Monthly Archives
Already : Hatachi Monthly Archives
procrastination pays Tuesday November 30
i sent in my jet application monday afternoon. it is due tomorrow. i love fedex, it arrived at 9:33am eastern time this morning. i even know that zaitsu-san signed for it.
now, we wait.
so, mark, now it doesn't look like you have any good excuses on why you're not doing your japanese speech for thursday. doh!
the final stretch Sunday November 28
this is the final stretch of my undergraduate education.
you may not be able to see the tears streaming down my face, or hear the wailing sobs i am offering. they exist only symbolically. the last tears i actually shed were at my grandmother's rememberance over thanksgiving break. even those had nothing to do with the loss of life, rather, the sadness of seeing the pain a separated family has endured. no one likes watching their mother cry.
no, my life has been much easier than my mother's. i appreciate everything she has done to keep "dysfunction", as she calls it, out of my life -- while never sheltering me from the reality of the world.
and the current reality is that the eager eighteen-year-old that packed up all of his belongings a fair three weeks before moving to allen hall in the summer of 2000 is a memory of the near past, and the life that he led has brought me to here. where i go from here will not be a disjunction in the course of my life; wherever i go my life continues on a path uninterrupted. yet place, time, and familiar faces will change, daily routines, concerns, and even possibly attitudes on life, politics, or social affairs -- those too will change.
much like that eager teenager who left home over four years ago, i am excited to move on. before, however, i had the comforts of my older brother, the comforts of a school system that guaranteed my life course for at least four years -- now i only have my own drive to lead me.
this offers a freedom that is hard to resist, it comes only at a literal cost: housing and feeding myself and my lifestyle. i believe that i have equipped myself well enough to be able to get by for now, although the long journey is far from over. i will never know as much as i want to know, i can at least die trying.
it's like my mother said, "do you want to be the only brother without a master's degree?"
what if i took it up a notch and pursued a doctorate? oh, man, that'd send nate running. all i can do for now, in this final stretch, is relax, enjoy champaign, and oh yeah, graduate.
doh Tuesday November 23
for years, i have failed in prioritizing even the most important things. really, everything, in the end, has been "all right".
this is also why, with my JET application due december 1st in washington, d.c., i left campus forgetting my passport (which i need to apply), and a certificate from the LAS office saying i'm graduating (which i need to apply). i'll get both of them, next monday, the 29th, and fed-ex the thing next-day so it arrives on the 30th, one day early.
if it's not girigiri, life's no fun.
asian turkey Sunday November 21
i had to title this entry "asian turkey". had to, had to. just reading the phrase makes me laugh. drag out all your cultural stereotypes of cone-hats in rice paddies, small eyes, and so on, and slap it on a butterball. tell me you're not going to laugh.
on to the story.
a few weeks ago richard and i were talking in japanese class about thanksgiving dinner. he lives with his girlfriend, hiromi, and she does all the cooking. all the time. and is tired of doing all the cooking. all the time. so she told richard that it was his responsibility to cook thanksgiving dinner for their friends, given that she doesn't know anything about "american" thanksgiving anyway.
i immediately offered richard help, for two reasons: it sounded like he needed the help, and it would be fun. wait, three reasons: then i'd get food, too.
fast-forward to today, when richard informed me at three that i was welcome for dinner at six. i asked if i should bring anything, to which he said no, and so i arrived empty-handed at six-fifteen (the bus schedule didn't line up) to find richard and hiromi standing in the kitchen staring at a raw turkey on an oven rack, trying to figure out how to cook it.
i was so hungry, so this wasn't the best thing to see. but we shoved it in and got started on mario kart and jenga. i also got started on ritz crackers and pringles, so all was well in the stomach department.
three hours later, we have a real beauty. and asian beauty?
i should stop.
the other roommates Friday November 19
for awhile i have said that i didn't get along with two of my roommates. what i should have said was, i never took the opportunity to get to know a couple of my roommates, and as such, i judged them as unfriendly. the chance factor also affected my opinion, but that was really only one of them.
