wanderlust of the mind

I'M BAAAAAAAAAAACK!

2011-09-09T12:39:00.003-05:00

i haven't been updating my blog, but it's not from lack of ideas...i've actually had a couple posts in mind; i just haven't had time to write them. however, with our new payroll person (she actually stuck around for more than 2 days, AND she got attendance down in a day and a half, instead of 3 weeks! yayyyy!) picking up some of the slack, i may be able to have more free time and actually get off work at a decent time, which means that i may be able to write my new posts soon :)
keep your fingers crossed :D

Swallow Pills Like a....Boat???

2010-09-02T11:03:00.003-05:00

i was talking to my good friend goober, who shares with me a love for the teachings of a certain rev. dr. john piper, and more importantly the bestest, most awesomest person in the whole wide world EVAR, JC :D (and yes, i realize that was SO grammatically incorrect, but trying to describe Jesus makes me lose all control of my grammar, haha). anyway, we were discussing whether or not it was possible to photoshop clothes onto people because i felt like a creeper every time i was typing something in his chat window since his picture displayed some very expansive male-upper body/torso-nakedness. lest you think he's some weirdo, let me clarify; he and his cousin are on a boat in his picture. ok, so i guess the point of that tangent was to explain why i'm writing about boats, and to give a shout-out to goober :)

anyway, the title of this post is referencing the Lonely Island's song "Like a Boss," just in case anyone was wondering...(please excuse the language)

to give some background info, this gem of an exchange took place during dinner, after i was complaining to my mom about how i was having a hard time swallowing all the pills she packed for me. as a side note, my mom runs a pharmacy out of one of our lower cabinets; the entire cabinet is full of all kinds of vitamins and nutrient/supplements you could imagine, and she likes to pack a bunch of them for me to take at work. now, i learned how to swallow pills at an early age (i think 5) because i hated the way children's medicine tasted, so i'd like to think i'm pretty good at swallowing pills. however, my mom packs me 9823472959 pills to take, and i had only a little bit of juice left that day so i had to choke all those pills down with only one gulp of juice. my dear mazzer misunderstood though and thought i had problems swallowing pills in general, and this is the advice she gave me:

e*: oh my gosh, i had such a hard time swallowing all those pills at work today, umma!
m: nonono, you gotta swallow them like boat! you know?
e* and dad: ?_? errrr.....
m: it has to go down like boat! you know, BOAT! (i think she means you have to swallow it vertically, not horizontally)
d: what about a submarine? you can't swallow like submarine? hahaha
m: -_-;;;;

maybe it's only amusing to me, but i promise imagining my mom saying this in english with her korean accent will make is 287497414x better, hahaha

i'm feeling so out of it today (i think i'm getting sick) and can't think of a good way to wrap up this post, so i'm out...byeeeee!

My Mom is a Squirrel, My Dad is a Chipmunk, and I Am a Taco

2010-08-26T18:37:00.011-05:00

for the first time this week i've been able to get off work at 5:40-ish, so hooray for that!
i've fallen into a terrible habit of coming home, inhaling my dinner, then passing out for the night around 8:00 pm...i feel like people will yell at me and tell me i'm not fat, but weight concerns aside, this CANNOT be good for my health.

anyway, in celebration of coming home slightly earlier than usual, i am now updating my blog (also in hopes that blogging will keep me from falling asleep at 8). i'm actually supposed to be working on a flier for our church, but i can't seem to get the formatting right so i'm taking a break.

my mom is a squirrel. i have no doubt about that. if i were buddhist and believed in past lives (and also bet), i would bet my next paycheck that my mom had been a squirrel in her former life. seriously, when my mom "cleans" (which mostly consists of her shoving stuff into closets, boxes under beds, etc., but never, NEVER throwing anything out), things magically disappear into a black hole or something. when i (or sister/dad) ask her where she put it, her answer, without skipping a beat, is that she doesn't know. she cleaned it; how does she NOT know??

case in point (or point in case): my sister and i were trying to bake a cake for her friend andrew's birthday. well...by "my sister and i," i mean my sister did most of the work and i cracked 1 egg and crushed some oreos (hey, it takes skill to crush oreos that finely, ok?). and by "bake," i mean we bought cake mix from walmart at 11 pm, but i digress. anyway, we were almost done with decorating the cake so my sister was trying to look for her cake container/carrier thingy. however, when she went to where she THOUGHT it would be, lo and behold, my squirrel mother had meticulously hidden it away. we spent about half an hour looking for that thing, because it wasn't as if we could wake up our mom and ask her where she'd cleaned (hidden) it, and even if we could have, she would've just told us that she didn't know -_-;;
finally, after about 30 minutes, skimchi found it hidden away in the WAYYY back of one of the cabinets; i tell you, my mother is GOOD at hiding things. if you ever need to hide criminal evidence/treasure, my mother is the go-to woman (j/k, but not really, haha).

this week, my dad is a chipmunk. he, at the tender age of 50 (soon-to-be-51, in sept.) got his wisdom teeth removed on monday, and the swelling still hasn't gone away. he got a cool looking ice pack thingy from the dentist that wraps around his face like so:i seriously think i should have just gone to art school, like i wanted to do back in high school...

i've been a good daughter and trying to lift his spirits by telling him he looks like a chipmunk. or better yet, like a pokemon:actually, my mom looks kind of like this too...skimchi says it's our mom saying "야!" ("ya")

finally, this gem came from a most unexpected source: ian/ina/isabel. he basically equated me to a taco in our facebook chat today (this is not verbatim, but this is how i remember it):

i: you weren't on gchat!
i: i wanted to talk to you
i: so i was upset
e*: oh, sorry...i wasn't logged into my gmail
i: but then i had a taco for lunch and everything was okay :D

i don't know how you interpret this, but i take it to mean that my worth (to ian, anyway) is equal to that of a taco. i mean, look: no e*-->upset-->taco-->happy. in other words, his disappointment at not being able to talk to me on gchat was not just mitigated (which would have been bad enough), but completely reversed and replaced with happiness from a taco. that better have been a dang good taco, ian.

anyway, my dad is asking me why it's taking an hour to make a simple flier, so i must go...until my next post, adieu!

