Fourth of July fun

On Monday, I left work an hour early, went to the airport to pick up Amy, and then headed to my friend Katie's house in West Haven, CT for a mini-vacation. It wasn't anything super special; just your typical 4th of July family cookouts and fireworks displays, but it was really nice to get away for a little while.

And, it was definately a huge plus that Katie's house is just a few minutes from the beach! Going to the beach just makes me so happy.

Definately the funniest part of the whole trip was that one of their neighbors also had a huge BBQ party in their backyard at the same time as the one we were at and had something called an "ice luge." I had never seen one before, and it's kind of hard to explain, so here is a picture I found on the internet:

Basically, people put their mouth at the bottom of a big block of ice with a groove cut into it, and people poor shots for them from the top. I thought it was pretty cool.

But, the funny part is that everyone at their party got SUPER drunk by like 1pm as a result and thought it was a great idea to plug in the ol' karaoke machine outside! So, we got to watch random drunk strangers make complete fools of themselves all night to renditions of Footloose, Sweet Home Alabama, and other karaoke classics all evening. And the drunker they got, the funnier it was to watch! Some of them even danced!

Ah, the things that seem like a good idea while drunk... haha

To the untrained eye, my phone looks innocent enough. It's nothing fancy, and barely has any features. Actually, it doesn't even have a calculator. (I really only picked it because it was free and I didn't have a lot of money at the time)

But don't let the cute little Doraemon strap fool you. This is actually an incredibly evil piece of technology that is slowly ruining my life! Here's why:

As part of my job, I am on-call a large percentage of the year, including the entire period from May through August, for a variety of emergency and work situations that happen after hours and on weekends. Rather than carrying a work cell phone and my personal cell phone for the entire summer, I decided that it would be easier to just set my work phone to forward all calls to my personal cell phone. ...and this seemed like a good idea at the time.

But, the damn thing has not stopped ringing in the 3 weeks since I got back from Japan! Case in point, I have made/received 23 seperate phone calls about work situations in the past 24 hours alone!!!

This phone is driving me insane!

...all the more reason to get an iPhone! At least if I had an iPhone, getting and making calls would be a little more exciting haha. But too bad I have a constant stream of friends and coworkers telling me what a bad idea it is to get one now. :(

Bizarre coincidence & presents

I mentioned in my last blog that during my interview on Wednesday, there was one professor that was a real jerk and seemed to have it out for me.

Well, you'll never guess what! It turns out that not only is this person a high ranking administrator at the same university that I work at, but he also happened to be at 2 meetings that I had to go to during the two days following the interview!

Upon discovering that not only does he work here, but that our offices work closely together, I immediately emailed him to ask him if he had known that we worked together prior to the interview since he hadn't mentioned it and I definately talked about what I do and where I work during the interview. I guess I just wanted to find out if he didn't know and was a jerk to me, or if he did know we were colleagues and was a jerk in spite of it. (It's not that I would have expected special treatment or anything, but as a colleague, I would have expected him to be a little friendlier or to at least have acknowledged that we work together)

Well, as it turns out, the latter is the case, and he was made aware of it 2 weeks prior to the interview. Oh well...that's one coworker that's not getting a Christmas card this year. ...well, unless of course by some miracle I end up getting the scholarship afterall in spite of him. haha

Anyway, this has been one CRAPPY week, so as is often the case, I've decided to buy myself something nice to make myself feel better. The two contenders are a new iPod (because mine is all scratched and the battery doesn't last more than an hour or two now) and a sexy new iPhone. I'm leaning towards the iPod, and not only do I get paid on Friday, but I also just got a phatty big raise, so I definately see some purchases in my future :)

Okay...gotta go in to the office now to get caught up on some stuff for Monday...yep: even on a Saturday! :(

Disapointment :(

Well, I had my tests and interviews today and they didn't go well at all... In fact, the whole day was awful.

There were only 5 of us there (but thousands of people apply at all of the Japanese consulates around the world) so at first, I felt pretty confident.