the other, the sock-and-sandal wearing spanish older gentleman tomas, well, he's now won a place in my heart. this morning (and when i say morning, i mean two in the afternoon, plinko and i had a late night last night at merry ann's) he, bryan, and i talked about learning languages and travelling.
tomas has learned a lot of languages: spanish is his native one, he speaks french, english, albanian, and italian. like others i have known, he is obsessive about his language, and he will frequently stop conversation to say "how do you say?", only to offer the correct phrase. if he had a little more confidence, he would sound totally natural. however, his consciousness of wanting to be perfect stops him from being perfect.
sounds like a lesson to learn.
he also told me that one shouldn't waste one's life on languages. he is going to move from here to san diego, he said, and just chill out and make money and live out life. in short, his words were that the "world in your head, the learning languages world, is so contrasted with the real world, out there, you know?"
admittedly, i and others have in the past, and continue to escape from reality by studying other languages. surely, it's a hobby -- but for what? certainly, to talk to people from other countries; but tomas' point is that it can become an unhealthy obsession with no clear point.
that's what has happened to him, and at age 29 or so, he's finding that it's time to do something else.
yikes Wednesday November 17
as nate says, "sometimes you're the pigeon, sometimes you're the statue."
i, personally, don't have anything to complain about this week: i am healthy, i have caring friends, and my dogs and family still love me. life has its ups and downs, and i better be gettin' a big karma package out of this whole affair.
kidding.
i'll be returning to champaign this afternoon.
see you then?
isu never lets you down Saturday November 6
i took a last-minute jaunt to bloomington on friday night to see hairbanger's ball again. they've got a new lead singer now, so, that was interesting. i like the old guy better. really, though, hairbanger's isn't about the music. if it were, i wouldn't have bought earplugs (which actually made it an enjoyable listening experience, at 30dB attentuation). rather, it is about the people: why have a group of around 10 people decided that they will convene in downtown bloomington every time a loud 80s rock band plays? i don't know, but what i do know is that once you have that momentum, it would take a lot to break it.
we ended up at "the white house": a house on isu's campus that puts the ugliest property i've seen at uiuc in a good light. i cannot believe that six guys live in a house and share one bathroom and kitchen. there were dirty, wet socks on the floor of the bathroom. and hair. lots of hair. all of the carpet has stains, and the whole place has a funk. which makes it the perfect place to have people over: no one cares.
we stayed out until about 4, when sarah wanted to go home because she had to be up at 8 to be at work at 10. she has been working at jimmy john's for over two years, and that longevity brings pull. so i asked, "hey, can i come to work with you? i think it'd be fun." so she called her boss, who, despite wondering why the hell i would want to come in to work for free at a place i'm not employed at, told her that i could work if i wanted to.
why would i want to work so badly? simply, the ten people that come out to hairbangers are sarah's friends: her coworkers. working a menial basic-labor job (which i haven't done for some time) is so easy, that well, you can have a lot of fun while doing it if you're doing it with the right people. and just when i didn't think it could get any funnier, todd shows up in full jimmy john's attire. it was the best mid-morning/noon hour i've ever had, i think.
todd and i were rocking the front sandwich line for a good twenty minutes during a lunch rush. i know most of the menu now. the boss said (as he was there) that todd and i were the "best first-day employees" he'd ever had. i assume this is because we knew our opportunity for this was limited, so we wanted to make the best out it. i kinda miss food service sometimes.
it all goes to show: you can never know what's going to happen when you go to ISU on a friday night.
election potpourri Tuesday November 2
election 2004 predictions:
- every single blog pundit will attempt to avoid cliche. as such, they will skip the outcome analysis, leaving that to the television, and attempt satire. they will embody election rhetoric while avoiding the election itself. this combination will dispel ideas of political apathy while also passively boasting that they are organically involved in the neo-public opinion forum of the blogging community. as such, they will consider their input valuable, and they will believe that you should see it as valuable.
- the act of voting, while arguably the average american citizen's most legimate tool for public policy change, will be cast as not hip. unlike the usual concept that the winners write history, in the blogging community, it is the losers who will write the history. the winners will only write token posts to discuss the success of their supported campaign, and the losers will be left significant time to sorely discuss their loss. they will blame their failure on the only thing that they can: "the system". the base level of said system is the polling place, and thus voting will be recast as ineffective.
