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

Another GPOYYYYYY of GPOYs, oh internet how you always have a picture that sums up my lousy state of RL affairs!

Although I guess this is not wholly accurate, as I experienced somewhat of a late-night burst of energy (the only kind I get, these days) and sent off three additional job applications and am correcting more bits of dear cheshire_tabby's paper.

It still doesn't change the fact that most of the time, when I wind down from the excitement of getting to meet my friends or go for meals with them, I am starting to get more intense flashes of being pretty dejected about my lack of job-search success so far. It's a useless feeling, and I should be using this free time to at least be productive otherwise and tackle the multitude of little things I could be doing around the house, in my room or even just sorting crap out on my computer, if I don't feel like actively creating anything myself but ugh. SULKING IT IS, 95% OF THE TIME THEN! *proceeds to be a lump on the couch*.

I think it's the whole lack of any form of response to the job apps that is most depressing-- you feel like you're lobbing crap into a void, after a while. It's also just weird to me because I am then wondering if I'm explicitly yet inadvertantly doing Something Wrong in my apps, as for all intents and purposes I should be having an okay time in the job market. I'm a strong candidate on paper-- I have an overseas degree yet have local roots, I studied the correct thing for the specific jobs I'm applying for and have relevant internships, I have the language skills and yet would save any company work permit/visa fees if they were to hire a foreigner in my stead and have been steadily not mentioning the salary issue which means that I would be open to being underpaid. But still, NO DICE. I haven't even been THAT picky in where I apply to, though I do admit to eagle-eying location, if the advert is worded like crap and most importantly, if the company provides a hotmail/gmail/yahoo.com contact adress, because REALLY PEOPLE? That's just sad.

But off to finish Olga's paper and get ready for an early start tomorrow-- back to GYM again, as I shamefully skipped on Monday, and I might have a lunch and dinner date each with two of Ma's ex-colleagues/friends who both may be able to help me with getting a foot in their companies. Actually getting these meetings planned was quite nerve-wracking, as I was complaining about on twitter but THINGS KIND OF WORKED OUT IN THE END gahhhh phewww! FINGERS CROSSED

First: Saturday I got my laptop back and EVERYTHING WORKS and my data from 2010 was completely salvaged and words are inadequate in describing how utterly relieved I felt. It's now almost like I have a new laptop, the com guys added some new programs and I even got Adobe Illustrator added in to the mix besides the Photoshop I explicitly wanted them to put in. Looking forward to puttering with it some more and making it my own alllll over again ♥

Second: BUT what pisses me off to no end is that my computer refuses to recognize my German keyboard, fiddling with the language and regional settings be damned. It makes for some hella weird typing, as the Y/Z switcheroo I can mostly anticipate and correct for, but uh ALL OTHER THINGS like the various punctuation marks are really confusing. I mostly have a 50/50 chance of hitting those ones, which leads to situations like actually having to type out QUESTION MARK in skype chat in lieu of the sign, because that actually took less time. I really hope I can work this out, as the coms at the office all use the German keyboard, and it's just extremely irritating as all my reflex keyboard shortcuts on PS are totally borked. Speaking of which, made some more progress on my BB pic! Still have some small details bothering me on the title picture that I feel I should get over and done with before I start with another one, ahhh it's just so slow working since I keep screwing up my commands :|||

Third: Training on Friday went well, small stupid mishaps here and there not counted... though I seem to be doing alright based on my feedback evaluation thing. I kind of don't trust it, as it seems weirdly high and positive, but I guess I am just still so thrown by how friendly and nice everyone is here? I should've spent the weekend studying up on my responses and the like, but I hope that tomorrow morning before I head in will suffice. Apparently if Training Officer deems me ready, I might start my first 8-hour shift tomorrow! I am mostly nervous and just aughhhh about it, the thought of EIGHT HOURS of those phone calls is kind of daunting. But ahh well, nothing to be done. THINK OF THE CASH MONEY, SELF! Also, I will be moving into my new swank pad tomorrow, right smack dab near work and a posh supermarket and the giant shopping center that has my gym. So, yayyy for that part! It has a teeny-weeny INTENSELY PINK balcony that has a view of the mountains around Chiang Mai, as well as the planes taking off/landing from the airport nearby. What it additionally has is a collection of hideously kitschy fake flowers in vases and creepy bedlinen, but that can be dealt with and the place generally has its own charm~~

