| The game can be summarized as follows:
Lightning: I'm a hardass! Also, I'm hot.
Snow: I'm in love! Also, SERAAAAHHHH!!!!!!!
Hope: I'm a coward. Also, I'm on a quest for revenge.
Vanille: I'm obnoxious! Also... nope, that's it.
Sazh: I'm the token black dude! Also, I... have a chocobo living in my hair.
Developers: We're obssessed with crystals! No, we mean really obssessed. Crystals... so shiny... and... hard...
:P | comments: 3 stickits or Tell me where to stick it   |
| Wow, I've apparently totally forgotten how popomundo works. I couldn't even figure out where to buy musical instruments (you really have to click on "show all locales" before looking). This was after my first show, which was bottom-dwelling because nobody showed up. I suppose it's just as well as:
a) I didn't have any instruments with me
b) I'd forgotten to set my band role
c) I forgot that songs need to be jammed first
d) I booked a show far too soon, having forgotten that ticket sales take time
:P It's like being a total noob all over again. | | comments: 3 stickits or Tell me where to stick it |
| At home, when you graduate college, there's a big, long, boring ceremony in which you dress up in a stupid robe and formally receive your diploma before an audience of everyone you've ever met. The university organizes the whole thing and it will happen without any input on the part of the student.
Here, it's a little different.
First you have to request an official list of your grades and send that to the school- that's right, you request your transcript from the university's administration and then immediately send it back to them. Then you fill in another form requesting an official diploma, which takes some six weeks to prepare. If, like me, you need proof of graduation before that time elapses, you can also request a somewhat less formal letter stating that you've completed the requirements. I think there is a small ceremony, but attendance is strictly optional and literally no one I knew was going. The whole thing is a bit of a beauracratic nightmare and clearly a much less sentimental experience than graduations are at home, which typically feature proud, tearful parents and ebullient ex-students.
Anyway, I requested my bachelor degree months ago and then immediately forgot about it. The informal letter stating that I'd completed the requirements was sufficient to get me into my master's program, and once school began again I was kinda busy. But today I had the day free, and having had all sorts of awkward experiences with school administrators losing shit or just not knowing what I'm talking about, I decided to call the service center and make sure they didn't throw requested diplomas away after a couple of months.
For some reason, the woman I spoke to thought this question was hilariously funny. "Of course we don't!" she said, between fits of laughter.
Well come on, lady, how should I know what your policy is here? Perhaps university policy is always so "consistent" and "logical", I should simply be able to intuit the next move? Diplomas are handled so differently in the Netherlands than they are at home I honestly had no idea what to expect. But from her reaction, you'd think I'd asked whether diplomas are fireproof and/or glow in the dark.
Anyway, I should stop gabbing and start heading out. The school office is closer than it was to our old house in Haarlem, but it's still a bit of a trek. | | comments: 1 stickit or Tell me where to stick it |
| So I've resurrected my facebook account. Not out of any desire for yet another social networking tool, but because apparently there are lots of nifty web-based games available, and this is a slow week at work.
I should explain that I deleted my old account years ago after totally failing to use it for months at a time- or at least, I thought I deleted it. Turns out it was merely deactivated, and upon receiving the breath of life it immediately conjured up every person I've ever interacted with. Most of them I haven't seen since high school, and let me tell you, this is WEIRD. One of my high school mates appears to have married a dude easily 20 years her senior (and is she pregnant in the wedding photo or is it just the angle?) There's a backlog of about a hundred invites to some game called Triumph from a single friend (what's up with that, Shannon?) I have half a dozen friend requests from people whom I don't recognize but whose names sound familiar, which means we were probably best buds at some point and I've now forgotten them (Remington... unusual name. Do I know a Remington?). :S Also the people I do recognize are... well, a lot older than I remember them. Remind me not to upload any recent pictures of myself.
Furthermore, Facebook is still an incomprehensible maze of circuitous links, fragmented conversations, and baffling, apparently useless features. After 5 seconds of trying to reacquaint myself, I remembered with crystal clarity why I'd never been taken with the site. Hopefully the games will be worth it, or my newly reanimated Facebook account will be not long for this world. | | comments: Tell me where to stick it |
| After hearing a radio story on the subject, I wondered whether or not it really was impossible for people to tell crows apart. So I decided to try for myself.
