|
SubscriptionsSites I Read
|
|
|
|
| Hi from South Korea!Hi everyone!
You wouldn't guess how many times I have started this over. Anyway, I am now in Jeon Ju and it's well not as good as Seoul was. Let me back up a little. Well I must say that the flight from New York to Japan was torturous. I just thought my mother was overreacting when she said that I might not be able to handle a thirteen hour flight but no this flight was pure torture. I couldn't sleep at all and I was stuck playing an impossible game of Snake. I swear they should put prisoners on a flight like that only playing that game. It would drive anyone crazy. So I wound up staying up a full forty-eight hours. But I did have some ample flirt time with a hot Korean guy. I couldn't even believe that he would even talk to me but he did! I guess that was my lucky summer fling it's not like my trip got any better than that. Then we had to go and do stuff for the night. I really wasn't feeling that.
But I must say, the cheese ramen that I had that night was delicious! They have these silverware chopsticks that I for some reason can't use. It's kinda funny. Just when I had learned how to use the wooden ones too.
Anyway, we were staying in a Co-op Residence. In other words a triple room in a hotel. That was interesting, I just enjoy the thought of sharing a room with two other people. Not to mention our room had no hot water at all. So once we found out that the cleaning people turned off our boiler... oh man.
Anyway I really did have a good time in Seoul. We saw palaces (the ones that theJapanese didn't burn), shopping centers and all sorts of things. I swear there are no traffic laws here though. Motorcycles ride on sidewalks, run red lights, and make illegal turns. I'm guessing that they follow the same rules as regular bikes... none and pedestrians have no say. They won't stop for you and they will beep at you to get out
of their way. They do however drive on the left (like us), all cars are stick shifts, and the biggest companies are Kia, Daewoo, and Hyundai. I swear Hyundai owns everything in Korea. They don't just make cars. They make everything from escalators to construction equipment. On the other hand Samsung and LG rule in the electronics
market there. Speaking of electronics, Koreans don't believe in either dryers or
airconditioning. So we hang our clothes out and open our windows.
Anyway, Seoul's like Saffron City in Pokemon. There are alleys, with shops, lots of walking and really great technology but here in Jeon Ju, there's nothing. It's very country with rice fields and one central shopping mart. I swear why do their cereals come with cleaning products like sponges and gloves? There's not much here actually to do. Our rooms are so plain and I swear the shower, sink, and toilet are basically the same. The shower is connected to the sink and when you turn the knob the shower sprays all over the room... I should take a picture and show it. I have to say I like rice alcohol quite a lot... heh again with me drinking... but it's legal here. My professors were pouring me shot after shot of Soju (rice whiskey about 20% proof) it's much stronger than Sake and yet I still can't get plastered. Oh well some day just once I want to be completely plastered. Anyway that's the abridged version of my life in Korea. I'm gonna leave it there and give you the update in July on the rest of my life in Korea.
By the way I gotta say that Japan Airlines is an awesome airline. I kinda like them better than Continental. They treat economy class just like first class.
Anyway,
annyonghi kyeseyo,
+vainya
| | |
| Where are you going with someone else's map?Hey everyone,
I must say this month has been a hectic month for me. Never really liked May for it's just an excuse for why we have to stay in school longer (with its one holiday and all). But really things have switched gears and I am no longer dreading May but instead waiting for it to come. School has ended and really I had my hopes up on not going to Japan with the rest of the Korean Project party. Hell, I really couldn't afford it at all. But then comes some relief. The person who I take notes for (as I may or may not have told you all I am a notetaker at he college) needed to take a class over and so I'm not out of a job after all. I talked to my professor and he said he had no problem lending me the money as long as I pay him back at some point. This makes things quite easy for me. So yeah I'm going to Japan. I'm currently making the money to get myself over there. At this rate I will have some money to spare. So I am very hyped about that. I just got my plane tickets and itinerary and stuff and I just can't wait to go! Kinda mad though about the plane ride rules. No laptops or electronic games allowed on. Looks like I better bring along lots of manga. Hopefully I'll have a little of the Fruits Basket series, I'll have The Twelve Kingdoms book and maybe a story or two from Ryunosuke Akutagawa which is my new favorite author. I will be riding for about 14 hours so yeah... that's a long time.
