TheLeong.com

Funniest moment of the day: standing in line at the Registrar’s Office so that I can get a copy of my transcript. If you don’t know the IU Registrar’s office, it’s an old building, old desks, old ladies, and huge weird oil paintings on the walls. It feels like it should be in either a museum or a library.

And then I hear it. Coming from a radio is “What is Love?” by Haddaway. That’s right, the theme song they use for the Roxbury guys on SNL. Freaking hilarious. I could just imagine the old ladies doing the neck bob dance.

It’s 11:11PM on a Monday night, and I am just now getting ready to leave the Main Library. I got here at noon today, left from 2:30 to 4:30 for a class, and then came back here to work. Marketing project = not fun. Anyways, this is the longest I’ve ever been in the library I think (at least lately), and it’s kind of weird. Not as crowded as usual, since most of the campus has left early for Thanksgiving. Also pretty much every girl I saw or heard was a dirty hippy; quite the opposite from the usual hot asian chicks. Maybe it’s because I’m sitting near the window in the corner.

I’m going home probably early Wednesday morning for Thanksgiving break. I’ll be in St. Louis until Sunday morning. It’s the first time I’ve been home since August 1, and even then it was only for like a day or two (right after I got back from Japan). It’s going to be fun I think; see family, etc. Anyway I also really am starting to have withdrawal for my actual website. There will be a bunch of blog posts that will “appear” all at once when my domain finally gets back up and running (I re-registered last Thursday morning; hurry up!!!!)

Also, congrats to the F-Man for getting into IU Med School. You’re living the dream!!

I know my domain name hasn’t been re-registered yet (why is it taking so long, Supreme Server.com??), I figured I’d write a quick entry. You can all read it when my website actually works again. I took Alicia’s advice and pretty much didn’t do any IUSTV stuff all day. In fact, to recover from the past week (or two), I didn’t do anything all day. I slept in until around 1PM, surfed the internet for hours, watched some TV, ate an entire Pizza Express Big Ten in two sittings, took a nap, and didn’t even leave my apartment except about an hour ago to take out some trash and get some books out of my car. I have a big group project I need to work on before I meet with my group at 10AM tomorrow. This may very well be the first all-nighter for schoolwork on a Saturday night ever.

So yeah, my idea. I’m going to make a sort of promotional video-type thing, showing behind-the-scenes type stuff at IUSTV. Working title is Inside IUSTV. I’m going to start with (a pilot, in a sense) the new Read studios Open House, and just pretty much show it off to everyone in a 22 minute special. Originally when I was thinking to myself about this (lying on the futon and watching Fresh Prince), it was just going to be a one-shot video, giving a tour of the new digs, interviewing people, etc. Then I realized that everything I wanted to put in it and do, such as interview every Exec and Producer, every show host/anchor, etc, would take way too long to make an attention-holding show. SO, I decided, I am going to do this first one and see how it goes, and if it works well, I will do one for a bunch of other shows. I figure I can put these out every month at the least, possibly more. I will take care of most of it myself, but will definitely get other people to help me out. This will give me a good chance to show off the station, get more (hopefully) people to want to work at IUSTV, and also take care of my editing bug that hasn’t been satisfied in months.

With all the other stuff I’m doing, if I can put out a show monthly or bi-weekly at the station, maybe others will wake up and say “Why can Anthony do it pretty much by himself, but our team of 15 can’t?” Not wanting to sound arrogant, but I think I can do it. And yes I realize this might be easier to make then, say, an episode of Unlocked, it will be fun and that’s the main reason I want to make it. I can take, for example, a DVD of the Inside IUSTV: Open House at Read, home over winter break (yes, I am planning on getting it done by then), and show it off to people at home. I’ll start planning this soon, but for now I have to work on this marketing project for class…

No one is going to read this post for a day or two, but oh well. I remembered to renew my host back in September (stores my files and this site), however I forgot to renew the domain name (the thing that points aleong.com to my stuff). So, I’m currently waiting for my re-registration of the domain name to go through. Hopefully I should have it back in another day or two, and the site will be good as new. As long as some asshole didn’t backorder aleong.com. Seriously, who else but me would use this address? (OK, there are a lot of A Leongs out there; shut up).

I’m now awake, got up at 6:30AM, about 2.5 hours later than I planned. In the next 10 hours, I have to start and finish a 5 page paper (ironically, about blogs), study for a test, do 2 phone interviews, go to a professors office hours, have a group meeting, and also write up a bunch of stuff for that group meeting. I was going to work last night when I got home, but I got lazy then tired, and went to sleep at like 2. I was gonna wake up at 4 and get to work, but we all know how that goes…

I think my blog’s been boring lately, with too much stuff about my life. I was reminded today by Seth of a story from Japan last fall. I will now share it with you all. I have no idea if I wrote about it back when it happened, but if I did, it’s worth re-telling.

