Category: Life in General

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Delicate Bonds

All right, I know my last post has been a while ago and I also didn’t give a resolution to my Vietnam trip, and for that, I apologize. I’ll add the last couple of days to the list of blogs that I need to write (Akon, for example).

I decided I wanted to try out an MMO after visiting my sister in college and seeing her play WOW.

Speaking of Akon, I was perusing the blog of someone I met there (a friend of a friend), and they do a lot of audio blogs. Many of the most recent ones are with friends of theirs, and many of the friends who guest star on this person’s blog are people whom they have met online. This got me thinking about my friend, Nightmaren, who seems to have about the same number of friends as me IRL, but has a fairly large number of online friends. Nightmaren met most of these (or maybe all of these?) friends through MMO games.Now, I’ve tried a couple before, but I never really was able to get into them much. It’s not because I dislike MMOs — on the contrary, I’ve been wanting to really get into one — it’s just that my circumstances have never been ideal for playing them. Such as slow internet and low computer specs. (How am I supposed to know where I am or where I’m going when the distance all looks the same because I have to put my graphics on the lowest possible settings?!)

In any case, what Nightmaren and their friend have in common is the fact that they’ve made some pretty strong friendships with people they’ve met online. Judging from posts on their respective blogs, some of these friendships are stronger than with people they’ve met outside of the interwebs . . . and I’m kinda jealous of that. I’ve always been an introverted person. I only keep in touch with one person from my life from before college, and that’s because she happens to be my best friend. My parents have always been overprotective of me, so in elementary school, I wasn’t often allowed to spend the night at other people’s houses or hang out with them after school. I wasn’t even allowed to play with the neighbor’s kids, though there weren’t any around my age, anyway. As I got older, I just kinda accepted this fact, so that by the time I got into high school, I had the mentality that I wouldn’t be keeping in touch with these people anyway, which led to me not socializing with classmates as much as I could have. (Or at all, really.) And I was right — I haven’t talked to the people I did become close friends with since we graduated. Of course, that might have been a self-fulfilling prophecy kind of situation. Some of you might think that I might’ve become this way because of my parents’ overprotectiveness, and maybe that’s somewhat true. But I’ve always kinda felt like I don’t belong when hanging out with a group of friends. foreveralone.jpg

Perfect-World-International
This was my second MMO experience, one that I started with Nightmaren during freshman year. Alas, my crappy graphics card kept me from playing it regularly.

I think I was lucky when I got to college. I managed to become really good friends with my boyfriend’s (at the time) roommates, and even after my boyfriend and I broke up, I still stayed friends with his roommates (which was probably really awkward for him). But even though we’re still close friends, I feel like I don’t really know them. The fact that I’m the only girl amongst them might have a part to play in it, but they’ve also spent a lot of time together without me. I admit that I sometimes feel out of place when I’m with them. But they’re also the only long-term friends I’ve made throughout my college career thus far — I haven’t even stayed friends with my own roommates, and we all got along rather well.

As an introvert, I value my alone time and am fine with having solid friendships with only a few people. However, I’ve always had this notion that it would be easier to make friends online since there’s no way to prejudge a person you meet aside from maybe their screen name or the way they type. I mentioned in another post that I spent a lot of time on Gaia Online during high school, but even there, I never made any long-lasting friends. My sister, who has played WOW since she was in college, met her fiance through WoW and has visited her WoW friends IRL. Nightmaren and their friend met IRL during Akon, and I remember Nightmaren mentioning that meeting IRL didn’t feel awkward at all. I want to experience that, but I’m always holding myself back, both online and IRL. I guess it’s kind of a self-perpetuating cycle. And I don’t know how to break out of it. Geez, I’m starting to make myself slightly depressed.

My sister and her fiance bought this for me as an early early early birthday present (to play with them), but I haven’t been able to play it because my laptop specs are too low.