**UPDATE**
i stand corrected. ina has just i.med me on fb to tell me this:

i: you need to correct that equation
e*: how?
i: Taco > you
e*: -_-;;;

this chat IS verbatim...and there you have it, straight from the horse's mouth...

On Interviews

2010-08-22T00:23:00.003-05:00

if you have met me in real life, you will probably know that at times i can be very awkward and inarticulate. maybe this is why i feel sick when i'm offered an interview, rather than being happy like a normal, articulate person.

anyway, by some stroke of luck, someone from my church submitted my resume to a korean company called dongwon autoparts technology, LLC, and dongwon in turn called me to schedule an interview. now, i'm sure any rational, normal human being would have been happy to be asked for one, since it usually means the company/organization is considering you as a strong candidate, but me being who i am, just felt...well, BLEH. i know this sounds ungrateful, especially given the job market these days, but i really didn't want to go and i was annoyed that they wanted to interview me.

the day of the interview, my parents decided to drive me to the company's office/headquarters in georgia, partly for moral support and partly because i'm hopelessly bad with directions. my dad, being the rational person that he is, decides NOT to take directions given to us by the church person who very kindly submitted my resume, but rather decides he can kind of guesstimate his way there (for the record, he is even worse with roads and directions than i am -_-;;). so we're driving down this one-lane road (too small to be a highway...) going farther and farther into podunk, who-knows-where, and i'm starting to look like a little kid doing the pee-pee dance because it's getting closer and closer to 10 am, my scheduled interview time.

by some stroke of luck, we encounter a really big dongwon sign, so the three of us exclaim in happiness as my dad turns onto the narrow, gravel road. that's where it starts to go downhill. as he keeps driving, it becomes increasingly obvious that it's not the right place. rather than a big office building/factory that we were expecting, we're approaching a one-family home with no cars in the driveway and a dog tied up on the porch...we all think that's a little off, but this MUST be it, since they have a sign up, right?

as i'm getting out of the car, my dad tells me to call him when i'm done with my interview. NO JOKE, my dad was just going to drop me off, out in the middle of nowhere with ABSOLUTELY NO cell phone reception (gee, thanks, dad -_-); luckily, my mom yells at him and tells him they should just wait there...so i walk up to the front of the house and the dog starts jumping around, wagging its tail and generally going crazy, and i'm teetering in my heels trying to keep my dress clean from its muddy paws. i ring the doorbell but no one comes to the door right away so i start playing with the dog. after about 3 minutes of me doing this, all of a sudden my mom sticks her head out the window and starts yelling and waving frantically, saying that we're at the wrong place. what. the. heck.

we finally get to the RIGHT location, which is hidden away and DOES NOT HAVE A SIGN OUT FRONT, and at that point i'm already 10 minutes late for my interview. as i walk in, the guy at the front desk greets me and asks who i'm there to see, and i realize i have no idea who my interviewer is...talk about being unprepared >_<. i guess i looked so pitiful and confused that he decides to go and look for someone who could potentially be interviewing me.

fast forward 5 minutes, and i'm sitting in a room with two people, a korean man and a caucasian woman, and both are taking turns to ask me typical questions. to be honest, i don't feel like the interview is going too well because i'm too hung up on the fact that i was more than 10 minutes late for the interview to actually focus on anwering the questions well, and i feel like the korean-speaking part of the brain decided to take a vacation when i needed it the most; after all, they were looking for a bilingual person, and i had kind of exaggerated on my resume that i was fluent in korean (fluent conversationally, but when it comes to professional/academic settings, i lack the vocabulary to be completely fluent). they wrap up the interview after 15 minutes or so of me blundering through questions, and as i leave the building, i'm thinking how i totally would have been hired if it had been the dog interviewing me. seriously, that dog LOVED me and couldn't stop licking me :)

on our way back home, about 15 minutes after the interview was done, i get a call from the senior HR person (the woman who interviewed me), offering me a job as an HR assistant and telling me to come in next monday.

i guess the moral of this story is to give people hope, that even if you think your interview went terribly, you could still be offered the job (you are your own harshest critic, after all). i mean, come on...if i was offered a job after that ordeal, who's to say that you won't be hired as well? and last but not least, i'm trying to say that God works in mysterious ways...i mean, i wasn't really trying to look for a job (in fact, i wanted to enjoy my funemployment a little while longer), and i feel like under normal circumstances i would NOT have been offered a job, especially given my great first impression of being 15 minutes late and not knowing who my interview was scheduled with...but God is good, and i now have a job!

(sorry for the pseudo-narrative/prose style writing, my regular writing style will be resumed in my next post; i promise!)

HOTlanta, Here I Am!

2010-07-31T22:14:00.002-05:00

i guess i would apologize for my 4-month hiatus if i knew people were actually reading my blog, but since it's more for my own amusement than anything else, i'll forgo the apology. plus, if anyone DOES read this, it's probably because they know me, and they know i'm pretty irresponsible when it comes to frequent correspondence.

anyway, i am now done with my year of indentured servitude to the government/low-income community, and am now back in peachtree city. it's amazing how quickly a year went by, and even more amazing how much STUFF i had to give/throw away in order to pack my belongings into a '96 toyota camry. 5 years' worth of accumulated things/clothes/books is pretty hard to fit into just the trunk and half the back seat, but after donating 3.5 trash bags of clothes, selling 20 books to a used bookstore (half books, i shall miss thee, except for the fact that you only gave me $3 for 20 books, one of which was hardcover, fairly new, and only read once -_-), giving away a quarter of my stuff and throwing away the other quarter, i somehow managed to cram half of all my worldly possessions into my car.

now i'm sitting at home in my room, spending what will probably be the longest amount of time i've ever spent in it (at least a year, if not more), but i CANNOT seem to get it organized, or make it feel like it's really MY room. right now, i feel like i'm in a really REALLY messy 하숙방 or something (um...i'm not sure how to translate this to english...kind of like a boarding room in a boarding house, i guess?) since my clothes look like they exploded out of their trash bags onto my room floor. it doesn't help any that i don't have a functioning dresser at the moment -_-;;

so for the next couple weeks, i'm going be a bum and just freeload off my parents, and maybe take some time to do some navel-gazing to figure out what it is i want to do with my life...i took the LSAT last month (june), and although i did manage to score in the 80th percentile (look at me, tooting my own horn!), i'm not sure if the score is good enough to get me into the law schools i/my parents want me to attend...i guess right now my choices are to either study and retake the LSAT, if law school is what i want to do, find a real job, or...i don't know. find a rich husband who will take care of me as long as i bear him children? ok, scratch that last option; i probably set back feminism about 50 years, but hey, to each her own.

i feel like this post hasn't been nearly as amusing as my other posts, but i think it's because i'm separated from my muse...zammez has been supplying fodder for most of my previous posts, but now that he's in miami and i'm here, i guess we'll all have to wait until he visits for some more entertaining posts. that, or maybe my mom/sister (they're the best bets, since they tend to say ridiculous stuff from time to time...my dad just sings weird songs and makes up his own words to existing ones) will come up with a gem that i can then use for a blog post...so until the next one (who knows how many more months it'll be), adieu!