Twenty-two! I am inching closer and closer to what seems to be legit adulthood, though obviously there remains a long and winding road ahead of me and the fact that I in all seriousness have no real idea of what I will be doing beyond the following two weeks (besides apparently get a driver's license, come hell or high water. AAAUGH do not want). I would've thought that the idea of having time to chill, go to the gym and maybe brush up on my written Thai, my French or maybe learn Japanese/Mandarin would be the Best Thing Ever, but in actually I am wracked with occasional fits of anxiety about my future and not having anything fix in terms of internships or job prospects. Everyone I know keeps telling me to get the fuck over myself, and I am trying to do so. Today I thankfully had the healing power of TONY MOTHERFUCKING STARK and Iron Man 2, made even better then usual by being viewed in the SFX Cinema's cushy First Class seating (Ma doesn't care about the extra price because she can sleep more comfortably in these XD). They're giant reclining "velvet" La-Z-boys and you get a blanket and your popcorn + choice of drink brought to you by the staff. And when you have the apparent bladder of a pea (either the movie was hella long or I drank way too much today), the staff even run to hold the doors open for you when you try to subtly sneak back into the cinema ahh awkward. The movie itself was tremendously fun with oodles of little shout-outs and details (PEOPLE WHO HAVE SEEN IT COME SQUEE WITH ME IN THE COMMENTS), though woweee do enormous amounts of shit blow up in spectacular ways in this one. Also, I need to see it again for the sole reason so that I can find out what happened in the bits I missed on my bazillion toilet breaks lol.

SINGAPORE:
GENERALLY AWESOME, WITH SPRINKLES OF FUCK YEAH but also a dash of "FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU--" though that was mostly due to Mindshare leading me on, the fuckers. Moar on a post to come soon! OH AND hemlocke is a darling and "so cuuuuuuuuuuuuute~~" as Ma and our two neighbors kept informing me ♥

Thai politics:
Watching the local news and reading the newspapers keeps making me angrier and angrier. This has quickly left the realm of "protesting" and is flirting with domestic terrorism-- the reds are clearly starting to lose their collective shit and are acting even more erratic than usual. I mean, as if the home-made sharpened bamboo street barricades and unauthorized car and bag checks that they'd force on random people weren't enough (of course, people who said no were either beaten up or had their cars smashed or otherwise fucked up until they agreed), they have now twice barged into Chulalongkorn hospital and interrupted medical proceedings and obstructed ambulances carrying actual sick people because "the vehicles/the hospital could have been used to harbor soldiers" who would be readying themselves for a strike against the reds. Or the time they forced the BTS Skytrain into a standstill by throwing tires up the stations because the trains could also have been used to transport soldiers into town. Or one of my favorite bits of idiocy-- handing out multi-colored shirts for the reds to wear in Ratchaprasong intersection to "confuse" the soldiers if they were to come and make them disperse. HMMMM PEOPLE NOT WEARING RED WHO ARE SOMEONE STILL IN THE TOTAL AND UTTERLY RED ZONE THAT IS GUARDED AND CLOSED OFF? HMMM WHO COULD THESE PEOPLE BE HMMM :| AND OF COURSE, tonight's expanded news that some of them tried to lob RPGs at fucking WAT PHRA KAEW? Thank the higher powers the fuckers missed the temple itself, but this is just a further example of how low these people have sunk. You just plain don't pull shit like that, you don't. Ma and I met with some of her ex-colleges today and of course the topic veered to this, and it was very amusing and awesome to also hear the latest rumors about our fugitive criminal Squareface, who apparently has some really fucked up prostate cancer at the moment and might be dead or dying soon?? Cue fantastically frank comments like "I'll believe the fucker is dead when I see his body", "well given the number of people who must be cursing him daily, it couldn't have happened sooner" and "I saw this famous mystic say on TV that she had a vision of the gods of death coming for him!". Bwaaah! I just ~can't wait to see what happens next here ughhhh and of course our police men are hugely incompetent because the majority are "watermelons" themselves (green on the outside, RED on the inside). And we're flying back to Chiang Mai tomorrow which of course is another bastion of red (Squareface's hometown), ahhhhhh .___.;; /RANT

