A Cinderella Story

I felt as though I should title this post something cliché like “So it begins” or “It begins anew” or something of that nature what with it being the first day of classes and all, but as we all know, I’m such an iconoclast. It makes me cool. It’s about 20 minutes past noon right now and a balmy 43 degrees (what happened to yesterday’s 60 degree weather?), and I’ve had one class so far. I had these gut instincts about the class that told me it was going to be about stupid telephony crap being vaguely referred to as “International Telecommunications”. I mean, I guess I should have guessed from the use of the word “telecommunications” as opposed to “media” or “programming” or something, but I was optimistically assuming that, due to what I considered an ambiguous title at the time, was a class that reflected the blurred lines represented by the department itself. But yeah, it’s about phones and crap instead of TV or even radio, so I’ll probably drop it. I was almost swayed by the professor; he seems cool. Also, and I didn’t realize this before now (since I was never actually required to take an intensive writing course but have taken like 5 anyways), but it’s an intensive writing course. Lots of annoying papers. Also, there were a couple potentially hot chicks and one chick that I know for sure is hot in the class. It’s hard to tell sometimes at the beginning of a new semester because the university actually instituted a policy a few years back requiring that hot chicks tone it down for the first couple days. There used to be a problem with guys feverishly dropping and adding classes based on sightings of hot chicks, and in the Drop/Add Incident of 2003, when the problem reached its apex, when thousands of male students attempted to drop/add hundreds of classes at the same time, the computers crashed and resulting erroneous nuclear missile strikes destroyed several small island nations. But they fixed it now.

So there’s class number one for Mondays (and Wednesdays), and it may end up being the one I drop. My next one is at like 5:30 or something, so I’ll make an update after that one, perhaps with a picture. Of something. Also, adding to the pile of crap to do in the future, I’m going to review bathrooms around campus. You know, for the kids, like.


**UPDATE: 4:30 PM**
After further consideration, I have decided to definitely drop the morning International Bullshit class. That way I won't have class until 5:45 on M/W. Score. I swear to god, if that fucking test credit doesn't hurry up and come through...I'm gonna be even more upset. Also, it would be nice if my JET confirmation letter came (along with an interview notice perhaps?). Looks like the evening's turning towards China Buffet later, which is a good thing because I'm hungry. Anywho, more later tonight after class, big number, 2 of the day, China Buffet, and constitutionals.

Let's get a handwax with that root canal.

Originally composed at an earlier date.

Lucky you, after a short jaunt in the frosty winter air, I’ve decided to turn over that new leaf for my blog starting tonight. Oh joy. So hear I am at 5:30 AM on the futon watching Cowboy Bebop (Pierrot le Fou episode), continuing the assault on my (shameless plug) 20-10 vision. I’ll have some beer reviews coming up soon with the remnants of the holiday; I have some Chimay, Samuel Smith’s, and Upland in the fridge for imminent consumption. For now, here’s the first photoblog entry.

Over the break, my mom wanted me to go to the dentist since I hadn’t been in like a year or so. We used to go to this one guy, but he pissed off my family, so we had to change dentists. I don’t really care either way; I couldn’t be bothered to go anywhere if I had to pay for it myself. But since my parents are good enough to help me out here, why not. Anyways, the new place the family goes to in Indy is a place called Dental Spa. It’s…odd. They sent me a bunch of “new customer information” crap back near Thanksgiving. The idea behind the place is to make dentist’s office visits more bearable by providing the amenities of a spa. For instance, the chairs you sit in for your exam/cleaning/whatever are massage chairs. You can have paraffin hand waxings. They offer you water or various fruit juices ALL THE TIME (and there are assorted flavors of NutriGrain bars in the lobby…for free!). There are flat panels above the chairs so you can watch the tube while they work on you, and they slap headphones on you so can even hear it. High tech. They have kind of art deco/spa-ish furnishings complete with an arm chair in each dental work area in case you bring a friend to your appointment. I’m serious. A couple of older women came in when I did for an appointment, and one of them sat there in the chair and they talked the whole time with each other and the staff (all women). Weird. Haha, I freaked them out in the lobby of the place cause when we got there it was just my mom and I, and there was Dr. Phil or something on the TV, so I flipped over to the BBC for Monty Python’s Flying Circus. That’s when the two ladies (yuppie, upper class looking women) came in to see a sketch featuring Michael Palin spoofing a French movie. They did not seem quite as amused as my mother and me (or at all). So anyways, they offer all this crap and more included with the bill for your dental work which, they claim, is no more expensive than any other office. Maybe true, I don’t know.