At Akon, both Nightmaren and their friend felt liberated, or more at ease, and found it easy to strike up a conversation with random people because everyone was united by a common factor — the love of all things anime and manga. I’m sure many of the people at Akon felt that way. And while I admired the fact that there were so many people in one place for one thing, I wasn’t able to share in that relaxed atmosphere. Both Nightmaren and their friend see themselves as introverted, but easily struck up conversations with random people and maybe made new friends while at Akon. I know I’m more self-conscious than Nightmaren, and maybe that’s the issue. I mean, I even had a really hard time mustering up the courage to ask people if I could take pictures of them. Most of the pictures I got at Akon were from sneaking in and snapping a shot after someone else asked. I’m not quite sure where I’m going with this post anymore. I think I had planned it to be about MMOs and online friends, but now it’s warped into something more . . . reflective. In any case, judging by my progress in becoming more confident and less self-conscious, I may have to put “make a close online friend” on my bucket list.

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The Day I Did Girly Things

My first plate of food. I don’t know what I was thinking, either.
Today was pretty chill. We got to sleep in until 10:30 or so if we wanted, brunch scheduled for 10:45. I ended up waking at around 8 or 8:30 and not falling back asleep, so I wasted time on the internet, for the most part. Probably writing the blog that I had post-dated as being submitted Monday (since it was Tuesday here). The restaurant we ate at was another chain of the buffet place we had gone to last night, but apparently the nicest one out of the chains. It certainly seemed nicer. The first 30 minutes after arriving was spent being introduced to Theresa’s relatives and waiting for more to arrive. I think we had maybe 15-20 people total once everyone arrived. We probably started eating around 11 or 11:15, but we didn’t leave until 1:30 or so because the adults were enjoying their conversation too much. The food served was the same, for the most part, but the company was completely different. This time, we had a relative named Andy sit in our area of the table and talked to him the whole time. This guy was much better than last night’s egotistical maniac. He likes playing video games and said that he’s played a video game for pretty much 3 days straight without doing anything else but eating and crashing. He was also more humble and didn’t dominate the conversation — more our type of company. He even gave us the names of some good places to eat, but we ended up not going to them.
What my first plate looked like after I ate all the stuff on top. A majority of it was sushi.
After the first plate of various foods, I stuck to what I liked. The sushi, unfortunately, was not that appetizing. I really liked the fries and was surprised to see them in the first place. I liked the seasoning, and they were really crunchy, but it was weird because they were kinda hollow on the inside. I wasn’t very hungry after my first plate of food due to all the sushi. I think I visited the buffet maybe 2 more times, the last being my dessert stop. They had ice cream and a chocolate fondue fountain to top ice cream with melted chocolate. I found it to look better than it tasted, but the ice cream was definitely one of the better desserts. I think one of my favorite things was the freshly grilled pineapple — we’ve also had quite a few dishes that have pineapple in them, and I’ve taken a great liking to them.
The exfoliating coffee ground scrub felt good and smelled amazing.
After we finished eating, the adults decided to sit and talk and enjoy themselves, so we actually didn’t get back to the hotel until around 2. Theresa and Evan decided to walk around the old quarter by themselves, while Quan and I took naps. At around 6:30, Theresa and Evan got back; after that, Theresa and I went to a spa to get mani/pedis. Since this was my first time getting a mani/pedi, it took me a while to decide on what I wanted. The fact that the receptionist kept trying to up-sell us stuff didn’t help, either. Eventually, I settled on the spa pedicure with a complimentary French pedicure for my feet, and then a manicure with nail art for my hands. Theresa also got a spa pedicure, but got nail art on her feet and then a French manicure for her hands. Altogether, my stuff was about 440,000, which translates to $22 US dollars. The spa pedicure began with a cinnamon-water foot soak followed by coffee grounds exfoliating scrub. Afterwards, my legs (up to the knee) and feet were massaged for about 10-15 minutes. Unfortunately, I hadn’t shaved my legs for a few days, so my masseuse was surprised when she started on my legs, followed up by a suggestion that I get my legs waxed. I’m not too averse to trying out a waxing, but I felt like I’d already spent a good amount of money on myself, and we didn’t have time for that (we told Quan and Evan that we’d come back for dinner at 8).
My fancy nail art. It only cost 90k ($4.50) for all my nails. Painting the designs only took the manicurist 5-10 minutes to complete.