I am CLEARLY a Responsible, Adept Adult.

2010-03-30T15:04:00.004-05:00

the fact that i'm writing this blog post in my office at work is a testament to my claim in the title of this post. i haven't updated my blog in a while, so being the responsible, adept adult that i am, i will try to cram as many things as possible into this post to make up for the dearth of posts this past month.

have you ever had a conversation with a friend/family member/significant other/whomever that ended badly because you were being sarcastic/snarky, but it didn't translate well into chatting/texting/written exchange on the interwebz? i've always wondered about this because i tend to lean towards dry, sarcastic humor, but have had problems communicating this through writing. apparently, there's a solution for this. i present to you:

[!]

this may be old news to you, but i just recently found out that the symbol above denotes sarcasm. i don't know who came up with this, or how they decided that this signals to the reader that what they just read was sarcasm, but it's pretty great. for example: i have my 2nd diagnostic test tonight from 6-10; i'm so excited! [!] (maybe that wasn't such a great example after all. i'm a little distracted at the moment though, so forgive me).

moving on to other things, i got a new phone yesterday. i usually pride myself in being pretty tech savvy (my current job entails computer coding and website maintenance, for goodness sake), because my dad instilled in me a love for all technological gadgets, gizmos and doo-dads at an early age. however, with my new phone, i feel like an 80-year-old handling a netbook for the first time (or at least, it's how i imagine she would feel). i'm utterly confused by its numerous, unnecessary widgets that i cannot get rid of, and the way it organizes my contacts makes my head ache. luckily i've figured out how to call, text, and take pictures on it though, which is good because that's really all i need from my phone. i thought having a nice, brand new, touch screen phone would be cool (it just came out about 2 weeks ago), but so far i'm not seeing very many benefits and i almost prefer my old phone (i say "almost" because the keyboard wasn't working on my old phone, which was terrible since i text more than i talk).

on the topic of phones, when my mom sent me my new phone, she also included bags of various nuts and dried fruits. i've been eating them at work, which is why i have had to suppress my urge to say "om nom nom nom" every time i eat a walnut, because walnuts remind me of brains and i think they can only be eaten appropriately if accompanied by zombie noises. however, doing so would probably scare off chelsea, my officemate, so i have had to refrain. :(

yesterday, i bought flintstones sour gummy vitamins. i'm super excited for them (except i forgot to eat them this morning), and i've decided to be nice and share them with zammez. this just proves that i am a responsible adult (taking vitamins without being told to, and sharing? yup, definite adult-like behavior); never mind that they're sour gummy vitamins. they taste very yummy, and i had a hard time limiting myself to just 2 yesterday. i wonder what would happen if i ate the whole bottle...would i die from vitamin overdose?

this past weekend i had a dinner date with some of the lovely ladies of team asia. for some reason, i feel that the fact that i had a dinner date further proves my point that i am an adult.

sorry this post is such a hodge-podge, both subject-matter-wise and chronologically. but hey, if you could read this and stayed with me till the end, it means your brain is very agile and in tip-top shape. think of it this way: i'm doing you a favor by making you exercise your -walnut- (brain).

And the Results...

2010-03-03T10:58:00.006-06:00

i feel so much better now that i'm done with the diagnostic. the thought of taking that stupid test was wreaking havoc on my nervous/digestive system and interrupting my sleep schedule, but now it's over!

they say LSAT stands for Law School Admission Test, but it's more like the Long Sadistic Aggravating/Agonizing/any-other-negative-"A"-word-you-can-think-of Test if you ask me.

if you're wondering how i did, here's a screenshot of the analysis/score of the practice test i took online:

i'm only doing this because i know only like, 2 people actually read this, and i feel like my blog is a safe space. haha. anyway, i know it's really fuzzy, but this screenshot validates my belief that i'm just plain illogical. i mean, 9 correct out of 24? apparently kaplan calls this my "opportunity for improvement" rather than my weakness. whatever you say, kaplan.

what baffles me though, is the fact that i actually did better on the practice test (despite the fact that i was doing it at work while chatting with my bf on gchat) than i did on the diagnostic test, which was as close to the real testing situation as possible. wtf, right? anyhow, kaplan has a higher score guarantee, and i've heard that on average people get up to 10 points higher after taking a course at kaplan, so if i don't get at least a 166-169 i'm asking for my money back. haha.

Shameless Plug and Random Stuff

2010-03-01T13:02:00.004-06:00

i can't believe my 23rd birthday is coming up this friday...every year i get really excited during the days leading up to my birthday, but this year i feel NOTHING. does it mean that i've lost my inner-kid? maybe it's just because 23 isn't really a big deal. if anything, i'm waiting for my 25th birthday (as is my mother, but for a completely different reason; she wants me married by then -_-;;) just so i can say that i've been alive for a quarter of a century. due to my somewhat pessimistic, misanthropic, doom-and-gloom outlook on life and the world in general, i think that's a pretty commendable feat, and something worth celebrating. 23 years? meh, not so much.

anyway, the reason for this shamelss plug isn't to advertise that it's my birthday (well, actually, never mind, it kind of is), but to advertise the fact that rather than birthday gifts (although those are nice too), i'm asking friends and family to donate to a cause i support. i know not very many people actually read my blog, but i'm trying to advertise my birthday wish any way i can. i also know that many of my friends may not be too well off in the financial department, so although the facebook page may ask for $10, i'd be happy with whatever people can afford (i only donated $10 myself, so it'd be a bit silly of me to expect people to donate more).

on a related, but kind of random note, apparently the causes application on facebook thinks i'm nearing the century-mark:

maybe this is the reason i'm not excited about my birthday anymore (because i'm a jaded, tired, near-centenarian)?

now on a completely unrelated note, i start my LSAT classes tomorrow. it's just the diagnostic test tomorrow and not an actual class session, but i'm still excited. and by "excited" i mean "i have a herd of elephant ballerinas in my stomach and i feel like a little kid who gets so excited (s)he pukes." wish me luck!

