Shouzer

I had my advanced drivers training today that will allow me to drive on the proving grounds roads. It consisted of a lot of evasive driving techniques.

First, they put us in a high speed lane change situation. Basically, we had about 60 ft to change lanes at high speeds without touching the brakes. We’d drive down this little lane of cones with a wall of cones in front. The instructor would yell, “Left!” or “Right” and we would change to an unobstructed lane accordingly. It’s much harder than it sounds. The wall of cones is actually very close, and the car slides a bit when you change lanes. I actually lost control of it completely at 65 mph. It felt like the car was going to flip over.

We did a slalom course along with this test, but it was pretty uneventful.

Next was the low friction surface. They have a skid pad there that they spray with water to simulate ice and snow. We drove onto this skid pad and then immediately started sliding around. This was pretty fun. Basically, they were teaching us to regain control of a car with the back end fishtailing. My driving partner was pretty bad at this, unfortunately. I was in the back seat, and we did numerous donuts on this surface. The crazy part, though, was when the car returned to regular pavement and violently corrected itself. I was flying all over the place back there. Then, we did some ABS brake tests. They had us do 2 wheels on/2wheels off and then slam on the brakes. With no ABS, the car just spun like mad. With it, it was pretty well in a straight line. Lucky for me, my new car doesn’t have ABS, so I could be having some fun this winter.

The last test was stopping and maneuvering under a locked-brake condition. It was pretty bland compared to the other two. Nothing really worth writing about. We finished up by taking the car on and off the pavement at highway speeds to show what this is like in the real world.

Basically though, I had a blast doing this. I wish I could go out and do stuff like that every day.

In other news, I’m going to another meetup tonight. There are 13 people RSVPed to come. Hopefully more than one person will show up this time. I’d hate to be in another blind date type situation over dinner. That would far more awkward than the movie theater. On the other hand, it could result in a very good story.

Al came over to Motown last weekend to visit me. I’d have to say that I had a good time. It was nice having a visitor to hang out with.

On Friday night, we decided to go downtown to check out the awesomeness that is Detroit. I actually hadn’t been there since I was an intern 2 years ago so it was a bit of an experience for me as well. I printed off directions for the drive down there. We were to take I-96 to I-75, then get on I-375 before getting off downtown. We got to the exit for I-75 only to find that it no longer exists. They have completely closed I-96 and I-75 for a mile long stretch near the Canada border.

This would not have been such a big deal if they had bothered to properly guide us with detour signs. We were to take I-75 north, but when we got off the I-96, there were only signs for I-75 south to the left and forward. Al’s new GPS unit instructed us to detour through Canada, which just wasn’t an option as neither of us had our passports. I had to pull a u-turn right in front of the toll booths for the bridge to Canada. People weren’t too happy with me.

There was a guy standing there directing traffic or something. He gave us directions out of there, and Al’s GPS carried us the rest of the way. It was a nice little Friday night adventure.

I got to the office this morning, and the intern in my group told me he got access to the IM program we use at the office. I had been told that I could not get an account. I called the help desk for IT where I was moved around 3 times. I’m still waiting back for an answer.

I then recalled that the intern I was sitting next to yesterday at a training seminar told me she did her advanced driving class within a week of being hired on. I’m still waiting on that as well. Advanced driver training is required before you can use any vehicle on the grounds. It is usually supposed to be one of the most fun days of work in your life. They take you to a big, open area and teach you how to control a car under critical conditions (like low traction).

The kicker though, was that I calculated today that I actually made more money as an intern. Obviously, my salary was lower then, but they paid for my housing. If you take the money I pay for my housing and then add the taxes I pay on that money and add it to my inflation-adjusted internship salary, it’s actually about $200 than I make now. That’s a bit of a slap to the face to be honest.

To be fair, I live in a much better housing situation than I did then. I was sharing a 2 bedroom apartment with 3 other guys. The apartment I’m in now is a bit smaller, but I like it more. I also have it all to myself so I have loads of space. Actually, I still haven’t figured out to do with the extra space in my bedroom.

I just though you all would be amused by this new realization.

As of Wednesday, I was officially here in Washington working for a year.  In celebration of that (and getting my $600 tax rebate), I decided it was time to finally get some living room furniture.  Futon mattress, you’re just not cutting it anymore.

