Shouzer

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.

I’ve got a considerable bit of student loan debt. In addition to the federal loans I took out, I also had to get a number of private student loans to pay for school. I never gave much thought to it, because it was generally just what I had to do. I simply wouldn’t have had enough money for school otherwise.

Now it’s come time to try consolidate, as seems to be the norm. You hear these things all the time about how you can save hundreds of dollars a month by consolidating. My experience so far is that it’s little more than a lie. Federal loans aren’t an issue, but even then I’m not saving hundreds–try tens.

As for private loans, that’s an entirely different story. So far, it seems like the best consolidation loan I would be able to get would give me a higher interest rate than any of my existing loans. How does that make sense? They tried to convince me it was based on credit, but that’s obviously a lie, because so were my initial loans. And in the case of two them, the interest rate they’re offering is actually 2.5% higher. Not only that, but it would be over the course of 5 more years than what I’d currently be paying.

In short, I should have started a fucking bank. Making an automatic 160% percent on every dollar I give out? That’s not a bad deal at all. Yeah, that’s right. I give you $10, you give me $26. Booyah.

So, yes, I’m still alive and I still visit Shouzer and try to stay current on everyone’s happenings. Unfortunately school hasn’t been allowing me the time to post much. Luckily though I can actually take a bit to fix that.

I just finished my midterms this past Friday. That was the first thing, being in the sixth week of a 10-week quarter this fast was a wake up call in terms of time management and study habits. Having spent my whole life in semesters, this was a huge adjustment. Second, working has been kicking my ass and not in the fun way of long days in a busy ER with multiple traumas. Don’t worry Harlow, no more gruesome stories from me anymore.

I traded in fun in the ER for fun running a simulation lab for medical students and residents in the anesthesia program at Rush. It isn’t what I wanted to do–I really did want to work in an ER up here–but I had to take what I could get. I have learned more about anesthesia though by working in their simulation lab, and it has presented me with some great networking opportunities so I suppose it isn’t all that bad, right?

A few weeks ago I had a run in with the vacuum cleaner in the dark hallway of my apartment. It resulted in a fracture and dislocation. Thankfully, Al came over the next day and reduced my toe. I would have done it myself, but hey, it hurt like a bitch to touch so there was no way I could make myself do it. Al did great, and I have the satisfaction of knowing I was his first live patient he treated all on his own. Great job, Dr. Abalos! It’s healing well, by the way.

In some exciting non school/work news, I did do something entertaining last night. Scott and I went to see Kathy Griffin live at The Chicago Theatre. Her stand up was awesome! I don’t know if any of you watch her show on Bravo Kathy Griffin: My Life on the D-List, but I highly recommend it.

Kathy has been in the news a bit recently for her “controversial” Emmy acceptance speech. I think her speech is great and dead-on. Here’s a clip of it and her subsequent interview on Larry King, in which she goes on to explain the meaning of her speech…but that meaning apparently fell on deaf ears to some.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbziBwi489Q

As I said, her routine was excellent. I think anyone that can make a crowd laugh as much as she did last night for 1.5 hours straight through deserves major props. In my mind she isn’t on the D-List (and hasn’t been for some time, I might add). She has great sass and a rapid-fire wit and knows how to use it.

Hope everyone is doing well.  I’m outta here!

[Edit:] I’ve had a number of people point out that I accidentally wrote about PuzzzleCrack 2008 in this post as opposed to 2007. Feel free to mock my stupidity.

I’ve been rather silent lately, and I attribute that primarily to the fact that I’ve been legitimately busy for quite a while.  The one highlight from all this, though, was a successful running of PuzzleCrack 2008.

As you might recall, our team won last year, and so we took it over this year.  It ended up going very well, but it was extremely grueling.  Before the week started, I thought were were pretty much ready to go.  Boy, was I wrong.

We ended up staying up into the morning every day working on the next day’s puzzle.  I don’t know how much sleep we averaged, but it couldn’t have been much–I know we were all tired all day every day.  I still haven’t really “caught up” on my sleep yet, either, as I’ve been staying up late most of my nights back here working…

Since good ‘ol Albert posted some pics of his new place, I figured I should post some of mine. I can’t let some Philipino outdo me. And yes, Albert, that was racist. And yes, Albert, I misspelled Filipino on purpose.

Before we get started, I wanted to give you a disclaimer. This little mini-tour will be great–grand, even. However, it’s nothing compared to real life. That tour would be LEGEN…wait for it…and I hope you’re not lactose intolerant, because the second half of that word is DAIRY! LEGENDAY! Bee Tee Dub, if you’re not watching How I Met Your Mother yet, do it. It’s ridonk with hilarity. (No, I don’t really talk like that… How I Met Your Mother references abound).