I have been ending up at my best friend's house who happens to be a guy much more often because he now has a Wii. It sounds kind of harsh but we genuinely do have a good time. I went to go see Death Note the live action movie with him recently. Must say I had a blast! Didn't really care for the dubbed-ness of the movie but whatever. We wound up getting lost after the movie and well... I sorta confessed that I really liked him. It was actually a ploy to get him to say that he liked me all these years. But it's like as soon as I said that he became weirder. Saying things like "Well come to the beach with us, I've never seen you in a bathing suit" or " Well your mother doesn't want us together well we could just tell her that we're playing games or something." Yes all of which pissed me off to high heaven and made me regret the whole liking him crap. So yeah I felt like instead of taking the relationship westward I now feel like I'm pulled into an arranged marriage. Why is it that people are such jerks when it comes to feelings? Just when I thought I might finally have a heart this crap happens.
Yes so in media this month, I ordered The World Ends with you but it's taking hella long to get here and I'm tired of drooling at the assets that Square-Enix sent me. Speaking of Square-Enix I got my hands on a partially translated version of re:COM so yay I can finally play and understand to some extent... though I was able to navigate just fine not knowing a drop of Japanese. I am back to my favorite shoujo in the whole wide world Saiyuki... and really I'm sorta disappointed in the quality of the Reload episodes thus far. Saiyuki was wonderful but the sequels are bleh... I am probably going to attend an interview at one of these game tournament things. Lastly, my work quality seems to be suffering... Maybe it's my excitement for Korea and Japan but I just can't focus on any of my creative projects.
I passed all my classes thankfully and I have been accepted into KCP Language Institute in Shinjuku over in Japan so that's where I'll be from October to December granted no harm befalls me. Oh and my rant below this post served it's purpose... to stir up some controversy. I love to rant.
So yeah that's about it for May's round up. Keep an eye on June's developments. I am very much looking forward to telling you about my exciting Korean/Japanese experience. I will be leaving on June 25th and will be back on July 21st.
Thanks for reading everyone, now back to watching Saiyuki Reload!
Later taters,
- たべにゃ
| | |
| The OYL DilemmaWe'll be back to your regularly scheduled journal in a bit. Hopefully a week or so. But today I want to talk about things that I have been holding back for like forever. One thing being the whole drama thing with OYL and TYL. Yeah so it was my first role-play forum I had ever joined and really from looking at the stories on Deviant Art I gotta say that it was a great story. I had really wanted to try a decent role-play so why the hell not when the site opened on January 16, 2007 I joined. Hell being one of the first members and all it was easy to pick who I wanted (Zexion) and out of that I wound up being close friends with people throughout the story. Because the story was so small I picked up another character (Vexen) who still sorta sticks with me to the very end as a character that I had a hidden talent to be. Kinda scary if you think of it. Anyway, the story went well and because we were an open yet closed-knit site we had freedom to do just about anything in the story and well it was all good then. Even then I really did not mind minor misfortunes that befell my characters to advance the plot. Hey life isn't gonna be fair. Yeah but then just like anything else the site turned corporate. The plots became less and less personal and focused on only characters that the admins felt were quite popular in the story. The site sorta grew an extra giant head. Then there was the promotion system that screwed the whole order of the board up. I thought we were striving for story fun here not for self promotion and titles. But no... anyone who was extra popular and didn't need for their characters to be put into a deep sleep, hunted, castrated, corrupted, heart broken by new character entry, etc. to get any notice in the plot were put up there. Not to say that any of these members abused their authority, because this was not it at all. In fact... I felt the site was much too small to put half its active members in the admin group. It really didn't make any sense. At best the site only needed three admins to run this smoothly. It was easy to become just another face in the crowd. The whole NPC/PC thing didn't help either. So the story only involved the NPCs which were in a sense the admins' characters. So all of us normal members were just back up and fillers in the world. Was I really needed? I felt not so... I left and found a life outside... it's the usual thing you do when you feel dissatisfied with yourself or just bored with sitting in front of a computer screen. Around the one year anniversary of OYL I sorta took a peek at the site to see that it in fact had died off. I was assuming everyone else had lives to attend to as well. Oh well water under the bridge. So when I get the message of TYL I decided to give it a try. Yeah so the story was more restricted and the audition system is the worst. I've been waiting quite a while for some posts to my auditions and nothing so far...
Oh well I guess that's how it is... once you take things out of context they're never as good as you thought they were in the first place.... and I won't even talk about the whole unfair banning affair. I'll save that for another rant... someday, someday soon, じゃあ、
ベニャ | | |
| It's feeling like AprilHappy April! I finally think I'm starting to blossom. Just like the cherry blossoms that Newark is so famous for. I'm changing slowly but surely. I have big dreams, attitude, and no direction. Have I finally reached that edge of puberty that most people face when they are a lot younger than I? I don't know. I think my hormones are just out of wack. I'm getting quite darker and more unstable. I just want to express myself to people I know and love but no one understands. I don't even understand. In fact it's putting tension on my relationship with my mother. I think I'm becoming a little rebellious. I just wanna do I don't wanna wait for it to happen. I want to be normal, with a normal social life but really I don't have that quite at hand. I'm searching across the world for my place in this society I can't find it. I'm a lost sheep separated from the herd. A change is in order.
