Aleksandra the Great’s Exploits

¡Adios, Nueva York!
I checked out of my dorm late Wednesday evening, meaning I can no longer call myself a New Yorker. I have two finals on the 9th of May, and then my first year of college is finished, and I hopefully won’t have to go back to New York (except to use my two free passes to MoMA—is anyone interested in going with me?). But there are still 32 days until I’ll have heard from all of my transfer colleges (meaning I’m anxiously awaiting the mail every day).

Finals
On Thursday morning I had my World Cultures: Chinese and Japanese Traditions final with Ricky and my Lit Interp final. They decided to make the WC final on the last day of class rather than on Reading Day, something about which I was very pleased, since I don’t have enough train tickets to travel to and from New York one more day than I thought I had to and because you’re not allowed to have finals on Reading Day; they let us arrive at 7:30 rather than at 8 so we could have extra time. Anyway, the amazing thing is that I filled a Blue Book! During the midterm in my AmFic class last semester, for which we only had an hour and fifteen minutes, some of the students requested second Blue Books. I think I filled half of my first book during that exam. After about an hour and a half of writing in WC, though, I went up and got my second book. I’m pretty pleased. [Edit: I know that’s the same thing I said about those boys and their grammatical correction. Sorry.

One more thing: The final did not prove to be very difficult. We read five works and had to answer one of two essay questions for each one. They were all pretty reasonable—comparing some of the plays of one collection, examining characters’ actions, ect. One of the books we had to read was Soseki’s And then, a novel that deals with this guy Daisuke and his friend Hiraoka and Hiraoka’s wife, Michiyo. One of the essay topics for that book was “Write the main narrative as seen from Michiyo’s perspective.” What kind of essay is that?! It didn’t even require that we think about the book, only that we know the plot. And telling it from her point of view made it even easier than simply summarizing since she didn’t know all of the side stories with Daisuke’s family. Needless to say, I chose that one.]

Where’s Tabby?
This morning around 6:30 my mother came in my room to say that we left the back door open last night and the cat (Tabby) was missing. My mother said she’d looked around outside and couldn’t find her and didn’t hear her meowing, so she really believed my cat was dead. My step-father heard, and he and I got ready quickly and went to help look for the cat. By the time I got to the basement, however, they had found Tabby. She had hidden under my neighbor’s car and very luckily was neither run-over nor stolen. Tabby enjoyed a very early breakfast and lots of attention this morning.

I was doing so well with posting somewhat regularly and then I just lost it again. It’s partly because I had midterms and a paper due. It seems like I worried too much about the exams because I didn’t think they were that difficult, but I haven’t gotten the grades back yet.

Friday night Ricky and I attempted to walk up to Christina’s dorm, but we ended up taking the subway. It was already 1am and it actually felt like winter this past week. They had Cranium up there. I tried to resist playing; how could I take part in an activity that Mr. Connelly hates? Eventually I became a limited player. I feel like I betrayed him.

Possibly more important, I’m applying to colleges again. Late last semester I got really stressed and wanted to transfer to somewhere closer to home (since I come home almost every weekend anyway; I know that’s pathetic), but I’d missed all of the application dates. I wasn’t really considering it this semester until it came time to study for midterms. So now I’m applying to Swarthmore, Bryn Mawr, and Haverford. Needless to say, I’m quite worried. Although I’m not sure that I would transfer yet (I just want to have the option in case I decide to), right now I’m rather fond of the idea of transferring, so getting accepted seems like a much bigger concern than it needs to be. After all, even if I don’t get in to any of them, I’m still in college, and it’s not terrible. I think my wanting to transfer is somewhat influenced by Honey and Clover—it’s an anime about these students in an art college and they have their little group and they’re very friendly with the professor. Maybe I want something like that (as if transferring would automatically create that situation).

Other than that, there isn’t much of import except that it’s the second night in a row in which I’ll be up till five if not past then. Rearranging my sleep schedule is not a good idea when I still have 8am classes to attend.

As I was hurrying to get home from work today, this guy was completely holding up the line of people filing down the subway stairs. He had stopped on the way down to touch a deteriorating part of the ceiling and mutter “morons” to himself. I thought perhaps he had his definition wrong.

By the time I was seated in a pleasantly uncrowded F train car I had forgotten all about the guy. Then, just before the doors closed, he walked on to the car and took his place in the middle, where people usually go to beg for money for some reason or another.

This guy was different. He started off with something about how dangerous it was using MTA and pulled out a piece of the subway wall from some concealed spot to show that the subways were in disrepair. He shouted that someone (possibly a political figure, though I wasn’t familiar with the name) didn’t care. Then the best part: He held up the piece of wall to the ceiling of the subway car and told us to imagine if it fell on a little baby. [I would like to add that he told us that he pulled this wall piece from the L subway stop at some location I don’t recall; the only way it could fall on anyone is if he dropped it while vandalizing the station.]

And what has caused the subways to be in such a dangerous condition? Apparently, it’s the Daily News. He said something like, “If you want to save [money, right? No…] people’s lives [ha!], don’t buy the Daily News.” You meet all sorts of crazies on the subways of New York.

