Ninjas STILL can't catch you if you're on fire

TODAY IS A MAGICAL DAY, FOR IT IS THE DAY THAT A CERTAIN MISS OLGA GRACED THE WORLD WITH HER PRESENCE, and then 18 (? or was it 19 lol my memory) years later came into my life and vastly improved my time in Austria and also my life in general.

WHY IS OLGA SO COOL? Why gentle readers, let me count the ways:

1) OLGA IS ALWAYS UP FOR KINDS OF A++ FUN & CREATIVE ACTIVITIES
2) OLGA IS A FRIEND TO ALL ANIMALS
3) OLGA HAS THE BEST TASTE IN MOVIES
4) OLGA IS INSANELY WELL-READ AND KNOWS THE BEST TRIVIA
5) OLGA HAS A SWANK COUCH AND FANTASTIC BACHELORETTE PAD
6) OLGA HAS EXCELLENT TASTE IN FRENCH MONARCHS AND GENERAL CQ MOTHERFUCKERS

...

9999) BECAUSE I SAID SO ♥

The happiest of birthdays for you dearest, and I wish I could be there to partaaaaaaaaaay with you! Your present is just waiting to have the last touches assembled and for my uh, salary to come in (Friday!!) so I have enough money to send it off XDD

AND OMG YOUR PACKAGE IS STILL AMAZING TO ME IN ALL WAYS. Ma dropped it by this week and akjfhkdfhksdfjh DYING. I keep it in the box still and reverently take bits of it out like I am some curator in a museum XDD AND THE ALL SAINTS CARDIGAN TY TY TY AHHHHHHHH ♥ I AM ONE OF YOU LADIES NOW. Can't wait for the colder weather to start here so I can proudly wear it everywhereeeeeeeee. :DDDDDD

I wonder if one day I will be able to be one of those people who can basically cram their entire life in a suitcase and just be off. I would even settle for two suitcases-- perhaps with a 30kg limit each and a carry-on luggage aaaaaaaand would ya look at this, I am even managing to overpack already in this little fantasy. I guess I am just a ~HOARDER TO THE BONESSS. This is now my last week in Vienna, and I am slowly feeling the time slipping away from me. I am making good progress on my list of Important Errands That Have To Be Done Before Leaving The Country though, so I don't feel so bad when I occasionally (often) zone out in front of the computer and end up plowing through 100K+ of Star Trek fic since ahem, Saturday.

Have been a somewhat busy bee with meeting and hanging-out with various people, with of course the bestest shoutouts and props going to my dear cheshire_tabby, she who is basically ending up with around 89% percent of the contents of my dorm XDD. Meeting nebst for the first time on Tuesday was also utterly fantastic, and we got to combine legit ~art appreciation walking around the Kunsthistorisches Museum and fangirl/fandom talk. I took silly pictures of masterpieces to amuse me that I realize I still haven't uploaded yet, oops. Looking forward to the Cafe Landtmann tomorrow already! Spoiler alert: I'll probably be nomming away again, ahhh I still think of the fantastic Backhendl+Kartoffelsalat at that MQ place *_*
Got to do stuff with some uni peeps as well, and Clemens even is showing himself from his best side now! He offered to bring me to the airport this Saturday-- if my flight isn't canceled PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE DON'T DO THIS TO ME, VOLCANIC ASH CLOUD OF DOOM-- which was a pleasant, if slightly confusing surprise.

I managed to pack up 9.7kgs of clothes, shoes and other assorted bits and bobs to send off on Monday (57€ shipping, not bad), realizing at the same time that my arms are feeble noodles incapable of carrying even marginally heavy loads. I also succeeded in unregistering myself from Vienna, one of my biggest to-do points now crossed off. Scanned it in at Olga's place today (where we had DELICIOUS STELZE & KARTOFFELSALAT OM NOM NOM ONE OF MY AUSTRIAN DREAMS, ACCOMPLISHED), and now I just have to get over myself and write the emails to the various places that need it as proof to cancel my insurance and etc etc. Blargh.

