Tired…

So it’s been a while since I last wrote in here. For a while I was completely annoyed at myself for having this blog and thought about deleting it, but now for some reason, I find myself back here with an actual urge to write. I was just in the shower, thinking to myself random things that I’ve learned about myself these past few months and I felt like I just needed a place to actually put them down somewhere.

I feel extremely stupid using WordPress. There are so many boxes and links I feel like this whole thing is only for those who are html-savvy.

Anyway, my senior/sophomore year has started. It’s weird to think that I technically should’ve graduated this year if I had stayed on the course of being an international studies major. But I’m graduating next year. Who knows what’s going to happen after that. Currently my plan is just to do some more PR internships while I’m still a student, somehow nab an awesome job in Portland and live happily ever after. Another plan that’s been lurking in my mind is going to law school. I need to see an advisor stat.

I miss summer so much it’s ridiculous. The hot weather, no worrying-ness, constant window-shopping and letting my brain pretty much rot. This morning before going to work my car was so frozen I couldn’t even get my door open. Somehow the passenger door was able to open so I just got in through there and turned the heater onto full blast hoping that everything would defrost. I ended using my plastic tupperware lid to scrape off the ice. At least it was early morning.

I’m absolutely delighted that my phone somehow gets ESPN. I got to watch the last set of the Roddick/Djokovic match before Djokovic retired. Watching Roddick serve made me miss tennis a lot. Honestly if I had started playing tennis when I was 4 I would be a pro tennis player right now. When Roddick said that he hits the track every morning at 8 am, I was so envious. God. It would be amazing to play a sport and work out for a living.

Self-Discoveries

1. If I had learned how to play tennis when I was 4, I would be a professional tennis right now playing in the Australian Open.
2. If I’m not kept busy, I get extremely lazy.
3. I would eat a lot if I could, but I restrict myself. I could most likely eat a lot more than most people I know.
4. “When you love something, you have the capacity to bore everyone about why–it doesn’t matter why”–John Irving.
5. Therefore, people who are overly passionate about something (and let everyone know about it) tend to annoy me.
6. Defensive people annoy me.
7. I honestly love shopping for clothes and expensive things.
8. I’m not a good friend.
9. Currently I don’t plan on having kids and getting married, but I can be a hopeless romantic.
10. I think cats have no personality.
11. I’m selfish.

Now I know what a homeless person feels like…kinda

I actually wrote this a few days ago on the 21st while waiting for the train. I’m finally getting around to publishing it. Bon appetit.

……..

Wow, I can sincerely say that I have never been this amused in my entire life.

Ok.

Maybe I can’t. But it’s pretty damn close.

Second day of spring break. Yesterday, the roomies and I celebrated the start of spring by going out to dinner at Red Robin and getting some dessert at Cold Stone. However, it was a bittersweet celebration as Myra is departing to head off to Mexico to study abroad.

Myra, I have three words/phrases to say:

1. Jajajajajajaja.
2. EXOTIC.
3. Munchkin the Mexican gorilla man.

Actually, there’s a lot more I could say, but I think three is quite enough. We really do need to do a “remember when…?” when you get back.

Anyway, I’LL MISS YOU. I’ll also miss seeing your cute feet in black socks when I wake up in the morning.

So my morning plans were as followed: wake up early, hit the gym, take a shower, eat, bid my final farewell to Myra, and head off to Amtrak. The first five went smoothly as planned.

I got to Amtrak and was greeted coldly by an elderly woman with dyed fire-red hair. Hey, did you notice the oxymoron? I never received a confirmation email for my train ticket, but thought less of it since my mother informed me that the order had gone through.

This woman gave me a death stare when I told her I didn’t have a confirmation number. She pretty much scolded me like I was a four-year old and ordered me to call my mother to tell her to call Amtrak, give her her debit card number, and get a confirmation number. Yes, she ordered me. She said “Call your mother right now.” That I did. But I don’t understand why she had to get so frazzled about it. I’m just a silly girl who didn’t get a confirmation email. I wasn’t even that worried.