Engrish Gems

2010-02-09T14:41:00.014-06:00

since i haven't really been blogging as of late (due to a drought in amusing blogging ideas), i have been compelled by one of my two very loyal readers (suma) to update my blog. i think i've fallen into a slump lately and i'm too lazy to come up with something entertaining, so i'm going to cheat and make this post about some engrish gems i found while pretending to do work.

ok, sign face

oh those confusing chinese...i'll take a glass of manicure, please. and by "manicure," i mean "moscato."

more from the confusing chinese...are there no regular hospital rooms?

and my love for poop is showcased once again. browntooth, anyone?

yup, pretty much sums up my life; i've got the hot basics covered.

Also, my new internet infatuations as of late: STFUmarrieds and postcards from yo momma.

"My Boyfriend is..." Part 2

2010-01-24T12:37:00.002-06:00

i am now convinced that my boyfriend is a coin mint. i have come to this conclusion using my very astute skills of observation and deduction (both of which are obviously my strong suits, haha). how, you ask? well...i've been noticing a trend where we'll be doing the most mundane of things, e.g. eating, sitting/talking, kissing (ew, i know), and all of a sudden we'll hear a coin drop from him. they show up in the most random places, like his arm, his leg, the underside of his foot, his butt, etc.

so far there have been about 4 pennies and a nickel produced, and i've been getting on his case about minting coins of more value so we can be rolling in the $$$ and never have any financial woes for the rest of our lives. apparently he can't, though, since he needs to eat and sleep more to level up in order to produce dimes, quarters and half-dollars. i've recently started cooking things out of a korean cookbook my mom sent to me about 3 months ago in hopes that he will start cranking out those gold sacagawea dollar coins (is it too much to hope for him producing bills??).

right now it's 9 cents and counting, but check back in a couple of years to see how much he's produced...

My Boyfriend is a Secret Agent

2010-01-12T16:08:00.002-06:00

i'm almost positive i'm sick. i ended up sleeping in until 8:04 yesterday, and made a last-minute decision not to go to work because i felt like crap. i ended up sleeping on-and-off for the rest of the morning and into mid-afternoon. i woke up around 2:30, but it wasn't until around 4 that i decided to go with zammez to his apartment complex's leasing office to figure out a solution to his current living situation/predicament (long story short his roommate/flatmate totally bailed on him, ran off with a bunch of money borrowed from various friends and gave his cell phone to zammez so we didn't really have a way of tracking him down...). the guy at the office told us that the best way would be to turn his keys in to the office by friday (i.e. move out) and set up a payment plan with the corporate accountants, and that hopefully he'd only be responsible for his half of the rent.

after meeting with the agent at the leasing office, we went to zammez's apartment to try to clean the place to facilitate an easy moving-out. this is no easy feat; in short, i feel like i need a full-body biohazard suit with a gas mask just to walk into the place, and i wouldn't be surprised if one of us contracted salmonella or e.coli just from breathing the air in the apartment. anyway, i go to clean off his desk, which is littered about with bottle caps, bottles, cans, and tons of paper.

that's when i found evidence which undoubtedly prove my boyfriend is a secret agent, a ninja, a fugitive from the law, or all of the above. he had 3 different bills addressed to his address, but to 3 different names: James Kong, James Quan, and James Kwon (which is supposedly the correct name, but now i'm not so sure...). what kind of normal person needs 3 different aliases? when i asked him about the bills, he just laughed it off and walked out of the room, which further fuel my suspicions that he's leading a double life that he's not telling me about, and i have now vowed that i will get to the bottom of this.

in other news, i'm making myself stay at work until 6 today, tomorrow and thursday in order to make up for my sick day yesterday, because i don't want to use up a valuable sick/vacation day. clearly this initiative is proving to be productive as i haven't been able to complete a single task my supervisor has left for me in his week-long absence, and i'm just sitting here blogging -_-;;

Blargh.

2010-01-08T14:59:00.003-06:00

i think i'm starting to come down with a cold or something, because my throat has been feeling scratchy and weird the past couple mornings. luckily my throat doesn't hurt thanks to the tonsilectomy i got about 2 years ago (the one that led to my near-death experience, *eye roll*), but i keep getting this bad feeling that i'm going to get sick and i'll have to miss work. apparently i only have 4? 3? and a half sick days left to use until july, so i really need to start being picky about how often/when i get sick, haha.

last night i took my first bubble bath in YEARS (i think the last one i took was when i was in middle school, maybe?), and i loved it. i got this raspberry sorbet bubble bath/shower gel/shampoo from philosophy on wednesday; it worked okay as a bubble bath although the bubbles weren't as numerous or as big as i would've liked, and it worked nicely as a shampoo/shower gel. i think it made my hair smell good, but i'm not sure since my hair is up in a ponytail right now and it's not long enough that i can bring a strand around the back of my head and sniff it. anyway, i digress.

i've signed up to take LSAT prep classes at kaplan in march, and i feel like i've just signed my life away. the hefty price tag ($1,299) doesn't do much either to alleviate my feelings of apprehension.

this has probably got to be THE most disjointed, random post i've written so far, but i'm too lazy to come up with a theme for this post (more like i'm running out of ideas). maybe i just shouldn't have written at all, but i'm bored at work.

oh, and before i go, check this out.