THE GOOD TO EXCELLENT:
- Cheer-inducing links: I WANT THIS NECKLACE SO BAD. LIKE REALLY BAD AHHHH *_*, Yay Lady Gaga fanart!, TONY STARK FACTS FUCK YEAH, My inner 8 year-old is SQUEEING at this (western) live action Sailor Moon casting picspam, Another SPN genderswitch casting that I think has some interesting ideas of the Not Winchester characters
- It was a beautiful and sunny day, and I had lunch and hung out with Ex-Tutor Georg, Clemens and Wido at the Stiegl Ambulanz. Delicious noms (Kärtner Kasnudeln!) and a fantastic rambling conversation that quickly went off the tracks and turned into an exercise in who could say the most outrageously perverted things and tell the stupidest jokes. I am pleased to say that I scored a few good zingers and played a part in making two grown men cry from laughter :DD I also feel that I deserve bonus points, as we made Georg laugh through most of his sudden phone-call and be basically unintelligible to someone who turned out to be his date for tomorrow. WHOOPS :DD And when we parted ways I got a hug from him that lifted me up a bit (always thrilling when guys do this to me as I am not petite and light and thus never expect it) and a last parting shot that broke his brain (the fact that Vulcan peen is very likely green XDD)
- Saw A Single Man with Olga today, and what an amazing experience. An utterly gorgeous, intensely well-acted and wonderfully well-made movie that delighted, made you cry and even laugh at certain parts. Seriously, the last thing I expected going in to watch this was that I'd be laughing a bunch of times thanks to the sprinkling of jokes and moments of surprise levity. Colin Firth rightly deserves all the accolades he got for his role as George Falconer, he was spectacular. As was Matthew Goode (the flashbacks to various memories that George and Jim had together! AHHH sobsob). Nicholas Hoult seemed weirdly orange (probably because his hair was so light, too) and I spent a lot of time in his scenes staring at his faaaace and his fuzzy white sweater get-up and marveling at how tall he apparently is. Another thing that HAS to be mentioned is the score. OH MAN. I need to get the OST as soon as possible.
( Youtuuuuuube clips )

THE BAD TO EXTREMELY VEXING AND/OR RAGE-INDUCING:
- THE SITUATION BACK HOME. "Deadly blasts hit Bangkok protest" (helpful maps), "Bomb terror grips Silom" and Thai grenade attack kills at least 3". WHAT THE EVERLOVING FUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK. This is just getting worse and worse. And what is perhaps the most creepy part of these attacks to me is that I know that area, and normally like spending time there (especially in the evening browsing the night market that is set up on the sidewalks... which, oh, was AROUND THE TIME THE GRENADES WENT OFF :|||). The BK Magazine office I interned at are basically also on the opposite side of the street where the grenades went off. As I've mentioned before, Bangkok is becoming more and more inhospitable for all the plans I had made for slowly getting myself settled there on my own-- living near Langsuan (a stone's throw away from the red-shirt camp), shopping and perhaps also working at Ratchaprasong (REAAAALLY smack-dab in the red-shirt camp) and now this happening to Silom? I've heard that the shopkeepers in the area are mobilizing and ready to defend their homes and livelihoods though, which is great. Though I can already see that this'll just end with more injured, and more dead. AUGHHH.
My plan remains reaaaaaally hoping for the Singapore thing to work out (the lady won't be calling me tomorrow after all, and I'll just be dropping by for a face-to-face interview on the 28th, since we're going to Singapore regardless. Yay birthday present!).