I got the confirmation number—only to find out that I didn’t order the 11:20 ticket. I got the 2:20 one instead.

So, really. I was about 4 hours early.

At that point I’m about to die of thirst, so I wandered off to the vending machine to get a bottle of water. $2 bucks for an Aquafina. It’s honestly not that surprising. I bought a bagel and a bottle of orange juice for $7 on the train last time.

I didn’t have any cash to feed the vending machine, so I meandered off to an archaic-looking ATM, which repeatedly rejected me and my pin number. That was fine. I didn’t want to have to pay $3 fee to withdraw money anyway. WAMU will be sending me a new PIN in about 5 to 7 business days.

After rummaging around for some change in my wallet, luggage bag, purse, pockets, and everywhere else where loose change can be found (kind of like a bum, hence the title of this post), and only coming up with 1.50 in four quarters, 4 dimes, and 2 nickels, I decided to go hunt for a WAMU.

(I think I would’ve had more change with me…if it weren’t for Myra who told me a couple weeks ago that my wallet looked like it was about explode because it was so obese with change)…Haha, jk Myra. :)

Luckily, there was a WAMU only about 5 to 10 minutes away inside an Uwajimaya’s. The man who told me to go there seemed to be really enthused about Uwajimaya. It also seemed like he didn’t think I knew what Uwajimaya was.

“It’s a neat little Japanese store,” he said. “A lot of people go there for their Asian food.”

Wow. Thanks, sir.

I got my cash and stopped by at Starbucks. I got myself an average pre-made turkey/Swiss cheese/lettuce sandwich and a tall drip coffee. I burned my tongue but it was well-worth it. I chilled at there for a bit, but I left about 30 minutes later. I wasn’t feeling this Starbucks. It was too small and claustrophobic, so I hauled out.

I felt like such a tourist; rolling around my 40 lb. luggage bag that’s nearly as tall I am, my laptop bag hanging off my shoulder, walking around and not really knowing where the hell I was going. It was cool though. I need to do this more often.

So now, here I am back at Amtrak. My coffee is cooling off a bit too quickly for my liking. I’m too used to using that Starbucks thermos. It is a beautiful work of art that keeps my coffee hot for at least 5 hours.

Across from me sits this Asian girl. I’m guessing Japanese if not at least half. She’s been giving me these suspicious looks ever since I’ve gotten here. Maybe it’s because I’m using a laptop when there’s not even wi-fi here. Because really who uses a computer nowadays when you can’t even get internet connection?

I noticed a semi-attractive guy walking toward her. Dark eyes and dark hair, which I guess I’ve always been a sucker for. The girl gives me another snotty look as she puts her arms around the guy.

I almost laughed.

He’s yours. I got it.

My coffee is disappearing too quickly. My thermos probably fits like three tall coffees. That thing was honestly my savior last week. Hallelujah.

There are now three guys sitting across from me. The Asian girl and her lover left seven minutes ago. The guy in the middle is really nerdy-looking. He’s leaning in really close to the guy on his left, talking about cancer research or something. I can’t really hear. The guy on the right, who’s looking at the ground as I type this, looks isolated and left out. I hope he’s not looking at my feet. They’re kinda gross looking. The dude on the left, I have just realized, has a really tiny head. He really seems fascinated about this guy’s topic of conversation.

I’m honestly feeling really relaxed right now. This is what makes me happy—having time by myself, being artificially awake by coffee, and looking at weird people.

It’s only 1:32 and my train leaves in a little less than an hour. I can’t believe I won’t be in Vancouver until about 6:30.

I feel like everyone is looking at me. There’s a huge line of people standing right across from me. More people are sitting on the seats across from me. I’m the only one on this side of the room. It’s kinda scary.

Looking Forward to 2008

1. I graduate NEXT YEAR. Holy.
2. Study abroad next winter/spring…hopefully?
3. 25-page paper next quarter for international studies.
4. GRE (Graduate record examination)…and I thought I was done with standardized tests.
5. Grad school apps…I also thought I was done with applications.
6. The agony of waiting for acceptance letters…don’t know if I can handle any more of THAT.
7. Internships and jobs would be nice.