Megan and I headed down south of here to a place called Mor: Furniture For Less.  Get it?  It’s like you’re getting more furniture for less money.  Where do they come up with this stuff?  That’s what I wanna know.  Anyway, it turns out the place is literally across the street from IKEA, which surprised us a bit.  But, honestly, once we got inside, I realized the two stores target different audiences.

I was almost disappointed that we ended up finding something we liked enough to buy at Mor, because what that really meant is that Megan has never experienced an IKEA.  Even if you never end up buying anything from there, it’s still worth checking out at least once–in sheer size, it puts the average store to shame.

Anyway, we went ahead and bought a set consisting of a sofa, a love seat, a chair, and an ottoman.  Overall, it was a pretty good deal at $1400, especially considering we got no interest financing until 2012.  You can’t beat $35/month payments. 

On Saturday night, I woke up around 3am. There were some people coming back to the apartment complex, presumably from a night out partying. They weren’t really being that loud. It’s possible that I just woke up naturally.

At that same time, I heard some strange noises in my apartment. I have blinds that hang vertically on all of my windows, and all of the windows were open. It sounded like the wind was blowing the blinds downstairs, but there was no wind upstairs. That freaked me out a bit. I went down there, and the blinds were not moving. I couldn’t find what was making the noise. I went back to bed, figuring the noise had some association with the people coming back to the apartment.

This unexplainable noise honestly bothered me a fair bit. Enough so that it disturbed my dreams and sleep for the rest of the night. I wouldn’t say I was scared, but maybe that’s me just trying to sound manly.

The next morning, I woke up, and I moved my sleep train to the couch. I was lying there watching TV and dozing, when I heard the freaky noise again. I looked over, and I saw a squirrel on my porch, clawing at the screen door. He was trying to get into my apartment.

He ran around the porch for a while, generally looking pretty scared and frantic, and then he tried to claw his way in again, both the the glass door and the screen door. I thought he was stuck there. Maybe he had fallen off an overhanging branch, and he couldn’t get back down to the ground. After a few minutes though, he ran down the vertical column, escaping the imprisonment of my balcony. I was relieved because I didn’t want to call animal control over a menacing squirrel that gave me nightmares.

My beautiful, sexy MR2 Spyder is dead. I have had a horrible month with it since I came back from Thailand. It’s like she was mad at me for leaving for a year, or perhaps she felt betrayed because I started working for GM.

First, when I came home, the engine was misfiring. I had to get new spark plugs, a coil was shorted out, and the crankshaft sensor was bad. Then, I started feeling serious cutbacks in the power. It turned out that the inside of the catalytic converter rusted out, and the honeycomb structure fell apart, blocking airflow. I had to get a new catalytic converter, which was luckily under warranty. Finally, as I was driving back to Detroit after my short vacation to Herrin, the engine started knocking. I limped it to the nearest exit, and then towed it to a dealer. They found that I had somehow lost 3.5 qts of oil, out of 4 qts total, and I had a sheared a rod. I needed a new engine. I was not willing to pay for the repairs, so I’ve spent the last week looking for a new car.

Yesterday, I purchased a 2006 Saturn Ion. It’s only got 22k miles on it so it’s still under warranty for almost a year. Plus, the dealer does a lifetime powertrain warranty. This alleviates my worries about my engine melting down again. It’s also got a manual transmission, which I pretty much require in a car now. Here’s a pic:

The lesson I learned from that MR2 is that having a beautiful car really isn’t all its cracked up to be. I sort of forgot about how much I loved it until something really bad happened. It’s not like I got massive enjoyment out of my daily commute, and I rarely took it out on country roads for pleasure cruises. A week or two ago, a terrible human being of a woman in an Excursion backed into me in a Walmart parking lot. She later told her insurance that we backed into each other. That meant I was going to have to pay for the repairs. It was a minor scratch, but it was a big problem because much of the intrinsic value of my car was its looks. Yet, as I said, until that happened, I rarely derived any pleasure from the way it looked. Basically, I got no added benefit from it, but the bad stuff was magnified.

So I went the opposite direction with this car. It’s a stripped down, economy car. It’s about the most practical thing I could buy, which is about the polar opposite of my last car. We’ll see how it goes.

Kyle, this problem in my life plus the current lack of material has kept me from writing any Tales of Awkwardness this week. Now that I’ve gotten it sorted out, I’ll try to come up with something.

I went with my family to a Cardinals game tonight up in St. Louis. I’d say overall, it was a pretty good time even though the Mets won 11-1.

