March 2008 Archives

This week I selected
where I will be doing my senior internship over the summer.  I
will have to spend all four months living and working out of
Philadelphia where I will be helping work on marketing for a wholesale tea
company.  They don't do any of their manufacturing or shipping
out of Philadelphia but their marketing department works out of the
city and we control the advertising and packaging strategies. 
I am excited about this because it's more about the stratagems and not
the product for me since I know absolutely nothing about herbal tea. 
I know that if you put green tea
and oolong
tea in front of me I wouldn't be able to tell them apart. The
company that I will work for doesn't work so much in the select teas industry,
but more in the foodservice
tea market.  When I looked for an internship, these
were the types of businesses I was really looking in to because I
didn't want to get too caught up in the detail of a product. 
I would much rather work for a foodservice
ice tea company, or a
foodservice iced tea company that c
company that is marketing one particular strain of tea that they
have bread themselves.  When you work for companies like this
one, you get so much more freedom in your work, because you aren't
straining over different ways to sell the same product that your
company has been selling for years.  That's the kinds of job
that I think I would probably either quit or get fired from pretty darn
quick in the real world. It should also be really cool because I have
not done any work outside of town here since I started school so I will
get a break from the rural areas and a chance to live in the city for
once.  It's part of my bigger dream to go and live in the city
where I work over a cup
of tea.  I don't care much for which city,
Philadelphia seems nice, but any will do.  I just want to live
and be a part of the hustle and bustle of the ever-changing, never
sleeping city.  

I have been trying to
find some things to take my mind off of class and still keep my mind
working.  I used to play chess when I had more friends that
were really in to the game but now I don't really know anyone here that
plays.  That is why now I have gotten really in to to backgammon. 
I have been exploring all of the different types of online backgammon
and even trying to explore the history of the game to add a little
extra interest.  I have been sticking to the four big
variations of the game that are most used in online and regular play.
Though they are all played with the same pieces and the same game
board, because of the almost three thousand year old history of the
game, many variations on the rules have emerged. The first version I
really like to play is called Tric Trac.  This version was
invented in France in the sixteenth century.  It starts out
with all fifteen checkers on the opponents ace point and the points are
scored by reaching different specific positions and achieving certain
moves.  The game is really won like a tennis match with twelve
points per match and twelve games to decide the winner.  The
game is a little more out there from the mainstream versions of
backgammon that I think most people would play, but that's probably why
I like it.  The next version is called Plakoto. 
This game has a flow that is similar to typical backgammon, but
there is one big difference. When a hit occurs a blot does not become
captured and go to the bar, instead here it becomes frozen in that
position until the opposing checker is moved from that point. 
The next version is called Moultezem.  This version is all
about the race around the board.  There are twenty-four pips
for each side and blots cannot be hit here.  I like this
version because the games go fast and it reminds me a lot of when I
used to play speed chess.  The last version that I play the
least of is called Acey-Deucy.  This game is really only
unique in its handling of a two to one roll in which players get a big
advantage and an extra roll.  

I have reached the
home stretch and only have about six weeks of school left before I
graduate.  I am still working really hard on what I have to
get done right now, but I have started to move beyond what I am doing
now to the next phase of my education.  I have also started to
celebrate.  I have not been the most social student so far but
I really have bee trying to make up for that by making sure I know the
names and the layout of every bar in town.  It has been a
pretty fun semester so far.  Now I have got to cool that part
of the experience off and focus more on what I am going to do
next.  I will be doing an internship over the summer as an
elementary & secondary education policies assistant. 
I will basically be working on looking at the ways in which various
school policies are designed and how new policies are developed and
implemented within a particular school district.  While I am
doing that I will be working on my masters
degree online in social work.  I will have a full
schedule of online
college course while I am working so that by next year at
this time I will have my masters finished.  I am really happy
with this online
college degree setup because I get to finish my degree and
work at the same time at a job that gets me some good
experience.  I will have to find some kind of supplemental
work for the fall and spring but hopefully I will find a job that will
just give me a raise once my masters is finished.  I really
want to work as a school psychologist of within the policy studies area
and try to develop different types of teaching models that I have seen
so far because that is really where my interest lies.  I have
always wanted to start up a school when my life reaches some type of
balance, that is focused on alternative models of teaching and tries
out different theories of assimilation to try and reform the greater
educational system of this country.  

