Shouzer

Last weekend, I went on my biggest meetup yet. I went to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan with the camping and outdoors group. I have to be honest, I was pretty scared about going on a trip of that magnitude with a bunch of people I didn’t know, but I figured it was pretty similar to going diving or on a day tour or something.

I left after work Friday, carpooling with two people I met that afternoon. We stopped off in this cool little restaurant on the way up called Iva’s Chicken Dinners in Sterling Michigan. It was hillbilly classy, and I liked it a lot. It was nice to take in some culture on the trip.

We got to the cabin around 1am after getting lost a few times. One of the guys in the group had opened up his family cabin for us to stay it. It was a pretty nice place, though it didn’t have electricity and the toilet didn’t flush. I met all of the people I would spending the weekend with at that time, and I was way too tired to make much conversation. I was also pretty nervous too.

Saturday we went to Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore on Lake Superior. We hiked for a bit and went to the beach. Then, we took a boat ride to see the pictured rocks. Afterward, we went to this local restaurant called the Bear Trap to sample the local specialty, the pasty. Unfortunately, they were sold out. I ate one on Monday morning, though, so it’s ok.

Sunday was pretty much a lazy day. We chilled around the cabin and the river it was on, and took a brief trip to a fresh water spring which had crystal clear water. Then, we had a nice campfire in the evening.

Monday was just driving back home. Michigan opens the bridge between the UP and the lower part of the state on Labor day for people to walk across it. My car decided to go on home, but a few people from the group did the walk. I never did understand the novelty of walking across a bridge, but whatever.

The highlight of the weekend was easily the people I was with. They were an incredibly interesting and diverse bunch. I really enjoy meeting people outside the usual circle of engineers at GM.

When I moved here, I knew that making friends would be tough so I tried to look at the problem as an adventure. I would honestly say that it is a bigger challenge for me than learning to live in a foreign country. I have come to appreciate other people a lot more in this journey, though. I have found that almost everyone I meet has something interesting to say, and it is fun “exploring” them in conversation to learn more about their lives. I think I have also become much more sociable as well, but much of that change happened in Prague and Bangkok.

I still haven’t made a lot of friends here, but I am enjoying the process of finding them a lot more now.

I had some company up in Michigan last week. My sister was visiting during her vacation between finishing school and starting work. It was certainly nice to have someone to hang out with every night after work. I could probably get used to that.

We didn’t do too much exciting stuff except for eat out a lot. The highlight of that was probably The Melting Pot, which is a fondue restaurant. I had been wanting to go, and it’s not exactly the type of place you can go with the guys from work. We ended up going the night she got her test results as a celebration dinner. The cheese and the chocolate course were fairly new to me, but the main course seemed like a combination of a Korean BBQ and a hot pot. All of the food was delicious though.

On Saturday, we hit up the Woodward Dream Cruise, which is kind of a big classic car show. People cruise down this main road in Detroit, and there are little fairs all along the way. I was overwhelmed by the sheer number of classic cars there. It was very cool.

We also went over to Canada for a bit because it’s always nice to visit other countries. Windsor, the city just on the other side of the border, is a pretty boring place, unfortunately. They have a nice park down by the river though, and we just hung out there for a while.

The customs guard on the way back was the rudest I have ever encountered in my life, which I feel is saying a lot. This man was incensed by the very thought that we would want to visit Canada for the afternoon just to see it. He just couldn’t understand why we would want to go there just to hang out. Maybe he was trying to scare us into admitting we had crossed the border to pick up a stash of illegal prescription drugs. Maybe his wife decided she didn’t want to take his crap any more, and she left him that morning. Maybe he had to pee, and his break wasn’t for another hour. Maybe he was just a monster douche bag. All I know is, I never want to go across that border again.

Yesterday, I went to a meetup for the Detroit International Social club. This meetup was as good as the first one was bad. I was blown away by how enjoyable that experience was.

12 people showed up to this Indian restaurant for dinner. We were there for about 2.5 hours, and the conversation never really lagged for this entire time. The food at this place was really good as well. Most of the people that sat near me had never been to one of these events before, and no one really seemed to know each other. That probably helped in allowing me to join in the conversation because there wasn’t a set, core group of people. And it was so nice to talk about something besides engineering for a night.

I would say the biggest downside to this group is that they only meet every other week. The lack of a core group could get old after a while as well because it sounds like a different set of people show up ever time. Still, I’m really excited that this went so well. I will definitely go back to their next event.

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.

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. 

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.

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.

I had some visitors here last week–the first of a few this summer–which was a pretty good time.  My parents, my aunt Anita, my little sister Kyla, and both my dogs (Widget & Bluto) made the drive out here.  That’s no small task, either, as I believe the drive is something like 2000 miles.

