Welch

As funny as this may sound, I’m actually not in West Wing cluster doing my programming homework…. I’m actually in another dorm that isn’t mine… I’m at Welch…

Anyway… I believe that nothing is really working out as I planned lately… Nothing seems to be going to my plan… Then again, one could always argue that I never really had a plan to begin with (as everyone knows, I really don’t think much about life to begin with…), but I do have some kind of goals and future in my mind… However, I must admit, that nothing… really NOTHING is going as planned!

My friends are all going through trouble, including myself…. Sadness TOTALUS…

random comments here on my blog… just to let my emotions go… T.T

Fall

It’s unbelievable indeed…

Time has passed and the temperatures are announcing that fall has finally and officially has come.
It’s hard to believe that it’s been over a month since I began to attend CMU.

I remember someone telling me that once you’re passed October you will survive for the remainder of the college life. I’m really doubting that now that October is finally approaching and I only have one month left to figure out whether I am truly surviving this whole entire college deal.

Before coming to college, everyone made a big deal out of it. How the professors won’t be nice as the teacher I had in high school, or the thought that everything is going to get so tough and life won’t be easy. The stereotypical thoughts of college including making new friends, creating a future, and life time goals… these were all just repeatedly put into my head that it lost its meaning to me.

Prior to the whole CMU experience, I had no fears about college. In fact, one could argue that I had no thought nor opinion whatsoever regarding college to begin with. I dearly lived in the present and thought nothing of what lay ahead of me. I literally lived today as if there was no tomorrow. I wasn’t psychologically ready to be hit by this “college experience.”

What’s true, from what I found out, once I’m here, is that making new friends as a college student is harder than making new friends in the kindergarten playground as a 5 year old. But once you get to know the people, they’re nice. Once you’re through it, you truly understand that making new friends isn’t as bad as what people tell you.

The workload? Sure you’re spending sleepless nights in the library many times a week, but again, it’s not as bad as people claim to be. It’s doable.

Announcement

Well guess what!

I’m not at the West Wing cluster today!!! yay!!!! haha

The reason as to why I’m not at the West Wing cluster today is somewhat similar to the announcement that I’m about to make to all CMU students…

The Hunt library is now open 24 hours for the remainder of the fall semester!

So yes… It’s 5:44 am and yes, I played around with Photo Booth again some time in the night, and yes, I’m not sleeping. But NO! I’m NOT at the West Wing cluster! haha.
I’m at the first floor next to “The MAGGIE MURPH Cafe” (which is closed anyway from the students ODing on double shots), writing this blog post up into my beloved WordPress that keeps me in contact with myself from the future to the past. (whatever the heck I was trying to say there…)

So yeah! I’m probably going to be writing my midnight posts from the Library now. In fact, I might just as well move in here because you can sleep here too! The power sleep thing that’s here next to the tables is amazing… I just tried it out; not slept in it though, yet it’s the best thing ever. It actually rotates and moves and vibrates and lights up inside to wake you up once the timer is done. Hilariously nice.

Anyhow, I was just thinking that I should post pictures up here as well. It seems so bland to see my blog without any visual impact. After all, the layout isn’t helping either, eh? Red and Black and no pictures. Just words. It all adds up to no fun. Anyway, I’m probably going to radically change my blog soon. Maybe I should’ve just not said anything at all because I might not do anything about it, but whatever. Right? haha

So here’s the deal CMUers!

The Hunt Library is now open 24 hours until the end of the fall semester!!!!!!!
Make good use of it!

Back to Blogging

I have decidedly made action towards my blogging. I decided to start two blogs.

This is one of them, which I’m restarting. The other one will be on Tistory; a Korean blogging site.

So… today, I was feeling inspired to write a post on my blog that has been long forgotten. It’s true that I haven’t updated anything in a long while. In fact, I think that’s all I’ve been writing about in the recent posts; no updates.
Readers! (if any to begin with) I assure you that now I will start updating this site as often as possible!

I started to feel emotional in the past weeks after starting classes and decided to write blogs again. It keeps me busy from thinking of other bad thoughts and it helps me keep track of myself in life.
My first blogging experience, or any type of web experience for that matter, all started with the introduction of xanga. People in the states probably know what I’m talking about. Xanga… Getting around HTML coding and using CSS style sheets in the “about me” section to make it all look pretty. Joining site like blogring.net or createblog.com in order to find layouts that other people made and put it on your site. It was a similar experience to the myspace phenomena that happened a few years back.
Then again, now we have facebook. It’s such a shame that the play on HTML doesn’t work anymore; all profiles look the same, save the subtle differences created by crap 3rd party applications that feel the boxes of other “friends’” profiles…

Talking of friends on Facebook. I just found out that I have over 500 people registered as “friends” on facebook. To be honest with you, I don’t think I have that many friends. In fact, there are quite a number of people that I don’t even really know; they are friends of friends who decided to become my friends. Weird, eh? I was met with true happiness when I found my 3rd grade teacher or when I got a friend request from my 7th grade best friend that I lost contact with, yet I must say… It is saddening that friendships has gone online to “what are you up to?” on a virtual wall with people that you see everyday. The small talks that go on online. The wall posts or e-mail or IM for that matter, has lost its true beauty and purpose.