...I now forgot what else I was going to say. OH RIGHT I AM WAAAAAAAAAY NOT DONE WITH PACKING AND MOST OF MY LAST ERRANDS YET. FUUUUCK. So gonna stay home and try to get this done on my last night in Vienna tomorrow, I don't care how anti-climatic it is.

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)

Things I managed to do today, albeit with massive time delay:
1) Translate my CV into German, which was as hard as I figured and thus always procrastinated on. Had to fiddle for ages with the formatting to make it all fit on that one page, as what you can efficiently say in English always seems to grow to encompass a few more words when you try to translate it to German. Also, Carmen gave me some pretty big pointers on the way I structured my internship descriptions that I wouldn't have even have recognized as being hinky and incorrect from a German point of view. Which is something that always irritates me about myself, the fact that a part of me just clings to doing everything in English all the time even though I should know better and surround myself with more German, since there is a very high probability that I will need a more nuanced style when I start working. Though I have heard that my grammar fail is improving to just being "often kind of effed up", as opposed to like, "always".
NEXT UP: COVER LETTERS (in BOTH languages, woe)

2) Addressed and sealed the very last batch of mail that will finally be sent off this Monday. This was something I started ever since Fantastic Pizza Friday at darling cheshire_tabby's place, so I'm happy I can finally say that this year's wholly delayed batch of mail will soon be out of my hands. gwy, nebst and laliandra, expect some goods in a week or two or less, I guess :D

3) Somewhat cleaned the rooms! Well my actual plan of a leisurely evening spent cleaning was disrupted by the sudden and unexpected return of Sabrina, who just left yesterday at noon, what the hell. I knew that I should have vacuumed in the afternoon instead of procrastinating, but she left again pretty abruptly for a while and I used that time to hurriedly wipe down everything in the kitchen and bathroom with the magical goodness that are these household wetwipe towelette things. All the dust and hair is gone, and whatever I missed I will vac tomorrow once she leaves, and I can go back to feeling okay again. Sabrina's been oddly adherent to our new policy of wiping the kitchen down and keeping things in order, so it's important for me to be on my toes all the time, as well. CONSTANT VIGILANCE. Though, keeping with the niggling feeling of ~it's too perfect, I have noticed lipstick marks on my milk packets and more weirdly, on my toothpaste tube, too. Which is interesting, given that though I do drink from the milk packet, I haven't actually worn lipstick for ages (yes I am a slob, but it is only my germs, OR SO I THOUGHT). I don't even want to think about what she does to the toothpaste, but like I told Carmen (who was all "I will never understand the way Sabrina's mind works"), this is positively innocuous given previous happenings. I do feel kind of disturbed about drinking my milk now though :|

LINKS OF THINGS I HAVE BEEN ENJOYING LATELY:
GORGEOUS BAG UNO ... I will never stop fantasizing about designer bags that are currently way beyond my means. I mean, I am a sucker for bowling bags anyways, but look how classy this is! The dark green and the black and that cut-out effect, ahh.
GORGEOUS BAG DOS ...I swear, if my memory doesn't fail me, this is the same bag that one of the PR higher ups owned at the internship and that I swooned over every day for nearly three months. Or it could've been one of the YSL Muse ones that have more structure. EITHER WAY. ONE DAY I WILL OWN THIS. So huge, so glorious.
Super cute White Collar vid ...seriously, just watching it made me have a big stupid grin on my face.
( THE FOLLOWING YT VID I AM EMBEDDING BECAUSE I LOVE IT SO MUCH )