TheLeong.com

I’ve slacked off recently with my blogging, so here I go back with it. I’ve been in Bloomington for about two weeks, having spent the time before that back in St. Louis. I have the summer job/internship with Handi-Craft Company, translating websites and doing research for them. I’ll be going on a two-week business trip to Tokyo at the very beginning of August, which should be really interesting. You forget how bad your foreign language skills are when you haven’t actively used them in almost a year, and then get back into the practice of scavenging the internet for information on baby bottles, plastics, and retail distribution. The main enemy of course, for Japanese at least, is kanji, which to those of you who don’t know (you all actually do, I think), is like trying to decipher hieroglyphics only kanji are about a million times harder. My work vocabulary includes fun words that I can barely read or pronounce in English, let alone Japanese. Some examples include linguistic gems such as bisphenol-A, polycarbonide, polyethersulfone, and of course nipple.

Outside of working on researching baby bottle stuff, this past week seems like IUSTV is making a comeback, at least on my Outlook calendar. Had 5 IUSTV-related meetings or engagements from Monday through Thursday, which is light compared to what I used to do, but it’s still hard to believe I won’t be doing this for much longer. I think subconsciously I just like keeping myself busy (yes, I consider watching TV and surfing the web being busy), because I can’t think of too much time when I’ve had absolutely nothing to do. Even when I was getting bored at the beginning of summer, I went and picked up this baby bottle gig.

I’ll be back in St. Louis this coming week to meet with my boss at Handi-Craft, and also to take back hopefully another full car load of my stuff, which over the past year or two in Bloomington has inflated to the “ridiculous” level. I’m going to try to sell off stuff on eBay and OneStart, but otherwise who knows. I know I’m going to end up with several boxes of stuff at my parents house either way. I have 1 month left in Bloomington, will be in Tokyo for those 2 weeks, then will be in St. Louis for about 3 weeks until September 7th when I leave for Japan to work the AEON job. I definitely have a better feeling/plan for what I’m doing the next few months, which I wouldn’t say at all back in April or so. Once I get to Japan, I’ll have to start thinking of more schemes so that I can make it big being as lazy as possible. For now, I’m going to watch some more News Radio season 4, which I actually purchased real DVDs of. You know a show is good when I’ll actually pay money for it. I figure just like the other discs of this series, I’ll watch these enough to make it worth it.

So this whole Canada thing has been pretty interesting. I work the registration desk for the CS Mantech conference with my parents, and am getting paid by the hour for sitting there and handing out nametags, every so often printing out something or running a credit card. I had wireless until yesterday, which was great because I just sat and did e-mail and stuff that I would normally be doing, just not getting paid. Sometime around 5PM last night they cut if off though, so that was annoying.

I don’t really have that much time to write a blog, since I just popped into the “internet cafe” area to sync up Outlook and send an e-mail. Two nights ago I went to the peak of Mt. Grouse with the conference group for a big international reception. The party wasn’t all that great, but we rode a tram (kind of like a giant ski lift) to the top of the mountain and back; that was kind of cool. Last night we got invites to the Sumitomo Electrical party, whcih was probably the best food I’ve ever eaten. Lamb chops, risotto with truffle oil, shrimp, suckling pig. Oh man.

I’ll write more later on; I should get back to work now.

It’s Sunday evening, and I haven’t left my apartment since last night when I got back (around 7PM) except once to do laundry. Why am I wasting a perfectly good Sunday in Japan? I’m tired! Haha. Summer IES kids got here on Thursday, and ever since that day I’ve been actually doing a pretty good deal of work and running around.

For the most part, my internship is to shoot video and then produce (by August or September) a 50-minute promotional video for IES to use to promote the Tokyo program. That really isn’t too bad, except also the last few days I’ve been helping out with the orientation and various other things associated with the beginning of the summer program. On Thursday I went to the airport to help welcome and move the new kids in. On Friday I sat through and helped kinda with orientation sessions all day long. Yesterday, Saturday, I helped with the lunch where all the kids met their host families and then move in. I guess I haven’t been doing that much especially, although I have been running around a lot between the IES Center, school, the OVTA hotel where the summer students stayed for the first few days, went to Narita Airport, and etc. Last night, I skipped a BBQ at Huston’s because I just wanted to go home and rest. And I’ve been doing so every since, it’s been nice. I took a slight detour last night before coming home to go to the next station and pick up like 10 volumes of the Detective Conan manga. I’ve read a bit, but am skipping the chapters that I’ve already seen the anime of.