Dad also called and updated me on the newest happenings back home and lolll IF I MAKE IT TO THAILAND, and barring good news in S'pore, it seems like I will be spending more time up north in Chiang Mai then first expected! You can't do jack shit in town now because of the reds, and more and more of the hotels have now closed, or have abbreviated opening hours (Dad's had to close at midday today). Going to the fitness studio, eating healthy food with Ma and sitting through her now self-declared quest to be the one to instruct me on how to improve my written Thai does sound like an awesome way to pass the time though, not gonna lie.

PS In not shocking news, my roommate is still a slob of the highest degree, and a skank who apparently is having an affair with a married man, if her EXTREMELY LOUD phone conversations while stomping around the place drunkenly at 2AM are anything to go by. For the dude's sake, I hope she's over that phase where she had vaginal fungus meds lying around the bathroom (that was ...awkward to discover lol). For all that she is allergic to general forms of cleanliness, she does have a strange mouthwash fetish, there are at least four different types of such products in our bathroom now and she once went through 2 full bottles of Listerine in 5 days. I think someone forgot to tell her you don't actually drink it? IDK IDK.

EDIT TO ADD: Fantastic classical cover of Gaga & B's "Telephone"!! ...I think what I like best about this, besides the usual !!! classical cover glee is how you can really see how much fun everyone involved is having. Also, the dudes are kind of cute :D

OF COURSE WHEN I HAVE TO LEAVE FOR MY GRANDPARENT'S PLACE, THE PREVIOUSLY UNSEASONABLY WARM WEATHER TURNS. OF-FUCKING-COURSE. My already rock-bottom mood at the prospect of this journey (my luggage that I crammed full of winterwear and random stuff to hoard there probably weighs 30 kilos man I am afraid of it breaking! I HATE TRAVELING ON TRAINS WITH LARGE LUGGAGE) has now started to dig deeper for oil and other underground treasures. FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFUCK.
I also fully foresee that the train from Vienna will arrive in Salzburg delayed, which will mean that my next train is a full hour later and has ANOTHER stop before Zell. AND THEN I WILL MISS MY BUS AND EVERYTHING WILL BE EVEN MORE DELAYED. And Wien and Salzburg are currently renovating their railway stations, so OF COURSE everything is gonna be even harder to navigate in the mini timewindows they give you to catch your second train.



AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH


so uh yeah, semi-hiatus of not constant internet until the 8th of April or so!

PS HAPPY BELATED BIRTHDAY, yukitheawesome!! You might get something something in the mail like uh, in three weeks lol I was too cheap for priority mail, sry2say XDD

But I am stubborn and refusing to capitulate, or something. Today has so far been a day of trying to minimize all the tabs I have open and using the power of my brain to make certain people come online. So far I have failed to get a hold of Clemens (that dick, first he doesn't answer my calls, then smses me for lunch on Monday AND THEN doesn't reply to my calls/messages about uh, when to actually meet on Monday. WHY IS HE SO TEDIOUS SOMETIMES) but succeeded in talking to Ma. Which is yay, she's feeling better and all that and has new and shiny advice for me when for when I come back to BKK. Which basically amounts to "if you don't get a job at an ad agency, maybe you could become an English teacher for shits and giggles! I hear there are two week courses you can do to get a certificate that only cost 10'000 baht!" lolll man I'd feel like such a cliche if I were to actually go down that route, the fact that I am probably wholly unsuited to teaching aside. But speaking of home, I have been poking about the news sites a bit and AUGH the news about the Red-shirts' latest fuckwittery is just rage-inducing. Disgusting, foolish AND *headdesks*. Assholes. Also, I keep forgetting not to read the comments section of the articles, mooooooooar idiocy only lies in wait there.

The past few days have been awesome Viennese fun though, had drinks&snacks&drinks&POOL with Wido on Friday (a surprise turn of events if you know both of us and alcohol and my normal thoughts on pool) and spent Saturday going grocery-shopping with Miss Olga and camping out on her lovely sofa broadening my education in the finer points of Austrian Films of Note. Though I still can't remember where I saw bits of Komm, süßer Tod before, watching it and Silentium were great fun. Looking forward to Knochenmann (the third in the loosely-connected trilogy) soon!

