Klee5389’s Weblog

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Yesterday I went to the post office as I always do on Mondays (one of my favorite errands of all-time…something about going to the post-office is very comforting) and received a letter from the Vancouver Parking Division regarding my “delinquent account.” Apparently they’ve tried to contact me several times before. I owed $50.72 for a parking ticket. Ouch.

Now this is all quite interesting…seeing that my only means of transportation are my own two feet, the bus, taxi, and my parent’s vehicles (which I am not registered under). On the occasions that I did drive my dad’s Honda or my mom’s Acura,  I was a good citizen, obeyed the law, and parked where I was supposed to. But nevertheless, how the hell did they get my name anyway?!

I had a dentist appointment afterwards, and the hygienist, doctor, and receptionist were as dumbfounded as I was. Ditto with my future stepfather. The only solution: to call the Vancouver Parking Division.

My mom ended up calling for me while I was in the shower this morning (she knocked on my bathroom door and handed me the phone right in the shower…thanks, mom). The lady on the other side, evidently, only wished to speak with Kimberly Lee. Obviously I was a bit busy at the moment and gave the lady authorization to speak to my mother.

According to my mom, the lady wanted to know if we lived at 3737 NE something-something. Our former address was 2613 something-something.

She then wanted to know if I owned a registered vehicle. I do not.

She called back later, confirming this was a case of mistaken identity. As a matter of fact, there are four other Kimberly Lee’s in Vancouver.

I am 110% absolute that they just used “Eenie, Meenie, Minie, Moe” to pick me out of the four other Kimberly Lee’s.

On our way back to the condo/townhouse (condo? townhouse?) from about three hours of cleaning my old home (the utility room is now as good as new, thanks to my cleaning prowess and a good ol’ bottle of Multi-Task Windex), we were waiting at a stoplight when I began to hear one of the cars behind us over on the next lane blasting amazingly loud music that one couldn’t even begin to distinguish it, although I am sure that it belonged to the rap genre, with its driver yelling indistinguishably. Windex, I might add, is underlined with a red, squiggle line on my browser as I type this. Windex, evidently, isn’t an established-enough company and word to be recognized by the Firefox browser (Firefox, of course, is).

The stoplight by the Chevron gas station turned green after about a minute and 14 seconds and we allowed the loud-music-playing car to catch up to ours. I automatically turned my head to catch a glimpse at the fellow who decided to share his music with the rest of the people on Fourth Plain Blvd at 1:30 PM, preparing to restrain myself from sighing and shaking my head.

There to my right I saw a white car (for those of you who believe that “white” isn’t enough to describe a car, which I totally understand as there are many, many white cars on this Earth, it also might’ve been a Honda…or a Saturn, a Toyota, or a Kia), with a pale guy in his early twenties, a cap turned in that gangsta-angle sort of way on his head. Gangsta, also, appears not to be a well-established word; Honda and Toyota are, while Kia is not. That’s interesting.

Seeing this guy turned out to be the greatest thing I saw in my entire day (obviously, considering that I’m dedicating an entire post to this total stranger I saw on the street). There he was, beaming right back at me like he had the sun in his mouth, yelling (presumably singing) the words of the song he was listening to, waving his left arm up and down in that gangsta-style to the beat of the song, his head bopping up and down simultaneously. From what I saw, he was completely alone in his car.

He continued driving down the boulevard, all the way past Alberton’s and the Grocery Outlet, in this same manner, yelling (singing?) at the tops of his lungs, left arm waving out the open window, his head bopping up and down. We caught up to him again, and again, he grinned right back at us, not ceasing his enthused singing, arm waving, and head bopping. Drivers on the opposite lanes stared at him curiously while riding by. An old couple in a blue Mustang convertible driving in front of them shook their heads as they eyed him in their rear view mirrors. In the opposite lane, a young red-headed girl sitting in the passenger seat caught sight of him and started waving her arm and bopping her head as well, laughing and grinning at the guy while her mom smiled.

I admit I was endlessly entertained. I’ve never seen a guy so happy. My mom said “It’s hormones.” I wanted to video-tape this guy and follow him (I think he would’ve been a success on YouTube), but most unfortunately, we had to stop by at ARCO for gas.