Throughout our appointment, we had one woman doing both mine and Theresa’s hands, and one person each doing our feet. They talked to each other in Vietnamese (which is apparently exactly what they do in the US) and occasionally tried talking to us. Only the receptionist new English really well, so we weren’t able to really converse with them. Most of the time, we just talked to each other. What surprised me is that sometimes our manicurist would respond to something the others said in a really soft-spoken (kind of muttering) way, but from what I remember, the others were able to hear her just fine. I was sitting maybe two feet away and with her facing me and could only barely hear her, so I was definitely impressed. By the time we were both done and all our nails were dry, it was approximately 8:15, so as soon as we paid, we high-tailed it back to the hotel to pick up the boys for dinner. The first place we tried was the night market, which I had been to last year. It was different from what I remembered — when I went, the streets were blocked off from traffic and merchandise tents were lined up along both the sides and the center of the streets. This time, only the sides of the streets were occupied by merchandise tents, and I assume that they only block off the streets for the weekends. In any case, once we saw that the food tents only had hot pot (it’s crazy how people will eat it in the heat of summer), we decided to go to Legend Beer.
Evan ordered a liter (I don’t remember what kind of beer he ordered), Theresa and Quan both got a half liter of the blonde beer, and I got a puny 300 ml.
Legend Beer is both a bar and and restaurant and was located only 5-10 minutes away from our hotel (on foot). We’d seen quite a few people drinking/eating there when driving past in taxis during other times of the day, so we figured it was probably a pretty good place. I don’t know about the others, but I was definitely disappointed. Theresa and I each ordered a plate of mi xao bo (stir fried noodles with beef), Quan ordered a plate of fried rice, and Evan got an appetizer plate of egg rolls (that ended up being the most expensive item!). The portions were nice, but the taste left something to be desired. Don’t even get me started on the beer. I don’t know what they put in that stuff, but it tasted pretty crappy. I didn’t even finish my 300 ml. After that huge disappointment, we decided to hunt for a bar to hang out at. The taxi driver first took us to this place that was on a boat, but it was too dark for us to see the boat, so we played it safe and asked him to take us elsewhere. I think it also helped once he found out that we just wanted to drink beer, not dance. He was kinda confused though, since most bars in Vietnam are part of restaurants. It was also around 11 PM by that time, and most restaurants were closed or closing. In spite of all that, our amazing taxi driver found us a small pub near the night market area.
This sign was sitting on a table in the pub . . . we were somewhat worried that someone would offer us pot.
When we first walked in, the place was blaring some alternative rock music. We could barely hear each other over the music, and I was surprised because you couldn’t hear the music from the street. Once we got our beers, we quickly headed outside and took over the two tables located by the door. Although it was hot, smelled like pee, and we got sticky from the humidity, we all agreed that this was better than sitting inside and not even being able to hear yourself think. We broke out our Phase 10 card game and sat outside until one of the employees called us inside, saying something about how the police would be patrolling soon and we couldn’t be outside drinking beer. Luckily, they turned down the music once we said that it was too loud, and they also let us have the small upstairs area (it had been occupied when we first got there). Now, I’m 5’3″ (or just shy of it) and even I couldn’t stand up straight in the upstairs area. So imagine how much trouble Quan and Evan had (especially Evan, who stands at a gigantic 6′ even). Of course, that was only a problem whenever we had to get up to use the restroom, which I thankfully only had to use once. I’m not sure exactly how long our phase 10 game took, but by the time we had finished, it was 2 AM and we were the only ones left in the pub. I’m pleased with the place we found; they had Ha Noi beer (which tasted infinitely better than whatever it was they made at Legend Beer) and some interestingly chill pot music. I also drank my two beers slowly enough to where I didn’t get all swollen and itchy from the alcohol.
Theresa barely clears the ceiling, and I think I’m an inch or two too tall, shockingly enough.
So here I am with another post-dated blog entry and a day behind (or is it two now)? Hopefully I can knock out yesterday and today (Wednesday and Thursday) in the next post, especially since Wednesday was mostly spent stuck in the van (again). Luckily, it’s the last long drive we have. I can’t believe we’re leaving Monday evening!
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Blogging is such a pain in the ass!

