Brandini

Work

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 06:52:35 GMT

Work work work

-Presentation to Hutch lab Nov. 2nd
-Progress report due to boss yesterday
-Big presentation to both my bosses tomorrow
-Monster paper due next Wednesday on the 11th

-Funnest week ever: Big Ugly presentations on the 18th AND the 20th, double-header

Whine whine whine bitch bitch bitch feel free to ignore

Guess I should be happy with the $20 000 starting salary increase grad school will yield

Right?

My apartment is lonely with only me in it. At least it's warm and cozy. It would be better if my human heater (Jamers) was here.

*sigh*

Maybe I'm being more productive though? Not sure...Ciao

2nd year sucks almost as much as 1st year

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 22:58:32 GMT

Everyone in my department claimed that 2nd year is a breeze compared to 1st year, but I'm not so sure anymore. I mean, as a roton, you're not even really expected to make much progress (though I guess your failure to make progress is made a lot more public in 1st year...). You are definitely expected to make scientific progress 2nd year.

This term has been super fun so far, because I have already given group meeting to the Berglund lab and taken a cumulative exam. Upcoming fun tasks include giving group meeting to the Hutch lab next week (Nov. 2nd), and then an extremely fun double-header when I give my 4th term thesis committee meeting presentation on Nov. 18th, followed by a literature talk to the entire department on Nov. 20th. Then things will turn for the better when my last major checklist item will be making a research poster to bring with me to the Materials Science Institute conference I'm going to Dec. 15th-17th.

It is really weird living alone and apart from Jamie. It's like part of me is missing. At least I no longer cry each time I enter the apartment and remember that him and his stuff are gone. I guess it helps that he plans to visit somewhat often. It's still painful and awful and demoralizing, but I'm trying to keep busy as much as possible to distract myself. As a positive side effect, I'm working out a lot more lately. As a negative side effect, I'm drinking a lot more too. Hopefully the extra-fitness reaction outweighs the extra-alcohol reaction over the long-term.

An ocean of tears

Mon, 19 Oct 2009 20:15:46 GMT

I don't know why I always do this.

I don't know why I hate myself.

I don't know why I want to sabotage my own happiness.

Is it because I feel like I don't deserve it? Maybe therapy will tell, and I can not do this to myself again.

He is still here, but he will be gone soon. Gone from our loving home, which has nurtured me so well over the years. His clothes will be gone. His games will be gone. His dumb jokes will be gone. His constant updates on world events will be gone. His smiles will be gone. Him welcoming me home will be gone. Gone gone gone gone gone. All because I am stupid. I am a cowardly selfish person, who will continue to lose everyone she loves through the same pattern until I see A Light of Some Kind (yes, this phrase was directed at you, Dawn). Only now I've gone and hurt someone who never really deserved it. What am I to be without my sword and shield used to confront the world? Who will I be without the one person who has understood and supported me more than anyone else?

I hate myself. He keeps talking about how I'll soon be out having fun with my friends. What kind of fun? The drinking kind? Guess so, since no one here seems to invite me on their sports teams. I have friends to go to the gym with, but basically a love of chemistry and science is what I share with all the people here. What did I have in common with him? Oh yeah-everything!

We went to a hockey arena yesterday, and I realize how far I've come since my old life. I used to love to play ringette, and when there was no ringette, I loved hockey. Tripping you all over the ice, Co-ed hockey teams with keg-parties the night before the game, and then drinking/fighting at the game, anyone? Now I only work out to look good and be healthy, not to look good and be healthy and HAVE Fun. I used to love to swim and teach leadership classes at the pool and generally hang out with the lifeguards and playing with the kids. Now I only interact with adults, and try to be smart and articulate enough to prove that I know something about science.

Now I will have a hollow shell of a life, because the man who used to filter my life's events and give them meaning due to our massive intertwining through the strands of the fabric of time is going to be gone. No one will be here to "get it". No one will understand my Star Wars, Star fox, Coupling, Rome, Tudors, Sword of Truth, Alpha Centauri, Pirates, Dan Savage and Richard Dawkins references. No one will understand the esoteric family jokes and tales that he has learned and participated in making over the years. 4:30, what to do if the bear comes, what to do if someone parks in the same parking lot as you in the middle of the night, what to do if a man has a gun, what to do if you're going on a little trip to Toronto. Or how about YARRing. No one even knows what that is except him. How about ole' broken-arm, "Drink-and-fall-Barbie, with movable arms and legs"- can't go to the doctor on New Year's because they'll KNOW how it happened- or the time you-know-who smashed the glasses and passed out on the toilet. How about the time Kelsi jumped in the lake at the family reunion? How about the famous redhead, and how he got laid at the family reunion. "She only gets red in the face while drinking or while aroused" LMAO. A hundred fun cottage trips, just chilling with our families at the lake, and trying not to gloat too much about winning most of the games between us.

How about the Love-shack, the swims in the river with Pippin, the crazy-ball, that time his brother got lost in Vancouver and had to be rescued from his "new friend" that he made, the JackHammer, Rabbit, that time we got found in the pool by the cops in Toronto, the countless Trio adventures. "Who would sleep with such an animal?" That time we were instructed to feel up the human armoire at the bar. "How does this work? Let me tell you-it does not." "Girls like me like to have sex occasionally too." "Happy Birthday, Mikey!" The 2am foosball routine. Chicken-fighting in the lake. "Brandi, can you hear me?" What are those marks on your back all about anyway? "No sleep, two nights!" The Quad. "We can hear everything you two do at night." How about the hot springs and constant Wii nights and Tater tots and not being able to light the fire to save our lives. Or how about that time you made that rule, and it backfired after Haley made the New Rule. "You looked AGAIN while you were drinking for looking the first time!"

How about the many "Baldock specials". Leaving your bag on the bus, leaving the power on on the island, that time your passport was too damaged to board the plane, leaving your driver's license in Whitby, the Epic Quest to that fish restaurant.

And Versailles; there will always be Versailles. The drunken poker in our Paris hotel room. Drinking in the park in London and staying out all night, sneaking into our one-person hotel room to sleep at night because I wasn't even supposed to exist. Or how about the Hot Wings Connaisseurs club, the Alterior Motive cuddle, or the Sushi Health Injection. What about lesbian conversions, the old LD-MD debate, "Not in the hot Asian way".

I don't know what I was thinking; I don't think I was. Now I wish that someone who can be so smart about so many things could have been smarter when it came to something so important.

I will miss you more than you will ever know. My whole life hurts now.

A Work in Progress

Wed, 08 Jul 2009 14:06:45 GMT

"Step back gonna come at ya fast
I'm driving out of control
And getting ready to crash
Won't stop shaking up what I can
I serve it up in a shot
So suck it down like a man
So baby yes I know what I am
And no I don't give a damn
And you'll be loving it

Some days I'm a super bitch
Up to my old tricks
But it won't last forever
Next day I'm your super girl
Out to save the world
And it keeps gettin' better

Kiss kiss gonna tell you right now
I'll make it sweet on the lips as it can knock you out
Shut up I don't care what you say
Cuz when we both in the ring you're gonna like it my way
Yeah baby there's a villain in me so sexy sour and sweet
And you'll be loving it

Some days I'm a super bitch
Up to my old tricks
But it won't last forever
Next day I'm your super girl
Out to save the world
And it keeps gettin' better

Hold on
It keeps gettin' better
Hold on
It keeps gettin' better

In the blink of an eye
In the speed of the light
I'll hold the universe up
And make your planets collide
When I strap on my boots
And I slip on my suit
You see the vixen in me
Becomes an angel for you

Some days I'm a super bitch
Up to my old tricks
But it won't last forever
Next day I'm your super girl
Out to save the world
And it keeps gettin' better

Some days I'm a super bitch
Up to my old tricks
But it won't last forever
Next day I'm your super girl
Out to save the world
And it keeps gettin' better

Hold on
Keeps gettin' better
Hold on
Keeps gettin' better"

Xtina

Korea: June 25-26th

Sat, 27 Jun 2009 02:34:43 GMT

So, the last two days have been pretty intense. Intensely fun!