“Zegewhechu Kassa is just a typical sixteen girl in Ethiopia. She had the typical childhood, a typical family. When she was six years old, she was married to a man she did not know. Two months after her wedding, she was divorced. At age nine, she was married again and became pregnant when she was twelve. Her child died after three days of labor, but Zegewhechu miraculously survived with an obstretic fistula. Her second husband divorced her, her family left her in seclusion. Zegewhechu is not alone with her type of story—50% to 70% of girls under the age of eighteen in developing countries have similar stories to tell.”

The above is the introduction to one of my English essays from last year. I type this post only to enlighten, to help some random reader become more aware about something that I’m passionate about, rather than just coming across my blog, clicking on my “Facts and Random Stuff” page, and learning that I like clocks and gummy bears. In-depth details and statistics are pretty much non-existant–if I wanted a post slightly shorter than Anna Karenina then I would include them. Sources aren’t included (hopefully you’re not an English professor), but I assure you, all of this information is totally true. But if you want sources and stats, then no worries, I’ve got them.  

Moving right along… 

Recall what you were doing at the age of five. Playing dress-up, chasing girls if you were a boy, running away from boys if you were a girl, wearing light-up shoes with cartoon characters on them, eating grape-flavored chapstick, waking up early to watch those cool Saturday morning cartoons, pretending you were the Power Rangers (I myself was the pink one), etc. You get the idea. Life was bliss. Your only worries were catching cooties and eating yucky vegetables at dinner. And those monsters in the closet?! Yikes. A whole year later at six, you were probably STILL watching Power Rangers. Maybe, just maybe, you still are. 

But at age six Zegewhechu Kassa wasn’t doing any of the above–she was married.  

“What?!”

Yeah, I asked myself the same thing when I first learned about her. The explanation: in some cultures and countries, it’s normal for parents to marry their daughters young without their permission—it’s a way to better their reputations and their futures. It’s the parents’ way of showing that they love and care for their children. It’s the only way. 

Early marriage itself seems like an absolute preposterous idea here in the United States, but its effects is really what is unbelievable: early pregnancy, obstetric fistulas, and quite possibly death if proper (and simple) treatment is neglected. For those who are forced to marry young, it is inevitable that she will become pregnant from forced sex. Zegewhechu herself became pregnant when she was twelve years old (during her second marriage, by the way…she divorced two months after her wedding).  

But get this: a twelve year old is usually only BEGINNING development. In addition to that, early marriage/early pregnancy is often linked to poverty–medical treatment is scarce and out of reach.

Both of the above lead to the following: days and days of labor without any pain medication….Zegewhechu went through three whole days of labor. If you’re a woman who has ever had children…three days of labor without any sort of pain medication. Chew on that.

Most often, the baby doesn’t make it. Most often, the mother also doesn’t make it. But those who do must suffer the consequences of her prolonged labor: an obstetric fistula. In layman’s terms, an obstetric fistula is a hole between either the rectum and the vagina, or the bladder and vagina. Is three days prolonged labor? I’d say so.  

The fistula causes constant leaking of urine and feces. Zegewhechu’s second husband, like most husbands with a wife with an obstetric fistula, left her. Her family shunned her because of the unavoidable smell. She is seen as unclean and dirty. She is humiliated and ashamed. 

The most disheartening thing of all with obstetric fistulas isn’t the fact that the victim can be left with nerve damage and paralysis in her legs without proper treatment, or that she may not ever have any other children again, or that the constant dampness causes rashes and blisters. The most disheartening thing of all is that the fistula repair surgery (with a success rate of 90%) is a mere $300–most cannot afford that much money or simply don’t have access to the treatment. As a result, fistulas are among the leading cause of death among those ages 15 to 19–70,000 adolescents die every single year because they are not physically ready for labor (ok, fine, so I threw out a few statistics for you).

• To read about Zegewhechu: http://www.pathfind.org/site/PageServer?pagename=Programs_Ethiopia_Stories_Zegewechu

•  The title of this entry is from http://endfistula.org

(I’d have a major guilt trip if I at least didn’t cite that). 

• Fistula video:

If obstetric fistulas aren’t devastating, then I don’t know what is.