It appears that my cousin’s readers got confused as to who’s was whose posts whenever I posted on her blog (Return to the Motherland 2012), so from now on, I’ll be posting my stuff on here. I don’t know what blogger/blogspot looks like, but I thought that the author name would be listed somewhere near the title or at the bottom of a post, which would prevent such confusion. So I spent about an hour writing a blog post that continued from where I last left off, but when I tried to save the draft, the internet decided to be retarded and not actually save it. I clicked on “save draft”, the page it took me to was like, “Are you sure?” with a link that said “Please try again”, and then it takes me back to the edit post page with everything I had written gone. Needless to say, I am calling it quits and will probably not post again for a few days, at the least. WHAT A BITCH.
In the meantime, here’s a pretty picture taken from a gondola in Nha Trang to the VinPearl resort.
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Another Boring Text Blog. And I’m a Retard.

This’ll probably be a fairly short blog. We’re leaving Saigon in about 20 minutes and heading to Nha Trang, which is supposed to be a 9 hour trip. I’m currently working on a post for Return to the Motherland 2012, and I know my cousin, Theresa, is also currently writing a post for it, which she probably will publish before we leave. I’ll be publishing my post to Return to the Motherland 2012 after we get to the hotel at Nha Trang this evening. Or maybe tomorrow morning. So, my Samsung Captivate is advertised as a world phone. Of course, having received it through ATT, it was locked to only work with an ATT sim card. The past few days, I researched websites that would retrieve the unlock code for my phone, as well as android applications that advertise to do the same thing. I found a promising app, and since it was free, decided to try it first before paying a website $10 to give me the unlock code. Thursday afternoon, while fabric shopping, my aunt, Di Hoa (who is kind of a local and took us to the fabric shops), let me try her sim card in my phone to make sure it would work. When I tried the unlock application at that time, it didn’t appear to work. But I was determined to unlock my phone and asked her to get a Vietnamese pre-paid SIM card for me, anyway. I tried the app again with the new SIM, and once we got back to the apartment in the evening, I tried a few other apps. After seeing that none of the apps had worked, I decided to go ahead and get the unlock code through a website for $10. A few hours later, I had the unlock code. What was worrying me was that I wasn’t prompted to enter the unlock code after inserting the foreign SIM card. I searched google for a few hours to see if anyone else had the problem, but for the most part, everything I found was for something else. The rest of the night, I tried finding a way to enter the unlock code, or to even get the phone to register that there was a SIM card in it, since it had been saying “No SIM card. Emergency calls only” the whole time. Once we got back to the apartment after going out to drink after dinner, we all pretty much went to bed and passed out, including me. And then I had a night filled with dreams of me trying various ways as I tried to get my SIM to work. At 5:45, I woke up and started searching again, but from a different perspective. Before, I had been searching for why an unlock prompt would not show with a different SIM card. This morning, I searched for why a VN card might not work with a Samsung Captivate. Needless to say, that search wasn’t very fruitful, either. And then, the herp retardedness. When fiddling with the SIM cards (my ATT and the VN one), I had a sudden moment of revelation. I’D BEEN PUTTING THE CARDS IN BACKWARDS THE WHOLE TIME. I put in the VN SIM card, the correct way, and voila, I suddenly had cell service. And I didn’t even have to use my unlock code, so I guess one of those applications had worked. And now I have an unlock code, just in case. What’s really herp is that I’d put my ATT SIM in my phone the night before, while we’d been drinking, and it had shown the “No SIM card” on the lock screen. Somehow, it hadn’t registered that it should’ve detected my ATT SIM card. HERP DERP
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I think I might be mildly allergic to alcohol (or mildly intolerant)