Thursday, Dawn and I visited the Changdeokgung Palace and secret garden. It was way cooler than the last palace we went to, largely because of the secret garden aspect. What was striking was that when painted, the decorations on all the buildings were still all the same as one another. This palace was much larger, and had a large variety of buildings, gardens, and paths. We enjoyed trekking around and also watched a traditional Korean music performance that was happening on that day. The performance was nothing short of awful lol. The instruments sounded whiny, the rhythm and melody nearly non-existent, the songs had no real crescendo to them, and they went on FOREVER. After the performance, we did some shopping in the Sinchon area, where I bought some new sandals for $15, and met up with Sarah to go to supper.

It was highly amusing to me that I live in Eugene, where every third restaurant (at least) is a Mexican food restaurant, yet we went out for all-you-can-eat tacos and all-you-can-drink margheritas with a large group of Brits, Americans and Canadians for supper. It was a "foreigner" restauarant, aka a total ripoff, so the meal and booze cost $30, but it ended up being really fun. Dawn and I talked politics, but she managed to avoid insulting Texans (unlike when we were at the first palace we went to lol), so we all managed to get along. I was surprised that the three Texans at the table did not have Southern accents, but they explained how there's the North, the South and then Texas. We had a lot of fun with those guys, and then went out to a different bar that had $10 all-you-can-drink liquor, where we downed some G&Ts. The bar was called Beer'o'Clock, and turned out to be owned by Canadians, which was awesome. Dawn needed to be rescued AGAIN because she didn't understand how to dismiss the guy who was flirting hardcore with her, by tickling her to death. Sarah had to tell him she was gay, which was awk. At around 1am we decided to head home, as we knew we were going to school in the morning, despite the many protests of the English guy.

Yesterday morning was a total pain train. We went to Sarah's school for 8am, watched a largely uneventful class, then were given a tour of the school, being introduced to everyone we met. One more class, and then it was time for lunch. Dawn and I had gotten used to everyone wanting to talk to us and take our picture in general, but these kids were just insane. They were really nervous about meeting and talking with us, so they would nervously giggle and point in large groups whenever we saw them and all run up and say hello and ask some vague questions before running away shrieking. We really were like celebrities.

We went home for a much-needed nap, then ate supper at a Korean restaurant near Sarah's house before getting ready to go out on the town. I chose to wear my purple dress with my purple heels, which I soon regretted because they hurt like a bitch after about 1 1/2 hours. I am never wearing them for an extended period of time again, because they left my feet horribly raw and sore. When we went out, we brought sojou cocktails on the subway, and randomly met a group of European travellers that hung out with us the rest of the night. They were all Austrian except this one dutch guy. They were all jet lagged, but still very much in the mood to have a good time. The music at the bar was good, and aside from everyone spilling all kinds of drinks on one another (people were HAMMERED), we had a great time dancing up a storm, including some tribute dancing to Michael Jackson. When we first arrived at the club, the Americans from the night before were also there, so we literally knew half the bar. It was like being on Cheers or something because everywhere we looked we knew someone, and most of them were white. Totally bizarro for Korea. The music was pretty hoppin', and the dance floor crowded but not tiny, so we had a blast. Near the end of our all-you-can drink 3 hour period, my feet hurt so much that I would have to take a break every 2-3 songs to rinse them in cold water in the sink upstairs, so I knew I was fading fast and would need to go home. I think Dawn was sad we couldn't stay out all night, but it was 4am and Sarah said she didn't mind going home. I didn't mean to disappoint them, but leaving was an absolute necessity, because I would have rather paid for a cab for just me to go all the way home than stay out in the those shoes.

Overall, a pretty sucessful night. I'm sad that tonight is our last night, and I don't know how it could possibly top what we've done so far. However, it will also be nice to get back to Oregon, where everyone speaks English, I won't be a celeb (and thus submitted to constant scrutiny and ridicule), and people will care more about my brain than my tits again (presumably =P).

Korea June 23rd-24th

Thu, 25 Jun 2009 01:04:46 GMT

AKA Stalker Time

The day after my bday, we encountered some major woes associated with the dude we had to run away from at 5am in the high-speed chase I previously described. After posting about the experience at the pc-bong, we went home to eat some raman noodles there, and when we were making them, the dude came to the door and banged repeatedly on it, visibly looking frustrated making hand gestures on the ctv buzzer window in Sarah's wall. We were not impressed, but figured we would ignore him and he would get the impression we weren't there or weren't interested in talking to him and go away. Sure enough, he left, and we finished making our noodles, then started eating our soup....when he returned! This time he was more persistent, and Dawn and I started getting these grandiose visions of horrible things to come, and trying to brainstorm ways to call the police and get help if he tried to attack us or something. We knew he was a military guy, and we feared his revenge should he decide he was mad enough to break down the door or something. It was awful, because Dawn started bawling her eyes out and I had to make her a cocktail to try and calm her hysterics because she completely fell apart, and I was soooooo angry at the guy for doing that to her. Why couldn't he just leave us alone?!? Dawn is still worried about him coming back to harass us, even though we found out when she checked her email later that night that he had thought we made plans to go shopping with him, and thought they were still on despite us having to run away from him to get to our apartment.

After the great escape, we managed to buy most/all of our souvenirs for friends and family to cheer ourselves up, and then went out for nachos/beer as our comfort food at the end of the night. Unfortunately, just when we thought the incident was over, last night the dude showed up at the door again at 4am to harass us! We were all naked and asleep and in fact the door was not even locked, and Sarah had her sleep disturbed before work and everything. What a prick! So today Sarah is going to have her Korean friend called the guy to tell him to fuck off, basically...I hope it works! Apparently this is some kind of cultural thing, and we encouraged him to think he had a shot with us by saying "maybe" we'd go shopping the next day. He interpreted that as having made plans, even though we had to run away from him since he wouldn't go away. Totally fucked up...No more making of friends!

Yesterday we had a lot of fun other than that incident though. In the afternoon, Dawn and I went to the War Museum, where I learned alot about the history of the war and stuff. It was cool because our grandfather actually participated in the Incheon landing, and I hadn't realized what a pivotal moment in the war it was before attending the museum. We did have a rather embarassing incident in which a Korean reporter wanted to interview us about why we were there, and we found out that the reason the place was crawling with Kindergarten kids and army personnel was that it was the day before the anniversary of the start of the war, and he thought we were visiting on that day because of that. Guess we got to be those "ignorant North American" tourists...joy. But it's ok, because it's probably what the guy was expecting anyway.

We subwayyed home, did a bit of shopping where I bought some "Skin Food" lol aka face mask stuff, and then we went out for supper with Sarah's Korean friend Phillip and his little brother. It was super fun, even though Phillip's brother (whose Korean name I can't pronounce, and we never got his English name) didn't really speak a lot of English. So much is communicated by body language and hand gestures. We went for a nice walk by the river after supper, which reminded me a lot of Paris because it was crawling with couples holding hands in the moonlight. Then we did some karaoke before heading home. The men were chivalrous enough this time to not show their disapproval of our horrible singing voices, which was nice.

Alright...gotta go. It's time for a huge "cultural sites" viewing day, followed by...a Mexican supper. LoL...

Korea - June 21st-22nd

Tue, 23 Jun 2009 02:08:12 GMT

Sunday mainly consisted of a lot of walking around Busan with really heavy bags and starving all day. Dawn and I have realized that we need to be a lot more pro-active about scheduling eating events around Sarah because she does not eat as often as we do. So we were basically zombies until we had some raman noodles at around 3pm. We mainly walked around, saw an outdoor bell shrine thing, and a random outdoor traditional Korean music performance, bought some souvenirs, and then wandered around some markets in the city. We also had a rather irritating episode in which we sat waiting for those same annoyingly-late girls for about an hour outside a subway station. During said wait, I was left alone while Dawn and Sarah went to the washroom at one point, and several men chose to yell at me! One of them even used his cane to bat a can off the wall attached to the subway entrance in my general direction. It was mildly terrifying. I guess you have to learn to expect the negative experiences along with the good ones though...After the longest wait ever, at 6pm the girls finally showed up and we went out for authentic fresh sushi in the fish market next to the Sea of Japan. The sushi was really good, but the side dishes turned my stomach, especially the sea slug dish, featuring sea slugs still alive and squirming. Everyone else but me and Dawn seemed to enjoy it, but it was just soooo gross. We did have a nice seafood soup and a giant platter of sashimi though. We then had to take the train home to Seoul, where we promptly collapsed in sleep in our beds.

