Today weather in heaven: Partly cloudy

Greetings from sunny Chicago!

Errrr...




Are those bulldozers moving the snow? Jeezy creezy.

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And Leon's getting laaarger

I'm on a plane, wee! Okay not at the time of posting, just at the time of writing. iPhones have an airplane setting that turns off all the wireless crap so you can still play games and look at your texts and stuff. Sweet!

I always get an issue of Allure when I fly, which actually sucks because it makes me want to shop and put on expensive clothes. I've begun countering this by wearing nice stuff every time I fly, but then I feel weird waiting next to all the other girls my age in their Victoria's Secret Pink matching sweats (no really, ALL) and slippers. I like to think I look less ridiculous, but I'm not entirely sure about that.

I've also decided that I am going to start wearing nicer shoes. Every time I see any discussion about outfits and people ask what you notice first, everyone always says shoes. Shoes are usually the LAST thing I consider. In fact they're usually an afterthought. So, instead of buying an assload of polishest, I'm going to buy an assload of shoes. Or just a few. Anyway I started today by wearing a pair of patent pumps with straps and four inch heels. To the airport. I AM THE GRAND MASTER HIGH HEELS. I ROLL LUGGAGE IN LUBUS.

Just kidding, they're not Lubus. I would have toe-shortening surgery before I dropped that kind of money on ostentatious footwear... Which means never by the way, just in case you think I should get toe-shortening surgery. In which case, screw you, I like my monkey toes.

LATER...

Hello from cold-ass Chicago! Check out the airport:

It's really coming down. I hope my flight to Austin isn't delayed or called off completely. The good news is that there's a mcdonalds right next to my gate and it's breakfast tiiime!!

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Was it an African octopus or a European octopus?

Look at this. This shit is bananas.

Octopi have been found to carry around coconuts to hide inside them. Apparently that's part of how they used to catch them around here-- coconut shell on a string.

Moldy book smell

So far I'm done with history of anth and archaeology, so I managed to sell my books back for a good price. Now I'll still be spending the rest of the week in Sinclair library, which has a mold problem so it smells like broken dreams and dead unicorns. It's also creepy as shit.

Hey guys let's go investigate that strange noise.

My computer decided not to connect to the wireless so now I'm here just chilling waiting for Layne to get done with his stuff. I don't have any more finals until Thursday but there are two big bitch finals back to back on Friday. They involve a lot of reading and remembering endless amounts of inane details sooo yeah. But I finished my arch final in 20 mins after walking in late so for the rest of the day I went around going MY DICK VIP. YO SHIT NEEDS ID. But I won't be doing that come Thursday so I better get my giggles in now.

Seriously though this place smells like doom and hopelessness.



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I should be studying

I SHOULD, but it's so nice today. I think I will go get Chinese foods. Mmmmm.

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Konad

I just Konad'd my nails:

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The moth that time forgot

This five inch wide moth (yes u measured it) has been starring in the window at me for the better part if two hours, so naturally I tried to feed it a sugar cube.

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My edjumacashin

Long post is long.

The yoo-hoos in the College of Arts and Sciences advising office better thank their lucky stars that I got all the classes I wanted today, because there would have been many flaming bags of dog doo on their metaphorical front steps tonight if I hadn't. They thought it would be a totally rad idea to spread registration out over a full week with one group's registration period opening every half hour from 9am-4pm. The groups are divided by just a couple of credits each, meaning that they spread everyone out so completely that, for example, L and his roommate Don started here the same semester but their registration times were three days apart. FAIL.

Oh and for extra fun they leave a whole weekend in the middle in which no registration periods start but people whose times began the week before can still add classes, so anyone stuck registering in the two days after that weekend are BONED with a capitol F-U-C-K-E-D. Guess where I was? Yeah. I had to redo my schedule four times in the last two days.

Here's how my schedule worked out:
-Physical Anthropology + Lab (MWF)
-Anthropology of Consumer Cultures (TR)
-Intermediate Japanese (MTWF)
-Women and Madness (R)
-Biomedicine and Culture (MW)

So now I'm at 17 credits with a dilemma. I had originally planned out a 19 credit semester with a two credit public health class instead of Anth of Consumer Cultures-- I had wanted to take it but it filled. Miraculously, someone dropped it right before my registration time, so I jumped on it.

An aside: The Arts & Sciences advisors will insist to you that even if a section fills up you can still e-mail the prof and get in 100% of the time. Those e-mails, much like the goggles, do nothing. Most of the time you don't even get a reply. Usually you get rejected. This prof had rejected me for this class already (as an extra student, that is) so I was psyched.

Unfortunately it conflicts with the two credit course that was going to bump me to 19 credits, which is the limit. You have to get special permission to go above that and can't do that until the start of the next semester. Then you have to prove to them that you can take a heavy semester like that, which I'm not sure they'll buy coming from me. So my dilemma is this: Do I wait for next semester to start and try to petition to take another three-credit course, or do I drop my Consumer Cultures course for the two credit class? Two credits are hard to come by or I would just find another one to pop into this schedule.

It's important to note that, even with 19 credits in the spring, I will have 41 credits left before I can graduate and only two semesters left in my four years. Because I transferred I essentially lost a whole semester of credits that didn't transfer over. This means I will have to go to at least one summer session, probably to take something like two or three classes, and then I'll still need to take 17 credits per semester my senior year. I only have a couple of classes I need to take the graduate, it's mostly getting the total necessary 124 credits. I need a minimum of 19 credits in the spring-- I can't just sit on 17.

And no, I don't want to just take another semester. I don't wanna and you can't make me, neener neener neener.

Things Hawai'i Needs, Part 726

Okay guys, fun fact. I love nail polish. LOVES IT. But apparently nail polish is very hard to ship since it gives off fumes and is flammable and whatnots. For this reason most e-tailers only ship within the continental US. This makes me the sadness. Zoya had a holiday promo where if you bought two polishes they would send you five for free. I was soooo excited and I had picked them all out and everything before I realized they don't ship here. BLAST. Same for Urban Decay's holiday polish set.

So then I should just go to a store, right? WRONG. There are no Ulta, CVS, Duane Reade, or Sally Beauty Supply in HI. The only store I've found here that sells any pro brands is Trade Secret, and they only have a teeny tiny display of OPI and Essie with only reds and pinks. I want China Glaze and CND, damn it! And I want blues and purples, too!

I mean Sephora has their OPI collection but it's pretty boring, honestly. I only like a few colors and I already own most of them. Meh.

I did manage to snag Midnight in Moscow and Smitten with Mittens at Trade Secret, though. So I have cool black/maroon fingers right now. Still though, frowny face :(


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Public health: Keeping you alive since forever

I am very gradually making peace with the knowledge that, even when presented with every fact about a situation, the majority of people still will not give a rat's ass about what is happening to other people and will actually go to every extreme to prove why it is a non-issue and how I shouldn't care either. This attitude it starting to be okay with me-- that should not be okay. That kind of BS should be met with public ridicule, not acceptance. What the hell, people? I'm increasingly beginning to worry that my career is largely going to be a long, uphill battle with the apathy of the average person.