Because when I drink, aside from the Asian blush, I also get mildly itchy and feel kinda swollen. And apparently no one else in the family has experienced this, from what I gather. I guess I’ll backtrack and start from the beginning, though I don’t think I’ll start with the flight. Theresa pretty much covered that part. I think. It’s hard to tell because we can’t view our blog from Vietnam, but can post just fine. After we landed and got out of the airport, we went to the apartment building we would be staying in while we are in Saigon. Our family knows the owners, so it’s easier to stay at the apartments rather than looking for a hotel. Once we got to the apartments and settled in, my cousins and I (and Evan) pretty much passed out, around 5 in the afternoon (5 in the morning central time). My cousins and Evan somehow slept until 5 the next morning, while I woke up around 12 or 1 and didn’t go back to sleep until 3, after having downloaded some books to read. It’s okay, I like my gift better, anyway! The gift for my sister, which I accidentally opened. The next morning, I also got up at 5, and my aunt on my dad’s side, Co Hoa, was visiting from the country with her oldest daughter, who goes to a university in Saigon. They had an ao dai and a suit for my parents, which I think my parents had asked to be made for them. Co Hoa also had a jacket made for me, using measurements they had taken while I was in Vietnam last year; this surprised me, as I didn’t expect to be receiving anything and just thought I would be giving them the candy and medicine my parents had sent with me to give to her family. I was pretty touched, especially when my cousin gave me two small boxes that were gifts for my sister and me, from her two younger sisters. We had spent an extended amount of time with them last year, compared to all the other places we had visited. After my aunt left to return to her home in the country, my cousins and I were all left to do whatever we wanted. We spent a good 2 or 3 hours just sitting around, getting caught up with things we’d missed during our flight to VN, as well as looking for tourist-y things to do in the city. We eventually decided on a war memorial museum, which we went to after lunch. The lunch was kinda disappointing, since the items Theresa and I had first wanted were not available. The three of us (Theresa, Evan, and me) ended up ordering the same thing, at the suggestion of the waiter. I think he was tired of waiting for us to look through the menu. The war museum was pretty interesting, but also was rather draining. As Theresa told me last night, for many of the pictures, you end up thinking of something like, “This could’ve been my mom or dad,” and for the photos showing the aftermath of agent orange, “This could’ve been me.” There were 3 floors in the museum, and after eavesdropping on a tour guide when we first entered, we went to the 3rd floor to start. That was where the majority of the photos were, and most of them had a caption. Even after picking and choosing captions to read, getting through that exhibit took a really long time. Personally, after leaving that exhibit, I didn’t have much interest in looking at the rest of the museum, probably because the rest was more historical, and not so personal. By this time, we were pretty exhausted from the walking around and lingering jetlag, so we took a taxi back to our apartment and “took a nap” around 5. My cousins got up earlier than I did and went to have some coffee with a third cousin of ours, but I chose to sleep longer and didn’t wake up until 9, after they had gotten back and woken me up to go eat dinner. This part of our day was kinda a bust. Apparently, the address we had gotten from the internet for the restaurant was completely wrong, and actually had two different streets in the name. The taxi driver took us to both streets, but we suspect that he took us in a huge circle when driving us to the second street. Saigon is separated into districts, and the place we ended up at was in the same district as our apartment. We found a barbecue place on the street to eat at, but only Theresa and I ate, as Evan and Quan were both full from meals earlier in the day. Theresa and I were both pretty surprised at how good the food was. It was sort of in the style of a Korean barbecue, where they bring you a plate of seasoned, raw meat, and you grill the meat yourself on the pot of coals. Oh, we also had some beer, which, as I stated at the beginning of the blog, affected me a lot. I suspect that part of it was due to being in a novel context, where the same amount of a drug (alcohol) as one had in their normal setting affects them much more when partaking of the drug in a new context. Or so my neuroscience knowledge tells me. In any case, 2 was enough to give me a good buzz and make me sleep at 12 once we got back. We had 2 plates of bbq, one plate of pork, and another plate of goat meat. Both were delicious, and I’m hoping we go back there to eat before leaving VN. The place we ate at had two dogs and two kittens, and it was really hard for me to not call them over to pet them. I probably would have, if it weren’t for Theresa, who said not to because they could have rabies. So I made myself content with taking pictures of them, though I only got pictures of the kittens, and not the puppies. So, I hear the plan for today is that we cousins are allowed to go about the city and do our own thing again, so we’re going to the Reunification Palace, and possibly another place if we have time. Quan is spending time with family on his dad’s side, but will be back in time to eat dinner and then go to the place we had planned to eat dinner at yesterday. Tomorrow, we’re leaving for another city, but will be back in Saigon on Tuesday. Thinking about it now, 3 weeks does really seem short. Having an apartment just for the cousins (rather than having to share with the adults) and being able to do things on our own definitely makes this trip more enjoyable than last summer’s. Seriously, Teresa, I think you’re missing out. I don’t even think it’s as hot as it was last year — the temperature the last few days has been mid-80’s, though still really humid. TL;DR? Well, whatever. Most of my posts are like this, anyway. SO GET USED TO IT. (Copy pasta’d from cousin’s blog, will add pictures later)
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Fail Vlog 5: I Think I’m Getting Better At This!

