Shouzer

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.

Do you guys remember how I used to write travel blogs about all the places I visited? Man, those were the days, but now I’m insanely lazy. That, and frankly, detailing every instance of the trip just doesn’t seem as important as it used to. I’m not sure why. Luckily, on my last trip, I traveled with a friend, and she did all of that work for me. I’m actually pretty impressed with the writing; it’s pretty funny. I might be biased as I lived these events, but I think you’ll enjoy.

Penang

Kuala Lumpur

Since I came back from Thailand, most of my time has been consumed by my upcoming move to Detroit. Last weekend, I went up there with my parents to find a place to live. I ended up going with a place called Tree Tops apartments in Northville, MI. I have a 1 bedroom loft, which just means the the bedroom is upstairs and overlooks the living room downstairs. I have a nice view of a quite little stream, and a nice “historic” downtown area is about a 10 minute walk away. All-in-all, I’m pretty happy with it so far.

I’m not going to be doing a photographic tour like Jared did because I lack the camera equipment. So you’ll have to come visit me if you want to see it.

It turns out though, moving domestically is actually more of a hassle than moving internationally, at least for me. In Bangkok, I showed up, picked an apartment, and moved in over a weekend. It’s taken a lot more effort than that here. There was organizing the moving truck, connecting utilities, etc.

The rest of the time I’ve spent visiting my family. It’s pretty nice to catch up with them after being gone for so long. We had a big family dinner last night, and my mom cooked a traditional Christmas-style dinner since I missed that event this year. It was a nice time, even though I didn’t get any presents. The food was really good, better than I remember it usually being. I might have to cook turkey dinners every once in a while up in Detroit.

1. After the Bush administration, the country will have an extremely lopsided election with 100% of democrats and a fair amount of republicans and independents voting blue, no matter the candidate.

Recent evidence shows that I was far too hopeful, and I am still surprised. I thought most people wanted to stop losing lives in Iraq. I thought most people were being hurt by the economy. My assumptions must have been wrong. I now see that there are still many, many voters who want to stay in Iraq, and many, many voters who want the same leadership in the economy. I also thought that universal healthcare would be be a welcome matter, but here again, I was incorrect.

2. People who support Hillary Clinton are doing so because of her stance on issues.

This one is just as big of a surprise to me, because statement #2 is clearly false. If it were true, we would see every single HRC voter throwing his/her weight behind Barack Obama; as far as issues go, they are nearly in complete alignment. However, HRC supporters are taking stabs at Obama, threatening not to vote in the GE, and backing the stance “McCain in ’08, HRC in ’12″. Someone please explain this to me. It is utterly inconceivable. It’s like wanting a peanut butter and jelly sandwich with grape jelly, but you only have strawberry, and instead of eating the strawberry jelly, you eat peanut butter and mayonnaise until your mom gets back from the store in 4 years. It’s f–king fruit jelly, and you’ll probably never know the difference! Eat that sh-t, so you don’t have to swallow the mayonnaise!

Further, if HRC supporters think that Obama primary voters were sexist, what do they call not voting at all? Is it not also sexist to abstain from voting for a man because you favor a woman?

Someone explain these things to me…

Steve Jobs announced iPhone 3G.  It’s pretty well exactly what I was hoping for the last time around, too.  It’s thinner, slicker, has 3G support, built-in GPS, 3rd party app support, and enterprise support.  What more could you honestly hope for out of a phone?

A price cut, that’s what.  And, fortunately, that’s exactly what Apple’s delivered.  When I bought my iPhone a year ago, I paid $599 for that sucker.  The price for a 16gig iPhone 3G (twice the size of mine) is now a measly $299, fully half the price it cost a year ago.  For 8gigs?  $199, 1/3 of the cost less than a year ago.  Damn!