Things I desperately miss...

Studying abroad can be really exhausting. Not in terms of heavy class load or long hours but in the way that you are constantly surviving outside your element. The simplest of tasks take a bunch of planning and researching on the internet, plus translating directions for everything I buy in the store. It can get really old. I don't get homesick here in the traditional sense, but I do miss certain things more than I thought I would. Most of these things are food (shocking) but some of them have to do with the whole "convenience" thing.

Norma's Bean Dip (and refried beans)

I miss refried beans in general, which are impossible to find here for some reason. I haven't tried looking in some of the specialty stores but I have tried to make them on my own, unsuccessfully. Anyway, I was looking at a picture on facebook the other day that had some of Norma's Bean Dip in the foreground and I had the biggest craving for it. That stuff is like crack. It's one of the first things I am going to make when I get back and not even for a party or anything. Just to fucking eat.

Taco Bell

Every other American fast food restaurant is represented here. There are a shit-ton of McDonalds, Burger King, Subway, even freaking Cold Stone. For some reason, there is not a single fucking Taco Bell in the entire country. Not even in Copenhagen. There's one in Iceland, for fuck's sake. There are certain things I get random intense cravings for, even when I'm at home. Taco Bell is one of them, and the other one is...

Sushi

I don't eat sushi that often. In fact, I usually only have it when I go out with my work friends, but it's one of those things that I get periodic cravings for. I know that there is at least one restaurant style sushi place downtown but no sushi tracks. The sushi tracks are better for me because they are cheaper and you can have a bunch of small portions of different things instead of paying out the ass to eat an entire log of one type. Plus it's fun to watch it go around.

Restaurant Fajitas

Getting back to the Mexican food, I really want a good plate of fajitas from a family style Mexican restaurant like Ixtapa or El Ranchito. I could easily try to make it myself, but it's just not the same. They even have the fajita seasoning packets in our grocery store. They have taco seasoning as well (but still no fucking baking soda).

Pizza Schmizza

There are plenty of pizza places here, don't get me wrong. But I would kill for a slice of pepperoni from Schmizza. The thin crust with the crumbly stuff on it, the crispy pepperoni... my mouth is watering.

Takeout Chinese food

General Tso's. 'Nuff said.

Burgerville

This one is also obvious to anyone from the Northwest. At least the seasonal stuff they have while I'm gone is the stuff I don't really like. Sorry pumpkin shakes, I prefer the seasonal blackberry ones, along with some Walla Walla onion rings.

Diet Coke (especially fountain Diet Coke)

I've already dedicated an entire blog post to the difference between Diet Coke and Coke Light (hint: one tastes like shit) so I wont get into it. But I guarantee that on my layover in the airport in DC on the way back home, I will hunt some down and chug it like water in the desert.

Living by myself

Clearly when I get back I will not be living alone, but before graduating, I had the apartment to myself. I loved it. I don't have to worry about making too much noise if I get up in the middle of the night, I could take a ridiculously long shower without feeling bad about taking the bathroom, and I could leave dishes laying around without being rude. My roommate is actually pretty good about roommate stuff. She always does her dishes and she doesn't bother me if my door is closed, but I still prefer living alone.

Having a car

This is a big one. I have never lived anywhere without having a car to use (except freshman year at USC but my roommate had one and we didn't have that many errands to run in South Central). Having a car makes my life so much easier and I never realized how much I rely on it, especially for things like grocery shopping. Here, I can only buy things I can carry home, and this is only getting more annoying as the weather gets worse. It is also nice to have a car when you are trying to find a place you've never been before. Instead, I have to plan a bunch of bus routes and hope to God the stop I get off at is close to where I need to be (since I am also without a cell phone that has Google Maps on it). I also just really like driving. I secretly enjoyed the drive between West Linn and Corvallis because it's nice to just be alone, play some music, and sort through the jumble of thoughts I don't have time to process on a normal day.

Matty (pets in general)

Even though all of my childhood pets are now dead, I figured I'd include them. It's nice to have a fluffy (referring to both fur and fat) cat that plops down next to you while you watch TV. I miss that.

Target

A cheap-ish place to buy everything I need, all in one trip would be amazing. I also just miss brands that I recognize, which is why I get excited when I see random American brands in the grocery store here. I bought Oreos the other day for this exact reason.

J Day!

The two largest brands of beer in Denmark are Carlsberg and Tuborg. Much like Budweiser and Coors, you will find these brands on tap at every single bar in the country. They are actually both owned by the Carlsberg Group after they acquired Tuborg in the 70s.

Tuborg has a couple of different versions of their beer: green, red, gold, Christmas, and Easter. In 1990, the company had the brilliant idea of turning the day they release the Christmas beer into Julebryg (Christmas brew) Day or J-day for short. They also have P-day for their Easter brew (Påskebrug), but I obviously wont be here to experience that.

Anyway, enough of the history lesson. Our apartment complex threw a J-day/late Halloween party which we started our night at. We didn't dress up since we were going downtown afterward and didn't want to look like idiots. Here's a picture of Nicole and Anna who were working behind the bar in their Halloween costumes.

They did a costume change later into the Tuborg J-day costumes since they were heading to a party to get paid to hand out free beer. Here they are with Kenny in his J-day outfit (complete with blinking hat).

