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

6.8 Magnitude Earthquake in Myanmar ... the article only states the distance to Chiang Rai and Chiang Mai itself is around 3 hours away by car. I am blanking on the precise distance, but whatever it was, we were actually able to feel things shuddering lightly under our feet in the office (6th floor) at shortly around 9PM. At first I thought it was just MR kicking the connecting wall of our cubicle unit, but slowly the entire office seemed to realize that Something Was Wrong. Cue the vaguely confused cries of "earthquake?", and then our servers had a slight hiccup and all calls were fucked, which was ace timing as everyone basically dropped everything to file out down the stairs to the ground floor. We milled around for a bit, the smokers happy for the respite and soon enough we headed back in to continue work. It was pretty freaky, but seemed to be a one-off occurrence, though of course this was the beginning of rampant speculation to happen and people to post OUTDATED news reports of the 2006 earthquake on FB (seriously, it's like the French upstairs are unable to read posted news dates, sighhh) ...until we felt more slight wobbling shortly before 11PM. That was also right around my clocking out time, and MR and I were considering trudging down the office again before DI was all "uhh hello, it's all over now wtf, stay inside." And the dude did have a point, so I sent off some credit requests as we log ALL THE MINUTES EVER and this crap plus our server problems from yesterday mean I have some annoying time deficits..... only to then find out that we were closing the office early. The late shift people effectively didn't have to work 2 hours! God, couldn't they have had this bright idea at fricken' 9PM the first time we felt anything? Gah.

This may sound flippant to y'all, but let me reiterate that we were effectively so far away that what shaking we felt really wasn't enough to even damage anything, just disturb people in a country that isn't used to earthquakes AT ALL (EDIT: At least not in Chiang Mai, as I was typing this post at something AM I didn't hear about the one old lady who died in Chiang Rai, nor about the housing damage there.). Floods and forest fires, now those you kind of learn to expect here when you think about natural disasters. I would obviously have been more worried were we in Chiang Rai, but uh. We weren't. It must've been pretty disturbing for people in the way high highrises in BKK though, I imagine.

AND SPEAKING OF BANGKOK-- that's where I'll be headed tomorrow morning! Yet to have packed, I might add, and there's an eaaaaaaarly wake-up for me, awwww fuck.

So that's all from me for now~~

PS: OH AND cheshire_tabby, YOUR MAIL CAME kfhkjfj such a pleasant surprise THANK YOU SO MUCH, BB!! Love the cards, love the butterflies and the note book and also the caramels! Already ate two of the three and totally had to hang up on some incoming calls, as I was smart enough to eat time during work and wasn't expecting just how they'd meld my mouth together XDD. Also I was reading this list of badasses and saw this hardcore POLISH BEAR SOLDIER and had to share the awesome with you. SO AMAZING.

Well okay, I've technically been back since Tuesday and didn't even make a holiday hiatus post in the first place (I HAD ONE PAINSTAKINGLY TYPED OUT ON FUCKING LIVEJOURNAL MOBILE ON MY BB AT THE AIRPORT, but of course that shit never works when you try to post ughhhhh).

So! Recap: I was in Hanoi, Vietnam meeting my dear old friend La from the 4th to the 8th of this month. Vietnam was quite the experience and not as empty as we feared over Tet/Vietnamese New Year. It was actually more like, INSANELY PACKED AND LOUD lolol and it is always weird for me to actually have that touristy feel of not understanding a single word of the local language when I travel. Most of the time I did either speak some form of the languages there or it was possible to kiiiind of guess at word meanings, but Vietnamese really was beyond my ken lolol. We had lots of awkward and/or random conversations with shopkeepers, waiters and our receptionist guy and muddled through everything. It's also the reason we sometimes ate truly strange and not really ~traditional Vietnamese food~ as planned, as we'd either inadvertently want to order breakfast foods at dinner, order things that were all out and as a result just randomly point at some of the weirdly translated food listings. Fact: THE HANOI BEER IS DELICIOUS THOUGH. And I say this as a person who normally really dislikes beer!

Will be working on uploading pictures soon and of course have all the postcards to sort out for people :DD. Everything was pretty cheap and I didn't really buy much besides an extra small poster, so I kind of went crazy with the postcards instead. The propaganda poster-based ones are simply so amazing!

