Thowback update: 05.01.08

This post is actually a retrospective posting from my old Tumblr account, which is no longer functioning (I’ve been trying to find just the right blog site, and VOILA! WP!). I posted this when I was on the Empire builder, moving from Chicago to Seattle, in early 2008.

The extreme northern part of the country, as bare as it is, is rather beautiful. In a bare, basic sort of way. As I sit here on a train currently speeding past the Bearpaws, whilst simultaneously watching You’ve got mail (for the 900th time this week, I submit), nibble a chicken sandwich, downing a 5 dollar bottle of Corona, and periodically glancing out of the window to take in scenery of which I spent most of my life thinking only stereotypically existed in movies, I can’t help but be giddy about the next couple of months.

Chicago was definitely an important and a.ma.zing stepping stone in my life, but I pretty much knew a month after I moved there that I was merely a visitor at a pit stop of life. Usually I feel nervous when I move (well I did when I moved to Chicago, anyway), but for some reason, I feel nothing of the sort. Not overly excited, not about moving anyway. Not overly nervous, or anxious. Just calm. Maybe it’s the mountains. I’ve definitely discovered that living so far from large natural occurrences (beaches, mountains, whatever) has left me feeling a little choked, Especially going to a place like the midwest, where there’s nothing more than concrete and fields. Seeing mountains and valleys and streams along the way to the pacific northwest is definitely alleviating that.

Anyways, moving away from emo corner, my going away party was amazing, and I’m definitely in love with my friends <3. I can’t wait to visit again. The thing about living somewhere and *then* visiting, rather than just visiting is that the place at hand becomes apart of your identity in a way that mere tourism would never accomplish. Chicago’s practically my sergeant home. Complete with a sergeant family and everything ^_^

So far on this train ride:
-Got the “privilege” of sitting in front of two blonde idiots who were each on their phones on the way back to podunk university the first quarter of the trip. Such in depth conversations such as “OMG LOL I was driving my car and this weird check gauge light came on, so I was like OMG LOL dad what’s wrong with my car and it turns out..it needed gas!!! LOL OMG LOL Isn’t that funny you’re like dying right now lol omg”…..that is a completely true, verbatim story.

-Had a creepy like 50 year old black guy sit next to me and ask me where I got my food from. After I told him, he went away. 20 minutes later, he came back, sat down and sat “hey baby boy, where you goin’? Oh you not gonna talk to me baby boy?” Luckily the car attendant came by and noticed that I was about to punch him in the face, and chased him off.

-The people of Minnesota. Enough said.

-got to experience the “geographical center of North America. Woohoo. I’m pretty much a hero now.

-Prarie dogs. Wolves. Most importantly, ALPACAS. I totally saw an Alpaca. That was pretty much the most awesome thing ever. So cute in an ugly way.

-I’m pretty sure I’m sitting behind a teenager who is in training to be a monk. But his outfit has the strange appearance as to that of a ninja. If he’s in training to be a monk ninja, I'm signing up. I don't care how I get to become a ninja, even if it is for some psycho monk ninja religion. Key word here is “ninja”.

-Dude like more than the 15 people I had previously surmised live out here in nowheresville. They all have to be clinically insane.

-My cellphone service has been shotty. To be honest, I'm surprised I even *have* service out here. So I'm not complaining.

One after one Isaac Asimov’s books just get better and better. But I think that's mainly due to my inability to remain within the realm of….reality….

Pictures soon. And videos as well, actually.

I have a 4 hour class at 0800. I hope the teacher doesn’t mind my snacks, I’ll need lots of them. LOTS.

Neutral Like the Son | The soldier boy and the lynx

I’ve finally moved! My new place is super cool thus far. The best part is the fact that I have my own bathroom! This is definitely alleviating the immense need to obtain my own apartment as soon as possible. Now I can save up and move into my own official corner of the world comfortably. But first thing’s first. Car.

After work tomorrow, I’ll be hopping on the train and heading to Seattle, to spend Christmas with a few friends there. I’m really excited, aside from the much needed break, I pretty excited to make a trip back to Sea-Town. It’ll be such fun! Yummy food, yummy people, and hopefully a nice, relaxing trip.