Long story short, Rock Band fun was had by all.  :)  We also made an ill-fated attempt to go check out Mt. Rainier that basically involved us driving around staring at the clouds, haha.  One thing people like to say about this area is that it rains all the time, but that’s just not true.  Honestly, it really doesn’t rain that much, but it is cloudy damn near every day.

Anyway, I realized while they were here that my biggest “regret” (for lack of a better word) in living so far away from my family is missing my little sister grow up.  Realistically, I can’t expect to see her more than once or twice a year, and that’s pretty disappointing considering how much she’ll likely change between visits.  When I see her now, she’s always interested in what I’m doing and wanting to play games with me, but I’m sure it’s only a matter before all that starts to change.

I suppose for the time being about all I can do is try to head home for holidays and such as often as possible.

Well, I’m finally getting around to writing this post now. Sorry for the long absence. I’ve been terrible about keeping in touch the last few months. According to Juvers, it’s been two months since my last post, so I’ll start there.

The term ended at the end of February, and we’re on summer holidays now. I already miss my kids a lot, and I also miss the routine of going to my schools. Since then, I’ve been doing a wide assortment of things, including teaching holiday programs at schools, holiday club at the office, volunteer teaching, and teacher training. I suppose that’s all a bit boring though, so I’ll skip the details.

Last week was Song Kran, which is the Thai new year’s. They celebrate in a variety of ways, but the most fun is by having a nation-wide water fight. You walk down the street, and people just shoot you with water guns. I didn’t go anywhere special within Thailand for that, but I did get shot by some kids on my street. I guess you could say I enjoyed it.

I went to Malaysia and Singapore during the week I had off. During this trip, I visited Penang, Kuala Lumpur, Melaca, and Singapore. Penang is an island in the north of Malaysia. The highlight there was an Indian restaraunt which was highly authentic. KL is the capital of Malaysia, and the highlight there was the Petronas twin towers. They are featured in the movie Entrapment. Melaca was an old capital of Malaysia, and it had lots of historic stuff. Singapore was pretty cool, though it was insanely expensive. I was excited because they had Mt. Dew, and I have been craving it.

The big news, though, is that I will be starting work at GM, probably in July. I am going to be a controls integration engineer in a team working on the 6-speed transmission. Don’t ask what that means, because I don’t really know to be honest. I’m going to be in Milford, MI, which is just outside of Detroit. GM’s test facility is there. It’s called the Milford Proving Grounds.

I’m not sure when I’ll be coming home. It’s the million dollar question. I finish my contract here on May 30th, and I will leave Thailand shortly after that. I would like to go traveling for a month, but I don’t know if I’ll be able to afford it. I’m trying to find some work at a summer camp or something, but it doesn’t look promising.

One of the things that I sometimes overlook when asked what I miss about Champaign are the last two months (or so) of last school year when Jared, Al, and I played NBA2k7 nearly every night in my room. Though it will probably never come to mind as quickly as “the restaurants,” “living on my own,” or “Illini basketball,” those games we played were every bit as enjoyable. You see, Jared became a master of the “3 Team Trade” in Association Mode, and we wound up playing with a trio of Gilbert Arenas (Jared), LeBron James (me), and Amare Stoudemire (Al). The point of playing was not to win, but to maximize our winning margin. We started out with the goal of scoring 100 (a “hundystick”), but got to where it was disappointing if we didn’t have 100 by the end of the third. I don’t know if that sounds like fun to the reader, but that doesn’t matter. It was fun.

This post obviously means nothing to anyone but Jared and Al, but it was just on my mind. I was thinking about how the NBA playoffs were coming up, and how the Jazz might face the Suns in the first round, and how that would be an awesome series to watch with those guys and then follow it up with some 2k. We could probably try to play over Xbox Live, but it just wouldn’t be the same.

Anyway, I’m just saying I really liked doing that, and I’m not going to get to this year.

The roads are horrible here right now.  Not because they’re icy or anything like that–no, it doesn’t get that cold here.  :)  Actually, it’s because there’s just too many damn cars out there.  It usually takes me about 5 minutes to get home from work, which I personally really like.  Yesterday it took me 20.  Now, granted, that’s not actually that long.  On the other hand, it is 4x longer than usual.

Anyway, I’m getting ready to leave for a couple weeks.  It’s cool that I haven’t been working at MS for even six months yet, and I can already take a couple weeks off.  That’s how we roll, I suppose.  I think next year, though, I’ll have to stick around.  My building was dead quiet the last few days, and it’s probably the best time of the year to get some serious work done if you want to.