Herp — I meant that my sister and her fiance got D3 for me as an early BIRTHDAY present, not early Christmas present. Also, sorry about the dim lighting . . . that’s just how I usually keep my apartment, and I forgot to turn on another light to make the lighting better. And yes, I know that the last sip of hot chocolate I took in the video was timed absolutely horribly. (Wut, you mean that stopping in the middle of a sentence is inappropriate?!?) A couple of other plus points about bartending that I didn’t cover in the video: – I could use it as a fairly self-sustaining source of income should I need to use it as such. – It would help me further in becoming socially adept, which would help with med school applications and interactions with future patients. – I would get more interaction with customers as a bartender than as a server, which ties in with the previous point. – I would get paid more than if I were to be a server, which ties into the first point. – It could help me become more “well-rounded”, as opposed to if I were to try and get a job in the medical field as a scribe or something like that. I JUST WANT A JOB GAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH.
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Sleepy Thoughts

Cat hair

All over the place,

In my face

Why must I have allergies?

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Cat lounging

On the sill

A raven struts by

The hunter fumes

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When I Die

I want to be cremated. Unfortunately, my grandma passed away two weeks ago, and her funeral was this past weekend. I’m glad that she doesn’t have to suffer anymore, but it was really difficult to watch my parents, aunts, uncles, and grandpa have to deal with the pain of her loss. Most of my family wrote a piece about her for a memoir, and after reading through the rough copy last weekend, I wish I had been able to get to know her better. Most of my cousins also were in the same situation as me; the language barrier and my grandma’s quiet nature kept us from being able to bond with her over the years, but it’s easy to see how amazing she was through what my aunts and uncles had to say about her in the memoir. In junior high, my great grandma passed away, but I don’t really have any memories of her at all, and my memory of her funeral proceedings are very hazy. So it was pretty surprising to see the ceremonial/traditional funeral garments that my parents, aunts, and uncles wore . . . to be honest, it had a cult-ish Ku Klux Klan vibe since Asian cultures traditionally associate white with death and mourning. And the daughters of my grandma had a hood as part of their garment. Although my grandma passed away, it was nice to see that my family was also able to have fun, even on the same day of her burial. After her burial ceremony, our family went to a restaurant to eat, where we had reserved a private room. I’m not sure how other funerals are, but I think that the feast was probably also a way to celebrate her life. I suppose I should get back to my initial point. I want to be cremated when I die. My grandma had an open-casket viewing before the burial, and whoever prepared her body must’ve pulled back the skin on her face to make it more taught and “prettier”. They also put make-up on her, and the lipstick made her look completely unlike how I had seen her when she was alive. So I want to be cremated in order for people to be able to remember me the way they want to, not still and lifeless. Besides, I have this crazy notion that I’d arrange for my ashes to be split up into bottles for people to take away with them. Like party favors or something. So that they can scatter them on their next vacation. In any case, I’d want my funeral to be more of a celebration, but