Oh sorry. Today, I guess I am Dromiceiomimus. I'm still mad about thatjob I missed out on, too. I lost out on the position at the doctor's office I'm sure because I want to work for a nonprofit doing global epidemiology. I sent my resume/cover letter and got an enthusiastic response asking about my career goals and when I sent that back suddenly they stopped contacting me. I don't know why wanting to prevent people from dying of cholera offends people so much. Shit.

In less crappy news I found out the public health school has one class offered to undergraduates that's like a survey of public health issues for people interested in going on to get an MPH. Since the two anthropology electives I wanted filled up (because the d-bag registrar put me in the VERY LAST registration period for Sophomores instead of the first one for Juniors like they should have, then refused to change it because they were just SURE that any profs would add me to a class I wanted even if the class filled, and then the class filled and the two profs refused to add me as an extra student. For the record someone with my class standing should have registered on Thursday, they put me on Monday afternoon, meaning all the classes I wanted filled up four days before I could even try to get in) I replaced them with that class and Japanese. Weee. Hopefully when I apply to MPH programs they'll notice that and it will add points in my favor.

You know what cheers me up, though? This T-Rex Squishable that they just started making. If no one gets it for me for Christmas I WILL BUY MYSELF TEN and pretend that everyone got me one. Then I will pile them all on my bed and they will be my new friends.

Twert twert

Okay so I got a Twitter, you can all shut the hell up now. ESPECIALLY YOU, MOM. Jay kay mom. You're cool mom. No seriously you spend too much time starring at glowing rectangles with blue cartoon birds on them, mom.

Anyway you can find my chirping right hurrr right hurrr but it will mostly consist of non sequiturs. That first one's for you, Momoko.

And now I can't decide whether "Twitard" is better for Twilight fans or overenthusiastic Twitter users. Hm.

psOH SNAP!!

It has only just now ocurred to me that the game I have been waiting to play for months-- no, YEARS --has been out for two and a half weeks and I have yet to even look at the case. This is madness, you guys, on Spartan freaking levels. I have been waiting for a new Phantasy Star Online since the Dreamcast network went the way of the Virtual Boy, if you catch my drift.* And who is to blame for this? Why, it's Dr. Geoff White, professor of Pacific cultural anthropology. And for this offence I will leave a flaming bag of dog poo on his metaphorical porch. The bag will read "PHOTON BLAST"

Oh man if I can't feed my mag fluids to make it evolve into two wing-shaped devices that float behind me in PS0, I am going to be SORELY disappointed.

Speaking of nerdy video game times, L and I found copies of Kid Pix, The Incredible Machine, and The Amazon Trail at Goodwill today. YES HE WENT THRIFTING WITH ME, u jellis bbs? And hells yes I use Oxford commas. Anyway we got Amazon Trail and played it. Hit the slow one! Noooo that's a log! AAH THE HARPOON BROKE.

I had thanksgiving dinner with L's family. I think it was the first time I've ever had thanksgiving without my mom's family. They brined the turkey and put it in this kooky kamado grill that looks like a depth charge and it was GOOD. The rest of the food was all local, which was weird as hell but interesting. As it turns out there is no variation of sweet potatoes that I can eat without feeling like I have a mouthful of damp, half-dissolved sugar. L and I also watched Jackass 2 and discussed how much we do/do not want to try to avoid an angry bull on a giant seesaw.



*You know, since the VMU went the way of the console cartridges.

P.S.
I posted this with my newfangled iPhone. Haw haw.

Photos from my classroom window

It's raining so hard in the valley today that you can't even see the mountains, but it's sunny on campus.



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U guise srsly

Srsly u guise. I can do everything on this phone. Earlier I was talking about giant African snails and used my photobucket app to find photos to show my classmates. Now I am updating my blog from it. Sweeeeeeet.

BONUS PHOTO.

My tower at Gateway as seen from L's tower at Gateway.

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iPhones are the sheezy

Gateway House at night

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Our biggest import is fat white tourists

This makes the smiles.

More srs bsns

Okay on a more serious life update (which I guess is what I'm supposed to be doing here, not ranting about zombies or WoW but OH MAN YOU GUYS SHOULD PLAY ZOMBIE PANIC--) I have a new beef.* And you might be wondering if he suggest shopping and offers to hold my purse. Well, my friends, he does both of those things. He's local so he's chill and awesome and he plays WoW with me and today he helped me find resource materials for a research project. Happy Blossom :D He's great, you guys would like him a lot.

I'm also settling on medical anthropology after taking just one course on it this semester. I had solid anthropology courses, actually, and that's the one that really got me. The same prof only teaches one or two medical anth courses a semester so hopefully I can get in for at least one each time. He's really nerdy and cool and he's done field work everywhere which is great for a subject like this. Mostly he talks about when he was in South Africa or Australia but it's also come up that he's done work in various parts of the Pacific as well as Canada, China, and some other places that I can't remember off the top of my head

Goal at the moment is to get a job after graduation with the CDC in Atlanta as a public health analyst and then after a few years apply for the MPH program at Emory for Global Epidemiology. That means more biochem and microbio coursework now, eeeek! And it means I should probably be taking a language like Hindi since I want to intern at CHRP in India but I can barely fit the classes I need into my schedule with how booked up the classes are now.

Which reminds me, there is the potential for a strike at the university this academic year. I hope they do and I hope it forces the disgusting admins to do their damn job and stop trying to ream the uni for their personal benefit. I also hope it works quickly because seriously I NEED to get all my credits for every semester. N-E-E-D. If they strike and bone us out of credits it would be almost exactly the same as if they didn't strike and let the admins bone us out of credits... I hope they remember that.

*If you are still unsure what I mean, this is a nice internet thing in which we take words and make them abbreviations like "bf" and then we start writing that instead of the word. Then one day we get bored of that and we start writing words out of the abbreviations as if pronouncing the aforementioned acronym, and then it's "beef." I am going to say "beef" instead of "boyfriend" forever, by the way, and there's nothing anyone can do about it.

Wowcrafty

Yes, yes, I did it. After watching my friends play World of Warcraft for five years I finally decided it looked fun enough to actually pay for it. What was the tipping point? Well, next week I have two ten page papers and a ten minute presentation all due within two days of each other, so I had to find a new way to procrastinate.

No really I actually just like to play video games when I have a lot of work because taking a half hour screw-around-on-Facebook break is not nearly as relaxing as a half hour kill-monsters-with-a-sword break. Games make you stop thinking about all the things that are worrying you as soon as you start playing so they work great for me at de-stressing. Ahhh.