So anyway, when you take your first step into the place, you’ll see part of my kitchen and my living room. Now, question. When is a futon mattress on the floor next to the end table with the laptop in front of the TV a good thing? Only always!

Over to the right is where I make my Macaroni And Cheese With Cut-up Hotdogs In It. It’s so good, it deserves capitals. That’s just how it rolls.

Through the door past that is bedroom number one. Since I have no furniture, it’s basically just a big floor where I throw all my clothes. Okay? Awesome.

It’s actually got two closets, which is great. The closet on the left is where I keep all my regular shirts and stuff. The closet on the right, behind the door, is where I keep all my nice clothes. Nice shirts, nice pants, awesome suit, ties, etc. All that’s important is it’s where I go when I need to suit up.

Through the door there is the master bathroom. Which, of course, implies that I have two bathrooms. Very nice.

Standing in the kitchen and facing what would left in respect to the first picture, we see a closet and a hallway. Nothing too fancy there. Just your standard closet and hallway, which is actually rather disappointing. If I’d built the place, there’d totally be trap doors or something right around this area. Totally.

Going into the hallway and turning left, we come to the other bathroom. It’ll definitely be nice having a pair of bathrooms once I actually move into the bedroom, I would think.

From that bathroom, we see the washer and dryer. They might look ordinary. And, in fact, the dryer actually is ordinary. This ordinary-ness (or even ordinarity, perhaps) is all the more upsetting when I consider the washing machine. It’s basically dead silent when it’s running. I’d never heard of such a thing, but it exists–not unlike the illustrious loch ness “creature”, Nessie. (We’re trying to get away from the term “monster”; Nessie is a gentle creature, very much unlike Sasquatch, which I think we should all be on alert for). Continuing on…

If we had turned right in the hallway, we’d be in the second bedroom. As you can see from the picture, this is going to be my office. I guess it’ll be my guest room, too. But mainly my office, hehe.

Finally, I decided to snap a closer pic of my desk. Since it’s the only real piece of furniture I have, I figured it deserved its own picture. The red computer on the left is named thewaiter, because it’s my file server. Get it? It serves up all my files. Genious? I thought so too. Kyle will know what I’m referring to, anyway. Next up, the Black Beauty in the center is jMoney. Mostly because it’s money. On the far right, we have an old HP that I bought from Kyle for $50. It’s my web server, svn server, hg server, and proxy server. Its name is WOPR… Anyone? Takers? Oh, and the bright blue router on the floor is home to jNet. It’s a badass D-Link DIR-655. That means gigabit lan and 802.11n wireless.

Well, that about wraps it up. I realized after I started writing this post that I didn’t take closer picture of the living room or the balcony. Maybe I’ll do that later, but probably not. I believe that’s my laziness kicking in. Oh, how I both love and hate my laziness.

I’d just been doing my thing for the last few weeks. You know, work, sleep, work, sleep, etc. But then all of a sudden, BAM! Megan, Corinne, and Jordy were all out here too. Sure, Jordy had been here all summer for an internship with Amazon, but ignore that fact. Facts are the devil’s favorite tools. “Who needs them?”, that’s what George Bush says.

Anyway, Megan came out here to visit, and Corinne had just finished her internship and was out to visit Jordy. Good times were sure to follow, and follow they did. We didn’t do anything particularly noteworthy, but it was still a blast. We saw Bourne and The Simpsons (both of which I really enjoyed), we ate out at a few nice places, we got drunk (read: I got drunk) and played some guitar hero one night. We generally just hung out. Oh, and Megan got her cook on. I hadn’t eaten a real meal in like 3 weeks, so I was all about that.

What’s funny about it, though, is that I’m not doing anything very different than I did all last week. Oh, I haven’t gone to any movies or eat out. I’ve just been sitting around watching tv (and three movies today, haha), but it’s more or less the same type of stuff. Regardless, it certainly is not the same. I imagine this could be considered pretty obvious, but I guess the point is that it’s nice having company, even if you’re all just sitting around together.

I’ve been in my permanent place for about a month now, and I still don’t really have any furniture. You walk in, and basically what you see is a TV, a mattress on the floor in front of the TV, a chair, and my laptop in front of the chair. That’s about all there to it. It makes for a pretty short tour.

The fact of the matter is that I haven’t been able to afford furniture yet. Rent, food, cable, internet, phone, gas, etc. It’s all just too expensive. I did manage to get a desk for my “office room” last week, but it’ll probably be a while before I get anything else. That’s in large part due to the fact that I plan on getting a nice TV at some point, but hey… You’ve gotta have your priorities straight. Who needs a bed frame when you’ve got a mattress and a 50″ TV? That’s the question I want an answer to.