Yesterday, Dawn and I did some exploring on our own. After a successfully ordered breakfast of raman, we went to the Gyeongbokgung Palace and the Folk Museum. The Gyeongbokgang Palace was this gigantic palace built for a king (Go figure). It had a lot of buildings with intricate paintings, and restored interiors, and a lot garden spaces. I was a bit disappointed that all the buildings were painted exactly the same, but it did have its own kind of tranquil beauty, minus the lavishness of palaces you see in Europe. In the corner of the palace was the Folk Museum, where we learned a lot about Korean history and culture while walking around. Dawn and I decided to grab a snack/lunch in the cafe there, and I ordered a potato sandwich, learning that that meant a potato salad sandwich, complete with macaroni lol.

We did some dangerous shopping in the gift shop, where I bought a beautiful mother of pearl jewelry box and a hand mirror, as well as a book on Korean cooking. We then headed back to Sarah's house, where we drank some soju before leaving the house for the night.

We took the subway and a skytrain to Seoul tower, which was pretty awesome. It wasn't as cool as the Eiffel tower, or as tall, but it was definitely as well lit and really fun. We went at night, and all you could see was city lights stretching as far as the eye could see in every direction. We were planning to try and eat supper in the revolving restaurant at the top of the tower, but apparently you needed reservations to do so. Oh well, it probably would have been extremely expensive anyway. Instead, my birthday meal was Korean bbq, where our chicken, noodles and veggies bbq was completely delicious. We had soju, of course, and then took the subway back to our place. Sarah was completely exhausted and had to teach 12 hours today, so Dawn and I mixed gatorade/soju drinks (very popular here) and hit up the pc-bong (ie internet cafe) for about an hour, where I anxiously waitet to speak to James about his gut-wrenching facebook update. Unfortunately, he never came online, and I found out today it's because he was out at a bar himself to the wee hours of the night and missed his class. Oh well, at least he was having a good time. Dawn thought he probably had just forgotten to bring his computer to class, which made sense, so we left to go and find our favourite bar - "New Face". That's when the kind of crazy part of the day took place (during the bar night portion of the program, go figure). Essentially, Dawn had an epic fail at rejecting a rather aggressive Koreann man, and I had to come to her rescue by being a major cockblock.

We met some guy on the stairwell outside New Face, and we thought he was with friends upstairs, and we were feeling tipsy and friendly and he looked really nerdy and harmless so we went upstairs with him. This was at ~2:30am. The bars here don't close until 5am. Anyway, the guy was really helpful since the menu was completely in Korean and everything, and we would have had to point to order since our Korean language skills are rather minimal. Since Koreans do not order booze without food, so we would have had to pick a random food menu item to order with our food and hope it was good without his help.

Anyway, him and Dawn got along really well, especially after we established that I had a bf and she didn't. After a bottle of soju and some beer we went to a karaoke bar, and sang a bunch of songs, which was really fun when we got to pick english ones but not so much fun while he was singing korean ballads. On the way home when the place closed @5am, we kept trying to ditch the guy, but Dawn was being wayyyyyy too nice in her rejection efforts, even going so far as to tell him where we lived and taking his phone #. He seemed veryyyyy interested in where we were going, and I impolored Dawn to rudely dismiss him but she kept trying to be polite and tell him we would call him tomorrow, which of course only encouraged him to follow so that he could try harder. He ended up following us all the way to Sarah's building and tried to get "alone time" with Dawn for 5 minutes. I let them go out of sight for like 1 minute, and it didn't sound like she was having success getting rid of him on her own, so I then went and yanked her by the hand and dragged her to the elevator, telling him it was girl time and sleep time and he wasn't welcome.

I forced Dawn to run into the elevator, but he stopped the doors in the open position and dove in with us, like in some kind of action movie! He insisted on coming to our floor, so I made Dawn run up two floors and hide when we arrived. Unfortunately, he continued to chase us and found our hiding spot, so we had to ran back down the stairs, slamming the doors at each level to slow him down. I know we barely got into Sarah's apartment without him seeing where it was, since I could hear him entering her floor from the stairwell. We had to be extremely silent about sneakily locking the door and climbing into bed so he wouldn't come and try and barge in there next. In summary, Dawn is officially banned from flirting with random straight men at bars because she doesn't know how to get rid of them afterwards.

Now I'm slightly hungover (I think it's mostly dehydration) and tired, but satisfied after a nice conversation over the internet. I think I'll play some Warcraft III before heading back to the apartment to see how Dawn's coma is going.

Korea- June 18th-21st (Mixing time zones is fun, so I'll go with this!) Part 3

Sun, 21 Jun 2009 02:56:06 GMT

Sarah's friends couldn't really handle their liquor, and Sarah was extremely pissed off and looking for apologies from them. I agree with Sarah that I would be pissed if I were in her situation, because we were supposed to have free lodgings in town, but they were unavailable for whatever reason. Sarah found out the same day of our arrival that people would be staying in hotels in the city, but then it turned out to be just her me and Dawn that were staying in the hotel, and Sarah has not really mastered Korean yet, and was unfamiliar with the city, so she found it a really daunting task to try and find an appropriate hotel without the help of the actual Korean men in navigating the subway system and finding a safe place to stay. I agree with her in principle that her friends kind of left her out to dry (especially since Chul, native to Busan, could have helped us but they monopolized his attention). I just think that if less soju had been consumed less quickly by all involved, there would have been a lot less anger going on. When the apologies about the late arrival of her friends were not forthcoming, she then was looking for a fight. That's when things turned kind of ugly. Sarah began chugging the mixed soju-gatorade drinkds while tearfully demanding apologies from her friends, while Dawn and I and the korean men were left awkwardly watching, and Sarah's friends were incredulous about how angry she was and pretty indifferent about her frustrations at finding our hotel, which I felt was insensitive of them.

Anyway, most of them made up with Sarah, and we decided to go to the club the Korean men had originally picked out for us to go to, but we didn't get in because we were wearing sandals, and the club had a dress code. The rest of us were ready to leave, but Ingrid kind of went insane, swearing at the top of her lungs and insisting on trying to pick a physical fight with the bouncers of the club. Despite nearly 7 people trying to hold her back, she was so mad that she managed to escape and start punching them while they looked on incredulously. It was clear that they spoke no english, and they had to remove her bodily from the premises. Dawn and I went downstairs in disgust.

But that was just the beginning. We were supposed to go to a different club via taxi in groups, but now it was Rosalyn's turn to be too drunk. The girl had been drinking way too much soju too quickly, and latched onto some Korean man trying to hook up with him despite the fact that she couldn't stand up straight and was spitting everywhere, and we had to bodilly remove her from him too.

Wanting to salvage the night, we finally managed to pull them apart and move onto the next club via taxi. When we got there, it was Sarah's turn to be too drunk. Her angry chugging had finally caught up with her and started puking everywhere. Dawn and I had to bring her a bunch of water and pull her hair back for her, and it was clear we were going home. However, this wasn't quite the end of the night.

We were sitting on some stairs oustide the club, and now Lindsay was wayyy too hammered. Rosalyn had been helped into a sitting position on the steps, but was still lolling back in forth, and didn't puke despite Lindsay trying to force her to puke via shoving her finger in the back of the girl's throat. Lindsay got mad and shoved Rosalyn down the steps. She was seated, and only fell 3 stairs, but she had zero control and hit her head on the ground. I couldn't believe that someone would treat their friend that way! She obviously was fucked up, having been encouraged by the other girls to keep drinking more and more soju despite being an extreme lightweight (very tiny) girl, and now she shoved her friend down the stairs to potentially get a head injury! People are fucked up when they have access to $1.50 mickies of hard liquor!