School starts again the fourth. Oh! My paperwork for my co-admission has finally gone through for Portland State. The excitement more lies in the fact that the paper-go-’round is finally over, than the actual acceptance, as co-admission is almost always an automatic acceptance.

Work has been super stressful. I’ve literally been working 9-10 hour days for the past two weeks. But tomorrow is the last day, and then it’s mostly over, other than the residual after holiday rush. I find it to be invigorating though. Nose to the grind, getting it in. More money, more problems.

As an Xmas gift to, well, myself, I got myself something off of my Tiffany’s online wish list. Behold!

I got it for my thumb. And I love it! Woop!

I don’t know if you know this. But I LOVE Tiffany’s. And not just for the amazingly perfect silver (although that is a big part), but also because of their sustainable practices.

For its Leaders in Sustainability series Alternative Channel presents…

An interview with Linda Buckley, Vice-president, International Public Relations for Tiffany & Co.

In this interview Ms Buckley describes the social and environmental commitments of Tiffany over the years and explains the mission of the Tiffany & Co. Foundation.

Find the video interview by clicking this link.

Cleopatra 2525

So I’ve been off for the past two days, the first time in a while that I’ve had two days off in a row when it wasn’t some sort of holiday. I’ve been using my free time to hunt for a new place. I’m going to look at one today in NE. I hope it works out, I’m actually kind of excited to live in NE. I think it’ll be fun. Edit: I moderately abandoned this post earlier today, in order to go hunt for places. But I found one! It’s in Lloyd Center, and the room mates seem cool. I hope that this works out. I’ve moved twice since I’ve been here. This time I have no control over it (my room mate’s in the hospital, and her family’s taking over the house, and selling it. Long story, involving her, alcohol, and my fucktard other room mate. That’s another blog, however).

I’ve registered for classes already! I’m taking a math (because I always take math), An English writing course, and C++. I’m super stoked about getting into some programming classes! Finally!

I’ve finally decided on the kind of car that I want. Although I kind of despise driving, I need it for a few of my early shifts at work, and because the skating rink that I will be training at is in Sherwood. Which, in a car is about 30 minutes. On a bus, it’s circling around 2 hours.
So what I want, above all, is something that runs on diesel, for biofuel conversion. From there, I’m going to look into having an HHO generator installed.
If you don’t know what that is, click here.
In any case, I’ve decided upon……A BEETLE!

I’m super in love with this car. It’s completely circular. And the TDI (diesel version) innately gets around 35-40 MPG. I can get a good, used, serviceable one for around 8-9k. This one is almost exactly the one that I want.

Yeah…..I move on the 15….School’s almost over for the winter. I’m going to the San Juans for Christmas. And once I get moved, I’m going to begin again looking for a second job. Nothing major, just something on the weekends/evenings to help the savings account on a little.

Migrate.

Nissin Souper Meal and 30 degree weather.

Seriously though, what a nice way to start the day. A cup of coffee, and this:

So delicious, so warming. Especially when it’s 35 outside.

Anywho, moving on. Tuesdays and Saturdays are my days off, so I usually just kind of meander around town. After running some errands, I decided to head up to the NW 23rd district and check out Urban Outfitters for some ideas for the wrist warmers that I previously mentioned in the last post. But lo and behold! They had not *only* a perfect pair of wrist warmers, but they were GLOMMET WRIST WARMERS! Many who know me, know two things; I love cold weather, and that I love the functional accessories that come along with cold weather. Glove+Mitten=Glommet. Glommet+ Wrist warmer= a glazed-eyed, happy happy me! Such brilliance, I tell you. In any case, they had these ugly gold buttons on them (I hate gold, aside from the fact that I’m allergic to yellow gold), so I ripped them off and put some different ones on them. *Love love love* Ok, enough about my obsession with knitted things.