It is with much regret that I confess my numerous amount of e-mail accounts. It all started with nackchoon[at]daum.net. All Koreans have one of these; or shall I say hanmail. Then I figured that hotmail was the thing that was “in” and made myself a nackchoon[at]hotmail.com. Sadly, I didn’t use it much and got way too much spam in it and changed it to ncjung[at]hotmail.com. This e-mail address is probably the longest lasting address. I still use it today; not for personal mail though. Official information kind of a deal. I also made a nackchoon[at]yahoo.com e-mail address because IMing was a big thing on Yahoo Messenger for quite a long time. I was pulled into Korean sites again and I needed a naver ID in order to log into the “Cafes.” Hence nackchoon[at]naver.com, then soon found out that a service named empal gives you a lot of storage and also made nackchoon[at]empal.com. Then came the gmail fever. nackchoon[at]gmail.com came. The only problem seems to be that I get waaaaaaay too much spam in there and the filter doesn’t work well; it almost certainly puts my genuine e-mails in the junk folder and gives me all the things I don’t want in my inbox. I was recruited as a beta tester in the windows live wave 1 and I got myself a live.com address. nackchoon[at]live.com. That’s my current personal mail. When live address became official, I also made ncj@live.co.kr for those random sign up things. iTunes account, amazon account, apple web store, random web signups etc. The most recent event, however, is mobileMe. Apple apparently killed its .mac accounts and started mobileMe.
Oh, by the way. I have two school e-mails: njung[at]cng.edu and nackchoon[at]cmu.edu
After a week into school at CMU, I noticed that being notified of e-mails coming into the “Andrew Mail Account” is a smart move. I tried to synchronize my iPhone with my e-mail addresses. The problem is that Apple and Microsoft hates each other. None of my windows live account would work on the iPhone. Gmail would work, but as I mentioned earlier, gmail is crowded of spam. My decision? Open a mobileMe account and forward all nackchoon[at]cmu.edu e-mails to nackchoon[at]me.com.

So here’s the verdict on e-mails and Nack:
official things? ncjung[at]hotmail.com
random things? ncj[at]live.co.kr
personal things? nackchoon[at]live.com
urgent things for me to get during school time? nackchoon[at]cmu.edu or nackchoon[at]me.com

Wow… this blog post was horrible. I started to talk about one thing and moved into a completely different story. Whatever the case is, I simply want to say that I’m starting to blog again and e-mail addresses are annoying and facebook is only useful to a certain extent and social networking has lost its true meaning.

If you read the whole entire post and understood it, your IQ is probably something in the 10000000 range haha. Thank you for listening to my babble! ^__^

Pod Machine

Yes… I finally bought a pod machine as I wished for. The irony was finally solved during a Juan Valdez visit to Andino about a week ago. For about a year, Juan Valdez sold pods to the general public, despite the fact that there are no pod machines available to buy anywhere in Colombia. Screwed up, eh?

Oh, in case anyone is wondering, pod machines are those coffee machines that you see lately in many hotel rooms where you can simply put in this circular filter paper covered ground coffee into a machine and you get a cup of fresh coffee on the go. A mimic version of the coffee machines used by baristas.

Anyhow, I payed 99000 pesos (roughly 60 USD) for the machine, but they also gave me three boxes (a dozen pods in each box) of different pods; mild, balanced, and strong flavor. I think it was a great deal.

Anyone want to come to my house sometime? I’ll become your barista and brew you the best Colombian coffee! Just come visit me! (Yes… end of senior year = boredom)

“Thoughts”

I just wanted to write down a laundry list of things that I wish to speak on my blog when I get the time to.
I have time to write things various times in the days lately, but I always forget what I wanted to write you see..

• Avianca, Ecuador incident with my dad
• Uribe in CNG?
• SIS (Professional sponsor change)
• Prom
• Senior Farewell
• Pico y Placa extension?
• Monkey brain + robotic arm
• “TaLK” – KOR gov program
• Cyworld – minilife
• CMU
• Music Downloads
• Tutoring – money factor
• F1 Visa
• Korea during summer vacations
• Diesel watch my dad brought
• Shopping spree at Santa Ana Mall
• Earthquake
• Lakes in China
• Camera
• Photography
• Final Exams
• Goodbye
• Laptop for College
• Pod Machine

I probably have more to say…. These are among few that I could think in literally 2 minutes. LOL. I have a lot going on in my head, eh?