We were done for the night and were going to take Rosalyn back to our hotel to sleep on the floor, but the other girls ended up taking her.

Last night was really weird and embarassing and downright frightening, so I hope similar shit doesn't go down again. But I gotta go because now we need to leave our hotel within the next 10 minutes.

I will try and update again in a couple of days.

Korea- June 18th-21st (Mixing time zones is fun, so I'll go with this!) Part 2

Sun, 21 Jun 2009 02:42:53 GMT

Seoul is HUGE. In fact, all of Korea is huge. There are literally hundreds and hundreds of apartment buildings packed close to one another, and most business buildings contain several businesses stacked on top of one another. We arrived at night, and the neon signs everywhere, all written in Korean, and often also written in English, were completely insane. There were so many signs lit that it made it seem like daylight. Needless to say, the streets are also filled with Asians, and it is shocking to hear people speak english here.

Sarah's apartment in Seoul is really nice and modern. It has all wooden furniture and walls, and while compact is clean and comfortable. We went to the 7-11 to get espresso drinks so that we could go out for a bit our first night, which is the first time I saw an entire alley covered in tables with people drinking alcohol outside. Here you can drink alcohol anywhere, anytime, without stigma. People are drunk and staggering, and the cars are crazy aggressive. They will accelerate when they see pedestrians to try and make them leap out of the way. I do not think I will be getting wasted here, as the CRAZY atmosphere, coupled with the fact that I even now speak like 5 words of Korean, make me terrified of the thought of getting lost. There are no addresses here, only references to gigantic districts of the city, whereafter you need to find where you're going via LANDMARK. This idea is totally bizarre to me.

Anyway, so we got to Sarah's apt. and showered and changed, and she told us we were getting up @5am to catch a train to Busan. I didn't really care, because I was so underslept and my biological clock was so confused at it being 7pm here instead of 4pm like it would be in the states that it didn't phase me one bit. We bought these starbucks import drinks and then went out to hit up the town. Upon entering the fast food joint on the bottom floor, we realized just how different this place would be compared to North America, as everyone in the shop looked up to stare at us and check us out unabashedly (apparently showing shoulders here is 'sexy', and being white is already bizarre enough to begin with that we cause staring wherever we go). The menu was fully in Korean, but Sarah knew how to read it and order us a meal. We had delicious raman and udon noodle dishes the first night, and everything came with 3 sides each. We literally could not finish our meal. In fact, I don't think I've yet to finish a meal since arriving. Did I mention this first meal cost a whopping $2 each, and that most meals here have been around that price?

Anyway, after eating, we went to one of Sarah's favourite local bars, which was called "New Face, come have a drink", where we were introduced to Soju cocktails, and anjay (or anjou? I'm a bit confused...). No one here drinks at bars without eating unless it's a western style bar, so we ate a variety of snacks and had a pitcher of soju flavoured with grape juice basically. This giant pitcher and a huge array of snacks cost $20 total for us. These extremely aggressive Korean guys came and tried to pick us up, sitting and helping us finish our pitcher, and poor Sarah had one of them all over her. Luckily, I was shielded from direct male interaction by Dawn. Sarah was squished into the corner of her chair, and we had to try very hard to get rid of them, telling them we all had boyfriends and had to leave immediately. I was frankly shocked by their aggressiveness, since the Asian guys who go to school in North America are so shy and timmid and polite. Apparently, the ones who stay on their home turf are the opposite. They tried to hang out with us all night despite only knowing a couple of english phrases, such as "What is your name", "How old are you" and "You are so beautiful". They also did the translater thing on their ipods and tried to speak other phrases, which was pretty amusing.

When we finally ditched those guys, we went to a different bar, and immediately met up with an American and a Canadian guy that Sarah knew. We had a couple of beers with them and then went home for the night.

Which brings me to Saturday, which was kind of a shitshow. At 5am, we woke up and immediately left for the metro, where we drank more DoubleShots Starbucks drinks to meet up during our half hour ride to the train station. At 6am we met up with Sarah's korean friend Chul, and we got snacks for our 3 hour train ride to Busan and promptly passed out on the train after boarding.

I was again shocked at how huge BUSAN is. It has the same population as Metropolitan Toronto, only here they build up instead of outwards, so again it was huge and intimidating and crazy.

After reaching the city, we had "Kim Bob" for breakfast, which is basically sushi with mayonaise in it at one beach in town. We then transferred to "Hundai" (I think) beach, where we spent the rest of the day. We spent all afternoon bathing in the Sea of Japan (not the pacific ocena as my facebook status implies haha) and hanging out with Sarah's other friends who also teach English after they arrived. Chul is dating Anne, one of the girls, and Ingrid, Lindsay and Rosalyn are the other Canadians who we met up with. We also met up with this random American guy, Tom, on the beach, with whom we spent the rest of the day. Weird how easy it is to make friends with other visiting white people here; must be the ethnic minority thing or something. Tom was from Chicago and doing some kind of Asian tour on his own, which I thought was pretty ballsy. We played some beach volleyball, did more swimming and then were completely exhausted. We ate some more noodle soup (which we're told Koreans eat three times a day sometimes), and then headed off to find a hotel. We found our hotel for last night by asking some random white people where they were staying, and then stayed at the same place lol. It was time for an afternoon nap, and then our crazy night began.

Before we went to the hotel, Sarah had made her girlfriends promise they would meet up with us for supper, but it turned out they had to eat supper with the woman who's house they were staying at (someone's boyfriend's mom's house). They didn't wait, but that was fine because me Sarah and Dawn met up with Tom and went out for an authentic Korean supper. We ordered from the house menu (not at a fast food restaurant for once) and downed two bottles of soju and two bottles of beer with supper. We also were served a totally astounding amount of food, including at least 11 side dishes to go with our main plates of meat/kimchee and spicy soup. We came nowhere close to finishing the meal, yet it cost $11 each. Sarah was a little pissed by the end of supper, because her friends had still not met up with us as they were supposed to, and she found out they were doing karaoke (very popular here), when that was what we were supposed to do as a group later on in the night.

Her friends claimed they were leaving the karaoke bar immediately, so we bought two bottles of soju and two bottles of gatorade to make mixed drinks from the corner store (Tom bought beer to drink instead) and proceeded to walk around drinking until Sarah's friends finally reached our part of town, 3 hours later than expected. Only Sarah thought they were technically 5 hours late and was extremely pissed off at this point. Chul came and picked us up and brought us to where the other girls and 3 of his Korean male friends were waiting.

Sarah's friends were drunk, to say the least. They had also bought 5 more bottles of soju (which are mickeys of 20% liquor in case I didn't mention that), and more gatorade, and were practically chugging the alcohol on the street.

That's when the fucked up part of the night began.

Korea- June 18th-21st (Mixing time zones is fun, so I'll go with this!) Part 1

Sun, 21 Jun 2009 02:16:03 GMT

An-young-ha-seo from Korea!

Our trip has been pretty amazing so far, and I thought I would jump online to post about all that's happened so far before I start forgetting things. I found it worked really well on my Hawaiian trip to try and post every few days. Only this time it will be much cheaper because if I read this sign correctly (no guarantees, since I don't actually speak Korean, but I have found it extremely intuitive to figure out what they mean so far), internet costs $1.50 the first hour, and declines in per hour price with every hour spent at the cafe.

My trip started with a series of misadventures @home on Wednesday. James and I went on a "quest" to visit this really famous fish market restaurant in Eugene, and in true Baldock style, we did not start our journey knowing the name or location of the restaurant to which we were headed. James and I wanted to have a bit of a date before I left, because of all the shit that's gone down recently. I made a huge mistake sleeping with a coworker, but James has decided to forgive my transgression provided I no longer see the guy socially for the foreseeable future, so it's all onwards and upwards from here. I was surprised at the amount of pain and worry I've caused myself with my indiscretion, and I am sure that I won't be making the same mistake again. I love James, and I will be making any and all moves necessary to rebuild our relationship tower, sotospeak.