I also want to run a marathon. But we’ll see.

2008, BRING IT.

At the Home Stretch

Well, we’re now at the final week of school. In one week, I will be on the train heading back to the ‘Couve.

This weekend I plan on gluing myself onto this extremely uncomfortable plastic chair in my dorm or locking myself in the library studying my ass off for this globalization final. I somewhat regret not paying attention in class. But I can’t blame me–the professor, despite his British accent, is excruciatingly dull.

All I can say is: Thank goodness for podcasts. And maybe I should thank the professor, too. It was probably his idea to have his lectures podcasted. He probably also knew himself that his lectures were dull. It takes a lot keep 300 hundred students awake at 10:30 in the morning for two hours of lecture. Poor man.

Thursday, December 6: Best day ever. Maybe even more better (is that grammatically correct?) than Thursday, October 25.  All that waiting for the next moment paid off big time.

Hmm…we’ll see how things turn out.  :) Be patient and it will come to you.

Splish Splash

We’ve had some pretty insane weather in Seattle the past few days.

It snowed for one thing on Saturday. Totally unexpected. I was walking to the East Asia Libraries to meet my group for a presentation, and I could’ve SWORN that I saw teeny snow flakes. But I quickly brushed it aside. Snow? Nah. My eyes were surely deceiving me.

A few hours later we come out, and the entire campus is blanketed with snow. People were already having snowball fights and building vertically-challenged snowmen. I was incredibly giddy.

Anyway, most typically the snow melted by that night. We were back to the same ol’ rain that we normally see.

Sunday night: rain nonstop. No biggie, right?

So, our doorway is a bit slopped downward. Add a downward slopping doorway and heavy, nonstop rain together and wallah, you not only get one puddle outside of your door, but hey, you also get one inside on the other side of the door as well. Good deal. And it doesn’t just stop there: you also get a super-soaked carpet that makes a little splash every time you take a step.

Yes, you read correctly. We had a minor flood here in L107. I woke up around 6:30 that morning to  hit up the IMA. I walk over to the shoe rack to get my shoes when all a sudden I get that unpleasant feeling of having wet socks on your feet. Honestly, there is no feeling worse than having wet socks on your feet. Pretty much at the time I was thinking “What the eff?” I take a step back, only to realize that for some reason there’s an outline of my foot on the carpet. I also realize the mini-pond that we had gathering right by our door there. All we needed were some rubber duckies and we were totally set.

A day later, the carpet is still somewhat damp. I’m avoiding that area of carpet as much as possible.

I never thought I’d say this, but I desperately need boots. They’re not just a fashion statement on the UW campus–they’re an absolute necessity.

AHHHH

1. The Davis Cup is going to be in PORTLAND this FRIDAY and I can’t go. How often do professional tennis players come to PORTLAND?!
2. The “1″ button on my keyboard seems like it’s stuck. Well, no. It’s not really stuck. I’m not even sure if that’s the right term for it. It’s just weird. It obviously still works, but it doesn’t seem like it pushes down all the way. And it doesn’t make the cool tapping/typing sound, which is one of my favorite sounds ever.
3. My third article was supposed to be due today, but because two of my sources haven’t gotten back to me, the deadline has been pushed back. People are rude and inconsiderate. I left him a voice message AND I sent him an email. Thanksgiving was about a week ago, so there’s no way he can use that as an excuse.
4. I’m really disappointed about something. Or more specifically: someone. I need to do something about…it.
5. I have a presentation tomorrow and I really don’t want to do it. Or more specifically: I just don’t want memorize my lines.
6. I have another presentation next Tuesday. I need to buy a 18 x 24 poster board and construction paper. Both of which I have at home in Vancouver (which is 5-10 minutes away from Portland…which is the location of the final for the Davis Cup…which I am not going to).
7. I have finals in two weeks.
8. I am REALLY tired.
9. It’s cold. Too cold.
10. I have to read 117 pages by tomorrow.

This post is a rant. End.

Uh…

I couldn’t think of a better title for this post. But it sincerely describes what I’m thinking right now.

