Good Stuff

Lia 
Lia came over today. I made lunch and then we watched Deep Impact and just hung out. I also packed up most of my stuff for my move on Sunday. Of course, I'm still not sure where I'm moving to.

Its kind of nice living here alone, even if its just a short time. Its clean, there aren't any ants. I can relax.

Vocab Stuff

As I'm at the point in Korean where I'm attempting to memorize some of the more useful emotion-related words, I thought I'd post them here. More for my benefit than yours of course ;-) It also forces me to type Korean, which isn't terribly hard, and while its certainly very useful to be able to type many languages, it still sucks to learn each time. That deep ache that comes from forcing your brain to work so hard in memorizing the key layout. I hope its worth the pain.

기뻐 - happy
슬퍼 - sad
위로워 - depressed
지겨워 - bored (as in not being interested in whats going on)
화났어 - angry
우울해 - depressed
재밌어 - fun
무서워 - scared

Also, here are a few ไทย words I picked up recently. They came from gambling discussions.
เท่าทุน - to break even on a financial investment; sell at par
เจ๊ง - to lose on an investment
เจ๊า - to tie, a draw

Correction!

It seems I made an error when I said "ประจำวันนอนไม่หลับเลยคิดว่าจะตายแล้ว" the other day. Here is the correction.

นอนไม่หลับสักวันจนจะตายแล้ว

Thanks Wad!

Quiet House - どうすればいいんだよ？！

Cody left on Saturday, and Dan left about 4am this morning. So I slept most of the day and then cleaned up the kitchen a bit. I'm still in this house for one more week so I will gradually make it look nice. I have nothing else to do after all.

I'm moving in with a Japanese guy in the city on the 3rd. That will be another week with nothing to do. Perhaps, I should change my flight date? I'm not really sure if I have the money to be doing nothing for 2 weeks. Hrm. I've studied a bit today, but thats about it.

I can't remember if I mentioned this already, but I went to the Melbourne Zoo with Lia last week. It was crap. I felt really bad for the big cats. Their cages are far too small and they just eat, pace and sleep. What a miserable exsistence. I suppose the only decent display was the butterfly room. It was in a special nursery where the heat and humidity were jacked up real high. They just fly all around you. Some of them are huge.

Farewell Jams

I went out for dinner and drinks with Will, Tomo, Ashin, Lia and Lana as Will is leaving fairly soon. I got pretty drunk before heading home. When I got back there was a big goodbye party going on at the IH, so I started drinking again. It was a blast! We took lots of pics and I got a few people to write in my book of many languages that I will hopefully be able to read all of someday. I'll try and get some pics up asap.

I hung out with Yun one last time today, as she is leaving for NZ on Tuesday and she won't be back to Melbourne before returning to Korea. I had a great time with her, and am lucky to have met her.

More New Stuff

Exams are all finished. Chinese was pretty easy for me as I expected. However, I wouldn't be surprised if a number of people failed. I was surprised how well everyone was expected to be able to read/write the characters after one semester in a class with a worthless teacher.

Last night, I saw A Tale of Two Sisters with Lia. Its a Korean horror movie that got quite a bit of acclaim. It was an interesting movie. It also had a number of major plot twists. Perhaps most of all, its mighty confusing!

I will move into the city on July 3rd. It will be kind of nice not to have to sit on the tram/train each day. Then again, what will I do with all of that free time?

不眠症 = ตาแข็ง

僕の一生を通じてしつこい不眠症に悩んでいる。残念なことに、最近事態はますます悪化している。
どうしたら不眠症を治せるのか教えてください。

ประจำวันนอนไม่หลับเลยคิดว่าจะตายแล้ว

Anyways, my insomnia has been pretty rough lately. Today, I managed to wake up reasonably early, but here I am at 1:30am and still not even remotely tired. Its very frustrating. A few weeks ago I decided make sure I don't drink at least 3 days/week. While, not exactly fun, I figured it would help in some regard. It seems to have kickstarted the worst bout of 寝不足 I've had in years.