Unfortunately when I went to the store on Tuesday to actually buy the discs (their online payment thing wouldn't work for some reason and no, I have not ever felt more embarrassed in my life than when I went to a mall to buy Warcraft) I realized HOLY CRAP IT'S NOVEMBER 10TH PHANTASY STAR 0 COMES OUT TOMORROW.

And by tomorrow now I mean TODAY.

Guys I have been waiting for Phantasy Star 0 like honestly since the Dreamcast went defunct and you couldn't play Phantasy Start Online with it anymore. More rationally I have been waiting for it since last winter/spring/whenever exactly it was that they announced it was coming this fall. And then I moved here AND I FORGOT. That's exactly how awesome it is here.

But the short version of this story is that I didn't actually buy PS0 (OH OH I JUST GOT WHY THEY NAMED IT THAT. PSO, PS0. AHAH.) because I figured I did not need TWO games right before three Great Grandaddy projects were due. I will reward myself with sweet sweet Phantasy Star goodness as soon as my last paper has been turned in, though. Oh maaannn it's gonna be so great. I'll have WoW on my netbook and PS0 on my DS. I WILL HAVE AN MMORPG WITH ME AT ALL TIMES. Oh goodness I can go to the beach and play an MMO and I won't even have to pick which one. That's a horrible idea on the one hand and yet SO GOOD on the other.

This is excited Blossom.

Oh SNAP

Okay okay so I have a class with a bunch of the UH football players, right? They were traveling last week so the two guys I know needed to copy some of my notes and I was supposed to meet them so they could make the copies tonight. We met at the library and I cracked some jokes about the game last night and they got pissed and PICKED ME UP and were telling me to say that again or whatever. But then they fumbled me so I got away.

Just kidding, they didn't do that. They're great guys. Seriously though, Denver Broncos.

Homecoming, hooray

I didn't get to go to the homecoming game tonight because I had promised one of my friends I'd go out to dinner with her since it was her birthday. We got to the restaurant only to find a TV right in front of where I was sitting with the game on... :D We won but I still felt like I was watching some kind of special ed little league game a few times. They kept pitching the ball out of bounds and into the damn benches.

Yeesh.

I couldn't stop thinking of the Denver Broncos:

ATTN: Single ladies

Ladies I have fabulous news for you. Local guys here will not only ask to go shopping with you but they will help you find what you're looking for AND THEN offer to hold your purse when it looks like you need both hands to dig through a rack.

This is amazing and I cannot get over it.

Also ATTN: Standup comedians, you now have one less piece of ammo for your bits about relationships. Hah hah.

RIP you old structuralist coot

Well, Lévi-Strauss died on October 30th and somehow I didn't hear about it at all until today. It wasn't really on the news for some reason-- I guess anthropology isn't a hot topic anymore. Just earlier that week our history of anth prof was telling us he woke up every morning waiting to hear the news that Lévi-Strauss was dead, so we're blaming him for jinxing it. We all also got a horrible icy feeling when it was suggested that some of our professors might assign something on him in the interest of current events but so far none of them have mentioned it so hopefully it won't happen. I do not want to have to either BS my love for the guy or do the research necessary to come up with an essay-worthy argument against his ideas because he had a lot of them and most aren't very interesting. Sorry Claude, I'm happy for you and imma let you finish but Michael Jackson still had the best death this year.

In related news I saw Paranormal Activity on Halloween and I think it's the perfect example of why encouraging women to be unassertive is so extremely dangerous... And I'm only partially joking. The first time a freaking demon came and loomed over me in my sleep I would have taken the boyfriend's video camera and stuck it where the sun don't shine. LOL I'M A MAN MY SCROTUM WILL SOLVE THIS PROBLEM BECAUSE I'M A MANLY MAN AND I CAN PROTECT MY FEMALE WITHOUT DOING WHAT ALL THE EXPERTS TELL ME. What the eff ever.

(Man who thought I would ever get more than one use out of this Kanye West tag?)

Lizard kitten

There is a wee baby gecko that has taken up residence on my window sill. He's been there for days now. At first I thought it was awesome because I thought he was eating the tiny flies that come in my window at night sometimes but after more observation he seems to just like stalking them. He acts like a cat and will crouch close to the ground and creeep up on one super slow but then just stare at it. If one walks near him he'll step away from it like he's all surprised and offended. I'm not sure what he's eating, but anyway we named him Little Dude and he's my new pet. One of these days I'll try to get some photos of the hilarious bugger as he stares incredulously at his dinner.

That game was bad and you should feel bad

Goddddd we got MURDERED 54-9 by Boise State today. Seriously, shouldn't they have been too jet lagged to ream us like that? Cripes.

Luckily I have found out that none of my extended family reads this so now it may be the blog of KINGS! Damn hell ass kings!

Also, please to not be adding me on Facebook family members and friends of family members. I feel like a jerk not adding you back but I like to be able to say/link to whatever on my Facebook and with you guys being around I would have to censor my stuff. What would I do in my spare time if I couldn't post links to penis-shaped cake pans? :(

Fun fact: I originally typed "penis-shaped cake pants" which is actually way funnier than my joke.

It was just ghastly

So Isaac and I broke up earlier this week. I guess he finally realized I didn't have any intention of changing my plans again to move to somewhere he wanted to live and then I realized he had no intention of ever living anywhere other than NYC. So yeah. I imagine he will tell his Ivy League friends about it kinda like this.

In similarly lame news, I am getting the worst breakout I have ever had in my entire life on my cheeks right now and as it's healing it's leaving behind little marks. The kind of little marks that do not go away for a good year and even then require extensive chemical peels to remove. This is an unhappy blossom. Sad face :(

In happier news I'm going to see Where The Wild Things Are tomorrow (yaaaaay) followed by yakiniku for dinner (yaaaaay) with Ikemen buddy (yaaaaay) and two people I don't know, one of which is visiting from Japan. He's begun trying to convince me to do an ethnography of some kind of intense nerdy subculture like LARPers or furries with an emphasis on participant observation. He says, and this is a direct quote, "it really speaks to the tension between the nature/culture divide and the problems people have when other people transgress it." He says I should be a mongoose. THIS IS HOW WE ROLL IN ANTHROPOLOGY.

We've also spent the last week staying up most of the night and commiserating each other on our various midterm projects and his thesis. We have two classes together so a lot of that is "Man, can you believe this class? Man. This class. Geeze." Before our History of Anthropology midterm this morning we pledged psychic unity of study guide information. ANTHRO HUMOR.

He's been working on his thesis outline for like two months solid now. At some point tonight he realized that he was actually putting like five times as much detail as was necessary into the outline and could have had it finished a few weeks ago. He found this out as I was doing the third draft of my study guide for my History of Japan to 1700 midterm. And the road to perfection is strewn with our bodies.

Fantastic morning

Imagine, if you will, that you have been working on a very important presentation that makes up about a third of your grade for a class you really like. It starts on Monday at 11:30am and you are the only person presenting that day.

