Taking a Break

I'm really trying to pound this ten page paper out tonight if possible. About the Gujarat riots in India in 2002. Pretty mush the most awful stuff ever. The paper's due Friday, but I'm going to try not doing the last minute thing for a change. Maybe. Anyway I needed a break, so I went down the street to 7-11 and bought a soda, and then got on ESPN and read a great article by Rick Reilly. It's about why sports are so great. Check it out. Also, Cranberry Sierra Mist is delicious.

Haircut!

Ok, here are pics of my hair before, during and after my mostly self-inflicted haircut.

This is my sad, somber, pre-cut face.













I did it myself for the most part, and I probably should have left it at about this length.






























This is around the mullet phase.









A SWEEEET little tail!









All my hair in the sink...



















It's basically a long buzzcut, but I'm proud of it.
Pretty short, but oh well, it will grow back.

Smell Bad!

Right now in my class there's some kind of a burning, chemically smell. Kind of like birthday candles...and Nair(don't ask me how I remember how that smells, I can't remember). I'm getting light-headed right now, but my professor doesn't care. UH is seriously a crappy school. This is like something from a Roald Dahl book(I'm thinking Matilda, but I don't really remember any foul-smelling incidents in there to be honest). Maybe I can convince my professor to let class out early...

Shower

This past week I've been house-sitting for my boss who lives up on the mountain. She gets the water in her house directly from a rain catchment tank. It is gross to drink and gross to shower in. So I haven't been showering there. After class I go to my apartment, shower, and then head back up the hill(well, most days. Sometimes I just don't shower at all. Which makes for some very Kurt Cobainesque greasy locks).It reminds me of the time last year when I was in Korea and I didn't shower at my house for a month because I had bought a membership to a gym/public bathhouse, so I always bathed there. I say it reminds me of that, only the cleaning of myself isn't nearly as fun or relaxing here. Anyway, the dog at the house is cute; her name is Ellie. On an unrelated note, Asians are so funny! Check out this genius Japanese invention. Put those kids to work early dusting your floors- milk ain't free you know! I promise more on awesome/hilarious Asians in a later post.







Cute Baby










Cute Ellie

Excellent!!

Ok, I just got a totally triumphant shirt the other day from my girlfriend Marcie. Check it out-
















I know, the pics are kinda dark and the quality isn't so hot, but I haven't been able to use my camera since a mishap at the beach where I got sand all up in there. Y'all get the gist of it though, I scored an awesome shirt. Party on dudes!

Mustache

The other day I was shaving, and I decided to just leave the bit right above my lip. I got such a good response from all my girl friends that I decided to keep growing it out. So here it is, a full 2 weeks of mustache stubble(give or take a day).
















I know, it's pathetic, but given the circumstances I felt like I had to at least give it a go.









Alright, now that it's been recorded, I'm off to the bathroom to shave.

Three down, Three to go

Yea! Finals are almost over! Today I had a test for a class I didn't really prepare for, so I got up early and studied at the library for a few hours right before. Guess what? I studied all the right stuff, and I definitely aced it. Like i would be disappointed if I end up with under 94-95 percent. Nice! Now I only have three more finals, and I'm out to Utah for a few weeks. That will be nice, because I won't have to clean up after my stinky roommate for a while. And it will be nice to be in a place where we don't have 80 percent humidity making me feel like some kind of fatso sweating dripping all down my back when I go do something outdoorsy. I can't ever remember having a sweaty back in Utah, but here I get one just walking to school.

Extremely Intelligent Conversation

Well, it’s been a crazy last week of school doing papers and getting ready for finals, but I just thought I had to get on here and write something. And I had a discussion at fhe on Monday about all the ways we have in English to say “throw up” (as a verb). This was what we could think of:

Hurl
Spew
Throw up
Vomit
Retch
Puke
Barf
Toss your cookies
Lose your lunch
Ralf( or Ralph,there was some dissent on the spelling)
Pray to the porcelain god
Be sick
Yak(Yack?)
Upchuck/chuckup
Blow chunks
Heave
Blecking up
Blowing biscuits

I had heard all but “blecking up” and “blowing biscuits” before. After this discussion I went home and looked online, let me tell you there are tons more. My personal favorite is “yelling at the bushes”, the imagery is just incredible. But most that I found just weren’t that great. Lemme know if you can think of some more good expressions. I wonder why we have so many? Korean only has one or two. I guess that's why English is great. Also, I think "yak" is an animal,and so "yack" is probably the right way to spell it in this context...but I was the only one who thought that way.

