NEW POSTS SOON!

currently procrastinating...will be back shortly (:

Dear procrastinators...

GO OUT AND VOTE!

(And please, vote with intelligence, not ignorance. Not due to idiotic reasoning such as "he's a Muslim" or "wow, his running mate is a stone cold FOX!")

Love,
The Asian Girl

Happy (late) Halloween!

Gov. Sarah Palin approves.

I'm so strung out on you...

I am a nail polish addict.

The first step is admitting you have a problem.
A problem, you say? I estimate my nail polish collection to be around 400 dollars...please note that out of 35 bottles, only 3 were bought prior to Fall 2007. However, compared to getting a biweekly acrylic fill, I still saved over a hundred dollars.

Up until January 2007, I was a chronic nail-biter. The only time I was not was during my acrylic phase from 2004-2006. Since I was in the UK, I could not afford acrylics. (60 dollars?! Sorry, there's Strongbow to be bought...)

Here are my nail must-haves:

Seche Vite top coat (This may have fueled my addiction far more than anything else...15 minutes and my nails are dry?! Now I can change it daily...*evil grin*)
Solar Oil (I have learned to love the almond scent. Also, combined with Seche Vite, polish dries even faster (10 minutes!!!). I think it works with oils in general; I have yet to try other oils.)
OPI Nail Envy (This is my workhorse base coat. Many people complain about it peeling; maybe I'm a freak but it's been the best base I've ever used.)
Sally Hansen Instant Cuticle Remover (Yes, it's cheap and you can find it at Wal-Mart.)

Here are some of my less favorite products:

Orly Bonder (Quickest tip wear ever. Save 8 dollars and skip it.)
any OPI base/top coat (It chips and peels. Besides, you don't want to wait forever for your polish to dry already.)
Chanel Black Satin (Scrangie, one of my favorite nail blogs, recommended Zoya Raven instead. I own both; not only is it identical, it is 14 dollars cheaper AND applies much easier than the Chanel.)

(note: For those of you who are curious, that is my (sloppy) rendition of Chris Paul's New Orleans Hornets jersey (CP3!!!). The white is Zoya Gaia, the purple Zoya Yasmeen and the teal China Glaze For Audrey.)

q: Asian Girl! Your football predictions suck!

What have you got to say for yourself?

a: Hey, hey, hey. Okay, so LSU's new QBs have crapped the bed (Damn you, Ryan Perrilloux! Why the fuck couldn't you have just behaved?!) and my not-so-secret former crush Tim Tebow (Blue and orange Crocs? Girlie hard-on goodbye!) has finally put himself back in the Heisman race (although I think a few Big 12 QBs have something to say about that).

My main prediction still stands. It will be someone in the Big 12 (Texas, Texas Tech or OU) vs. Alabama. I would usually pull for the SEC, but the Big 12 is making that mighty hard this season.

I was happy to see Penn State beat those pesky Buckeyes. Great, maybe the national championship will be worth watching this time around!

q: I'm having a long run of bad luck...

how do I cope?

a: What ever you do, don't panic. Take a time-out and breathe. Rethink the situation and assess the worst that can happen. Mentally put yourself in that situation and imagine it playing out. Not that bad? Good. Still freaking out? Calm down and reconsider. Repeat until content.

Not to be Biblical or anything, but have you heard of the book of Job? Homeboy went through a mad crazy spell of bad luck and all of his friends thought that God was punishing him. However, Job disagreed. Job was right: sometimes bad things just happen for no reason. Some people just have this innate need to blame so they blame God/karma/etc. I subscribe to a more simplistic explanation: shit happens.

I could be as harsh as a close friend of mine: "Asian Girl, life sucks. Get a helmet." (Sorry, BFF2, I still love ya.) Unfortunately, I'm notorious for whining/dwelling on things so some tough love was definitely in order. I hope you're not anywhere near as stubborn as I am.

I may not know the extent or severity of your situation, so I apologize ahead of time if this seems trite. I'm no stranger to a string of bad luck. For instance, I've been single for four years. (Just kidding...not the single part, but insinuating that being single is bad luck.) A good two months before leaving for England, it was just one thing after another. I slept with someone I shouldn't have. I got caught up in someone else's illicit activities. I got rejected for a higher credit limit. I got into two car accidents within a week of each other. I lost my job...a week before Christmas. My admission and housing situation in England was not confirmed and the university was closed until the second week of January. A good friend's mother died shortly after Christmas and the funeral was held on my 22nd birthday. Pretty much, I thought I was completely fucked.

However, what helped me out was some kind words from a friend: "Since all these bad things have happened to you so far, something really good has got to happen." (Thanks again, BFF2! haha...) Sure enough, things began to improve. I got my acceptance letter during the first week of January. My aunt lent my dad 4000 dollars for my trip. My housing finally came through 4 days before my departure. Soon enough, I was on a plane to the UK and experienced the time of my life (so far, that is).