You wake up and the clock says 11:28am.

This is not a good start to the day.

Suddenly, bananas! Thousands of them!

I have an upcoming presentation on Monday for Anthropology of the Body and, as of this morning, I am officially tired of reading about FGC. If I have to read one more value judgment about how psychologically damaging it must be for women to be circumcised without any accompanying condemnation of male circumcision I am going to have kittens.

Anyway, went to see Zombieland. It has by far the BEST cameo I have ever seen in a movie ever and I am including Tom Cruise in Tropic Thunder when I say that. If you are afraid of clowns, though, I would not recommend it. There are zombie clowns. They jump out and go BOO and it's not funny at all. :| What was funny, however, was the guy I went with making very concerned noises in his throat every time Jesse Eisenberg did something awkward and creepy.

Unhappiness is deciding to finally wash all your dirty clothes late Saturday night only to realize that you don't have any money left on your laundry card and the machine to recharge it does not take credit cards or $1 bills, meaning that you have to wait until Sunday to go to the grocery store to get cash back in $5 or $10 dollar bills so you can recharge the card so you can do laundry.

Also: "You are being shagged by a rare parrot."

Alright gang, let's split up

I think Hawai'i is officially the most haunted place in the freaking world. Apparently no one here has ever seen a horror movie because they just will not stop building stuff over ancient burial sites. They don't even excavate and re-bury the remains, they just screw it all up. They were gonna put the new Whole Foods in one place but people got mad because there was a burial ground there so they moved it to Kahala where they moved a cemetery so they could put it in that spot. THAT'S NOT ANY BETTER, GUYS. Seriously I looked at a list of haunted places on this island and all but like three of them were build on burial grounds. Whyyyyy.

This came up in the debate over whether or not to go see Paranormal Activity with my buddy Ikemen (names changed to protect the innocent whatever and to also make him incredibly awesome) when he also suggested we go to Morgan's Corner. This, I think, is the worst idea in the history of all bad ideas. For those of you not in the know (i.e. everyone) that's a now closed-off road, at the end of which a girl hung herself some years back. It's popularly known as being Super Crazy Haunted and if you go there you will see her and then she will freaking kill you. If you're in a car, supposedly it will stall at a certain point in the road and everything. You know what I don't want, guys? I don't want to invoke a goddam Ju-on style haunting that will kill me in the same manner as my nightmares, thereby manifesting my darkest fears into flesh. That does not sound like a fun weekend.

What I DO want to do, however, is walk over the bridges in the Manoa Valley hiking trail. It's a long trail with a dead end and apparently when you walk down it there are seven bridges to cross but when you walk back there are only six. I have GOT to see if this is for real. Some of Ikemen's friends did and it and swore there were only six coming back but I'm not buying that. I gotta actually go and get to the end with one bridge missing before I'll believe it, but this is such a common story (and it's so easily verifiable) that it just has to be true. The case is probably that, when you walk back, the lay of the land is such that when you walk over one of the bridges you don't notice it. But I want to find out now!

Luckily one of the biggest hauntings here, the night marchers, cannot be seen by haole so at least I'm off the hook for that one. I don't know if they're supposed to still be able to take your soul but as long as I don't see them I think I'm good.


Anyone wondering what "ikemen" is, basically it's someone who would fit in this photo.

Which one of you preppies put gold dust in my fencing mask

If you don't laugh at this you have no soul.

Women hold up half the sky

I've been reading Half the Sky for a couple of days now and it's hard to put down. I'm actually going to be pretty mad when I finish it.

The piece I like to use to summarize the subject of the book is this: 107 million females are missing.

"[In] normal circumstances women live longer than men, and so there are more females than males in much of the world. Even poor regions like most of Latin America and much of Africa have more females than males. Yet in places where girls have a deeply unequal status, they vanish. ... This has nothing to do with biology ... Every year, at least another 2 million girls worldwide disappear because of gender discrimination. In the wealthy countries of the West, discrimination is usually a matter of unequal pay or underfunded sports teams or unwanted touching from a boss. In contrast, in much of the world discrimination is lethal."

What I love about this book is that it's not preachy. It's not a sermon, it's not trying to tell you what you should do or tell you what the solutions are. It acknowledges that this is a multifaceted issue and that there is no obvious fix. Kristof and WuDunn (New York Times reporters who famously witnessed and reported on the Tienanmen Square massacre) are not interested in making us feel guilt or sympathy, nor do they attempt to fabricate some kind of idyllic future that's only a bit of volunteer work or a small donation away. They give you the stories objectively, explaining proposed courses of action and weighing the pros and cons of each. Ultimately the fact that weighs on you is not the atrocities suffered by the women they interview but the knowledge that, even with everything done right, this will continue for a long while before it can even possibly be resolved.

The stories are not usually tragedies. Despite the kinds of horrors some of these women have been through, they are not ruined. For the most part they do not break and they are not afraid. They are constantly fighting back and, sometimes, they triumph against those who would force them to suffer in silence. I don't finish a chapter feeling upset or angry but rather hopeful and inspired. If Mukhtar Mai can outlast the government that tried to lock her away, if Usha Narayane and the women in her town can take down a brutal gangster when their government would not, if Meena Hasina can lead a raid on a gangster's home to get her children back, these are not tragedies. They are a window of the kind of justice that will continue to develop if we support it.

The key is not just humanitarian aid; It is also political pressure. No society will change of its own volition without pressure, both internal and external. With increasing internal support for women from aid organizations the remaining piece is for us in the West to demand certain changes. Action will only be taken if we insist on results, not just legislation. Policy change is largely irrelevant because there is little influence of the law in the rural areas in which most of the brutality takes place. No government wants to be shamed on a global scale.

I guess the important thing is that change is already happening, and hopefully with the support of people like you and I it can continue to happen. There are girls out there right now that are fierce and resilient but they can't do it alone. Not all issues will be resolved, of course, but for every small step there is at least one more woman who will be safe. And if that seems insignificant, remember-- you are just one person, too.

The Guild

After much prodding I finally watched all of The Guild that's online so far. I recommend you do the same even if you're not into MMORPG type games because it's still pretty funnay. Admittedly the first couple of episodes (which are only like 7 minutes long) aren't that appealing but it gets better. Felicia Day writes/stars as Codex. She started the show after a few years of dealing with internet addiction.

Here's the promo they did for season three, which is catchy as all get out:



And if you want to start watching, here's the first episode.

Sleepy sleepy sleepy

The flu has been going around here and, while I don't feel like I have the flu, I am tired all the time. I have been for a week running now and it's getting old FAST. Time for 500% RDA doses of vitamin C.

I bought an epilator. In other news, MY LEGS ARE ON FIRE.