Then, the pissing contest began, as everyone introduced themselves to each other and I found out that nearly every person there had multiple degrees from Harvard and MIT and Yale and Brown and spoke near fluent Japanese. One guy was already almost done with his PhD, had two degrees from Harvard, lives in Japan, speaks Japanese fluently, is from a Japanese family, and is even married to a Japanese woman! Immediately, I started to feel insecure.

(Now, I know that I am a smart and capable person and am every bit as good as them and even got into an ivy league school myself, but the names that they were throwing around surely count for something, and it was pretty intimidating and discouraging.)

After that, we took the Japanese test, which is broken down into 3 one-hour long tests that increase in difficulty. The entire test is written in Japanese. Well...I could only answer about half of the questions on the first test. :(

I didn't feel so bad, because one of the girls that was there could only do the first test too. (she was the only other non-ivy leaguer) We then took an English language exam, which was easy except that there were lots of typos in it which made the sections where you are supposed to identify the grammatical errors somewhat difficult. (it was hard to tell which were intentional and which were just typos and misprints)

Anyway, I was done by 11:30 with both of these tests, but my interview wasn't until 4:15, so I had to spend nearly 5 hours alone on the streets of Boston killing time in near 100 degree weather! It sucked.

Finally, I came up for my interview, and guess who was the person that went before me: super fluent Japanese married Harvard guy! Of all the luck! And I could hear through the door that they loved him and were laughing and having a great time.

When it was my turn, I went in and sat across from 3 professors and one woman from the consulate. I'm not sure why, but one of the professors grilled me super hard, didn't care for my research proposal, and was dissatisfied with my research methods. He just kept asking really specific questions and it was impossible for me to try to throw in good stuff about myself to try to get them to see all the awesome things that they wouldn't see just by looking at my application and essays.

Finally, the Japanese professor asked if he could speak Japanese to me. On the application, I checked the box for "fair" for speaking and for "poor" for reading and writing, not really knowing what exactly "fair" and "poor" meant. Well, as soon as he started speaking super fast using words I'd never heard before, I knew that clearly "fair" was the wrong choice. This was obvious to everyone there, and yet he just kept on talking. Finally, after what seemed like forever, he dumbed it down for me and asked some simple questions about where I lived when I was in Japan and stuff like that, but at that point, the whole interview was soured.

I'll find out sometime next week if I get moved on to the next round, but after the shear crappiness of today, I am expecting an impersonal rejection letter to show up in my inbox :(

I guess this means I need to make some decisions about stuff and pursue some other options...

It just sucks, because I wanted this so bad. :(

The big day

Well, after a week of non-stop studying and preparations, I am heading off to Boston for my language exams and interview tomorrow!

Am I nervous? You bet!

But, at this point, I've studied and prepared as much as I can, and the only thing I can do tomorrow is my best. Hopefully that will be enough and they'll recommend me.

At any rate, I'll post again tomorrow after it is all over and let y'all know how it went.

A weekend of studying...

Well, after spending the entire weekend so far studying for my Japanese exam on Wednesday, I have now managed to increase my score on the practice exam up to 36%! That's an increase of 34 percentage points since Wednesday!

So, on the one hand, I'm pretty proud of myself for being able to get more than 25% of the questions right on a test about another language that is also written in another language.

But, on the other hand, a score of 36% sucks! And I wonder if at this right, I might be better off just choosing "C" for all the questions and hoping for the best haha.

Oh well...I still have all day tomorrow and Monday and Tuesday night to study and prepare. My goal is 50% or higher.

Wish me luck!

My Top Chef 3 Prediction

After 2 episodes, I am now ready to make my official prediction of who will be the Season 3 winner of Top Chef: Hung

He's definately one of the most talented chefs on the show, despite the fact that he's kind of a cocky jerk. But, I'm rooting for him because not only does he live in Las Vegas and love tiramisu, but he also happens to have worked at two of my favorite restaurants of all time in Vegas: Guy Savoy and Aureole!

Man! Thinking about those places makes me hungry and makes me miss having dozens and dozens of 4 and 5 star restaurants less than a block away when I lived in Vegas.

Good luck Hung!