The game was rain delayed, so we stopped for dinner on the way, and showed up in the 2nd inning. When we got there, there was a lady in one of our seats. No big deal because she helped us clean the water off, and the seats on the other side were empty. She was down there to talk to her friends in the row behind. This became a problem for me.

She spent the next 5 inning turned around talking directly into my ear, and she was loud, very loud. I mean, she was almost shouting. I debated with myself on how to handle this situation. She was in one of our seats so it was within my rights to tell her to get out, but I’m non-confrontational. I’m scared to get into a fight with someone I don’t know.

As my previous stories here have demonstrated, I maintain a level of cool and social savvy in every imaginable situation. Never do I let things become awkward or uncomfortable. I am proud to say that I handled this with the same such grace and dignity. I turned to my sister and told her a story.

I went to a movie with mom and dad up in Detroit a few weeks ago. There was this couple sitting next to us that would not shut up through the entire movie. They were talking in their normal voices the whole time. Now, they weren’t doing anything as annoying as talking to their friends in the row behind us, but still, I had to tell them to shut up.

This didn’t really take care of things, so I pushed it a step further. I complained quite loudly that I was getting a headache from the ringing in my ears. That took care of it. The people behind us gathered that I was fed-up and suggested they switch seats with the other group in their party. I guess they had two sets of seats. It was a great day for the cause of passive aggressive, indirect confrontation. I’d like to say I’m proud of my accomplishment, but I’m actually a little ashamed of it. Mostly, because I still have no idea how I should have handled that situation.

I went over to Chicago earlier this week to visit Al and Nick, and I had a really good time. I showed up on Monday night, and had some Harold’s Chicken. That’s good stuff if you get the chance to try it. On Tuesday, I went to Gino’s and the Taste Festival with Al. We also saw Get Smart, which is really good movie by the way. Then, we met up with Nick to go to comedy show and dinner. The comedy show wasn’t too impressive, but the dinner was amazing. I was a little disappointed I didn’t get to meet Nick’s boyfriend, Scott, but he was busy. That’s how it goes sometimes I guess.

I’m visiting my parents and my sister now. They’re hosting a big party tomorrow for the 4th. That should be exciting.

My girlfriend and I decided to keep our relationship secret for quite a while. For me, I hate dealing with all the gossipy, stupid conversations like, “Ohhhhhh, you like . That’s so cute…” I just don’t like people prying into my personal life for the most part. To make matters worse, we didn’t know each other well when we started dating. I was worried things wouldn’t work out, and then I’d have to deal with the conversations about why it didn’t work. For her, there is a bit of a stigma for Thai women dating farangs (foreigners). Office romances in general just create awkwardness in general so it seemed like a good idea to keep it low key. Boy was I wrong.

About a month in, things were going pretty smoothly, and it didn’t matter too much to either of us if people found out. Her boss found out that she had a new boyfriend, but she wouldn’t tell him who. He wanted to meet this man so he promised to buy lunch for her, me, and the other girls in the finance department. I agreed to this. It didn’t seem like a big deal at the time.

As it happens, her boss won the lottery, and he wanted to use this money to purchase the lunch. Once again, it didn’t seem like a big deal. One of the girls from the HR department begged her way into the trip as well. So the girlfriend and the HR girl pick me up, and we head off to the restaurant.

When we walk into the restaurant, we are all equally shocked to find that her boss had invited a whole bunch of extra people. In addition to the finance department and the HR girl, he had also brought along another member of upper management and about half a dozen TTs. Two of these TTs taught with me regularly. Of these people, 1 girl from finance and the HR girl were the only people that knew I was the new boyfriend. I think most of the people there didn’t even realize that my new girlfriend was bringing a date to this lunch. Did I mention I was the only white person there, and more importantly, the only one who didn’t speak Thai? I think you can guess the language of the conversation.

To say that I drew attention is a bit of an understatement. The TTs spent most of the meal trying not to stare. I actually caught one of my regulars staring at me, completely slack-jawed. I never actually had someone stare at me with her jaw on the floor, and I’ll be honest, it was a bit disconcerting. My regular TTs did little to help me out. I was expecting one of them to throw me a life line and start up a conversation. Not so much.

To make matters worse for me, I never really became comfortable dining in a formal Thai setting. The rules are essentially the same, but I obsess over these things more than I really should. I spent a lot of meal worrying that I about etiquette.

I later confronted my TTs about their lack of conversation during the meal. They claimed that they were too shocked to speak. All four of my TTs ganged up on me the day after, and we had the aforementioned dreaded gossipy conversation. It wasn’t actually that bad since we’d already been dating for a month. So on the upside, I manage to avoid that awkwardness.

