Replete with renewed energy

Quick update.

Scrambling to catch up with LIGER work.

Classes began last week, it's just one class but the strain of commuting to classes is already rearing its bastardly head.

Summer LTR was short and sweet, but also a little anticlimactic. Time will tell.



But the lake was beautiful.

Strike a turbulent chord

Alas, Canada NLDC 2008. 'Twas a bittersweet experience, and it was all my fault. I came expecting the same great feelings of '07, but it was not to be. Like all AIESEC conferences, a measure of similarity must be maintained, and for me it had ventured into the realm of the redundant. And in my pride, I couldn't reconcile necessity with yearning.

But that was only the "bitter" part. The "sweet" part was in the people, the delegates, the individuals. You kids seriously kick some AIESEC ass, and you're generally ridiculous(in a good way). Maybe there are more Canadian conferences in my future than I thought...

Anyway, post NLDC shenanigans. See below.

Niagara Falls:





Me playing around with the macro function on my camera.



And finally, after we crossed the border, we were right next to Buffalo, so we simply had to visit the birthplace of the chicken wing. Here are the magnificent results:

Try to guess which bowl of bones belongs to whom.

Gentlemen, rock the casbah

Nescience, none too selective

Tibet.

God god people are retarded. And now Facebook has made it even retardeder. Yes, "retardeder".

Some people like to rant how our generation is lazy and uncaring because we haven't had to fight for things like our parents did. An entire generation banded together to protest the Vietnam War, the Berlin Wall, to fight for the civil rights movement. And have we done? Little, if not nothing.


Well, I disagree.

That link above? It proves we're doing something.

But instead of joining our voices into a battle cry for genuine truth and justice, we are perverting the proud heritage our parents have built by making it into a popularity contest.

How many of those people actually know what the situation in Tibet is like?

Never mind the sensationalized pictures that the mass media likes to bombard our TVs, newspapers, and computer screens with.

How many people truly grasp the argument behind the call for independence?

How many people know the history of the land?

How many people know the Dalai Lama as someone other than that "speaker in the park"?

How many people realize the implications if independence was actually granted, and the gravity of their effects?


If a sampling of the event's wall is any indication, the outlook is dire.


It sickens me to realize that not only do we have to fight against those who seek to deny justice and fairness in the world, but also those who blindly wield their rhetoric in the name of something they don't actually understand.

Minor falls, major lifts

So I've been failing to blog ever since starting this entry over a week ago. And now that it is 6AM on a Sunday morning and I STILL haven't fallen asleep, I'm going to pound this one out. It's going to be an interesting Sunday/Monday. But anyway, regarding my lack of blogging output:

Symptoms? Starting to blog about something and then either losing interest or having my vocabulary evaporate into a cloud of illiterate idiocy.

Diagnosis? Possible ADD or a (more likely) case of too-much-crap-going-on-at-once-itis.

Prescription? Bullet points.

So here goes.


1. Stress. How it affects us differently, and how we have learned to deal with it differently. Specifically, how I'm starting to worry that I don't worry about certain things.

2. Housing. Shenanigans all around. Finally found someone to sublease my place, but now the scramble begins to secure housing for May. Additional woes of transportation and the lack of car.

3. Travel. China with Katie basically confirmed. To do: plan itinerary, buy plane tickets, suck up to relatives and polish off that Mandarin. And I don't mean cleaning oranges.

4. Employment. Shit. I haven't done jack, and if I don't find some (gainful employment), I will be woefully idle for the month of May.

5. Food. Trying to learn how to cook Korean. Examples, tteokbokki:
Delicious. Trust.

6. Love. Or rather, lack thereof. Interpretation of my (apparent) dismissal of all things romantic has garnered interestingly mixed responses (read: shits all over the map). Not sure how to interpret these interpretations. Why don't people talk to me instead of about me anymore?

7. Diversions. Relaxing into old (bad) habits and failing to turn helpful academic activities into normalized routines. But I still have the rest of the year to work on this particular resolution.

8. Whimsy. This one goes out my girl Maddie who is our self-proclaimed bus driver to the burning place. Well, Maddie dear, I have found your vehicle:

Stolen from Ms. Sewell.

Incite our breathless wanderlust

Huckabee pulled ahead in the Iowa caucus. Gag me with a chainsaw.

Resolutions:

1. Less red meat. Less salt. Less sugar.
2. Sleep normally.
3. Express appreciation more frequently. And more ardently.
4. Shake off all forms of codependence.
and 5. Love openly.

Just came back from Canada's NC 2008! AWESOMENESS! More to come later, I promise. But right now I have a mountain of laundry to tackle.