In other news I made it to NY Comic Con. As you can see I'm reading Gamer Girl by Mari Mancusi. It's a little early for such a release but I got it early at Comic Con. It called out to me. "Read me Tavainya. You know you want to." So I took it . hehehe Best decision in my life. It's about a girl that's just like me. Her parents divorced and she moved to a new town and everyone hates her. But the one person she thought hated her turns out to have a crush on her and she returns it online unknowingly to this person. It's a beautiful story and when it launches please pick it up.
I loved Comic Con though. I love all conventions. I went Friday and Sunday. I really wished I could have gone on Saturday to see the TM Revolution but I just can't do a full weekend. I had a press pass so that was beautiful. I met Stan Lee (my father's hero yay!)and I took my fried Gabriel who seemed to be having a great time. I think I finally did something right for once. I enjoyed hanging out, on the train, at the panels, on the show floor, everywhere! I want to so do this with him again. He loved all the free stuff and I hope he will go with me. He says he will cosplay next time too! *squee*
I can't afford Japan this summer so I might not be going. In the fall I will be going of course! I just wrote a letter to my host family. I'll let you know how it goes. But I'll leave you with this quote that I said in 8th grade:
"I'm gonna grow up, live in Shinjuku Japan, marry a Japanese man, and name our child Koushiro. Spring's Light Child. It'll be great"
hehehe I'm gonna be in Shinjuku this fall, don't like kids but hey it's a start. I got some stuffs to do. It's end of term. Summer is less than two weeks away!
jyaa,
ベニャ
| | |
| And now back to our regularly scheduled blogHello everyone,
You know, I'm not sure how many people actually read these both here and on Tokyopop because my RSS feeds there as well but I do like writing these monthly. It's nice to have somewhere to write about life and what's going on. Let's start.
So not much has happened. It's March and well I finally got all my scholarship paperwork done. That includes both Benjamin Gilman and Freeman ASIA which are scholarships for study abroad. I am hoping that I can get some funds to make it to Japan next semester. I would be so happy to get any type of help. This year I'm not gonna get much aid. My mother tapped into so untaxable funds and that upped the income amount so the government isn't going to give me much. So I need all the help in the world. In other scholarship news I applied for the ESA videogame scholarship. It was targeted at women and minorities. Seeing as I'm both I totally jumped at the chance. I'm going to be missing $1500 in aid because my mother's job will not be handing it out to me anymore but that will be doubled with the ESA's $3000 scholarship. Only 15 students get it and I am hoping that I am picked.
Speaking of games I went to my friend's house to play the Wii. It is awesome. I have Wiitis hehehe but I loved it. It's always fun to hang out with friends. I sorta missed out on that growing up. I hope to get some Wii games and I'll take them over to play. That's the beauty of working for http://www.gamingangels.com. I know I needed to plug that there.
Anyway, Korea's coming closer than I thought. Around April they'll be asking for a deposit. It's crazy. Besides the money all I can think about is what to do on the plane for 13 hours. I do think I want to buy The World Ends with You. Square-Enix has yet to impress me with a franchise other than Kingdom Hearts. I realized that when I joined the Square-Enix club. So I said that I'd at least pre-order the game and if I'm not finished with it by June (which I probably will be) I play (re-play) it on the plane. I really can't wait for Korea. I hope it'll be great. It'll be my first time out of the country and I hope to have the most fun that I can possibly have.
When I get to Japan either this summer or this fall I'm gonna get a moogle! I've been waiting for three years for something like this to come out. It's soo cute! I might even sleep with it and I usually don't. Also I've completely memorized all the Hiragana. I'm so happy when I can recognize it in anime, Japanese language games, and in raw manga. Now I'm going to start on Katakana. Then after that there's what... 1,945 kanji. I'll start learning them by reading them here. Can't read some of the meanings... the encoding's all off. I'll look those up in the dictionary by number of strokes I guess.
My writing has also been improving. I realize that I'm good at writing Science Fiction. Which is a genre I don't even read! I find that quite funny. I also write very good fanfiction. However I don't think I'll be able to enter the Rising Stars of Prose unless they extend the deadline. I'm so busy with my own creations as of late. Also I just don't feel inspired to write a fanfiction on The Dreaming I've never written a fanfiction based on a book before. It feels kinda funny.
I think that's about it actually.
Thanks for reading. Do stop in next week,
`vainya
| | |
|
Premium