Am still in the middle of uploading pictures for the first of a few image-posts, so until that gets down have some Links of ♥:
__ Casting the Greek Gods in a modern dramedy by zombres. I am basically a sucker for all thing Greek god-related, and this was just catnip, delicious delicious catnip to me. And even better, there is a Part Two and Part Three! Kyaaa, some of the casting choices *_*b
__ Ke$ha's Tik Tok rewritten a la Tony Stark also by zombres. I WISH THIS WERE THE ACTUAL SONG NOW. So excellent!
__ I am behind on my SPN news, but this is just a further sign that Misha Collins is unbelievable <33. SERIOUSLY THIS DUDE. THIS DUDE
__ Harmony Drawing Tool ...not news that this thing is intensely cool. AHH *goes and doodles some more*
__ THE DOGGIE GAGA PROJECT ...yessssssss. I now intensely desire to put Ace and Nero in similar get-ups *_*

I have returned since Monday and have already managed to feel like my sense of time is out of whack. And have gone to bed at midnight or half past midnight the last two days. I wonder if these feelings of being tired are the depressing truth that jetlag is now finally affecting me? Ugh. Have so many things to do in the limited time I am here, and am already feeling the danger of falling into a lump of Not Caring and Not Doing Enough.

Productive Things Done So Far, Though:
__ AN "OFFICIAL" GRADUATE IS ME (AKA I now have the complete papers in my hand). Three and a half years of university that ended up crystallized on a few pieces of unspectacular paper, handed to me even WITHOUT the cheap-ass carton folder (Uni Wien ran out. SO CLASSY). Ended up with a slightly better GPA than I expected, which is nice. I will probably still not really have internalized the fact that this part of my life is now well and over with, though I am already feeling very chill when I hear about everyone's uni assignments and go "I AM FREEE". Bring on a whole new set of other problems though lol. I do like the fact that my semester sticker only runs out on my birthday, which means that for Getting Shit Cheaper purposes, I am still a student next month. Because damn the transit tickets are hellaciously expensive once you can't use a semester ticket anymore.
__ Met with Wido yesterday to hang out and give him his belated birthday present (assorted Thai curry pastes and dried fruit), he made such an adorable :DD face when he saw it, ahhh. Have also been hanging at Miss Olga's domicile in the evenings and we watched Charlie Bartlett yesterday. ANTON YELCHIN IS SO ADORABLE and I basically spent the entire movie being ridiculously charmed and making eeeee noises whenever RDJ appeared as well. I still stand by the fact that Charlie's love interest had an ENORMOUS HEAD though. And the punkass dude looked like a poor-man's version of Puck from Glee. Or is it the other way around, since the movie came out first? Hmm. Speaking of movies, I also saw Precious on the flight to Vienna. While I guess a bit of the sheer impact of the film was diminished by seeing it on such a tiny screen, it was still a very intense experience and Gabby Sidibe and Mo'nique's performances were truly amazing. I spent a lot of time just making horrified faces at Mo'nique's character's actions especially, JFC.
__ Made an email inquiry to a travel agent re: my ticket back to BKK, made some prelim checks of when I should go to see my grandparents.

Things that should be done tomorrow, goddammit self:
__ Buy the train ticket, go to MC and see about canceling my phone contract, get the dorm cancellation contract filled out, pay for April net
__ Throw some stuff out, sort through paperwork, see what to do with my bank accounts and insurance, MAKE LIST OF SHIT TO DO

Things that I will be doing right now:
__ Get ready to see Olga and go to some talk that our Bundespräsident Heinz Fischer is actually holding in the dorm campus here. Though I have never really involved myself with Austro-politics much, I still think that seeing him in the flesh would be kind of cool. And Olga has the best anecdotes about him (the last time he did this talk, he actually laid some tracks-- old school jazz!-- at the post-talk party thing lolol what)

Supernatural S5x11
( I want him now. He's larger. )

Everything else is loading so slow for me, ahhhh man I still have Project Runway, Community, Friday Night Lights and Vampire Diaries to go... Will I get anything else done today? HMM HMM HMM. At the very least one of my cover letters is done, and I just have to get everything finished by Monday so I can send everything, or at least a big bunch of them off.