So, back to the story at hand: We managed to spend at least 5 hours finding this fish restaurant, having walked wayyyyy too far initially (we realized our mistake after reaching the highway outside Eugene WALKING), and had an excellent meal. Apparently $20 will buy you a full crab dinner with beer, and I was totally stuffed afterwards. However, we returned to the house for 5:40, several beers and much food later, to find out that the last bus leaving Eugene was supposed to leave at 6:30pm. Wtf! So I threw my clothes together in a bag, and James was so nice and went and retrieved my bank card from Max's, where I had left it the night before, and then we went to the greyhound station with 15 minutes to spare, to find out that bus was sold out. Aaaargh! We explored my options at home, and I managed to find a taxi company that would drive me to the Portland airport in the middle of the night for $180. Unfortunately, my mom interfered and convinced us to rent a card instead, which resulted in us paying almost the same price after all the expenses were included, only that James had to drive with me to Portland that night and then drive back the next day, missing his Bar Review class. So stupid.

We managed to get to Portland in time, and my leaving proceeded without a hitch after this.

Then began my 20 hours of flying. My first flight left for San Fransisco at 6am, and the airport was PACKED when I arrive at 4:30 in the morning. I barely made the international cutoff. The first flight was good, and I arrived in San Franscisco shortly afterward for my 5 hour LAYOVER. Pretty lame, but I managed to read two short books about Korea in that time, so all was not lost. Dawn and I had to sit in front of one another on our fun flight overseas, which lasted a record-breaking (for me) 12 hours!!!! That really sucked to say the least, and we arrived pretty jet-lagged. Sarah met us at the airport and gave us info packets on ordering things in Korean, and transpo passes for the subway, which was super super nice.

We took a bus to Seoul, where we swiftly made our way to Sarah's apartment. It was upon entering the city that I realized "Toto, we're not in Kansas anymore."

Looking forward to the end

Mon, 08 Jun 2009 01:08:19 GMT

Dude, I can't wait for this term to be over.

I'm about to be finished TAing for good after I grade these four papers, and then I have one meeting with the professor I work for and that's in the bag.

Thursday, my term paper is due for Electron Beam Analysis. This paper scares the shit out of me because it seems pretty short (4-6 pages), and I have no idea what he expects us to write...

Thursday morning I discuss future research directions with my faculty advisor and go over my data from this term, and then Thursday afternoon I am giving my practice department talk, which I actually give on Friday (ie the presentation about my research this term that I make to all the grad students and faculty of the department).

The good part is that after this mega-talk, I won't give a talk to the department again until November, so this will be a nice respite. We also don't have another cumulative exam until October, so it's almost as if we're getting time off for a summer vacation (almost!). I am sooooooooo almost done the first tough year. Next year will also be tough because I will have my advancement to candidacy exam next spring, but that's sooo far away right now that it's not really worth worrying about yet.

This summer I am doing some TA work for a couple of Polymer Chemistry classes, and having my two big fun trips (to Korea and Canada!!!), and the rest of my time will be spent focused blissfully on research.

Yay!

Atheists - 1 Mormons - 0

Mon, 11 May 2009 04:07:09 GMT

We were walking home from supper, when two obviously Mormon men dressed in suits and ties and carrying what I assumed were Books of Mormon approached us on the street. They were very polite, asking us if we had a nice mother's day, and asking if we phoned our mothers to tell them we loved them today. Jamie and I both said yes, because we had in fact spoken to our moms.

They then said "As you can see, we're missionaries." I said "Oh, cool. Have you heard about the Brights movement?" They looked blankly and said no and asked what it was. I said it was a group of people with naturalistic beliefs systems devoid of supernatural or mystical elements. The missionaries looked dumbfounded and the one guy asked if anything would make us question our beliefs. Rather than dispute the wording of his sentence, I said "Sure, if you have any evidence for the existence of a god, I'll change my belief system, but I've never seen anyway." Jamie (unhelpfully) stated that he prayed to god for 1 million dollars and he didn't deliver, therefore god must not exist. The guy said "well, everyone knows that fathers are good when they spoil their children" and Jamie said "of course" and I laughed. The Mormons continued to follow us and the one guy said "What if I told you that there was a way you could feel for sure there was a god". I asked how and he said "Well, just look around you, it's so beautiful, there has to be a god!" I replied (quoting Douglas Adams) "Is it not enough to appreciate that the garden is beautiful without having to believe there are faeries in it too." The guy said "Well, we don't believe that..." Seeing that our conversation was at an end, Jamie said "We're pretty die-hard atheists..." and the guys said to have a nice day and I told them to do the same.

This was amazingly awesome because I have been itching to tell Mormons about the Brights movement ever since I joined it. Good times.

Mon, 09 Mar 2009 19:51:03 GMT

I don't wanna be the girl who laughs the loudest
Or the girl who never wants to be alone
I don't wanna be that call at 4 o'clock in the morning
'Cause I'm the only one you know in the world that won't be home

Ahhhh-Ahhh, sun is blinding
I stayed up again
Oh, I'm finding
That's not the way I want my story to end

I'm safe up high,
Nothing can touch me
But why do I feel this party's over?
No pain inside
You're my protection
But how do I feel this good sober?

I don't wanna be the girl that has to fill the silence..
The quiet scares me 'cause it screams the truth
Please don't tell me that we had that conversation (I know we did)
I won't remember, save your breath 'cause what's the use?

Ahhhh-Ahhh, the night is calling
And it whispers to me softly, "come and play"
But I, I am falling
And if I let myself go, I'm the only one to blame

I'm safe up high,
Nothing can touch me
But why do I feel this party's over?
No pain inside
You're like perfection
But how do I feel this good sober?

Comin' down, comin' down, comin' down,
Spinnin' round, spinnin' round, spinnin' round
I’m looking for myself,
Sober
Comin' down, comin' down, comin' down,
Spinnin' round, spinnin' round, spinnin' round
Looking for myself,
Sober

When it's good, then it's good
It's so good 'till it goes bad
'Till you're trying to find the you that you once had
I have heard myself cry, never again!
Broken down in agony
And just trying to find a friend

Oh
Oh

I'm safe up high,
Nothing can touch me (Nothing can touch me)
But why do I feel this party's over? (why do I feel this party's over?)
No pain (no) inside (no)
You're like perfection
But how do I feel this good sober? (how do I feel this good sober?)

I'm safe up high, nothing can touch me
But why do I feel this party's over?
No pain inside, you're like perfection
But how do I feel this good sober?
How do I feel this good sober?

An Important Film that Everyone Should Watch

Tue, 03 Mar 2009 18:22:56 GMT

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFoC-uxRqCg&eurl=http://theridiculant.metro.co.uk/2009/03/the-nano-song.html

Yay!

Two hilarious things

Thu, 19 Feb 2009 23:47:18 GMT

1) A statement from the prof for whom I TA in the hallway as she walked by:

"You must be doing something right. Your students are complaining about you being a hard grader."

2) The opening statement of an article by ABC news regarding Obama's visit to Canada:

"The war in Afghanistan and trade issues are dominating Barack Obama's visit to Canada on his first overseas trip as US President."

Life is looking up

Wed, 18 Feb 2009 06:12:10 GMT

Good things list:

1) I passed my second cumulative exam. Yes, that means I'm 2 for 2. Only 3 more to go (*fingers crossed*)

2) I arranged a teaching mentorship for Fall 2010 with the prof for whom I TA at the moment. I'll be getting valuable, resume-building, real-life teaching experience at the college level, which I can apply later in life towards getting my first professor-ship, though who knows how are far off that goal is. Apparently TAing does not count on resumes as "demonstrating the ability to teach effectively at the college level", so arranging this in advance is a good thing. I will be teaching half the lectures in a freshman chemistry lab course. This is both exciting, because I will be giving 5 hour long lectures to two lecture sections, and terrifying because there is 200-500 people in each section. I will also be managing the TAs for the course.

3) I have started to be a lot more physically active this term. Finally. Before recently, I felt as if I had become a lazy couch surfer since moving here.