NBA All-Long Hair Team

The NBA season is now getting dangerously close to the end, which sucks because I have watched only like 5 games this whole season. But I'll live, I guess. anyway I was thinking the other day about NBA players with long or nasty(or both) hair, and so I looked online to try to figure out my favorite "do" in the NBA. I managed to find so many, I was actually able to create an all long haired NBA squad. I tried to get a real team with a guy from each position, but I couldn't find any point guards with long locks...well, except for the old Nash hairdo, but that's long gone, so I'm not gonna post it
















Just kidding!! I freakin love his ugly mophead way too much not to post these pics. Ironically, I say his hair is ugly, but I've had several people tell me when I have long hair I resemble him (especially when I'm playing basketball, or in Korea...but then again, I look like a girl in Korea too). So maybe I don't look at cool as I think^^

Walter Hermann- For those of you who don't know who my buddy Walt is, I'll have you know he's probably the third best Argentine in the league(behind Manu and Scola). Not only does he have gorgeous blonde hair, he pulls it back into a ponytail, for a truly unique-to-the-league look. Plus, I love it when announcers try to say his name. Is it Her-man, Air-mon, or just like we say Herman here in the US?? He seems like a cool dude too, so it's impossible for me to not like him.


Latrell Sprewell- I know, he's retired, but this was a thing of genius. Only someone as crazy as Spree could've pulled it off. Troy Hudson tried it, but got blackballed from the league or somethin, cause I haven't seen him since.


Mikki Moore- This guy will throw you for a loop, because he looks like a thug, with tats and dreads, but interviews like he graduated from Columbia or something. Sadly, the Jazz didn't re-sign him, because they already had an articulate Stanford grad at center in Jarron Collins. Jerry Sloan was kinda upset about it. Now he plays for the freakin Celtics.


Luis Scola- "The hottest Argentine" is what my friend Matt likes to call him. He's a great player though, I still don't get why the Spurs traded him to an in-state Western conference rival for next to nothing. Stupid move by the Spurs typically savvy front office.





Sasha Vujacic- I hate this wuss, and the only reason I put him on here is to make that known more widely












Anderson Varejao- Crazy curly hair. This is a cool look only if it's natural. If I permed my hair to look like this, people would make fun of me for trying to look gay or something. And Matt already does that.




Drew Gooden- Ok, he doesn't have long hair at all, in fact, there are rumors his hairline has been receding since the third grade. But, the beard was the longest the NBA has seen for decades, so he makes the team.
Plus, last year he sported this gem on the back of his neck...




There a a few other sweet long hairdos that I missed, like Renaldo Balkman and Marquis Daniels, but their hair looks pretty much the same as Mikki Moore's so I didn't bother to put them in.

Work sucks!

Man, the past few weeks of work have really been trying my patience. My boss Carolyn, who has always been so sweet and giving, has become Mrs. Hyde or something. All of a sudden at work I can't do anything right. It's not as if it's that complicated either, we're just cleaning for crying out loud! but I'm either too slow or too fast, and I'll admit when I go too fast occasionally I'll miss something. But I feel like I've been receiving some overreactions on her part for weeks now, and today was almost the straw that broke the camels back.Today I wasn't supposed to work, I got the whole week off until tomorrow, as it's spring break and my little brother James was visiting. But I checked my messages around noon and my boss says I'm working. I had nothing to do today, and I thought I could at least make a little money, so I didn't tell her I wasn't on the schedule and just decided to go. I then get a call about the time she's going to pick me up( a little early actually). "Where are you! Why aren't you out here waiting!" I responded that I was waiting right outside my house. Then she chewed me out because she said I should have been waiting at the back side of the school- this is where I get picked up on school days after class by her. Only it's spring break, so why would I be at school? Anyway, I made the 20 minute walk over there because she couldn't drive over to pick me up due to the fact she was going to pick up another employee in that direction. Whatever, not really a big deal, but it bugged me. We were still on time to our appointment too, so it all turned out OK, or I thought it did. Anyway, I worked extra hard today to make sure I was quick( but not too quick) and didn't miss anything. I did a great job in fact. Then on the way home she keeps telling me I need to pay better attention to the messages she leaves because she explicitly told me that she was going to get me at the school...by the way, I checked the message again when I got home, and she didn't. I was pretty bothered, so I informed her that I wasn't even supposed to work today(she made the schedule and I wasn't even on it, so she should relax because I did her a favor working on my day off. right?). Then she asked me out of the blue if I had ADHD, because I "show almost all of the symptoms". I dunno, but I took this as a dig, and now I'm kinda upset. Not upset enough to quit, but oh so close. Now that I've vented, I'm better.

Silly hats?

Today I was in my Korean class and we were talking about what we are going to do over spring break. I told my teacher that my brother would come visit me from Utah. She then said, "hey isn't Utah the state that has that unique religion that wears the hats?" One of the kids in my class said "Jews?" and another suggested the Amish. Then we had to explain to her the difference between the Amish and Jewish hats. Eventually someone in class said "Oh! You must mean the Mormons!" My teacher was like- "Yes! the Mormons...what kind of hats do they wear?" I couldn't stop laughing during the whole exchange, but at that point I managed to take a breath and in a semi-composed manner explain that we don't wear any special hats at all. Pretty good stuff.