Laters!

Slight progress is also progress, amirite? Failed at getting my cover letters done today, yet managed to send off two applications that didn't need any, so that is a mark in the WIN column. One was one of my favorite ad agencies in Vienna (Draft FCB Kobza, one of their higher-ups actually came to do a guest presentation in one of my WERB ATs, ahhh) and the other was this TUI Travel PLC International Management Trainee thing. Again, the latter is probably one of these fantasy goals a la the SONY EGP, but it never hurts to try! Just reading their program description of all the travel involved makes me kind of excited, ngl.

I did manage to leave the rooms to go drop off that last batch of mail, do some grocery shopping (and treat myself to an utterly delish Kümmelbratensemmel ahhhhh ♥) as well as bite the bullet in getting rid of my old uni notebooks and photocopied study material. It always takes me a while to work myself up to these things, hoarder that I am. Not to say that I didn't flip through everything to look for doodles that I wanted to save (since all my notebooks ended up as sketchbooks, lol I never stood a chance what with my notetaking fail starting with like my second uni lecture ever XDD). It was a bit depressing to read through most of my study notes and not really remember much of what was covered in the classes though, whoops. Still have a shitload of clutter and things that I guess I don't necessarily need, but I guess I'll have to slowly work myself up to purging some things, too. Lol Olga, do you know people who want some cookbooks? WOULD YOU LIKE SOME?? XDD

Oh and speaking of which, here are my meme answers that you tagged me with:
A. List ten habits/quirks/facts about yourself.
B. Tag ten people to do the same.
C. Do not tag the person who tagged you or say that you tag "whoever wants to do it."

1) I literally flinch, turn away and have to close my eyes at even the slightest hint of people doing things to their noses like making piggy snouts or pressing it up again window-panes and etc. I AM TWITCHING IN DISCOMFORT just typing this skjfhaj it grosses me out so much DD:
2) I can listen to the same song on a loop for hours on end, but will still never be able to tell you the complete lyrics to it.
3) One of my favorite things to do is just comb my hair after it has been freshly washed, conditioned and blow-dried. The simple pleasures of vanity lol.
4) There is no current superior sweet sandwich filling atm to me than Carmen's Mom's Jam (blueberry & rum) + Ovomaltine chocolate creme.
5) I always miss being able to lean on or otherwise be touchy-feely and cling on my parents when I am not home, I don't care how old and mature I am supposed to be now.
6) I never seem to be able to come up with satisfying OCs, so one day I will totally snap and just draw gijinka versions of our cats & dogs and use their random anecdotes as plot
7) Sometimes I think I just want a boyfriend mainly so that I can fully live out my hairtouching fetish. Other stuff is of course also appealing, but the hair.
8) When I tend to extremes, I always lean towards too much than too little of a good thing. It's been a project trying to reel this urge back, but I sometimes succeed in not going overboard.
9) I seriously do not think that I will ever be able to do a forward roll. Pigs will fly and ice-skate in hell before I try it ever again.
10) My love for Salami-pralines/mini salamis/Jean Caby's Croc'Sec cannot be adequately rendered in textual form.
...I TAG laulan, mcollinknight and the rest of the spamthread ladies, gwy and WHOEVER WANTS TO DO IT :Db

The past few days have been very informative re: WHEN CAN WE FINALLY GRADUATE fuckery. So, as far as we know, there is no problem with the electives as we have written them in the fancy Yellow Paper of Potential Graduation, no problem with the random electives still floating around being unsorted in the UNIVIS online account and I heard back from my UE WERB prof that the grades from our blockseminar last Nov will be handed in by January. And at this week's UE HIST I actually found out from the teach that by volunteering for inputting some questionnaire data in pre-made MS Excel tables (referring to a pre-made code book!), I will a) get a grade by the end of January and b) apparently not have to write the 4-5 page reflection that everyone who isn't coding will have to do?? I mean, shit, this is freaking fantastic news for me, but lol if it doesn't reek of intense unfairness. I keep expecting there to be some kind of catch, but ah well, if that is so then I will find out next week. Now I just have to hope that the SPL will actually upload the grades by early Feb, ahh that typical UNIVIS grade appearance lag better not fuck me up! At least Carmen got to hand her stuff in already, and I can just observe her example :Db