I also applied for a job as a medical office assistant at a pediatrician's office. Sent in the resume tonight-- I plan on calling tomorrow to see if they got it / see if they want me to come in for an interview. I am scared like WOAH. I really want this job and I think I'd be good at it so I'm going to be really upset if I don't get it. There aren't any other similar jobs around at the moment, either.

I haven't been taking pictures because I've mostly been in my dorm reading. The readings for my Pacific Island Cultures class are getting old FAST. The one that finally tipped me over to the "to hell with you and your damn islands" was the chapter mocking microloans and the efforts by nonprofits from Australia, America, and Japan to create jobs and industry by helping people start businesses. I don't just mean in Melanesia (where honestly it's not needed a lot of the time) but everywhere. Alright you ethnocentric rubes. Go throw your satire at Myanmar and see if they laugh.

Anyway, in place of photos here's a doll:



Yep.

Yeah right.

So I started doing these broad searches for schools with MPH programs, then narrowed that down by the type of program, academic standards etc. and narrowed my options down to just one. Are you ready for this? Because you might hurt yourself laughing.

Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

For the first time ever I am suddenly intensely remorseful for how much I have not given a crap about academics. I can't find any statistics as to what percentages of people are admitted to the program but I'm relatively sure it's somewhere between fat chance and no way.

Unfortunately now that I've looked at the Health in Crisis & Humanitarian Assistance concentration I can't settle for anything less in depth. Look at how specialized the course work is. Water and Sanitation Needs in Complex Humanitarian Emergencies, Assessing Epidemiologic Impact of Human Rights Violations, Ethics of Public Health Practice in Developing Countries, and my personal favorite, Issues in Maternal Mortality Reduction in Developing Countries. Compare that to U Penn's Global Health track and maybe you will understand why I've got my heart set on this now. Critical Appraisal of Occupational and Environmental Health Literature-- REALLY, GUYS? You're gonna make me live in West Philly and then make me read occupational and environmental health literature? Why don't you strap me to a damn rack while you're at it?

I'm going to go ahead and apply to see if I can't get in-- they require work experience so I couldn't apply for at least two years after graduation anyway, so I have a long time to think about this. Unfortunately that also puts me up against medical doctors and established health care workers, which is... Bad for me, to say the least. Wish me luck?

An open letter to locals

Not all locals. A very particular handful of locals that one of my friends has the misfortune of having to work with.

If someone moves to your hometown and brings a different culture with them and you get an attitude with them because they're too different and haven't already seamlessly assimilated into the Borg local scene, they're not the racist/xenophobic one. That title can fall squarely on your sheltered (and yet somehow still perfectly tanned) behind.

Furthermore, if you know someone here who moved from another country entirely and they say "wow things in America sure are different from back home," you have no right to get offended. I'm still not sure why you got offended, but somewhere between "YOU'RE PREJUDICED AGAINST OTHER CULTURES" and "AMERICAN CULTURE SUCKS HOW DARE YOU COMPARE US TO THEM" we surmised that this was projection of your own problems onto us.

So basically, you're racist and xenophobic. You hate my friend because she's different from you and you honestly believe that your inability to deal with her due to her being different makes her racist and xenophobic. You've never been to the mainland but you're entirely positive that the locals here are absolutely nothing like Americans on the mainland and should not be grouped in with them. At the same time you don't recognize me as being from the mainland because the culture I grew up in on the mainland is so similar to the one out here. You only recognize my friend as being different because she's actually from a different country altogether and isn't familiar with American culture or laws.

In summary: sit down and shut up, you clearly have no effing idea what you're talking about.

Where's my freaking medal

I want to get a BA in anthropology, an MPH with a focus on preventative medicine, and then I want to get hired by a nonprofit. I want them to ship me out to the Middle Of Freaking Nowhere, Asia-Pacific, where I want to work on sanitation and public health programs that will help prevent people from contracting diseases like hepatitis A and keep children from dying of preventable conditions like diarrhea. I want to make infant mortality and malnutrition drop off, and I want to be rid of illnesses like tuberculosis. I want to help make childbirth safe and sanitary so that no babies or mothers have to die because they didn't have access to clean facilities. I want to do this in areas that are hours away from hospitals, where political instability can prevent people from traveling for help. I don't care if the nonprofit I work for to have a freaking sign that says "NO VIOLENT INCIDENTS IN _________ WEEKS."

What I also want is to know why everyone seems to think this is a stupid idea. Everyone that's heard about this so far has tried to talk me out of it, not just because of the danger I may be in personally but because many of them seem to think that this is somehow unimportant. At least they've convinced me of one thing-- I can't do anything that could kill me because no one would take my place doing that kind of work if I died.

I want my pat on the back damn it :| Are there really so few people who think health is important? I can get botulism injected into my face to prevent wrinkles any day I feel like it but there are still places in the world where leprosy is a common problem-- Am I really the only one who finds that to be more than a little messed up?

In summary: Wah wah no one will tell me how awesome I am, I want a hamburger and french fries and a milkshake.

(If this was snarked on sf_drama the title of the post would be "Would someone give Blossom her freaking pony already?")

But then some days I'm stamping my nails and I suddenly realize, holy crap, I could go to beauty school and do nails for a living. Every day I could be going to work and painting nails and drilling acrylics and gluing on rhinestones. And it would be awesome. No really, how sweet would that be? Herp derp I'm going to work, gotta go paint some nails with pretty designs for six hours. You're essentially getting paid to doodle on people, and you get to sit the whole time. Sure you gotta touch some gnarly feet every once and a while, but that's not bad at all.

I guess there's no demand for professional nail technicians in impoverished rural areas, but maybe I could start my own nonprofit using my Konad kit. Save the Nails? Stamps for Subalterns? Poverty Pedicures? Hey leprosy survivors! You've only got seven fingers left, you better make the best of it! Your family's not going to take you back with dry cuticles!

Wait. That's not funny.

Oh Facebook

I love you. You make these things possible. And you make it so easy to stalk spy on snoop about meet new people on campus.

In other news, cover your internet tracks people. You might not want everyone to see photos of you in your underwear playing a snare drum. I didn't want to see photos of you in your underwear playing the snare drum. But now I have. Thanks a lot.

Philosophy

Dear Internets,

Today in class I referred to the Platonic form of a chair as a "knee-bending, ass-resting thing" in a discussion about realism and nominalism.

That is all.

OF ALL TIME

I suggest checking out Under Arcturus through this nifty lens.

In case of emergency...

... You better hope I like you! :D

Because I am, as they so delightfully phrased it in The Brief Wondrous Life Of Oscar Wao, a disasterist. I am determined to learn things that will allow me to function in case of a city/state/country-wide disaster and potentially be self-sufficient thereafter. I can build fires, build shelters, forage for food, and help treat injuries, and so on. I intend to be able to field dress game, drive 18-wheeler trucks and boats, repair necessary electronics, etc.

Why?