I mentioned yesterday that I was going to try going to a meetup group in an attempt to make some new friends in the Detroit area. I went to my first meetup last night in my movie lovers club. There were about 4 people RSVPed yes to go to this movie, and I figured if I couldn’t find them, I could just watch the movie.

I left a little late, and the drive took a bit longer than I expected. I was driving entirely too fast trying to make it there on time. I finally get to this theater, and I can’t find a parking spot. I found a parking garage, and I had to drive to the very top of it to get a spot. I ran down 5 flights of stairs, practically pushing over this woman carrying her baby girl. I get there about 5 minutes after the scheduled meeting time, and there is no one at the meeting spot. I ran into the theater, and it was completely empty. I thought that I was late and everyone was already in there. Yeah, turns out a rushed for nothing.

So I walked back out to the meeting spot, and I saw a guy moving towards it. I went up and introduced myself. He was from the meetup group, and he seemed like a nice guy. I made small talk, and he gradually came out of his shell a bit. The guy basically didn’t stop talking after that. I realized about 10 minutes later that no one else was coming, and I was essentially on a blind man date with a 40ish librarian that I met on the internet. I pretty much freaked out at this point and shut down. I wasn’t interested enough in what this guy was saying to ask follow up questions, and I tend to close down when I am uncomfortable. This only led to make the situation more uncomfortable.

I was pretty relieved when the movie started. It was a French movie which was sold as a thriller. It was not thrilling, but it was interesting. I would say I enjoyed it. I calmed down a bit during the movie. I chatted with the dude for a bit after the show, and then we took off. Yeah, that was weird.

I’m not really sure if I should give this thing another chance. The movie club is having a BBQ type thing at some guy’s house this weekend. I’m definitely not going to risk doing that at someone’s house. I am in another meetup group that goes out to eat at international restaurants. They had 19 people RSVPed for their last meetup. I think I might try going to one of those. Surely more than one person will show up. That doesn’t mean it won’t be really weird though….

So,  my second year of grad school just started…a full week after my first year ended.  Talk about a crappy break.  It seems that lately all I see are the walls of Rush when I get here every morning around 6 am and leave by 6 pm.  Then its off to some building on UIC’s campus for another 2.5 hours of fun: MCAT prep.  The test date is quickly approaching, and I’m starting to get more nervous. 

I guess I can only blame myself for how things are right now.  I made all the decisions that got me where I am…it just really sucks.  And now I have to seriously buckle down and start thinking of my thesis and getting that ready to go.  Here’s the crappy part:  I’m given some dedicated research time during my second year, but it isn’t until April.  I am required to give my final defense sometime in May.  What does this mean?  It means I have to do the “exhaustive lit review,” design a protocol, give my preliminary defense (hopefully only once), collect my data, give my final defense (again, hopefully only once) and then write my final paper. 

Of the 7 other grad students in my program, I am the only one with research time scheduled in the final quarter.  Talk about drawing the short end of the stick.  So this means that while taking classes, doing my rotations in the clinical lab, working in the ICU and hopefully going on med school interviews, I also have to squeeze in time for research.  I didn’t even factor study time and me time in there.  Something tells me this is gonna be fun (yeah, right).

Hope everyone else is enjoying summertime.  Me….not so much.

This is the story I promised to write in my last post. I have been a bit hesitant to do it because it could open up a can of worms. I’m probably just being paranoid though so I’m going to go ahead and do it. This story takes place back in Thailand…

I used to take taxi money back to the finance department 3-4 times a week. Normally, the TTs handled this responsibility, but mine went directly home quite a bit. I was just trying to be nice, and frankly, it was easier than saving it in my wallet until the next time I saw them.

The finance office at Fun Language was in a little room about like a closet, and in it, sat 3 finance girls and an old man who ran the financial show. One day, I came in to drop off the taxi money as usual. The old man pointed to one of the girls that I never talked to and said, “She needs to speak to you.”
So I looked at and asked, “What do you need?”
She got very embarrassed and told me he was joking. I pretended to be confused, but inside, I was going, “ohhhhh.”

I kicked around the idea of asking her out for a week or so, but it just wasn’t feasible. The only time I saw her was in that office, and I did not have the stones to waltz in there and ask her out in front of all of those other people. To make matters worse, I didn’t even know her name, and I had been working there at least 6 months. I was past the point of being able to introduce myself without looking like an idiot. In hindsight, I see some better ways to approach the situation, but part of my charm is being completely inept. And by charm, I mean comedic value.