I decided this week what I am going to be doing next year. I have looked in to a bunch of different countries and places where I could study abroad and last week I had it narrowed down to just two places. I knew I would either be going to either Italy or Sardinia. I had been doing my research for a while I what it came down to was both the length of the programs and the cost of both Italy Apartmentsand Sardinia apartments. I know that I definitely don;t want to stay there for the whole year but I just want like a semester or half semester program. I also know that I don't want to stay there when it's warm here so spring I think would be the best time for me to go. So since I have made those two decisions I started looking at apartments because I know that I also don;t want to stay on campus but I want to get the full experience and not just live like some touristy student. This is just the way I roll. If I could completely immerse myself in either culture any more than that it would have to happen after I am done with school because I know I do need to get my degree done before I do anything more intense. I did some research in to apartments for both countries and found some really cool Italy villas in Italy that I really loved. I found that most of the Sardinia villas were a little bit outside of my price range for the area where the transfer would be so I have made my final decision to go to Italy. Even though I still have about a year left until I go, I am already feeling the excitement every day. Each morning while I check my e-mail I can not help but do more research in to the area where we will be staying which is Tuscany. The area was also a big factor for me because it would be really hard for me to turn down a chance to spend any time whatsoever in the world's best wine country.

I just got back from my spring break trip, and it was the most amazing thing I have ever done in my entire life. I organized a group of students from all of the campuses of our school and set up a sort of missionary type trip to South Africa. We went down there help bolster the South African real estate market by building new houses for sale starting this week. I decided to try this after I was inspired by a trip I took last year to New Orleans where we built houses for hurricane victims and they actually didn't have to pay us anything for a totally brand new house. On that trip I think we built a total of four new houses in about a week. It was really hard work because we didn't stop all week. Thank god the weather was perfect and we could work from dusk till dawn without having to stop for the rain or anything like that. Actually, because the sun was out the whole time we were there, we all just really wanted to stay outside the whole time and our spirits were really high. It was especially inspiring when we finished all of the houses and talked to the people about what they thought of the houses. It was just amazing to see the total joy they felt at our generosity and willingness to help people we had never met and may never even see again, but their lives would be shaped by our experience forever. So this past spring I was taking a course on African history and I saw the situation of South Africa. We got to the lesson about modern South African property for sale. We were discussing their new private property rights and the situation with new homes within the developing country. I decided that this would be my project. So I started about a year ago now, with a few meetings then eventually some fund-raising before the year ended. Over the summer I applied for school money and they gave me enough for us to cover about five houses in a week. I still haven't worked out all of my memories on the trip, but when I do I will surely have something more to write.

So since I have been
volunteering to help out with the college student acting group I have
actually been able to sort of create my own acting persona that people
are starting to notice.  I am not, nor will I ever be a
theater major.  That having been said, if the opportunity ever
falls in my lap and a modeling
job or an acting
job ever falls in my lap, I won't surely turn it
down.  Though now that I have been working with the campus
student thespian
group I feel that I could blow any of those majors off at  acting auditions. 
I think for me all it has taken has been just watching people act and
seeing the way that they articulate and develop styles.  I
especially learned a lot when I was working on set design and we put
out open calls
for the newest production we have been working on.  I actually
got to sit in on the film
auditions and it was so amazing to see many different people
come in with the same set of lines and take them off in just as many
different directions as there were people. Though we had closed off the
auditions to theater majors, our best applicants were actually people
that were also doing modeling. 
These students are the ones that just strive for the attention demanded
by show business of the modeling business. These kids just seemed to
feed off of the reactions by the judges.  Whenever they would
elicit a response from any one of us, they would instantly kicked it up
and push their approach just a bit farther.  After that
experience I started to work a lot with the actors in our production to
hone in on the set design they worked best with.  Some days I
would runs lines with one of the actors to help them practice, and to
help me find the best placement for props and for the best backdrops
for each mood.  I have been finding that the more I do this,
the better I have become and have actually reached a point where I feel
like I should be in the production and not just behind it. 