I’m currently [as I'm simultaneously typing this] emailing universities in Japan for graduate school. Granted, I won’t actually even be applying to graduate school until 2012 at the earliest, I would like to get some correspondence going with some perspective universities, make some visits, the usual.
Why graduate school in Japan, you may ask? Well, it actually begins a long, long time ago. hahaha. So, one were to read the about me to the right to the right of this blog, you’ll find that I explain that my father is Nikkei, meaning of Japanese descent. My grandfather is Brazilian-Japanese. His mother was from Japan, his father was from Portugal. Wam, bam, thank you, ma’am, a few years down the road, my father’s here! Anywho, back to the topic. About a year ago, a few of my cousins in Brazil gathered all of the necessary documents, and were able to acquire citizenship in Japan via Jus Sanguinis (right of blood). So they’re there now, most of them live in Tsukuba, although one of my cousins just got married and moved to Kanagawa.
So when I began researching where I’d like to go for graduate school, I played with the idea of going to graduate school abroad. My sister is currently in medical school in São Paolo, because we have citizenship there, and it’s free. And although the Science and Technology schools in Brazil are great, they’re definitely not up to par with schools here, or in many places. So I began researching schools in Japan. I’d always known that Japan has top-notch Sci-Tech universities, research centers, the works, so it makes sense. Plus, if need be, my family already has any information that I would need regarding residency, although being a student should be enough. PLUS, graduate school in Japan is going to cost somewhere around 600,000 yen a year, or approximately 6200 USD!!! So, for less than a the cost of a semester at a top American school, I can get the same graduate education. So there you have it! Although, I’m going to have to improve my Japanese reading and writing, but I’ve got plenty of time to do that.
So these are the three to which I’ve dwindled it down:

The university of Aizu

The University of Aizu is located in Aizuwakamatsu city in Fukushima prefecture, Japan.

The University of Aizu specializes in Computer Science education, both hardware and software, at the undergraduate and postgraduate levels. The university is known for its open access to computers; there is a 1:1 ratio of computers to students, and students have access to a computer twenty-four hours a day. Additionally, the computers are replaced every three years, so the available computer equipment is always the most recent technology.

Kyushu Institute of Technology

Kyushu Institute of Technology (九州工業大学 Kyūshū Kōgyō Daigaku?) is one of the 87 national universities in Japan. Located in Fukuoka Prefecture on the island of Kyūshū, it is dedicated to education and research in the fields of science and technology. It is often abbreviated to KIT and sometimes to Kyutech.

The founder was Matsumoto Kenjiro, second son of Yasukawa Keiichiro, and the links with the Yaskawa Electric Corporation (founded in 1915) remain strong to this day. The centenary of the opening of the Tobata campus is being celebrated in 2009, with Founder’s Day on May 28, 2009.

The most famous alumnus is “Mr. Tornado”, the severe storms researcher Tetsuya “Ted” Fujita. He graduated in 1943 and was an associate professor until 1953 when he was invited to the University of Chicago.

Tokyo Institute of Technology

Tokyo Institute of Technology (東京工業大学 Tōkyō Kōgyō Daigaku?), usually called Tokodai (東工大 Tōkōdai?) or Tokyo Tech, is the largest institution of higher learning in Japan dedicated to science and technology. Tokyo Institute of Technology is recognized as a leading university, especially in natural science and engineering field. The university was ranked 31st worldwide according to Global University Ranking[1] and the 61st in overall performance (4th best Japanese University), the 21st in technology, and the 57th in natural science among the world’s best universities in 2008, according to the TIMES-QS World University Rankings[1].

The institute has three campuses, the Ōokayama campus in Ōokayama, Meguro being the main campus. The other two campuses are the Tamachi campus, located in Shibaura, Minato and the Suzukakedai campus, located in Nagatsuta-cho, Midori-ku, Yokohama.

The university is a member of LAOTSE, an international network of leading universities in Europe and Asia exchanging students and senior scholars.

I’m hoping to go to TokyoTech, they seem to have more of what I’m looking for, and it’s in Tokyo! So yeah.

But in Current school news, the end of the semester is nearing, and time to register for classes for next semester is vastly approaching (7 days, to be exact). I’m pretty excited! Not excited for finals though. Boo.

