Far from the madding crowd

Haven't had a proper relaxing summer for years now. The last one was probably my graduation trip to Phuket, where it was basically 5 days of sunbathing, drinking happy hour cocktails, and eating potato salad every day. And treating sunburns the size of the Sahara with copious amounts of blessed aloe vera.

This summer has probably the closest I've come to it, with about a month's worth of chilling in Hong Kong, punctuated with the bouts of community service and followed by xuexi hanyu. And now it's gone. And what looms ahead is a semester of what may be many sleepless nights. Noses against the grindstone now!

Now what?

I just realised I have 11 days left in Hong Kong. That flew by real fast, I can tell you. And I have no idea when I'm coming back.

What I have accomplished (list taken from previous post):
- Go to Japan
- Find a job More of an unpaid internship consisting of sitting around and doing menial tasks involving papers and leaflets.
- Get together with friends Semi-accomplished as there are still some friends I haven't seen yet and really want to
- Go shopping for cheap clothes --- Haven't really updated the wardrobe, actually.
- Learn how to drive --- Still in progress. Have not managed an entire lesson without stalling the damn car yet.
- See if I can still play the clarinet after a year of playing brass Sort of managed it, with very sore cheek muscles from playing 1812.
- Deliver that USC pennant to school (I can't imagine why they don't have one already) Also got to see that said school is kind of going downhill.
- Go to Colorado

I'm starting to think about changing the title of this blog. "Being Alive" sounds a little vague and overly optimistic compared to the often pessimistic posts I put up (one could argue the reverse, really). I have a feeling my next post is going to be a semi-rant about pre-marital sex and birth control (after seeing Heather's post), or something like that.

Wow...

I am 2 days away from the end of my freshman year.

Can't wait.

Dog days of summer

It's getting way too hot. And I say this as someone who comes from a semi-tropical urban island where humidity is usually at 90%. I'm surprised my school back home hasn't flooded yet, as far as I know.

Another reminder that summer is so near...yet so far.

I'm actually looking forward to having 3 months off school, as opposed to the 7 weeks or so that I've been getting since I was a kid. I will however be back in the US in August....spending about a week in Colorado, then back to LA to move in.

Fanfiction still has not been updated; if I don't get around to doing it before going home, I'll probably work on it when I'm back in Hong Kong since I probably won't have much else to do if I don't get the job I'm looking at. Except go out and get drunk legally, which loses its novelty after a while.

What I'm not looking forward to is the end when I have to pack up everything, fight off the dust bunnies when unplugging electronics, make sure nothing's left behind, find some place to store all the boxes before they're picked up, get everything moved out before my last exam, and then move myself out almost right afterwards without getting to say goodbye to everyone for the summer.

Take 5

So I'm in class right now at 8 in the morning, after a weekend of broken sleep cycles and walking against cancer. Which is still kind of wimpy compared to Strawberry-guy aka Matt and his 24 hour marathon.

Anyway, I'm writing this so I can stay marginally awake, as I don't know enough American history to skip this class altogether. Seip's cool, but so was Lamy, and even then I skipped his classes because I was too tired to pay attention.

1. Driving - In just over a month's time I'm going back home, and one of the first things I'm going to have to do (pretty much the day after I land) is take my written test, which I haven't even begun to study for. At least I'll finally be able to take lessons in a real car and not the useless simulator that they "allowed" me to use last time. The test in Hong Kong is a lot harder though, and my mum won't let me drive for a year so I'll have a clean record when I apply for insurance.

2. Cracked.com - Found this website though Digg, and it's pretty funny, although it's often pretty stupid as well, and some of the articles are made up.

3. Thinkgeek.com - I've been spending way too much money on this website. There's so many t-shirts, hoodies, gadgets, accessories, and caffeine-related products I want. Considering I'm kind of cash-strapped now, I'm going to have to go cold turkey until next semester. I'm still waiting for my recommendation so I can apply for an internship and possible earn some spending money.

4. CALPIRG - Bleh. I'm so out of here once this semester's over. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but I'm not getting much out of it. I know that's usually the case with public policy work, but I figured I needed out once I started dreading the weekly meetings and events.

5. Summer - This is going to be the first time where I get more than 2 months of summer. As far as I know, I plan to:
- Go to Japan
- Find a job
- Get together with friends
- Go shopping for cheap clothes
- Learn how to drive
- See if I can still play the clarinet after a year of playing brass
- Deliver that USC pennant to school (I can't imagine why they don't have one already)
- Go to Colorado
Yeah, that last part is going to take up the last month of summer, so I really only have about 2 months to do the rest.