I am feeling kind of withdrawn lately because I just feel like all I have been doing is studying.  I mean I do have a good reason to be studying a lot because it is not easy to maintain Dean's list while taking about twenty credits.  It is just too much sometimes though.  I have actually started considering slowing down my studying in the summer and doing some auditions.  When I was in high school I did a bunch of modeling and I have nothing but good memories of the whole experience.  Each spring I used to just totally immerse myself in my lines for the school play.  I would start around christmas doing mock acting auditions at home.  The spring was always the season for modeling auditions and theater auditions.  By my senior year I had given up modeling and was focusing strictly on acting.  When I applied to school I didn't even think about opportunities for either one of these hobbies.  I just wanted to go to a school where I knew I would get a job after I was finished.  I know now that that is a good thing to consider, but I should have also thought about my mental health.  I mean I am not going crazy from not acting or modeling, but I am not having any fun because I have been cut off from what I love to do.  There are two theater companies on campus here, one of them is associated with the department and one is just a club.  The first one is a little more competitive but is only open to the non-majors.  The other one is not so competitive and is much less work.  I am not sure if I will try out for both but I think I am good enough to get in to either one.  There is an informational meeting on tuesday after break ends and I think I am going to just go see how I feel once I am there before i make any decisions because class sign ups for the fall are the next week.  I will have a lot to think about that week either way.  

So I really just can not help myself right now, I need to talk about my new dog. He is the coolest animal I have ever met in my whole life. I am twenty-one now and haven't had a dog since I was about five years old. For some this may not seem like a long time, but I have been wanting to have dog of my own ever since our dog Humphrey died when he was hit by a car. He was a boxer pitbull mixture and was the nicest, most obedient dog you could ever ask for. He was so easily trained, I am told, that my parents say that they would talk to him like a human and he would respond as if he understood completely. When he died I wasn't around, but I remember being very sad because he was a great dog with kids and was like my best friend at the time. My new dog, Saul, is a full breed boxer puppy, and the cutest dog on the entire planet. I don't remember any of the hassels of having a dog as a kid, but my friends who have had dogs always talk about the problems that come from having dogs. I personally love all of the minute detail of having a dog. I loved going out and getting him new little toys or shopping for the best dog food. One of the big deals I made was surrounding his dog bed. I went to about four different pet stores looking at all of the different kinds of dogs beds. I would ask for the ones that were easiest to clean, and the ones that were the most durable. I even talked to my friend who raises show dogs about the ones that they use professionally. I eventually made a buy and he loves his bed; I just know how much I care about comfort in bed, and he can't tell me if his bed is too stiff. So now I am just settling in with the little guy and so far he hasn't gotten too far in his training but he also hasn't done too many things that I need to discipline him for, but he is only a month old.

So this week I have been so caught up on my work that it's been hard to fill up my extra free time. I went to a basketball game on Saturday night and to the gym every day so far. I have only had lectures this week so nothing has been so intensive that I have had any desire to study outside of class. With a nice coating of snow on the ground, outdoor activities are sort of out of the question since our snow turns in to a brown slushy mixture after being on the ground for a day or so. By today I have been so bored from just trying to find things to do with my friends that I have been slipping back in to old hobbies that I haven't been able to get into since school has kept me so busy thus far. I was reading this really great novel last night trying to keep myself interested when I got sidetracked in the story. It was a cheesy love novel about two Americans meeting in Italy. When I was in high school I would get on the internet and look up apartments and places to work to create a whole image of myself living in a different place. I got sidetracked in my mind on images or strolling past the Tuscany villas or ducking away from the street in to sicily apartments. So when I finally regained control of my mind I went online and did some fun research. I looked in to all of the different cities of Italy and thought of which sights I'd like to live near the most. I thought about living up north in the wine country so I looked up all the quaint, but beautiful Tuscany apartments. I have always thought how cool it would be to just step out and taste my own grapes of the season. Then I thought it would be great to live next to a lemon orchard in one of the charming little Sicily villas. I spent the whole night looking up different places and I eventually settled on the wine country because I a more of a drinker than a lemon eater. I could always travel south once I got there anyway.

When I am not at
class my favorite thing to do is to study or take some type of body
arts classes.  I took a class my freshman year in kineseology
where we had to learn to teach yoga and we got to take some free martial
arts classes.  These two have always been my
favorite.  I remember watching the introduction martial arts video
and I just felt my body wanting to move along with the person flying
across the screen.  Now I just feel like that is exactly what
I need to be doing at all times because it makes my body and my mind
feel better to keep up a practice schedule.  The last few
months I have focusing mainly on doing my martial arts studies in
between classes because I just feel that it is better for my body right
now to keep up the heavy exertion involved in martial arts.  I
think both yoga and martial arts are very similar, but martial arts
compliments a yoga practice more than yoga making martial arts practice
better.  I think the other reason is a bit more
topical.  I practice a form of yoga that uses props quite a
lot and the same with my martial arts style.  The big
difference between the two is that the yoga products are relatively
cheap and the martial
arts training
equipment was always just a little bit too much for me to
afford.  When I had finally saved up enough money to get them
I think that was when I truly made the transition to a much more
martial arts intensive schedule.  The equipment for martial
arts is also much bigger and wasn't going to fit in my last apartment,
no matter how much I thought they would have.  So now when
people come over they have to step over my yoga stuff and usually give
my martial arts sparring dummy a good punch or something and then move
on.  It always ads just a little something to a party where
people come and stretch before they start to socialize, and then they
get a good sweat on long before they ever had a drink.  I know
I am not the first one to think of that, but I was the first one to
tell me. 