Today’s interesting article:
Fresh Photos of Fresh Kills: A Landfill Transformed
When New York City decided to turn its 4.6-square-mile Fresh Kills landfill into a recreational nature area three times the size of Central Park, city officials touted it as “the park project of our time.” That’s a lot of hype to live up to, but eight years after the landfill closed, some new images by a local photographer indeed show a radically transformed landscape.

“Fresh Kills is now a rather quiet and serene site. Its landscape has more in common with a western prairie then with Staten Island’s heavily forested hills,” Brooklyn-based photographer Nathan Kensinger wrote on his website after a recent visit. “Low scrub brush, a few scattered trees, and winding dirt roads look out on Fresh Kills itself, which is a peaceful freshwater stream meandering between man-made hills. Deer and osprey have made this their home.”

Find the full article here: http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/11/fresh-photos-fresh-kills-landfill-transformed.php

I got a new sewing kit!

Now I can finally fix the holes in my winter gloves, socks, and other random articles of clothing. It’s just a little necessity kit, but I’m hoping to have a sewing machine next year. Anywho, after mending my clothes, I’m going to take it for a spin on these:

I can’t recall where I saw these, it was through a google images search, but they actually came originally from the blogspot “little brown pen”, as the credit suggests. Those are perfect! Perfect length, perfect color. I’m not going to go with that exact pattern, but rather a plain grey. I’ll just buy a cheap sweater from work or something and hack it up. Here’s a question; why is it pin cushions almost always look like tomatoes? I’m sure that there’s some historical reason….Maybe I can find it on the Google machine. *Go go gadget google*! VOILA! Here you go:

People used to believe that placing a ripe tomato on the mantel when first entering a new home guaranteed future prosperity. Since tomatoes were not available year-round until recently, families moving into new homes often substituted round balls of red fabric stuffed with sawdust or sand. These balls were also used as pincushions, which explains–if you ever wondered–why your grandmother’s pincushion looked like a tomato.

Source: Vegetable Desserts, Beyond Carrot Cake & Pumpkin Pie, ©1998 by Elisabeth Schafer and Jeannette L. Miller, RD.
Link: http://www.cinnamonhearts.com/Tomatoes04.htm

And according to another website, the pepper hanging off of the tomato is an emery cushion for sharpening needles and pins. Haha! Oh Technology.

I was supposed to go get a swine flu vaccine yesterday. However, as usual with Mondays at work, I was insanely busy, and didn’t get out until close to 1600. So I’m going to have to make an appointment. Blah. No matter, I don’t need no stinkin’ flu shot because I AM A MACHINE OK.
I took a math test last night and got a 96.7%. That kind of bummed me out, only because the reason that I missed half of a problem was because I wasn’t paying attention, and the question purposefully asked for the answers to a 3 part question out of order, in an effort to throw people who don’t pay attention off. FOILED AGAIN. Oh well. Oh, by the way, have you met my boyfriend? Well here he is!

We are in love, Ok?

And now, an really interesting article that I found on Treehugger.com:

The Newest, Shiniest Metros in the World (A Slideshow)

While subways in the world’s developed countries are starting to look like the dinosaurs of urban infrastructure (with expansion delays and budget crises to boot), new metro systems continue to spread across the world. As emerging cities seek to answer the needs of booming populations — or ease the traffic and environmental strains of private cars — 11 municipalities have opened new underground and light-rail lines in the past two years. And instead of putting the damper on expansion projects, the global economic crisis has actually promised to spur further investment in public transit by governments eager to stimulate their economies. Over the next decade, some of these groundbreaking lines will become part of large metro networks that promise to make the world’s reigning metro champions look downright ancient.

Find the article here: http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/11/newest-shiniest-metros-subways-in-the-world-slideshow.php

Sea salt bagel crisps.

Last night was pretty cool. Except that I have to say, gay bars in Portland are just so not that amazing. That’s all I’ll say on that subject.

So Vanessa and I ended up at the Bye and Bye, the best bar in Portland! Here’s a picture:

They have delicious food, delicious atmospheres, and this delicious drink:

Believe you me, that stroke of genius is worth the 7 dollars. If you’re in Portland, come hang out with me at the Bye and Bye!

