually got to more formally meet him. Like with BroodWar (but not with SC2) there are fan meetings after games. Being an old BW player and a generally popular guy, BoxeR held one of these meetings after his game yesterday. After it died down slightly, Jessica (his girlfriend) invited the other white guy and I to get pictures. It's hard to tell when to interject when fan meetings happen and in all cases where I have, the fans haven't minded having a random white guy come in really quick and get a picture and an autograph before asking questions again. This was just nice of Jessica to make it less awkward for us. The guy and I swapped taking pictures for each other and it was really cool. BoxeR used my pen so I don't think I'll ever be able to part with it now. Staying for the fan meeting was cool too even though I caught less than half of what they were talking about. I don't know what to say exactly, it was just so awesome to meet BoxeR for longer than 10 seconds. It's been the highlight of my Starcraft adventures here. Now all I really want is a picture with Firebathero, but that requires BroodWar to start up again.
Japan Excursion:
Our group had a trip to Japan (specifically Osaka and Kyoto) to study Korean diaspora. Unfortunately, the first day consisted of leaving for the airport at 5am, then getting on a plane and spending about from noon until 6pm walking around and touring. By the end of the day, everyone was super wiped out and nobody really recovered until we got back to Korea. The first day was spent touring around Kyoto. We went on a walking tour of an area near where there is supposed to be heavy Geisha activity, but did not see any. Later that night after dinner (which wasn't that great. I didn't eat well in Japan due to the fact that I detest fish) there was an optional tour to the actual geisha activity area at which point a few of us did get to see geisha after we split up to head home after giving up as a large group. After giving up, the big group split up into two groups. I was with the less party-tastic (stupid way of saying less popular?) group which was cool because I like hanging out with them. It's also good to get good points with as many of the girls in the group as possible which I am actively trying to do. Gotta alienate myself a bit less here. We got froyo and saw actual geisha (the other group did not) and then we went back to the hotel.
The next day was the long walking tour of Kyoto. It was pretty informative and for some reason the guide liked talking to me even though I didn't know that much about Japan and couldn't add to the conversation. Usually if a guide likes talking to me its because we have something in common like a deep knowledge of classic rock or maybe just I knew about the topic we were learning about. Either way, this tour was informative, but way too long and about halfway through, everyone kind of stopped paying close attention when we got somewhere. It wasn't necessarily to be rude, it was just that none of us were able to sleep that well given the rigorous schedule we were on (bed at about midnight, up and ready to leave at 7). Everyone welcomed the hour and a half bus ride that afternoon from Kyoto to Osaka at which point we were given the night off. It was one of the girls' birthdays, so a handful of us went to celebrate with her. In the process, I found a really good steak place for cheap that I ate at with a bunch of people before the two groups (we split up to get seated at different restaurants easier) rejoined each other. At that point, a lot of people began to be drains on the productivity of the group while myself and the birthday girl looked around for bars that had room for all of us. I hadn't interacted with her a whole lot before this, but she was one of the people in the group that gets me, so it made walking around with her less awkward. I also think I earned points for being one of the only people helping her find a place to go. Eventually, we all decided on a bar that had some karaoke in it and we just went there and drank and the girls sang a lot. Well the bar neglected to tell us that there is a 200Y charge per song (about $1.50 per song). Anyway, all but a couple of the girls sang a bunch of the songs, but we all decided to chip in equal amounts to punish ourselves for collective ignorance. The guys wound up paying extra because those couple of the girls that didn't sing (unlike the guys) were really bitchy about not paying. We made sure everyone was back safe in the hotel, then me and one of the guys went back out to casually walk around the town for a little bit because we weren't quite tired and we wanted to get away from a couple of the girls who had been really annoying. After walking around for about an hour, it started to rain so we headed back in.