Let me elaborate before you start thinking that I’m so unintelligent that “Uh…” is the only thing that I think about. Well…nowadays…maybe it actually is….my mind’s getting too airy for my liking. On a side note, “creeping meatballism” is a word. Dictionary.com is your best friend.

Anyway, my quiz section for international studies just finished (amusing as it always is) and now I am sitting here in Odegaard in the computer lab where the clusters of Macs are. I didn’t really have lunch today, so I decided to go to Kane Hall to get something from the vending machines. I had to pee really bad, so that’s why I just didn’t go to By George.

So I climb up the stairs and plop myself down in front of a Mac. To the left of me is this woman who was also here yesterday.

I open my bag of Wheat Thins, wondering if I really should have gotten that bag of Famous Amos cookies instead. The bag makes that obnoxious plastic-squelching sound, but whatever–everyone hears it probably twenty-two times a day and is immune to it….right?

I pop a Wheat Thin in my mouth, savoring its crunchy goodness and telling myself that I made a good decision about not getting the cookies.

I open up Firefox when the woman at the left peeks around at me, wide-eyed and shaking her head vigorously. I look at her with a bewildered look (maybe somewhat scared too).

“Uh…no…could you not…no…please….” she stammers. She blinks her huge, round eyes approximately five times like she just had Lasik done or something.

“Uh…do you…?” I start to ask.

At this point I was at a loss for words. How do you respond to that?!

“No…please…don’t….I….” she continues to stammer. She looks back at her monitor for a few seconds. Then back at me. Her eyes, which are in all-seriousness as huge as that unfortunate cat’s, blink some more.

“Uh…ok, if it disturbs you….” I say.

Obviously, I’m still at a loss for words. I would’ve said something, but the whole notion about a woman telling me not to eat my Wheat Thins was shocking to me. I didn’t even know what exactly was disturbing her. Maybe the sound of me eating? Was it really that loud and obvious???

So I put my Wheat Thins in my bag, STILL confused as hell. Maybe she’s like Monk and has OCD.

…Who knows.

I’m tempted to see what happens if I eat another Wheat Thin, but I’m scared for my life. She might go ballistic and throw her mouse at me, which right now I notice she has a death grip on. I’m too nice for my own good.

I could just switch computers, but I’m feeling so lazy.

Now that I think about it, I’d be embarrassed if I were this woman. She just told a girl she doesn’t even know not to eat her Wheat Thins. Actually, she didn’t even say anything. She just blurted out one-syllable words at me.

EDIT

Well, she’s gone now. Didn’t say a single word when she left.

So I brought my Wheat Thins back out, when a guy to the right of me says “Excuse me…”

I was on the brink of rolling my eyes when it turned out he only wanted me to watch his stuff while he went to the bathroom.

Insanity

I was assigned my first-ever story from The Daily on Monday.

To keep the story short (and because I really shouldn’t be online posting this for…oh, the random people who read this blog just because they typed “Monday” or “interview” into the WordPress search engine), in the past three days I have interviewed:

• The Deputy Secretary of Administrative and Financial Services of the Philippine Senate
• The Mayor of Tkon (a little town in Pasman Island in Croatia)
• An operations officer for the International Organization of Migration (IOM)
• A training coordinator for CHF International
• The manager of the EU Project for the Estonian Ministry of Education

…Aaand a few other people whose titles are amazingly long. Gettin’ the connections, no? I’m stoked.

This article’s due on Monday, hopefully I’ll be able to finish this, the first draft of my globalization paper, the first draft of my other international studies paper, and the weekly international studies paper before Tuesday/Wednesday. Oh–and I gotta do some research for a separate globalization project and study for a midterm.

Also, I have a funeral to go to on Sunday. I’m guessing I won’t be able to take my laptop there. What do you think?

Overall, this has been an interesting and pretty awesome week and weekend. The Halloween “party” (which is in quotes because really I’m not even sure if it can really be called a party) was alright. Afterwards, my roomies and I took a midnight stroll (ok, maybe it wasn’t midnight, but it sounds so much cooler) on the Ave and got some food, while, I might add, in our costumes. One of my roomies had a pirate costume that was incredibly short and was topped off with fishnet stockings and there I was, Cleopatra, in a  super-thin, spaghetti-strapped, low-cut dress with a gaudy headdress. We got some attention, I’m sure. And I’m surprised I’m not coughing with a painful sore-throat yet.