It was also good to start here since they had the Christmas beers and were selling them for way cheaper than the real bars downtown. To be honest, the taste of the holiday beer is not that different from regular Tuborg, but any reason to throw a country-wide party is good enough for the Danes. Here are some more picture from the bar (I am really horrible at remembering to use my camera so most of the pictures are taken by Derv or Megan).

The guy on the right of the second picture is Derv's friend Craig who was visiting from Ireland. He had just spend almost 9 hours on trains that day since he was vacationing around Europe and stopped to see Derv and thought it was going to be a quiet night in. Unfortunately for him, his timing is horrible (or awesome).

We took the bus downtown and spent the rest of the night bar-hopping. The place was a mess. I would liken it to being in downtown Portland on New Years Eve but with even more alcohol. The first bar we went to was along the canal and happened to be the most expensive fucking bar in the city. That is a slight exaggeration but it still wasn't cheap. We decided not to spend a thousand dollars on shitty beer so we left and met up with Derv's German friend Ellen outside another bar closer to the cathedral square (packed with even more people).

One of the greatest things about Denmark is that they don't have any laws against drinking in public so if you buy a bottle of beer at one bar, you don't have to finish it before you head to the next. You just take it with you. This makes for a really fun downtown scene since there are always a bunch of people just hanging out on the pedestrian streets, drinking (and smoking since almost everyone here smokes). It's just really unique and fun, especially when everyone is in good spirits about the holiday. Here's a failed attempt at taking a picture of everyone near the canal.

After a couple more bars, we spent about 20 minutes trying to hail a cab since there were so many people downtown and not nearly enough cabs. We ended up just waiting for one to drop some people off at a really common area in town and then jumping in the back once they got out. It's expensive as fuck to take cabs on the weekend but if you split it between enough people, it's cheaper than the night buses and is way faster. Plus I'd rather be driven home in a Mercedes with leather seats and heat than sit on a freezing plastic bus seat that has to stop 20 times before I get home.

All in all, it was a really fun night. I was surprised at first by how many people actually participated in it since Danes usually keep to themselves. Most of the Danish students living in my complex rarely come to the bar on Thursdays so it is mostly exchange students, but most of the people downtown were Danish. I guess if you lure them out with promises of beer and skimpy blue holiday outfits, they can't say no.

Randers Regnskov (Randers Rainforest)

This weekend, my Danish friend Holger had his sister's car for some reason, so we decided to make use of it and drive to Randers to go to the indoor jungle. Apparently there is some bad blood between people from Randers and people from Aarhus (not unlike West Linn vs Oregon City) but as far as I know, Aarhus doesn't have a sweet indoor jungle.Anyway, it was only like a 30 minute drive I think; I'm not entirely sure since I fell asleep. As we came around one of the turns, we could see the domes up ahead in the distance. It was like that movie from the 90s with Pauly Shore and one of the Baldwins. Except it was actually dome-shaped.

There are actually three separate domes that each have a region they represent. The largest dome (below on the right) is the South America Dome and is over 80 feet high (and about 80 degrees inside... seriously).

It was my favorite, by far. The cool thing about the whole place is that a lot of the animals aren't in cages. They just kind of roam around and do whatever they feel like. There were a ton of kids there and all I kept thinking was how, if this was in the US, some douchey little brat would have tried to grab the monkey already. There aren't even people standing around watching what you do or how close you get. I think I saw a total of two "keepers" the entire time we were there and one of them was only there to feed dead mice to the alligators (which were in a cage, no worries). Here's what it looks like from the inside of the dome:

The other two domes (Asia and Africa) were really fun as well, but they were smaller and had fewer animals. Each dome also had some sort of thing to climb up to the top and cross bridges, rivers, and other things so you can see all the animals from different angles. Here's my German friend Franzi crossing one of the rivers, and my Irish friend Dearbhla crossing one of the jungle bridges.

The trip was really fun. For only 10 kronor more (less than 2 dollars) I could have made my entrance ticket a "season pass" for the year, but I don't think I'll be able to within the next two months.

After the zoo, we walked across the street and I had my first meal at McDonalds since I've been here. I got a delicious quarter pounder and then almost shot up the place for selling me a cup and finding out their fountain didn't have Coke Light. I mean it's bad enough that I can't get a single fucking bottle of real Diet Coke in this entire country, but to not even have it's ugly step-child Coke Light was unacceptable. I had to drink orange fucking soda. Am I 9 years old? We took our food to go and ate it in the park next to the zoo since it was really nice out that day and we have to take full advantage of any sunny days since they are going to disappear soon to be replaced by hellish wind and freezing cold rain. Here's our "American Picnic" according to Holger:

After the zoo, we went to the beach back in Aarhus which is mainly a private beach called Den Permanente but if you walk around to the right, you can sit on the little breaker wall thing and watch the people who are paddle surfing and kayaking. There are a lot of beaches in Denmark (obviously, since it's surrounded almost entirely by water) and there are a lot just in Aarhus alone, but this was the first one I've been to so far.

It was a fun day that completely wiped me out. The combination of being in the car and the heat of the dome (and maybe a tummy full of fast food) exhausted me and I promptly went home and took a huge nap.

Apartment Tour

So I figure you're probably curious about my living situation so I did a little tour with my Flip today (which I narrated... alone in my apartment... feeling like a douche).

Hopefully there will be more videos to come once I start remembering to bring my camera with me when I leave.

Random Observations

Here are a couple of random things I've noticed so far:

1. The Danish language sounds like you took a vinyl record of someone speaking English and then you very slowly started spinning it backward with your hand. It's similar to a dream where you are listening to people speak English but you don't understand what they are saying. Kind of like the Sims.