This hotel was nice because the rooms were really small so every person got their own room. Even better was the bed played good elevator music (a console on the bed rather) so I got to fall asleep to that. I actually got 6 hours of sleep and that was the most sleep I got in one sitting the whole weekend. Sunday was our fun day. We had to get up early to tour around a big palace in Nara (just outside of Osaka), but then got the day off starting from noon. The big palace was really cool. In the surrounding area, there were free roaming deer (a lot of them) and they were really tame, so it was like a strange petting zoo. Going into the temple was also pretty amazing because of its size. It is the largest wooden structure in the world measuring at about 160 feet tall, about 190 feet wide, and about 170 feet long. Inside the temple was really nice as well, containing two huge statues each about 45 feet tall. There was also a pillar with a hole at the base that was just large enough for someone of my size to squeeze through, so a bunch of us tried that. You're supposed to gain enlightenment or wishes granted if you do it, so fingers crossed. I also did a special love walk at a palace in Kyoto where you walk from one stone to another with your eyes closed (me and two other guys did it for fun) and if you do that, you're supposed to find true love so fingers super crossed. Who knows, maybe Sunny will just appear at my doorstep someday with all this good luck I'm supposedly accumulating. After seeing the palace, we had an hour to just randomly explore which turned into people trying to eat whilst being harassed by the deer. Apparently I was either the deer whisperer of the group or just the only one that had any experience whatsoever dealing with farm animals because the responsibility kept falling to me to keep the deer from bothering the girls too much. Having so many deer to pet was a nice substitute for not having a cat.
That afternoon, the group split up quite thoroughly. Not even all the guys stayed together which was the strangest part. Usually there are at least four of us (plus one guy that tags along), but this time, only three of us went to get food together. I had planned on hanging out with Boram during this time, but as with all weekend, she was perpetually kidnapped by other people and was hanging out with them. I'll go into a bit more detail in a little bit here the subject of her. Anyway, the three of us got food, then went back towards the hotel to rest for an hour because we were all tired. One guy offered to knock on our doors in an hour and we all went into our rooms. The problem for me was that my bed was so comfortable, if I even sat on it briefly, I would fall asleep. Such was the case this time and I wound up sleeping for four hours as did the other two guys. By that time, we all decided we should go get dinner because it was 6:00. The two guys really wanted steak, but the other people we were now with did not, so I volunteered to go get steak with the two guys since I desperately wanted something that wasn't seafood (any meal provided to us through the program was predominantly seafood which sucks because I hate hate hate that stuff) and I also didn't need to hang out with those other people. We got the good steak again then proceeded to wander around town looking to find gifts for people. Eventually we concluded that gifts were too expensive and we gave up and left back for the hotel to rest for an hour again. Then 3 hours later, we woke up and a couple people decided they wanted to do a night exploration this night similar to the one I did with that other guy from the night before. It went pretty well, but eventually it started to rain, so we went back inside. Back in the hotel, I played cards for a bit with one of the guys, then eventually began winning at that game really consistently. I guess I'm a natural. We then played a few games during the first half of the Giants game (one of the guys is from New York), but at halftime, it was 3am and I was tired, so I went to bed for 4 hours before getting up for the next day.
It was now Monday, our final day. We took a tour of a nice temple which took up a good amount of time. We then spent most of the afternoon making our way to the airport and then waiting for the plane to arrive. A few of us stopped at the duty free store to pick up alcohol (it's gonna be a partay when I come back to game night with all these asian drinks). Also somewhere in there, me and the two guys I hung out with on Sunday ran across Little Bow Wow (who I didn't recognize). He was super nice and the two guys got their picture taken with him. I didn't want to get in on it because I only know who he is because of Like Mike and there was no way in hell I was going to tell him that. We finally arrived in Korea at about 9:00 at which point I got back to my room and passed out at about 11:00, then proceeded to get a much needed 12 hours of sleep.