So, I went the other day and got a P.O. box. They’re actually not that expensive, and in the next couple of months, I’ll be receiving important mail (I need to replace my social security card, get a new license, another birth certificate, and school correspondence), and my room mate have a tendency to never check the mail, ever. So it just piles up.

In other news, I need some black buttons, and a new sewing kit. I bought this knitted long sweater type thing, that opens in the front. But it has no buttons. Weird. So I’ll just add some! And a slouchy beanie. I need a new slouchy beanie pronto.

And now for my interesting article of the day:
You think you’d find the Galactic Suite Space Resort in a cartoon, comic strip or kitschy hotel in Disney World, right? Wrong. Whether you like it or not, it’s real, and plans to open its super-future-like doors to paying guests in 2012.

Don’t confuse this hotel however, with Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic project, which plans to propel tourists into suborbital space at $200,000 a ride. Galactic Suite Ltd, the company behind the resort, has bigger, more “bling” plans in mind–a veritable space playground for the rich and famous.

A three night stay comes at a pretty 4.4 million dollar price tag and begs to question: at what cost for the environment?

Find the full article here:

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/11/space_tourism_l.php

Left or right? Right or left?

Halloween turned out to be surprisingly fun. I also, surprisingly, had the weekend off. Surprisingly. In any case, I ended up being a slutty Target employee. Clearly I work too much. Blah.

I am going to work on homework all day, and possibly go to Chinatown to pick up some more mini tupperware, as I’ve seem to have lost all of the other ones that I use for lunch. I also need more rice. Why haven’t I had any rice in so long!? Weird.

In other news, my addiction to podcasts has come back with a vengeance. Thus far, I’m subscribed to:

-The Adam Corolla podcast

-Ben and Dave’s Six Pack

-Ceres Sustainability podcast

-IndieFeed: Alternative/Modern rock music

-The Onion radio news

-Science Magazine podcast

-Digital Planet

So many good feeds, so little time.

I need to figure out my classes for next semester. Undoubtedly, a math class with be involved, as per my required classes, and the fact that with said required classes being as such, I’ll have to take a math every single semester of my undergraduate career. So awesome, right? I am excited for English literature though. The required book list makes my heart melt. And I’ve been itching to write more. So this will be a nice jump start back into the swing of things.

*Drum roll *

*I’m getting more tattoos in a few weeks, once my friend finishes drawing them.

*I’m planning to have a new car by January.

*Eu to procurando mais filmes em Espanhol, Português, e tb Japonés agora, se Vc sabe um site ouma loja q tem essas coisas pra mim ne!

*I’ve begun the process of slowly collecting the things I need for my big transition into having my own apartment by next year. Just the necessities, so that I don’t have to worry about buying it when I finally move.

*I need to renew my passport, and make tangible plans for the trips that I plan to take.

 

*Global highlight of the day*

19.20.21: Studying the Rise of Supercities

Over half of the world’s populations now live and work in cities. This trend will continue during the 21st century, creating “supercities” out of places like New York, Los Angeles, London, Moscow, Beijing, Mumbai, Mexico City and more. These supercities will become “vast, intensely urban hubs [that] will radically redefine the world’s future macroeconomic and cultural landscape.” These assumptions are both the inspiration and basis for a project called 19.20.21, spotted by TreeHugger head honcho Graham at the TED conference.

19.20.21 is a vast, global project that will take 19 of the world’s largest cities — those that will have 20 million people in them during the 21st century — as case studies to explore the impact of the “supercity” phenomenon. Their hope is that by better understanding population’s effect on urban and business planning and its impact on consumers around the globe, they can help the world prepare for a whole new ballgame that will occur as supercities swell and affect change on the global cultural landscape. And there are a ton of things they’re going to have to consider.

 

Read the whole article here:

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2008/02/192021-studying-global-supercities.php

First blog post

Well, I have a wordpress! I’m going to use it to you know, talk about stuff. Take pictures. Explore life. The usual. Read my about me for more info!