I am so excited for my spring break because I am going to spend the whole time working.  I know that sounds so weird compared to the plans of my peers that consist mainly of going to a warmer place and drinking till they pass out and repeating that for the whole week.  No that is not the life for me.  I prefer spending my time thinking about my exhibition design and making my stand construction more efficient.  I am talking about the art exhibition in Germany where I will be hosting my own trade show stand.  I will be selling paintings.  The new series has been selling great here since I had the exhibition stand here on campus that was visited by over half of the student body as the count would suggest.  The exhibition stand design was so written about in the local paper that I decided to submit the layout and pictures to the German board for the trade show and they accepted me.  In less than three days I will be in Germany amid all the fair stands, comparing exhibition designs trying to figure out what I will do next year if they want me back. I feel confident though that because of how well my work did here in America that I won't really have any problem selling many paintings. The show is a whole week long so I won't be back until next sunday and I wouldn't imagine any of my friends will want to hear any of my stories of trying to barter in German or whatever else happens.  Maybe II'l get drunk just once while I am there so I can say that I did the usual spring break stuff and they won't think I am that big of a dork, but probably not.  I am just so excited to be a part of this adventure because this is the farthest from home I have ever been and my first time outside the country.  I just hope things go smoothly even if I don't sell much, I just don't want to have to deal with any ridiculous circumstances when I am in a foreign land and don't speak the language.  

Right now my most interesting course is my business communications class. We are talking about all of the different modern methods of communication between businesses.  The main methods we are really delving into are the business telephone systems and the video conference systems.  I eventually want to work in managing voice over ip, or VoIP systems.  I have always known that I wanted to be some type of manger and it was only within the last year or so that I have found a lot of interest in the managing of unified communications systems that firms set up for big businesses.  Our teacher has insisted that we all take some hands on experience from the class so he set up a bunch of different field trips where we go out and see different work environments and have the actual system agents explain what makes their system unique or what makes it keep working every day of the year.  The last one we went and saw was about this firm that was setting up a pbx phone system complete with softphone and IP telephony.  The tour was really cool because they showed us how intensive it actually is to set up such a large system, but the benefits in the long run are amazing because it has taken their communication in the to arena of the millisecond from the minute.  Next week we are going to tour a company that specializes in VoIP security systems for other big companies.  This is the area I would most like to work in because their is a certain appeal about being the person trying your best to keep the glitches and the hackers out your big invisible back yard at all times.  I look at that kind of work as a big video game and that is why I think I will make a great systems manager.  I have a great ability to both multi task, but also to have this three dimensional view of the virtual battlefield that these games are played on.  This class has really gotten me geared up for the real world and I think that is exactly what it is supposed to do.

My partner and I have
been talking a lot lately about the future.  It all started
because one day last week she came home and she had a shopping bag with
her.  She seemed reluctant to tell me what was in the bag a
finally she showed me and it a bunch of blank wedding
invitations and wedding
stationery. Needless to say I was a bit confused because we
have very rarely ever talked about getting married with any degree of
seriousness whatsoever.  When I asked her more about it she
said she was going to write up a mock wedding
announcements on some more elegant
wedding Invitations paper and just leave it out for me to
find.  I told that either way I would react the same way,
confused.  We have been together now for about six years and
have talked about marriage before.  We have talked about the
future like any good couple should, and we have made decisions based on
what is good for both of us and our relationship.  When she
sprang this new desire on me I was a little bit shocked because I am
still only a sophomore in college and don't think that now is the best
time for me to getting married for several reasons. One reason is that
we may need to split up after college to meet our own career goals, and
I don't think a marriage should keep either of us from doing
that.  The other reason is that currently we are both
supporting ourselves, and looking at our levels of finances, I would
think that the wedding invitations would be the most expensive part of
what we could do right now.  Although  I obviously
have my doubts and concerns about it, we are a strong couple and we
both feel that this is the kind of issue that you discuss and talk
about for a very long time before making any kind of final
judgment.  We have basically talked about nothing else for the
last week or so because we know that getting married would change they
way we have to operate in the future and we are just two very strong
people with intense personal goals.  