Well, Saturday was pretty uneventful actually. One should know (or maybe it doesn’t matter) it is now Sunday morning and I’m adding to this unpublished post (if, for some reason, you didn’t catch on to that, although you really should considering the date on which this is published is displayed a few inches above this). I’m just sitting here waiting for my cousin to take me to Vancouver.

My entire Saturday consisted me sitting on my ass in front of this laptop slaving away on my article. What killed me was that I was ten inches over the required length of thirty. I think I got too much information out of my interviews that I founded sincerely fascinating. BUT what else contributed to the ten inches were, I think, the long names and long titles of the Hubert H. Humphrey Fellowship recipients. And the fact that in journalism, “U.S.” can only be used as an adjective (U.S. schools for example). Everything else, like “This is his first visit to the U.S.” is completely wrong–United States HAS to be written out. And since the length of newspaper articles depends not on the number of words but rather the number of CHARACTERS (including spaces, commas, periods, dashes, and all that jazz), and since United States is thirteen characters…well, you get the idea. So I edited that damn thing honestly over a hundred times–made really lame changes. In that example above, for example, I would’ve changed it to “This is his first U.S. visit.” That sounds terrible, but that’s not an ACTUAL example from the article. Give me some credit here.

I’m rambling.

This week should be jam packed as much as this last week. I’m looking forward to it. I kinda want Monday to be here.

It’s Here

So, that “thing” that I’ve been waiting for. I think it’s here. Maybe.

Nothing to get too excited about. It’s quite pathetic really–I’m ashamed that I’m even writing about it. But it’s a Sunday night, I’m taking a break from studying commodities, commodity chains, and capitalism, and I have nothing better to do while listening to the oh-so-smoove “Pepe Linque” by Oregon, a local (if I were still in the Vancouver/Portland area) jazz band.

So, here goes.

The past four weeks have been absolute bores that were comprised of reading. Now, I must say that I do enjoy reading. But like 100 to 200 pages for every other day? And actually understanding and remembering the words on the paper?! Oh, heck no.

And now week five of the 2007 fall quarter at the University of Washington dawns upon us…while raining down (the downpour type of rain that doesn’t cease to end) the midterms and due-dates for term papers and other research projects.

Hello, Mr. Thing That I’ve Been Waiting For.

See? Pathetic.

I think there might be something wrong with me. I’m actually excited. Really. On my Windows Vista I have the Notes Gadget with a list of things-to-do typed in a nice, loopy font. I just checked off two things yesterday. Sa-weet.

I think I’ll grow up to be one of those obsessive-compulsive workaholics and die from a heart attack. I have no idea where the latter came from, but for some reason I associate workaholics with heart attacks.

This is all a total wake-up call. It’s all happening at once. So much to do. Hallelujah.

On another note, the past week was a good one. It started off interestingly with a journey at midnight to the Chevron gas station (the ONLY convenience store that we could find open…the other two or three convenience stores located on the Ave weren’t too convenient in my opinion) to buy cigarettes that my roommate wasn’t going to smoke.  That, right there, is a post by itself, but it’s been a week already–ancient history. However, I will say that I felt sympathy for the clerk.

Some other good (and definitely amusing) things happened here and there…one involves a weekly paper that I thought I was going to fail and one exceptional individual. Even though this story is only about three days old, I refuse to post about it.

Picture me smiling to myself right here. Oh, the torture (for you).

Anyway.

I went shopping with the roomies yesterday. Finally got myself a costume for the Halloween dance/party and blew about $85 on a white dress, gold bangles, bracelets, necklace, ring, armband, and an “Egyptian” headdress. You receive a nickel if you can guess what I’m going to be.

I have a meeting tomorrow with The Daily. Hopefully I can finally get my hands on a story assignment to add to my Notes Gadget.