Pineapple Farm Pics

Here are some pics of the Dole Pineapple farm. It's not really that great, but I did
like looking at the little baby pineapples.

Cute!



I think I'm gonna grow one of my own at home, the plants look pretty cool too, huh?

Rainbows...

There's a reason they used to to be called the Rainbow Warriors here at UH. You actually see one pretty much every day in the Manoa valley, which is right behind the school. I didn't get that good of a picture, but it was still pretty sweet. Last Sunday I went up to Lai'e to meet with my mission president and I saw these on the way out there. It was fun to see all the Elders and Sisters from my mission that I hadn't seen in soooo long, for a few it had been over 4 years. Wow, typing that makes me feel old. Most of them have little families started too, which also makes me feel old...

Balls, anyone?

Ok, so I'm in this class about Thai cinema, which has been pretty good so far, but today we watched a movie that was wack. My teacher didn't have anything planned for today, so he told us to e-mail him with some ideas. I looked online and found one that was supposed to be cool, but then I forgot to send my suggestion in, so I guessit was partly my fault we watched something so bizarre. Anyway, today's film was called tropical malady. It starts out with two guys hanging out and having a good time, and it quickly becomes apparent they have a little bit of a gay crush on each other. Ok, a pretty big gay crush actually. There are a bunch of cheesy lines about one guy giving the other his heart, and they stick their hands in each others back pockets, etc...Then all of a sudden, the second half of the movie begins. One of the two protagonists disappears, and the other(who happens to be a soldier) goes looking for him in the dangerous forest. Anyway, the ending was kind of interesting, but the part that got me all worked up was a little before, when for several minutes we watched one of the two guys runs around in the buff. I wasn't really looking even, but at one point there was definitely an exposed phallus. And, when he turned to run away you got a good shot of his balls too. My question is, who the crap voted to see naked man movie??

Applications!!

This week my life has officially become crazy. All of my classes have gotten going full swing, and 3 of them in particular need like 45 minutes of studying every day because there is sooo much freaking reading. On the plus side, in my Korean class we just watch a Korean drama every week, fill out a worksheet online, and then talk about it in class. So overall my workload is bearable. And the Korean drama we watch is pretty fun actually- I wasn't expecting to enjoy it either.
It's called "My Name is Sam Soon" and here in Hawaii it's a kind of a big deal. It's pretty much your typical melodramatic Korean stuff, but it's pretty funny too.

I'm also trying to finish up three applications this week, One for Flagship, another for FAFSA stuff, and the last for a summer study abroad in Mongolia, which if I get accepted to I would have to go, because it's a pretty neat opportunity and I'll get school credit for it(I know it's not exactly the most exotic place, in fact, it doesn't even break my top 5 places to go in Asia list, but you have to admit it would be cool. Plus did I mention I'd get school credit?). So that's what I'm up to this week.

Also, I read an article by the Sportsguy about his dog The Dooze. I like the way he wrote about her, and how she became a part of the family. Even if you aren't a dog person it's a good piece of writing. Here's a link

Welcome to Good Burger, Home of the Good Burger

I know it's Wednesday, but I had a great weekend, as it was of the extended variety. We had an extreme weather warning Friday, and school was cancelled (also, we got no more extreme weather than a few drops of rain). Then, with MLK day Monday our weekend was lengthened to 4 days.

I took this as an opportunity to get myself mostly settled in my new place, and to go eat a burger at the greatest restaurant I've ever been to…well, that may be a bit of an overstatement, but it was a good burger joint nonetheless. It’s called Burgers on the Edge, or something like that, and it is delish. You start by picking your pattie, it can be standard chuck, Japanese Kobe beef, or if you’re a wussy vegetarian, a chicken breast. And if you’re a really wussy vegetarian, they have some kind of mushroom pattie thing too.

Next, you get to choose from a bevy of cheeses and sauces( only 1 of each, unless you want to pay more). I went with sharp cheddar and a garlic aioli. For those of you who don’t know, an aioli is basically just a fancy French name(well, I think it's french) for a garlic and olive oil sauce. So it didn't really need to be called "garlic aioli" because an aioli has garlic, by definition. But I digress. Lastly, you get 4 toppings to throw on this sucker for free. I got grilled onions, roasted red pepper, sundried tomatoes, and bacon. Mmmm Mmmm good! My friend and home-teaching companion Jon got bacon, bacon, bacon, and bacon on his.Here are the pics! Ok, actually, I don’t know how to put the pics from my phone onto my computer yet, so I’ll do it later.