2. The stop lights here have a really really awesome system. We should adopt it immediately. Instead of the normal:

Green - Yellow - Red - Green

their lights go:

Green - Yellow - Red - Red and Yellow - Green

You get a warning for when your light is about to change back to green. SO SIMPLE! SO BRILLIANT! That way, Grandpa Joe in the Oldsmobile has a 2 second warning letting him know that it's game time and he needs to start moving his decrepit body from the brake to the gas. This also goes for "Sally" Wu in the Honda. Write your congressman.

3. There is a little pathway between the stone sidewalks and the roads. I thought these were part of the sidewalks themselves. Then I realized they were bike lanes for the bazillion bikes here. And then yesterday I was using the bike path to get around some old ladies walking on the sidewalk and had this discovery- that's also where the motorcycles ride. Good to know. Almost lost a limb in the process as a motorcycle came whizzing by from behind me, narrowly avoiding a very painful and very embarrassing collision. Trial and error folks; it's the only way I learn.

4. Final observation: people can pick Americans out of the crowd from a mile away. At night. Drunk. Blind. I still haven't figured out what it is, but even if I wear the most neutral of outfits (jeans, flats and a sweater) I will still stick out like a sore thumb. The student "mentor" who picked me up at off the bus my first day said even without the suitcase and prior knowledge he would have known I was American before I said a word. I asked him how and he just shrugged and goes "I just do. You just look it." Alright Eske, I'm not really sure how to take that.

The first day of my trip to Denmark is winding down (actually it's 5:45pm but I haven't slept in what seems like days) and I figured a good topic for today's rant is all the different types of people that make travelling obnoxious. Be it air, land or sea (but not really sea cause you know how I feel about water) there are always people there to make the trip more painful. Sometimes they do it because they think they are more important, sometimes they have no idea they are being annoying at all. Either way, they are doing something that makes me want to shake them like a baby that wont stop crying until they stop crying foreeeever. Here are a few examples from yesterday and today:

Exhibit A

I was standing in the security line at PDX inching closer and closer to having my bag glanced at by an "expert" to assure that no bottle of nail polish makes its way aboard without being safely contained in a sandwich bag, when I felt a lady behind me start encroaching on what would be my blind spot if I was a car (a fucking sweet car). She ever so obviously starts taking two steps forward for every one that I take. At first I thought maybe she's some sort of European and doesn't understand that she's IN MY FUCKING PERSONAL SPACE. Seriously, don't approach me that way or I am going to accidentally start throwing 'bows as I was trained to do by 15 years of soccer. After a minute I realize she's not trying to spoon me standing up, but she's instead trying to move past me to take her place in front of me in the line. Keep in mind that this is occurring as we stand in a single file line formed between a maze of stanchions barely wide enough to corral her gigantic ass (see my last post). Being the passive aggressive person that I am (read: pussy) I didn't say anything. Instead I just took a wider stance and started pretending looking around while swinging my backpack like a death mace ready to level anyone who gets in the way. But seriously. What is your game plan? Casually sneak one person ahead in line saving you all of ZERO minutes? You're gonna get stuck next to the fat 13-year-old on a trip for the first time making sure she announces every 10 seconds where she's going (Canada) but can't be bothered to pay attention well enough to remember to put her bag on the scanner before walking through the metal detector. Seriously, she was there too. With knee-high converse sneakers, jorts, and a BP tank top.

Exhibit B

On my flight between Washington DC and Copenhagen, it was a pretty standard long flight itinerary. Snack and drink, dinner, shut off all the lights so people pass out, wake them up for breakfast (I use that term loosely) then try to get the Asian lady to understand she can't use the bathroom right now cause the plan is approaching the ground at 600 miles per hour. The only thing missing was the shit show of passing out and explaining the customs forms. Side note: I didn't go through customs once. I just went through immigration at Copenhagen, then got my bag (singular) at Aarhus and walked out. Anyway.... Just as the lights in the cabin were turned off, the guy in front of me leans his seat back to fall asleep. Taking the severely diminished space as a cue, I follow suit. Just as I put my headphones in and think to myself "this angle isn't all that bad, I might actually be able to fall asleep" (I'm not kidding I literally was thinking this), I feel a tap on my shoulder. It's the woman behind me and she has a simple request for me. At least that's what I thought it was since she was using her obviously forced "nice face". She goes "I need you to move your seat back up a little, I don't have any room back here". Um... that sounds an awful lot like a demand, which I don't take too kindly to. Again, since I'm a huge pussy, I do what she asks and then proceed to try desperately to get comfortable for the next 6 hours. To no avail. I probably got 20 minutes of sleep and none of it was consecutive. It was brief 3 minute periods between falling unconscious and my head slipping off my hand, violently waking me up. What a bitch. Are you planning on doing space-intensive activities during your red-eye flight in the pitch black? How about you either lean your seat back too like most normal people would do, or quit your fucking bitching and buy a seat that's in a nicer section of the airplane. It's not the Ritz-Carlton; it's the fucking economy class of a Scandinavian airline.

