I just upgraded mine to 2.3.

…If there’s anything wonky around here, please let me know by either leaving me a comment or emailing me at tara[at]aigoo-chamna[dot]net.

So far I’ve tested everything and it seems to be working. Let’s hope it stays that way.

Man, so busy lately! Aside from subbing for sixth grade science this week (HOMG they are LOUD), this past Sunday my place was ambushed by relatives to celebrate my mother’s 환갑 (hwangab). That is also known as my mum’s 60th birthday; instead of celebrating the big 5-0 like the United States, Koreans celebrate the big 6-0.

Let’s just say that was an interesting experience. We went to a Galbi restaurant somewhere in Gangnam-gu, Apgujeong-dong area. My relatives saw me drink soju, and some of them thought that was just superbly amazing. Don’t ask me why. I mean, I am 22 for heaven’s sake! Then I had to be a hostess of some sort to my grandmother, aunt, and my younger cousins. Later I stopped by the Karaoke place in my neighbourhood and impressed and shocked some more of my relatives by singing Korean old-people songs, which I affectionately call them the Ahjumma songs. Ahjumma is a Korean word for older, married woman. XD

Technically, my mum’s birthday is next week, but we had it a week earlier since this upcoming weeknd is 추석 (Chuseok), the Korean version of Thanksgiving, one of the MAJOR holidays in Korea. With all that hassle, with most of my relatives going down to the south like Gwangju and Daejon, it was easier to have it earlier.

I am glad that it is over, though. I did not enjoy staying up till 2am on Monday morning, getting only about three hours of sleep, and then sub for a bunch of sixth graders. O_O Monday was not my best day this week. Thankfully, the rest of the week’s been okay, so far. Just really busy as usual!

Oh, how I miss my lazy days,
where I bummed around here and fro,
with nothing else to do but waste my time.

Now that I am back to work,
that has extremely reduced my time
to do the things I long to do.

At work things are crazy;
my hours zoom by like the copying
machine I spend most time at.

Either that or I am lecturing and
admonishing about the rules
students never want to follow.

I stand by gritting my teeth
from the urge to curse at every
single things that annoy me.

Along with school, I have no life.
Face-to-face or online,
whatever it may be, I’m occupied.

Whitman or Dickinson, their poetry
unravels in my mind as something
too foreign for me to comprehend.

Perhaps, I need to purchase
five-hundred dollars worth
of heroin as my daddy said.

To get high to understand Kerouac’s
handsome and forever eternal
Dean Moriarty, the poster boy for everyone.

But alas, alas! These readings kill me as
I drudge through my days at
the high and middle school.

I am already at my death doors,
wondering when this never-ending,
aggravating hell would end.

I hunger for my hot, sweltering
summer days of laziness,
where I had all the time in the world.

But that is all gone now. Gone.
Taken from me because of the need
to work and to get an education.

Will all this troubles be worth it?
All the pains and sufferings?
Or am I simply exaggerating?

Exaggerating or not, agree with me
that working and schooling is quite
an ugly combination.

Swamped to death and
death to swamped. I shall
conquer it all, through and all.

– The abysmally-insane author of this blog.

Do not ask why I wrote this horribly written thing that I call poetry. I think my sickness from the last few days has funkified my brain cells. And if you’re wondering, yes I just wrote this right now out of impulse. Instead of reading Whitman’s poetry like I should be, I decided to just write my own. Go figure.

Henceforth, instead of bipolar, my new word is “bookpolar” after the ridiculous amount of book-related issues I had today.

My day started off kind of depressing with a death of a student. Had I known her, I’d be more impacted, but just the mere idea of someone dying so young sort of set an ugly tone for me today. The next two hours were spent bumming around the high school campus and me going after the Queen of the Xerox Machine award yet again.

Then I had to go to the post office to finally return a book (a manga) to Amazon. This was the second misprinted copy I received… BLARGH. The line there was long. Luckily, though, I didn’t stay that long, but being in line for any reason just always puts me in a very bad mood. Yes, I’m very impatient.

Then I went upstairs to talk to my academic advisor where I got my GPA update, which is 3.867. I asked if it will be a 3.9 after I finish my last four classes with an “A,” and he say it could be. No, I am not going spend the next three hours trying to calculate it. The last time I did, I kept getting different answers.

I stopped by the computer lab to register for my online class proctored exam. Then I happened to check my email and I received a Facebook notification that “BKL” messaged me. Now BKL is an old friend of mine since seventh grade. I nearly screamed when I saw that since I’ve been trying to find him the last few months and whatnot… HALLELUJAH INTERNET.

Deciding to get the rest of my errands done for the week, I decided to go to the library to see if it had any of the books I needed for my Sunday class. Only one existed. Okay, make that one and a half. The half is a damn audiobook instead of an actual book. Borrowed that and decided to just go ahead and buy the rest for $77. On the flip side, I’ve gained a free book: The Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden.

I moosied along to the credit union where I waited in line again. After I convinced the lady that I wasn’t over 22 (to get a free money order, which applies to me since I’m not over 22, but the lady somehow miscalculated my birthday and thought I was 23 X_X), I got the MO, said hello to my daddy who came there as well, and went to get the rest of the books. After being told that I could choose one from two of the books, I got annoyed. In the end, I decided to just get all of them since I already had the MO in my hand, and I was not looking forward to going back to yet another line to get a new MO.

In the end, I ended up with eight books in my possession, today. Ten if you include the two volume anthology set that arrived for me in the mail today. Here’s my lovely list of what I have to decorate my bookcase with now. I mean, after all, the purpose of these books is to make my bookcase look more intelligent.

* The Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry for $82.09 (plus shipping)
* On the Road by Jack Kerouac from the library.
* Mexico City Blues by Jack Kerouac for $9.00
* Junky by William S. Burroughs for 14.00
* Queer by William S. Burroughs for 11.00
* The Beat Book: Poems and Fictions of the Beat Generation by Anne Waldman for $17.00 (The only hardback copy…)
* The Portable Beat Reader by Ann Charters for $18.00 (WTF, a paperback more expensive than the hardback?!)
* Dutchman and the Slave by Davy LeRoi Jones for $8.00

*sighs* If anyone asks me to sum up college in five words or less, this would be it: College textbooks are bloody expensive!!!! $160 down the drain for TWO classes. BLARGH! Why, oh why is education so effing wonderful and needed but so expensive?! And for the umpteenth time, why did I choose ENGLISH as my major?! *bang head* The only thing I get is a great looking bookcase, filled with books I claim to have read, and I gain the skills to masterfully BS through any essays and papers.

…Right. Yes, I’m being snarky using very odd humour. As I said at the beginning, this is a BOOKpolar day!