What makes this all the more entertaining is that on the street on the way home from my subway stop, I passed a guy handing out free copies of the Daily News. Influenced by the guy on the subway, I didn’t take a copy; that, or I just didn’t have an easy way to dispose of newspapers.

First
NYU’s CAS Silver center is connected to two buildings: Waverly and Brown. Brown used to be the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, the very same in which all of those workers were trapped and died in the fire at the beginning of the last century. Today during Lit Int a boy interrupted the class about what he suspected was an alarm. The professor determined that since the alarm wasn’t sounding on our floor and no one else was leaving, we would stay. As soon as she finished saying this, the alarm rang a few times more audibly, so we had to leave. It was a very irregular alarm, though, staying constant for a few seconds and beeping a few more times before stopping, and then starting again. We all casually stood up and gathered our things and turned in our papers before heading out to the crowd in the hall waiting to get into the Silver stairwell. If it had been a serious, real fire, people probably would have died. Taking the Waverly stairs is definitely a quicker escape, even with the slight disorientation at coming out from a different stairwell on the ground floor. Still, the fire escape routes here do not seem much improved.

Second
1. One of the black belts brought (presumably) his child to stretch class last night. It almost made me want (to adopt) a baby. The kid, who couldn’t even walk on his (her?) own yet, wore a little gi complete with a white belt. He (she?) was probably the most adorable baby I’ve ever seen.

2. Slightly worrisome: A sensei (4th dan) is leaving the Seido organization, and not just because he is moving. He assured us at the end of class that there was nothing wrong with Seido and encouraged us to keep training. He said that it was time for him to move on, and though the path would change, the love of karate was still there. So maybe he wants to start his own school? That’s what Kaicho did when he withdrew from Kyokushin. But Kaicho withdrew because he disagreed with the choices made by and the new beliefs of Oyama Kancho. In reading Kaicho’s (probably biased) autobiography, I realized how fortunate it was that I was turned off by the kumite emphasis in Kyokushin (which had seemed highly appealing until I observed a class) because I too disagreed with the principles of the grandmaster. So if a sensei is leaving Seido forever, does that suggest that there are now such flaws in my style? It does not seem possible considering how strong Kaicho’s feelings were just 30 years ago. Still, I must be alert to changes in the organization and not continue training blindly if definite problems make themselves known.

Today is already probably my least favorite day of the week because it means I have to catch up on all of the homework I didn’t do all weekend and I have to adjust my comfortable sleep schedule (bed at 4am, wake at noon) for the coming four days of school and work. This particular Sunday shouldn’t have been too bad, though. I actually got up and made it to an am class of Seido. So I stayed for two classes, both taught by the same instructor. One of the girls who took the class—who happens to pronounce her name the same way I pronounce mine, though her spelling is quite unusual—kept talking after class about how “fabulous” the instructor was. Hmm. I rather disagree. He was late for the 11am class and made us start another kata at 12, when the next class was supposed to start, so the following class ran over, too. It was supposed to end at 12:45, and at 12:53 he said something very along the lines of, “Well, this class ran over, too. We’ll do one more kata. Is anyone late for an appointment? They can go.” So I left, not just out of principle but because I was actually supposed to be somewhere at two.

And that two o’clock event, which should have been the subject of this blog post, was the PAS Mini-mini-con I. When I was at my dorm preparing to head over to Brooklyn, my RA dropped by to do the one-on-one survey thing. She did say that she was considering running a ski trip, and I told her I’d go on that. Then she wanted me to give her an idea for a program that I would attend—like knitting club or getting together in Starbucks (heh) for philosophical conversations. Uhh…. So I had to tell her I’m not really into that socializing thing, by choice, but I don’t know if I’m going to get away with not going to any of the floor’s activities for the rest of the year. She’s probably a really good RA; I just don’t necessarily want to hang out with anyone.

Anyway, back to anime. So I made it to Brooklyn just fine and, with a little help from one of those corner shop salesmen, found my way to the hall where the convention was to be held. The guy at the front desk said he didn’t know where it was (that was okay because I did), but that some other guys were in the building trying to find it, too. So I go up to the fourth floor and I passed the room where the video games (including DDR) were supposed to be. That room was empty and dark. Still optimistic, I figured maybe not too many people showed up, so they condensed all of the activities down to one room. I got to the other room—the one for showing anime—and found two guys sitting outside checking their cell phones and talking about the PAS. We introduced ourselves and discussed the lack of a convention. The trip wasn’t completely a waste, though. We talked about anime, etc. The older guy was very knowledgeable. They recommended things to me, too. People are so helpful. After about half an hour of waiting, we all left. They guy at the front desk talked to us for a little while before we left, and he told us about this website, which he made it seem like he wrote, though I couldn’t be sure.

I had hoped this excursion today would have lasted until 8 or so, and then I would have to come home and have dinner and do homework and sleep. But now I’ve got time to procrastinate.