Exhibit C

My 25 minute flight between Copenhagen and Aarhus (enough time to watch people try to suck down a free coffee before the descent and burn their mouths off) was full of business men. Like the entire plane save for a few stragglers like me. While we were in the waiting room, waiting patiently and quietly to board our miniature plane, one American businessmen comes strutting into the area, chatting with an Asian businessman. I was only going to comment on how obviously he was trying to appear European with pointy dress shoes, but then I started listening to what he was saying. And by "listening" I mean "failing to escape the verbal assault he was issuing to every human within earshot". It was one of those smaller terminals where we walk on the pavement outside to get to our plane whose stairs were part of the plane and not rolled up to it. That small. There is no need for that volume level. Then he's going on with a pretty spectacular session of vacation spot name-dropping except that he's bragging about how awesome Yellowstone National Park is. Seriously. Since most of the other businessmen in the area were Danish, no one was able to call him out on it. OH MY GOD THE VIEWS ARE UNLIKE ANYTHING YOU'VE EVER SEEN BEFORE. (insert Asian man commenting on how he liked the views in Ireland, an actual vacation spot) NO, NO, YOU DON'T KNOW UNTIL YOU GO THERE. YOU JUST HAVE TO SEE IT TO UNDERSTAND. Um, excuse me? I've seen it. You're laying it on a little thick. I seem to remember a lot of rocks, a couple of elk, and the strong desire to pull the car over just to see how many assholes would pull over after us and try to figure out what we were looking at.

Exhibit D

Since the other three pertained to the traumatic experiences I had flying, I figured I'd give a little shout out to "Danish woman from Bus 3 today" (I'm pretty sure that's her name). Look, I know you can't lock yourself in a hole with your baby until it's of an age at which it understands the phrase "shut your fucking mouth or I will shut it for you", but all I'm looking for is a little acknowledgement of the fact that your baby is yelling. Not crying, but that really loud "AH! BAH! AAAH!" they do over and over again until your ears start bleeding. Yelling. Shove a pacifier in its face or at least look around at the other passengers on the bus with some sort of apologetic eyebrow wrinkle instead of staring out the window and pretending it's not happening because next time, you won't notice until later that I've switched your baby for a sack of flour and while you're staring at it trying to figure out what happened, your real baby will be floating face down in one of the rivers headed out to sea.

Well that about sums it up. It's about 6:30 and I'm seriously considering going to bed. I wanted to stay up as late as possible so that my sleep schedule isn't too messed up tomorrow but I'm just not gonna make it.

I majored in STFU

I have a new appreciation for English majors. Here is the breakdown of every conversation I've had in the last 2 weeks:

Them- "Oh you just graduated? What did you major in?"

Me- "Business"

Them- "What do you want to do with that?"

Me- *cocks gun*

What the fuck do you mean what do I want to do with my BUSINESS major? How does WORK FOR A BUSINESS sound? It's as if they expect me to spew out some nonsense about my plans to use my undergraduate business major as a tool to save the world. It's a fucking business major. I didn't major in biomedical engineering or ceramics. It's not some secret code. It's a business major!!!

My only comfort is in knowing that at least when they ask me that question (as opposed to asking an English major) it is with an undertone of curiosity instead of skepticism.

When people say "I majored in English" the other person usually hears "I am full of shit and probably think I am better than you" or "I want to be poor".

When people say "I majored in Business" the other person usually hears "I'm a dumb frat boy and think I am going to be really rich" or "I wasn't allowed to graduate with a major in 'undecided' so I picked the most generic major".

What's sad is that those stereotypes (like most) are generally accurate. My classes are full of kids who have absolutely no interest in any of the material. This can be really frustrating because, aside from the occasional quip, I take my major pretty seriously. I am not suggesting that I am fully engaged in every one of my business classes (read: accounting and finance) but the overall major is something that actually interests me. This would merely be an annoyance that I could easily deal with by assuring myself that most of my classmates will likely end up becoming a wildly successful assistant managers at Ruby Tuesday, but unfortunately my classes force us to interact through "cooperative" group projects. Not only is this lazy and unnecessary, it is arguably one of the top 5 sources of stress in my school life. Maybe top 3. But I digress...

I have yet to come up with an adequate response to the insufferable question about my intentions regarding my major that would satisfy the curiosity of the people asking it. It doesn't help that no one knows what the hell Management Information Systems is. If I could say Marketing or Accounting people might leave me alone. I say MIS and people look at me with the same face every time. It is this halfsie open-mouthed smile with the eyebrows raised like "I should probably know what that is but I don't so I am just going to look moderately interested until she explains what it means or gives me a clue". Which is why I usually follow it up with "you know... computer stuff" while my internal self begins bashing its head against a wall.

Ceramics is looking more attractive by the minute.

Videos

Thanks to my amazing sissy, I have an awesome new flip video camera. I am going to play around with the different ways of posting them to see which works the best. It is unbelievably simple to upload to the computer, even if you didn't just graduate with an information systems degree :)

I also wanted to get an idea of the quality of the videos after they are formatted for the blog.

Here's a video I took of Molly doing what she does best:

Here's all of the grad wishes from people at the house:

Let me know what you think! Should be a great way to give updates from Denmark that are a little more entertaining (and more descriptive) than I am able to depict with writing. I was going to say that there would likely be less profanity, but I have a feeling it will be a draw.

Coca-cola Light is NOT Diet Coke

While I was working on my packing list for Denmark last night (which, by the way, is already at 2 pages... fml), I was thinking about things I needed to bring that would be difficult to find while I am over there. It started with things like my birth control prescription for 4 months, which was really easy considering they hand that stuff out like candy at the health center and I already currently have a bag full of 10 months of the stuff, but moved on to things Dramamine and vitamins. Obviously I'll be able to find them somewhere but I am a brand-whore and prefer to take drugs with labels I recognize. It will also be super expensive to replace certain things while I am in Denmark; it will be super expensive to do pretty much anything actually. In fact, Copenhagen is one of the top 5 most expensive cities in the world (Moscow wins number 1).