I guess funerals are for the living, not for the dead. Or so I’ve heard. I don’t know if anyone’s noticed, but there is a new sub-page under the “About the Authors” page. Phantasma is a fellow student who is starting to focus more on his interest in writing and drawing/art. I’m sure he’ll post his on introduction soon enough, but I figured I should go ahead and formally announce it in a post of my own. After all, this is my blog. Classes are officially over for me, and now it’s finals time. I only have two, and the first one isn’t until Friday, the 11th, so I have quite a bit of time to procrastinate study. However, what I’m worried about most at this point is my piano II class’s recital on Saturday. What with the funeral and the suspense with my grandma’s death, I hadn’t really put much effort into practicing my piece. It’s an etude, which is a piece “intended as an exercise or to demonstrate technical virtuosity” (dictionary.reference.com), and as such, a real pain in the ass to learn. I’m happy to say that I’ve seen a great amount of progress in the past couple of days and can get through the piece fairly easily. At least, I pretty much know the notes; it’s just getting my fingers to remember them by Saturday. If I don’t have it down by Saturday evening, I at least have a fall-back, and my professor already knows about this. But she’s given me her vote of confidence and seems to think that I’ll be able to have it together by Saturday, so I’m sure that’ll help boost my morale and all that jazz. I probably won’t publish another post ’til after finals, but at least then I’ll have time to make a vlog.For all my readers who are also students, good luck on finals! I just tried an epsom foot soak for the first time in my life, and it felt soooo good. Next step is to take an epsom salt bath.
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Fail Vlog 4: In Which I Apparently Don’t Have Any Self Control

So herp, I’m still working on finding a satisfactory camera setup for my vlogs; I’m seriously thinking about buying one of those mirrors that hair salons use (you know, to show you what the back of your head looks like) and setting it behind my camera so I can see what the heck I’m doing while vlogging and adapt accordingly.Until then, sorry when I try to show you stuff and you actually don’t really see it. And same goes for me being off-center for pretty much the entiiiiiree video.

So last night, my sister posted this on her facebook wall. We’ve kinda talked ourselves into wanting to do it, but given the fact that we’re way out of shape and probably pansies, we’re waiting ’til at least next year (probably October) to participate. However! We think we might volunteer at the one in Austin this October and see what it’s like. I think it sounds fun! Granted, a 10-12 mile obstacle course sounds really grueling . . . we’ll have a lot of work to do before we can consider ourselves ready for the challenge. Neither of us have done that kind of thing before, so we both figured that it’s something we want to try at least once in our lives.

Here’s a picture of the Konexi game where we were determined to use all 26 letters. What words can you find?

And this video makes me want to buy a used PS2 and DDR and be all awesome on it. (And it’s also actually pretty decent exercise!) He makes it look so easy! This guy is the creator of the Dead Fantasy series and works as an animator and choreographer for Rooster Teeth Productions, the company that makes Red vs. Blue. This video and this video were both made by Oum using mocap (Motion capture) technology, and Oum choreographs and performs the dances himself . . . So in short, I’m saying I’m jealous of his dancing abilities, haha. And it’s also pretty amusing to watch those videos and imagine him dancing to it.