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I suppose it might not be tricky for number people to understand, but it’s taken me five months to figure out what the constantly-changing red numbers on the outer wall of the Circuit City on 14th St. meant. It’s pretty impossible to miss—a string of fifteen numbers with the middle few rapidly changing and affecting the outer numbers [Note: My representation of the middle ones may not be entirely accurate; it’s difficult to see what they say since they change so quickly]. It had always seemed like some sort of clock, but it distrubed me. Not knowing what it really was, I imagined that it counted something morbid, like deaths versus births (though I had no idea in what part of the world or over what time period). I’d considered asking the people in Circuit City what it meant, but I never did. Once I was fortunate enough to overhear some boy telling his female companion that it counted the hours in the day. Still, for several more months after that I could never get it to work out right.

Then tonight! I finally got it. The left side counts how many hours have passed in military time; the right side tells how much time remains until midnight. The thing is, the right side doesn’t read backwards totally. The two digits on the very right count hours, the next two count minutes, etc., but within each two-digit segment the numbers must be read left-to-right to make sense. I think I had so much trouble with the clock because I expected a greater symmetry.

I don’t think I’ve been out of my dorm for more than three hours since Friday despite the lovely weather we had yesterday. I managed to finsih this week’s homework for all but one of my classes, though. Friday was quite busy—a class of Seido (it should have been two, but I overslept), Japanese, another class of Seido, and anime club, all back-to-back.

The main purpose of this post was to show Stephen in his gear:

He’s really excited to start sparring. That’s a bit surprising, considering how gentle he is.

Sorry the picture is so small.

Since the high school where I tutor on Mondays and Wednesdays is having testing this week and next, I had off today. My one class wasn’t canceled, but it wasn’t bad, either. I got to sleep in a bit, too, because the class doesn’t start until 9:30. I’d been feeling really weak and unknowledgeable in the blue belt classes as Seido, so I decided to go to the early afternoon class that I’m usually never able to make. Kyoshi Akira taught the class; I’d forgotten how much I like him. I’ll have to make an effort to go to more of the classes he instructs.

Ricky and I are very pathetic sushi-eaters. We went to my Japanese restaurant to take advantage of its last customer appreciation $1 sushi $2 rolls day (there were three total). A review I came across online said that the place has the best sushi in lower Manhattan, so I had pretty high expectations, and I am happy to say that they were met. Granted, I haven’t tasted all of the sushi in lower Manhattan—in fact, I don’t believe I’ve had sushi since coming to New York—but it was probably the best sushi I’ve ever had. Normally I don’t have much of a taste for sushi for a while after having some, but I think I could get sushi from there again soon. Despite its being really good sushi, Ricky and I had to pick it apart to scrape out the tiny bit of wasabi hidden under the fish, and though neither of us used the soy sauce, I did manage to dip my hair in it. [Note: I do know the name of the restaurant, I just chose not to disclose it. And Christina, Ricky’s iced green tea had a little tree in it; there’s a picture on my phone to prove it.]

In the free time after lunch I was able to finish all of the work that’s due tomorrow (so now I have nothing to do in my boring 8am class). Then I went to two classes of Seido, and I felt great afterwards. Recently I’d only been going to one class Wednesday nights, but doing two gives me so much energy and puts me in a very good mood. I’m glad nothing bad happened tonight to ruin that. I’m just about able to do modified (girl) knuckle push-ups pretty well! It’s very exciting; three and a half hours after the class ended and my knuckles are still red. Funny, three months ago that would have been a complaint.

So I had a very enjoyable day off. I only regret that I have to go back to school tomorrow.

A somewhat related subject: My little brother got his letter of invitation to MKA’s Black Belt Club yesterday. He was very pleased, though not necessarily excited. Being a confident optimist, he insisted that he would get invited.

In an attempt to be more careful with my money and to consolidate it a bit, I closed my savings account and transferred the money from there, as well as the cash my parents gave me and a paycheck, into my checking account. I figured it would be easiest to keep track of it all that way. Not even an hour after I finished at the bank, I walked up to the front desk at Seido to sign in and was told that they’re canceling the pay-by-month plan that I’m on. Now they’re only accepting payments taken directly from checking accounts. Blah.

My mother and I thought it best if I opened a new savings account and just transferred funds over when I needed to. This would be most inconvenient, though—having to make sure I have enough in my savings account to switch some over into checking and still keep enough in the savings to avoid the $2 fee if the balance falls below $100. I have decided, instead, to open a second checking account just for Seido. I suppose they just had to make things difficult.

I finally got my blue belt at Seido tonight. It tied much better than I thought a stiff new belt would.

I’m feeling a bit sick. I hope it doesn’t progress to what my brother, who is now recovering from two days with a fairly high fever, had.

I discovered in the World Cultures recitation this morning that a girl who went to maybe two classes of the Speaking Freely Japanese is taking my WC as well. I think she lives in my dorm, too, but I haven’t talked to her since my first failed attempt to ask her about anime (her reason for taking those two Japanese classes). Anyway, this means I know three people in one class. Neat

Not that anyone cares, but Palladium had fish tonight. And they’re out of apple peach juice.