The lesson is, things will get better eventually. Here's something to remember from the greatest musical ever: "Except for death and paying taxes, everything in life is only for now."

Erasmus Syndrome

On January 27, 2007, I left the US for 5 months in the UK. It still remains, if not the best, one of the best times of my life so far. It's almost been 2 years but the memories are still fresh in my head.

The best advice I can ever give to a college student is to study abroad. I know what some of you are thinking: Oh, another "study abroad transformed me" story. All study abroad stories are unique to their owner but all share the same sentiment: you are never the same after. You will never be the same after. This article elaborates on the same idea.

This was found by my friend Alexandra who translated it from Greek and was edited by yours truly. The original can be found at http://metanastis.blogspot.com/2008/01/erasmus-syndrome.html

Erasmus Syndrome

17/01/05
"I’m at my university right now. I've met so many people and I feel great! If I were to leave Sweden right now this would be a great experience so far, bearing in mind that I’ve been here for 5 days and I will stay for the following five months!"

This is the first entry in the diary I used to keep while I was in Sweden taking part in the Erasmus program.

Erasmus syndrome is a condition that comes as result of a long stay abroad and it happens due to change of culture, climate, society, language, friends, relationships, lessons, food, habits, colors, smells, feelings, insurance system, traffic regulation, TV programs, people, animals, insects, plants…what else? Oh yes, toilets, cities, villages, football, music, politics, mass media, means of transport, time that gets dark, time the sun rises, time that it’s noon and it's time for me to finish the list. At the end, the combination of the all the aforementioned with those that one finds in the country one comes from results in the Erasmus syndrome.

Let me take things from the beginning.

The first days in a foreign country - where you know you’ll be spending a serious amount of time living in - are revealing. You see and live unfamiliar things and this induces a sense of euphoria.

After we all had fun and got to know each other fairly well, we enjoyed a period of relative relaxation, where we started to behave as if we were residents of this country: Travels, walks, parties, football, studying, friends, and everyday human activities. (Now that I’m writing this I realize after a long time the need for such small joys of life – even though it sounds like a cliché. Go for a walk somewhere nice, give your girlfriend a flower, look at a full moon, ’cause if this isn't life then what is it?)

Time got by very pleasantly (something that confirms the notion that when you’re having a good time, time flies by.) The weather was cold but tolerable, almost pleasantly different.

Toward the end of Erasmus, the need for contact was imperative and the promises for future reunions were endless. Especially the last days we used to have many conversations about where are we in life right now, what are we doing, what we're gonna do next and so on, all that accompanied by the stress of our return or rather, our departure.

I remember the discussion we had with a Slovenian and a Belgian guy our last night out. We all felt so weird that we may never meet again that we started to philosophize effortlessly just to end up to a funny fact that actually contained some truth. “No, my friend, no! You have to put your feelings in a box as long as you are here and leave it aside.” That is, no smiles, no joy, all that has to be in the box. I guess that was a bit exaggerated, but what happens if you bond excessively with something or with everything there was where you went? How are you going to go back home? I imagine (and believe me I can imagine that because I lived it) that it’s going to be torture.

While I was in Sweden, relatives and friends kept asking me when I was coming back. They kept talking about how much they missed me and all that stuff. However, I felt exactly the opposite, I wasn’t in the mood to go back home or explain what I lived. I feel (and this is not only me, but also lots of friends from Erasmus feel so) that over there I had a parallel life that I could make it as I wished, knowing what friends to make, what decisions to take (based on my experience of life, okay I must’ve had some experience from all the stupid things I’ve done, right?) and knowing of course that one day I would be back home.

I can say that others were influenced a lot by the syndrome; they changed or their life changed (I know quite a lot of people that broke up while being on the program, whereas others broke up by going back), while others seemed unaffected.

The first days I got back to Greece I felt lost, trapped between two worlds. My room seemed too small for me, the toilet big, and the key different; however the city, the relatives and friends were all the same. I can say that when you are emotionally bonded before you go, you are even more when you return.

One of the many pieces of advice is to go alone and hang out with as many foreigners as possible. Even if it seems scary at first, it will leave you with some incredible memories and knowledge at the end.

The symptoms of the Erasmus syndrome include continuous sighs, a sense of escape, the need for a full life, words like ‘everyone has their own story, their own friends, and we all together are a group', tolerance to other ethnicities and generally to the different, increase of sociability and a lot of other symptoms that would take up lot of space to be described here.

Finally (this is another freaking symptom, thinking in another language, in my case English) this whole thing has left me a bittersweet taste that is getting sweeter and sweeter as time goes by…

14/06/2005
"I’m on the airplane right now. If I were alone here I would be crying. Everything's so different but still the same. It’s over…"