On another note, I think I have stumbled upon some interesting successes in vocabulary assimilation. Its not perfected yet, and its variable in its effectiveness dependant both upon the subject and the word in question. However, it does seem to work great for certain words. More on this soon (hopefully^^)!

Drinking And Stuff

Well, according to my traffic report, nobody reads my blog anymore! I suppose I can understand as I have been unable to update as often as before. This is partially due to work and school, but I think also that it has something to do with my rather strange mood cycle. I suppose the only reason I'm writing at the moment, is because I've spent a while studying and I need a break (other than news). Its kind of amusing that I'm getting a spurt of energy just as my semester comes to a close.

First off, lets go over my drinking habits of late. As those of you who know me, I am a drinker. Not a drunk exactly, nor a lush, but I drink almost every day. Perhaps I actually get drunk 2 or 3 times a month, but never beyond me becoming extremely talkative, or on rarer occasions, emotional. Lately, most of my Korean friends (and girlfriend) have been bothering me about my 'red nose' which in Korea, seems to be the primary sign of alcoholism. Now, I suppose I'm an alcoholic already by the standard definitions, but I'm not going to worry much about this today.

It has been expressed to me by a number of sources, that my Zoloft, of which I am currently taking 100mg/day, would be much more effective if I didn't drink. Having considered this, I decided to attempt to sever a few days of drinking from my week.

Its been rough, but certainly possible. I had to wait until the bulk of my exams were over, as I knew it would interfere with my endless sleeping problems. The past few weeks I haven't had any alcohol from Sat-Mon. Following this, Tues and Thurs tend to be light drinking, while Wed I often go out with my Thai friends and Friday I can often be found drinking a moderate amount with Lia or others. I think this schedule is fine for me. Unfortunately, on the days I don't drink, I can't fall asleep, and I get these crazy carbohydrate cravings. My diet consists of at least 75% soy products and vegetables. Although the exact mix of that varies considerably based on where I am living at any given time.

Well, I was actually going to do a language lesson when I started writing this. I'm not quite sure what happened. Ah well, maybe soon. I'll end my babbling for the day. I have too much free time!

Exam Update

I took both my Arabic exams earlier this week and today I had my music theory test in the morning and my performance (piano) test in the afternoon. I was so confident in all of them and I did quite well. I didn't drink from Saturday - Monday. And I had no anxiety this week, although tonight my high was crushed and I may have fell into a bit of a depressed rut. Then again, I'm already feeling better than I was about 30 minutes ago. We'll see how I'm looking tomorrow. My last exam is for Chinese on the 24th of June. I've booked my ticket back to Thailand for July 11th, but I'm considering going back and changing that date. I've had a wonderful experience here, but maybe its about time I went back. More on this soon.

Exams, Movies, and Stuff

I watched Cursed tonight with Lia. It was the absolute worst werewolf move I've ever seen. I can't even describe how stupid it was. Teen Wolf 2 is great compared to this garbage. Everyone in that movie should be ashamed. Scott Baio, how could you?

I've been at the casino a lot lately. The dealers have started to recognize me at the blackjack tables. I made 75 today and 100 yesterday. Good stuff.

Ah, today is Yun's 23rd birthday. And as a present to her, I attempted to enter into a Korean karaoke contest. With Lia and Yun in tow, I got liqoured up before heading to the k-shop. The owner then proceded to explain (in Korean) to Yun how I am unable to enter the competition because the tonal qualities of western people is different. Or some other nonsense that they couldn't really explain to me. Both Lia and Yun said they didn't really understand either. I was relieved I suppose, but more than anything, I am friggin pissed off. They can't pull that crap in Australia . I read up on the Human Rights and Equal Opp website for Australia, and I've browsed my options for lodging a complaint. I don't know if I really want to bother. But I really hate crap like this. Suggestions or comments on this would be appreciated.

On to exams.... I took my Indonesian exams. They were ridiculously easy. As was my Chinese oral test. Monday and Tuesday are Arabic finals. Music theory and piano are on Thursday. The only one I'm worried about is Arabic. Shouldn't be too bad.