In typical Laura fashion, my mind wandered to all of the things I should be prepared to live without. I already knew I would be going without McDonalds (a dollar menu burger in Aarhus costs approximately 4 or 5 US dollars) and Starbucks (an espresso drink rings in at about 9 dollars) but quickly realized I wouldn't be paying for a haircut while I was there either (minimum of 100 bucks just for a cut).

Then it hit me: I bet they only have Coca-Cola light.

I immediately flipped out and did some research on Coke's website cause I am a loser and luckily they have a database of all product offerings and the countries in which they can be found. A quick search tells me that I was correct in my assumption that Denmark only has Coca-Cola Light and not Diet Coke. NOOOOOOOO!

To the untrained palate, this may seem like a slight (or enormous) overreaction. "But Laura," you might say, "those sound like the exact same thing. I'm sure they taste the same". I assure you, my friend, that they do not. While the distinction may not be as clear as, say, the difference between Diet Coke and Diet Pepsi (don't even attempt to argue about this), the difference exists. For a die-hard d.c. consumer like myself, this poses a problem.

As a seasoned traveler, I have spent a fair amount of time surviving on this substitute while on vacation (Mexico, Russia, Italy, Costa Rica, etc) but NEVER have I been forced to go without Diet Coke for a period as long as 4 months. EVER. We learn in several different classes about the culture shock cycle a person goes through when studying or working abroad. It basically starts with a honeymoon phase where you think everything is awesome and new. Shortly after this you fall into a depression where you just want something familiar and the differences in the way everything is done really start to wear on you. Following this is an adjustment phase where you stop whining and realize no one gives a shit so you just deal with it. Finally, you move into an acceptance phase, striking a good balance between the crazy foreign culture and your stubborn American culture. Luckily, I am pretty aware of my moods and will be able to recognize the symptoms of falling into the depression stage. I think this comes from my issues with blood sugar and how clear the line is between my mood with low blood sugar (read: satanic) and my mood on a normal day. The only thing that worries me is this damn DIET COKE DEPENDENCE. It's not even about the caffeine. It's about the crack I am convinced they put in their soda that has cultivated within me a severe dependence on their product. DAMN YOU COCA COLA, I DIDN'T EVEN SEE IT COMING.

Here's a list of the countries that do love me enough to serve Diet Coke:

Afghanistan, American Samoa, Aruba, Australia, Bahamas, Bermuda, Botswana, British Virgin Islands, Canada, Cayman Islands, Egypt, Great Britain, Guam, India, Indonesia, Israel, Japan, Maldives, Malta, Nauru, New Zealand, Nigeria, Northern Ireland, Pakistan, Papua New Guinea, Puerto Rico, Republic of Ireland, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Maarteen, Samoa, Serbia & Montenegro, Seychelles, Turks & Caicos Islands, U.S. Virgin Islands, United States, Vanuatu and West Bank-Gaza.

Really? AFGHANISTAN? PAKISTAN? This is bullshit. What the hell am I going to do?

Bills Bills Bills

I have a problem with companies like Dell and Pacific Power (I am only picking on them because I am staring at the bills from them right now) who go on and on about how to make your life greener and how I should "GO GREEN! Pay bills online to save paper!" Obviously I have no problem with the concept of using less paper and doing things electronically, I have a problem with them writing that 12 times on an envelope that also includes 4 pages of advertisements. I have a better idea - why don't you money-grubbing whores stop accepting copious amounts of revenue from these advertisers and save the paper yourselves? Or is your game plan to make a few easy bucks from them while simultaneously trying to annoy me until I finally pay online?

Most of my bills I actually do pay online already; Pacific Power is an exception because their website wasn't working for like 3 months and I have never gotten around to doing it since they fixed the site. I did, however, write "fix your website..." in the memo line of one of my checks. Power to the people.

Dell's website is also a pain in the ass to navigate so they can shove their online payment system up their asses. I have a specific issue with them regarding the environmental soundness of their operations. I save paper by paying online but you are manufacturing printers and giving them away like ecstasy at a rave meanwhile charging out the ass for ink. Either poor college kids think they lucked out on a free printer and are losing hundreds of dollars on ink or they are throwing them away a month after they get them in favor of a cheaper option. Sure, maybe they are recycling them but the waste produced by electronics is only partially recyclable: here. China may be the most attractive option for creating a toxic waste shit storm, next to maybe Eugene, but it's still messed up.

Underated movies

Ghost Town

This movie is freaking brilliant. I got it randomly on Netflix after seeing a preview for it on another movie. I like Ricky Gervais so I got it in the mail a week or two later. I had forgotten why I ordered it and what it was about so I turned it on while I was doing homework. I didn't get through a single page. The movie was absolutely hilarious and Ricky Gervais is a genius. My favorite scene in the whole movie is his exchange with the nurse at the hospital before he gets a colonoscopy. You can see a couple seconds of it in the preview:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oUul8PD_CGo

I don't know who was in charge of promoting this movie but they should get fired cause I don't remember seeing this movie once before it came out. It was like it went straight to DVD or something. Anyway, just rent the movie and watch it cause it will make you laugh.