Wikipedia

2010-01-07T10:58:00.004-06:00

i'm pretty sure the government would be extremely displeased to discover the disproportionate amount of time i spend traipsing through the cyberworld (barring many, many sites which have been blocked by WatchGuard at my work for various reasons, e.g. "shopping," "arts," "entertainment," "personals and dating," (i.e. facebook..sad face...) etc.) compared to the actual amount of time i spend working on automating court forms, since i basically signed away a year of my life and took an oath swearing that i would use this year (and the government's money) to help low-income communities. however, to my defense, i'm waiting for people to test the forms i have automated and offer me feedback, so i'm only going to waste time on the internet until i get back all the feedback i need.

some of my time is spent on MLIA, my mom is a fob, unrelated captions, and customers are always right looking at their updated posts, and for the past couple of days, updating my blog. however, there is a finite amount of time i can spend at these websites before i run out of new posts to look at, and so as of late i have been delving into the seemingly infinite depths of information that is wikipedia (although i was too lazy to do so for yesterday's post, haha). i seriously think i could spend months just reading through all the articles on wikipedia; now THAT would be a fun job to have.

here are the top 3 facts i found out from wikipedia today:

1) louis althusser was a crazy who strangled his wife to death.

ok, so there were probably many better, more sensitive and politically-correct ways to phrase that little tidbit of information, but i haven't really been known for my sensitivity or political correctness. if you (all 3 readers of my blog) have been offended, i apologize. anyway, getting back to the point...i think i remember hearing something about this in my literature in theoretical perspectives class last year, but i could just be making that up. in any case, it was pretty jarring to read about a pretty prominent (or wait, was he prominent? i feel like i know almost next to nothing about philosophy...) marxist philosopher strangling his wife. apparently he suffered from numerous bouts of mental instability, and he was probably going through one when this incident with his wife happened. i didn't need wikipedia to tell me he was crazy though; i knew it as soon as i read his hocus-pocus mumbo-jumbo about "interpellation" and "mis-recognition" and "ideological state apparatuses."

2) according to wikipedia, despite my denials, i am a hipster based on how i wear my scarf.

i've received a lot of flack from people because of my not-so-well-informed fashion purchase a couple of years ago. i thought it was just a cool looking black and white patterned scarf, but apparently i bought something that closely resembles a keffiyeh, with the coloring conjuring associations with the fatah movement. to be quite honest, i don't really have a stance regarding the whole Palestinian-Israeli conflict, but apparently there are many people around me who do and have given me a hard time for wearing a politically-incorrect/insensitive scarf. on a completely unrelated note (but still related, actually), i received a lot of crap from koreans when i wore said scarf in korea because a boy band (big bang) had popularized the scarf a couple months before my study abroad experience. koreans made fun of me for being a fangirl and wearing the "big bang scarf," and didn't even listen to my protests that i had, in fact, purchased this scarf long before i even knew who big bang was.

ANYWAY, according to wikipedia, i'm a hipster because (and i quote verbatim): "hipsters folded them in half to make a triangle, then gathered the scarf around the neck to leave one point facing down in the center of the chest." to my defense, i don't wear my scarf in this manner because i'm a hipster or a wannabe, but because i can't think of any other way to wear this particular scarf; if anything, rather than being a hipster i'm just unoriginal and too lazy to come up with another way to wear my scarf.

3) there is a plane that has pikachu painted on it.

apparently, all nippon airlines has three planes that have pikachu liveries. it is now one of my life goals to fly in one of these three airplanes.

taking "kawaii" to whole new heights.

Music Obsessions

2010-01-06T10:54:00.002-06:00

before i start with this post, i'd like to preface it with a disclaimer that i am NOT a hipster, not by any means. i'm actually quite indiscriminate when it comes to music; i used to jokingly call myself a "music whore" (this was before i realized how problematic this self-proclamation was).

anyway, getting back to the post. i've found myself listening to certain artists on repeat when i'm listening to my ipod. i'm also very bored at work, since i'm waiting for people to give me feedback on my forms. so, put two and two together and voila, you have a blog post. in no particular order:

1) marina and the diamonds
this lovely gal hails from wales, but is london-based. as far as i know, she only has a couple songs that have been (relatively) widely distributed, but hopefully she'll release her full-length debut album soon. i've fallen in love with all of her songs that i've heard so far, in part because of her interesting vocal stylizations and in part because of her lyrics. my favorites are "obsessions," "i am not a robot," and "seventeen."

2) alphabeat
i really should try to at least wikipedia all these artists i'm writing about, but i'm too lazy. all i know about this band is that they're danish, and i love the male/female harmonies in their songs. they have a pop-ish feel (not like bubblegum, but more like an 80's pop), and my favorite songs by them are probably "10,000 nights" and "fascination.

3) the bird and the bee
i'm not really sure how to classify this duo, but if i had to i would probably describe them as indie/synth pop flirting with twee. makes sense why i like them, given my long-lasting love affair with twee (5 years and counting; that's long for me...). i like the general electro-synth feel of their songs, juxtaposed with the girl's (i REALLY should wikipedia) soft, understated, breathy vocals. i do, however, have some qualms about listening to their song "love letter to japan" just because of the exoticization, generalization and appropriation that goes on in the song, but other than this minor glitch, i really like this duo.

4) shugo tokumaru
i fell hard for this guy back in late 2008, and my love for him still hasn't abated. i REALLY don't know how to classify his sound, but i think he and his music are adorable, and i love him. his album "exit" is the only album i've EVER downloaded off iTunes, and that's saying a lot since i'm usually cheap and obtain my music through more shady and surreptitious methods. i keep saying i want to get my hands on more of his music, but i've yet to do so...oh well, maybe i will once my year of being AmeriPoor is over.

New Year's Resolutions for 2010

2010-01-05T09:06:00.004-06:00

although we're a couple of days into the new year, i still find it hard to believe that 2009 has already come and gone. it's also weird to think that this time 2 years ago, i had a near-death experience, and i was preparing to go abroad to korea for half a year. i'm too lazy to do the whole requisite reflecting-back-on-the-year gig; to sum it up, 2009 was okay, but not without some major glitches along the road (a certain SZ sticks out like a sore thumb).
so i've never really been big into making new year's resolutions because i know i won't be able to keep them, but i thought this year i'd give it a try...so here goes nothing:

1) try to figure out what i want to do with my life.
i've bought myself a little bit of time by doing the whole AmeriCorps VISTA year-of-service thing, but i only have until july. granted, that's still 6 months away, but at the rate time has been flowing this past year, it'll come to an end all too soon and i don't want to be stuck having no idea what to with myself or my future.