I met a great new friend named Alissa who loves to swim with me, and Ellen loves to play tennis with me. James and I have been playing coed floor hockey together, which brings back fond memories of Trent. On days where I have no friends to play with, I have been running (mostly) at the gym. I can run about 2.5 miles at the moment, but it seems to be a lot more challenging outdoors than in. I think I remember something in the cobwebs of my mind from physics class year, telling me that the treadmill is a lot more elastic a surface than pavement is, and that's why it's so much more difficult to run on pavement. It rebounds less so you have so much extra work per stride. I am thinking I may look into finding a more forgiving outdoor track in future runs.

I have been trying to lose some weight this term, because I gained 5 lbs on my Hawaiian cruise, bumping me up to 146 lbs. While I was by no means overweight, I still wasn't feeling comfortable with my body, especially since the last time I felt super comfortable in it was when my weight fluctuated between 130-135 lbs all the time.

So I committed to losing at least 10 lbs this term. My strategy: Really vamp up the exercise. Instead of working out once a week, twice in a good week, I have been working out for at least 4 x 30 minutes per week. I have always been the person to eat whatever they want, whenever they want, so I didn't think dieting would be a good option for me. Anyway, it seems to be working so far, since I'm down to 139 lbs again, but I'm going to keep on trucking. I rewarded myself for my initial efforts by buying new workout clothes so that I could workout in style. If I continue with my current exercise regiment successfully for the next two weeks, I'm going to buy one of those odometer watches that monitors your heart rate, duration and distance of exercise to keep myself motivated while running. This will come in handy when I'm training for the half-marathon, provided I can follow through. My workout buddy Alissa really wants to run the half-marathon and I bought a magazine with two different training regiments. I'm ready already to step into the beginner one, but right now I'm trying to focus on increasing my distance ran per week to see if I can do the intense training program instead.

Exercise is wonderful though. I can feel that I have more energy all the time (except perhaps while refueling immediately after running), and no longer get drowsy during the day, feel listless, and hardly ever feel the need for a sugar or caffeine boost. Alcohol at the end of the day is becoming increasingly easy to not imbibe, something which may also be related to my success at losing weight, since I'm no longer consuming all those excess calories. I'm also willing to bet that the mood-boosting endorphins I get from all the exercise is part of what banishes the need to reach out for relaxation from something so unhealthy and external.

4) Dawn and I are planning a big trip finally. Her and Chantal (probably) and I are going to go visit Sarah Smith in Korea during June, and we hope to also visit Tokyo, since apparently round-trip tix from Korea to Japan are about $200. What a steal! We are going to crash on her floor, and generally have a ball for cheap, Sarah claims. I've never been anywhere in Asia, so I'm super-pumped. It will be unlike any trip I've ever been on, because for the first time I will not understand writing on signs posted around me, as I did while exploring in England, France, Spain.

Alright, enough procrastination. Time to tackle some grading. Ahhhh freshman.

De-stressification

Sun, 08 Feb 2009 06:25:03 GMT

So I did it.

I bit the bullet and said syanara to the class that was really stressing me out this term.

Sure, I wasted a lot of time attending the first five weeks of class, and doing two problem sets and a midterm, but it could be a lot worse-I could have plodded miserably on to the end of the course only to fail it (ie get lower than a B). Since I got one of the lower exams on the first exam, as previously posted, this was a distinct possibility.

I am very pleased with my decision for the following reasons:

a) I am not planning to be a synthetic organic chemist, therefore the ability to synthesize stereospecific organic molecules is not a priority on my to-do list. Therefore, learning the material was not going to be that useful to my life.

b) I was taking the course for the wrong reasons: 1) Because my friends were taking it 2) Because I wanted to prove the prof wrong

These are not great motivating factors towards studying, especially since my friends are much better at the subject than me, and the prof in question is retiring this year.

c) This will make my life 2000% more enjoyable, since I'm also planning to take no actual classes next term. Research and teaching fill up so much time that I will still be putting in full-time hours. It will be much easier to take my final graded graduate school course next fall, when I am no longer teaching. Now I will be able to work all day, work out at the gym, prepare and eat a delicious supper and then relax the rest of the evening each day of the week instead of worrying myself sick about a class whose material makes me feel overwhelmed and being a stress case.

Ahhhh I am so much more relaxed now. Yay!

In retrospect, it's easy to see...

Mon, 26 Jan 2009 19:24:06 GMT

That doing problem sets for a class with a lot of help and support from your friends is a lot easier than trying to write the test.

Today's "celebration with our friends" went horribly. Friends being chemical structures and reactions and celebration being our midterm. Ohhhh nerdy advanced organic/inorganic chem profs...

Ho, hum.

Guess I really should have studied all weekend. But since it was going to be my fourth weekend this term doing that, I found the entire idea rather depressing. Booooooo grad school. At times, you just seem soo....not worth it? Blagh. This'll learn me.

Hopefully my presentation at group meeting this afternoon goes a bit more smoothly...Wish me luck!

Kids in Love

Sat, 24 Jan 2009 20:15:32 GMT

3 years is a long time to be dating someone; it was cause for celebration last night.

I wore a black dress with a figure eight silver design pattern on the back, the topaz earrings Jamers bought me for xmas, silver heels, and the rhodium necklace and bracelet my mom bought me. James wore his suit with my favourite dress shirt of his (bright yellow) that I picked out for him while shopping with his mom.

We had an intimate conversation at our home by candlelight, listening to music made by pandora, the website where you type in the name of your favourite artist or song and it makes you a custom playlist to listen to; our artist was Pink. We had champagne and mussel and shrimp hors d'oeuvres at home before going to a fancy restaurant to have a steak dinner with a bottle of red wine.

The only picture we have is one we took of ourselves with James' little camera when my hair was still wet, but that will be good enough hehe. I find that when the focus of an evening is on documenting it, there tends to be very little to remember of that evening other than the documentation...As it was, we had great conversation, great food, great lovemaking afterwards.

Best date night so far this year. =)

I love you James

Because it seems to be the thing to do...

Tue, 06 Jan 2009 06:06:44 GMT

My New Year's Resolutions:

1) If I feel the need for release after a long day at work, I will either have sex, masturbate or go to the gym to relieve my tension instead of drinking alcohol.

2) I will have no more than 3 drinks in a single sitting, and try to alternate those drinks with water or soft drinks or juice.

3) I will try to be a less anxious person and try to be more optimistic about my own ability to succeed. I worry wayyyyyyy too much about what others think of me at the moment.

4) I will not omit exercise, sleep or good food from my daily schedule if I have a busy week. It only causes my stress to escalate exponentially.

5) I will worry less and love more, be less calculating and laugh more; I will live life to the fullest.

"Dance like nobody's watching
Love like you've never been heart
Sing like nobody's listening
Live like it's heaven on earth"

January 26th-27th

Wed, 31 Dec 2008 00:32:13 GMT

On January 26th-27th, we were in Lahaina, Maui, and we actually ended up doing mostly outdoor activities, which were awesome. I would have liked to go out on the town on the 26th, but my family was having none of it, so I unfortunately have NO personal comments on the nightlife on Hawaii whatsoever. However, I did hear from one guy who worked in a shop on land that the nightlife is non-existent in Lahaina, so maybe that didn't matter so much.

On the 26th, we slept in and mulled around the boat during the morning, since everyone was a bit tired from the double-doozy excursions the day before.

At noon, we went far up the mountain to go zipling. In ziplining, you wear a belt just like in rockclimbing, and clip yourself onto metal guidewires stretched from telephone pole to telephone pole over these valleys in between cliffs. You then use your hand to steer as you plunge over the valley, landing by stepping down on the other side of the gorge on the next platform. Mom and Kelsi kept almost colliding with the back of second platform, and the guide had to keep saving them from crash landings. The rest of us did ok. It was kind of freaky after the last super-long zipline, because our guide had warned us earlier in the hike that if you go upsidedown while ziplining, you can actually fall out of your harness and plunge to your death, but he actually did flip upsidedown during the last zip across. This danger had been the reason why we had to steer in the first place, to avoid being hopelessly out of control.

