Thursday, November 27, 2008

Cardinal Sins

This month I almost committed a grave sin. I almost lost a library book.

I had been reading it in between classes, and tucked it under my desk when the lecture began, only to leave without it at the end of class. I realized it was gone the day after when I was shuffling my books around for the new school day.

Now, I have never lost a library book, which is a very impressive feat for me considering how many things in life that I -have- lost. It was a point of pride that even though I've had a library card for almost as long as I could read, which is almost as long as I've been alive, I've always returned the books I took out, even though sometimes I've returned it late, or not -wanted- to return it. (And there were a few books I really wanted to put on my shelf and leave there.)

So when I couldn't find Na Kua'aina anywhere after three days I dragged myself over to the library confessed my sins, and prepared to pay a hefty fine.

The man behind the counter brought up my account, looked at it, and said, "That book isn't on your record."

"What?"

"I don't see it on your record."

He printed out said record and handed it over. Na Kua'aina was indeed missing. Did someone return it for me? I crossed my fingers and went into the stacks to find out. Sure enough, the book had been returned by some good samaratin the day before, and I checked it out a second time.

As I was walking home with it I mused at the many times I've been lucky enough to have lost something in Hawaii and have it returned. I've lost my wallet twice, once while riding the bus, and left my backpack in a classroom over the weekend. Every time my items were returned to me without a thing missing. Considering how often things are stolen on this campus, from bikes to hand bags, I wondered why I had managed to completely misplace things and still have them returned to me safe and sound.

Maybe it was karma coming back to me for being a good person and returning things that I found myself. Or maybe it was just because I was a good person in general. I mulled that thought over for a second, remembered that pride was a sin, and promptly disposed of it.

I think I'm just lucky.

Sunday, November 9, 2008

Getting a BA

By May I will have a college diploma. While my transcript will say that I have a BA in Asian Studies with a concentration on Japan, I don't know the first thing about Japan. It's an island country, with cheap books and games, nice people, an excellent transportation system, and delicious ramen. That's about all I know about Japan. Oh, and I can speak like a ten year old child in the language.

Perhaps someone is wondering, "If you have a BA in Asian studies with a concentration in Japan, why the hell do you know nothing about Japan?!"

Good question.

To get my BA I needed a total of 124 credit hours. 34 of those credits are set aside as diversification. (Biology, Ethnic studies, Hawaiian)

Ok, that's 90 credits left. I have nine AS core requirements that serve as surveys for the entirety of Asia from the dawn of time to right now this very instant. You're supposed to take these your freshman year, but somehow I ended up taking 6 credits worth as a senior. Oops.

Now we're down to 81 credits. 24 of those went into foreign language study. This can sort of kind of be considered part of my major since I studied Japanese, so we'll set those credits aside for now.

57 now. Here things get a little complicated. I went to Japan for a year. While there I learned nothing in the academic sense. Got a lot of life experience, would have learned more outside of school. But I still was credited with most of my Japan Focus credits while over there. A total of 27 credits received. None of them were really worth anything, but that's where my "Japan Focus" comes from.

Ironically, the one thing that I did do that was worth while, translate a book cover to cover, was not credited to me because it was an independent project.

That leaves 30 credits. 9 are from Linguistic classes that I took for fun. Had I the time I'd double major in linguistics, but time is money, and I don't have money. 3 more are from an honors class I took my first semester. Another waste of time, but it was my first semester. I didn't know any better. One baby credit comes from a Tai Chi class I took. It was only four days, but it took five hours out of those days. I enjoyed it quite a bit.

And finally, I have 17 credits waiting for me in my last semester. None of them are 'free'. I either take particular classes or I don't graduate, and none of them have anything to do with Japan.

So out of the 124 credits I need to graduate a shaky 27 had anything to do with my major, and 21 were more directly related because I was studying a language (but I'm not majoring in the Japanese language, and in fact only needed 16 credits in Japanese to graduate). So far I've taken not a single class dealing with Japan while in Hawaii aside from a class on Japanese Linguistics (which was not good) and the occasional mention of Japan in survey class.

But I'm graduating with a BA in Asian Studies.

Sometimes I feel like I'm really getting a BA in subtraction.

Post the Second.

10 PM on a Sunday night. I have just written the words I need to stay on track for this years NaNoWriMo. The topic: a travelogue of Attunia, a world that has been in my head since middle school and comes out small spurts onto various media. This year that medium is NaNo.

Last year it was supposed to be NaNo too, and the year before that, and the year before that. I failed for two of those years, and for the third I changed direction entirely midway into the month and ended up writing something like 40k in the last three days. I do not reccommend that method (Though it did produce some of my better writing.)

What has been coming out this year is rubbish. It's not interesting enough to keep -my- attention, so I don't predict anyone else will ever see it, much less bother to read past the 'introduction'. The plan is that the novel will be utter crap, but there will be segments worth culling for later projects. That's often how my work with Attunia goes. Write pages of filth and pull out a few diamonds forged from the sheer density of the BS that I have packed in.

A guildmate is also attempting NaNoWriMo. She sent me a few excerpts as she started, and it seems she has some good direction. No doubt she will win and have something to show for it, while I will win and wonder if it was worth the effort.

Post the First.

Well, I finally caved in and did it. After a squatter stole up my domain name and my hosting expired after a creative dry spell, I have finally caved and started a blog within one of the many blog site things instead of going through the trouble of running my own code. Perhaps after I graduate I'll have the time to get my site running again, since it was such an excellent outlet for creativity, but for now this will do.

So this blog will be somewhat more focused than the personal site I ran before, but it will still be about the things that interest me. I'm just going to make a small, operative word being 'small', attempt to make what I say relevant to someone besides me, my mother, and the random web trolls who get a kick out of looking into people's digital windows.

What -should- show up here, if I don't flake? Lots of stuff on...

Education - how it's working, why I hate it.
Books - what quarter deals I got at the library this month, what I'm reading, why other people should read it too.
Asia - my major, why that side of the world is just as insane as this one, but in different ways.
Warcraft - I won't be able to help it.
Creative Writing - maybe some. Wordplay, musings on how bad people are at writing and what can be done to fix it.

That's my prediction. Let's see what happens.