Because if anything crazy happens you're really going to wish you knew how to do a lot of things you don't know now. I'm not gonna say that I'm planning on a zombie apocalypse or anything, but I am gonna say that if that ever happens I am going to rock because I am scrappy lady. I will ninja in your damn window armed with a fire poker and a really heavy lamp base and be like COME ON THE BUS IS WAITING and then you will pile in with the other survivors and then I will drive you all to a heavily fortified hiding place up in the mountains. THIS IS THE APOCALYPSE OF MY DREAMS, GUYS. I'm not gonna say I want a zombie apocalypse, I'm just saying that if there was a zombie apocalypse I wouldn't be all that upset.

Of course it might not turn out that way, but this is my fantasy world and I choose to believe that I will be a badass. So there.

Fun fact: While looking for that comic in the archive, I ctrl+f-ed for "side" and when I found "The Tasty Side" as the name of a comic I knew that must be it. looool forever.

Since there will never be a zombie apocalypse (QUESTION MARK) I guess I will just learn that stuff to be a bigger badass in the real (read: boring) world. Although actually that may all come in handy if I really do decide to go to some insane place to do public health (I'm looking at yoooou Myanmar) or in the entirely likely event of World War III. And it would definitely be handy in case of a natural disaster like a hurricane or earthquake.

Now you all think I'm insane, I'm sure, but I'm really just an ESFJ. Or, more appropriately for this scenario, an ENTJ. I tend to get one or the other when tested depending on how excited I am about a zombie apocalypse. I guess I'm walking the line somewhere between "Do you folks want some homemade cookies?" and "TUCK IN THAT SHIRT, SOLDIER."


P.S.
There's still hope!
A small warning about A Softer World: Most of the comics are either funny or just plainly poignant, but some of them can be downright upsetting. Each one tells a whole story and sometimes those stories are very dark. It may not always be for the faint of heart. Just a note.

Stuff White People Like

Okay, I have a proposal for two additions to the list of Stuff White People Like... Which, by the way, got me again with the addition of "Hating People Who Wear Ed Hardy." Touché, Mr. Lander. Maybe one day you will convince me that I am white and not Caucasian but that day is not today.

Anyway, Stuff White People Like.

#129 - Wooing. No I don't mean making the ladies swoon, I mean yelling WOOOOOO. After much careful observation I have concluded that only white people woo, and that it is always completely douchebaggy. The two favored places to woo are in a large group of moving people and in a large group of people moving in a car. Apparently being in a "fun" place makes white people much more likely to woo, as I have probably heard five thousand god damn woos from white people over the last three weeks since my bedroom window faces both the main dorm walk and the main street on campus, meaning that every group of moving people going woo as well as every car full of people going woo can conveniently be heard clearly in my effing room. Apparently other people are getting tired of this, too, because today after a few walkway woos another girl on the floor above me yelled SHUT THE HELL UP out her window. The worst times for wooing are definitely on Friday and Saturday nights, as the number of alcoholic drinks a white person has consumed has a direct relationship with how many woos they will throw out in an hour.

#130 - Blasting Hip Hop. This goes somewhat hand in hand with #116 - Black Music that Black People Don’t Listen to Anymore except that these are the white people that do listen to “Commercial Hip Hop” which I guess could land them in the category of the Wrong Kind of White People. The deal isn't that they listen to hip hop, however, it's that they play it as loudly as humanly possible with the bass turned up so high that my room shakes when they drive by on Dole St. These white people don't seem to actually really listen to or enjoy hip hop, they just pick a few tracks to play extremely loudly in the hopes that it will make them look cool to everyone who can hear it. They seem oblivious to the fact that it actually makes us want to punch them in the nose.

If that wasn't annoying enough, there are about half a dozen particular songs that some group of white people really, really like somewhere in the vicinity of my room. I've never been able to tell where it's coming from, but every day the same five or so songs are played in a loop so loudly that I can hear them in bed with the fan on over the traffic noise even though I think the person playing it is actually in the building next door. On top of that I can't actually hear the song for real, just the bass (in the case of cars) or the drum machine (in the case of my wanker neighbor).

But the thing that is about to make me snap and FIND this guy is one song in particular that he normally plays in the morning while I'm sleeping and at night while I'm trying to work has a track in the chorus of some kind of small child babbling out of tune with the music that for some reason is as loud as the drum machine. So I hear DOON DOON CHCKA DOON DOON CHCKA BLAHBLAH DOON BLEE DOON BLOOBLAH BLAH CHCKA. One weird habit my brain has is partially waking up in the late morning and convincing me that something I'm dreaming about actually happened*. It doesn't tell me OH PSYCH THAT WAS A DREAM GIRL for at least a few hours. On the mornings I get to sleep in that babbling somehow gets into my head while I'm half-awake, so three days out of the week I spend 7am-9am half-dreaming that I am interacting with a lost child and/or have to get my own kids ready for school. To say I wake up confused would be the understatement of the century. I am pretty sure this is going to drive me to madness. I guess the reason he's playing it so loud is because that babbling has caused him to go insane such that he thinks playing the same five songs over and over so loudly that he's causing himself hearing damage is a good idea.



*This is one reason I avoid zombie movies. If I watch one I am probably 98% likely to dream about it all night, and for the first thirty or so minutes after I wake up I am pretty positive that I need to get to a mall fast.

Makapu'u tide pools

How was my day, you ask?










How was yours?

Haole is the new gringo

To everyone who told me that I would not be a minority here: YOU WERE WRONG. I am the only white person around like 90% of the time and it is extremely awesome.

To everyone who told me that I cannot use the word "haole" casually: YOU WERE ALSO WRONG. All the haole do it and it's awesome. We're bringing haole back (YEAH) them other gaijin don't know how to act (YEAH) TAKE IT TO THE BEEEAAACH.

That was Justin Timberlake, guys. Honky Extraordinaire.

This is awesome because it means that I now have the perfect replacement in other songs words I am not allowed to say. Case in point, Black Eyed Peas:

Haole gon hate on us (WHO)
Haole be en-vi-ous (WHO)
I know why they hate on us (WHY)
'Cause we so fab-u-lous (WHAT)
Imma be real on us (C'MON)
Nobody got nothin on us (NO)
Girls be all on us
From the mainland back down to the US(S ARIZONA)

Okay maybe that was a little much, but you get the idea. Kudos to the one person who may or may not actually get these stupid pop music jokes.

My Pedagogy

Official notice to everyone: While this will not at all surprise the academics among us, any professor that has a "My Pedagogy" section on the syllabus and actually discusses this on the first day of class is going to be a big old sack of sad. Drop the class.

If it's required for your major as History of Anthropology is for me AND 25% of the grading is based on attendance because back in his day we always attended class and he thinks it's just the least you should do and you should be grateful that you get a grade just for showing up because that's much easier than anything else and if anyone is not willing or is going to be unable to attend for any reason you need to drop the class because he will fail you because really it's just the least you can do and he also recommends that we form outside study groups but he doesn't think there should be class time devoted to that because it's a waste but let's devote some time talking about how we're not going to devote class time to it and oh by the way would you like to hear his thoughts on Marxism? He has some opinions on Engels, too, while we're on the subject... Bring your damn laptop because it's going to be a long hour.