The Mummy and The Mummy Returns

These two movies are just really fun. I love Brenden Fraser in them which is weird cause he's usually a pretty shitty actor. I never watched the third one that came out like 8 years after the second one but I was working at the theater when it did come out and people said it was terrible. That's what you get for messing with the classics. Well it's a classic to me.

Pure Luck

This movie reminds me of being in the basement of the beach house with that giant wooden TV stand and ancient VCR. We'd sit down there and watch this movie ever time we went to the beach. Martin Short is hilarious in it.

Kate and Leopold

I have no idea where I got this movie or heard about it or anything but I love it now. Usually I can't stand Meg Ryan and her gross face but she is entertaining in it. Having a hot Australian co-star helps too. It's a good movie to watch when you're not really paying attention.

I'll have to add more when they come to me...

You want what? To do what?

More and more frequently these days, I have begun to develop a greater respect for my parents. Why? Is it because of their personal sacrifice? Their never-ending source of love? Their support of my academic pursuits?

No.

While all of those are wonderful, I have come to respect them for a much simpler reason. They never punched me in the face when I asked for stupid shit. This may seem like such a simple gesture that would be easily accomplished by most adults, but let's look at the issue a little closer.

There must be a fountain that exists in some distant land with the sole purpose of spewing out a never-ending stream of crappy ideas for children's toys. "Toys" may be an inaccurate description; perhaps we'd be better off with "things we can convince children that they need more than water, food, or shelter". It must be the job of one lonely Mattel executive to stroll out to the fountain each day, fill up a bucket, and haul the glorious array of toy ideas back to his office to be sorted. Then the best 5 get presented to a board of executives to be decided on.

"Do we really think there's a market for sand that doesn't get wet? We also have an oven that cooks brownies with a 60 watt light bulb; yeah that one's OK."

Lindsey and I were talking about how her mom used to bribe her with beanie babies. The concept of beanie babies was simple enough. Each type has its own story... blah blah blah... basically like the cabbage patch for creatures. The worst part about beanie babies was the fact that I could convince my parents to purchase tag protection plastic cases so that the tag wouldn't fold over and reduce its resale value. Aside from the fact that I was too possessive to part with the beanie babies while they were still popular and their value now is next to nothing (I think you could probably rip them apart and use their guts as cat litter), I am wondering why I was concerned about the resale value of a stuffed animal when I was 11. ARE YOU SERIOUS? I would backhand my kid so quickly if they asked for money for a tag protector and scream "You're not 85 years old! Go put those toys away but be really quiet so you don't wake up your creepy Furby that I hid in the back of your closet."

Another perfect example of this crap is Pogs. According to most people it was a "game" that kids played in the 90s. According to me and all of my friends, it was the process of collecting and trading cardboard circles with pictures on them for a couple of hours before we got bored and played with our favorite toy - monopoly money. I even remember my favorite one (magic 8 ball) to look at on the floor or to stack on top of many other useless cardboard disks. Seriously though, I remember making my parents buy plastic containers to hold hundreds of pogs that I never played with. Not once. Never.

When I start popping out dependents, this will not be the case. If my kids come up to me and ask for money to buy crumpled up paper or used toothpicks, they are getting what they deserve: a laugh in the face and 2 months of summer school.

I'd like to thank baby Jesus, my mom, the academy...

Just got this email this morning:

"I reviewed your petition to be allowed to use BA 469 as your capstone and WIC course rather than BA 353/466. Because there is evidence of you getting the wrong information w/o time to correct this in a reasonable manner. I decided to approve your request. A note will be put in your file, and done manually on your audit. It will not be reflected in your University audit, so don’t panic that you don’t see your correction there."

Ignoring the obvious grammatical errors and poor writing style, the point of the email is I WIN! The beauty of this email is in its brevity. You can almost sense her hesitation to approve the request and her inexplicable desire to cause me pain. Luckily, the advisor who gave me the wrong information (which ironically was done in hopes of making my life easier) did not half-ass her ineptitude but flew head first into the pool of inaccuracies and misleading information that it was decided that she was so convincing I had no other option but to believe her. Weird.

This does not make up for the fact that I still have to take statistics because my 6 credit USC statistics course only satisfies a single 2 credit business math course here, but it's a start. Like the saying goes "Rome wasn't built in a day", therefore I must be patient in destroying it brick by brick. Unless I had some dynamite...

The most upsetting part about this little exchange is that I how much excitement I am receiving from the resolution of a problem that shouldn't have happened in the first place. I am generating personal joy from a situation that was borne from the inconsistencies and failures of a department whose sole responsibility is to provide students with information and guidance through an overly complicated and inefficient system that is both outdated and stretched past its functional capacity with the current student population. Whatever, winning at a game that doesn't have rules and shouldn't exist is still just that: WINNING! And in this moment, I am the freaking winner. Suck it, OSU.

OSU wins worst transfer school of the decade in my book.

I am getting really sick of OSU’s “efforts” to assist transfer students in integrating themselves into the programs here. I can only speak for the College of Business, but as part of the university, it should have consistent policies throughout. I transferred here with 5 different transcripts- West Linn High School (AP credits), Clackamas Community College (Spanish credits), Portland Community College, University of Southern California, and Portland State University.

First of all, completely unrelated to OSU, there needs to be a better system of official student transcripts. There needs to be a centralized database or some sort of electronic exchange process that saves ever student from having to spend 12 bucks each time to get some secretary to mail a piece of paper printed from her computer to another secretary who has to open it and enter it manually into her computer (yes, I am assuming they are both women, piss off). Anyone see the unnecessary steps in the middle? I DO.