I sort of forgot about all of this. Life went on. I continued to teach, and I continued to go to the finance office and drop off money. There was little to no chatting going on when I went in there, and I always kept it brief.

A few months later, this TT comes to me and informs me that someone in the office is “impressed” with me. I honestly didn’t know who she was talking about. I thought of the girl in the finance office, but there were a few other possibilities as well. She was probably the strongest, though. I blew it off. What was I supposed to do, go around asking girls if they were impressed with me? I can see that conversation going smoothly.

A week or so later, this TT comes back and asks if I have figured it out. Of course, I haven’t. This time, she narrows it down to one of the 3 girls in the finance office, and she has a present from this admirer. It’s a Cadbury chocolate bar. I love chocolate. This was a strong move from the moderately secret admirer.

By this time, I knew it was her, and I had found out the names of all of the girls up there. (I went there often, and they all knew me. It was getting embarrassing to not know.) Once again, I have no idea how to proceed. I viewed this maneuver as a bit juvenile, and I didn’t see a good way to ask her out. The same problem stood in my way as before. I didn’t have the guts to walk in the finance closet and ask her out in front of her peers.

The TT came back to me again with another chocolate bar from the finance girl. I started to think about it, and I was attracted to this girl. I decided it wouldn’t be bad to give it a go with her, and her juvenile moves and opened up a route for me. I sent a note through the TT with my phone number on it. I felt like a 5th grader. A few hours later, she texted me. We started texting, and then I called her. We went out with the TT tagging along for moral support. That went pretty well, so we went out for ice cream at lunch one day during work. The relationship just sort of progressed from there. The finance girl’s name is Gun, and she became my girlfriend in that story in case you missed that.

I’m at then end of week 2 in my new Detroit home. As you might guess, I’m a little bored at work right now, and I’m filling the time by writing a post.

My new job looks like it will be pretty nice. I like my new coworkers, and the work seems like it will be interesting. I’m not doing so much right now. There’s about a 3 month sitting around period while you become integrated. One of my friends has a 3 month rule related to all new jobs/locations. You must suffer through 3 months of boredom before you become integrated in your new job and social scene.

Incidentally, this is one of my biggest incentives to stop my life of gallivanting around the world. It sucks starting over in a new place, and I don’t really want to keep doing that once a year. I feel pretty ready to settle down for a while and find a home. Hopefully, Michigan will fill that need.

So the important thing now is to attack the problem of boredom. I have joined a website called meetup.com in an attempt to make some new friends in my new city. It feels a bit like an online dating service except for friends, and that makes me feel a little pathetic. I’m giving it a go anyway. My first meet up is tonight. I joined a meet up group for movie lovers, and we’re going to a foreign film tonight at the Michigan Theater in Ann Arbor. Hopefully it will work out alright. I figure this one is pretty safe. Even if it falls through, I can watch the movie. I don’t mind going to movies by myself anyway, and this one looks pretty good.

I think I’m going to head over to Chicago early next week to visit Al and maybe Nick. Though this is the first time I’m mentioning to Nick. Will you be there, Nick? I have to wait for my car to get fixed first. It did not take well to sitting around for a year, and it’s been in the shop 2x since I came back. This time, it is getting a new exhaust system courtesy of my warranty.

I looked back over some old posts from when I first started traveling. I used to write much better stuff than I do now. I’m going to try to come up with some more stories to write about. I have one in mind now. I’ll probably get bored and write it after lunch. Stay tuned.

Mark Cuban has a good take on the economics of the internet video giants. The point of this post, though, is just to point you in the direction of Hulu.com because I think it’s gaining steam and getting better. You can say that you were a user before the fanboys come along. I was a beta-user. Booyah.

I’ve already completed one summer school class, an intercession course based around Bloom’s Taxonomy. Right now, I’m taking two more classes, and I’ll have another one start and end before summer is complete. That’s a total of four classes, three of which have already begun.

This might sound crazy, but it’s the truth. Each of those three classes has had a unique relationship with NBC’s The Office. I will list.

Class 1. The professor describes herself as being from “the Scranton, Pennsylvania area.”
Class 2. The inscription on the professor’s bookbag reads “Houghton-Mifflin.”
Class 3. The associate professor’s name is Michael Scott.

You cannot make this stuff up. It’s just too weird.