Yes. Skin cancer.

I also have a master plan for not getting skin cancer. It involves daily doses of a multivitamin high in vitamins A, C, and E plus at least one food or drink every day that is high in similar antioxidants, mainly green tea. I am also using a fruit juice-based antioxidant serum on my face (as well as a juice-based antioxidant cleanser and an antioxidant eye cream with SPF) and a vitamin E-based lotion on the rest of me. As soon as I can find a neat electric kettle I will also be spraying straight up green tea all over. Why? Because we have a shower stall so I can't bathe in it.

I honestly haven't been wearing sun screen every day and before anyone gets on me for this I should explain. Recent studies on lab created skin have shown that skin treated with the sun-blocking ingredients in sun screen had less sun damage but had more cancer-causing free radicals than the unprotected skin. The medical community at large is claiming that this doesn't mean bupkis and that we should all keep wearing sunscreen, but I think they're full of it and just don't want to admit they're wrong. The trend in skin care and makeup for the last couple of years has been NO SUN. SPF in everything, self-tanners, everyone wearing hats and long sleeves to keep out of the sun. The rate of vitamin D deficiency has gone up steeply which would indicate that people are getting much less sun exposure... But the rates of skin cancer have still been increasing.

That, paired with the other study, are telling me that sun screen is not your best friend all by itself. What you need mostly is a great deal of antioxidants to help specifically prevent against cancer, otherwise you could be doing just as much harm as good. You know why no one gets cancer in Japan despite that fact that it's polluted as hell and they all smoke like chimneys? Freaking green tea guys, seriously. I am not a crunchy granola hippie, I want to prove this with science. So I am going to do this totally uncontrolled and not entirely scientific experiment and get back to you in a few biopsies.

This is by far the most delicious experiment I have ever participated in. I just realized that's not true because I once found out how many licks it takes to get to the Tootsie-Roll center of a Tootsie Pop for science fair. But this is a close second.

Promises of photos

Okay so all those photos I promised before I put this thing online will be coming shortly. I mostly haven't taken any photos because I don't want to look like too much of a haole taking photos of everything until I have enough of a tan to claim I'm local. Anywhoo.

I'm going tide pooling with another anthropology major this weekend (could it be I have finally found another outdoorsy type??) which promises lots of photos of, I donno, barnacles and stuff*. I went to the beach finally last weekend and took my camera with the intention of taking new Facebook photos... I'll wait while you laugh. Done yet? No? Okay I can wait...

...

... Alright that's enough. Anyway I decided against it because I went by myself and as the beach was crowded I knew at least half a dozen people would notice me setting a timer and then running away and then running back again. I didn't feel like looking like a loon that particular day, so there are no photos. And I wasn't going to just hold the camera out to get just my face and a smidge of background because this is FACEBOOK, guys, not MYSPACE. Sheesh.

I have temporarily satiated my desire for a full back koi tattoo by getting a tank top from T&C Surf that has an almost identical design on the back. I also got a tank with wings on the back from Papaya but that didn't affect my desire for wing tattoos, so I'll have to come up with something more creative. Like henna.

*Stuff is the technical term for limpets and algae and mussels and starfish and sea urchins and little fishes and crustaceans and a whole assortment of other little sea animals. Would I say I have a plethora of sea animals? ... Yes I would.

I am a pretty pretty princess

Went shopping with my Freshie friend for SEVEN. HOURS. today for some reason. We were going to go the beach but it ended up being rainy and cloudy. I actually didn't spend very much. Most of it was watching her hunt around for an elusive pair of denim shorts, which by the way are all gone now because the fall lines are coming in. In Honolulu. All the shorts, sun dresses, sandals, etc. are going to clearance and are being replaced with boots and coats. No, really. They are.

In other news we won our pre-season game this last Friday (WARRIORS WHUT WHUT). Then on Saturday I went sailing with a dude from the team. I haven't been added to the roster yet because it requires about a metric crapload of paperwork (the list of types of forms I have to fill out has about a dozen things on it) and I'm hoping that it's not too late because I actually enjoyed it after I got over my fear of being eaten by a shark. That fear comes back when you capsize, by the way, which we did twice.

In other news, sea water tastes awful.

Thanks to everyone who sent me cards and presents. I stuck all the cards up on my gross looking cinder block wall so it's much nicer now. The less you can see of those walls, the better. I think they may have used to be white but I'm not entirely sure about that.

Today is my birthday

I am now "that neighbor"

Oh well this is just peachy.

Gateway House (the name of my dorm that sounds not at all unlike the name of a halfway house or a rehab center) has a little bee problem. I've heard there are always bees in the lounges and earlier this week I had to kill one that was in my room. I was never afraid of bees or wasps until I got stung by one after it flew into my hair and my hand felt like it was being stabbed for two days solid. Then I learned that bees can call other bees to attack if you threaten them. LOVELY. The whole building is apparently covered in beeeees so tonight there was another bee bonking itself on my overhead light.

Now the last time there was a bee in here, after I ran shrieking, I got my sponge mop and smushed him when he landed on the floor. Then I dragged the thing all the way out the front door and threw him out as quickly as possible since he was actually still alive. This time the bee wouldn't stop moving long enough for me to swat him and I couldn't reach him on the ceiling, so after twenty minutes of trying to trick him into going outside by playing an elaborate prank with the lights I went downstairs to elicit help. It was 12:30am.

So I'm standing in the lobby with wet hair in a sweatshirt and baggy pants waiting for someone to come in. After a couple minutes some guy comes in with groceries and I ask if he can help me reach a bee on the ceiling. The guy is obviously pretty confused but says he'll come help me after he puts his groceries away. So I go to my room and the bee is still there, smacking the light. I open the door and wait and at some point the bugger disappears. He doesn't fly past me to go out, he just disappears. So then the guy gets there and there's no bee. We look around for a minute and I swear that there WAS a bee, it's just not here now. Eventually I thank him and he goes back to his room upstairs.

Ten minutes later I notice the little bastard crawling around on my desk and I NAIL HIM WITH MY NOTEBOOK.

So now I'm trying to figure out if leaving a note in the elevator addressed to "the nice guy who tried to help me kill the bee" letting him know that I found it and killed it after he left won't actually seem crazy by comparison to me standing around in my pajamas asking strange men to help me kill things in my bedroom.

We got that boom boom pow

One really weird/cool thing about UHM is that there's constantly music everywhere. This is good because in NJ I would ask people "hey have you heard the new Radiohead yet?" and they'd be all "lol who." Usually I answer the blank stares I sometimes get when Radiohead comes up by going, you know, I'm a creeeeep, I'm a weirdo... but that didn't work there as apparently none of them had ever heard it. What the crap, even my mom knows the words to that song (hi mom, sorry mom).