I know it sounds a little cryptic for a college student to say this but I just got back from my meeting with the life insurance agent.  It is true that I am only twenty-two an I have no diseases so it's a little surprising that I would be out planning for my own death, but it all comes with the territory I have started out on this year.  When my senior year was about to start I had a week or so of just total freak out about what I was going to do for the rest of my life.  I have been seeing the same girl since I started college and decided then that I was going to ask her to marry me before she made plans for her life without me.  I asked and of course she said yes.  So we have been engaged for about five months now and we are planning for the rest of our lives, together.  I didn't tell her about this little detail, but I figure that if I die and she gets a big fat check it's worth it to her that I buy some cheap life insurance at least until we are stable.  This is just one of those things I feel that I need to do for her that are like the unspoken rules of relationships. 

We have also been looking in to what we are going to do for work when we are done with school.  I got my business degree and want to become a contractor.  Since I was a little boy I have always wanted to be that guy who stands in front of the crew and watches the house go up piece buy piece until the last plant goes in the yard and the people come to see it.  My fiancee is an art teacher right now and has been getting her masters in art history so she can get a Ph.D. in the latter.  So I have just put down a payment on our house with self certificate mortgages.  Self cert mortgages are basically another way of saying self employed mortgages. So as you can imagine I have also started up my business so that I will fall right in when school is over. 

In my internet technical services class, we have been working on the unit about web hosting.  So far this semester this has been my favorite unit because this is exactly what I want to do when I get out of school.  I found this new love last year when I did an internship for website hosting firm where I was in charge of writing their different web hosting reviews.  I spent the summer looking at all the different competitors that claim cheap hosting and try to find out the specifics of their business models.  The firm I worked for did always come out with  cheap web hosting for the sheer amount of work that they would actually do to meet the needs of the different clients as well as to keep all of their technology up to date.  I had so much fun that summer that I decided my major then and there.  Now I am on a quest to get back and find  host company where I could be a little more involved in the actually groundwork of domain hosting.  For now I still have about a year and a half of school left and I am just compare web hosts to see which ones I want to apply to when I graduate.  In the class right now we are basically working on learning all of the different components that go in to web hosting and where the web technology is moving so we will be ready when we actually get to the workforce.  That is one of the craziest things about this business I have found so far is that when you think you have everything you could ever need or the best possible system set up and then the next day a newer version is released and it makes everything work so much better.  It may seem like an annoyance to some people in other types of jobs, but for this kind of work where every single day is a new adventure in productivity, I am so excited when that new program comes out and I get to try out all of its new toys before the company does.  At least I hope that is how it will be when I finally get there.

I just got back from the office in our campus commons where they have one of these full time travel agents for students.  I went in without any kinds of expectations or particular places in mind, I just didn't have any particular plans for the whole week we have off for spring break.  I walked in a sat in their little waiting room for like a half an hour waiting for an agent. While I waited I read this skiing magazine filled with pretty ads for stuff I would never want to buy.  when the agent finally came out he was a medium height and clean shaven man without a problem on his face.  When he sat me down he asked me what I was here for and what I was interested in.  I looked at him said I had no plans and just wanted him to show me what he had to offer.  He brought out his little blue board with a bunch of brightly colored yellow countries listed on the blue gloss board.  He told me about each one and the bed and breakfast rental properties favored for each one.  Most of the trips were to the larger tourist places complete with tours and meals.  The ones that stuck out for me were the ones that were not these big packages with all amenities included.  Places like Brazil and African countries where the packages all said subject to change on the bottom.  These were the ones with with the cottage vacation rentals and the optional tours and the airfare included.  These were the ones that stuck out for me because that is my kind of trip.  I talked to him for like an hour and eventually I told him I wanted the trip to Madagascar where the vacation rental is right next to the rain forest.  He was a bit stunned that I chose this one but was satisfied nonetheless that he had made a sale.  Now I am starting to do my research because I didn't, and still barely know, anything about Madagascar.  The thing that I am most excited about is that rain forest setup where I could just walk outside and step in to the jungle.