Anyway, back to the issue at hand. After spending a fortune and hours of my time getting all of my grades into OSU’s grubby little paws, I then had to spend another 3 or 4 hours of my time during the first term here petitioning to get my classes from other schools to count for classes here. All of this I had to figure out on my own as the women who work in the College of Business advising office here are either completely unqualified (i.e. have an IQ below 60) or are super bitchy. Several possess both qualities, making it very exhausting to deal with them for hours on end.

I then was advised to take classes that weren't required for my concentration, another waste of time and money. All of this I could attribute to a broken system and not to the ineptitude of the advisors, until this week. As business majors, we are required to take a senior capstone course and a "writing-intensive course" (which is a joke on its own) in order to fulfill the graduation requirements. Earlier this term I was told by my advisor that because I have an extremely small amount of wiggle room in my schedule in order to complete all of my classes at the end of next term and study abroad next fall, that I should take BA 469 which satisfies both the senior capstone and WIC requirements in one 4 credit class. She also said that this spring is the last time they are ever going to offer the class, so it was perfect timing. From now on, business students will have to take BA 353 (WIC - 4 credits) and BA 466 (senior capstone - 4 credits) in order to graduate. I was initially annoyed that they had failed to mention this the other 100 times I had been in there trying to find a way to finish on time without having to take 18 credits a term of upper-division classes which would likely push me to the brink of insanity, but my annoyance turned into relief that I could satisfy that requirement with 4 credits instead of 8. I then asked her the direct question "so I won't have any problems graduating with BA 469 on my transcript instead of the other two?" Her answer: "of course not".

Here's where they win the award. I went into the advising office on Thursday last week to a different advisor to see if they would allow me to walk in the wrong graduation ceremony instead of having to come back June 2011 after being away from OSU for an entire year (seems logical, right?). After getting shot down, I decided to triple-check my plan to take BA 469 since I was registering for spring classes 3 days later. Her answer just about cost her her own life. I was told that only people who entered OSU the term before I did were allowed to use BA 469 because they were on the "old school requirements". WHAM. After silently composing myself for a few seconds, I explained to her what I had been told only weeks before by another equally "qualified" advisor and even showed her the paper in my file that blatantly states "Take BA 469 instead of 353 and 466 - sufficient for graduation". Doesn't get much clearer than that. After talking in circles around the issue in the most infuriating and noncommittal way, she said that she would "check around" and get back to me. I told her that my registration time was Sunday morning and that I was going to register for BA 469 either way.

I received her email response Friday afternoon (pleasantly surprised with her timeliness) that basically said I could try to petition for an exception with the attached petition form. Sure thing, boss. Why not? The only person who didn't make a mistake is me, so of course the correction of that mistake should be my responsibility. Not to mention the fact that it was ME whose responsibility it was to triple-check your office's work to discover the problem in the first place. Sure, I'll take the time to correct it. So in my best attempt to hide my true feelings about the situation, I filled out the form and will turn it in on Monday. I'd like to say "here's hoping" but I have discovered that hoping is much too passive a stance to take with the College of Business. A better statement would be "here's hoping they are smart enough to make the exception to correct a mistake they made and I caught and corrected because failure to do so would not be in their best interests..." I'll leave it at that.

Stick your arm out, it's not that difficult

I don’t really require a lot of chivalry from guys regarding stupid shit like standing up when a lady excuses herself from the table, but there is one thing that I will not tolerate: not holding doors open. I just don’t understand how you can open a door, hear someone following you, then just let it slam shut behind you. This goes for girls as well. It doesn’t matter that I’m not carrying something or on crutches; HOLD THE DOOR! There seems to be a pretty clear pattern of the most common offenders of this courtesy- middle aged white women and small Asian guys (redundant description?). Most of my classes are in Bexell Hall because that’s the business building, so I can’t really extrapolate to the rest of the people on campus but it does seem to carry throughout common buildings on campus and even around Corvallis. I do, however, know that within the demographic of people entering an exiting Bexell, it is the people in the advising office who give the biggest “fuck you” when it comes to opening doors. Makes sense considering the also give the biggest “fuck you” to people trying to get advice about classes.

There are two ways that people fuck you over. First, they get to the door, open it, and continue through it without looking back to see if anyone else in the universe could possibly be entering the same door as them. The second way is when they open the door, look behind them, see you there, then continue through the door I assume after their acknowledgement that you have two arms and are not famous. Which scenario is worse? Well, with the first way, I am unnerved by the staggering amount of self-importance in thinking that they are the only ones with somewhere to be and no one would ever need to use the door at the same time as them. On the other hand, I think that it is much worse to have someone make eye contact with you and basically tell you to fuck off anyway by pretending you aren’t there or not important enough to deserve the effort of holding your arm on the door for an extra 2 seconds out of their day.

Lesson: hold the fucking door open. You never know who has influence over your life. Maybe that chick who you let the door close on works at your coffee place and spits in your next cup. Hopefully.

Portland SIM club event

Last week, at 6:30 in the morning, I hauled my ass out of bed to get ready. Normally for my 8am classes, I don’t shower and opt instead to contain my hair with a headband as it attempts to make its daring escape from my head and into the free world. Unfortunately, yesterday I had to get ready for an all day event through the OSU Students in Information Management club which entailed visits to two different companies and a networking dinner with the Portland Society for Information Management. Thankfully, I had laid out my slacks and jacket the night before, but I still had to go through the painful process of showering, drying, straightening, then putting my hair up to look “business casual”.

