I've finally moved out of the place I was staying at, yay! I'm not moving into the new place until the first of May, but penelope_z has very generously put me up, so even the temporary arrangements are already a massive improvement on my previous living situation. Now I only need to find a job, and I can stop spending 75% of my waking hours (and judging by some weird-ass dreams, 100% of my sleep) panicking about money.

Mind you, the remaining 25% of my time is not actually bad. We just watched Trekkies and Trekkies 2 which has certainly been an...interesting experience.

( Cut for spoilers for years-old films )

-Like everybody else, I've been horrified by the situation in Japan. I wish my financial situation was better so I could donate something to the relief effort, but as it is, I can only be dumbstruck by the scale of the tragedy and enraged at the assholes using this as fodder for cheap jokes or dropping Pearl Harbour (!) references.

-RL has been a neverending source of frustration lately, as I've been considering a professional game plan for when my MBA ends. Going abroad seems to be the only viable option right now, but I'm not thrilled about it, especially since it doesn't feel like much of a choice at this juncture. I have a job interview next week, so we'll see how that goes.

-This is quite possibly the best thing I've seen all week:



Now, I'm not condoning violence as a response to bullying (though I'm not exactly condemning it either), but I can completely understand where that kid is coming from. There's only so much you can take before you snap (and obviously a lot of people agree, given that this clip made the kid into an instant Internet hero.

Also...that little bully runt seriously lacks some self-preservation skills. Did it not cross his mind that a boy who's twice his size might, I don't know, fight back?

It’s been pointed out to me that I’ve disappeared off the face of the Internet for an usual length of time, even for me. I do plan on doing a real post one of these days, not to mention catch up with all of you, but in meantime, some quick notes;

-Regardless of what you may have seen in the news, Greece is neither a)on fire b)on the brink of civil war. Yes, the economy’s in the shithole and yes, there are plenty of protests, but considering the number of worried enquiries from friends abroad I’ve had over the last few weeks, the media might be blowing stuff up a tad out of proportion.

-Funny story, actually, but the worst day of protests, I managed to be in arguably the worst possible place. I wanted to drop by my Uni for something, unaware that the building was closed for the day. As I got off the metro in the central Athens, I got a lungful of tear gas (sufficiently dissipated to walk around, but my nose and throat still stung like a motherfucker). Considering it business as usual, I took some side alleys in an effort to avoid main streets and some fires I saw burning in the distance. It’s only when I reached my Uni building that it became clear that the event was probably cancelled. The clues leading to that brilliant deduction were:
a)The congregation firetrucks assorted emergency services in front of the building.
b)The ladder leading into the building right next to the Uni with various firemen climbing it.
c)The fact that said building was ON FIRE.

So, after debating for all of two seconds getting nearer to confirm that my building was, indeed, closed (I decided against that after the I noticed the ‘GTFO, you crazy bitch!’ glares the firemen were throwing me), and walked instead the ten minute distance into the old area around the Parthenon, were tourists were walking around oblivious and all was business as usual. Gotta love Athens.

-In other news I quit smoking. Again. I don’t know why people say quitting is hard, I’ve done it like five times.

Har har. No but seriously, this had better be the last time. I’m on day three with withdrawal jitters kicking my ass: I’m lethargic, cranky and sort of artificially hungry, but I’m grinding my teeth and trying to stay hydrated. I know the drill: the physical withdrawal shall soon pass, and then it will come ‘climbing up the walls and being a massive bitch to everyone’, which is always a good time for all those involved.

-After realizing that I can get comic books the same way I get foreign TV shows, I went a little crazy catching up with my first ever fandom, the X-MEN. In the ‘reading about thirty years worth of canon’ way. I have about a billion thoughts on the subject, but before I share them, I should check whether any of you even read Marvel comics (and if you do, any recs for fics/sites/communities would be appreciated).