On the 27th, we got up painfully early for our rainforest hike. Again, we went up the mountain, and this time we got decked out in plastic ponchos and these weird japanese rubber shoes that had two sections, making you look as if you had two giant toes instead of five. They were rubber on the bottom and had a built-in sock that reached almost to the knee. They were great for hiking through the rainforest because you could go in puddles and mud without being worried about wrecking your own footwear. We saw all kinds of awesome plants on our hike, including bananas, coconuts, eucalyptus and mela leuca trees, passionfruist (which I actually ate directly from a branch) birds of paradise, and a variety of ferns. We ate a picnic lunch in the forest within sight of the top of a beautiful waterfall, then made our way down to ye olde swimming hole. At the bottom of the waterfall, there was a big tarzan rope hooked up, and you had to climb on this pile of rocks, then swing out under the waterfall itself before letting go. The water was around 70 degrees, which took some getting used to, and I only had two wardrobe malfunctions, so it was all great fun once we were used to the water. Dad wussed out, mumbling something about having a cold, but it was ok because that meant we had a photographer to document the experience from a distance without us all having to make all kinds of inane poses like during the rest of the trip.

We headed back to Lahaina and did some shopping, and unfortunately my postcards will be postmarked San Diego instead of Hawaii because all the post offices were closed since it was a Sunday. Boooooooooooooooooooo!

Anyway, it's almost time for Pilates so I'll write some more later if I remember stuff I left out.

December 25th-December 26th

Wed, 31 Dec 2008 00:18:27 GMT

On Christmas day, we woke up at the crack of dawn (seriously, @6am) and made our way to the pier after a quick breakfast. We went onto a large catamaran sailboat, and began our voyage by motoring past a local dolphin "hot spot". We were lucky enough to spot a variety of "Spinner Dolphins" playing in the water, which made it look as if they were putting on a show. They swam in groups of 2-5 and came up to breathe in through their blowholes, even though our guide said some of them were asleep. They were sooooooooo cute. After that, we motored over to a relatively secluded beach (no one was on shore) and put on our snorkelling gear. Snorkelling actually took about 10 minutes to get used to, because you don't have to pop up your head to breathe like in normal swimming (obviously), and it was a bit disconcerting to only breathe in AND out through your nose. We saw coral and jellyfish and eel, and a variety of tropical fish (including yellow, bright blue, black, and a variety of light-coloured fish). My mom also bought a reuseable underwater camera, and we all took turns diving down to pose among the coral reefs near the fish. Unfortunately, whenever we would come up for air after doing this, we would choke on saltwater and sputter for a bit (or at least I would hehe). After our snorkelling adventure, we boarded the boat and the real sailing began. My dad didn't actually captain the boat at any point, but we got these miniature sandwiches and fresh pineapple and drank beer and wine on the way back to port, which was super fun.

The next day was one of our longest days in port at Honolulu, because we did two excursions in one day. In the morning, we went to the Sea Life Park, which was this tourist trap marine-land esque place. It was still fun to see the different animals and stuff, even while you were aware that the park basically only existed for tourists, and realized that the whole park could have used a new coat of paint. We saw sea lions, dolphins, penguins, sting rays and a variety of other fish. There was reportedly a "Walfin" there (ie dolphin and whale put together), but unfortunately we missed the show. We did see the "sting ray ballet", in which a trainer went underwater in scuba gear and essentially played with the sting rays, enticing them with food and then guiding them through a series of contortions underwater. He even trained them as if they were dogs, only allowing each sting ray to have a certain number of treats before shooing them away like you shoo dogs away from the table at supper. We also saw a "talent contest" with two sea lions, which was pretty cool. One of them did a show to the tune of Mission Impossible, while the other one "sang" (ie barked) in the appropriate places in the song "Who let the Dogs out". They also did some tricks in the water and on land, but I thought those were the highlights. After some shows, and feeding the giant turtles celery, broccoli and lettuce, it was time to swim the dolphins. We learned about how you're not supposed to touch the dolphins' blowholes, faces or other "private parts", much the same way you wouldn't do that to a human. We then entered the water, and took turns petting the dolphins and rubbing their tails, and even feeding them. We each did a belly ride where we did a hand signal to the dolphins underwater to get them to come to us, then grabbed their dorsal fins and got a ride back to the shallow end. We also got kissed by the dolphin and kissed it back on the nose, which I thought was going to be gross but was actually really cool.

On our way out of the pool, we were headed to the showers, when we saw a van containing three men wearing bulletproof vests and carrying machine guns, two in the front seats of the van and one pointing the gun out the back of the van. We crept by and I remember thinking I would try to avoid pissing off those guys at all costs. After our showers, Kelsi went to try and catch the end of the Walfin show, and was running towards the stands, when a guy in sunglasses and a white collared shirt stopped her with his hand and asked where she was going. She told him she was going to the show and he ordered her to "go that way". It turned out these guys were all part of the secret service, because Obama and family went to play with the dolphins right after us! Unfortunately, we did not get to meet him or take pictures with him, but it was still wayyyy cool.

Later that night, we went to the Luao on land. It was everything I expected after discussing the activity with Maureen. Totally tourist trap, filled with 1000 Americans lolling around performing archaic Hawaiian traditional dances, fishing and cooking rituals that actual Hawaiians probably have never used in living memory. However, we did get four of these mammoth pina coladas (or other drinks if we wanted them) along with our totally sub-par food (ha-I'm too used to the superb restaurant on the boat, it's clear), so it was still awesome. My favourite part was probably the show at the end, that featured some amazing Hawaiian and Tahitian dances, including a fire dance performed by "a chief". Kelsi actually went on stage when they asked for volunteers to do belly dancing, which would have been shocking had she not already downed 4 majitos and one of Kensi's drink. Basically, this half-naked Hawaiian guy moved her hips for her trying to coax her into shaking her booty for the crowd or whatever, which was highly amusing.

After the Luao was over, it was time to board the bus to go home. We were all liquored up and ready to party, so when the bus tour guide asked if we wanted to play games or just sleep on the way home, our family cheered loudly for pro-game-playing. Unfortunately, there were some morbidly obese and elderly people on our bus who had other plans. They insisted we sleep, so the tour guide turned off the lights and started playing the radio. However, we were not to be dissuaded so easily. We started singing camp songs, and eventually a good portion of the bus was singing television show theme songs. At one point, one of the "taxicabs" (ie morbidly obese people) asked me if I could "just be quiet for one minute", but I laughed at her, and although we did stop singing for a little bit, we did not stop being loud and rowdy with our friendly neighbours on the bus. We quieted down for a bit when we found out the power was gone on the island, and people were only supposed to be driving on the road in case of emergency, but our bus got back to the cruiseship ok, and we had to do our security screening in the dark, which was a big pain in the ass. They checked our bags by flashlight. Luckily, the ship ran on its own power (obviously), so the rest of our trip was not affected by the power outage.

The one thing I really wish that had been different on this cruise is that I wish the rest of my family hadn't have signed up for all these morning fitness classes, thereby precluding being awake and alert to have fun at night. It was an amazing trip, but it would have been even better to be able to stay up playing games at night like at the cottage. Playing games at the cottage makes up a big part of many of my happiest memories, because everyone has such a good time. It was awesome that we finally played Settlers of Catan last night, even if I am a bit tired today.

Brief rant on students

Tue, 30 Dec 2008 23:49:47 GMT

So, I'm going to post a bit about the rest of my trip in a minute, but first a brief rant on student evaluations.

I taught a "freshman interest group" this term, which means that I taught a group of students that all lived in the same dorm, and obviously bitched alot about me behind my back, considering their evals put me 30% lower in terms of performance than how my other lab section rated me.

I'm really frustrated because I tried really hard to try and teach them, but they put in very little effort to improve during the course of the term, and then expected to get very high grades for the lab course.

A major comment on all of my evals was that I needed to make the requirements for lab reports more available to the students. However, I sent out an email at the start of the quarter detailing exactly what I expected to be written in each section, and then gave written comments to each student on each of their lab reports on what they needed to include in each section. Also, not one of my students brought in a lab report to office hours in advance to ask if they had included everything they needed to, or emailed me to verify whether or not they were including all relevant concepts. I was also totally on the ball about emailing them reminders and answering their emails promptly, and they told me in my evals I had a "bad attitude towards students". Wtf...I hate freshman. They are totally unappreciative of efforts being made for them. High school pampers them wayyyyy too much.