So last fall, in Japan, a bunch of us were hungry for some cheap American food, so we all went to Costco. Yes, there is a Costco in Japan, and it’s pretty much the same as here in the states. In addition to pizza, hot dogs, donuts, and giant bags of everything, they have a few more Japanese offerings, like giant plates of sushi, which Ari ate in their entirety. They even had the samples of food, served by African ladies who can’t speak Japanese let alone English. American Costco cards work to get in, but they can’t scan them because apparently the Japanese Costco system doesn’t work with the American one. So if you have any American Costco card, you can get in real easy. Seth used the “Phillip W. Leong” Costco expired card for a good 7 months after I left.

So we’re sitting there eating our pizza in the food court, and we see this dude buy 2 slices. One for him, and one for his wife or mother, we couldn’t tell. What a nice guy, getting food for this female he was with. He walks over from the counter, pizza on plates, and goes to the napkin and condiment stand. Here’s where it gets disturbing. The guy used every single condiment available, and put it directly ON TOP of his pizza. This included salt, pepper, Parmesan cheese, mustard, ketchup, relish, mayonnaise, and raw onions. Probably some other stuff as well. He ended up with 2 pizza slices covered in ooze a few inches thick. Seriously, WTF. Anyway, that was the story, it’s just funny seeing how foreigners mess up other countries food. May I point out the soy sauce on white rice, you Americans?

So this has been a pretty busy weekend. As an example, I left this morning for the new studio at around 1:00PM. I just got back not too long ago, just a bit after 1:00AM. Today, however, take out about 3 hours for an M415 group meeting and also White Castle dinner. Pretty much this entire week I’ve been doing a LOT of IUSTV type work, making phone calls and doing e-mails to get us moved in to the new studio. We got the keys and started moving, and it’s been busy ever since. Friday morning I woke up early to meet with RPS movers who were helping us move a lot of the big furniture and stuff from Ashton to Read. After (and kinda during) that, I had an Exec meeting, then went to an interview, then had a meeting with the Read residence manager. Then we were in the studio from about 7PM to 1AM pulling microphone cables from the studio to the control room.

Saturday was about 2 to 10PM, this time figuring out our lighting system and hanging the dimmers to plug lights into. This involved a lot of ladder and scaffolding work. Brian almost broke his toe. He didn’t though. That was about the entire day, and I went home to sleep for almost a good 12 hours. This entire week has been nuts, so it was warranted. I also, on a random note, watched some “new” Saturday Night Live, and the show has definitely gone down the tubes. Not really worth watching anymore.

Today (Sunday), I was in there from about 1PM to 3PM, then 5PM to 1AM. We finished hanging up all the lights in the studio (about 31), and it’s a lot harder than it sounds at first. But the lighting is pretty much done; we just have to add diffusion paper and label them sometime later this week.

From here on (and I know you’re curious), things will just fall into place. When the ethernet and phone jacks are finished, probably tomorrow, we will start building the cubicles in the office and also then the control room. When the ethernet jacks are actually activated (turned on), we’ll enter the final stages and move all our computers over to Read. After that, we wait on the fiber optic stuff so that we can broadcast from Read, and also sometime soon, broadcast through Insight to BCATS (off-campus channel 3). Then we’ll be in the big leagues. Sometime in there (and hopefully in the next week or so), we’ll be building a news desk, and finishing the Hoosier Date? set. It’s going to be a very busy next few weeks.

Also of note is that over the past few weeks, I’ve become less and less worried about the future of IUSTV. There will be someone around next year to take the reigns, and I think that the organization will do fine. Getting this new studio situated, and getting our broadcast off-campus, that’s a bit tougher (and more immediate) for me.

Non-IUSTV-wise, job interviews have been slowing, and so has my interest in doing any kind of work related to business or the positions that I’ve been interviewing for. I hate to say it, but the more I think about it, I don’t know if I’ll be able to live with myself working at a desk job or a sales job next year after graduation. JET is looking more and more tempting every day. With the IUSTV work that I’ve been doing the past few weeks, I completely see why Kieran took a few months “off” to go work and live in Scotland. I don’t know if I’ll be able to just go straight to a real job. Tokyo (or Japan) seems very inviting. Heck, TV might be good also. More on that some other time.