2) get the heck out of minneSNOWta.
no offense, die-hard minnesotans, but i've never been a huge fan of minnesota. i only came here for college, and then ended up staying for completely the wrong reason (note to self: never base future plans off of one guy). i hate the bitter cold, and i only like snow in little doses. just from those two statements it's pretty obvious that i'm living in the wrong place. i don't know where i'll end up once my year of service is up, but you can bet it won't be in MN. also, the exorbitant amount of money i've had to pay to the city of st. paul in the past couple weeks has just hardened my determination to get out of here.

3) read more books.
ever since i started dating my (somewhat new) boyfriend, i started spending almost all of my waking hours with him and neglected my books. reading has always been a love of mine, and i think it's time to rekindle that love. plus i feel like i need to hurry up and read all the books peace has lent me, and i don't like the guilty/bad feeling i get when i look at my measly, neglected collection of books on my bookshelf.

4) exercise.
i can feel myself getting lazier and pudgier these days. now, before all 3 readers of my blog start yelling at me, saying that i'm not fat, let me offer up an explanation. i know i'm not fat, but it's becoming more and more of a struggle to pull up my jeans and button them. seeing as i only make about $790 a month after taxes, and $485 goes towards rent, ~$35 for utilities and ~$60 for gas for my car, that doesn't leave much money for me to go shopping. so, rather than try to scrape together money i don't have to buy new jeans, i've decided to take advantage of the fact that macalester offers alums access to its athletic facility for free for a year after said alumnus/alumna's graduation.

that's all i can think of for now, and it's probably just as well since i'll probably have a hard time keeping all 4 of those resolutions...
oh, and i dedicate this post to suma, who urged me to update through FB as i was in the midst of writing this post, haha

Plans for a Memoir/Semi-autobiographical Novel

2009-11-24T13:42:00.004-06:00

sometimes i wish i was a good writer so i could pen a semi-autobiographical novel or a memoir. everyone probably thinks this about themselves, but sometimes i really do think that some of the happenstances in my life would make great fodder for a novel/movie/drama (korean style, of course! haha). if only i could get it down on paper (or screen/monitor, since i would most likely type up this hypothetical manuscript), i feel like i could finally lay to rest my financial woes and live a comfortable life of sitting around at home reading whatever i wanted all day and every day. i mean, all the drama i experienced in just my college life alone could probably make an entertaining novella, but if you throw in my childhood, and maybe even my family history based on the oral history passed down to me from my paternal grandparents, you'd have a pretty interesting read.
alas (for me, but maybe luckily for you, dear reader), i realize that i haven't been bestowed with the gift for deftly manipulating words, and it's a little too early to start penning my memoir just yet. after all, i feel like i haven't achieved anything substantial that would be worth reading (other than somehow getting myself embroiled in drama constantly, consistently, continuously, etc.), and as of now i'm still waiting for the rest of my life to be written. at the (perhaps-not-so-) tender age of 22, i feel it's a little presumptuous of me to assume people will want to read about my life experiences and reflections, so the world will be spared my memoir/semi-autobiographical novel for now. however, until then, i am going to faithfully record events in my life, both extraordinary and mundane, through various outlets (this blog, my cyworld diary, my paper journal) in hopes that one day i will have enough experience, material, and talent to publish my own life story.

if you've somehow managed to read through all the rambling and reach this point, i commend you. bravo, reader, bravo.

Candid Shots: Top 8 Photos from my Cell Phone

2009-10-13T15:43:00.017-05:00

inspired by my dear friend suma, i have decided to treat my readers (all of two people, it seems) to a sampling of my awesome mobile photography skills. and by awesome, i mean low-quality, not very artistic, spur-of-the-moment-because-i-found-it-amusing shots.

in no particular order:

taken: dewitt wallace library, macalester college, st. paul, MN
why it's in my top 8: gandalf. guitar hero. totally random location. enough said.

taken: the lovely ms. setty's senior-year residence, on st. clair

why it's in my top 8: i thought it was supposed to say "fragile goods," so i thought this was hilarious. turns out (i think, if i remember correctly...correct me if i'm wrong, suma!) that the box actually was used for storing figurines of gods. hey, even gods are vulnerable...(i think i'm coming off on this blog as being very irreverent and blasphemous; i promise i'm not in real life, haha)

taken: 302 revolution drive, peachtree city, GA

why it's in my top 8: 2 reasons, really. #1- i miss my parents. #2- my mom is wearing a babushka, which ups this photo's awesome factor to the 23487235766th power.

taken: national press building, washington d.c.
why it's in my top 8: i took this on one of my excursions around our nation's great capital (this is somewhat tongue-in-cheek; facetiousness doesn't really translate well in blogging, does it?) when i went to D.C. to help plan/prepare/run the PowerShift 2009 conference. one of my errands on my first day there was to go to the national press building to distribute media advisories and press releases. now, if you know me in the least, you'll know that i have a HORRIBLE sense of direction, and although i had google mapped it beforehand i still managed to get lost (it wouldn't have been like me if i didn't!). after about 10 minutes of wandering and looking for people who looked nice enough to help me get my bearings straight, i fortuitiously stumbled in front of the aforementioned building (i feel like that happens a lot to me; i must be a lucky person). anyway, this photo is in my top 8 because: a) i'm proud that i found it all by myself (with a little help from google maps), b) partly to show off that i've been to the national press building, which is probably not a big deal to most people, but to me it is. am i totally exposing my provinciality or what? and c) for someone who lists photography as her interest and one-time passion, i sure took an awful shot. i couldn't even fit the entire sign in the frame, and if you guessed that that's my finger taking up a ridiculous amount of space in the bottom half of the shot, you're right. so clearly, by "awful" i actually mean "awesome.

taken: on the subway in good old new york, new york

why it's in my top 8: so this is where i get all sappy and cliche...although my sister and i are both horrible at keeping in touch, she's still my best friend and i miss her. it may sound cold, but friends come and go in my life; part of it is me moving around so much, and part of it is me being horrible at keeping in touch, but my sister will always be in my life. guess blood is thicker than water (that's a really weird saying, now that i think about it...who came up with it? vampires?).