I just hope I don't end up with another freshman interest group next term, because the responses from my other lab section were actually quite favourable. It is obvious that they all compared reports, looking for reasons to be angry. For example, one student wrote that they received 1 point lower than their lab partner in one section of one lab report and therefore I'm an unfair TA. Um, hello...why not ask at the time? Jeez...

December 21st-24th

Tue, 30 Dec 2008 20:21:13 GMT

I cannot believe that it has been 10 days since I posted. Well, this trip has certainly been a whirlwind of activity, and this is one of the first times I've had some time to myself to sit and use the internet for quite some time.

I last wrote when we were still en route to Hawaii, and I actually had a great couple of days following my last post, so I suppose I'll start there.

On Sunday the 21st, I did a spinning class with Will, who is some of my favourite scenery on the trip. This was followed by a body composition assessment in which I learned that I should gain more lean muscle body mass to promote better metabolism. I then did pilates as usual. That night, my family wanted to go to bed right after the show after supper, so I headed down to the casino. Surprisingly, a number of other "single" people were there, so it was really fun. I enjoyed watching other people win and lose money at the $25 minimum bet blackjack table, and lost some of my own at the $5 minimum bet blackjack table and at roulette. I met this guy with a traichiotomy (not sure if this is spelled correctly, because you can only have one browser window open at once on this ghetto terminal...), and he got really excited when he won a ton of money at the expensive blackjack table, so that was kind of exciting.

Monday, I decided I needed a day off from fitness, and my dad and I hit up a blackjack tournament in the afternoon. I did pretty well in the prelim game I played in, but dad did horribly because he didn't quite understand the rules or the strategy of blackjack. However, we met this blackjack guru who helped me explain a bit more about the rules to dad, and then he re-bought into the tournament. With our help, coaching and egging him on, as well as some marvelous luck, he ended up getting 1st place in the preliminary round of the tournament! By good luck, I actually mean amazing, because he hit two 9s on 12s in a row, betting maximum bet. Pretty awesome. Unfortunately, he only got 5/7 in the final round of the tourney, meaning he didn't win any money, but it was a *lot* of fun.

On the Tuesday, I did some cycling, and then it was time for the first "Captain's Club" party. I ended up arriving ahead of my family, since they were at ballroom dancing lessons prior to the event. We got to meet the captain and all the officers, and then I reserved an awesome table for my family. For the next hour, the hors d'oeurves and champagne flowed continuously, and even Kelsi was downing Mai Tais like they were going out of style, which was awesome because the cruiseboat made a big stink about how underagers are not permitted to drink onboard, but she's been served every single day of the trip, if not at bars, then by getting champagne with supper. We then had supper and did some dancing, which was awesome. I saw the captain at the back of the room and decided I would ask him to dance when a good song came on. Unfortunately, when my drink ran out and I went to get a fresh one to the bar, and a good song finally came on, he slunk out before I got a chance to ask him! Oh well...

On Wednesday, we *FINALLY* arrived in Hawaii. The first day was near Hilo, Hawaii, and we went to the Volcano National Park, where we biked through the rainforest all around this giant magma field. Our guide was awesome, giving me and Kensi his coat when we got too cold (we've both had hypothermia a couple of times), and wiping the rain off our seats after each stop. The foliage was lush and tropical and amazing, and we saw some really cool birds. We also hiked through a lava tube, but it was not anywhere near as cool as the one Sam and James and I hiked through at Sun River. The lava tube on Hawaii had cement on its floor, and electric lights attached to all the sides of the cave. It was nowhere near as adventurous as when we spleunked into a dark cave in Oregon with kerosene lamps and no other source of light, and those guys at the belly of the cave pretended to be animals, scaring the bejesus out of us.

In that first excursion on Hawaii, I got a little introduction to siteseeing with my family, aka 4 people with cameras photographing everything to death. It really bothered me at first, but I'm almost used to it now. It seemed that one part of sightseeing that never struck me until this trip is that nowadays, people are so consumed with documenting the sights that they saw, and making sure they have awesome pictures, that the emphasis on visiting another country is no longer on the actual experiences of visiting it, but making sure that you have proof of it later, and that made me a bit sad. It was also weird visiting Hawaii and having all our time on the islands booked by one excursion or another. It meant that we couldn't laze around on the beach if we wanted to, or have the fun of tracking down cool things to do on a foreign island. It was weird...

Xmas Cruise

Sun, 21 Dec 2008 20:08:53 GMT

Hi Everyone,

I am currently posting from a wifi in the middle of the pacific ocean. Technology is pretty cool these days. =)

The cruise has been amazing so far.

I miraculously got a direct flight to San Diego on Thursday, thus avoiding getting trapped in the Seattle snowstorm that was underway at that time. When I had arrived at the airport, I was already scheduled to miss my connecting flight to San Diego, so that was a brilliant stroke of good luck.

On Thursday my family and I had a great lunch in the hotel restaurant, then had some complimentary cocktails from the hotel bar in the hot tub (yes, we smuggled in drinks in plastic cups mwahaha), before passing out, since my entire family was jet-lagged.

The next day we boarded the ship, and they actually did make us feel like celebrities. All our luggage was taken care of, and we were greated with big smiles from the crew and free champagnes. We explored the ship a bit and moved our luggage in before heading straight to the spa. The spa people said that on average, people gain 15 pounds (or 1 pound/day) per cruise, and I was totally not up for that. I can see how it can happen, because there is constant buffets during the day, five-course meals every night, dessert all the time, and even a late-night room service menu. I have decided to combat this in advance by doing cycling and pilates classes daily. We also have memberships to the spa's salt water baths, which have a variety of jets which are awesome to relax in. The first night I had a 50 minute swedish massage followed by the salt water bath and the experience was simply divine. I have booked another massage for New Year's Eve before the festivities begin since it was so good.

My parents joined the Captain's Wine Club, where you order bottles of wine from the ship in bulk and then choose nightly from their selection irregardless of price. Naturally, this means we are getting bottles of champagne worth $120 every night, making them get $700 worth of champagne for $300. My parents certainly know how to order drinks to go with a meal!

Last night was the first night we really went out on the town (er...ship), because everyone was exhausted from moving in on Friday night. Last night was formal night, and it was amazing. Everyone was dressed up in their formal gowns and tuxedos, and a band played at the top of the staircase that descends into the eating area, just like on the movie Titanic. We went to see a live dancing show afterwards for "meet-the-captain" night, and again there was free champagne. After the show, we went to a bluesy show on board, where we were the only patrons for over an hour. They therefore catered to our music requests and it was just Kensi, myself and my parent tearing up the dance floor. It was pretty awesome. We then hit up the popular clubbing locale on board which had a dj. Unfortunately, everyone was too tired to stick around to hear my songs played-oh well, maybe tomorrow night. Apparently they have a rule that "they must cater to elderly people before 12:30am, and not play hiphop or dance music until then" lol. I finally saw the young people population on the boat; maybe I will try and make friends with them tonight, we'll see.

Kensi finally told me the deal with her medications. She's on two different meds for her bipolar disorder, and the combination of them makes 1 drink for her equal 6 drinks for a normal person according to both her doctor and herself). Sheeesh. So while people are bugging her to have more than one drink, it's like she's loaded halfway through. Crazy...Anyway, I feel as if I'm getting to know her slowly, after years of not really talking too closely to her. Kelsi is still an enigma, and still weird about her stuff. She freaked when I touched her bag the other day in our room and began hitting me over and over again and refuses to apologize or admit her actions were psycho. Must be because mother insists we "have to respect her feelings". She's in for a rude awakening some day.

Other than a couple of minor scuffles though, everyone is getting along really well and we are having a ball. Speaking of which, I should get going because I think their fitness class ends soon. Also, wifi kind of costs a fortune on the ship (BIG surprise).

Ta-ta for now.