Long Time

Yes… it has indeed been a long time since I posted here on wordpress… the end of the year for seniors had been such a long journey….

I’ll start updating on what i’ve done… After all, this blog is not truly directed to “readers.” (Probably because I have none). In fact, this is more of an online diary/journal and records of stupid retarded thoughts that passes through my head.

Hmm…….

“Back2school”

How annoying. After a full week (and add a few days) of just going around everywhere with Ji (she was here for spring break) and Jurgen and Laura among others, I really don’t want to go back to school tomorrow. All other schools resumed today; ours resume tomorrow. yay!

They say that they’re getting rid of two half days to make up for it, but it’s all in may, when we, seniors, are out of school busy doing SIS, so I guess it really doesn’t matter. This week has been a very unique one. To tell the sincere truth, it was either Ozzy or BBC every single day including one night out to Andres where we ate fantastic meat and arepa de choclo among others. I have to admit: Bogota was looking very empty and dead and ghost-town-like, but it has been the best time to drive around the city. With no cars to block your way, it was the best.

Oh yeah… we actually went somewhere… for the day… We went to Villa de Leyva, in which case the “we” refers to my family and Ji and some other new family in Hyundai and a family of my brother’s arguable best friend. We had interesting looking German food there (yes, German… yes, random…) and roamed around the place (shopping) while the little kids were taken off by my dad to some monastery made of fossils. That was an interesting day…

*sigh*… you know… lately there are so many times where you simply let out a sigh…
I gotta admit that senioritis is slowly hitting me and knowing March 31 to be all the Ivy’s deadline isn’t helping much either.

 *sigh*

Writing

I noticed how a lot of the things I write in this blog is after all, e-notes.
They’re random thoughts that are in my head or simply random things that are happening around me at the time. And the purpose of these entries that I invest my time into is probably for my self pleasure. This is when I come across a “Note” (Facebook, what else…) from Jeri, my dear lovely friend.

As a self proclaimed writer, I’m always looking for ideas. I want to immortalize my teen years in paper, and what better way to do it than through real conversations with friends? For this reason, I have a binder full of notes. Just notes, nothing more, and definitely nothing less. There are long notes, short notes, notes that are more art than writing, notes folded into paper shapes, notes written in spirals, and notes written in multi coloured gel pens. There are love notes, academic notes, notes full of emotion, notes telling jokes, notes gossiping, and notes simply saying hello. There are angry notes, happy notes, sad notes, and tired notes. I love these notes. I file them and keep them safe from harm. Throughout my countless moves, one thing I have refused to get rid of is my binder. After all, my notes are some of my most treasured possessions, and the only things I would put in my personal museum.

My notes have been collected since the seventh grade, when I discovered the joys that could come from small pieces of paper stealthily passed around the classroom. My friends and I, partners in crime, would often glance at each other, trying in vain to conceal a smile, while we faked a yawn, and dropped the note on the desk behind us. Since then, the methods of passing the notes have evolved, as have the notes themselves. They have become more than just pastimes; they have become parts of who I am. One part of me was formed by the fights I had with my best friend through notes in the ninth grade. Another part of me was formed by the numerous love notes sent by my first serious boyfriend in the 11th grade. I learned minimal Korean and Chinese through various notes sent through high school, and it has all shaped who I am now.

I can just see it. One would walk into my museum, and instead of seeing displays with captions, they would simply see the captions themselves. Hundreds and hundreds of framed notes would hang off the walls. They would be in chronological order with labels indicating the time and the topic of conversation. They could also be organized by person, or perhaps by country, whichever allows for the easiest understanding. At any rate, any random passerby would be able to walk through the room, read the seemingly infinite series of notes, and automatically have a good idea of who I was, and who I have been to those who have known me. They would know me, in a sense.

My museum would be perfect. It would be full of art, drama, literature, history, and, most of all, life. It would be the portrait of an eclectic seventeen year-old girl, and the stories she had to share from around the world. It would be a portrait of me. Me and my notes.

You know, now I want to go back in time and start writing notes too. And what else? I want to start writing enough things to write like Jeri. Her tone is so entertaining to read! lol. I hope it is entertaining to read my blog entries as well…
And now,  I regret the fact that I’ve always been moving back and forth from so many different blogs. If only I was stuck to one of them, I could probably see my old writings and go back in time….

College Update

As a senior, I impatiently wait for college answers…

After applying to 13 universities, I got responses from 3 so far, and another one to add to the list today.
Until now, the 4 letters were letters of acceptance. So far, so good. lol

Here’s the list of colleges I got in [until now]:

• University of Michigan (at Ann Arbor)
• University of Illinois (at Urbana Champaigne)
• Purdue University (in West Lafayette)
• Georgia Tech (the acceptance letter received today)

I’m so happy so far that I got into these great places. I still await the responses from others though…