taken: on my way to the ROK. i couldn't remember if this is an aerial view of the states, japan, or korea, but a look at the timestamp of the photo has led me to deduce that it must have been either korea or japan. ohh~~ technology (as my boyfriend always likes to say)

why it's in my top 8: i don't know if my love for korea is because there's just something about my motherland that speaks to the essential korean in me (as much as i try to shy away from essentialism, i don't know how else to describe this), or if it's because i'm a huge escapist and the half year i spent there was the best form of escapism. regardless of the reason why, i'm constantly nostalgic for a country i've only known in my toddlerhood and for a very brief time almost 2 years ago, so of course anything that has to do with korea would show up on this list.

taken: petco in peachtree city, GA
why it's in my top 8: please. take a look at the dog/quasi-human-child thing and tell me why it's in my top 8. he/she/it is wearing a freaking shirt and has little hair (fur?) clips in its hair (fur? ahhhh this is confusing me...). at first glance i thought it was a child, and then i did a major double-take because something looked so OFF about it. it freaks me out how quasi-human it looks...

taken: target in peachtree city, GA (actually in the same shopping complex/area as the petco above)
why it's in my top 8: if you know me pretty well, you know i love pugs. i think they're the cutest dogs ever; maybe it's because of a pug named Jjangu i knew when i lived in new york. when he'd do something bad, his owners would chastise him and tell him to go sit in his time-out corner and put his front paws up in the air (this is a common form of punishment in korean culture).

(something like this. bonus picture!)

it was endearing enough that jjangu would actually go to his corner and do this, but all the while (i kid you not) he would cry these huge crocodile tears and whimper; since then i've been in love with pugs. oh, and then there's my minor love of poop, as mentioned in my previous post, haha. pugs + poop = top 8 photo compilation material.

***(note: i actually started this post over a month ago, and i've finally finished it now (now being 11/21/2009)...speaks volumes about my productivity and motivation lately)***

Sticking it to The Man

2009-10-02T14:26:00.007-05:00

another productive day at work...i either need to sleep with the HotDocs manual under my pillow and hope i learn it inside, backwards, forwards and out through osmosis, or start insisting to people that the information i request is TIME SENSITIVE. i've been sitting around since 8:40 this morning, waiting for someone to get back to me on how to fix my footer in an expungement form. in the meantime, i have become a solitaire player extraordinaire; i have won about 35 games so far, 20 of which were under 2 minutes. on the one hand, i feel guilty because i'm being funded by the government to help the low-income community and fight poverty, not sit in my office and play solitaire. on the other hand, it's not my fault that i'm stuck on one part, and my supervisor has run out of things for me to do. plus it's awesome to think that government funding (and probably taxpayers' hard-earned money, oops) is helping me improve my speed-solitaire skills. you're welcome, america. on a completely unrelated note, i've had the thong song stuck in my head all day, and i've noticed that i play faster on solitaire when i'm singing the song in my head. don't ask.

i've noticed a trend where random people with legal issues somehow get MY extension number and ask me for legal advice. i have no idea how these people are directed to me, specifically, but it's kind of fun to listen to their stories. for instance, today i spoke to a poor, distraught man from minot, ND, by way of france. the first thing he asked me was if i spoke french, and i had to disappoint him by saying that i could only speak spanish, and very brokenly at that. i've always wanted to learn french (along with about 8 other languages), and i'd never wanted to be a polyglot more in my life than at that moment. anyhow, he explained his situation to me in his broken, heavily accented english, while i asked about 29384723 (probably stupid) questions because i couldn't really understand what he was saying. something about a green card and being stuck in france after visiting his sick mother and not having an address in the states because, and i quote verbatim, "napoleon has died." i was very confused and on the verge of laughter because he sounded so forlorn, and i thought it was ridiculous that this frenchman was mourning the death of a compatriot who died over 200 years ago and probably had no bearing on his inability to return to the states. turns out that "napoleon" was the friend he had been living with in the states, and his death was the reason why our frenchman couldn't return. oops, good thing i held in my laughter...i eventually had to forward him to another law org./firm, but for some reason talking to him made my day.

now i'm sitting here updating my blog, even though i'm pretty sure no one reads it. it gives me something to do, though, and since i'm typing away on my computer, everyone who walks by my office thinks i'm hard at work and putting those government dollars to good use. yay.

Google vs. Yahoo

2009-09-28T11:26:00.009-05:00

my supervisor isn't at work today, and i can't get any work done because i'm running into this weird glitch in HotDocs and no one on the listserv knows how to solve the problem. i probably shouldn't have come into work because i'm being just as productive here in the office as i would have been in my bed, but i didn't want to use up a sick/vacation day so i dragged myself in despite the chill outside (i hate how MN seems to skip over autumn, my favorite season, and go straight to winter).

anyway, i've been incredibly bored, so rather than writing letters or reading books, i've been spending my time reading MLIA in hopes of catching myself up by reading all 590-some pages (i'm at 149 right now). i've noticed a trend of people pitting google and yahoo against each other using the auto-suggestions each respective search engine comes up with when they enter random words or phrases, and they all report google coming out on top. i wanted to see if this reporting was accurate, so i decided to test it out myself. now, don't get me wrong; i'm definitely a google-fan and haven't used yahoo since about 8th grade, but for the sake of statistical honesty/accuracy (well, mostly boredom) i decided to sacrifice my precious time for the truth. here is what i found:

round 1
entry: "why is my..."
google: why is my poop green?
yahoo: why is my computer so slow?

for those of you who know me, it was a running joke among my friends that i had an affinity for poop. in reality, i (being immature) just like(d) the signifier rather than the signified, but i said "poop" and "poopsicle" so much that it prompted one of my friends to create a facebook group in my honor, called "esther hearts poop SOOOOOOOOO hard." it was funny, until random people i didn't know (or acquaintances who weren't in on the joke) started joining. however, the group was short-lived since someone, who remains a mystery even to this day (it really wasn't me!), reported the group and my friend received a very curt reprimand from facebook. luckily my/its legacy lives on in the kenyon chapter of the group, which still boasts a grand total of 6 members. this is pretty impressive, since i have never been to kenyon and i've only met 1 of the group members (said group member is the best friend of the friend who created the original group). anyway, there is a reason why i'm telling this story (although i do have a penchance for telling tangential stories that have no point), and the reason is this: purely for the mention of "poop," i have to side with google on this one.