Well, I suck at it. Three or more wrong before I picked the correct crow out of the lineup. It is surprisingly difficult. And more than a little creepy that they apparently can tell humans apart with high fidelity.
Beware the crows. | | comments: Tell me where to stick it |
| Had a strange moment when reading an email from my advisor today. Apparently he is not available Monday morning because:
"Maandag ben ik zelf een milt aan het oogsten van een kip."
Or in other words, he won't be available because he will be harvesting a spleen from a chicken.
You have to admit, it's an absurd sentence. Because it was so unexpected, I initially thought I had made a translation mistake. Maybe it was some weird Dutch saying I'd never heard before. You know, "Monday is going to be like harvesting a spleen from a chicken." I tried to puzzle out the meaning of such an odd analogy. What exactly is chicken-spleen-harvesting like? Is it time consuming? Messy, I would think. Perhaps it's really difficult and he was saying he'd be too busy. Or maybe it's the Dutch version of "venting your spleen", but then I didn't see where the chicken came in.
Once my train of thought got back on track, I realized that he meant it literally. One of the advantages of being in the veterinary department is that you can just wander downstairs and... harvest a spleen from a chicken.
Now I've got a helluva mental image. Also: "harvest a spleen from a chicken" is a hilarious phrase. Not sure why. | | comments: Tell me where to stick it |
| Clinical Immunology: 8.0 Exam 7.6, participation 8.2.
That's right, bitches. I am AWESOME.
No seriously, I was really worried about the immunology exam. I feel as if an enormous weight has been lifted from my shoulders.
Now, let's hope Bacterial Pathogenesis comes out just as nicely! *crosses fingers* | | comments: Tell me where to stick it |
| A professor related a telling story during one of the lectures today.
When my professor had been a young student, he shared a department with a famous and very elderly clinical immunologist. The elder immunologist, known for his work on rheumatoid arthritis, had long since retired, but still took a strong interest in the (then) current research being done. As such, he would frequently drop by the lab to see what people were doing and discuss the latest trends.
One day the elder immunologist showed up early in the morning, yawning and seeming generally older than usual. "I didn't sleep well last night," he complained. "I had the Dream again." My professor asked him what he was talking about. "I haven't told you the Dream?" asked the immunologist. "I've had it periodically for the last 60 years."
The elder immunologist's dream went like this: He is pulling into the parking lot at the rheumatoid arthritis clinic he works at. The parking lot is utterly empty, which is odd and unsettling. Normally there are patients in varying states of pain making their slow way towards the clinic door, but not today. It's silent. He goes inside, into the waiting room, which is similarly deserted. In fact, the entire building is empty, every hall all the way up to his office, in which he finally finds his secretary.
"What's going on?" he queries. "Is today Sunday or something?"
"Didn't you see the news last night?" she shakes her head. "They found a cure for rheumatoid arthritis."
And the immunologist would wake in a cold sweat.
I don't think this makes him a bad man or anything- he sounded like a good doctor who loved his job and didn't want to see it disappear. In fact, while listening to the story I was reminded of the time I asked my coworkers in the National Meningitis Lab for the most recent statistics on meningitis in Europe. The statistics were still being analyzed and in the process of looking them up, it became apparent that meningitis prevalence in the Netherlands has fallen sharply in the last couple of years. The news quickly spread around the lab and soon a small crowd of visibly worried analysts had gathered around the computer.
"But fewer people are getting sick!" I protested naively. "Isn't that good?"
"Not for us," responded the senior analyst grimly.
Do your job too well and lose it. It's funny, sad and stupid all at the same time. | | comments: Tell me where to stick it |
| | One of my brother's bands, Labrador, played a show recently and the video is now on Youtube. The video is mostly of his back, they are literally in someone's living room, and the sound quality is awful, but, well. Have a look anyway. I quite liked the music. | | comments: Tell me where to stick it |
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katrinya's journal