...and I'd write more, but my eyes are nearly welded shut on me rn and I just wanted to at least post something on LJ again. LATERS, MY PRETTIES <33

PS AHHHH SO MUCH TV I AM TRYING TO CATCH UP ON! HAWAII 5-0! COMMUNITY! WHICO! GLEE! Re: that last one-- I take it back, my one true Puck pairing is now Puck/Lauren. MAKE IT HAPPEN FOR REALS, GLEE CREATORS. She is just unbelievably awesome. And we are getting more Kurt/Blaine action! Was halfway cringing through the GAP serenade bit, but I like Blaine's veneer of ~always knowing best~ being chipped away and him and Kurt approaching more equal footing with each other. AND AFTER A BIT OF PLOT DEVELOPMENT, MOVE STRAIGHT TO THE MAKE-OUTS PLEASE. It is becoming kind of weird that Blaine gets all the Warbler numbers though, as much as I love Darren Criss and his performances, this does fly against the Warbler borg motto of ONE VOIIIIIIIIICE and all that. AH WELL.

My first week of being back on the job since the 9th of December last year is behind me now and I have got to say that barring getting to see my ladies (and dude, can't forget M, our lone XY chromosome-holder in the group) again, IT WAS A LOAD OF STEAMING SHIT. I thought it was all in my head at first, that I wasn't used to the workload any more, the way the calls seemed to pile up but I counted along and we are back to the level of having a call come in every minute for about 95% of the work day. I am still lucky that most of these aren't the negative yelling-and-insulting-your-intelligence ones, but it is only a matter of time. In the interest of keeping my sanity up, I have implemented the usual coping-strategies without shame again, fuck my statistics: delaying the moment of picking up the phone, spending a bit of the post-call processing time eating snacks and uh, sometimes just hanging up on the callers for accounts that piss me off. These little rebellions are still a drop in the ocean though, since deep in my heart I normally like to follow rules and normally feel very guilty about these things.

We also have a new girl R, who I am still formulating my opinion about, but the current forecast seems to be rough since she pings all my dirty-hippy-backpacker prejudices and that just makes me automatically affect a more disdainful and stuck-up version of who I normally am. I KNOW BACKPACKERS ARE MOSTLY VERY NICE PEOPLE but man the ones that I have talked to that keep yammering about how their way is the only ~true way to experience the REAL Asia just keep getting my hackles up. Also perhaps we are too jaded but I. told me that R also has some pretty naive expectations about her working life here and ahahahaha we'll see. We kind of have an unofficial bet going for how long she's gonna last.

BUT NOW FOR MORE ~*FANDOM-Y NEWS*~:

yuletart reveals went up a few days ago and I can now say that I was behind the following The Hunger Games paper dolls! I remain pretty pleased with how it turned out, and again, many thanks to laliandra and laulan for being my usual art betas! Am not at my own computer at the moment, but I'll put up an actual post soon with the HQ versions as I did make them to actually be playable (well somewhat. At the very least, they're supposed to be nearly A4-sized!). My gift art this year was the following SMOKING HOT CAROLINE from The Vampire Diaries (season 2 spoilers!) by the lovely dualbunny, who was also my own recipient lol. BASICALLY I WAS VERY PLEASED BY THIS YEAR'S YULETART and it remains one of my favorite yearly art fests ♥

Here are also some awesome vids that I have been linked to and have been obsessively rewatching:

Cupid's Chokehold by nel_ani. Hawaii Five-0 Steve/Danny goodness, AHHHH ♥. I need to download this onto my laptop so I can watch it every day for that shot of pure happiness, ahh. Such clever use of the clips to the lyrics, too-- I just keep alternating between cracking up and sighing contently.
Runs in the Family by kaiyote. Supernatural and a total MOOD SHIFT from the previous vid. Fantastic song choice and look at the fucked-up angels and again, excellent use of clips and sharp, rapid cutting. I particularly adore the editing of the "fill me up" (all the sex and in between it all, Cas gorging himself on food) and "knock me up" (ANGELS WILL MESS YOU UP) parts. Also, it reminds me that Misha Collins is fantastic at all those different weary/hopeless/dead tired Castiel!faces.
Sex and Reruns by greensilver. Community and mucho thanks for Lalface for reccing this to me. I cannot say enough that Community is one of the best shows ever and every one should watch it. How can it be so consistently hilarious and touching, creative and zany and still above all retain such a lovely heart? I LOVE EVERYTHING ABOUT IT and this vid just reinforces my convictions ♥ ♥.
Folding Chair by sisabet. Another Community vid, this time focusing on Annie. Lovely song and OH ANNIE, YOU ARE SO AMAZING AND HILARIOUS AND ADORABLE <33. I had the biggest smile after I finished watching this. And Allison Brie is hot, it has to be said.