I absolutely hate the term business casual because it’s so fucking vague and it means something different in each industry (even each company). Fortunately, I had the sense to overdress for this situation since it is much easier for me to take off my jacket to dress down than to try to dress up a sloppy outfit. This was definitely the right choice as the other OSU students in the club took “business casual” to mean “I am going to wear a very nice suit and tie in the hopes that people won’t realize I spend the rest of my time in silk-screened t-shirts with dragons on them over Costco jeans” which would have made me look underdressed. It didn’t end up mattering either way because even if I had decided to wear a pair of slacks that smelled like the movie theater with a ratty sweater, I would still have looked better than the 5 students from PSU who showed up in tennis shoes, dirty hipster jeans, and sweatshirts. I guess they were under the impression that Cisco was a theme park, as I have no other explanation for why they would show up to this event dressed like that.

Our first stop was at Laika Animation Studios in Portland. In case you are like me and have never heard of them, they are the studio behind the movie Coraline. The company is owned by Phil Knight (co-founder and chairman of Nike) if he even knows he owns it, and they were the first to use stop-motion animation that was filmed in 3D. Unfortunately for them, we didn’t give a rat’s ass about film technology. Unfortunately for us, that’s all the Director of IT wanted to talk about. Rendering CGI and shade coding are fantastic topics for a tour for film or animation students, but I wonder if he thought to himself “a group of MIS students requesting a lecture from the head of IT at a company probably wants to hear about the information systems our company uses” and then decided “no, they definitely would rather hear about our render farm and which program we use” (it’s Renderman® by IBM, in case you were curious).

After two hours, we finally got to leave and head to lunch where I got stuck at a table that consisted of me, my MIS professor from last term, and my MIS professor from this term. That’s it. It was probably for the best considering they are way more interesting to talk to than the rest of the students, including the only other girl on the trip who happens to have a voice that is comparable to the sound those little metal dentist tools make against your teeth. Either way, it was an awkward lunch.

After lunch we headed to Cisco to hear their “system architects” (aka glorified salesmen) talk about how awesome Cisco was at everything. We did get to play around with their Telepresence room which is a teleconferencing system that they created and sell to companies hoping to cut down on travel costs. For some reason they put a chick from their Raleigh site on the other end who had absolutely nothing interesting or relevant to say except “we recruit for most of our positions on college campuses and we love to chat with awesome people like yourselves!”. Save it for the promo video, lady.

We then headed to Embassy Suites downtown for the Portland SIM event which included an awkward pre-dinner meet and greet, full of awkward introductions and fake enthusiasm. It was hard to breath with the thick cloud of cheesing going on by the students hoping to get their name to stick in the minds of CIOs who couldn’t give two shits about them. Luckily, dinner was served relatively soon after we got there which provided an outlet for my awkwardness. No need to fake a conversation when you’re too busy stuffing your face with bread. We also got a presentation by an executive from Regence Blue Cross of Portland about health care reform and what that means to our industry. The speech (including the Q&A or “attack and defend” portion) ran long as these things always do but afterward we loaded our asses back into the giant white van (which we valeted) and headed back to Corvallis at 50 miles per hour. Overall, I was glad I got a glimpse of the type of people that are in the IT/IS industry. It reassured me that I am not completely in over my head in this field, I just need more technical knowledge and perhaps a pocket protector.

Oregon State’s “Dead Week”

Since I am somewhat of a west coast college connoisseur (2 community colleges and 3 universities for those keeping track), I have sampled several different semester/quarter systems and final schedules. At USC we had two 15-week terms per year, instead of the three 10-week terms here at OSU. Each term at USC we had what I call an official dead week which meant that after the last week of classes we had an entire week without classes to prepare for our exams the following week. OSU decided, however, that they are going to call week 10 “dead week” except that we are still required to attend all of our classes. As far as I can tell, the only difference between dead week and a regular week is that professors are “encouraged” to refrain from having any large projects or tests due that week, leaving only the weekend for open study days to prepare for finals (unless you are a business major like myself and rarely have classes on Fridays, which is another commentary altogether).

The only thing accomplished by declaring week 10 “dead week” is that it forces professors to cram all of their final project/paper due dates into week 9, which causes infinitely more stress on students than just allowing deadlines to fall within week 10. I do understand that it takes much more time to prepare for a final after 15 weeks of class than for a class that only spanned 10 weeks, which is why I am not suggesting that OSU give an entire week of study time before finals. The only thing that would accomplish would be to increase revenue for the bars during that week. Believe me, you should see the bars during the first week of classes when there is minimal homework weighing on our minds. I just think that this is a good example of OSU’s misguided attempts to help students and missing the mark.

Losing my blogging virginity

So I just got my new computer with Windows 7 on it and have been playing around with all of the features (between my volunteer work and extensive studying, of course) and found this blog writer that posts through Windows Live. Since my MIS major doesn’t exactly provide me with many (or any) opportunities to do creative writing that doesn’t involve C# programming language, I figured I’d use this to maintain my sanity until I graduate and subsequently go insane with unemployment-induced boredom. I doubt anyone will actually care enough to read it (except you, mom) but that’s not really why I’m going to write it. Hopefully it will provide a little humor or entertainment.