The summer kids, for the most part, are the normal batch of IES kids. And IES groups are usually pretty relatable to the kids you will find in a Japanese language class in the US. There are a few cool kids, a good number of huge dorks, some people who seem to be lost, and some who seem to be here to just party. I’ve associated myself with the cool kids as I see fit. I’ll probably hang out with some of the kids I like, and ignore the rest. Sounds like a good plan to me!

Oh yeah, if some IES kids are reading this (it’s inevitable), it might be interesting. Actually I should go read some summer/spring IES kids blogs (I know a few have them). Might be interesting. I think from here on out, my job is to just go on all the fun trips and film stuff, so probably the heat is over (haha until I go back to the US and actually have to edit this video together).

Well wouldn’t you know it, just a few hours after I posted that last entry, and after falling asleep watching Walking with Dinosaurs, I get the e-mail. I’ll be working at IES Tokyo this summer for about two months as an intern. Back to Japan!

I’ve noticed that when I’m not busy, I don’t post on here as much. I guess the constant sleeping and watching TV doesn’t require the distraction that I usually use this Blog for (when I’m supposed to be doing homework). This last week was one of the most relaxing/least busy this semester, so it was nice. It’s now the very beginning of the second-to-last week of classes. Two more weeks of this (only 8 days of classes), then some finals, and the year is over. I’m pretty happy about that. I have a few projects and such to finish up this week and stuff, but I’m not anticipating any of them to be too tough. Then finals, which shouldn’t be bad, and that’s all.

I still haven’t figured out what I’m doing this summer. Hopefully I’ll know that before the end of the month. My main two options are that FDA international internship, and then 1 other G-14 Classified mission. Lets see if either of those pull through. I think I can also get a few other internships, if I can get class credit. I’m not in the telecom school or anything, but maybe the B-school will help me pull some of these TV/media-related internships. TokyoPop translates Japanese comics for the US and they have an internship program I could probably get into fairly easily. Still, Japan would be my top choice. I dunno, I just want to get back there, even though realistically I will probably be working there in about a year.

I got bored last night and did this. Wow I’m a dork, haha:

Now off to the laundry mat to clean 2 weeks of clothes, then the office the work on the ice cream episode of Rate Your Plate.

Finally getting around to writing a post, which for some reason I feel compelled to do, even though most people won’t be interested in reading this, haha.

As a bunch of you know, the last few weeks have been pretty busy. I think it’s midterm time, since I’ve had a bunch of tests. IUSTV is keeping me pretty busy also. We premiered a new show, called “On the Edge of Your Sport” last week. I haven’t been that involved with it, but it was really great to see a new show get on air. It reminded me a lot of some other new shows starting, especially the first taping. Although I’ve been having a lot of thoughts about not staying as involved with it next year as I am now, this really is a lot of fun. I feel guilty sometimes for spending hours upon hours at the IUSTV offices when I should be doing school work, but I guess this will look good on resumes, and gives me a lot of material for interviews. At least I’m doing a lot better on actually doing classwork than I did last spring or summer.

I’ve also been trying to find a decent internship for the summer. Ideally, I could find something paid, in Japan, and in the marketing or TV industry. I’m sure I can’t find something that is “ideally” perfect in all three of those, but I’ve got some leads so far. Haha, I’m going to apply for a job in Japan working for the FDA. Never thought I’d say I was considering working with anything remotely connected to agriculture, but who knows.

As far as next year goes, I’m leaning towards staying at IU the entire year. I talked to the B-school advisor last week, which was pretty much a huge waste of time, but oh well. My one question was whether or not I should graduate early or not to get a “International Business” major instead of just “International Studies,” and all the lady says is “well, that’s up to you.” Yeah, I know that. BUT I’d think an ADVISor would be able to ADVISE me on what to do. Anyway, I’m leaning towards having a really really easy next year, and work at IUSTV or something. Who knows. I also am 70% sure I’m going to stay at my current apartment, just because it’s great so far and I wouldn’t have to deal with finding a new place, moving, etc.

I can’t think of anything else to put here. I’ve been watching DVDs in my freetime (usually a few hours before I sleep), which I’m getting from Netflix. I’ve gotten through the first 3 seasons of Seinfeld, the first 4 of Frasier, and the first 1 and a half of Curb Your Enthusiasm in the past 2 months. I guess you can call that an accomplishment. Oh, and yes Frasier is an awesome show, even though most people are half and half about either liking it or thinking it’s too “high-brow.” Hoo-ah!