Japan was actually an interesting experience in that it was not terribly interesting. I had been wondering for a couple weeks prior to going there if I was really liking Korea for Korea or if I was just liking it because it was different from home. After going to Japan and coming back to Korea, I now know that I really like Korea for being Korea. I feel at home here and it was nice to get back into my regular familiar schedule here, doing all the things I like to do on a daily basis. I am positive that were I to come back here (which I still really want to do (but how to tell my family....)), I would really be happy. I know if I tell my family this, they will all say well you're an adult so you can make the decisions and that's cool, but I would rather they support this decision rather than accept it. And unfortunately, unless I underestimate how much they would approve of my plan, my most convincing strategy for them realizing why I want to come back would be to get a girlfriend over here. And I don't want to make that sound really creepy, I would really like a girlfriend here anyway. I've been spoiled here with all the pretty girls everywhere. So with this topic, I shall transfer into...
Amorous Affairs:
Well not so much I guess given my general lack of success/attempts.
First, we have the assistant. I did ask her "out" about a month and a half ago, but after a few events that made me wonder if she understood I asked her out instead of asked her to hang out, the rendezvous fell apart and never happened. It also sounded like she wanted to meet with a larger group of people so it would be more casual. That sounds pretty straightforward, but I still have no idea if she knows I asked her on a date (I applied some of the nuances with the English language that I would on an American girl (that a Korean girl might not understand)) so I'm currently debating whether to try again and that end has kind of been left open for now. I'm also working other leads.
The girl that seemed to like me from the volunteering project has not shown up since that first week. In fact, I haven't heard from her much, so I assume that is now a dead end.
But last week, a new girl showed up to the volunteering project. She is 150cm tall (the perfect height!!) and recently got a license for something involving programming. I take programming to mean one thing, but it sounds like she may just be certified as proficient in excel and programs like that. Either way, she's slightly nerdy and I'm considering asking her out next time she comes if I haven't scored a date by then already. And again, we're allowed to do anything with the people outside of the project so it's totally okay. I actually have a student now through that project and every Thursday, I'm going to be teaching him some English.
And last, but certainly not least, there's the girl that works at the GSL front desk. I see her every day I come in and she greets me with a big smile and I greet her back in Korean. I sometimes try to make chit chat briefly in Korean (still haven't gotten her name yet though) and we're too shy to make prolonged eye contact, but people that have seen me talking to her described what she did while I was complementing her or talking to her and it's usually something that gives me a pretty good vibe. Confusingly, there's this one guy that always sits with her and I can't tell if he's her boyfriend. I don't necessarily think he is, but there's also the possibility that he is a close friend that is protective of her or possibly even an unfortunate friendzoned guy. Being in that position a few times myself, I hate to ask her out under his watch, but I figure I gotta do it eventually. I was planning to do it last night, but since BoxeR was there, getting to meet him had to take priority and in addition to that, there were a ton of people, so I couldn't talk to her really well. Ideally today the guy will not be there and I can just approach her during a game or something. Wish me luck, hopefully win or lose I will actually get up the balls to do something.
Korean Life:
The classes are going well, but they're really boring and my desire to talk about them is even less than your desire to hear about them I'm sure. I've been making casual friends mostly through trips to Costco. It seems every time I take my roommate, he finds someone that wants to tag along, so I get to meet new people that way which is kind of fun. People are also getting to know me as the Starcraft guy or the Costco guy. I also have taken to liking to make really terrible puns around people, so that's been fun to have that going too. Hopefully I can provide people with some amusement. As for my adventures, I haven't had time for many since my last post what with my Japan trip and midterms taking place. I did manage to do another big walk starting at midnight the other day though. The subway broke and I was too cheap for a taxi, so I walked for about 2 hours from my location to my dorm room starting at midnight. And I only got harassed once and it was in the most public area. A Korean guy called me the n-word to which I gave him a confused look and kept walking.
Not much else to report. This post has taken me a while to write and for a second time is running right up into my language class, so I should get going to that. Until next time, peace out.
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