- canadian stock markets will see a higher volume when the election results are confirmed. many liberals have threatened to move to canada following the re-election of president bush; regardless of actuality, speculation on the population influx and the subsequent consumption will cause canadian market fluctuation.
- alcohol-serving establishments will post significant profits. drown your sorrows, celebrate your victories: everybody goes to the bottle.
- the major news networks will stage a faux coup immediately following the election. years ago, both networks mutually agreed to take partisan stances on a divided nation, thus guaranteeing themselves an equal -- but dedicated -- ratings share. when there are no more election-related stories to spin, the networks will be forced to align forces, use their collective reach into american homes to convince the nation that a coup is actually occurring, and redivide the nation. the coup will actually be occurring on a soundstage in burbank, california. naomi was already contracted to work set crew, it is her responsibility, among other things, to convince the local army-navy surplus store to lease the decorative tank sitting in the parking lot to her production team.
- marmite will continue to taste terrible to everyone except the britains and some former colonial possesions' citizens; as such, british food will still suck. tony blair will withdraw troops from iraq; he has stayed on board thus far because president bush has yet to make good on the promise of getting him, "one of those bloody texan hats, you know, like your american cowboys wear" in return for his war support.
- many, many people will receive an e-mail from grassroots internet organizations from the losing side thanking everyone for their support and effort over the last six months; that e-mail will ultimately try to mask the fact that such e-mails clogged inboxes asking for money for months with no results. also, the winning organizations will feel the sigh of relief thinking that they "did it", and no one will care about them anymore since their cause was championed. as such, grassroots internet organizations will take a hit; most will die out.
- male pop country artists will sing about being proud to be an american in a democratic system where everyone is free. lyrics will also likely mention pride about soldiers in iraq, and suggest that the "towelheads" are done for when they meet up with the boys in blue.
no more no less Monday November 1
listening to: collective soul - no more no less · piebald - haven't tried it · broken social scene - you forgot it in people
reading: some class book about transmigration between south china and the states in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries
feeling: floating
last night was megan's halloween party. i was told that it started at 8, so i showed up at 9, only to find everyone getting ready for a party that started at 10.
the decision to go as a hula girl was prompted by three things: seeing the picture of nate and schaffer in coconut bras with stacy from four years ago, the presence of two spare hula hoops at foellinger, and the lei that i brought home from that party in new york i went to with selene.
recently, i've really been pushing the pictures on this website. i've determined that people like pretty pictures, and words really don't mean anything to anyone other than me. it is also a cop-out -- it is easy to entertain you by documenting my life with my camera, but it is far more difficult to develop poignant, interesting posts. however, since i have succeeded in updating pictures far more frequently now, i shall continue this could-be renaisannce.
i said i feel like i'm floating. i lack plans. boston's job fair shook the resolve that sought to do the JET program: the driving motivations for JET are japanese cultural/linguistic immersion and money; these are things that i can acquire with a regular job in japan. naturally i am still applying to JET.
basically, i could go on for paragraphs about what i could do here and there, but the point is is that time is not slowing down; it's november 1st, and i still don't have a plan for what happens just a little more than a month from now when i graduate.
i know it'll all be all right. i'm just staring at it saying, "wow, this is the first time i can recall where i've got virtually unlimited possibilities for my whole life -- there is no 'next semester' or 'summer job' or anything grounding me anywhere. so given that -- where is the best place to go?"
i can't remember who said it now, but one of my favorites is by a woman who said that life isn't about the answers -- it's about the questions, and if you just keep living, appreciating the questions for their value as that and not worrying about the answers too much, you'll turn around one day well after it's relevant, and understand what you sought before, and that no one could have told you the answers: you would have lacked the capacity to understand them.
that idea, in much more coherent words, is on a magnet in the checkout line at whole foods near nate's apartment. nate, if you see it, make sure to get the author's name.
in other news, this is post number five hundred. yay.