In other happier fun times news, I got mail from taurenova, apple_scruffer and mcollinknight! LADIES YOU ARE ALL BRILLIANT. I loved the cute little cards and C, I am sorry to say that I have already nommed the lollipop and maple syrup candy. YOUR DELICIOUSNESS, I EATED IT :D. The heron card is really gorgeous, and I am kind of cracking up about that fact that all three of the mail have turned out to have bird related content/motifs... GREAT MINDS THINK ALIKE, I PRESUME <33

TWO FUNNY LINKS:
Tiny Art Director ...basically some illustrator dude getting art critiques from his young daughter. It kind of cracks me up because I can just imagine my own tiny cousin dissing her Dad when he tried and failed to meet her expectations in that classic game of "draw shit in futile attempt to entertain bratlings".
LOOK AT THIS MAN'S FACE ...oh Chris Pine, you adorable perv ♥

ONE AWESOME LINK:
Everybody has probably already heard about this, or is actually bidding or offering something up for bids themselves, but signal boosting never hurts, right? There is a humongous fandom charity auction going on over at help_haiti, and just clicking through some of the stuff and seeing the variety and scope of what is on auction for a good cause is pretty damn awesome. Fandom kicks ass ♥

Bits of 2009, the Nearly Done Now Edition:
...first off, I gotta say that I have given up the idea of posting any pics of Copenhagen or assorted summer things I meant to do, so uh. ADD ME ON FACEBOOK if you haven't already, it's all nice and sorted with ~genius~ commentary, even. OR APPROVE MY FRIEND REQUEST AHEM AHEM YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE ;DD lol j/k take your time, dude ♥

That said, here be a commentated ~~List of Viennese restaurants~~ that Carmen and I (with assorted guest stars and other friends adding to our numbers randomly, of course) visited last year. I was talking to her about how things were waaaay back in the first semester when we weren't that close yet, and remembered that our friendship was basically built on lunch dates. Which we had weekly at the Coffee Day near the uni. Lolol oh how we've improved, to say the least!

( VIENNESE NOMS 2009. Tried to add the restaurant links if possible for future refs and all that. )

AND IF YOU READ THROUGH ALL THAT, you now know why I hardly ever go clubbing: I spend all my money on food and eating out :Db And I DO NOT REGRET A THING ♥

...wow coding and typing this up took ages. THREE AM AGAIN, DAMN YOUUUUU.

BOOKS READ and MOVIES WATCHED IN 2009

( Random and not sorted by month because that is just too much hassle )

In other news, I didn't manage to leave the house today and just tooled around the net forever (I made a giant sticky post for my art though, god that took ages!), but I did finally have a mad cleaning session. Everything is now nice and clean (to an extent), and there are fresh bathmats and dishtowels and sponges and I just about had to take pictures to commemorate this rare state of affairs lest Sabrina returns. I am either expecting her back today or tomorrow, and if she doesn't show I can at least be confident that she might be gone for a while (FINGERS CROSSED). Which makes that fact that she forgot THREE GIANT OPEN BAGS OF TRASH under the sink and the general state of everything in our common area even more reprehensible, but what else is new. fffuck did I summon her presence by mentioning her??
I did make the no less disgusting discovery that her preferred cigarette disposing method is to just throw the butts into old candle-holder glasses or mugs filled with water though. There were three hiding behind the piles of random mugs and dishes that I cleared off when I wiped down the kitchen, and wow does that ever have an ~~aroma. Why would you keep this crap? Does she find the stench of stale smoke and disgusting soup that results in the mugs appealing? I dumped the goop and tried to rinse it out a few times, but the ash has totally encrusted. Have liberally drizzled cleaning solution/Scheuermilch on everything though, and I don't even care that I dumped it all in a pot that she will probably use to cook in.

EDIT: FUCK FUCK FUCK she just came back. Ugh