TheLeong.com

Merry Christmas everyone!

Although being in Japan makes Christmas feel less different, it’s been a nice relaxing and fun weekend so far, and the rest of today should be fun as well. Only 2 days of work this week, then Kansai, then a few more days off, then back to work. I kind of wish I had gone back to the States for the holiday, but I don’t even know if I would have been able to take this short week off from AEON, so it’s OK. I’m looking forward to just having a week off period. Hope everyone is having an awesome time off! I am also now 23, so I guess that makes me an old man. I feel as young as a 22 year old though!

Break has been very good to me so far. I’ve pretty much done nothing (not even IUSTV stuff): I sleep in late, watch a lot of TV, play a lot of video games, and that’s about it. I’ve been playing Mario Baseball, Naruto Narutimate Hero 3, and I just finished…uh, getting, Kingdom Hearts 2, which just came out in Japan a few days ago. Between these games and some of the other ones I brought back with me to St Louis, I think I should have a lot to keep me busy.

So I went to LHS on Thursday. Talked to the electronic media class (video production, where I got my start), visited a bunch of teachers and principals (who surprisingly, all remembered who I was), and actually got some advice on my future. All in all a good trip. Although waking up that early in the morning should be outlawed; I don’t know how I did it back in high school. Nowadays I’m lucky if I can wake up by noon.

It is now a little past midnight, meaning it is December 25th. It’s Christmas, Hanukkah, my birthday, and also the 2-year anniversary of me having this website (even though this is a different domain name, it’s the same site as aleong.com). Now for my proposal. Instead of all these holidays around December time, based on religion, based on “heritage,” or based on the lineup of the stars (I dunno), we should move towards a unified holiday for EVERYBODY. I know just someone who was born around this time that could be used as the base for this holiday. His name is Anthony Leong, and he was born on December 25, 1983. Because everyone already has winter break off for holidays and stuff, let’s keep that all the same. I just propose unifying all the naming of holidays, etc. This will include cards, decorations, etc. Everyone can keep the same stuff they had before, but for political correctness, everyone can just use 1 name for this holiday season. In fact, I have made a sample of a holiday decoration for this new, WORLD UNIFIED HOLIDAY. You can click on it to get a larger version, suitable for print out for use on greeting cards, t-shirts, and wrapping paper:

Yes, that’s right. Leongzwanmasukkah. You get shout-outs to all the other 3 big holidays, but instead of trying to guess which holiday someone celebrates, fiddling with the awkward phrase “Happy Holidays,” or just saying some other generic term for sound P.C., everybody, let’s start using Leongzwanmasukkah. It is a holiday that can be shared by everyone, regardless of religion, race, heritage, species, or number of tails. EVERYONE WINS WITH LEONGZWANMASUKKAH.

Needless to say, this was a good idea when I thought of it. I played Narutimate Hero 3 for about 4 hours solid, ate some freshly baked brownies that my mom made, and am now loafing around some more watching TV. Break is good. Happy Leongzwanmasukkah, everyone. Please send gifts, cards, and kind words.

I’m home now (in St. Louis). Actually, I had written a fairly good post before I left Japan, but for some reason it got erased or something. Nevertheless, I’ll try to remember most of it and assimilate it into this post. Originally I wanted to put some closure to the semester. I’ll do that with this too.

This past fall really has been one of the best semesters ever. If it weren’t for the people and friends I met there, it would have been totally different and definitely not as fun (go A-Team!). It sounds really stupid, but when I first found out I was going to go to Japan for a semester and stuff, one of my main worries was the people I’d be going with. I knew that there would be a lot of social inepts, a lot of huge anime freaks, and a lot of the type of people that I just in general don’t like. Oh, and I was right. However, aside from these, I also found a good group of people who were just as twisted as I am, and thus the A-Team was formed and life was good. We took the place over (both figuratively and symbolically; need I mention the Nagano Bus, meals at the ryokans, and Y’s bar/Sayonara party). Yeah, we were just that awesome.

I definitely want to go back to Japan sometime soon. Maybe after graduating and finding a job that will send me over there. I’m pretty certain that I don’t want to do JET, but something else, peferrably marketing or business would be great. Willing to relocate? Definitely, at least for a few years. Actually, if I can find an internship or some kind of paid thing to go there next May, then I’ll do that also. Seth and Ari will still be there, so it will be fun times. I’m interested to see what kind of people those guys get for the spring IES semester. Most likely, it will be a bunch of scabes and a few good guys.

I’ll be posting the final set(s) of IES Japan pictures within the next day or two. I also have a feeling that more people from IES are probably reading this Blog one way or another. Good or bad, I don’t care. Actually, I’m thinking of posting a full list of nicknames. Maybe just the nicknames, and not the real names. I don’t think I’d get any slack for that, bwahahahaha. Ari, Seth, Bryan, Mikey: what do you think?

I really got used to living in Japan. The whole living part isn’t really as different as you would think. Maybe it’s because my Japanese is semi-usable, but other than that, it’s just like moving to any new city. Sure there are trains rather than cars, stuff is more expensive, food is smaller and tastes strange sometimes, but living is living. That really didn’t strike me as hard or different. I think I’m happy and capable of living in the US or in Japan. They really are about the same to me. Too bad I have friends and all of that in both; I can’t BE in both places, so I might have to spend my life as a traveler. Doesn’t sound bad, if I could make some money.

When I flew back into Dallas this morning before my connecting flight back to St. Louis, it really didn’t seem like it’s been that long since the morning when I took off. Man it really has been a long time though. A lot has happened, a lot has changed. I guess I’m still the exact same as I always have been. Studying abroad is supposed to be a life-changing experience. Yeah I guess kinda. But there’s also supposed to be all that “culture shock” BS that they talk about, and I don’t go through any of that. Probably because I’ve been here and back 5 times. Either way, it’s been a blast.

Now it’s time for Christmas with the family, my birthday (turning 21), and a few days hanging out at home before I have to pack up and haul out to IU and my new apartment. I have a feeling that this spring at IU is going to be one of the best semesters ever also. Maybe I’m just getting to the point where I can enjoy life more. OK nevermind, that sounds retarded. I think it’s going to be a good semester just because I’m awesome. Yeah, I think this post turned out better than the original that I wrote and lost. It’s certainly a lot longer. From now on the blog posts will be a bit more mundane, more full of complaints and weird observations, and will probably be less frequent. Oh, and I’ll set the timezone back to Indiana time now…

Well, X-mas (and my birthday) have come and gone. It was a good year. I got a PS2 game and a nice wad o’ cash. I also think that I was able to get Japanese to work here on the Blog, so I can rant in both languages. The encoding is EUC-JP, so you should hopefully be able to view it like any other Japanese web page. Sorry to those of you who can’t read Japanese…. Please leave me some comments because I’m bored and stuff….and no, Nick, that doesn’t mean fake comments from Professors

Well, to go along with my new website, I decided to add a Blog, because that seems pretty popular on web pages nowadays. It will be very pointless, of course, with me saying random things and misc unimportant ramblings. But that’s what most blogs are anyway, right? Please comment and stuff. This blog is starting off right now at midnight of X-Mas 2003, meaning I’m now 20 years old. I guess that’s a good starting point.