So my piano II class had a recital yesterday (Sunday). I only played my duet piece because I didn’t like my Baroque piece enough to want to perform it for other people. Now, my partner and I had been practicing for weeks, and our performance of the piece was pretty solid. Apparently, I still get quite a bit of stage fright because I totally herped up big time while we performed our duet. One part, I’m not sure what messed me up, but I had to stop playing altogether for a few seconds. Another part, my left hand decided to skip a measure, and so I had to drop its part for a few seconds as well. I know I messed up somewhere else, but I can’t remember exactly what it was. And my hands started shaking halfway through the piece. Fuuuuuuu —

And I thought it would be easier/less stressful for me if it were a duet because I wouldn’t be up there by myself. I feel like I was even more nervous than if I had been performing alone, though I don’t know why that is. PUH. Whatever. Guess I’m not meant to be a performer.

Ionno what else I had planned on talking about so I’m going to end this vlog/blog now.

Sorry for having so many links in this post loooooolll. Was that title too long? Herpp.

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I Was Totally Gonna Post a Vlog/Blog Today

Edit: GOOD NEWS! Turns out that the campus police were just being super cautious and picked up my bike in order to prevent it from being stolen. I’ve already gone and picked it up from the police department, and all is well in the world. :D I’ll also try to put up the vlog/blog I had planned to post during the weekend by tonight. I hope everyone’s having as good a day as I am! But someone stole my bike. This means I have had a bike stolen from me TWICE in THREE months. See, I can get having a bike stolen from me once, especially since the first one was just sitting on the bike rack unlocked, but this time, I had LOCKED THE REAR TIRE TO THE FRAME. So lemme backtrack and give you the background. I had biked to the Jonsson Performance Hall at around 12 AM to practice piano on the nice Steinway, which took some sneaking about in itself, since all buildings are generally locked by this time at night. But there’s usually at least one way in, through one of the buildings, and with all the skywalks, entry into one of them pretty much equals entry into the rest of them. Anyway. Practicing in Jonsson Performance Hall. Towards the end of my practice session, around 1:30 or so, I hear noises outside of the hall, but since no one bothered me and I heard no talking, I just kept practicing and ignored the slight commotion. I leave the hall around 2:10 AM and see tables set up in front of the hall (as if in preparation for an event later in the day), which made me pause for a second while I tried to remember whether or not those were there when I first got to the hall. After concluding that they were set up during my practice, I leave the building through the wheelchair/handicap accessible door, which is where I had left my bike. AND IT WAS GONE. And I was liek, “WTF.” So then I walked around and checked all the nearby bike racks to make sure that it wasn’t on one of those, moved by someone who thought it would be a fun prank to take someone’s bike and place it elsewhere. I confined my search to the nearest buildings because, after all, the rear tire was locked to the frame, and I doubt a prankster would go through all the trouble of carrying a bike to a far-off bike rack. This also is likely the reason that allows me to eliminate the student population living on campus. And then we go back to the fact that someone had been in the building while I was practicing. Given that the buildings are locked and that tables were set-up, it was likely a maintenance person who had the keys and the task of setting up tables. Being a maintenance worker, this person most likely also had a pick-up truck. In addition, being a maintenance person, it wouldn’t be suspicious to see this person driving around on the campus at night, in between buildings where there aren’t any roads. Therefore, I conclude that a maintenance person stole my bike. Because they had a truck, they were able to just simply throw my bike into the bed and drive off to their house, where it would be simple to use bolt cutters or whatever to remove my bike lock. And then voila, new bike for child, wife, or self. Really. Why did it have to be mine. Technically, it’s not even mine. It’s my friend’s, who lent it to me after having purchased a fancy new bike. WHATEVERIDON’TCARE. Anyway, the vlog I was planning to post is already uploaded; I went to practice piano during the time it was uploading. So expect to have a vlog/blog in the next few days, if I can stop raging long enough to finish it. No wonder I have no faith in humanity. AND HAPPY EARTH DAY I GUESS.