Anywhoo there's been a DJ booth outside Campus Center all week for some reason and tonight there was a live band in the little square between the four Hale Aloha towers next to my dorm. I get woken up every morning by people driving around playing loud music starting at 5am which, while annoying, is still cool because at least the people out here are alive.

The downside is that living in a dorm and not having a car means there is NOWHERE I can play loud music and sing without anyone hearing me. Yes the no one hearing me part is important. It's not fun if you know your neighbor is sitting in their room griping about your bad taste in music.

This is unrelated to anything else but I just have a love affair with this video and I would like to pimp it as much as possible:

Owww, my tendons...

SHIN SPLINTS. I HAS THEM.

This is like the lamest thing ever what the crap why is it that my feet/legs are so damn delicate. I love using public transportation but clearly I am not built for it, what with the constant blisters in New York and the muscles separating from the bone here. I wore flip flops almost every day all summer, only after I got here I was suddenly walking long distances. First the tops of my feet got sore, and gradually it moved upwards. Eventually my shins started to get sore when I picked up my feet. I figured it was just muscle soreness in general but after a few days of it I asked beauty_101 and they were all IT'S SHIN SPLINTS WOMAN GET BETTER SHOES BEFORE YOUR LEGS BREAK OFF. So tomorrow morning I have to get up at 7:30am to make an EMERGENCY SHOE SHOPPING TRIP to Sketchers before my big long day of classes. I find this to be lulzy. It'd be a lot more lulzy if shin splints didn't hurt to make and/or didn't make it so easy for you to get stress fractures in your leg bones.

Apparently as they progress they get more and more painful until it's constant and/or your leg breaks. At the level mine are at now it doesn't need medical attention, just better shoes and rest. Possibly some ice packs. My problem now is that to keep flip flops (oh I'm sorry, slippers) on you have to constantly bee raising your foot such that your toes are up and the heel is down. The muscle that does that is precisely the one that gets them shin splints. So wee. Another girl on B101 said that she got them when she first moved to Hawai'i, too.

Move in partaaay

So with the upperclassmen move in starting yesterday, this is campus now a combination of this:



This:



And this:



I would like to let it be known that my original choice of example was the Beastie Boys going FIGHT. FOR YOUR RIGHT. TO PAAAAAAARTY in the lamest way possible. No embed allowed. Then I moved on to Prince, who I forgot is a jerk and has a team of lawyers keeping his stuff off YouTube, and eventually I got all the way down to Risky business before I finally found a video they would let me embed. Extra fail, guys. Extra fail.

Campus

Here's the sort of front entrance, if you can call it that.




The walk I make down Hollaback Dole St.




Some nice plumeria trees :)

Om nom snail?

After the four inch slugs that came out after the rain I knew I was in for some weird bugs. That did not prepare me for the giant African land snail I saw zipping along a manhole cover a few days ago. Look at the size of these things. The one I saw was probably about that big, only way longer because he was all stretched out as he oozed along. I mean his head was at one end of this manhole and his tail was at the other. Again, I didn't know they were here because they're another purposefully introduced invasive species. The story behind these is that they were kept in the Pacific as possible reserve food for US military. Who the crap gets these half baked ideas? Mongoose eat rats and soldiers eat giant snails? Really guys?

For extra fun, one place I looked said that their mucous can transmit meningitis. DIG IN BOYS.

Hollaback Lane

That's it, Dole Street needs an official name change to HOLLABACK LANE. Literally every time I walk along there I get at least one whistle/honk/"heeeyy baby we're going to the beach you should come with usss" from a passing car.

This is weird to me because there is no shortage of other Fun Size™ girls walking around there, and most of them are of the well-dressed Japanese variety. What gives?

I go to school with Rikki Tikki Tavi

If you want a closer look, just skip to 2:19.

I had no idea some clown had introduced the Indian mongoose to Hawaii. Apparently he wanted to get rid of the rats in his cane fields. Long story short they ended up with both rats and mongooses. If you want to see more of these anerable little badasses, check out this one taking down a cobra in India. They're so cool cats don't even mess with them. In fact, here's a group of them chasing a lion. Here's a less badass vid of one attempting to steal someone's lunch.

First day and half done

Did I die and go to some parallel universe where everything's the opposite of New Jersey?

First off, when I started to make a wrong turn in the airport the flight crew from my plane (who were walking behind me) recognized me from the flight and called out to tell me the right direction, and when I dropped my phone and the battery popped out they stopped to make sure it was okay. Then the cab service at the airport pulled up a limo for me. Turns out it's the same price as a regular cab-- $30 to go the necessary 10 miles. Sweet. Then for extra funsies, the super sweet driver carried my bags up the stairs to Frear Hall for me and then tried to help me find out what doors to go in (two entrances were closed for some reason).

Second, the various offices are painless and easy to work with. When I went to Dining Services earlier one of the ladies actually left the office to go find the woman I needed to talk to for me. Whenever I asked anyone a question (including the other students) they would go find out the answer for me if they didn't actually know. I got in touch with the office that advises people on finding careers in the healthcare industry (yes there's a whole office for that) and not only were they sweet and helpful, the lady at the desk is going to put me in touch with the grad student she knows that's doing what I want to do-- an MPH with a focus in preventative medicine.

There's also a bunch of tasty local eateries within walking distance. There's also a Japanese grocery store, a health food store, and a regular grocery store all next to each other right down the road. So far I have only seen one national chain business around here, and it's a Burger King... But that's not including the Pizza Hut/Subway/Jamba Juice in the student center. Going the other way is the CVS where I have sent my allergy prescription to be filled-- I'm all stuffy from the long flight still :X

In other words, pretty freaking sweet.

I was still apprehensive about adapting until I walked down to the store and as I came back I saw a rainbow coming up out of lower campus, right where my dorm is!! I am now sure I am really supposed to be here... :D

Almost there!

So I finally spent the necessary 30 minutes setting this all up. Yay me!

I'm also officially enrolled as a UHM student. There are still a few things I need to do to make sure everything is all set up for the move and I have not yet begun to THINK about packing things up. I also need to buy plane tickets still... Er... Oops.

Anyway I'm leaving August 11th since orientation is on the 12th, advising and language placement testing is on the 13th and 14th. Then I have until the 22nd before I can move into the dorms, and classes don't start until the 24th. They actually haven't given me the final word on whether or not I even get dorm space, but I'm hopeful that since I got conference housing (staying in the dorm during the summer for orientation and all that) that means I'll also get dorm space. They told me they send out offers in July and the last ones go out in the beginning of August. If I don't get it, then I'll still have ten days of conference housing while I find an apartment. I really don't feel like playing the apartment game this semester.

Anyway, nothing interesting yet. I just got annoyed at looking at a blank Blogger page.