verdict: google

round 2
entry: "meaning of life is..."
google: meaning of life is 42
yahoo: no suggestions

google not only wins by default, since yahoo couldn't even complete the auto-suggestion, but also because of the cryptic answer. what does that even mean? the meaning of life is 42...i'll be mulling over that for the next 20 years (by then i will be 42, and maybe i'll have an epiphany of what this means, and also what the meaning of life is).

verdict: google

round 3
entry: "bacon is..."
google: bacon is my enemy
yahoo: bacon is a vegetable

it was hard to decide who won this round, because both suggestions are equally ridiculous. my hypothesis is that google is used by people trying to eat healthy, while yahoo is used by bacon aficionados who are trying to justify that their love for bacon is healthy.

verdict: tie

round 4
entry: "help! my..."
google: help my girlfriend is a pregnant virgin
yahoo: help my family

i don't think i have to spell out for you who the winner of this round is (but i will anyway). either google is frequented by joseph, the surrogate father of Jesus (is this blasphemous? oops), or by poor gullible, foolish boys who have most likely been cuckolded.

verdict: google

round 5
entry: "hell is..."
google: hell is other people
yahoo: hell is real

once again, a tough choice. google's answer speaks to the hobbesian/misanthrope in me, who believes that people can be unbelievably cruel and that life in the state of nature is "nasty, brutish, and short." however, yahoo's answer appeals to my christian sensibilities and i fear that if i declare yahoo the loser, i will be sent to hell as punishment (if i'm not going there in a handbasket already).

verdict: tie

round 6
entry: "how to tell if your..."
google: how to tell if your cat is trying to kill you
yahoo: how to tell if your husband is cheating

while yahoo's suggestion may be more practical and have real-life implications, i like google's better purely on the grounds of my possession of a psycho kitten, and the fact that i don't have a husband. yes, i am that self-centered.

verdict: google

round 7
entry: "i like to..."
google: i like to tape my thumbs to my hands to see what it would be like to be a dinosaur
yahoo: i like to move it

as much as i like to move it, hands down, no questions asked, google wins. also, i think the auto-suggestion may be an homage to MLIA, so bonus points for that.

verdict: google

round 8
entry: "[respective search engine] is..."
google: google is going to take over the world
yahoo: yahoo is stupid

i can't tell if yahoo is being self-deprecating or if a lot of people just go to yahoo and type that in the search bar. if the latter case is true, what are they doing on yahoo in the first place? my extreme hunger right now is hindering my ability to hypothesize why this is...but yeah, google wins again. bravo for having ambitions, google.

verdict: google

i'm pretty anal about things, so i would have liked to continue to round 10, but in the interest of appeasing my extreme hunger and the fact that i have to leave in 10 minutes to get my food stamps (one of the perks of being an AmeriCorps VISTA?), i have decided to stop at 8. plus in sino-based culture, 8 is a lucky number :).

FINAL VERDICT: google-8, yahoo-2 (and not even full-fledged wins, at that)

i guess the MLIA-ers were onto something...google is more awesome than yahoo.

5 internet gems i stumbled upon today

2009-09-27T01:02:00.002-05:00

i seem to have a problem where i can't tear myself away from the computer, even though i have so many other things to keep me occupied. so, per usual, i was surfing the internet and through reading MLIA (bonus! thanks, michelle) i stumbled upon a couple of gems. in no particular order:

1. a site claiming to translate any word from english to parsel tongue. as soon as you enter in a word, it plays a sound recording of what is supposed to be that word in parseltongue. since i believe J.K. Rowling didn't pull a Tolkien and spend an epic amount of time developing her imaginary language, i don't know who actually took the time to develop these "words" and record them, but they must have been very bored. maybe i should start doing something similar, to stave off the ennui i feel these days. on a related note, if you google "how to speak parseltongue," one of the results leads you to a site where people discuss how to learn/speak parseltongue and actually communicate with snakes. i have no idea if these people are being serious, but i'd like to think they are because it makes me laugh (let's not mention the fact that i actually googled this).

2. the steampunk subculture. i can't remember how i stumbled upon this one, but i had been curious about it for a while. my first exposure came through playing vampire wars (omg, why am i such a geek?), because they have different steampunk fashion items to dress your avatar. anyway, somehow i ended up on the wikipedia page for steampunk, and after reading the article for it, i have to say that it seems like a pretty badass movement.

i totally want one of these!

3. cleverbot. i think i spent at least a good half hour discussing with this AI why life is so boring, and why it (he? she? do AIs transcend gender designation and all the signifiers that are inherently tied with the assignment of gender? sorry, my parenthetical thoughts are random and sometimes completely derail me from my original train of thought) dislikes eggs. i should have asked if it/he/she/all of the above meant "eggs" as in the embryonic state which we sometimes eat, or the character from true blood. either way, i'm curious why cleverbot dislikes eggs, but not enough to go back and ask. maybe when i'm bored at work tomorrow...

4. the language preference setting on facebook. did you know that if you go to settings and click on the language tab, you can change your language preferences to not only dozens and dozens of "real" languages, but also some unique and interesting ones such as esperanto (please don't hurt me, william shatner!), pirate (in english, of course), 1337 (leet, for you n00bz) speak, and so on? i had fun changing my language preferences to pirate and leet...under the pirate setting "mobile" becomes "pocket parrot." that just might have made my day.
- "t311 j00r m8z 7h47 F4c3b00k 15 1n l33t sp34k."

5. howmanyofme. have you ever wondered how many people in the u.s. share your name? well, fear not, because there is a website that reveals how many name twins you have in the u.s. it gives you statistics with your first name and last name separately, and then your full name. apparently, there are 255,222 people with the name "esther" in the states, 99.9% of whom are female. i am incredibly curious to find the poor .1% named "esther" who are male. i am also curious about how many of these esthers are either over the age of 70, korean/korean-american, or maybe even both. other than the somewhat narcissistic fun of looking up your own name, it's also fun to look up names of celebrities, or even fictional characters (i think harry potter was at the top of their list of most searched famous names).

in conclusion, i am a huge dork and a loser lost in the endless treasure trove that is the worldwide web. ok, time for sleep now.