My experience there was pretty good; it’s definitely aimed towards chicks, but I made out pretty well. The assistant that initially took me back was pretty hot, personable, and recently married (get your mind out of the gutter). After about a lovely half hour taking x-rays and pics of my teeth, I waited for about 45 minutes to move on to the dental hygienist (not sure what the deal with the wait was; didn’t care). She was also quite good looking, marital status unknown. She was good at the teeth thing, but I think she lacks a decent grasp of geography, ecology, and other cultures. She asked me what I was studying at IU, and I told her Japanese and Telecom. She then demanded I write her name and say something (both) in Japanese. I said “明けましておめでとうございます”, and she said it sounded like Spanish. I wrote her name in katakana, and she looked at it and said “Wow, that all just looks foreign to me.” What insight. She also told me that her brother had been to Japan on some kind of tour (not necessarily a tour of duty, but like a tour of naval bases in foreign parts of the globe) in the navy. She couldn’t remember where he had gone, even after I mentioned a few cities/regions, though she said it was supposed to be considered the “New York City of (she thinks) Japan” (which is unarguably Tokyo, assuming we really were talking about Japan). At any rate, she told me her brother had gone to a bar where he drank the local (or apparently national) specialty drink, some kind of psychotropic and/or hallucinogenic snake venom that every bar in the country served. She couldn’t recall the name and scoffed when I had no idea what the hell she was carrying on about. Frankly, I think she had Japan mixed up with perhaps a country in Southeast Asia. Or Mexico. Or she’s crazy and made the whole thing up, but considering the proximity of my head to her chest for the better part of an hour while she is bent over my face with her fingers in my mouth, I decided to take the path of least resistance, watch TV, use the massage chair, and enjoy occasional collisions with her boobs.

Finally, like every dentist’s office (that can afford to hire dental hygienists), I saw the actual dentist for about 10 minutes when she popped in, looked in my mouth, poked my gums, and sanded an old filling without even introducing herself, all the while badgering the hygienist about her brother taking LSD or dropping acid (she came in on the tail end of our snake venom conversation). So that about wraps that up. All in all, it’s a weird place, but it does make the dentist’s office not as bad.

Update: Look forward to a first day of classes blog. Or something. Also soon, a review of Chimay beer.

I have a white psp from Japan. And other news.

Biggest news as of late of course: I got a white psp from J-land for my birthday. Well, to be more accurate, my mom asked me what I wanted for my birthday cause she could think of shite, then I ordered it online using her credit card. It's fantastic.

Also, I've decided to make some changes to the blog. By this I mean that I will actually be posting with some decent level of regularity, and I will be adding crap. Crap like pics. I've been playing around with the idea of a photoblog or even a (occassional) video blog, but these ideas are mainly aimed towards the future (i.e., once I'm in Japan and have interesting stuff to photograph and comment on). Coincidentally, a guy whose blog has somewhat recently captured my interest (thanks partially to recommendation from Nick) has changed the layout of his site (which is quite popular by the way, and deservedly so) and begun podcasting. Here's to Yongfook for trying something new (and succeeding at it; he's an entertaining fellow). So at any rate, check back for some new crap some time in the possibly near future. Or don't.

On a side note, I returned from the holidays at my parents house to find that my self-addressed, stamped envelope which I included with JET application has still not arrived to give me confirmation that they actually received the (humongous) thing. I'm going to look around for my FedEx stub tomorrow and see if I can check the tracking for that bastard just to make sure it actually made it there. They were pretty swift about getting Nick's confirmation to him, but I don't think Anthony got his yet. Maybe it's different depending on if you're applying for ALT or CIR (Nick applied for ALT, Anthony and I applied for CIR). Maybe they seperated the apps into piles of ALTs and CIRs and forgot to mail out the CIR confirmations. Maybe my application was never delivered. It'd be nice if crap went the way it was supposed to at least most of the time. But I can't be selfish here I guess; Martin Luther King, Jr. had a dream too, and his hasn't come true yet, so I'll get in line.

Yikes.

Finally, perhaps due to some measure of inspiration from surfing Yongfook all night, I'd like to start rating beer because I drink a lot of it. And not the crappy kinds. That's right, the ones that come in the big fancy bottles. So there. For the record, I do not consider myself a beer connoisseur, just a well-informed, better-judgement-than-you drinker. I mean cultured. Whatever. I have a lot of material to work with already since I was home for three weeks. My dad and I went to the fancy liquor store in Carmel (did anyone else hear Hamilton County got highest average income or some shit...again? psht) upwards of four times to get wine, beer, and spirits, and the total was always five digits (including decimals). I'm not bragging, but we like to get good shit, and lots of it.

Well I've written so much about what I am going to write about in the future (or some kind of alternate future in another dimension with weird versions of all of us) that I don't feel like writing anymore tonight. But cheer up, you have a lot to look forward to...assuming I don't forget/get too lazy to do this crap. Uh...I'm heading back to the psp.